The sitter was born in Andermatt as Edouard Christen on 24 July 1837. He was the fourth child of the thirteen offspring of Joseph Maria “Sebastian” Christen and Josef Karolina Danioth. On the 5th of October 1855, Edouard entered the Novitiate at Lucerne receiving the habit and the name of Bernard. He took his solemn vows to join the Capuchin Order on 8 October 1856, and was ordained a priest on 29 July 1860, eventually becoming Minister General of the Order which he held until 25 May 1908.
Bernard was the first Capuchin general to visit North America, and he visited Kansas after visiting two blood brothers in San Francisco. He was photographed in a top hat, seated in a buggy on the Kansas plains on September 26, 1891, when he was on his way from Munjor to Victoria. In the buggy with Bernard were Father Francis Wolff, minister provincial of Pennsylvania; Fr. Gabriel Spaeth, superior and pastor at Victoria; and Father Martin Muelders, associate pastor in Victoria.
Father Bernard’s incessant work for the renewal of the Capuchin Order in Spain and elsewhere was recognised by both Popes Leo XIII and Pius X, the latter naming him on 6 June 1908 the Titular Archbishop of Stauropolis, Turkey. He died on 11 March 1909. He was buried in Lucerne.
The portrait as reproduced in the 1943 biography
Bibliography:
Hilarin Felder, Ministro generale e arcivescovo. Bernard Christen da Andermatt e il rinnovamento dell’Ordine dei Cappuccini (1943, reprinted Rome 2010).
Hilarin Felder, Bernard Christen of Andermatt : Minister general and archbishop, 1837-1909 : and the restoration of the Capuchin Order (Detroit, 1943)
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This portrait, according to the 1943 biography of Father Bernhard Christen, hangs in the priest’s house in Andermatt, now the parish office. I am grateful to Peter Giacomini of Wisconsin for the photograph of the portrait.
The Christen family were once as prominent in the St. Gotthard as the Müller family, indeed they married into the Müller family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they were the builders of the Grand Hotel Bellevue in Andermatt which was later purchased by the artist’s mother.
