Lausanne

by Francis Henry Gribble

MONT BLANC FROM ABOVE MORGES

'Each district of the town had its special privileges. The fine for assault and battery was sixty livres in the city where the Bishop resided, sixty sous in the lower town, and only three sous outside the walls. The Bishop could not arrest a citizen without informing the burghers, or hold an inquest on the body of a dead man. The citizens of the Rue de la Bourg sat in judgment on criminals without assessors. Whenever they heard the summons, though they might be at the dinner-table, glass in hand, or in their shops measuring their cloth, they had to run off and give their opinion on the case. In return, they were exempt from certain taxes, had the sole right of placing hucksters' barrows in front of their shops, of using signboards, and of keeping inns.'

It was the Reformation that terminated this primitive state of affairs. A succession of weak Governors had allowed the hold of the Dukes of Savoy over the country to be relaxed. It was impossible for them to maintain their authority when the people were indoctrinated with the new ideas. The end came when the Duke of Savoy threatened Geneva, and the Bernese marched through Vaud to the rescue, captured Chillon, delivered Bonivard, and kept the Canton for their reward.

From the capture of Chillon onwards, Lausanne, like the rest of Vaud, was a Bernese dependency. Bernese governors (or baillis) were established in all the strong places, and Protestantism became the national religion.

The conversion of the inhabitants was chiefly effected by Viret, a tailor's son, from Orbe, an excellent man, and a persuasive rather than an eloquent speaker. In 1536, after the fashion of the times, he, Calvin, and Farel challenged the Catholic theologians to a great debate. The monks, recognizing him as a formidable antagonist, had previously tried to get rid of him by surreptitious means. One of them had assaulted him at Payerne, and another had attempted to poison him at Geneva. At Lausanne they were obliged to argue with him, and failed still more conspicuously. The argument lasted for a week, and, at the end of the week, the populace, considering that the Protestant case was proved, proceeded to the cathedral to desecrate the altars and smash the images, while the governors confiscated the Church property and offered it for sale. 'It was thus,' writes Vulliemin, 'that Jost de Diesbach bought the church and vicarage of St. Christophe in order to turn the one into a baking house and the other into a country seat, and that Michel Augsburger transformed the ancient church of Baulmes into a stable for his cattle.'

At the same time a disciplinary tribunal, somewhat on the lines of Calvin's theocracy at Geneva, was instituted to supervise the morals of the citizens; and absence from church was made punishable by fine, imprisonment, or banishment. Viret, it is true, was driven to resign his pastorate and leave Lausanne, because he was not allowed to refuse the Holy Communion to notorious evil-livers, and fifty other pastors followed his example; but the pastors who remained drafted a new moral code of sufficient severity, consisting, in the main, of a gloss upon each of the Ten Commandments, giving a list of the offences which it must be understood, for the future, to prohibit. Under the heading of Seventh Commandment, for example, it was written: 'This forbids fornication, drunkenness, baptismal and burial banquets, pride, dancing, and the use of tobacco and snuff.'

A number of Sumptuary Laws were also adopted, to check the spread of luxury; and here again we cannot do better than quote Vulliemin:

'The regulations prescribed the dress materials which each class of society might wear, and permitted none but the nobility to appear in gold-embroidered stuffs, brocades, collars of Paris point lace, and lace-embellished shoes. The women of the middle classes were forbidden to wear caps costing more than ten crowns, or any sort of false hair, or more than one petticoat at a time. One regulation settled the size of men's wigs, and another determined how low a lady's bodice might be cut. There was a continual battle between authority and fashion, and fashion was always contriving to evade the law. The purpose of the magistracy was not only to maintain the privileges of the upper classes, but also to fortify domestic morality against the imperious demands of vanity. A special government department was instituted to stop the use of tobacco. The baillis alone considered that the law did not apply to them; but one day, when one of these officials opened his snuff-box in church, the preacher interrupted him. "Here," he said, "one only snuffs the Word of God." Above all things, however, morality was the object of the jealous care of the magistrates of Vaud. So it was with an outburst of holy wrath that they heard that there was at Vevey "a dancing master, a Catholic, whose presence caused great scandals, at balls, in the evenings, between the two sexes." The stranger was banished, and the town was censured for its criminal toleration.'