After his peregrinations through the Romandie, which had taken him from the
eastern end of Lake Geneva to Neuchâtel in the west, Guillaume Farel finally
arrived in Geneva in the autumn of 1532, armed with a safe conduct from Bern in
his pocket. Geneva was later to insist to Fribourg that Farel had not been sent by
Bern but rather invited to the city by Reform-minded Dominicans.493 Fribourg,
which had made its commitment to Catholicism plain by demanding of its citizens
a public affirmation of faith in 1527,494 and which was exercised by the spread
of Reformed doctrines in the common lordships, could not help but be alarmed.
In January 1533 it had publicly declared its solidarity with the V Catholic cantons,495
and the following month it made no bones that if Geneva went ‘Lutheran’ it
would cancel its Burgrecht.496 Fribourg’s ability to influence events in Geneva
had in any case been weakened by the death of its staunch ally Besançon Hugues
in late 1532.497
Fribourg’s Catholicism estranged it not only from Geneva but also from Lausanne,
where the bishop was suffering infractions of his authority from opponents in the
city (some undoubtedly by then evangelicals), but there was little Fribourg could
do, apart from invoking its Burgrecht.498 On the other hand, it made a pointed
gesture by granting citizenship to Michel Mangerod, the lord of La Sarraz and
leader of the League of the Spoon, with the stipulation that he should open his
fortresses if need be to Catholic troops.499 Thereupon it cancelled its Burgrecht
with Lausanne and instead entered into an alliance with its bishop and with the
Valais communes.500
493 EA IV, 1c, 28 (no. 13: 1) (Feb. 1533).
494 Louis Waeber, ‘La réaction du gouvernement de Fribourg au début de la réforme’, Zeitschrift für
schweizerische Kirchengeschichte, 53 (1959), 105–24, 213–32, 290–318, here at 119–20; Monter,
Calvin’s Geneva, 47. There had been stirrings of Reforming enthusiasm as early as 1522, and when it
came the confession of faith was just as much a measure of social disciplining; it is striking, moreover,
that the Fribourg council never allowed the preaching of indulgences in the city. André Zünd,
Gescheiterte Stadt- und Landreformationen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in der Schweiz (Basler Beiträge
zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 170) (Basel, 1999), 67, 70–1.
495 EA IV, 1c, 12 (no. 7: a) (Jan. 1533). 496 EA IV, 1c, 27–8 (no. 13) (Feb. 1533).
497 Monter, Calvin’s Geneva, 48–9; Monter, ‘De l’Évêché’, 133.
498 EA IV, 1c, 31 (no. 16) (Feb. 1533); 32 (no. 18) (no. 32) (March 1533). The fact that the houses
of clergy were attacked suggests that evangelical anticlericalism was at work, not merely a resurgence
of the political-constitutional opposition to the bishop of 1525.
499 EA IV, 1c, 54 (no. 30) (April 1533); 57–8 (no. 35) (April 1533); AEF, Verträge und Richtungen,
271; Cuendet, Traités, 163.
500 EA IV, 1c, 57–8 (no. 35) (April 1533); 58–9 (no. 36) (April 1533); 62–3 (no. 40) (April 1533).