The Swiss Without Halos

J. Christopher Herold

• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781787201385
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

A fascinating and unbiased account of the Swiss people, their history and customs, their literature, art and science, religious turmoil and economic problems."Don't sell this as a travel book. Actually, I could wish for a little more of that aura, but since it is not intended as such, that is mere quibbling. For here is an intellectual approach to the history, the geography, the political structure of a country that in many ways might serve as a microcosm of world federation in action. But the author has approached the subject realistically, and torn off the overlay of legend and story, showing a small country, protected from encroachments by its geographic expression, but far from being an oasis of peace. The cantons warred one with another; religious wars and civil wars tore them internally; the Catholic cantons attempted secession in 1848 and only then were the two major segments—Catholic and Protestant, brought together under one constitution. There were internecine class wars constantly. But by the end of the 15th century common sense dictated a common military organization of defense only to have the Reformation rip them asunder again. Finally the Congress of Vienna established the bound aries. Successive popular legends are gently dissected and disproved, and full circle is traced to Switzerland progresses from a peasant economy, to conquerors, soldiers of fortune, state monopolies, and back to unity of farmers and merchants. Names in the hall of fame, Voltaire, Rousseau, Amiel, and other writers; Pestalozzi, Henri Dumon, Zwingli—names internationally known in their fields; brief biographies integral to the overall picture of a people in a chronic state of political excitement, but yet able to evolve an aesthetic and cultural life, and a reputation for stability…Plenty of controversial but revealing material here; scholarly without being pedantic in style."-Kirkus reviews

IV: THE MIGHTY FORTRESS

IN HIS very malicious, but thoroughly unadmirable, mock-epic, The Civil War in Geneva, Voltaire introduced the city in these words:

Below a mount whose scalp the years have peel’d,

Along the shores where, rolling his fine waves,

The Rhône escapes his deep imprisoning caves

And rushes on, to Saône’s appeal to yield,

Geneva’s shining city greets the eye:

Proud, noble, wealthy, deep, and sly.{9}

At the time when these lines were written the “noble cité, riche, fière et sournoise” was in the throes of a profound transformation, the transformation from the status of the Protestant Rome, Calvin’s “City of God,” a model to all men, to that of a “Little Paris” on Lake Geneva, endowed with theaters, nightclubs, streetwalkers, and a mild form of officially sanctioned roulette game.

Leaving aside for a while the solid brawn of Alemannic Switzerland, let us consider the rise and fall of that fortress of the brain, that most un-Swiss of all Swiss cities, that most cosmopolitan of all provincial towns. Geneva became a Swiss canton only in 1815, and still stands apart from the rest of the country. Yet there are certain subtle affinities and mutual influences which if conveniently ignored would by their absence falsify the general picture.

The general aspect of the city, which for a quarter of a century was not only Calvin’s Rome or a “Little Paris” but also the “Capital of the Nations,” is familiar to many thousands of Americans. All that, though splendid and beautiful, is not Geneva; the real Geneva is known only to a few thousand among the city’s 124,431 inhabitants, and can be guessed at by an outsider with great difficulty only. Even Baedeker, otherwise so intimately acquainted with all the family secrets of towns and cities, is stymied when it comes to Geneva. Its compilers will tell the outward story of the place, they will mention the cathedral of Saint Pierre, where John Knox thundered and Calvin forbade, and a few other historical places—but as soon as they can they leave the forbidding walls of Calvin’s Rome and overwhelm you with information on “Little Paris.”

Little Paris—and the “Capital of the Nations”—lies mainly on the right bank of the Rhône and of the lake. Part of its long quay is named after Mont Blanc, visible from there in all its majesty on fine days, but hidden from the eyes of the inhabitants of the left bank, and part after President Woodrow Wilson, a Calvinist who by making Geneva the “Capital of the Nations,” helped to hasten its end as the “City of God.”

