Decoding Liberation Samir Chopra download

https://ebookultra.com/download/decoding-liberation-samir-chopra/

Explore and download more ebooks or textbooks

at ebookultra.com
Here are some recommended products for you. Click the link to
download, or explore more at ebookultra.com

The Chopra Center Cookbook Nourishing Body and Soul

37226th Edition Deepak Chopra

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-chopra-center-cookbook-nourishing-
body-and-soul-37226th-edition-deepak-chopra/

The Chopra Center Cookbook Nourishing Body and Soul 1st

Edition Deepak Chopra

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-chopra-center-cookbook-nourishing-
body-and-soul-1st-edition-deepak-chopra/

C Programming An Introduction Rajiv Chopra

https://ebookultra.com/download/c-programming-an-introduction-rajiv-
chopra/

Amritsar 1984 A City Remembers Chopra

https://ebookultra.com/download/amritsar-1984-a-city-remembers-chopra/
The Changing Face of Globalization 1st Edition Samir
Dasgupta

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-changing-face-of-
globalization-1st-edition-samir-dasgupta/

Anaerobic Biotechnology for Bioenergy Production

Principles and Applications Samir Khanal

https://ebookultra.com/download/anaerobic-biotechnology-for-bioenergy-
production-principles-and-applications-samir-khanal/

Biometrics Identity Verification in a Networked World 1st

Edition Samir Nanavati

https://ebookultra.com/download/biometrics-identity-verification-in-a-
networked-world-1st-edition-samir-nanavati/

Professional Apache Tomcat 6 1st Edition Vivek Chopra

https://ebookultra.com/download/professional-apache-tomcat-6-1st-
edition-vivek-chopra/

Introduction to Google SketchUp 2nd Edition Aidan Chopra

https://ebookultra.com/download/introduction-to-google-sketchup-2nd-
edition-aidan-chopra/
Decoding Liberation Samir Chopra Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Samir Chopra, Scott D. Dexter
ISBN(s): 9780203942147, 0203942140
Edition: Kindle
File Details: PDF, 2.66 MB
Year: 2007
Language: english
 Decoding
Liberation

RT8939Z_C000.indd 1 6/29/07 9:19:27 AM

 Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture:
Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture is dedicated to furthering
original research in new media and cyberculture studies. International in scope,
the series places an emphasis on cutting edge scholarship and interdisciplinary
methodology. Topics explored in the series will include comparative and cultural
studies of video games, blogs, online communities, digital music, new media art,
cyberactivism, open source, mobile communications technologies, new informa-
tion technologies, and the myriad intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, nation-
ality, class, and sexuality with cyberculture.

Series Titles

Cyberpop: Digital Lifestyles and Commodity Culture

Sidney Eve Matrix, University of Winnipeg

The Internet in China: Cyberspace and Civil Society

Zixue Tai, Southern Illinois University

Racing Cyberculture: Minoritarian Internet Art

Chris McGahan, Yeshiva University

Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software

Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter, Brooklyn College of the City University of
New York

Forthcoming Titles

Virtual English: Internet Use, Language, and Global Subjects

Jillian Enteen, Northwestern University

RT8939Z_C000.indd 2 6/29/07 9:19:28 AM

 Decoding
Liberation
The Promise of Free and
Open Source Software

Samir Chopra and

Scott D. Dexter

New York London

RT8939Z_C000.indd 3 6/29/07 9:19:29 AM

 Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
270 Madison Avenue 2 Park Square
New York, NY 10016 Milton Park, Abingdon
Oxon OX14 4RN

© 2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97893‑4 (Hardcover)

No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming,
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the
publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

Chopra, Samir.
Decoding liberation : the promise of free and open source software / Samir Chopra,
Scott D. Dexter.
p. cm. ‑‑ (Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0‑415‑97893‑9 (alk. paper)

1. Open source software. 2. Computer software‑‑Development‑‑Social aspects. I.

Dexter, Scott. II. Title.
QA76.76.S46C56 2007 005.3‑‑dc22 2007004119

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at

http://www.taylorandfrancis.com

and the Routledge Web site at

http://www.routledge.com

ISBN 0-203-94214-0 Master e-book ISBN

T&F_LOCGMaster.indd C0100.indd 4
RT8939Z_ 6/8/07 9:29:37
6/29/07 9:19:30 AM
A M
 Dedication

To Noor, light of my life.

S. C.

To Jill, because she hates being the center of attention.

S. D.

RT8939Z_C000.indd 5 6/29/07 9:19:30 AM

RT8939Z_C000.indd 6 6/29/07 9:19:30 AM
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xiii

1 Free Software and Political Economy 1

2 The Ethics of Free Software 37

3 Free Software and the Aesthetics of Code 73

4 Free Software and the Scientific Practice of Computer Science 111

5 Free Software and the Political Philosophy of the Cyborg World 145
Notes 175
Bibliography 181
Index 199

RT8939Z.indb 7 6/8/07 12:07:16 PM

RT8939Z.indb 8 6/8/07 12:07:17 PM
 Acknowledgments

A number of our colleagues and friends helped us get this project off the ground.
Timothy Shortell, one of the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, loaned
us his copy of Steven Weber’s The Success of Open Source; Corey Robin and Sha-
ron Zukin both read and provided advice on the book proposal; Robert Tempio
expertly guided our proposal into the right hands. Our editor, Matthew Byrnie,
demonstrated faith in this project from very early on. For their comments on early
versions of two chapters, we thank the members of the Faculty Fellowship Pub-
lications Program at the CUNY Graduate Center during the Spring 2005 semes-
ter: Jordi Getman-Eraso, Janet Johnson, Anru Lee, Costas Panayotakis, Fredrick
Wasser, and Sharon Zukin. We also thank Lee Quinby and the Zicklin Seminar at
Brooklyn College for their support during the Fall 2006 semester.
Richard Stallman provided extraordinarily timely and constructive feedback
on versions of Chapters 1, 2, and 4. We owe him another intellectual debt, in that
much of this book is directly inspired by his writings.
David Arnow, Carolina Bank-Muñoz, David Berry, Matt Butcher, Fernando
Cassia, Chris Cardona, Thomas Chance, Marvin Croy, John Frohnmeyer, Ben-
jamin Mako Hill, James “JD” Howell, Aaron Kozbelt, Lee Quinby, George
Thiruvathukal, Saam Trivedi, Robert Viscusi, Donna Wilson, and Thomas Wren
provided intellectual support, critique, and encouragement. Portions of some
chapters were presented at the International Conference on Knowledge, Technol-
ogy and Society 2005; Computer Ethics and Philosophical Enquiry 2005; North
American Computers and Philosophy Conference 2005; and the American Philo-
sophical Association’s Central Division Meeting 2006. We thank audiences at
these meetings for their comments and discussion.
Noor Alam, Jill Cirasella, Dayton Clark, David Coady, Gabriella Coleman,
David Dexter, Sharon Dexter, Virginia Held, Jelena Karanovic, Chandra Kumar,
Edward Levine, Sean Sullivan, John Sutton, and Katherine Willis were dedicated
readers of different versions of the chapters; we thank them all for their graceful
handling of anxious authors.
Jill Cirasella and Katherine Willis performed astonishing feats of librari-
anship; Camille Martin helped dissolve bureaucratic obstacles; a PSC-CUNY
research award helped in the procurement of books and supplies; Aaron Tenen-
baum continues to be a sensitive and accommodating chair.

ix

RT8939Z.indb 9 6/8/07 12:07:18 PM

  Acknowledgments

Pilon Coffee, Rasily Supari, International Food Store, John’s Bakery and
Cafe, the MTA, Yo in Midtown, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Chris Parnell,
Andy Samberg, Mark Feuerstein, Sam Friedlander, Adam Stein, VoxPop, Pros-
pect Park, Transportation Alternatives, Ali Mohammed Grocery, Yahoo! Groups,
and Gmail facilitated the long hours of writing.
S. C.
S. D.

I owe multifarious intellectual and personal debts: Jim Whitescarver, for daz-
zling me with his regular expressions and his spirit of constant inquiry; Rakesh
Kushwaha, for the companionship, and for help with my struggles with coding;
Gurinder Johar, for showing me work on computers could be playful; my brother,
Ashutosh Chopra, for being the first hacker I knew; Devendra Vamathevan, for
the first beautiful algorithm I had ever seen; the Computerized Conferencing and
Communications Center, for teaching me most of the computer science I know;
Thomas Meyer, for discussions about the philosophy of science; Norman Foo,
for providing a great research environment in Sydney; JD Howell, for making
GNU/Linux installs fun; Rohit Parikh, for teaching me much about mathematics,
philosophy and computer science; Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz, for intro-
ducing me to a study of technology’s social and political implications; the UNIX
community, for putting on many, many brilliant performances; all those in the
free software and open source communities that keep their code free in all the
ways they know.
My families continue to provide the emotional sustenance that lifts me each
day. I am thankful for their love and support to the Chopras, the Sabharwals, the
Tulis, the Sens, the Alams, and the Ahujas. A special thanks to Ashu, Ritu and
Akul for keeping a home for me in India.
No expression of my gratitude to my wife, partner, and best friend, Noor Alam,
would do justice to all she does for me. But I’ll go ahead and thank her anyway.
I was fortunate in this project to have the perfect coauthor: Scott Dexter. I
grew in many ways —intellectually and personally—while working with him on
this book. We started talking about politics and technology years ago, and have
not stopped yet. I look forward to many more conversations with mi buen amigo.
S. C.

