170 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
Fribourg had a small circle of humanists (elsewhere so often the seedbed of
subsequent evangelical enthusiasm), but its influence is hard to gauge. Its leading
figure, Peter Falck (whom we have encountered during the Dufour affair) died in
1519 on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. No gifted preacher donned his mantle, though
a faction on the council was keen to have Oswald Myconius appointed school-
master, after his expulsion from Luzern. By 1522 the council was denouncing
all manifestations of ‘Lutheranism’, and the following year staged a public
book-burning of Reforming tracts and pamphlets. What is remarkable about
Fribourg’s commitment to Catholicism was its independent character: not only
was it precocious, it received scant support from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, in
this case the bishop of Lausanne.823
A proper assessment of Bern’s religious policy should focus, not on its relations
with distant Geneva where Reforming doctrines only gained a following after
1532, but on the Vaud. In Bern itself Reforming sentiment had been held back by
the council’s desire to steer clear of the bitter conflict between Zürich and the
Catholic cantons and by the ineffectual persona of its preacher Berchtold Haller,
while in its rural territory the Oberland revealed itself as especially hostile to the
new doctrines.824 But at the Disputation in January 1528 Guillaume Farel, the
itinerant evangelical firebrand who had already preached in Aigle and Bex, com-
posed a French translation of the ten Latin articles which formed the substance of
the colloquy.825 With the backing of the Bernese council Farel then widened his
preaching tour to embrace the whole of the Romandie. At first his success was
modest, for his style was described as ‘aggressive, deceptive, and often violent’.826
He did, however, attract a young acolyte, Pierre Viret, who from 1531 was active
in the common lordships of Orbe and Grandson, as well as in Avenches and
Payerne.827 It was at Bern’s instigation that Viret was then sent to join Farel in
launching the Reformation in Geneva.
In other words, Bern was actively abetting the dissemination of Reforming
doctrines in the Vaud well before the dénouement in Geneva. Once the con-
quest of the Vaud was complete the die, of course, was cast, though a
Reformation edict for the Pays de Vaud was not issued until December 1536.
By then, as Bruce Gordon sagely observes, the Bernese ‘fully intended using the
Reformation to strengthen their hold on the French-speaking lands’.828
Religion had become an instrument of politics. In the long run Bern could
hardly have secured the triumph of the Reformation in those areas of the Vaud
which it ruled without physically controlling that territory, just as was the case
with Catholicism in Fribourg’s city-state. But that must not be read backwards
to imply that the annexation of the Vaud was a predeterminate plank in Bern’s
foreign policy.
823 Guggisberg, ‘Problem of “Failure” ’, 197–9. 824 Gordon, Swiss Reformation, 103–5.
825 Gordon, Swiss Reformation, 149. 826 Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground, 93–4.
827 Gordon, Swiss Reformation, 152. 828 Gordon, Swiss Reformation, 152–3.