The origins |   The Tibet Mastiff: between reality and legend |   Prehistory |   Ancient history antica |  Roman history |   Medieval history and the Great Saint Bernard Hospice Bernardo |   Barry I and the Napoleon era  | The first spreading of the breed |  Schumacher, the pioneer | 

The crest of a helmet of Heiliberg

  The Great Saint Bernard Hospice was founded by the nobleman and future Saint, Bernard of Menton around 1049, with the stated intent of helping, assisting and offering shelter to wayfarers through the mountains, that were crossed at that time only on foot. The Barun of Menton, Bernard's father, helped financially more than once to enable his son to expant and improve the buildings of the Hospice, some of which have survived until present days. As time passed, the Great Saint Bernard became a reference spot not only for "honest" wayfarers but for bandits as well; the latter ones, after a period of frequent raids, decreased until they disappeared completely. One could presume the first mastiffs were used to "clear out" the mountain of these bandits and dangerous wild animals, and only later for rescue missions. The legend tells us the prototype of the great mastiffs' kin of the Hospice, that was said to be a gigantic "dogue", was first used as guard-dog for one of the estates of the Baron of Menton in the region of Savoy, at the foot of the Alps. No wonder the first medieval representation of a heavy molossus, that is of the modern Saint Bernard, is dated roughly in the mid XVI century and it is painted on a crest of a helmet of the Swiss noble house of "Heiliberg". The National Museum of Bern displays various documents regarding breeding (with accurate drafts of genealogical trees) of mastiffs owned by the noble houses of the Bern Oberland, of the Valle d'Aosta region and of other Swiss cantons. It was, in fact,

Two typical exemplars of alpine mastiffs with clipped ears

an ambition of the Swiss aristocracy to conserve the pureness within the breed of the great molossians and assert the actual Saint Bernard descended from those ancient progenitors is more than a hypothesis.
In many medieval emblems and ornaments of helvetian noble houses and of the italian alpine regions raffiguration of dog heads that resemble very much the Saint Bernard are quite frequent and prove that his breeding was diffused for a long time. In more recent times, noble families of the Bern, Freiburg, Valle d'Aosta and Waadtland area considered the breeding of this dog an honour: noblemen such as the the Rougemont, the Pourtalès, the Graffenriede, by establishing genealogical books they created actual blood-lines that, til the mid XIX century, were even named after them. When the monks of the Great Saint Bernard decided to employ canine auxiliars for rescue missions, they certainly tested different breeds, but not one of them showed the exceptional skills, strength and resistence requested for a job almost always on the edge of survival. In the end the choice, as Tschudy asserted, couldn't be any other than the great "roman" mastiff, present in all of the Helvetic territory and widespread in the Valle d'Aosta region.
  The size and the strength (most important gifts for rescue activities, as we'll see later),were kept in the blood-line of the breed. The selection carried out through the centuries by the monks, aiming towards

Caesar, son of Lion (from a painting of Landseer)

an improvement of the great mastiffs' intelligence and sense of smell, eventually brought about an anatomic modification to the dog's skull: from a virtually flat shape it turned convex (especially in the frontal region); this physiological characteristic, however, is still not among the essential ones for an assessment of a Saint Bernard dog. It can't be excluded that the monks tried out, when selecting their canine auxiliaries, the Great Cattledog too (direct descendent of light molossians used in battle). Nevertheless, the theory sustained by some about the modern Saint Bernard deriving for the most from these "farmers' or cabine dogs" is disputable and has no historical or cynotechnical grounds. In fact the Saint Bernards of the times prior to the exhibitions era, when they were used as work-dogs only, were typical heavy molossians. Let's just think about the dogs Landseer painted in 1820, about the XVIII century statues of the Castle of Belp, near Bern, or the famous 1695 paintings by Salvator Rosa, in which the dogs were already showing (and let's think of the period) the so desirable convergency between the superior longitudinal axis of the skull and of the muzzle (crucial characteristic of the modern type of Saint Bernard). It is difficult to be certain about the century when the monks started employing dogs in their rescue, but we can presume it was about two or three centuries after the Hospice was founded (1049). Prior to that date there is no certain information about the presence of dogs in these areas, also because the roman temple dedicated to Zeus and the incorporated craftwork were completely destroyed by the Saracens in 950 A.D.

