Jakob Joseph Matthys
Jakob Joseph Matthys was a Catholic priest who served as chaplain in Niederrickenbach for about 15 years and as chaplain in Dallenwil for about 20 years.
Primarily in his first position, which by far did not fill him, he dealt with at least 37 foreign languages as well as a now forgotten planned language. He wrote his own biography in 1844 in 35 languages, including the native dialect and the native written language.
When Matthys learned in 1862 of the project for the Schweizerisches Idiotikon that had just begun, he worked out a monumental Nidwalden dictionary - a folio of 611 closely written pages - as well as an 89-page dialect grammar despite illness and sent both to Zurich. The dictionary is still one of the most important Nidwalden sources of the Idiotikon editorial staff, and the grammar is of importance in the history of science.
Life
Childhood and study
Matthys was a son of Niklaus Josef Mathis, a small farmer and - after he had sold his small estate out of necessity - a day labor, and Anna Josefa, née Käslin. He grew up in great poverty, from six to sixteen in Beckenried, his mother's home village. As a boy, he tended goats on the Buochserhorn, combed silk and spun cotton; later, he gathered resin with his father, searched for roots for doctors and distillers, and wood for coopers and other craftsmen. As he grew older, he worked as a farmhand.Matthys did not attend school until he was 21 years old. He taught himself reading, writing and arithmetic. It was said of the fifteen-year-old lad that anyone in the area who had to calculate a haystack, a livestock lease or a "Käslosung" had this done by young Matthys. From 1821 to January 1823 he served in Bavaria with one of the princes of Oettingen as a "Swiss servant". In 1822 he bought the Latin grammar and the Latin-German dictionary of Christian Gottlieb Broeder at the market of the "nearby city" and began to learn Latin. He continued this self-study in the summer of 1823, when he was a shepherd high above Engelberg. In order not to have to constantly look up words in the dictionary, he learned it by heart without further ado.
The chaplain at home became aware of the young man and found him a patron in the painter Martin Obersteg the Younger, so that Matthys was able to attend the Capuchin-run Latin school in Stans from December 1823. Learning was easy for him - instead of four years he completed the school in two and a half. In the school year 1826/1827 he was at the Jesuit College of Solothurn, where he immediately took the second to last year's course before transferring to the university. In 1828 he studied at the Jesuit College St. Michael in Fribourg, from 1829 to 1831 at the Seminary in Lucerne and in 1831/1832 at the Seminary in Chur - there he always graduated with top grades. Since his patron had died in the meantime, he had to earn his living as a tutor. On 6 March 1831 he received the minor orders, already on 13 March he had become subdeacon, on 19 March deacon and on 25 March he received the ordination to the priesthood.
As pilgrimage chaplain in Maria-Rickenbach (1831-1845)
As a child from a poor family, Matthys had to look for a position as soon as possible. On 6 November 1831 he was elected chaplain in Niederrickenbach, where he was responsible as pilgrimage chaplain. The small mountain village, lonely and situated at an altitude of about 1200 meters, was at that time only a moderately visited place of pilgrimage and there was also no monastery. Matthys had little to do during the winter months, and there were few children to teach. In his autobiography Matthys enumerated in seven points all the things that had been concealed from him in order to distract from the lack of attractiveness of the chaplaincy, which therefore nobody but he had wanted. During this time he took refuge in a restless study of languages. The benefice, however, only came with about 500 guilders - clearly too little for Matthys, who was dependent on many expensive books for his language learning, had to support his penniless relatives, and increasingly suffered from health problems.Learning foreign languages apparently appealed to Matthys more than his chaplain duties - in any case, the reports on his spiritual work are "extraordinarily scarce". Nevertheless, in 1835 he published a revision of the pilgrimage booklet of Maria-Rickenbach, the frommen Wallfahrters. New in it were the many quotations from Latin and Greek church fathers, teachers and writers, whom he invokes as witnesses to Marian devotion - in the series of mentions in the pious pilgrimage booklet Bernard of Clairvaux, Gregory, Eucherius, Anselm, Bonaventure, Ephräm, Ambrose, Jerome, Thomas Aquinas, Antoninus of Florence, John of Damascus, Augustine, Basil, William of Paris, Ildefonsus, Rupert, Irenaeus, Epiphanios, Athanasius, Anthony of Padua, Germanus, Albertus Magnus, Peter Damian, Beda Venerabilis, Ignatius, Methodius and Sophronius. Matthys evidently not only learned vast amounts of languages during these years, but also immersed himself in patristics.
The Maria-Rickenbach period also saw Matthys' fight against a new textbook of 1835 that allegedly did not conform to official Catholic dogma, which further embittered him and turned him into a grouchy loner. The construction of the new chaplain's house, which dragged on until 1842 or 1843, also troubled Matthys - in the only half-finished house he could not heat during the winter and suffered from gout and rheumatism. Bathing cures, however, were expensive, since he had to hire a curate's clergyman for each day of his absence. Matthys therefore strove for another position, but set up loud barriers for himself: For example, he rejected the chaplaincy of Oberrickenbach offered to him, which held a prospect of the parish of Wolfenschiessen, because he did not want it to appear that he was only waiting for the passing of the Wolfenschiessen pastor. In any case, his solitary nature meant that he was only incompletely informed when a vacancy occurred somewhere.
