Baring-Gould’s sources: Venerated in the diocese of Constance. Authority: — A Life in Werfer u. Steck. Heiligen Legende, Ulm, 1864, pp. 1006-9.] On November 2nd, AD Souls* Day, in the year 1230, a faint, sick youth of scarce twenty-three years, in ragged pilgrim habit, came into the little village of Berkheim, in the Illerthal, on the high road between Memmingen and Biberach. He had crept, with a death sickness on him, over the pass from the Inn valley into Bavaria, by Nassereit, Lermos, and Reutte. With fading strength he had made his way past Fiissen, along the more level hop-grown fields to Memmingen. Then he had crossed the bright IUer, foaming from its not very distant seven sources in the glorious Algaii Alps above Oberstdorf. And as night feD, without money to pay for a room in the little inn of the Crown, he crawled into the hayloft of the hostelry, and lay down to die on the sweet hay of the past summer, dead clover, hare-bells, and golden-balls. No one in the village gave a thought to the poor young pilgrim. No kind hand ministered to the boy as he struggled in his last agony. Here and there, throughout the night, some widow or orphan sobbed and prayed in the last hours of AU Souls* Day for the dear ones recaUed to mind by the solemnities of the Church at that season. Suddenly, at midnight, the church-bells began to peal joyfully. The people started from their beds, hurried out into the one street of the village, thinking that there must be a fire, and that the bells sounded the alarm. But no light was in the belfry, and still, rung by unseen hands, the bells pealed loudly. The whole village was speedily out of doors, wondering and alarmed. Then a strange light was seen to issue from the hayloft of the Crown inn, and the villagers hastened to it, fearing lest the fresh hay might have caught fire by spontaneous combustion. There they found the pilgrim lying dead, with a mysterious glow-worm light surrounding the emaciated form. The body was raised and carried forth: the sweet scent of the new hay hung about it, and the wondering people heard, soft and inexpressibly sweet, a distant unearthly strain of music. Nothing further was needed to satisfy them that the poor pilgrim was a saint; but this growing conviction became firmly established when they discovered who he was.

He was, in fact, Albert von Calw, son of the noble house of Beutelsbach, which had given two popes to the Church, Leo II. and Gerard Count of Calw, bishop of Aichstadt in 1040, and sovereign pontiff in 1054, under the title of Victor II. The history of the young count gradually became known. His name was Albert, he had been brought up in wealth, but had gone forth in 1229 from the family castle and his parents, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, under the name of Willebold. No details of his adventures on this pilgrimage have reached us. We know nothing more of him till he died in the hayloft of the Crown at Berkheim. His noble parents erected a monument over him, representing him in his pilgrim’s habit, staff in hand, treading on a dragon, and the inscription, “ Here rests Willebold, pure in body, who lived so that he is made associate with the saints.” Forty-three years after, Berchthold, conventual of MiinchNot. s.] S. Willebold of Berkheim.

Roth, and pastor of Berkheim, in consequence of a vision, took the body up. Miracles attended the elevation. A shrivelled hand stretched to touch it was healed, a boy bom deaf and dumb obtained his speech and hearing, a maniac came to his right senses.

In 1703 Abbot Martus, vicar-general, built a new and larger church at Berkheim, and placed the sacred body before the altar of the Five Wounds. The bishop-rural, Ferdinand Conrad Geist of Constance, came in 1705 to Berkheim, to consecrate the new church, and sanctioned the veneration of S. Willebold, in accordance with the directions of the bull of Urban VIII. of May 12th, 1625, which permits veneration of a holy person not enrolled in the Martyrology, if it can be proved that this has been customary for over a century. In 1731, by permission of Bishop John Frank, the five hundredth anniversary of S. Willebold was celebrated with an imposing procession, in which the relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of the saint in a costly shrine were carried by the canons of MiinchRoth. The body was then enclosed in a shrine of tin, and laid under the altar. On this occasion S. Willebold was chosen as second patron of Berkheim. To this day crowds of pilgrims visit the church and shrine, and many miracles of healing are wrought by the intercession of the pilgrimsaint.