  Rev. Cuming Macdona was a pioneer of English saintbernardists; in the mid XIX century he had a long epistolar relation with the librarian of the Hospice, Etienne Metroz. According to rev. Cuming Macdona the dogs appeared in the ghat area a little after the Hospice was founded. This opinion is shared by Hugh Dalziel, the famous cynofile researcher and historian of numerose dog breeds.
  Unfortunately, in December of 1555, there was a fire at the Hospice, and it was impossible to recover any certain information from what was left of the archive. Incontestable information about the presence of molossians at the Hospice are of the XVII century. Some cynologists, like the Manning and, later, Prof. Heim assert that from that period on the dogs were used for rescue.
   First "modern" portraits of Saint Bernards, as it was said before, were the ones by the painter Salvator Rosa, in 1695, and are displayed at the monk's Casa Madre in Martigny. They reppresent two very characteristic heavy mastiffs, that are positively assessable according to modern zoognostics criteria..

Painting by Salvator Rosa (1965)

Detail of a skull with the convergency in evidence

  On August 22nd 1774 the literate traveller J. Bourrit wrote from the Hospice: "They keep dogs here of extraordinary size, trained to rescue wayfarers, both to lead their way and to escort them through the fog and the snow". In 1780 J.B. de Laborde and F.A. de Zurlauben, said about the monks of the Hospice: "They are accompanied by huge trained dogs who go searching for stray wayfarers, let themselves be grabbed by them and then drag them out of the snow, they then lead them towards the Hospice".

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  The rescue activity of Saint Bernard dogs had it climax in the two decades between 1790-1810, for the presence, among the other dogs, of the legendary Barry (1800-1814),

Barry I of the Great Saint Bernard (1800-1814)

whose psychical skills are, as we'll see later, still exemplary for the breed. Barry was born in 1800, precisely when Napoleon was passing the ghat leading 40.000 soldiers through it. Between May 15th and May 21st 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte passed through the ghat covered in snow, leading an army of 35.000 men, 3.000 horses and mules and 40 artillery pieces, and was joined by another 6.000 highlanders of the Valle d'Aosta region who towed the cannons on tree logs. For that backbreaking job the dogs from the Hospice were used as well, as guard and guide for the troops. Coignet, Captain of the French army and author of a book on that expedition, left us with a vivid description both of the massive presence of those dogs and of the unusual work they were trained for. He also wrote that Napoleon himself took a lot of interest in the meritorious work of the monks and dogs during the meeting he had with the Prelate of the Hospice, the canonic Louis Antoine Luger. It seems that Desaix, one of Napoleon's generals, was rescued by the dogs when he found himself leading a small squad of soldiers, at the edge of a chasm on the top of Mount Telliers (in the Convent's Chapel there stands a headstone in memory of that episode). After that event Napoleon understood the extraordinary importance an institution such as the one of the Cenobites of the Great Saint Bernard could have. He had other two hospices built, one at the Simplon Pass (still existing) and one on the Montecenisio, the functioning of the latter one was left in care of the monks themselves and of their gigantic dogs.
  The name "Barry" derives from the bern dialect "Bari", diminutive of "Bar" (bear). That name was then a synonym for the Saint Bernard dog, in fact in Switzerland, between 1810 and 1860, all dogs of this breed were called "Barryhund" or "Chien Barry".