On the quay, Baedeker triumphantly points out the supreme architectural monstrosity of the nineteenth century, the mausoleum of an exiled duke of Brunswick who left his millions to the city provided it build him a monument of his design. It is a super-colossal replica of the Scaliger tombs in Verona, surrounded by elaborate iron grills; the equestrian statue of the duke, who had never done anything except run away from his duchy, was originally placed on the highest pinnacle of the monumental pastry—but either it actually threatened to come crashing down through the delicate arches or was merely a constant source of psychological uneasiness to the nervous passers-by—at any rate, the statue was ultimately taken down and placed on a solid pedestal adjoining the tomb. The monument, for which no one but the compilers of Baedeker ever had a sympathetic word, has a subtle message, however. As long as it stands it will tell its fascinated beholders that there is hardly a thing that the city of Geneva would not do to inherit a few millions. “If you see a Genevese jumping out of the window,” said the Duc de Choiseul, Madame de Pompadour’s foreign minister, “jump right after him: there is fifteen percent to be gained.”

A few Americans who are not afraid of walking will also have contemplated another monumental mausoleum: the palace of the League of Nations. Craning their inquisitive necks, they have probably been awed by José Sert’s hyper-muscular giants, who are breaking chains and generally progressing all over the ceiling of the Council room. Those with cultural and historical leanings probably also have visited the cathedral, a fine structure, parts of which are excellent Gothic, but disfigured by a monumental Greek portal, added in 1749, which proves that bad taste existed even before the nineteenth century.

If anyone has business in the medieval town hall, which instead of stairways has a ramp for horses and litters, and where pale-faced clerks labor in offices reminiscent of dungeons and torture chambers, he will in all likelihood be surprised to encounter two or three earnest and unmistakable Americans, inquiring for the location of the Alabama Hall. La salle de l’Alabama is the council chamber where in 1872 the United States and England settled the dispute arising from the damages inflicted on Federal shipping by the Confederate cruiser “Alabama” and other vessels constructed at British shipyards. That the hall where so prosaic an event was transacted should have become a place of pilgrimage is one of the many things that make Europeans puzzled about Americans.

Even those visitors who, in preparation for mountain climbing, roam the hilly streets, ramps, and stairways of the Upper City (the old and aristocratic left-bank part of the town) cannot penetrate the spirit of Geneva without an effort of the imagination. They will read the plaque which commemorates the spot where Calvin’s house stood, but will they ring the bell of the neighboring door, where, if they look, they may discover a smaller name plate: M. Necker? A Monsieur Necker still lived there a few years ago, and presumably still does. For a number of years he had the misfortune of renting the upper floor of his mansion to the International House, a student organization whose energetic entertainments and dances must have shaken the ancestral chandeliers no less than the Revolution of 1789 shook Monsieur Necker.

Between the cathedral, where Calvin preached, and the college, which Calvin founded, the stroller will notice the dark and forbidding old prison, where Calvin kept those who would neither listen to his sermons nor learn his lessons. It is now replaced by the new prison, appropriately contiguous to the college.

The stroller might as well be an inmate of the prison for all he knows of what is going on inside the handsome eighteenth-century mansions that line the streets of the old city. As in Boston, where the Lowells speak only to the Cabots, and the Cabots only to God, the Genevese patricians have only furtive communication with the vulgar world. Yet this was not always so. Though they felt obliged by the tremendous influx of foreigners and other low elements to isolate themselves within a wall of ice, they actually have maintained a tradition of intellectual and social cosmopolitanism which in the eighteenth century made Geneva one of the capitals of the spirit. It is within these icy walls and within the subterranean labyrinths that have undermined the invasion-conscious city since times immemorial that we must look if we wish to learn anything worthwhile about Geneva.

II

To the schoolboy in the Latin class Geneva is known as Genava, an oppidum of the Allobroges, where Julius Caesar posuit his castra. Genevese schoolboys are particularly painfully aware of this fact, since they spend several years on the study of the first book of Caesar’s Commentaries. Any secondhand copy of that work, which has been deplored by so many generations, if bought in Geneva, is remarkable for the grayness and dilapidation of its first thirty or so pages, and the immaculateness of the remainder, which deals with the negligible part of the Gallic Wars that did not center round Geneva.

