“Always Menthon.
Everywhere Menthon…”
One of the five great houses of the Geneva region
"If I don’t include the ruling houses of Savoy, the Geneva region and Faucigny, no family in the Duché or in the Comté de Genevois can prove like Menthon a more significant feudal power in the 13th century"… So said Amédée de Foras, the historian and Savoy heraldry expert when talking about the Menthon family.
A noble family of knightly extraction, the first members of the Menthon family would appear to have arrived from Burgundy. It is possible to go back with certitude to 1190 to a certain Jean de Menthon, but the family can nevertheless be considered to have already acquired a certain power before the year 1000. It was thanks to an exceptional birth rate – more particularly during the 13th and 14th centuries –, that the Menthons firmly established their influence. Thus, in addition to the senior branch, the family was to consist of several other branches: the Menthons-Dingy, the Menthons du Marest, the Menthons-la-Balme, the Menthons-Beaumont-Montrottier, the Menthons-Lornay, the Menthons d'Aviernoz…
Over the centuries, many Menthons played an important role firstly in the County of Geneva, then the Duchy of Savoy and finally France. Among others let us consider Henri de Menthon, the grand bailiff of the Pays de Vaud, Nicod de Menthon, the governor of Nice and Admiral of the fleet sent by the Council of Basel to Constantinople, Bernard VI de Menthon, who in 1613 at his nomination as Colonel of the Regiment of Annecy made a gift of a "great meadow called Pâquier" to the young members of the Company of Chevaliers Tireurs for their training. And closer to our own time, François de Menthon, the father of the present owner, one of the founders of the French Resistance, a member of the Order of the Liberation, Minister of Justice under General de Gaulle, the French Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and first President of the Council of Europe, after actively participating in the creation of Europe.
Saint-Bernard de Menthon (1008 – 1081)
Patron saint of mountain dwellers
It is known with certainty that in 1190 there was a lord of Menthon, but the family must have lived in the place well before that, since tradition has it that Saint-Bernard de Menthon was born there in 1008. The castle contains many representations of Saint-Bernard as well as an oratory fitted out in 1820.
Among the 12,000 works in the library of the Castle of Menthon, a text tells the legend of Saint-Bernard de Menthon. Bernard, who was attracted by religious life from an early age, was nonetheless destined by his parents to marry a rich and noble heiress, Marguerite de Miolans. The story goes that on the day before his marriage, when they had locked him in, Saint Nicolas appeared to him and told him "Jump out of the windows, angels will prevent you from falling". The bars gave way, and Bernard jumped out and escaped to Aosta where he became an archdeacon.
When he saw the dangers of the mountains, Bernard became the man who freed the Alpine passes to make them safe. It has to be said that the high mountains have always been busy crossing routes. To enable travellers to avoid being robbed and sometimes killed, since it was not unusual for people to lose their way, he founded the Hospices of the Grand Saint-Bernard on the former Col du Mont-Joux – between Martigny in the Swiss Valais and the Valley of Aosta – as well as the hospices of the Petit Saint-Bernard – between the Tarentaise and the Valley of Aosta. This considerably helped the development of trade and pilgrimages. A soldier of charity and a man of courage, Saint-Bernard devoted his life to a dual mission of hospitality and prayer, a spirit of welcome that is still maintained by the canons of the Grand Saint-Bernard congregation, who are also engaged in missionary work in Taiwan.
Saint-Bernard, whose feast day is 15 June, gave his name to the famous life-saving dogs used from the 15th to the 18th century by the canons to rescue travellers lost in the snow and storms. Their motto is: "Nobility, devotion, sacrifice".