Popular Responses to the "Reformation from Without" in the Pays de Vaud

• Main Author: Blakeley, James Joseph
• Other Authors: Karant-Nunn, Susan C.
• Language: EN
• Published: The University of Arizona. 2006
• Subjects: Switzerland; Vaud; Fribourg; Bern; Reformation; Catholicism
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194793

This dissertation examines religious reform in the Pays de Vaud, Switzerland from 1526-1537. The author focuses on the reactions of rural common men and women who were forced to abandon their Catholic faith and traditions and accept the Reformation and evangelical pastors. The work demonstrates that many rural folk continued to participate in the rituals and celebrations of the "faith of the fathers" (Catholicism) long after the authorities had mandated the Reformation. The rural folk of the Pays de Vaud confronted religious change in a manner that allowed them to preserve their religious identity. It also reveals that people could act and behave in both Catholic and Reformed way.The dissertation considers how Bern introduced the Reformation in the francophone territories that it controlled. Preaching was the most important vehicle for spreading the new religious teaching. Bern relied on William Farel to give sermons and stir protest throughout the region of Vaud. He left both converts and controversy in his wake. The Bernese religious authorities were short on qualified, francophone pastors, thus they looked outside of Switzerland's borders to recruit men who were willing to preach the Gospel. New pastors were both strangers to the villages in Vaud and socially and economically removed from their rural parishioners. Bern also confiscated church wealth and punished the recalcitrant to implement the Reformation.