NICHOLAS OF FLÜE (della Rupe), Saint. - Patron of Switzerland, b. in Flüeli (parish of Sachseln, Unterwalden) in 1417, probably on March 21, d. at Ranft on March 21, 1487. He married Dorothea Wiss, of Schwendi, by whom he had ten children. He held public offices in the commune and in the canton: judge and councillor (1459), deputy to the Federal Diet (1462); he refused, however, the office of head of state. He took part as a soldier and as an officer in military expeditions (the Old Zurich War) and during the war of Thurgau against Sigismund, duke of Tirol, excommunicated by Pius II, he is said by tradition to have saved the convent of nuns of Katharinenthal from destruction (1460).
Instructed in mysticism by his friend the priest Heimo am Grund, on Oct. 16, 1467, with his wife's consent, he left his family to retire to the eremitical life and settled in the gorge of the Ranft (Sachseln), where he lived in meditation and the harshest penances. His visions and his miraculous fast of about 20 years, during which the Eucharist was his only nourishment, are famous. His withdrawal from the world did not mark for N., as he had hoped, the end, but rather the beginning of his historical-political work. The fame of his holiness and of his fast spread rapidly beyond the borders of the Confederation into Germany and Italy; visitors of every class flocked to him from every side, and contemporary chronicles portray him as the saint of peace. His influence in federal affairs is already evident in the conclusion of the perpetual peace with Austria in 1473; but the most important work of pacification was accomplished from 1478 onward. The Confederation, in the grip of a severe crisis, aggravated by the consequences of the war, though victorious, against Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy (1474-77), saw the division arise between the city cantons and the rural cantons over the admission of Fribourg and Solothurn into the Confederation and over the division of the spoils of war. N. worked to smooth matters over and accomplished the miracle of the reconciliation of embittered minds at the session of Dec. 22, 1481 of the Diet of Stans. The danger of civil war disappeared, Fribourg and Solothurn were received into the Confederation, and on the same day the Pact of Stans was concluded, which, despite the religious schism, constituted until 1798 the public law of the Confederation. From that moment down to the present, N. was regarded, by Swiss Catholics as well as Protestants, as the peacemaker and the father of the country. Until his death and always thereafter, his name has been for all a symbol of peace, of concord, of confederate loyalty; especially in moments of crisis, Catholics and Protestants invoked his name and drew inspiration from the political principles instilled by the holy hermit who, an enemy of war, had recommended neutrality and warned the confederates against the policy of conquest, foreign alliances, mercenary service, the pensions of monarchs, and interference in other states. His cult was approved by Innocent X (Feb. 1, 1649); Clement IX (Feb. 23, 1669) granted his Office and Mass (cf. Decreta Servorum Dei 1592-1654, pp. 814-815; ibid. 1655-75, pp. 655-57, in Arch. S. Congr. dei Riti); he was canonized by Pius XII on May 15, 1947. Feast on March 21; for Switzerland on Sept. 25.
Bibliography3 works
Celestino Trezzini