EINSIEDELN, A town in the Canton of Schwyz. Switzerland, 2(3 miles south east of Zuri lt. It is visited yearly by 150,000 pilgrims. most of whom come from Switzerland and southern Germany (Map: Switzerland. C l I. There arc numerous hotels and inns for the de vout worshipers. The prineipal industry is the manufacture of images of saints, erneifixes. and other devotional objects that are exported to all parts of the Roman world. The road np to the celebrated Benedictine Monastery of Einsiedeln, which is 2900 feet above the village, passes the house where Paracelsus (q.v.) is said to have been born. The monastery buildings, in the midst of a gloomy forest that was once eX ten-ive. and surrounded by a quadrangle of walls, were six times partially or. entirely de stroyed by tire before the seventeenth eentury, and in 704-111 were rebuilt in the ltalian style. At the entrance of the church are statues of the emperors Mho i. and Henry II. In the nave is the blaek marble chapel, through the grating of which is the renowned miraele-working image of the Virgin. stnall but richly bedecked
and bejeweled. The gorgeous elm ier was given by Napoleon III. in memory of his mother. The monastery has a library of 40,000 volumes and 1200 manuscripts, a seminary. a gymnasium, aml a lyceum. It owes its origin to the hermit Meinrad, who erected a chapel for the image of the Virgin which had been given him by the Ab bess Ilildegard, and which has made Einsiedeln one of the most famous of Catholic pilgrimages. The founder of the monastery was Eberhard, provost of Strassburg. who began the building in 934. The town and district of Einsiedeln had a population of 8551 in 1900. The Protestants number only 83. The picturesque vicinity affords fine views of the Alps and the Lake of Lucerne. Consult Brandes, Die icier des tausendjahrigen Bestelo as run Maria Einsiedcln (Einsiedeln, 'SU).