The Church of St. Corneli
The Church of St. Corneli was probably built in the 11th century. The first document in which this church is mentioned is the protective bull of Pope Alexander III from 1178, which shows that Tosters was owned by the women's monastery of Schänis in Switzerland at that time. Initially, the church was probably looked after by a priest from Mauren. However, when the Counts of Montfort founded a benefice (hereditary land granted for use) near the parish church in Feldkirch, this benefice also took over the care of St. Corneli in Tosters before 1730. The first benefice and pastor of Tosters was Heinrich Ritter von Ems, who owned a house next to the Johanniterhaus in Feldkirch as a chaplain's residence. From 1620, the pastor of Tosters had a house near the parish church in Feldkirch - in Herrengasse - at his disposal. It was not until 1828 that the right of patronage was transferred to Tosters itself, and from 1836 the priest lived in Tosters, still a good distance from St. Corneli. Because this journey was particularly difficult for both the residents and the priest of Tosters in winter, a "new" parish church was built in Tosters in 1879, which has since - almost 100 years later - had to make way for a new building.
There were three brotherhoods in St. Corneli: In 1618, Pastor Arbogast Müller founded the Alms Brotherhood, which was under the protection of the Mother of God and Saints Cornelius and Cyprian and was founded - as the brotherhood book states - "because of the poor and sad times at that time, and in particular because a terrible comet star had appeared on May 7, 1618." Furthermore, the Rosary Brotherhood was introduced in 1666 and the Heart of Mary Brotherhood in 1846.
St. Corneli plot with the ruins of Tosters in the background
Despite the two patron saints of the church, Cornelius and Cyprian, St. Corneli has also been a place of pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary since ancient times. The aforementioned Rosary Brotherhood held a procession to St. Corneli on the first Sunday of every month and on old feast days of the Virgin Mary and celebrated a mass at the brotherhood altar. The legend that the Virgin Mary is said to have spent the night under the thousand-year-old Tostner yew tree also goes back a long way. In fact, the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln was brought from Einsiedeln to St. Gerold during times of war. This legend meant that the bark of the yew tree was repeatedly cut off for medicinal purposes. For a long time, a statue of the Madonna from around 1500 was also located in a glass shrine near the yew tree. It was the victim of a theft in 1950. And finally, the great devotion to Mary found expression here again in the 19th century, when Pastor Weißhaar had a Lourdes grotto built in the presbytery in 1889, which was intended to commemorate the grotto in which the Mother of God appeared to little Bernadette eighteen times in 1858.
But Saints Cornelius and Cyprian were also the destination of many pilgrimages. For example, the Rankweiler Häusle Chronicle of 1746 reports:
Text from Wikipedia