Caesar singled out Geneva, where he built a bridge across the Rhône, for precisely the same reason that in later ages was to give the city its great strategic and economic importance. It commands the gap between the Jura and the Alps, and thus controls the access to Italy from the west through the St. Bernard and the Simplon passes, while seen from the east it forms a gate leading into Burgundy and France.

An episcopal see since early times, Geneva, after the disintegration of the Roman Empire, successively passed to the Burgundians, to the Frankish Empire, to the kingdom of Upper or Transjurane Burgundy, and in 1032 to the Holy Roman Empire. During the Frankish rule the royal officials established themselves as the feudal lords of the region, the counts of Geneva. With them the bishops were in a state of unceasing litigation. Under the Burgundian kings, whose reign is affectionately remembered by the Genevese, the bishops were favored over the counts, till finally, in 1124, the temporal power passed virtually into the hands of the bishops. This state of things was undesirable to the citizens of Geneva, who had carried chips on their shoulders as far back as history can remember, and had discovered that having two lords was the best means of extending their own rights. They appealed to the counts of Savoy, who then resided at Chambéry and into whose family the countship of Geneva had passed, and by 1285 the count of Savoy, Amadeus V, was recognized as the civil protector (Vicedom) of the burghers. The episcopal power declined. In 1387 the bishop, Adhémar Fabri, officially recognized the rights of the citizens to direct their own affairs.

Things would have continued fine for the Genevese if the countship of Geneva and the countship of Savoy had not been eventually united in one person, Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy (for now the counts had assumed the higher title). In 1420 the duke demanded to be recognized as the lord of Geneva, but the Genevese stubbornly and politely declined. The duke hit upon another idea: to control Geneva the house of Savoy must unite the countship and the episcopate. The bishops having lost all their power, this was easily done; members and bastard members of the House of Savoy or creatures trusted by it successively occupied the episcopal see; the Vicedom’s representatives played into their hands, and they played into the Vicedom’s, while the independence of the citizens was whittled away.

The Genevese became seriously alarmed. For protection, they turned to the Swiss Confederation, then at the pinnacle of its military prestige. A treaty of common citizenship was concluded with Fribourg in 1519, and with Berne in 1526. In 1530 the last resident bishop of Geneva, Pierre de la Baume, declared the Genevese to be rebels against their rightful rulers.

It is necessary to know these events to understand the true nature of the Reformation in Geneva. The Genevese were little concerned with religious matters. In fact, they had a reputation of cherishing the sweet pleasures of the flesh, they held gaming in high esteem, they appreciated the wines from the vineyards that rise along the shores of the lake and of the Rhône, and they had a thriving red light district. The extent to which a citizen might sin was regulated by statutes. It was, for instance, a misdemeanor to keep more than one mistress at a time.

The Genevese were artisans and merchants, and they wanted to be left to enjoy themselves as they pleased. They had few intellectual preoccupations outside the writing of bawdy ballads, and they were not tormented by metaphysical anxieties. Not one of the great Genevese reformers was born in Geneva. But Berne, Geneva’s principal ally, had accepted Zwingli’s reform, and to obtain its aid in a concrete form against their bishop, the Genevese had to become reformed themselves. Guilaume Farel was dispatched from Neuchâtel to Geneva, where he began to preach the Reform in 1532. Disorders broke out between the supporters of the Swiss alliance, called Eydguenots (from Eidgenossen), and the supporters of Savoy, dubbed Mamelukes. In 1533 Pierre de la Baume left Geneva for good and settled in Annecy in Savoy, thenceforward the seat of the titular bishops of Geneva. In 1535 the people of Geneva, won over in their majority to Farel’s energetic preachments, invaded the cathedral, tore down about everything except its walls, and amused themselves by bringing their dogs and mules inside the hallowed walls in order to complete its desecration. Defrocked priests trampled on their robes, and what Catholics remained behind witnessed numerous miracles, notably the Hosts of the Holy Eucharist levitating in the sky. All in all, the Genevese had quite a time of it, as though they had a premonition that John Calvin was to arrive within their walls in the following year and that exuberance should have its last fling.

