15.08.2007 08:53

Half of the members of the particle theory group here at Wuppertal University are Hungarians. That is because one of the Professors, Zoltan Fodor, is from Hungary. In any case, being a rather small country, Hungary has a excellent record of very good lattice physicists. Two weeks ago, at the lattice 2007 conference in Regensburg we were making jokes about the Hungarian mafia, and Anna Hasenfratz suggested that somewhere in Switzerland there is a monument or something where it is written

May the Lord protect us from the arrows of the Hungarians

That place turned out to be St. Gall. So last week, as I was close by, I went in search for it. I wanted to take a photograph. It was like a real Schnitzeljagd and I learned a lot about ancient St. Gall and where this scripture most probabely comes from:

Back in the middle ages around 900 a. C. a woman called Wiborada lived as an inclusa in a church (St. Mangen) in St. Gall. That means that she lived there in cell without door only with small windows to communicate with the outside world, such that nobody could enter into her room nor could she leave it. She did this out of here own free wish, because she somehow wanted to sacrifice her freedom of motion to god. Well that were the times full of crazy people.... One day she had a vision, namely that marauding hungarian troops would arrive and destroy the city. She warned the officials and and all people and all treasures of the monastery could be saved. She herself was killed, once the Hungarians arrived because she was brickheaded enough to remain in her personal prison. Later on she became the first female saint of the Catholic Church, because at that time the Hungarians were still pagans. And still later on the library of St. Galls monastery became a UNESCO cultural heritage. Wiborada serves as the patron of books and libraries.

I turned the whole city upside down, but couldn't find it. The only place where it really seems to appear is in an old prayer book stored somewhere in the Stiftsbibliothek. There remains though the possibility that it is inside the church of St. Georgen, which was closed, where there is a Krypta dedicated to St. Wiborada, (St. Mangen itself belongs nowadays to the protestant church and is not suitable for a real saint...)

But you see, it's an old story from the middle ages and it is made in St. Gall. Then if you search the web carefully you will find out: It's all wrong! ;-)