514 PRÆTERITA-III

And during the whole of the eleventh century, and more than half of the twelfth, the power of Bertha’s institutions, and of the Church generally, increased in Switzerland; but gradually corrupted by its wealth of territory into a feudal hierarchy, against which, together with that of the nobles who were always at war with each other, Duke Berthold IV., of Zæhringen, undertook, in 1178, the founding of FRIBOURG in Uchtland.¹

The culminating point of the new city above the scarped rocks which border the Sarine (on the eastern bank?) was occupied by the Château de Tyr (Tyrensis), ancient home of the Counts of that country, and cradle, it is believed, of the house of Thierstein. Berthold called his new town Freyburg, as well as that which existed already in his states of Breisgau, because he granted it in effect the same liberties, the same franchises, and the same communal charter (Handfeste) which had been given to the other Fribourg. A territory of nine leagues in circumference was given to Fribourg in Uchtland, a piece which they still call “the old lands.” Part of the new colonists came from Breisgau, Black Forest people; part from the Roman Pays de Vaud. The Germans lived in the valley, the others on the heights. Built on the confines of France and Germany, Fribourg served for the point of contact to two nations until then hostile; and the Handfeste of Fribourg served for a model to all the municipal constitutions of Switzerland. Still, at this day, the town is divided into two parts, and into two languages.²

41. This was in 1178. Twelve years later, Berthold V., the greatest and the best of the Dukes of Zæhringen, made, of the village of Burgdorf in the Emmenthal, the town of Berthoud, the name given probably from his own;

¹ [See Gaullieur, p. 109. The following passage in Ruskin’s text is translated almost literally from the same page of Gaullieur.]

² [“The Canton Friburg is singularly divided between the German and French languages; and the line of separation, extending from the S. E. corner to the N. W., passes through the town of Friburg, so that in the upper town French is spoken, and in the lower German. This distinction, however, is wearing out” (Murray’s Handbook for Switzerland, 1891, vol. i. p. 261).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]