I wouldn’t have been able to imagine participating in a project like this had I
not stumbled into a community of scholars and activists during graduate school.
Most especially, Rachel Barish, Jon Curtiss, Tamara Joseph, and Karen Miller
opened the possibility of finding an intersection between the academy and a
vision of the world as it ought to be. Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoha-
ris aided in my search for that intersection while also demonstrating the intense
intellectual satisfaction that comes of writing with four hands on one keyboard.

RT8939Z.indb 10 6/8/07 12:07:18 PM

 Acknowledgments xi

Many friends provided intellectual, emotional, and gastronomic support

before and during this project; I am especially thankful for Noor Alam, Carolina
Bank-Muñoz, Patrick Doyle, Mikael Elsila, Teresa Hill, Christina Ingoglia, Shira
Kamm, Gloria Karimian, Ted Levine, Nikki McDaniel, Jack Shuler, and George
Theoharis.
Frank Hughes and Fran Anastasi Darge brought their prodigious intuitions
to my pursuit of harmonious relationships within and between body and mind.
The musical community created by Raquy Danziger, the Cavemen, and my fellow
Messengers continues to be an unexpectedly important source of and outlet for
creative energy.
My parents, David and Sharon Dexter, and my sister and brother-in-law,
Katherine Dexter Willis and Richard Willis, have shared all my anticipations and
anxieties; their steady enthusiasm and delight in my endeavors sustains me.
My discovery of Jill Cirasella in the library is the single most valuable result
of this project.
My gratitude to Samir Chopra goes well beyond that I would accord any
ordinary coauthor. I am unutterably fortunate to have in him not only an ideal
writing partner but also a traveling companion, an ally in the topsy-turvy arena of
academic politics, and a true friend.
S. D.

RT8939Z.indb 11 6/8/07 12:07:18 PM

RT8939Z.indb 12 6/8/07 12:07:19 PM
 Introduction

Technological artifacts of the past consisted only of hardware: engines, motors,

pumps, levers, switches, gears. To control the hardware was to control the tech-
nology. Hardware is expensive to acquire and maintain, so technology was invari-
ably controlled by large economic entities — states, then corporations. Concerns
about social control invariably addressed control of technology; Marx’s concerns
about the control of the means of production were focused on the hardware that
both crystallized and generated capitalist power.
The twentieth century brought a new form of technology, one in which
hardware and control are explicitly separated. The means of production no lon-
ger inhere solely in hardware; control is transferable, distributable, plastic, and
reproducible, all with minimal cost. Control of technology may be democratized,
its advantages spread more broadly than ever before. The reactionary response
to this promise is an attempt to embrace and co-opt this control to advance
entrenched social, economic, and political power. It is this reaction that free soft-
ware resists.
***
The software that runs on our computers is a sequence of instructions for
the computer to execute; these instructions are represented, in a fashion directly
understood by the computer’s hardware, as 0s and 1s. Programs in this form,
called binaries or executables, are extraordinarily difficult for humans to under-
stand. While it is theoretically possible to determine the purpose and function of
a program in binary form through reverse engineering, it is exceedingly time-
consuming and only rarely attempted. Similarly, it might be possible to modify
the function of a program by modifying its binary representation, but this, too, is
unsustainably expensive. Instead, the vast majority of modern software is writ-
ten using a variety of high-level languages. Automated translation programs
(compilers) then convert these high-level programs (source code) into executable
binary code. Programs in high-level languages, while difficult to interpret with-
out training, enable programmers to communicate their design logic to other pro-
grammers using language and symbols intentionally based on natural language
(usually English) and mathematics. Thus, it is reasonably straightforward for one

xiii

RT8939Z.indb 13 6/8/07 12:07:19 PM

 xiv Introduction

programmer to read another’s work and understand not only the function of the
program but the manner in which that functionality is achieved.
In the past few decades, most commercial software has been distributed in
binary form only, thereby providing users with usable programs but concealing
the techniques by which these programs achieve their purposes. Source code for
such proprietary programs is regarded as a trade secret, the revelation of which
supposedly has disastrous economic effects for its corporate creator.
But there is an alternative: to distribute software with its source code. This is
the guiding principle of free and open source software (FOSS). At various points
in the history of software development, in particular communities of program-
mers and enthusiasts, and among some modern software corporations, distribu-
tion of source code has been and continues to be a fundamental practice. This
distribution creates several potentials for users: to inspect the code of the software
they use, to modify it if they are so inclined, and to send the modifications back
to the originator for incorporation in future versions of the software. The core
distinction between FOSS and proprietary software is that FOSS makes avail-
able to its users the knowledge and innovation contributed by the creator(s) of the
software, in the form of the created source code. This permits, even encourages,
interested programmers to become involved with the ongoing development of the
software, disseminates knowledge about the inner workings of computing arti-
facts, and sustains autonomy among the community of software users. Allowing
this form of user participation in the evolution of software has created vast and
sophisticated networks of programmers, software of amazingly high quality, and
an eructation of new business practices.
The terms free software and open source software are nearly synonymous
terms for a particular approach to developing and distributing software. We use
the phrase free and open source software, or FOSS, to include both notions
explicitly. There are important distinctions to be made, however, between the
open source and free software movements; we will refer to them individually
when the difference is crucial.
***
The FOSS phenomenon is the subject of numerous political, economic, and socio-
logical studies, all reacting to the potential for radical change it embodies. These
studies focus mainly on four claims.
First, FOSS is a novel technology for producing software: it “represent[s] a
new mode of production — commons-based peer production” (Benkler 2002)
and is “a critique of existing laws, contracts, and business practices . . . [with]
the potential to explicitly change the ‘political-economic structure of society’”
(Kelty 2002). Therefore, it is supported by new microeconomic, political, and
personal dynamics that may shed light on other areas of economic productivity
and modes of collaboration. This new mode of production serves as the basis
for examinations of its historical antecedents, parallels from other (sub)cultures,

RT8939Z.indb 14 6/8/07 12:07:20 PM

Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
said) had repaired, escorted by a few gentlemen, to his castle of
Thiez between the mountains of Mole, Voirons, and Reposoir, on the
road to Mont Blanc, a little above the point where the Giffre torrent
joins the Arve. At the same time one Maule, a secret agent of the
vidame, invited Pécolat to take a walk with him to Pressinge, a
village situated between the lake and the Voirons, where one of
them possessed some property. Ten horsemen setting out from the
castle of Thiez lay in ambush. They surrounded the two pedestrians,
bound and carried them to the castle, where the bishop having
released the tempter, threw Pécolat into prison. When the news of
this treachery reached Geneva, the irritation was directed against
Maule still more than against the bishop. The traitor, who seems to
have been a man of debauched life, was loaded with the people’s
maledictions. ‘May the cancer eat Maule up!’ they cried; and this
saying became a proverb applicable to traitors ever afterwards.108

He had however played his part so well that the imprisoned Pécolat
was exasperated not against him but against his most intimate
friend Berthelier. His black fit came over him. He said to himself that
although a man of the most inoffensive character, he seemed
destined to expiate the faults of all his party. With what had they to
reproach him? Mere jokes and laughter.... Berthelier was the real
conspirator, and he was at large.... On the 3rd of April Pécolat was
removed from the dungeon into which he had been thrown, and
conducted to the top of the castle, under the roof. The bishop had
ordered him ‘to be examined and forced to speak the truth;’ and the
torture-room was at the top of the castle. After the usual
preliminaries the examination began. The plot of the non videbit and
the salt fish was too absurd; M. de Thoire, the examining judge,
dwelt but little upon it, and endeavoured particularly (for that was
the object of the arrest) to obtain such admissions as would ruin
Geneva and her principal citizens. As Pécolat deposed to nothing
that would inculpate them, he was tied by one hand to the rope,
and, as he still refused to answer, was hoisted four feet from the
floor. The poor fellow groaned deeply and speaking with difficulty109
said: ‘Cursed be Berthelier for whom I am shut up!’ He made no
confession, however.

