Lucie Rizzo

Université de Neuchâtel

From one’s own Wedding to the Death of Guillaume Farel: A Typology of the Events Related in the livre de raison of the Favarger Family (County of Neuchâtel, 1547–1681)

In egodocuments, personal and family events are often interwoven with larger-scale episodes, such as political or meteorological incidents, affecting entire communities. Which events are worth being noted, and which are surprisingly missing out? How are these documents balanced between micro- and macro-events? We suggest discussing those questions through a specific case study from the County of Neuchâtel, a small independent principality situated at the crossroads of French and German cultural influences and surrounded by neighbours such as France, the Swiss Cantons, the duchies of Burgundy and of Savoy. A bourgeois of this city, Jonas Favarger, kept a livre de raison which was continued by his grandson, going from 1547 to 1681. This source allows us to observe which events were recounted by Jonas Favarger and his descendants during a period that began approximately ten years after the arrival of the Reformation in the region, and which therefore is characterized by a certain instability.