Placidus a Spescha

Placidus a Spescha, born Julius Baptist Spescha on 8 December 1752 and dying on 14 August 1833, was a Benedictine monk and early Alpine explorer from Trun, near Disentis, in the upper Rhine valley of Graubünden. He became a monk at Disentis in 1774, finished his education at Einsiedeln and spent the rest of his life serving parishes in his native valley, where his brother monks never understood his scientific tastes. Suspected in 1799 of spying for the French because of his climbs and maps, he lost his scientific collections to them and soon learned that his monastery, with its archives, had been burnt. Despite this he made many mountain ascents, among them the Stockgron in 1788, the Rheinwaldhorn in 1789, the Oberalpstock in 1792 and the Piz Urlaun in 1793, though he never reached the summit of the Tödi. Part of his geological collection is kept in the Raetian Museum in Chur.