The next day they resorted to another expedient. The bishop gave
himself the pleasure of keeping the wretched man hanging to the
cord while he was at dinner. The servants, as they passed backwards
and forwards waiting on their master, said to Pécolat: ‘You are very
stupid to let yourself be put to such torture: confess everything.
What will your silence help you? Maule has told everything; he has
named So-and-so ... the Abbot of Bonmont, for instance, whom you
want to make your bishop after you have done for my lord.’ All these
traps were useless—he made no confession. It was next determined
to expose Pécolat to a more cruel torture: the executioners tied his
hands behind his back, and then pulled the rope so as to raise his
arms above his head; lastly they lifted him five or six feet from the
floor, which was enough to dislocate his shoulders. Pécolat suffered
horribly, and he was not a Regulus. ‘Let me down! let me down!’ he
cried, ‘and I will tell all.’ ... The judges, delighted at having
vanquished the obstinate rebel at last, ordered him to be lowered.
Terror was in his heart, and his features betrayed the trouble of his
mind. The man, usually so gay and so witty, was now pale,
affrighted, his eyes wandered, and he fancied himself surrounded by
hungry dogs. He said all that they wanted him to say. To the falsest
imputations against the noblest of his friends he answered ‘Yes, yes!’
and the satisfied judges sent him back to his dungeon.110

This was no comfort to the unhappy Pécolat: more terrible anguish

awaited him there. The thought that he had deposed against his
best friends and even incurred the guilt of bearing false witness,
alarmed him seriously: the fear of God’s judgment surpassed all the
terrors which men had caused him. ‘Gentlemen,’ said he to the noble
F. de Thoire and others standing round him, ‘my declarations were
extorted from me only by the fear of torture. If I had died at that
moment, I should have been eternally damned for my lies.’111
The bastard, not liking to feel himself within the same walls as his
victim, had removed to St. Joire, two leagues from Thiez, and there
attentively watched the examination and the torture. He had
acquired a taste for it; and accordingly on the 5th of August he
ordered another prisoner to be put to the question. ‘I have some
here who say plenty of good things,’ he wrote to Geneva.112 These
‘good things’ were the false witness extorted by pain and which
permitted the imprisonment of the innocent. The terror increased in
Geneva every day. People kept themselves indoors, the streets were
deserted: a few labourers only could be seen in the fields. Bonivard,
who feared, and not without cause, that the bishop and the duke
wished to carry him off also, did not leave St. Victor’s. ‘Things are in
such a state,’ he said, ‘that no one dares venture into the country
lest he should be treated like Pécolat.’ Many of the citizens quitted
Geneva. One day two friends happened to meet in a room of the
hostelry of St. Germain on the Jura. ‘Where are you going?’ asked
one of them who had just come from Lyons. ‘I am leaving Geneva,’
answered the other, by name Du Bouchet. ‘They have so tortured
Pécolat that his arms remained hanging to the rope, and he died
upon the rack.’ Du Bouchet added: ‘The Church not having the right
of putting men to death, my lord of Geneva will have to send
somebody to Rome to get him absolved. He weeps greatly about it,
they say; but I place no trust in such crocodile’s tears!... I am going
to Lyons.’113

The bishop had no notion of excusing himself to the pope: on the

contrary, he thought only of pursuing his revenge. The decoy was in
the cage and some small birds with him; he wished now at any cost
to catch the large one,—Berthelier. Most of the youth of Geneva
were either out of the way or disheartened; the league Who touches
one touches all was nearly dissolved, at the moment when it ought
to have been ready to save its founder. The bishop thought it
superfluous to resort to stratagem or violence and simply required
the syndics to surrender the great agitator to him. At eight o’clock in
the evening of the 28th of July, 1517, the council was sitting, when
the president who was on the bishop’s side said: ‘It is my lord’s
pleasure that we take up one of his subjects against whom he
possesses sufficient informations which he will communicate in
proper time and place; and that when the said subject is in prison,
the syndics shall execute justice, if the affair requires it.’114 At these
words every one looked at a seat which was empty for the first time.
Berthelier’s friends were uneasy; and as the bishop had adopted a
lawful course, the council answered the prelate that they would take
up the accused, provided that on his part he maintained the liberties
of Geneva.

As the councillors left the Hôtel de Ville in the dark, they said to one
another: ‘It is Berthelier.’ The friends he had among them ran off to
tell him the news, conjuring him to escape the vengeance of the
prince by flight. Bonivard joined his entreaties to theirs: ‘The sword
is over your head,’ he said.—‘I know it,’ answered Berthelier, ‘yes, I
know that I shall die, and I do not grieve at it.’ ‘Really,’ said
Bonivard, ‘I never saw and never read of one who held life so cheap.’
The friends of the noble-minded citizen redoubled their entreaties.
They represented to him that there remained in Geneva only a small
number of civic guards, imperfectly trained to arms;115 that one part
of the burgesses would assent through fear to the plots of the
Savoyard party, and that another part would aid them. Berthelier still
resisted: ‘God,’ said he, ‘will miraculously take away their power.’116
His friends resorted to another argument. There happened to be just
then in Geneva some envoys from Friburg; Berthelier’s friends
begged him to depart with them. ‘Out of Geneva,’ they said, ‘you will
serve the city better than within.’ That consideration decided him. He
went during the night to the hostelry of the Friburgers. ‘We leave to-
morrow,’ they told him; ‘here is a livery cloak with the arms of
Friburg; put it on, and thus disguised you shall come with us, like
one of the state riders. If you are not recognised at the gates of
Geneva or in the Pays de Vaud, you are safe.’ The Friburgers left the
city very early: the guard looked at them for a moment as they
passed the gate, but without suspecting that the great republican
was with them. He was safe.
The next day the syndic Nergaz having delivered the message of the
council to the bastard of Savoy, the latter was exasperated because
instead of seizing Berthelier, they simply told him that they intended
doing so. ‘Do you mean to give him time to escape?’ he asked. The
council immediately ordered a great display of force to arrest the
liberal leader. His friends the councillors, who knew him to be
already far away in the country, let his enemies go on. ‘Shut all the
city gates,’ said they. ‘Assemble the tithing men and the tens;
summon the vidame to assist in executing the law; let the syndics
preside in person over the search for the culprit.’117 ‘Bravo!’
whispered some aside, ‘shut the cage ... the bird has flown.’ The
most zealous of the bishop’s partisans hurried off to close the gates.
The syndics and tithing men set out, followed by a great number of
citizens, and all went towards Berthelier’s house. They searched
every chamber, they sounded every hiding-place, but found nobody.
Some were angry, others laughed in their sleeves; the most violent,
supposing he had escaped to one of his friends, put themselves at
the head of the troop and searched every house that Berthelier was
in the habit of frequenting. As a six days’ search led to nothing, they
were forced to rest satisfied with summoning the accused by sound
of the trumpet. No one had any more doubts about his escape: the
liberals were delighted, but anger and vexation prevailed at the
castle.
 CHAPTER IX.
BERTHELIER CALLS THE SWISS TO THE AID OF GENEVA; HUGUENOTS AND

MAMELUKES; THE BISHOP’S VIOLENCE.

B ERTHELIER’S flight was more than a flight. He went to

Switzerland; and from that day Switzerland turned towards
Geneva, and held out the hand to her.

Disguised in the livery of an usher of the city of Friburg, the faithful

citizen arrived there without hindrance. No one there felt more
affection for Geneva than Councillor Marty, governor of the hospital,
who by his energy, rank, and intelligence, possessed great influence
in the city. Berthelier went to his house, sat down at his hearth, and
remained for some time sorrowful, silent, and motionless. It was
thus that an illustrious Roman had formerly sat with veiled head at
the hearth of a stranger; but Coriolanus sought among the Volsci the
means of destroying his country, Berthelier sought at Friburg the
means of saving his. A great idea, which had long since quickened in
the hearts of himself and some other patriots, had occupied his mind
while he was riding through the Vaudois territory. Times had
changed. The long conspiracy of Savoy against Geneva was on the
point of succeeding. The obstinate duke, the dishonoured bishop,
the crafty count—all united their forces to destroy the independence
of the city. Switzerland alone, after God, could save it from the
hands of the Savoyards. Geneva must become a canton, or at least
an ally of Switzerland. ‘For that,’ said Berthelier, ‘I would give my
head.’ He began to discourse familiarly with his host. He told him
that he had arrived in Friburg, poor, exiled, persecuted, and a
suppliant; not to save his life, but to save Geneva; that he had come
to pray Friburg to receive the Genevans into citizenship. At the same
time he described with eloquence the calamities of his country.
Marty greatly moved held out his hand, told him to take courage and
to follow him into the ‘abbeys’ where the guilds assembled. ‘If you
gain them,’ he said, ‘your cause is won.’

