In ancient times writers exhausted their eloquence in painting the horrors of the climate of the Alps. Livy wrote, “and the snows almost mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated on the cliffs, the cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the men unshorn and wildly dressed, all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than described, renew their alarm.”[9]
To-day, within its habitable regions, the climate is distinguished for being generally temperate, healthful, and invigorating. It enjoys, from its geographical smallness, immunity from the penalty a vast continent pays in colossal visitations and vicissitudes of meteorological conditions.
The Föhn is a remarkable local wind in Switzerland; it is a strong southwest or south wind, very hot and dry, formerly supposed to originate in the Sahara, and flowing in towards the area of low atmospheric pressure; or to be a tropical counter-current of the trade winds. Meteorologists now hold that it is engendered by local causes. Commencing its descent in the northern valleys with a high temperature, it necessarily increases its temperature and dryness as it passes into the higher pressure of lower levels; it sweeps through certain valleys, especially in Glarus and Uri, where old laws enact that when it blows, every fire in the place, for whatever purpose used, is to be extinguished, for its violence is often extreme. It is much dreaded, yet acts beneficially by a rapid polar-like awakening of nature; it is it which melts most of the snow in the spring, and “without the Föhn,” says the peasant of the Grisons, “neither God nor the golden sun would prevail over the snow.” The Bise is the opposite of the Föhn, a cold, biting north wind, whose tooth has been sharpened by its passage over the ice-fields, bringing all the chills of Siberia, and searching one through and through, eating into the very marrow. This wind is confined within a narrow area of the country, pouring from the northeast over the Boden-See, and along the Jura to the Lake of Geneva below Lausanne; its effect is blighting on the pastures, which it sometimes visits at untimely seasons, killing even cattle exposed to it in May.
The German, Burgundian, and Italian nations which joined together to form the modern Swiss nation, cast away their original nationality, and made for themselves a new one, forming a nation as real and true as if it had strictly answered to some linguistic or ethnological division. These northern and southern nations of Europe have been singularly intermingled in Switzerland, and in this respect furnish an interesting study, as a striking exception to the general idea suggested by the word “nation” as a considerable continuous part of the earth’s surface, where speakers of a single tongue are united under a single government. The long persistent division of the Swiss people into German, French, and Italian stands in marked contrast with the thorough unity of the nation. They have never been blended into one people, so far as speaking a common language is concerned. German, French, Italian, Romansch, and Ladin are spoken within the limits of the Confederacy. And even the dialects of the German differ so much as to make communication almost impossible, at times, between the different villages and towns.
The census of December 1, 1888, showed the total population of Switzerland to be 2,933,612. The German-speaking element increased from 2,030,792, in 1880, to 2,092,479, which, taking into account the normal growth of the population, was no relative increase; the proportion in both cases being about seventy-one per cent. of the whole. The French, on the other hand, increased from 608,007 to 637,710, which was a relative increase of from 21.4 to 21.07 per cent., while the Italian declined actually as well as relatively, the numbers being 161,923 in 1889, and 156,482 in 1888, or 5.7 and 5.3 per cent. respectively. The decline of the Italians in Uri and Schwyz may be explained by the return home of a large number of Italian workmen engaged on the St. Gothard Railway. It is difficult to explain the large decrease of Germans in the Cantons of Bern and Neuchâtel, while the French have increased. In general, the French increase in Switzerland seems to be at the expense of the Germans, while the German element recovers its place at the expense of the Italian.
The region extending from the Lake of Geneva to the Lake of Constance, and from the foot of the Alps to the foot of the Jura, forms only one-fourth of Switzerland, so far as area is concerned; but nearly its whole population, wealth, and industry are concentrated there. The population is settled in the plains, the hill regions, and the valleys; there are chalets nearly eight thousand feet high on the Fleck and Indre Alps, but only one town, viz., Chaux-de-Fonds, in the Jura of Neuchâtel, has been built at an elevation of more than three thousand two hundred feet; but there are villages in Alpine valleys with an elevation of four thousand to five thousand feet, and the hamlet of Juf, in the dreary valley of the Avers, has an elevation of six thousand seven hundred feet, and is the highest village in Europe permanently inhabited.
