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Charivari or the Historicising of a Question |
61www.jrfm.eu
2018, 4/2, 55–66
lamation of the banns”.23 With his request the pastor, a member of the middle
class living in the agrarian context of face-to-face communities, indicated that
he was by no means eager for the “big event” mentioned in the editors’ call
for this issue. He wished rather for discretion and privacy. These couples were
not interested in an “alternative expression of the wedding ritual”, but instead
hoped that the expression of their deviant marital relationship would be as qui-
et as possible, even invisible.24 Another churchman, a preacher who declared
himself “peu fortuné”, suggesting he was destitute, and “a friend of silence and
calm” petitioned “to avoid noise and scandal that ordinarily accompanies this
kind of [sacred] ceremony”.25 Abraham Puenzieux and Susanna Marie Vielland
also hoped for dispensation from the need to have the banns read from the pul-
pit: “His reasons are the following, he fears a charivari, nocturnal celebrations
which are ordinarily accompanied in the parish by scandals and caricatures”.26 In
their common petition Albrecht Salchli, a councillor, and his fiancée asked for it
to be possible for them to marry “with neither pageantry, nor being accompa-
nied by a charivari or being announced with gunshots”, because this was often
the initiation of “real misfortune”.27
While many couples in the sources consulted do not name the reasons for
their apprehension,28 Daniel Moser, father of bride-to-be Elisabeth, states them
openly: he had promised his daughter to a local man of his own agrarian home
town, but in the meantime his daughter had become engaged to another man
from a different community. Now this wedding was approaching. In such cir-
cumstances, the petitioner said, it was a “silly rural custom of the wedding
night, to give a charivari to a woman who does not get married to a local by
staging her transfer of the trousseau”.29 How such a charivari was performed,
we learn from a contemporary travel report on the Bernese Oberland: the trans-
fer of the trousseau from the bride’s home to the home of the newlywed cou-
ple was enacted in a parody by unmarried men from the bride’s hometown.
This simulation was accompanied by clanging cowbells and other noises, pro-
duced by whips, pipes, horns, kettles and canes. Equipped with the improvised
23 “der, um Aufsehen zu vermeiden, sich ohne eine vorhergegangene dreymahlige Verkündigung verhey-
rathen zu können wünscht”, BAR B0#1000/1483#490* 1802–1803, 111.
24 See the call for papers for this issue.
25 “ami de la tranquilité & calme”; “d’eviter par là le bruit & l’éclat qui accompagnent ordinairement cette
espèce [sacrée] de cérémonies”, BAR B0#1000/1483#490* 1802–1803, 267.
26 “Ses motifs sont décidants, il craint un charivari, fetes nocturnes qui sont ordinairement accompagnier
dans la Paroisse de scandales et de caricatures”, BAR B0#1000/1483#490* 1802–1803, 493.
27 “ohne gepräng, ohne mit chari vari begleitet, noch mit feur-geschoss angekündet zu warden; wirklich
ohn-glük”, BAR B0#1000/1483#604* 1798–1801, 163–165.
28 In the five-year period from 1798 to 1803, more than 150 petitions from residents of Bern addressed the
central government; these documents form the empirical material for my investigation.
29 “ländlicher unsinniger Gebrauch […], dass in der Hochzeitnacht einer Weibsperson die sich nicht mit
einem OrtsbĂĽrger verehelichet, ein Charivarii gegeben oder welches nemlich bedeutet das Trossel
geführt wird”, BAR B0#1000/1483#604* 1798–1801, 423.
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 04/02
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2018
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 135
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM