The Peststein is a cuboid stone with a pyramid-like top. Three sides display reliefs: the plague saint St. Sebastian, Bishop Virgil, and Christ on the cross.
What could this likely more than 500-year-old stone witness tell us? In the years 1465, 1482, and 1495, the plague ravaged our country particularly fiercely. It was brought from Asia to Europe during the Late Middle Ages and spread explosively across the continent. Its symptoms: outbreak only 40 days after infection, first sneezing and severe coughing, then intense swelling of the glands, black-blue buboes, death within a few days. Efforts were made to combat the plague with rigorous quarantine measures: houses with the sick were bricked up, armed sentinels set up roadblocks. If a patient was dying, this was signaled by hanging a white cloth. The pastor would then come, hear confessions through an open window, and deliver the host on a long-handled spoon. The dead were pulled from their houses with hooked poles, lifted onto carts, and without formalities placed into pits. After covering these mass graves, wooden crosses were inserted into the ground, which were sometimes later replaced by stone monuments.Open to the public.
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