The legend of Felix and Regula
It was around the year 300 after the birth of our saviour, when two travellers came into Glarnerland over the stone and firn of the Kistenpass, seeking refuge. With great pains and urgency, the young Christian siblings had fled a massacre, carried out by the heathens in Valais and hoped to find food and shelter with the good people on the other side of the Alps. Far out on the outskirts of the land, where they reached the bottom of the valley and quenched their thirst on our soil for the first time and rested after their perilous journey, there is a stream still know as source of Felix and Regula.
On Glarus castle hill, they found refuge in a cave and were able to lead a meagre existence there for a while. Not all who lived along the Linth, bore them goodwill, and none in the land knew the new teachings of the Gospel of Christ. The pair told of wonderful things. The most wonderful of all however is a stone, in which an impression of the grasping hands of the brother and sister is said to have been made. In 1762, when the chapel above their cave was rebuilt, the peculiar stone structure was taken out of the shadows and built into the wall of the chapel, where it can still be seen today.
The pair then left the land for the city of Turicum (Zurich), where they were met with an even less welcome reception than among the farmers and hunters in the mountains. Together with their friend Exuperantius they were executed on account of their beliefs. During the following evening, it is said that they carried their heads in their hands from the place of their execution uphill to the site upon which the Grossmünster stands today. And so they are depicted on the official seal of the city of Zurich.