Voting on Faith

Fabrice Flückiger, Marc Aberle, Francesco Beretta

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Fabrice Flückiger, Marc Aberle, Francesco Beretta. Voting on Faith: Mapping Reformation Ballots with the Methods and Tools of Digital History. Sharing the Experience: Workflows for the Digital Humanities. Proceedings of the DARIAH-CH Workshop 2019, Université de Neuchâtel; DARIAH; Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Dec 2019, Neuchâtel, Switzerland. halshs-02532087

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# Voting on Faith

## Mapping Reformation Ballots
with the Methods and Tools of Digital History

Marc Aberle<fnref n="1" />, Francesco Beretta<fnref n="2" />, Fabrice Flückiger<fnref n="3" />*

As the Reformation ideas spread throughout the Swiss Confederacy in the 16th century, a significant number of ballots were held in the Swiss cantons in order to choose between either the reformed ideas or the teachings of the Roman Church. “Putting faith to the ballot” may seem to be a strange choice [Christin, 2014a]. Although voting on common matters was the usual decision-making process in Swiss communes, voting on faith was unprecedented and raised a crucial question: Could the “true faith” be chosen by a majority without risking a potentially catastrophic choice that would threaten the salvation of all? In order to understand why a vote was sometimes considered as the right path to a wise religious choice and under which circumstances the ballots were organized, the Swiss National Science Foundation funded the research project “Reformation and Ballots” [p3.snf.ch/project-162968], whose members work at the University of Neuchâtel and at the Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône Alpes (LARHRA) in Lyon [http://larhra.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/]. Based on a conference paper presented at the 2019 DARIAH-CH workshop in Neuchâtel [https://dariah-ch-ws19.sciencesconf.org/], this article explains how digital methods and tools give us new insights in some crucial aspects of the ballots and help mapping the Reformation process in Switzerland.

### I. VOTING ON FAITH IN SWISS CANTONS

In Abraham Ruchat’s, Karl-Ludwig von Haller’s or Heinrich Bullinger’s chronicles of the Reformation times, numerous accounts on the adoption of reformed principles by a majority decision can be found [Ruchat 1727; Haller, 1839; Bullinger, 1838]. Such votes echo the Swiss political traditions according to which decisions concerning the whole community had to be made by the communal assembly, the city council or the *Landsgemeinde* [Maissen, 2006; Würgler, 2013]. Which persons were allowed to cast a vote on public matters depended on local constitutional structures but an elected assembly whose members dedicated themselves to the common good was seen in all cantons as the best form of government. This principle was applied to religious matters since the very beginning of the Reformation process [Elsener, 1969; Christin, 2014b]. In April 1525, the Great Council of Zurich voted to abolish the mass,

<footnote n="1">¹ University of Neuchâtel/SNF, Switzerland</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² LARHRA/CNRS, France</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München/SNF, Germany</footnote>

<footnote>*Corresponding author: fabrice.fluckiger@bluewin.ch</footnote>
confirming thereby the reform-oriented course followed since 1523 under the
influence of Ulrich Zwingli. Three years later, the Council of Bern adopted the
reformed principles after a disputation held in January 1528.

Following Zwingli's teaching, the councils of Zurich and Bern
considered the promotion of reformation principles as their duty, but they had
only limited influence on religious decisions made by their allies in the
Confederacy and most cantons remained faithful to the Roman Church
[Burnett and Campi, 2016]. Nevertheless, both cities went to great lengths to
promote the new faith in their sphere of influence. Their tactics are well
documented for the *Gemeine Herrschaften*, territories over which they shared
lordship with catholic allies [Holenstein, 2005; Head, 1997] Bern and Zurich
claimed that since the cantons disagreed on which faith their subjects should
follow, the parishioners had to be consulted: The religious choice would then
proceed from a majority decision, hence the designation of ballots as “Mehr”
or “Plus” [Christin, 2014a/b]. In Orbe, where Bern shared lordship with
catholic Fribourg, ballots were hold in the 1530s and the majority of the
parishioners chose the Roman rites [Strickler, 1876]. However, Bern managed
to guarantee the celebration of the protestant religious office and the
community asked for a new vote a few years later. In July 1554, 123 of 227
people voted to abolish the mass and the catholic minority had to leave the
town soon afterwards [Deschwanden, 1886].

Ballots held in the common lordships were events of high political and
religious importance, often making one town or village the center of a conflict
raising significant jurisdictional questions and prone to lead to diplomatic
tensions. Documents produced in this context were kept by the cantons in
order to legitimize their course of action when challenged by opponents,
meaning that there is sufficient information to study the entire process leading
to a vote on faith as well as its aftermath. Complaints about the validity of a
vote, lists of potential voters or letters between magistrates and delegates
overviewing the process give us insight into the complex negotiations
preceding and following nearly each ballot held in the common lordships.