The Genevan and the Friburger immediately set off together to the
chief of these ‘abbeys’ or clubs. They had scarcely entered the hall,
when Marty in some confusion whispered into his companion’s ear:
‘Some of the duke’s pensioners are here; veil your meaning, for fear
they should stop our work.’ Berthelier took the hint, and, rendered
cautious by the presence of his enemies, spoke in ambiguous
language, concealing his thoughts, but in such a manner that they
might be guessed. He spoke of the wars that Burgundy had waged
against Switzerland and of Charles the Bold; he intended thus to
remind them of the war Savoy was now making upon Geneva and of
Charles the Good. He hinted that the Swiss ought to distrust the
Duke of Savoy, however smiling the face he showed them. Had they
not spoiled his country during the Burgundian wars, and did they not
still occupy a part of it? ‘Your ancestors,’ said Berthelier, ‘have
plundered and ravaged certain provinces—you know which—and in
any case others do not forget it.... If somebody should become
master of Geneva, he would fortify it against you ... but if Geneva
became your ally, you could make it your rampart against all princes
and potentates.’ Every one knew of whom Berthelier was speaking.
But if he saw the angry eye of some pensioner of Savoy fixed upon
him, he became more guarded, his language more figurative and
interrupted; he spoke lower, and ‘as if at random,’ said Bonivard.
Then remembering Geneva, his courage revived, and his energetic
accents burst forth again in the council of Friburg. He then forgot all
prudence, and made, says the chronicler, a great lament of the
oppression under which the city groaned. This speech, which
aroused violent storms, was not to remain useless: Berthelier’s
eloquent words were fruitful thoughts, cast into the hearts of the
people of Friburg. Like those seeds which, borne by the tempest, fall
here and there among the Alps, they were destined one day to
revive in Geneva the ancient tree of her liberties.118

The exile desired that the Friburgers should see the misfortunes of
Geneva with their own eyes, and connect themselves with the
principal men there. If Geneva and Friburg come together, he
thought, the flame will break out and the union will be cemented. He
attained his end. Some citizens of Friburg set off, arrived at Geneva,
and were welcomed by Besançon Hugues, Vandel, and all the
patriots. They dined sometimes with one, sometimes with the other.
They spoke of the liberties of the Swiss; they described their heroic
struggles, and in these animated conversations, hearts were melted
and united in such a way as to form but one. The deputies, having
been received by the council, complained of the violation of the
franchises of the city, and demanded a safe-conduct for Berthelier.
Three councillors immediately set off for St. Joire, a village in the
mountains, a few leagues from Geneva, where the bastard
happened to be staying at a castle he possessed there. John did not
like to be disturbed in his country retreats; he gave orders, however,
that the magistrates should be admitted, when they set before him
pretty plainly the complaints of the Friburgers. ‘What! I violate the
franchises!’ he exclaimed, with a look of astonishment, ‘I had never
even thought of it. A safe-conduct for Berthelier ... why, he does not
require one. If he believes himself innocent, let him come; I am a
good prince.... No, no, no! No safe-conduct!’ On the 12th of August
the syndics communicated this answer to the Friburgers. The Swiss
were indignant, and as if the syndics had some share in the matter,
they upbraided them: ‘Why even the Turks would not refuse a safe-
conduct, and yet a bishop dares do it! A safe-conduct useless?...
Was not Pécolat seized a few days ago beyond the bounds of the
city? Did they not expose him to such torture that pain extorted from
him all they wanted? Citizens have left the town in alarm; others are
shut up in their houses. Are they not always bringing one or another
into trouble? And yet the bishop refuses Berthelier a safe-conduct?...
Very well! we will get together all these grievances and see them
remedied. Rest assured of this ... we will risk our persons and our
goods. We will come in such force that we will take his Highness’s
governor in the Pays de Vaud, the friends of Savoy in your city, and
then—we will treat them as you have treated our friends.’—Upon this
they departed in great anger, say contemporary manuscripts.119

The language of the Friburgers, repeated from house to house,

inflamed all hearts. The union between Geneva and Switzerland was,
so to speak, accomplished before any public act had rendered it
official and authentic. Berthelier had foreseen that Geneva would
find in the Helvetic league a mightier protection than in that of the
young men enrolled beneath the flag of dissipation.120 From that
moment a political party was slowly formed, a party calm but firm,
which put itself at the head of the movement and replaced the
licentious band of the ‘children of Geneva.’

The Friburg deputies had hardly left the city, when the duke’s party
accosting the independent Genevans, and gallicising each in his own
way the German word Eidesgenossen (confederates) which they
could not pronounce, called after them Eidguenots, Eignots,
Eyguenots, Huguenots! This word is met with in the chronicles of the
time written in different ways;121 Michel Roset, the most respectable
of these authorities of the sixteenth century, writes Huguenots; we
adopt that form, because it is the only one that has passed into our
language. It is possible that the name of the citizen, Besançon
Hugues, who became the principal leader of this party, may have
contributed to the preference of this form over all the others. In any
case it must be remembered that until after the Reformation this
sobriquet had a purely political meaning, in no respect religious, and
designated simply the friends of independence. Many years after, the
enemies of the protestants of France called them by this name,
wishing to stigmatise them, and impute to them a foreign,
republican, and heretical origin. Such is the true etymology of the
word; it would be very strange if these two denominations, which
are really but one, had played so great a part in the sixteenth
century, at Geneva and in French protestantism, without having had
any connection with one another. A little later, about Christmas,
1518, when the cause of the alliance was more advanced, its use
became more general. The adherents of the duke had no sooner
started the nickname than their opponents, repaying them in their
own coin, called out: ‘Hold your tongues, you Mamelukes!... As the
Mamelukes have denied Christ to follow Mahomet, so you deny
liberty and the public cause to put yourselves under a tyranny.’122 At
the head of these Mamelukes were some forty rich tradesmen, men
good enough at heart despite their nickname, but they were men of
business who feared that disturbances would diminish their gains.
The term Mamelukes put them into a great passion: ‘Yes,’ continued
the Huguenots, ‘Sultan Selim conquered the Mamelukes last year in
Egypt; but it seems that these slaves, when expelled from Cairo,
took refuge at Geneva. However, if you do not like the name ... stay,
since you deliver up Geneva through avarice, we will call you
Judases!’123

While the city was thus disturbed, the bishop, proud of having
tortured the wretched Pécolat, removed from St. Joire to Thonon. He
had never experienced to a like degree the pleasure of making his
power felt, and was delighted at it; for though servile before the
duke, he had in him some of the characteristics of the tyrant. He had
made somebody tremble! ... and he therefore regarded the trap laid
for Pécolat as a glorious deed, and desired to enjoy his triumph in
the capital of Chablais. At the same time he repeated to every one
who would listen to him that he would not return to Geneva: ‘They
would murder me,’ he said. The Genevans, conscientiously
submissive to the established order, resolved to display their loyalty
in a marked manner. There lived at that time in Geneva an old man,
Pierre d’Orsières, respected by all parties, whose family possessed
the lordship of that name in Valais, on the way to the St. Bernard
pass. Forty years before (in 1477) he had been one of the hostages
given to the Swiss; since then he had been six times elected chief
magistrate of the State. His son Hugonin had been made a canon
out of respect to his father; but he was a fanatical priest and in after
days the most hostile of all the clergy to the Reformation. The
council resolved to send a solemn deputation to the bishop, and
placed the syndic D’Orsières at its head.

It was perhaps carrying rather far their desire to appear loyal

subjects, and these good people of Geneva were to learn what it
costs to flatter a tyrant. The bastard determined to gain fresh
triumphs. Tormented by disease he needed diversion; the sufferings
of his enemies made him feel a certain pleasure—it was sympathy
after his fashion. He bore a mortal hatred against all the Genevans,
even against the most catholic: an opportunity of gratifying it offered
itself. The deputation having appeared before him and made every
demonstration of respect, he fixed his bloodshot eyes upon the
noble old man, whose hoary head bent humbly before him, and
ordered him to be seized, to be taken out of his sight and thrown
into a dungeon. If he had been proud of his exploits against Pécolat
the hosier, he was more so now at having by one bold stroke put out
of the way a man whose family shone in the first rank, and whom
his fellow-citizens had invested with the sacred character of
ambassador. When the news of this outrage reached Geneva, all the
city (Huguenot and Mameluke) cried out. The man most respected in
the whole State had been seized as a criminal at the very moment
when he was giving the bishop proofs of the most loyal fidelity. They
doubted not that this crime would be the signal of an attack upon
the city; the citizens immediately ran to arms, stretched the chains
across the streets, and shut the gates.124

The duke was displeased at these mistakes of the bishop, and they
came upon him at a difficult moment. Charles III., a weak and fickle
prince, inclined at that time to the emperor’s side, and displeased his
nephew Francis I., who seemed disposed to give him a roughish
lesson. Moreover, the proceedings of the Friburgers disquieted him,
for Geneva was lost to Savoy if the Swiss took up its cause. Liberty,
hitherto driven back to the German Alps, would plant her standard in
that city of the Leman, and raise a platform whence she would act
upon all the populations speaking the French tongue. The most
skilful politicians of Savoy—Seyssel who had just been appointed
archbishop of Turin, and Eustace Chappuis who understood
thoroughly the mutual relations of states, and whom Charles V.
employed afterwards in his negotiations with Henry VIII.—
represented to the duke that he must take care at any cost not to
alienate the Swiss. The terrified Charles III. assented to everything,
and Chappuis was authorised to patch up the blunders committed by
the bishop.

This learned diplomatist saw clearly that the great business was, if
possible, to raise an insurmountable barrier between the Swiss and
the Genevans. He reflected on the means of effecting it: and
resolving to show himself kind and good-natured, he set out for
Geneva. By the duke’s intervention he had been made official of the
episcopal court; as such he was sworn in before the syndics; he then
exerted all his skill to alienate the Genevans from the Swiss and
attach them to the house of Savoy; but his fine words did not
convert many. ‘The duke,’ said the prior of St. Victor, ‘seeing that his
cats have caught no rats, sends us the sleekest of mousers.’
Chappuis immediately set off for Friburg, where he began to practise
on the pensioners. ‘Ha!’ said they, ‘Berthelier is an instance of what
the princes of Savoy can do.’ The diplomatist stuck at nothing: he
called upon the fugitive and entreated him to return to Geneva,
promising him a pardon.—‘A pardon!’ exclaimed the haughty citizen,
‘pardon does not concern good men but criminals. I demand
absolution if I am innocent, and punishment if I am guilty.’125

Berthelier’s firmness paralysed all the diplomatist’s efforts; and it

was decided that the duke himself should visit Switzerland. Making a
pretence of business at Geneva and Lausanne, Charles III. arrived at
Friburg and Berne. He endeavoured to win over the cantons,
induced them to dissuade the king of France from making war upon
him, renewed his alliance with the League, and as they complained
of the tyranny of his cousin the bishop, of the illegal arrest of
Pécolat, and of Berthelier’s exile, he made them all the fairest
promises.126
But he reckoned without his host: the bishop who had a meaner
character than the duke, had also a more obstinate temper. As his
illustrious cousin had visited Switzerland, it was his duty to be there
to receive him; he had accordingly returned to Geneva, and as some
sensible men had made him understand how deeply he was
compromised in D’Orsières’ arrest, he set the good old man at
liberty. If he consented to yield on this point, he was determined not
to give way on others. When the syndics complained to him of the
irregularities committed within the city and without, representing to
him that citizens were arrested without cause, and that too, not by
the officers of justice, but—a thing unprecedented—by his own
archers, the prelate was deaf; he turned away his head, looked at
what was going on around him, and dismissed the magistrates as
politely as he could. Accordingly when the duke returned from
Friburg, the syndics laid all their grievances before him: ‘Our
franchises are infringed by the bishop. A citizen cannot be arrested
beyond our boundaries, yet Pécolat was seized at Pressinge. All
criminal cases fall within the syndics’ jurisdiction, yet Pécolat has
been tried by the episcopal officers.’ Whereupon the bishop and the
duke, wishing to have the appearance of giving some little
satisfaction to the Swiss and the Genevans, transferred Pécolat from
his prison at Thiez to Geneva, and shut him up in the Château de
l’Ile. But neither the duke nor the bishop dreamt of letting him go;
would they ever have a better opportunity of showing the cardinals
that the bishop’s life was in danger? But if Pécolat should appear
before the syndics, his judges, would he be condemned? The duke’s
friends shook their heads. ‘One of them, the elder Lévrier, an
incorrigible dotard,’ they said, ‘would sooner be put in prison, as in
1506, than give way; another, Richardet, a hot-headed fellow, would
wax wroth, and perhaps draw his sword; and Porral, a wag like his
elder brother, would turn his back and laugh at the Mamelukes!’
 CHAPTER X.
FRESH TORTURES, PÉCOLAT’S DESPAIR AND STRIKING DELIVERANCE.

P ÉCOLAT’S condemnation became the chief business of the court

of Turin in its relations with Geneva. Archbishop Seyssel, who at
that time possessed great influence, was not for despotism: he
approved of moderating the royal authority, but hated republics, and
wished to take advantage of Pécolat’s trial to crush the spirit of
liberty, which was displaying so much energy in Geneva, and which
might spread farther. Feeling the importance of this case, in
combating the Huguenot influence, the archbishop determined to
withdraw, if possible, the Genevan from his natural judges, and
resorted to a trick unworthy so great a statesman. He represented
that high treason, the crime of which Pécolat was accused, was not
one of those comprehended under the constitutions of the city, and
that the cognisance belonged therefore to the prince; but he could
not succeed. ‘We have the power,’ answered the syndics, ‘to take
cognisance of every criminal case.’ All that Seyssel could obtain was
that the bishop should appoint delegates who would sit in court and
give their opinion, but not vote.127

The judges met in the Château de l’Ile on the 10th of December,

1517; they were surrounded by the duke’s and the bishop’s
attorneys, the governor of Vaud, and other partisans of Savoy.
Among the six councillors who were to sit with the syndics (the
judges being thus ten in number), were some decided ducal
partisans, upon whom the bishop could rely for a sentence of
condemnation. Poor Pécolat, still suffering, was brought in by the
vidame. The sight of the syndics—of the elder Lévrier, Richardet, and
Porral—revived his courage: he knew that they were just men and
enemies of episcopal despotism. ‘The confessions I made at Thiez,’
he said, ‘were wrung from me by torture: the judge dictated the
words and I repeated them after him. I knew that if I did not say
what they wanted, they would break my arms, and maim me for
ever.’128

After this declaration, the examination began: the clearness of

Pécolat’s answers, his gentleness and candour, showed all present
that they had before them an innocent man, whom powerful princes
desired to destroy. The syndics having declared that they were
bound to acquit him, the bishop said: ‘Give him the question, and
you will see clearly that he is guilty.’ The syndics refused, whereupon
the two princes accused them of being partial and suspected men.
The episcopal council, therefore, decided, that the city and the
bishop should each appoint four judges—an illegal measure, to
which the syndics submitted.

The new examination ought to have taken place on the 20th of

January, 1518; but Pécolat, suffering from the torture past and
terrified by the torture to come, had fallen seriously ill, and it was
necessary to send the doctor to him. This man consented to his
being carried before the court. The four episcopal judges
immediately called for the question, but the syndics opposed it, and
the episcopal delegates began to study this living corpse. After
examining him attentively they said: ‘He still affords some hold for
the torture; he may be examined with a few torments’ (such is the
expression in the report). Nergaz siding with the Savoyard doctors,
the torture was decided upon. Poor Pécolat began to tremble from
head to foot; he knew that he should denounce all his friends, and
cursed his own weakness. They tied his hands behind his back, they
showed him the rack, and interrogated him.... ‘However, they did not
torture him,’ continues the report, ‘considering the weakness of his
body and his long imprisonment.’ They thought that the fear of the
rack would suffice to make him speak; they were deceived; the sick
—we might almost call him the dying man, though tied up and
bound, having the instrument of torture before him, answered with
simplicity and frankness. Even the bishop’s judges were struck with
his candour, and two of them, ‘having the fear of God before their
eyes,’ says Bonivard, rather than the fear of men, declared roundly:
‘They have done this poor man wrong. Non invenimus in eo causam.
We find no fault in him.’129

This honourable declaration embarrassed the duke all the more that
he had other anxieties on his mind. The news from Piedmont was
bad: every day he received letters urging him to return. ‘The Marquis
of Montferrat.’ they told him, ‘is committing serious depredations.’
But the headstrong prince was ready to lose his own states, if he
could but get Geneva—and lose them he did not long after. Finding
himself on the point of discovering a conspiracy, calculated to satisfy
the cardinals, he resolved not to yield. His creatures and those of the
prelate held conference after conference; at last they found a means
—a diabolical means—of putting Pécolat to death. Seeing that lay
judges were not to be persuaded to condemn an innocent man, they
resolved that he should be tried by priests. To put this plan into
execution, it was necessary to change the layman—the ex-hosier, the
merry fellow who was at every banquet and every masquerade—into
a churchman. They succeeded. ‘To gratify their appetite,’ said
Bonivard, ‘they produced a forged letter, to the effect that Pécolat
was an ordained clerk ... and therefore his case belonged not to the
secular, but to the ecclesiastical judge.’ The fraud found, or seemed
to find belief in the official world. ‘Accordingly,’ goes on the chronicle,
‘they transferred him from the Château de l’Ile, which was the lay
prison, to the bishop’s palace which was the Church court, and he
was placed once more in the hands of the Pharisees.’ This was a
stroke worthy of a celebrated religious order not yet in existence,
but which was about to be founded to combat the Reformation.
Henceforth we shall see none of that silly consideration, of that
delicate circumspection, which the laymen had employed. The
bishop, now become judge and party, ‘deliberated how to handle
him well.’ Some persons having asserted that Pécolat could not
endure the rack, the doctors again examined his poor body: some
said yes and others no, so the judges decided that the first were
right, and the instrument of torture was prepared. It was not only
heroic men like the Bertheliers and Lévriers, who, by their daring
opposition to arbitrary power, were then raising the edifice of liberty;
but it was also these wicked judges, these tyrannical princes, these
cruel executioners, who by their wheel and rack were preparing the
new and more equitable times of modern society.130

