Page 162 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Sandro Guzzi-Heeb

spend time at home with them, gazing out of the presbytery window dur-
ing divine offices and processions of the Blessed Sacrament on the third
Sunday of the month.’
He also allegedly ‘cancelled many of the processions this year that usu-
ally accompany High Mass on feast days and Sundays in summer.’ This
must certainly have caused some discontent among the members of Lid-
des’ confraternities and especially among the brotherhood of the Blessed
Sacrament. Processions were the primary sphere of influence of the vari-
ous local religious associations, especially the powerful Blessed Sacrament,
which was dedicated to the upkeeping of the altar, and the more popular
Confraternity of the Rosary. Murith’s cancellation of the summer proces-
sions thus put him in an awkward position with these devotional societies
(Hersche 2013). This configuration suggests that local confraternities did
not perceive themselves as means in the hands of the Church and its local
representatives but rather as defenders of the community’s traditions and
interests.
In Bovernier a similar conflict divided the parson, Nicolas Cavé, and the
community in the years between 1796 and 1806. Several men, whom Cavé
explicitly identified as his enemies, were actually members of local con-
fraternities. The most important among them was probably Joseph Bour-
geois, in the 1790s an influential officer (métral) of the canons of Grand
Saint-Bernard, and by the way, probably the father of an illegitimate child.
In spite of these facts, Bourgeois had been a member of two local confra-
ternities, Saint Joseph and the Blessed Sacrament. Jean-Alexis Michaud
also belonged to the group of local notables at odds with Cavé: he was also
a member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. This did not pre-
vent him from having a scandalous adulterous relationship with his cousin,
Elisabeth Sarrasin, in 1793. At this time, local factions were not yet strictly
organized, and the devotional association did not seem to be able to effec-
tively control the allegiances of every single member.
Even later, as radical men openly shunned the clerical institutions, there
was no sharp divide between Catholic and radical milieus. In fact, whilst
the radical young men had abandoned the Church and contested the clergy,
many women from their families did not follow them.
Between 1820 and 1860 whether or not to join a brotherhood was not
a family issue but rather a matter of gender. The wives or sisters of many
radical activists thus remain devout ‘sisters,’ despite the different political
choices of the men in their families. The sister of ‘Young Swiss’ Maurice
Arlettaz, for example, was a member of the Confraternity of the Rosary, as

160