“Hermitage.” The famous shrine of Our Lady of the Hermit, at the Benedictine Abbey of Einsiedeln, in the Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland. S. Meinrad, who was assassinated by bandits in 861, had embraced the solitary life and established his hermitage on the slopes of Mount Etzel, when he built a small oratory for the wonder-working statue of Our Lady which had been given him by Abbess Hildegard of Zurich. Several anchorites succeeded him, and one of these, by name Eberhard, erected a monastery and church there. This fane was miraculously consecrated in 948 by Christ Himself, assisted by the Four Evangelists, S. Peter and S. Gregory the Great. Even the rationalistic Father Thurston, S.J., will be unable to impugn this holy marvel, as it was investigated and confirmed by Pope Leo VIII, and subsequently ratified by many a Pontiff, the last being Pius VI, who in 1793 confirmed the acts of all his predecessors. The miraculous statue is enthroned in a little chapel which stands within the great abbey church in much the same way as the Holy House at Loreto, encased in marbles and elaborate wood-work, the goal of ten thousand pilgrimages. The two chief days are the fourteenth of September and the thirteenth of October, the first being the anniversary of the Divine consecration of Eberhard's basilica, the second that of the translation of the Relics of S. Meinrad from Reichenau to Einsiedeln in 1039.