Three men had gained heroic fame in these troubled years: Bezanson Hugues, Philibert Berthelier, and François Bonivard, the Prisoner of Chillon. All three were leaders of the Eydguenot party. Berthelier was even decapitated by the bishop’s orders in 1519. But it was only the Prisoner of Chillon who gained, largely through Lord Byron, truly universal fame. His story, less known than his name, is the most fitting commentary on the discrepancy between what the Genevese wanted when they ridded themselves of their bishop and what they actually got.

François Bonivard was a Savoyard nobleman born at Seyssel, near Geneva, in 1493. At the age of seventeen he became, through his family’s influence, the prior of the Benedictine abbey of St. Victor, just outside the walls of Geneva. The abbey consisted of nine monks, but their young prior was not a monk, or even a priest. In fact, he had four wives in the course of his life, and a considerably larger number of mistresses. His only function as prior was to gather in the revenues. François, against his own interests, which depended on the duke of Savoy, adopted the party of the Genevese in the struggle between the Eydguenots and the Mamelukes. There is no rational explanation for this choice, except Bonivard’s personal friendship with Philbert Berthelier and his general preference for the “Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind” over tyranny. In 1519, as Berthelier was about to be dragged to the scaffold, Bonivard preferred flight, but was arrested by the duke’s men and detained for three years, recovering his priory only in 1527. If this had been all, however, Byron would never have written his sonnet. In 1530 Bonivard was waylaid while traveling to Seyssel to visit his mother and jailed once more, this time for six years and in the castle of Chillon.

For the first two years he was treated with great consideration, but then he was suddenly flung into the famous dungeon where Byron read his name carved into the rock. “I had so much spare time for taking walks,” Bonivard wrote in his later age, “that I left a groove in the rock, as though it had been beaten in with hammers.” However, he was not “to fetters confined,” as Byron would have it, and was given ink, paper, and books to study.

At last, in 1536, the Bernese came to the rescue of Geneva. Combining generosity with profitability, they overran what is now the canton of Vaud (which then belonged to Savoy), crossed the lake, and annexed the district of Chablais. In the course of this expedition they stormed the castle of Chillon, which became a residence of their bailiffs, and liberated poor Bonivard from the “damp vault’s dayless gloom.”

Lord Byron, who was not addicted to anti-climaxes, did not tell what happened to Bonivard after he had regained his freedom. Returning to Geneva in triumph, the prior was to discover that a few changes had taken place in his absence. Calvin was master, and his priory had been secularized. To compensate him for the loss, the city generously awarded him a place to live and a pension of 200 écus, a sum not entirely suited to his former habits of life. But this was not all.

Bonivard’s wives were no less prone to worldliness than Bonivard himself. His fourth spouse had the honor of being sentenced for adultery by the Consistory, through which Calvin regulated the morals of the Genevese with painful vigilance. She was punished in a somewhat drastic manner, of which even her betrayed husband could surely not approve: she was sewn into a bag and thrown into the Rhône. The ex-prior’s own peccadilloes were viewed with greater leniency, but many were the times when he, the hero of the revolution, was cited to appear before the Consistory for having neglected the sermon or the Holy Table and for wearing a nose...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• MAPS
• I: THE POLYHEDRAL PARADOX
• II: THE PERPETUAL STATUS QUO
• III: WAR FOR EXPORT
• IV: THE MIGHTY FORTRESS
• V: THE RULE OF BEARS
• VI: COWS, DEMONS, AND WAYSIDE CROSSES
• VII: THE BRAWNY MYSTICS
• VIII: STATE AND MAN
• IX: HUMANITARIANS, HUMANISTS, AND MEDIATORS
• X: THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
• XI: ANIMAL OECONOMICUM
• APPENDIX A-EXTRACTS FROM THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF SWITZERLAND
• APPENDIX B-ECONOMIC TABLES
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER