Laurentius Bosshart

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Laurentius Bosshart (* around 1490 in Winterthur ; † July 23, 1532 there ) was a Swiss chronicler and clergyman . He is the author of what is probably the most important chronicle about the city of Winterthur in the 16th century.

Life

Relatively little is known about the life of Laurentius Bosshart today, but he was probably born in Winterthur around 1490 as the son of an advisable family. He then graduated from school in Winterthur, where he learned Latin . In 1507 he was allowed to go to Freiburg im Breisgau and lived there first in the house of Ulrich Frauenfeld, who was a freelance artist and court clerk . There he did so well that he was allowed to attend the university there, his hometown provided him with the necessary study place in the city. However, Bosshart was not lucky financially: his mother married a poor man in his home country and his cousins ​​no longer supported him financially, so that for lack of money he ran the risk of not being able to begin his studies despite a place. In December 1508 (the original letter says 1509) he wrote a letter to his hometown in which he asks the council for financial support, accompanied by a letter of recommendation from Ulrich Frauenfeld. This letter then also paid off, so that Bosshart was able to complete his studies in Freiburg. After his studies, his name reappears in Rheinau in 1512 .

Bosshart must finally have returned to Winterthur sometime between 1515 and 1518 and worked as a canon on the Heiligenberg . When the Reformation began in Zurich, Bosshart joined it and was also a supporter of Zwingli . When the Canons' Monastery was closed in 1525, he received a pension from Zurich , but was still administrator of the monastery lands in 1527. Laurentius, now of the secular class, took a wife like other former confreres. He began to write his well-known chronicle on December 13, 1529 and worked on it until shortly before his death from the plague on July 23, 1532.

The Chronicle of Laurentius Bosshart

Today his chronicle is an important source for the city history of Winterthur and was also the first to focus on Winterthur, as the author of the chronicle himself noted. Although Johannes von Winterthur reported on his youth in Winterthur in the 14th century, his reporting about it is more anecdotal. Bosshart himself was not an excellent writer, but his vivid stories make the chronicle a valuable historical document.

The Bosshart Chronicle includes an introduction and a shorter account of the events in the 12th and 13th centuries, which become more detailed from the 14th century. The focus of the chronicle, however, lies in the Reformation period around 1500, i.e. during his own lifetime, which he described in detail. Another valuable section is the history of the spiritual institutions in the vicinity, which are contained in the chronicle.

At the request of the Zwingliverein (in whose magazine "Zwingliana" Bosshart was mentioned several times from 1897 to 1906), the work of the chronicle was edited and published in a 400-page volume of "Sources on the history of the Swiss Reformation" by Kaspar Hauser , a teacher in Winterthur . In contrast to other volumes in this series, not only the time of the Reformation is illuminated, but the entire Middle Ages are also documented based on Bosshart's chronicle.

The original of the chronicle is now kept in the Zurich Central Library. There are occasional doubts about the authenticity of the document, which are clearly contradicted in the book on the chronicle.

literature

  • Rudolf Gamper: The creeping Reformation in Winterthur according to Laurenz Bosshart's chronicle ; in: Querblicke, Zürcher Reformationsgeschichten , ed. by Peter Niederhäuser and Regula Schmid; Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2019; 203 p., Ill. ( Communications from the Antiquarian Society in Zurich , Volume 86); ISBN 978-3-0340-1498-4 , pp. 78-83.
  • Kaspar Hauser: The Chronicle of Laurencius Bosshart of Winterthur, 1185-1532 . In: Emil Egli (Ed.): Sources on the history of the Swiss Reformation . 3rd volume. Basel book and antiquarian bookshop, formerly Adolf Geering, Basel 1905.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ «Miscelles. To Laurenz Bosshart. " by Emil Egli, Zwingliana magazine in 1904 (issue 1/15, page 416).
  2. ↑ a b Werner Ganz : History of the City of Winterthur . Introduction to its history from the beginning to 1798. In: 292nd New Year's sheet of the Winterthur City Library . Winterthur 1960, p. 207 .
  3. ↑ a b Gertraud and Rudolf Gamper: Bosshard, Laurenz. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  4. ↑ Article «The Sources on Swiss Reformation History ». 3. The Chronicle of Laurenz Bosshart. " by Emil Egli, Zwingliana magazine in 1906 (issue 2/3, pages 75 and 77).
personal data
SURNAME Bosshart, Laurentius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss chronicler and clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH around 1490
PLACE OF BIRTH Winterthur
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1532
Place of death Winterthur