The Great Saint Bernard is located at a strategic pass that is on the highest point of a route that offers the shortest passage across the Alps, hence connecting the Northern and Southern parts of Europe. The passage is the shortest, but not easiest, since the travelers need to climb up to 2500 meters , and often against inclement weather, to make the pass. My friends and I only hiked five kilometers, and that is already an odyssey for us. Think about the people in the past who travelled all way along without any modern devices. To use a Chinese term, this is the pass of demonic gate (鬼门关).
It appears that from the time of antiquity, if not earlier, people at the region already used the passage to cross the Alps. Among them are Celtic people who left artifacts along the route. Particularly they threw offerings, especially coins, into a pond near the site of the monastery to pray to the God Poeninus to bless their travel. This tradition continued in the Roman period. With its military and economic power, the Romans constructed a road on the passage, which we can still see the trace of it during the summer. Based on the account of Raphael, a cheerful monk in the monastery, in the Roman time, the area had a warmer climate and the tree lines were higher than what we have today. This probably gave the Romans an easier time to build the road, though still an amazing achievement given the technology they had at the time. Moreover, the Romans also built a temple dedicated to the God Jupiter at a place not far from the monastery (in Italian territory), and two "mansiones" that rendered shelters for travelers and animals respectively. These structures are lost long time ago, but archeologists found many artifacts including the tiles, the coins, and the various offerings around the site. Just early today, Ed found a small piece of tile that is presumably produced in the time of Romans. How cool is that!
After the fall of the Romans in the fifth century, the temple fell into disuse, and eventually was destroyed. We don't know much about the history of this place in the Haut Moyen Age (fifth to the tenth century). Then came the figure Saint Bernard, who in the early 11th century came to the place not far from the Roman temple and began to build a hut to help the travelers to cross the Alps. He survived the first winter in the hut. Today we can still see the trace of the hut built by him a thousand years ago. This is the start of the construction of the monastery. In the following centuries, more rooms were added to expand the monastery, the last of which was done in the late 19th century. Today the Great Saint Bernard monastery has become a multi-structure place including the church, the hostel, the hotel, the animal room, the museum, and a room to preserve corpses (closed). In the summer time, this is an attractive tourist site, since people can easily come here by car and go hiking in the nearby mountains.
But we should not forget that the primary function of the monastery, as conceived by Saint Bernard, is to help people to cross the Alps. Spending some time here in winter is quite helpful to understand that goal. We already had the first-hand experience how difficult to walk a few kilometers in snow, against wind even with modern facilities. In the old days, the difficulty is unfathomable. We saw a video made in 1936 showing how the monks in the monastery rescued travelers from the avalanche, with the help of a special kind of guide/rescue dogs who are big and strong. They were given the name of Barry. There is a story in the 19th century that tells a heroic dog, Barry I, who rescued a boy who was abandoned by his companions as they crossed the Alps. The exhausted boy fell into sleep in the snow. The dog found him and kept licking his face to try to wake him up. The boy was hence saved, and he wrote an appreciation letter to the monastery that is still kept in its archive.
The humanitarian function of the monastery diminished in the second half of the 20th century when a tunnel was built connecting Switzerland and Italy. People don't need to climb up to the pass of Grand Saint Bernard to cross the border. But the monastery continues to operate, in the word of the monk Raphael, not to satiate the physical hunger, but to satiate the spiritual hunger. Indeed, the rapid moderation and globalization in the 20th century have fundamentally changed the way of living. The life becomes faster, more efficient and comfortable, but at the same time more stressful and materialistic. A place like the Grand St Bernard, hidden in the mountains and faraway from the mundane world of anxiety and haste, becomes a rarity, and increasingly attracts people from all over the world. My friend Ed. found this place when he was on an archeological trip organized by Stanford to research on the Roman remains left at the pass of the Grand St. Bernard. He immediately fell into love with this place, and came back many times. Two and a half years ago my friends Ed and Margo got married here. And now they brought me here to experience its unique natural beauty and warm hospitality. I, too, become very attached to the place.
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