## II. WORKING ON REFORMATION DATA WITH THE SYMOGIH.ORG VIRTUAL RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT

In 2017, the project team chose the symogih.org [http://symogih.org] virtual research environment (VRE) to host and analyze the data harvested in the source material. Created by the LARHRA in Lyon, this modular VRE designed for historical research is organized around an event-centered, extensible data model [Fig. 1]. It is compatible with CIDOC CRM, a standardized data model for the cultural heritage domain (ISO 21127:2014) and complies therefore with FAIR principles [https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/]. The symogih.org VRE allows to collect, organize and analyze relevant information about the Reformation ballots. It also contains information from different past or ongoing projects, therefore giving us access to other relevant datasets, but also allowing other researchers to re-use our data even after completion of the SNF-funded part of “Reformation and Ballots”. The long-term and evolving perspective, as well as the interoperability of
*symogih.org* are the principal benefits of working within this VRE rather than building a specific database for our project [Fig. 2].

Every actor, institution and place found in the source material is encoded in the VRE. Furthermore, these items are situated as precisely as possible on the timeline as well as geolocated using geographical coordinates, thus allowing their subsequent visualization with a temporal dimension on a map or within a graph. The data is structured by using existing classes and properties already available in the VRE, or by creating new ones, specifically devoted to our project's needs. For example, since it is crucial to consider the various alliances and overlapping jurisdictions which linked authorities, communes and parishes together to understand the vote itself, all collective actors concerned by a ballot had to be created and carefully linked up with already existing information. The relations between these collective actors are characterized by using different classes of time-related relationships. One of the most important of them is the “power relationship”, which allows to model different sorts of jurisdictional ties, political or religious [Fig. 3]. After all the information is encoded and cleaned up in the VRE, the identification and description of patterns characterizing Reformation ballots can begin.

### III. THE CASE OF TAVANNES IN THE MOUTIER-GRANDVAL BAILIWICK

In the 16th century, the Moutier-Grandval bailiwick was under the lordship of the bishop of Basel. However, many of its communes had entered alliances with Bern and Solothurn to protect their privileges: These alliances gave Bern useful leverage to promote reformed ideas in the region and though their lord was a catholic prelate, all southern villages of the valley chose the Reformation through ballots intensely promoted by Bern between 1530 and 1531 [Aberle and Christin, 2019].

One of the bailiwick parishes, Tavannes, chose the Reformation as early as June 1530, almost a year before the rest of the valley. This early vote can be explained with unprecedented accuracy thanks to *symogih.org*. Since all collective actors concerned by the vote had been created in the VRE, it was relatively easy to identify the complex relationships between the parish, adjacent communes, the bishop and the Council of Bern. For example, all villages depending of the Tavannes parish are linked with the latter using a “power relationship” class typed as “spiritual jurisdiction”, which means that these temporal entities depended of Tavannes in religious matters. The burghers of the Tavannes commune were also in a *combourgeoisie* relationship with Bern, a protective alliance through which the City Council could enforce the parishioners right to vote on their faith, even if their temporal lord was the bishop of Basel and the abbot of Bellelay the parish collator [Herminjard, 1868]. As the parish included the five communities of Tavannes, Reconvilier, Saules, Saicourt or Loveresse, a vote would have a large impact on the religious landscape and Tavannes consequently played a key part in the Bernese Reformation strategy for this region. The data in the *symogih.org* VRE therefore reveal the complex pattern of jurisdictions in which collective and individual actors were entangled, a crucial step in order to determine under which
conditions a community was allowed to choose the new faith. This also enables
us to understand how a parish could remain reformed when the decision was
challenged or why it had to go back to Catholicism [Fig. 4].

In a second phase, we examined the ballot itself. People did not vote on
“the Reformation” as a whole concept or as a coherent system of rules and
doctrines but pronounced themselves on the mass, on devotional images or on
financial matters like the tithe [Strickler 1844]. It is therefore crucial to break
down the rather vague concept of “vote” into its components and to show
which aspects were discussed in each case. In order to achieve that goal,
specific “abstract objects” such as “abolition of the mass” or “removal of the
images” were created to describe purpose and outcome of each ballot as
precisely as possible. In Tavannes, the event “vote on faith” which took place
on June 5th, 1530 was tagged with the abstract object “introduction of
reformed preaching” to show that the parish’s vote was about the sermon. The
information type “to be concerned” then allows to link the vote with the
collective or individual actors who participated in the organization of the ballot
or cast their votes in it [Fig. 5]. Examining both relation patterns between the
actors and data on the vote procedure itself reveals how the conditions to be
fulfilled varied from one community to another and shows that the results of
the ballot could always be challenged.

