Short Description

For the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation (1517), the Archives of the State of Geneva curated an exhibition presenting the impact of the Reformation on daily life in Geneva, aiming to demonstrate how the Genevans were involved in this process of Reformation and how the religious conversion of the city affected their day-to-day existence. The Archives of the State of Geneva maintain, restore and digitalize the documents that historians use in their work. The presentation of a digitalization project and the restoration of the archives of the Protestant Church complete this exhibition and highlight the historical work linked to the archives. In fact, the documents echo the activism, resistance and adaptation of various players – men, women and children – and underline the real or mythologized changes imposed by the practice of the new form of worship. The exhibition approaches this topic across three periods. The first period (1517–1555) charts the introduction of the Reformation in Geneva, while the second period (1555–1575) describes the Reformation as it was manifested in daily life, as the population adjusted to the new liturgies, mixed with students of the Academy, took in the influx of refugees and submitted to disciplinary constraints. Finally, the third period (1575–1617) saw tempers calming down and discipline being relaxed. The people of Geneva slowly found a new equilibrium, and the first hundred years of the Reformation were celebrated in Geneva in 1617.