The multilingual biography written during this difficult period has shaped the all too one-sided image of Matthys as that of an unfortunate eccentric.
As chaplain in Dallenwil (1845-1864) and the last years in Stans
In autumn 1845 Matthys nevertheless found a new position as chaplain in Dallenwil. The community, which lies partly in the valley bottom and closer to the cantonal capital Stans, had 730 inhabitants at that time, which is why he was in greater demand than in the remote Maria-Rickenbach. He also successfully campaigned for the village school and was able to bring a sister from Menzing to Dallenwil as a teacher, "so that boys and girls now have the same kind of school." During this time he also showed himself again more in public and officiated from 1851 to 1853 as secretary of the cantonal priest chapter.Towards the end of this period Matthys wrote a huge Nidwalden dictionary and a detailed Nidwalden grammar for the Schweizerische Idiotikon within a very short time. The correspondence with the Zurich Friedrich Staub, the founder of the Idiotikon, and the interest that the latter showed him, awakened in him once again all his strength to complete the dictionary and the grammar in spite of his illness: "Death throbbed ever more fiercely; it was as if the Grim Reaper and the Idiotikon were competing with each other. But the Idiotikon won it."
Matthys' health continued to decline. In 1864 he traveled once again to Baden in Aargau for a cure, but had to break it off after ten days because of stomach bleeding and exhaustion. A short time later he resigned as chaplain; he spent his last year and a half in the newly built cantonal hospital in Stans. He was buried in his home parish of Wolfenschiessen. On the plaque attached to his grave cross were the first two stanzas of a poem written by Matthys' brother Benedikt - then pastor in Hergiswil:
«Nach Gottes Wille hast du ihn getrunken
Den bittern Leidenskelch, der dir gebracht!
Nach Jesu Beispiel, tief in Lieb’ versunken,
Riefst neigend sanft dein Haupt: ‚Es ist vollbracht!‘
Heil dir, wenn auch die Welt dich einst missachtet,
Wenngleich sie deine Wissenschaft verkannt;
Was Menschen oft verschmähn, ist dort geachtet,
Im Himmel wird dein Streben anerkannt!»
Political-religious attitude
As a chaplain in alpine and rural Nidwalden in the 19th century, Matthys was fundamentally conservative. In 1835 he fought against a new schoolbook in which Jesus was stylized as a role model for the pupils - he had been diligent, had listened well to the teachers, had asked inquisitive questions and had become wiser every day. This implicit relativization of the dogma of Jesus' divinity led to a dispute that shook all of Nidwalden until Matthys, together with his comrades-in-arms, achieved the withdrawal of the teaching material. As one can read from his autobiography, he possibly wanted to endear himself to the clergy with his efforts in order to finally get away from Maria-Rickenbach and obtain a proper pastorate. However, the controversy left a poisoned atmosphere: a pastor and a teacher who had been committed to the new book died a short time later, which was interpreted as the result of the "slander and backstabbing" that they had "not been able to cope with." Matthys, for his part, largely withdrew from the public eye for a long time.Matthys, however, was not unilaterally conservative. His biographer Iso Baumer states for the time in the place of pilgrimage Maria-Rickenbach a great skepticism towards answers to prayer. In Dallenwil he fought for the strict observance of the school compulsory, as it was required by the cantonal school law of 1851. He complained to former Landammann Clemens Zelger that there was no authority in Nidwalden where he, as a religious teacher and school president, could find "effective help" so that daily school attendance could also be enforced.
In the autobiography, one reads explicitly of his permanent dichotomy in § 34:
Nidwalden German version:
«I ha n ai gseh, das di eint Partij vom Bischof und vo der Staatszijtig griemd wird, die ander vom Eidgnoß und vo der nijwe Zircherzijtig und derglijche. Der einte Partij ha-n-i i de Grundsätze mieße bijstimme, aber i hätt-s nid mit allem ihrem Tue und Trijbe ha derffe; zur andere Partij ha-n-i i de Grundsätze nid bijstimme chenne, nur hie und da i eppis wohl, wil uberall aj eppis Guets ist.»Standard German version:
„Ich habe auch gesehen, daß die eine Partei vom Bischofe und von der Stadtzeitung gerühmt wird, die andere vom Eidgenossen und von der neuen Zürcherzeitung und dergleichen. Der einen Partei habe ich in den Grundsätzen beistimmen müssen, aber ich hätte es nicht mit allem Ihrem Thun und Treiben halten dürfen; zur anderen Partei habe ich in den Grundsätzen nicht beistimmen können, nur hie und da in etwas doch, weil überall auch etwas gutes ist.“