The Mouse Tower on the Rhine
On a rock in the Rhine stands a tower where, legend says, a cruel archbishop fled from an army of mice, and found they could swim.
What was reported
The legend tells of Hatto, Archbishop of Mainz, who in a time of famine hoarded grain while his people starved. When the poor begged for food, he locked them in a barn and set it on fire, mocking their cries as the squeaking of mice.
Then the mice came: thousands of them, pouring out of the fields after him. Hatto fled to his tower on an island in the Rhine, but the mice swam across, climbed the walls, and he was never seen alive again.
Explanations offered
The real archbishops named Hatto weren't known for any such crime, and the story is told of other cruel lords elsewhere in Europe. The tower's name probably comes from an old word for a toll house, Maut, as it was used to collect tolls from river traffic. Rebuilt in the 1850s, it's a famous Rhine landmark.
- When
- Legend from the Middle Ages
- Where
- Mäuseturm, Bingen am Rhein, Germany
- Witnesses
- Rhineland tradition
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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