104 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
autonomy of Lausanne and Geneva, independent cities and sees, but exposed to
Savoyard duress.283
Savoy’s dealings with Geneva, therefore, involved a triangle of interests in
which the bishops, albeit overwhelmingly members of the Savoy ducal family,284
were not necessarily stooges of the dukes, for they were just as concerned to uphold
their episcopal rights against ducal encroachment, and that might redound to
the city’s advantage. By the same token, those who emerged in opposition to the
Eidguenots, known as the Mammelus, who dominated Genevan politics up to
1525,285 though customarily regarded as the pro-Savoy party, were often as much
partisans of the bishop as of the dukes. This may be illustrated by the fate of Amé
Lévrier, Pierre’s son. In 1517 in his capacity as the bishop’s criminal prosecutor
Amé had successfully intervened to prevent an execution scheduled to be carried
out by Savoy officials. Thereafter he became famous as a champion of Geneva’s
liberties against Savoy, maintaining that in the city the duke was simply a vassal
of the bishop. In 1524 he was seized by the duke’s henchmen on leaving church
and executed the following day.286
Within the city, Duke Charles had good reason to feel aggrieved. The office of
justiciar (vidomne), originally held by the bishop, had been acquired by Savoy at
the end of the thirteenth century287—yet here were officials of the bishop acting
against the duke!288 Moreover, far from being an independent city under the
Empire, the duke’s own lawyers argued persistently that Geneva was subject to the
duke by virtue of his title as imperial vicar, a title originally bestowed on Amadeus VI
by Emperor Charles IV in 1365.289 The bishops of Geneva and Lausanne for their
part persistently refused to recognize that the vicariate entailed any subordination
to the dukes.290
Yet it was outwith the city that the real conflict lay. The Burgrecht of 1509
between Savoy and Bern and Fribourg had, as we have seen, contained an explicit
prohibition on the cities accepting Savoy subjects as citizens; that treaty was
283 Naef, Fribourg, 17, 25.
284 In the period up to the Reformation five bishops came from the ducal family and four were
vassals or courtiers of the dukes. Caesar, Pouvoir, 49.
285 Caesar, Pouvoir, 75. 286 Naef, Fribourg, 27–8. 287 Caesar, Pouvoir, 17.
288 The responsibilities of the vidomnat were secular justice, both criminal and civil, though in the
latter limited to cases not exceeding 30 fl. Caesar, Pouvoir, 113. Given the subsequent bitter wrangling
over the vidomnat between Savoy, the city council (which acquired the vidomnat in 1527), and Bern a
decade later, the powers and scope of the office were clearly considerable, both actually and symbolically.
Monter, Calvin’s Geneva, 31 states correctly that the office of vidomne also included criminal justice
within the city.
289 Cuendet, Traités, 27, n 29. In 1365 the bishops of Lausanne and Geneva were obliged to
swear homage to the duke under its terms: Naef, Fribourg, 102. The vicariate, with its seat in
the Billens mansion in Lausanne, was granted for the dioceses of Sion, Geneva, and Lausanne.
It appears frequently to have lapsed, only to be restored (e.g. by Maximilian in 1503), and by
Charles V in 1525 and 1531. It regained its importance for Savoy in the 17th century. See Cornel
Zwierlein, ‘Savoyen-Piemonts Verhältnis zum Reich 1536-1618’, in Matthias Schnettger and
Marcello Verga (eds), L’impero e Italia nella prima età moderna/Das Reich und Italien in der Frühen
Neuzeit (Annali dell’Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento, Contributi 17) (Bologna, 2006),
347–89, here at 367–84.
290 Cuendet, Traités, 23; RCG, vol. X, ed. Émile Rivoire and Victor van Berchem (Geneva, 1928), 194.