William E. Rappard · 1944
Rappard studies the periodic sworn renewal of the old Swiss federal pacts, the institution called Beschwörung und Erneuerung der Bünde. Though prompted by his wider interest in intercantonal order, the book is archival and constitutional: it follows charter clauses, Diet recesses, ceremonies, and quarrels over oath formulae. Its premise is that old Switzerland was not held together by sovereignty, but by sworn association, public memory, and repeated assent.
« d'être l'histoire d'un serment »
English translation: “to be the history of an oath”
The first conceptual move is to distinguish ordinary medieval oath-taking from the innovation of 1351. The Zurich pact did not invent sworn alliance; it made renewal periodic, public, and popular, requiring males over sixteen to hear and swear the pact anew. The pact remained perpetual even if the ceremony failed, but the ceremony made the law visible and binding in civic consciousness.
C'est, d'une part, la périodicité, et, de l'autre, le caractère public et populaire du renouvellement de ces serments constitutifs.
English translation: It is, on the one hand, the periodicity, and on the other, the public and popular character of the renewal of these constitutive oaths.
Rappard’s genealogy is historically specific. He traces the institution to Rodolphe Brun, Zurich’s authoritarian burgomaster, who had already used repeated municipal oaths after his coup of 1336. In 1351 Brun extended this technique to confederal law in order to secure allies against both external enemies and internal opponents. A later symbol of Swiss union thus began in political fear and personal authority.
une manifestation des ambitions et des appréhensions dictatoriales de Rodolphe Brun.
English translation: a manifestation of the dictatorial ambitions and apprehensions of Rudolf Brun.
The chapter on the institution’s rise shows how Brun’s device detached itself from its origin. Renewal clauses entered the pacts of Zug, Bern, Basel, Appenzell, the Convenant de Stans, and associated alliances. Rappard moves from texts to practice: delegations circulated, oaths were administered, rural subjects appeared through representatives, precedence mattered, and the newer cantons resisted humiliating asymmetries. By 1520 the rite had become normal federal public life.
l'institution faisait désormais partie intégrante du droit public helvétique.
English translation: the institution had henceforth become an integral part of Swiss public law.
The Reformation turned this integrative ritual into a site of rupture. In 1526 the Catholic majority refused to exchange oaths with Zurich and Basel; union became exclusion. Zurich and the Reformed cities argued that the pacts concerned temporal duties, not salvation.
Les pactes et ententes entre les Confédérés ne concernent pas et ne peuvent ni ne doivent être conçus comme concernant la foi, l'âme, la conscience et d'autres valeurs intérieures
English translation: The pacts and understandings among the Confederates do not concern, and neither can nor should be conceived as concerning, faith, the soul, the conscience, and other inner values
The Catholic answer refused that separation. To swear a pact was to bind the whole Christian person; “God and the saints” could not be treated as ornamental wording. The dispute over formulae therefore exposed a deeper constitutional question: was the Confederation a defensive league, or a Christian moral body requiring confessional continuity?
ils nous embrassent au contraire tout entiers, avec notre âme, notre honneur, nos corps et nos biens...
English translation: on the contrary, they embrace us entirely, with our soul, our honor, our bodies, and our goods...
The long fourth chapter follows the “accord impossible” from Cappel to Vilmergen. The treaty of 1529 ordered renewal, but every compromise failed: dual formulae, divided presidencies, local variants, postponements. The pacts remained legally valid, yet their public regeneration became impossible. Rappard’s irony is sharpest where sacred language blocks the very fidelity it was meant to consecrate.
Une fois de plus les saints se dressèrent donc entre les Confédérés, non pour les bénir, mais bien pour les empêcher de renouveler leurs promesses de fidélité mutuelle !
English translation: Once again the saints thus stood between the Confederates—not to bless them, but rather to prevent them from renewing their pledges of mutual fidelity!
After 1656 comes sleep. Confessional alliances, foreign treaties, and military arrangements displaced the old rite. It returned only at Aarau in January 1798, under the double pressure of internal revolution and French invasion. All cantons except revolutionary Basel participated; Zurich swore before God, while Lucerne added the saints. The compromise had no future.
Ainsi renaquit pour un jour, avant de mourir pour toujours, l'institution qui a fait l'objet de cette étude.
English translation: Thus, for a day, was reborn—before dying forever—the institution which has been the subject of this study.
Rappard’s conclusion gives the study its relevance. Oath renewal mattered because Switzerland was both republican and confederal: changing peoples and elected magistrates needed public acts to bind themselves across time, while independent cantons needed ritual to turn alliance into solidarity. Printing later reduced the need for oral publicity, but ideological war killed the institution. Law survived; the shared symbolic language that made it common did not.
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