Napoleon at the Hospice

  In 1815 a Saint Bernard couple was imported from the Hospice in England by the Countess Boode. The male, "Lion", had a height at withers of about 80 cm and a skull already fairly defined: a square muzzle, well-developed lips and well defined stop. This Lion and his father Caesar were painted in 1820 by Sir Edwin Landseer. Later some English breeders, probably aiming to renvigour and energize their national dog, the Mastiff, purchased on several occasions dogs from the Hospice. From 1830 on, interest in the Saint Bernard gradually increased in Britain, and Queen Victoria owned a couple herself. The archives of the Hospice keep epistolar testimony on the initial spreading of the breed, as follows: "1800 - From the Headquarters of/in Turin, the 9th of Messidor, VIIIth year of the Franch Republic one and idivisible, Alexander Berthier, head general of the reserve army troops - to the Prelate of the Saint Bernard Abbey. You have promised me, dear Prelate, a dog of the Saint Bernard breed as a gift. I kindly ask you to hand it to my field assistant Laborde,bearer of this letter. I send you my regards. Al. Berthier"
  On July 15th 1822 Leopold, Granduke of Tuscany, sent his thanks to M. le Prévost for having sent him a dog. In 1831 Aglaè Corday (Dix mois en Suisse - Le Grand St. Bernarrd) wrote he had seen "kennels" at the Hospice. "At my request they called out loud Turc, Drapeaux, Jupiter, Courage e Turca, five young and enormous molossians who joyfully surrounded the table. Courage in particular had a grave physiognomy and a serious expression, that didn't at all belie her name. I was also introduced to a close relative of the famous Barry, that I had seen at the museum of Bern".
  In 1817 monks tried to reduce collateral negative effects that come along with consanguinity; first they used the heavy mastiffs that were still present in the plains and then, to improve with a richer coat the resistence of the dogs, introduced the Terranova and the Pirenean highland dog.
  But once they bred the new exemplars, the very heavy and lanose coat they had as the outcome of the new type of dog proved to be counterproductive, because in the polar environment of the Great Saint Bernard, the snow freezes and would have weighted the large animal even more. So from then on monks kept only short-haired exemplars, leaving the long-haired ones that appeared from time to time in the litter, to the breeders in the valley. This is how the long-haired variety was born; it was first bred in the Swiss valleys and then in the rest of the world and it is considered to be the more successful of the types for 70% of todays Saint Bernards are long-haired.

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  Towards the mid XIX century the Swiss breeder Heinrich Schumacher (1831-1903) begun his cynologic activity. Born in Holligen near Bern, he could be considered, next to the monks of the Hospice, as the "first specialized breeder of Saint Bernards". He was active in that field between 1855 and 1890. In that period he had the opportunity to carefully select the breed, minding as the "ideal" start point the dog he considered as a prototype of the Saint Bernard: Barry I.
  A male exemplar very similar to the old Barry was given by Schumacher to the Hospice, and that Saint Bernard contributed to improve the quality level of dogs the monks bred at that time.
  Certainly Schumacher, to avoid an excess in consanguineity, introduced in his selection some Great Cattledogs (heirs of the light combat molosses), widespreaded in the same valleys he recruited his Saint Bernards from. The not too encouraging result of the crossing was that some of the dogs of that period (among which the famous example of Barry III of the Great Saint Bernard), were too light and resembling in all the Swiss Great Cattledog. An expert of swiss cabine-dogs, Dr. Bernard Kobler, in an article published in 1924 in the Swiss paper Escholzmatt, said that Schumacher, owned a pair of Great Cattledog that he used for breeding with the Saint Bernards for a few years. Considering the bad result he got rid of them soon after.
  Between 1860 and 1870 Schumacher exported a number of dogs to Russia and England as well to other foreign countries, introducing the breed where it was virtually unknown before. He was also the first Saint Bernard breeder to obtain the pedigrees from the Swiss Dog Stud Book.
  When he retired, in 1890, he left his dogs in heritage to the breeders Seller from Zermatt and Muller from Brig, who successfully continued his breeding activity.
  The first exhibitions the Saint Bernards took part in were in Birmingham in 1862 and in Cremorne in 1863.
  The majestic appearence of the "Giant of the Alps", binded to his reputation of rescue dog, had a fantastic impact on the odience and helped the breeding progress in Europe.
  After the compilation of the Standard of the breed, officially approved on the 2nd of June 1887 at the Cynologic Congress of Zürich, the story of the Saint Bernard as exhibition dog began.

Lion, on the right, by Landseer in the 1820 painting "The rescue"

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