When Pécolat was informed of the fatal decision, his terrors

recommenced. The prospect of a new torture, the thought of the
accusations he would make against his friends, disturbed his
conscience and plunged him into despair.... His features were
distorted by it, his beard was in disorder, his eyes were haggard: all
in him expressed suffering and terror. His keepers, not
understanding this state of his mind, thought that he was possessed
by a devil. ‘Berthelier,’ said they, ‘is a great charmer, he has a
familiar spirit. He has charmed Pécolat to render him insensible to
the torture; try as we may, he will say nothing.’ It was the belief at
that time that the charmers lodged certain devils in the patients’
hair. The prisoner’s long rough beard disquieted the bishop’s officers.
It was resolved that Pécolat should be shaved in order to expel the
demon.131

According to rule it should have been an exorcist and not a barber

that they should have sent for. Robed in surplice and stole, the priest
should have made the sign of the cross over Pécolat, sprinkled him
with holy water, and pronounced loud-sounding anathemas against
the evil spirit. But no, the bishop was contented to send a barber,
which was much more prosaic; it may be that, besides all his other
vices, the bastard was a freethinker. The barber came and got his
razor ready. The devil whom Pécolat feared, was his own cowardice.
‘I shall inculpate my best friends,’ he said to himself; ‘I shall confess
that Berthelier wished to kill the bishop; I shall say all they want me
to say.... And then if I die on the rack (which was very possible,
considering the exhaustion of his strength) I shall be eternally
damned for having lied in the hour of death.’ This idea alarmed him;
a tempest agitated his soul; he was already in agony. ‘It is better,’ he
thought, ‘to cut off an arm, a foot, or even the tongue, than fall into
everlasting perdition.’ At this moment the barber, who had wetted
the beard, quitted the room to throw the water out of the basin;
Pécolat caught up the razor which the man had left on the table by
his side and raised it to his tongue; but moral and physical force
both failing him, he made only a gash. He was trying again, when
the barber returned, sprang upon him in affright, snatched the razor
from his hand, and raised an alarm. The gaoler, his family, and the
prince’s surgeon rushed in and found Pécolat ‘coughing and spitting
out blood in large quantities.’ They seized him and began to stanch
the blood, which it was not difficult to do. His tongue was not cut
off, as some have asserted; there was only a deep wound. The
officers of the duke and the bishop took extraordinary pains to cure
him, ‘not to do him good,’ say the chronicles, ‘but to do him a
greater ill another time, and that he might use his tongue in singing
whatever they pleased.’ All were greatly astounded at this mystery,
of which there was great talk throughout the city.132 Pécolat’s wound
having been dressed, the bastard demanded that he should be put
to the rack, but Lévrier, feeling convinced that Pécolat was the
innocent victim of an illegal proceeding, opposed it. The bishop still
persisted in the necessity of obtaining a confession from him:
‘Confession!’ replied the judge, ‘he cannot speak.’—‘Well then,’
answered, not the executioner but, the bishop, ‘let him write his
answer.’ Lévrier, as firm when it was necessary to maintain the
respect due to humanity as the obedience due to the law, declared
that such cruelty should not be practised before his tribunal. The
bishop was forced to give way, but he kept account of this new
offence on the part of the contumacious judge.133

All Geneva pitied the unhappy man, and asked if there was no one
to deliver him from this den of thieves? Bonivard, a man who
afterwards knew in his own person the horrors of a prison, never
ceased thinking of the means of saving him. He loved Pécolat; he
had often admired that simple nature of his, so impulsive, so strong
and yet so weak, and above all his devotion to the cause of the
liberties of the city. He felt that human and divine rights, the
compassion due to the unhappy, his duty towards Geneva,
(‘although I am not a native,’ he said,)—all bound him to make an
effort. He left his monastery, called upon Aimé Lévrier, and
expressed his desire to save Pécolat. Lévrier explained to him that
the bishop had forbidden any further steps, and that the judges
could not act without his consent. ‘There is however one means,’
added he. ‘Let Pécolat’s relations demand justice of me; I shall
refuse, alleging the prince’s good pleasure. Then let them appeal, on
the ground of denial of justice,134 to the metropolitan court of
Vienne.’ Bonivard, full of imagination, of invention, of resources,
heedless of precedents, and energetic, immediately resolved to try
this course. The Archbishop of Vienne (he argued) being always
jealous of the Bishop of Geneva, would be delighted to humble his
powerful colleague. ‘I have friends, relations, and influence in Savoy,’
said he, ‘I will move heaven and earth, and we will teach the bastard
a pretty lesson.’ He returned to his monastery and sent for Pécolat’s
two brothers. One of them, Stephen, enjoyed the full confidence of
his fellow-citizens, and was afterwards raised to the highest offices;
but the tyranny of the princes alarmed everybody: ‘Demand that
your brother be brought to trial,’ said Bonivard to the two brothers.
—‘No,’ they answered, ‘the risk is too serious.’ ... Bonivard’s
eloquence prevailed at last. Not wishing to leave them time for
reflection, he took them forthwith to Lévrier; the petition, answer,
and legal appeal were duly made; and Stephen Pécolat, who by
contact with these two generous souls had become brave, departed
for Vienne in Dauphiny with a warm recommendation from the prior.
The Church of Vienne had enjoyed from ancient times the title of
holy, of maxima sedes Galliarum, and its metropolitan was primate
of all Gaul. This prelate, delighted with the opportunity of making his
authority felt by a bishop who was then more powerful than himself,
summoned the procurator-fiscal, the episcopal council, and the
bishop of Geneva to appear before his court of Vienne within a
certain term, to hear judgment. In the meanwhile he forbade the
bishop to proceed against the prisoner under pain of
excommunication. ‘We are in the right road now,’ said Bonivard to
Lévrier. But who would serve this daring summons upon the bishop?
These writs of Vienne were held in such slight esteem by the
powerful prelates of Geneva, that it was usual to cudgel the bearers
of them. It might be foreseen that the bishop and duke would try
every means to nullify the citation, or induce the archbishop to recall
it. In short, this was not an ordinary case. If Pécolat was declared
innocent, if his depositions against Berthelier were declared false,
what would become of the scheme of Charles III. and Leo X. at
which the bishop himself so basely connived? Geneva would remain
free.... The difficulties which started up did not dishearten Bonivard;
he thought that the devices set on foot to enslave the city were
hateful, and that as he wished to live and die there, he ought to
defend it. ‘And then,’ adds a chronicler, ‘the commander of St. Victor
was more bold than wise.’ Bonivard formed his resolution. ‘Nobody,’
he said, ‘dares bell the cat ... then I will attempt the deed.’ ... But his
position did not permit him ‘to pass the river alone.’ It was necessary
that the metropolitan citation should be served on the bishop by an
episcopal bailiff. He began to search for such a man; and recollecting
a certain poor clerk who vegetated in a wretched room in the city, he
sent for him, put two crowns in his hand, and said: ‘Here is a letter
from the metropolitan that must be delivered to the bishop. The
duke and the prelate set out the day after to-morrow for Turin; to-
morrow morning they will go and hear mass at St. Pierre; that will
be the latest hour. There will be no time after that. Hand this paper
to my lord.’ The clerk was afraid, though the two crowns tempted
him strongly; Bonivard pressed him: ‘Well,’ said the poor fellow, ‘I
will promise to serve the writ, provided you assist me personally.’
Bonivard agreed to do so.