In point of religion the Swiss are as sharply divided as they are in tongue and customs. It is to the increasing efforts of the clergy, during the many centuries that elapsed between the fall of the Roman empire and the revival of knowledge, that the judicious historian of Switzerland ascribes the early civilization and humane disposition of the Helvetic tribes; and invariably the first traces of order and industry appeared in the immediate neighborhood of the religious establishments. The traveller will behold with interest the crosses which frequently mark the brow of a precipice, and the little chapels hollowed out of the rock where the road is narrowed, and will consider them so many pledges of security; and he will rest assured that so long as the pious mountaineer continues to adore the “Good Shepherd” he will never cease to befriend the traveller or to discharge the duties of hospitality. That a church, or rather that churches, existed in Switzerland in the fourth century is proved by the signatures, coming down from that date, of certain bishops and elders of Geneva, Coire, and the Valais; and one century later it is known that other places besides these had been in a measure Christianized. The Fraternity of St. Bernard was founded in the latter part of the tenth century by Bernard de Menthon, an Augustinian canon of Aosta, in Piedmont, for the double purpose of extending bodily succor and administering spiritual consolation to travellers crossing the Pass of St. Bernard, where winter reigns during nine months of the year. The idea of establishing a religious community in the midst of savage rocks, and at the highest point trodden by the foot of man, was worthy of Christian self-denial and a benevolent philanthropy. The experiment succeeded in a degree commensurate with its noble intention: centuries have gone by, civilization has undergone a thousand changes, empires have been formed and overturned, and one-half of the world has been rescued from barbarism, while this piously-founded edifice still remains in its simple and respectable usefulness where it was first erected, the refuge of the traveller and a shelter for the poor. The building, the entertainment, the brotherhood, are marked by a severe, monastic self-denial which appears to have received a character of stern simplicity from the unvarying nakedness of all that greets the eye in that region of frost and sterility. In storms, monks, helpers, and dogs all go out to search for helpless travellers; and during the severe winter of 1830 both packs of dogs had to be taken out, and nearly all perished; the names of Barry and Bruno are kept with those of departed archbishops and monks. These St. Bernard dogs are adapted, by their instincts, intelligence, and benevolence, to the charitable work in which they are engaged. The moment they scent a traveller buried in the snow they announce the fact by setting up a loud bark, but they do not wait for the arrival of their human companions, but begin at once to dig into the snow with all their strength. The pure breed is said to be extinct, but the cross variety still retains many of the good points of the genuine breed.[10]
Einsiedeln is a very ancient and celebrated monastery in the Canton of Schwyz; it is more generally known as the Monastery of “Our Lady of the Hermits,” and is one of the most famous pilgrim resorts in the world. It was here that Meinrad, an anchorite of the house of Hohenzollern, is supposed to have retired in the ninth century, and built a cell for the worship of the Black Virgin, presented to him by the Abbess Hildegard of Zurich. He was murdered, and respect for his memory induced a religious community to establish themselves there. On the occasion of the consecration of the chapel erected by them, the Bishop, it is related, was anticipated by angels, who performed the rite to heavenly music at midnight. Leo VIII. declared this consecration to be a full and perfect one, and forbade the repetition of the rite; and Pope Benedict VIII. placed Count Meinrad in the catalogue of saints one hundred and fifty years after his death. The inscription over the church-door at Einsiedeln is “Hic est plena remissio peccatorum a culpa et a pœna” (“Here is plenary remission of sins from their guilt and from their punishment”). There is a copious fountain before the church, and another tradition has it that the Saviour visited the shrine and drank from it. This fountain has fourteen jets, carved to imitate the heads of strange beasts and birds, and the pilgrims must drink of every one to make sure that they should not miss the right one, which is said to have refreshed our Lord.
