Great St Bernard Hospice

The Great St Bernard Hospice (French: Hospice du Grand St-Bernard), is a hospice or hostel for travellers in Switzerland, at 2469m altitude at the Great St Bernard Pass in the Pennine Alps. The border with Italy is only a few hundred metres to the south.

The first hospice or monastery was the 9th century one at Bourg-Saint-Pierre mentioned for the first time around 812-820. This was destroyed by Saracen incursions in the mid-10th century, probably in 940, the date at which they also occupied Saint-Maurice. Around 1050, Saint Bernard of Menthon, archdeacon of Aosta, regularly saw travellers arriving terrorised and distressed, so he decided to put an end to mountain brigandage in the area. With this in mind, he founded the hospice at the pass which later bore his name (it was originally dedicated to St Nicholas). The church's first textual mention is in a document of 1125. The hospice was placed under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Sion, prefect and count of Valais, thus explaining why the whole pass is now in Swiss territory.

The St. Bernard dog breed was created at the hospice from cross-breeding dogs, probably those offered by families in Valais in the 1660s and 1670s. The first definite mention of the breed is in 1709. The breed was originally raised to provide guard dogs for the hospice, before they became mountain rescue dogs. The St. Bernards were specially bred and trained for the role of mountain rescue because they were sufficiently strong to cross deep snow drifts and had the capacity to track lost travelers by scent. The first evidence that the dogs were in use at the monastery is in two paintings dating to 1690 by Salvatore Rosa.

The attachment to their collar of small casks containing brandy appears to be a 19th-century myth.

The last recorded rescue by one of the dogs was in 1955, although as late as 2004 eighteen of the animals were still kept at the Hospice for reasons of sentiment and tradition. In 2004, the breeding of the dogs was undertaken by the Barry foundation at Martigny, and the remaining St. Bernards were transferred there from the Hospice. They remain a tourist attraction, and a number of the animals are temporarily relocated from Martigny to the Hospice during the summer months.

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