The next day the prior and the clerk entered the cathedral. The
princes were present, surrounded with much pomp: it was high
mass, a farewell mass; nobody was absent. Bonivard in his quality of
canon had a place of honour in the cathedral which would have
brought him near the bishop; but he took care not to go there, and
kept himself at a distance behind the clerk in order to watch him; he
feared lest the poor man should get frightened and escape. The
consecration, the elevation, the chanting, all the sumptuous forms of
Roman worship, all the great people bending before the altar, acted
upon the unlucky bailiff’s imagination. He began to tremble, and
when the mass was ended and the moment for action arrived,
‘seeing,’ says Bonivard, ‘that the game was to be played in earnest,’
he lost his courage, stealthily crept backwards, and prepared to run
away. But Bonivard, who was watching him, suddenly stepped
forward, seized him by the collar, and placing the other hand upon a
dagger, which he held beneath his robe, whispered in his ear: ‘If you
do not keep your promise, I swear I will kill you.’ The clerk was
almost frightened to death, and not without cause, ‘for,’ adds
Bonivard in his plain-spoken ‘Chronicles,’ ‘I should have done it,
which I do not say to my praise; I know now that I acted foolishly.
But youth and affection carried me away.’ He did not kill the clerk,
however; he was satisfied with holding him tightly by the thumb,
and with a firm hand held him by his side. The poor terrified man
wished in vain to fly: Bonivard’s dagger kept him motionless; he was
like a marble statue.135

Meanwhile the duke, his brother the count, and the bishop were
leaving the church, attended by their magnificent retinue, and
returning to the episcopal palace, where there was to be a grand
reception. ‘Now,’ said Bonivard to the clerk, ‘no more delay, you must
discharge your commission;’ then he put the metropolitan citation
into the hand that was free, and still holding him by the thumb, led
him thus to the palace.

When he came near the bishop, the energetic prior letting go the
thumb, which he had held as if in a vice, and pointing to the prelate,
said to the clerk: ‘Do your duty.’ The bishop hearing these words,
‘was much afraid,’ says Bonivard, ‘and turned pale, thinking I was
ordering him to be killed.’ The cowardly prelate turning with alarm
towards the supposed assassin cast a look of distress upon those
around him. The clerk trembled as much as he; but meeting the
terrible eye of the prior and seeing the dagger under his robes, he
fell on his knees before the bishop, and kissing the writ, presented it
to him, saying: ‘My lord, inhibitur vobis, prout in copia.’136 He then
put the document into his hand and ran off: ‘Upon this,’ adds the
prior, ‘I retired to my priory of St. Victor. I felt such juvenile and silly
arrogance, that I feared neither bishop nor duke.’ Bonivard had his
culverins no longer, but he would yet have stood a siege if necessary
to bring this matter to a successful issue. The bishop never forgot
the fright Bonivard had caused him, and swore to be even with him.

This energetic action gave courage to others. Fourscore citizens

more or less implicated with Pécolat in the affair of the rotten fish
—‘all honest people’—appeared before the princes, and demanded
that if they and Pécolat were guilty, they should be punished; but if
they were innocent that it should be publicly acknowledged. The
princes, whose situation was growing difficult, were by no means
eager to have eighty cases in hand instead of one. ‘We are sure,’
they answered, ‘that this poisoning is a thing invented by certain
wicked men, and we look upon all of you as honest people. But as
for Pécolat, he was always a naughty fellow; for which reason we
wish to keep him a short time in prison to correct him.’ Then fearing
lest he should be liberated by force during their absence, the princes
of Savoy had him transferred to the castle of Peney, which was
contrary to the franchises of the city. The transfer took place on the
29th of January, 1518.137

A division in the Church came to Pécolat’s assistance. Since the

struggles between Victor and Polycrat in the second century,
between Cyprian and Stephen in the third, dissensions between the
catholic bishops have never ceased; and in the middle ages
particularly, there were often severe contests between the bishops
and their metropolitans. The Archbishop of Vienne did not
understand yielding to the Bishop of Geneva, and at the very
moment when Luther’s Theses were resounding throughout
Christendom—in 1517 and 1518—the Roman Church on the banks of
the Rhone was giving a poor illustration of its pretended unity. The
metropolitan, finding his citations useless, ordered the bishop to
liberate Pécolat, under pain of excommunication;138 but the episcopal
officers who remained in Geneva, only laughed, like their master, at
the metropolitan and his threats.

Pécolat’s friends took the matter more seriously. They feared for his
life. Who could tell whether the bastard had not left orders to get rid
of the prisoner, and left Geneva in order to escape the people’s
anger? These apprehensions were not without cause, for more than
one upright man was afterwards to be sacrificed in the castle of
Peney. Stephen Pécolat and some of his brother’s friends waited on
St. Victor; ‘The superior metropolitan authority has ordered Pécolat
to be released,’ they said; ‘we shall go off straight in search of him.’
The acute Bonivard represented to them that the gaolers would not
give him up, that the castle was strong, and they would fail in the
attack; that the whole people should demand the liberation of the
innocent man detained by the bishop in his dungeons, in despite of
the liberties of the city and the orders of his metropolitan. ‘A little
patience,’ he continued; ‘we are near the beginning of Lent, holy
week is not far off; the interdict will then be published by the
metropolitan. The christians finding themselves deprived of the
sacrament will grow riotous, and will compel the bishop’s officers to
set our friend at liberty. Thus the inhibition which we served upon
the bishop in his palace, will produce its effect in despite of him.’ The
advice was thought sound, they agreed to it, and everybody in
Geneva waited with impatience for Easter and the excommunication.

Anthony de la Colombière, official to the metropolitan of Vienne,

arrived to execute the orders of his superior, and having come to an
understanding with the prior of St. Victor and judge Lévrier, he
ordered, on the 18th of March, that Pécolat should be released
within twenty-four hours. He waited eight days, but waited in vain,
for the episcopal officers continued to disobey him. Then, on Good
Friday, the metropolitan officers, bearing the sentence of
excommunication and interdict, proceeded to the cathedral at two
o’clock in the afternoon, and there, in the presence of John Gallatin,
notary, and three other witnesses, they posted up the terrible
monition; at four o’clock they did the same at the churches of St.
Gervais and St. Germain. This was not indeed the thunder of the
Vatican, but it was nevertheless the excommunication of a prelate
who, at Geneva, filled the first place after the pope in the Roman
hierarchy. The canons, priests, and parishioners, as they went to
evening prayers, walked up to the placards and were quite aghast as
they read them. ‘We excommunicate,’ they ran, ‘the episcopal
officers, and order that this excommunication be published in the
churches, with bell, book, and candle. Moreover, we command,
under pain of the same excommunication, the syndics and
councillors to attack the castles and prisons wherein Pécolat is
detained, and to liberate him by force. Finally we pronounce the
interdict against all places wherein these excommunicates are found.
And if, like the deaf adder, they persist in their wickedness, we
interdict the celebration not only of the sacraments, but also of
divine service, in the churches of St. Pierre, Notre Dame la Neuve,
St. Germain, St. Gervais, St. Victor, St. Leger, and Holy Cross.’139
After the canons and priests had read this document, they halted in
consternation at the threshold of the church. They looked at one
another, and asked what was to be done. Having well considered,
they said: ‘Here’s a barrier we cannot get over,’ and they retired.

As the number of devout catholics was still pretty large in Geneva,

what Bonivard had foreseen came to pass; and the agitation was
general. No more services, no more masses, no baptisms, no
marriages ... divine worship suspended, the cross hidden, the altars
stripped.140 ... What was to be done? The chapter was sitting, and
several citizens appeared before them in great irritation. ‘It is you,’
they said to the terrified canons, ‘that are the cause of all this.’ ...
Nor was this all. The excommunicates of the Savoyard parishes of
the diocese used to come every year at the approach of Easter and
petition the bishop’s official for letters of consentment, in order that
their parish priests might give them the communion. ‘Now of such
folks there chanced to be a great number at Geneva. Heyday, they
said, it is of no use putting one obstacle aside, when another starts
up immediately, all owing to the fault of these episcopal officers!’ ...
The exasperated Savoyards united with the Genevans, and the
agitated crowd assembled in front of the cathedral gates; the men
murmured, the women wept, even priests joined the laity. Loud
shouts were heard erelong. The people’s patience was exhausted;
they took part against their bishop. ‘To the Rhone,’ cried the devout,
‘to the Rhone with the traitors! the villains who prevent us from
receiving our Lord!’ The excommunicated episcopal officers had a
narrow escape from drowning. All the diocese fancied itself
excommunicated, and accordingly the confusion extended beyond
the city. The syndics came up and entreated the citizens to be calm;
and then, going to the episcopal council, the bishop being still
absent, they said: ‘Release Pécolat, or we cannot protect you against
the anger of the people.’ The episcopal officers seeing the bishop
and the duke on one side, the metropolitan and the people on the
other, and impelled in contrary directions, knew not whom to obey.
It was reported to them that all the city was in an uproar, that the
most devout catholics wished at any cost to communicate on Easter
Sunday, and that looking upon them as the only obstacle which
prevented their receiving the host, they had determined to throw
them over the bridge. ‘The first of you that comes out shall go over,’
cried the crowd. They were seized with great alarm, and fancying
themselves half drowned already, wrote to the governor of Peney to
release Pécolat forthwith. The messenger departed, and the friends
and relations of the prisoner, not trusting to the episcopal court,
accompanied him. During the three-quarters of an hour that the
walk occupied, the crowd kept saying:—suppose the governor should
refuse to give up his victim; suppose the bastard’s agents have
already carried him away—perhaps put him to death? None of these
suppositions was realised. Deep in a dungeon of the castle, the poor
man, heavily chained, in utter darkness, wrecked both in mind and
body, was giving way to the blackest melancholy. Suddenly he hears
a noise. He listens; he seems to recognise well-known voices: it was
his brothers and his friends arriving noisily under the walls of the
castle, and giving utterance to their joy.

