Tracking Time in Sixteenth-Century Geneva: Vernacular Knowledge and Rural Social Networks in the Consistory Records

Historians have long used the records of the Genevan consistory to reinforce the dominant narrative of the Genevan Reformation focused on Calvin and his influence on an international religious movement inspired by the exceptional model of Geneva as a fully Reformed city. But these records also contain a wealth of information about how women and men in Reformation-era Geneva constructed time, social networks, and authority based on vernacular knowledge. To access these “loose ends,” this essay asks a new question: What can the details of one consistory case reveal about how members of the rural territories of Geneva experienced life outside of consistory meetings? This examination of the story of Jehane Vulbens, her young teenage daughter, Bartholomée, and the six rural neighbors providing testimony related to Bartholomée’s potential marriage reveals the ways that tracking time and age in Reformation-era Geneva depended upon shared memories, social relationships, and gendered physical experiences.