It has been disputed to whom the priority in the race of reform in Switzerland belongs, Zwingli or Luther. Zwingli himself declares that in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began to preach the gospel at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying upon human authority. The name of Zwingli is always associated by the Swiss with the rise of Protestantism as that of Calvin is with its triumphant progress.[11] This Reformation, introduced by Zwingli and extended by Calvin, occasioned the fiercest dissensions. Early in the sixteenth century both Geneva and Zurich became cities of refuge for French, Italian, and English who were forced to flee from their native lands on account of their faith. The first edition of the English Bible was printed in Zurich in 1535. The Reformers separated themselves into Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists. It was held to be the duty of each Canton to force its own faith upon the whole body of the people; church-going was enforced by fines and corporal punishment; staying away from church on Sunday mornings, in some localities, was followed by a loss of citizenship. The latter part of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century are crowded with controversies and bloodshed; that violence and those animosities which are found so terribly to prevail where religious zeal has been abused for the purposes of intolerance. Nowhere were the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation more ardently embraced; nowhere was the strange moral phenomenon, which is to be traced in so many quarters of Europe, more conspicuous than among the Cantons of Switzerland, the early, exact, permanent, geographical division, which was realized between the Protestant and Popish communities; a division which frequently an insignificant stream or street has been sufficient to maintain for ages. Religious parties, like glaciers, became at once frozen up in set attitudes and forms, which no subsequent events have been able to alter. In three instances controversies on the subject of religion kindled violent and bloody contests. The most memorable was the war between Bern and Zurich, on the one part, and five little Catholic Cantons on the other, in 1712. At the close of the period of the Reformation, seven of the Cantons, Luzern, Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg, and Solothurn adhered to their ancient Catholic faith; the Cantons of Bern, Basel, Zurich, St. Gallen, and Schaffhausen adopted the reformed religion; Appenzell and Glarus recognized both forms of worship. In Geneva, over which the Duke of Savoy ruled, the effects of the Reformation were peculiarly important. Calvinism, as it existed at Geneva, was not merely a system of religious opinion, but an attempt to make the will of God, as revealed in the Bible, an authoritative guide for social and personal as well as for moral direction. Moral sins were treated after the example of the Mosaic law, as crimes to be punished by the magistrates; “elsewhere,” said Knox, speaking of Geneva, “the word of God is taught as purely, but never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faithfully.”[12]
Reprobating and lamenting that the great reformer depended upon the use of the sword for the extirpation of heresy, let us remember that Calvin was not only the “founder of a sect, but foremost among the most efficient of modern republican legislators; and that his genius infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva, and made it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty, the fertile seed-plot of democracy.” That “theological city,” called by some the Jerusalem of Switzerland, seems to be pervaded by an endemic influence inciting to religious discussion and agitation; the eager, irrepressible spirit of John Calvin walks abroad from his unknown sepulchre as the genius loci. The Reformation contributed in Switzerland to the enlightenment of the people and to the maintenance of a spirit of freedom; but in a political point of view it was the cause of the gravest evils, which continued long after the original convulsions. To differences of race and language it added divisions of religious faith and the conflict of hostile churches. For some time there was an alliance of clerical aggressiveness and ambition, with the employment of religion as a political influence. The radical government of Zurich was violently overthrown on the 6th of September, 1839, in consequence of the nomination of Dr. Strauss to a chair of theology; thousands of peasants, led by their pastors and singing hymns, armed with scythes and clubs, entered Zurich, and the government was forced to dissolve itself. As late as the war of the Sonderbund, in 1847, religious intolerance appeared to threaten the integrity of the Confederation; and by an article in the Constitution of 1848, and re-enacted in that of 1874, the Jesuits and all affiliated societies were interdicted throughout the Confederation. Hostility to the Jesuits was not regarded as hostility to the Catholic religion. The order of Jesuits, as then existing in Switzerland, could not be considered purely religious, but partly political, partly sectarian and controversial, its direct aim being to aggrandize the Church at the expense of the state, and the Catholic religion at the expense of the Protestant. From the first of these two tendencies, it was repugnant to a large portion even of the Catholic world. The whole history of the Jesuits in Switzerland betokened an organized and systematic teaching of religion, not exclusively for religious ends, but largely as a means for procuring political and social ascendency; even to the extent of reducing it to rule, craft, and professional duty. It was against this tendency, not against any matters essential to the Catholic religion, that even the Catholic world protested. The growth of the Old Catholics, after the Vatican Council of 1870, caused many disturbances in Western Switzerland, specially in the Bernese Jura. Inaugurated in the Catholic universities of Germany, it was transplanted for a complete and more vigorous growth into the soil of Geneva, and there taking on a logical, consistent, and organized form, it seemed fitted for the wide propagation and success that marked the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, to which, in its early stages, it showed curious points of undesigned coincidence.