Their success was, however, less certain than it appeared to them.

Strange things were, in fact, taking place at that moment in Geneva.
The bishop and the duke had not been so passive as had been
imagined, and at the very instant when the messenger bearing the
order from the episcopal court, and accompanied by a body of
Genevans, was leaving by the French gate, a courier, with an order
from the Roman court, entered by the Savoy gate. The latter went
with all speed to the bishop’s representatives, and handed them the
pontifical letters which the princes had obtained, and by which the
pope annulled the censures of the metropolitan. This Roman
messenger brought in addition an order from the bishop forbidding
them on their lives to release Pécolat. The bastard had shuddered at
the thought that the wretch whom he had so successfully tortured,
might escape him: he had moved heaven and earth to keep him in
prison. We may imagine the emotion and alarm which fell upon the
episcopal councillors when they read the letters handed to them.
The coincidence of the moment when these two contradictory orders
left Geneva and arrived there is so striking, that we may ask
whether these letters from Rome and Turin were not supposed—
invented by the episcopal officers themselves; but there is nothing in
the narrative to indicate a trick. ‘Immediately on reading the letters,
the episcopal officers with all diligence countermanded the release.’
These words in the ‘Annals’ show the precipitation with which they
endeavoured to repair the mistake they had committed. There was
not, in fact, a moment to lose, if they wished to keep Pécolat.
Several officers got on horseback and set off full gallop.

The bearers of this order were hardly halfway, when they met a
numerous jubilant and noisy crowd returning from Peney. The
friends of Pécolat, preceded by the official letters addressed to the
governor, had appeared before that officer, who, after reading the
despatch over and over, had thought it his duty to obey. Pécolat’s
friends hurried after the gaoler, who, carrying a bunch of keys in his
hand, went to open the cell; they entered with him, shouting
release! They broke the prisoner’s chains; and, finding him so weak,
carried him in their arms and laid him in the sunshine in the castle
yard. Without loss of time they placed him in a peasant’s cart and all
started for Geneva. This was the crowd met by the episcopal
officers. The Genevans were bringing back their friend with shouts of
joy. In vain did the episcopal officers stop this joyous band, and
require that the prisoner should be led back to Peney; in vain did
they speak of the bishop and even of the pope; all was of no use.
Despite the rogations of the pope, the prelate, and the messengers,
the people carried Pécolat back in triumph. This resistance offered to
the Roman pontiff, at the moment he was lending assistance to the
bastard in his oppression of a poor innocent man, was, as it were,
an affair of outposts; and the Genevans were thus training
themselves for more notable battles. ‘Forward,’ they shouted, ‘to the
city! to the city!’ and the crowd, leaving the episcopal officers alone
in the middle of the road, hastened to the gates.

At last they approached Geneva, and there the excitement was not
less great than on the road. Pécolat’s return was the triumph of right
over injustice, of liberty over despotism; and accordingly it was
celebrated with enthusiasm. The poor man, dumb (for his wound
was not yet healed), shattered by the torture, and wasted away by
his long captivity, looked silently on all around him, and experienced
an emotion he could hardly contain. After such trials he was
returning into the old city amid the joyous cries of the population.
However, his friends did not forget the orders of the pope and the
bishop; and fearing lest the vidame should again seize the poor
fellow, they took him to the convent of the Grey Friars of Rive, an
asylum reputed inviolable, and quartered him in the cell of his
brother, the monk Yvonnet. There the poor invalid received all the
affectionate attendance he required; he remained some time without
saying much; but at last he recovered his speech, ‘by the
intercession of a saint,’ said the priests and Pécolat himself, as it
would appear. Was it devoutly or jestingly that he spoke of this
pretended miraculous cure? We shall not decide. Bonivard, who
perhaps no longer believed in the miracles of saints, assigns another
reason: ‘The surgeons dressed the wound in his tongue;’ and he
adds: ‘He always stuttered a little.’ If Bonivard had doubts about the
saints, he believed in the sovereign justice of God: ‘Then came to
pass a thing,’ he said, ‘which should not be forgotten; all the judges
who condemned Pécolat to be tortured died this year, one after
another, which we cannot suppose to have happened except as a
divine punishment.’

The remembrance of Pécolat’s torture long remained in the memory

of the citizens of Geneva, and contributed to make them reject the
rule of the Romish bishops.141 In fact the interest felt for this victim
of episcopal cruelty was manifested in every way. The cell of brother
Yvonnet, in the Grey Friars’ convent, was never empty; everybody
wished to see the bishop’s victim. The prior of St. Victor was one of
the first to come, attended by several friends. The poor man, being
tongue-tied, told ‘the mystery of his sufferings with his fingers,’ says
Bonivard. It was long since there had been such an interesting sight
in Geneva. The citizens, standing or sitting around him, could not
turn their eyes away from his thin pale face. By his gestures and
attitudes Pécolat described the scenes of the examination, the
torture, and the razor, and in the midst of these remembrances
which made the tears come to his eyes, he from time to time
indulged in a joke. The young men of Geneva looked at each other
and trembled with indignation ... and then sometimes they laughed,
at which the episcopal officers ‘were terribly enraged.’ The latter
were in truth both vexed and angry. What! they receive an order
from the bishop, an order from the pope, and only a few minutes
before they have issued a contrary order! Strange mishap! Not
knowing whom to blame, they imprisoned the governor, who had
only released Pécolat by their command, and to cover their
responsibility were actually planning to put him to death.

Some timid and alarmed citizens dared not go and see Pécolat; one
of these was Blanchet, the friend of Andrew Navis, who had been
present at the famous meeting at the Molard and the momon
supper, and who, falling not long after beneath the bishop’s violence,
was doomed to expiate his errors by a most cruel death. Blanchet is
the type of a character frequent at this epoch. Having learnt, shortly
after the famous momon banquet, that a certain individual whose
name even he did not know, but who, he said, ‘had given him the lie
to his face,’ was in Burgundy, Blanchet set off after him, gave him a
box on the ears, and returned. He came back to Geneva, thence he
went into Faucigny, and afterwards to Italy; he took part in the war
between the pope and the Duke of Urbino (who so terribly
frightened Leo X.); returned to Pavia, thence to Turin, and finally to
Geneva. His cousin Peter, who lived in Turin, had told him that
during his travels Pécolat had been arrested for plotting against the
bishop. ‘I shall not go and see him,’ he said, ‘for fear of
compromising myself.’ In spite of his excessive precaution, he could
not finally escape the barbarous vengeance of the prelate.142
 CHAPTER XI.
BERTHELIER TRIED AT GENEVA; BLANCHET AND NAVIS SEIZED AT TURIN;

BONIVARD SCANDALISED AT ROME.

(1518.)

N O one embraced Pécolat with so much joy as Berthelier, who

had returned to Geneva within these few days. In fact the
duke, desirous to please the Swiss by any means, had given him,
and also made the bishop give him, a safe-conduct which, bearing
date February 24, 1518, extended to Whitsunday, May 23, in the
same year. The favour shown the republican hero was not great, for
permission was granted him to return to Geneva to stand his trial;
and the friends of the prelate hoped that he would not only be tried,
but condemned and put to death. Notwithstanding these
forebodings, Berthelier, a man of spirit and firm in his designs, was
returning to his city to accomplish the work he had prepared in
Switzerland: namely, the alliance of Geneva with the cantons. He
had taken great trouble about it during his residence among the
confederates. He was seen continually ‘visiting, eating, drinking in
the houses of his friends or at the guilds (called abbeys), talking
with the townsfolk, and proving to them that this alliance would be
of great use to all the country of the League.’ Berthelier was then full
of hope; Geneva was showing herself worthy of liberty; there was an
energetic movement towards independence; the people were
wearied of the tyranny of princes. Free voices were heard in the
general council. ‘No one can serve two masters,’ said some patriots.
‘The man who holds any pension or employment from a prince, or
has taken an oath to other authorities than the republic, ought not
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookultra.com