#### IV. PERSPECTIVES

An online map prototype is currently under development in order to
allow dynamic geographical and chronological visualizations of the voting
process. A first map describing the progress of religious reform in Moutier-
Grandval will be published on a dedicated website. Based on this experience,
the prototype will be refined in order to build an evolving mapping system that
allows the visualization of the Reformation process in other bailiwicks like
Sargans or Orbe-Echallens and ultimately in every region of the Swiss
Confederacy where ballots took place. Furthermore, diagrams and graphs will
illustrate the relations between communities and temporal or spiritual
jurisdictions, leading to a better understanding of the network of political and
jurisdictional relationships. The website will eventually show in an interactive
way that the success of reform-oriented politics depended on local power
configurations and relations between institutional actors rather than on a
supposed ‘magical’ efficiency of the reformed ideas or on the persuasive power
of ‘enlightened’ preachers. Digital methodologies, and virtual research
environments in particular, can thus make a significant contribution to
advancing our understanding of the past.
V. FIGURES

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1: *symogih.org* generic data model.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2: *symogih.org* project's VRE: The different hosted projects work in a common research space. Data in the VRE are connected to external authority files and published as linked open data.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 3: Modelling of power relationships between actors in the “Reformation and Ballots”-project.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 4: Relationship graph for the Moutier-Grandval bailiwick, working draft. Pink arrows: Spiritual jurisdiction of a parish over a community; blue arrows: direct suzerainty of a magistrate over a community; red arrows: combourgeois-relationship; green arrows: patronage and collator rights; grey arrows: confirmed temporal jurisdiction over a community, but of unknown nature and extent at the time of publication.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 5: Ballots held between 1528 and 1532 in the Moutier-Grandval bailiwick, in Biel/Bienne and in Lengnau, working draft. Most votes took place in 1531.</figcaption></figure>
VI. REFERENCES

Aberle and Christin, 2019: Marc Aberle and Olivier Christin, Querelles de clocher dans l'Ancienne Confédération helvétique, *Revue d'histoire du protestantisme* (RHP). 2019; 4: 26-27.

Bullinger, 1838: *Heinrich Bullingers Reformationsgeschichte*, ed. Johann Jakob Hottinger and Hans Heinrich Vögeli. Frauenfeld, Beyel, 1838.

Burnett and Campi, 2016: Amy Nelson Burnett and Emidio Campi (ed.), *A Companion to the Swiss Reformation*. Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2016.

Christin, 2014a: Olivier Christin, Putting Faith to the Ballot, *Majority Decisions. Principles and Practices*, ed. Stephanie Novak and Jon Elster. New York, Cambridge UP, 2014: 17-33.

Christin, 2014b: Olivier Christin, *Vox Populi. Une histoire du vote avant le suffrage universel*. Paris, Seuil, 2014: 140-160.

Deschwanden, 1886: *Amtliche Sammlung der älteren eidgenössischen Abschiede*, IV 1e, ed. Karl Deschwanden. Lucerne, Meyer, 1886: 979-980.

Elsener, 1969: Ferdinand Elsener, Das Majoritätsprinzip in konfessionellen Angelegenheiten und die Religionsverträge der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft vom 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert, *Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte*. 1969; KA 55; 238-281.

Haller, 1839: Charles-Louis de Haller, *Histoire de la Réforme protestante en Suisse*. Paris, Auguste Vaton, 1839.

Head, 1997: Randolph C. Head, Shared Lordship, Authority, and Administration: The Exercise of Dominion in the Gemeine Herrschaften of the Swiss Confederation, 1417-1600, *Central European History*. 1997; 30-4: 489-512.

Herminjard, 1868: *Correspondance des Réformateurs dans les pays de langue française*, ed. André-Louis Herminjard. Geneva, Georg, 1866-1868; 2: 251-252.

Holenstein, 2005: André Holenstein, Bailliages communs, *Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse (DHS)*, ed. Marco Jorio. Berne, ASSH and Neuchâtel, Attinger, 2002-2014, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/009817/2005-08-19/.

Maissen, 2006: Thomas Maissen, *Die Geburt der Republic. Staatsverständnis und Repräsentation in der frühneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft*. Göttingen, V & R, 2006: 23-30; 60-70.

Ruchat, 1727: Abraham Ruchat, *Histoire de la Réformation de la Suisse*. Geneva, Bousquet, 1727-1728.

Strickler, 1884: *Actensammlung zur schweizerischen Reformationsgeschichte in den Jahren 1521-1532 im Anschluss an die gleichzeitigen eidgenössischen Abschiede*, ed. Johannes Strickler. Zurich, Meyer Zeller, 1877-1884; 5: 100.

Strickler, 1876: *Amtliche Sammlung der älteren eidgenössischen Abschiede Die Eidgenössischen Abschiede*, IV 1b, ed. Johannes Strickler. Zurich, Schabelitz, 1876: 985-986.

Würgler, 2013: Andreas Würgler, *Die Tagsatzung der Eidgenossen. Politik, Kommunikation und Symbolik einer repräsentativen Institution im europäischen Kontext (1470-1798)*. Epfendorf, Bibliotheca Academica, 2013: 231-334.