Porrentruy, Bibliothèque cantonale jurassienne
Begun in 1620 by Jean Henri Vest when he was living in Freiburg-im-Breisgau (p. 1), this collection was originally conceived as a Stammbuch (family book) recording the genealogy and the marriages of the Vest family, with corresponding coats of arms. The enlarged coat of arms granted honorifically by Emperor Rudolph II in 1582 to the Count Palatine Jean Vest, father of Jean Henri, is repeated many times. Humbert Henri Vest brought the collection to Porrentruy in 1667; after the marriage of his daughter, Marie Hélène Vest (1693-1761), the last member of the local branch of the family, to Fréderic François Ignace Xavier Grandvillers (1690-1727) in 1716, the collection passed into the hands of the Grandvillers family. The Grandvillers added their coat of arms and those of related families (pp. 51-85 and 138-139, etc.). Born and died in Delémont, the lawyer Conrad de Grandvillers (1813-1880), great-great-grandson of Marie Hélène Vest, and the last to carry the name, was the last of his family to possess this volume, as the signature “de Grandvillers avocat” indicates (p. 1). Perhaps he is the one who, in the nineteenth century, added some other coats of arms without a family connection (pp. 277-281), possibly with the idea of transforming the volume into a liber amicorum or, more broadly, into an Armorial jurassien, as stated in the title added on the binding, probably in the nineteenth century. The fact that some coats-of-arms connected to the Vest family have been cut out and glued on other pages (pp. 89-95) suggests a major working of the volume at an unknown date.
Online Since: 09/06/2023
Louis Philippe, a painter and upholsterer in Delémont, produced two versions of the same project for an Armorial de l’ancien évêché de Bâle, both of which are preserved in the Bibliothèque cantonale jurassienne, namely this one here and a second, later armorial (N.C.6). In both cases, the volume is primarily composed of coats of arms painted by the author. This copy was originally supposed to be divided into large books, the first three of which were to have been dedicated to bishops, to states, and to the feudal nobility. In any case, the volume quickly loses its coherence with the passing of the pages and the additions of coats of arms, most of which are glued by the author according to the sources to which he has access (see f. 176v) and to the space available. He also inserted photographs, rubbings, and even signatures and original seals taken from archival or printed documents. Clearly, the composite appearance of the collection led Philippe to prepare a second, more coherent, collection (N.C.6).
Online Since: 09/06/2023
This paper manuscript, paginated 108-286, is one of four surviving copies of the writings of Nicolas Godin (Besançon, 1727 – Porrentruy, 1805), surgeon for the last four archbishops of Basel. His 24 medical-surgical “observations” are followed by a last one, which consists of a “description abrégée” (abbreviated description) of the principality of Basel, with a medical topography and meteorological observations (p. 236-283).
Online Since: 10/04/2018
Historical notes collected by Henri Joseph Comman, schoolmaster in Courgenay. The exact title is Recueil de notes historiques sur le Pays de Pourrentruy ou Evêché de Bâle. According to the preface, H.J. Comman collected these notes with the intention of transmitting an objective history of the region and mitigating the lack of documentation on this topic. Until 1782 the history is very detailed.
Online Since: 10/13/2016
This volume contains “année après année tout ce qui s’est passé de remarquable dans cet établissement [the Collège de Porrentruy] depuis 1588 à 1771” (p. 1). So reads the title page of this paper manuscript, which moreover provides information on its provenance. Property of the Jesuit priest Voisard (1749-1818), at his death the manuscript was bequeathed to Henri Joliat (1803-1859), who deposited it in 1856 in the library of the Collège de Porrentruy. The text begins in 1588 with the establishment of the Collège directed by the Jesuits; this volume concludes in 1661. The years that follow are treated in a second volume, MP 4-2. These excerpts from the annals are probably the French translation and summary of the volume in Latin in the Jura Cantonal Library (A2597).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
This paper manuscript contains the conclusion of the “Extraits des annales du Collège de Porrentruy” (MP 4-1). It begins in 1662 and ends in 1762, somewhat before what was announced (1771) on the title page of the first volume (MP 4-1, p. 1).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Although this manuscript’s paper title page announces “Éphémérides de la ville de Porrentruy, commencées en janvier 1855, Vautrey prêtre” (p. V3), it only refers to the first eight pages of this thick volume (pp. 1-8). The largest part of the work contains “Notes sur l’ancien Évêché de Bâle” (pp. 9-473), followed by excerpts from the “Annales du monastère d’Augiae divitis” (Reichenau) taken from a Latin manuscript that belonged to the Benedictines of Delle (pp. 476-502). Alongside various ecclesiastical functions, this volume’s author, Louis Vautrey (1829 Porrentruy – 1886 Delémont) accomplished a significant body of historical work, as witnessed, for example, by the publication in two volumes of the Histoire des évêques de Bâle (1884-1886), which at least in part relies on the current manuscript.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Described by Gustave Amweg as the Mémoires d’un Jurassien, this paper manuscript belonged to the cantonal school of Porrentruy. It contains two distinct parts. The first contains accounts in German, divided according to month, running from 1670 to 1672 (pp. 1-177). The second part (pp. 181-358), written in French, is the diary of a man – not otherwise identified – written in first person, which reports his daily activities (time passed in study, copies of letters, poems, etc.), as well as, among other things, the account of a trip from France to Italy.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Jean Jacques Joseph Nicol, a Porrentruy shoemaker (1733-1822), wrote this diary, which is divided in two parts, the first running from 1760 to 1771 (pp. 7-71), the second from 1795 to 1809 (pp. 73-88), two completely different periods from a political perspective (belonging to the Bishopric of Basel and the French period). This diary’s interest lies in Nicol’s profession as an artisan, which allows us to see, alongside major historical events, more mundane ones. This manuscript is a copy of Nicol’s diary made by Joseph Trouillat (1815-1863) as the label on the cover declares. A teacher at the Collège de Porrentruy, Trouillat was in charge of the library. Undoubtedly, it was in the course of his historical research that he copied this journal, which was printed with the title Notes et remarques de Jean-Jacques-Joseph Nicol (Porrentruy, Société typographique, 1900).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
Marcel Moreau (Delémont 1735-1804), the author of this manscript, entered the Cistercian abbey of Lucelle in 1755, teaching theology there, and then at Hauterive, and Neubourg (in Alsace). After refusing to give the constitutional oath during the Revolution (1791), he took refuge in Hauterive, and then was named director of the Cistercian nuns of La Maigrauge. During these years, he wrote memoirs on contemporary events, as attested by this manuscript, which describes what happened between 21 April 1792 (p. 5) and 27 January 1793 (p. 138). The concluding index (pp. 139-150-s2), in chronological order, establishes the correspondence between the events treated on the manuscript’s pages and their dates.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
According to the preface (pp. 5-8), the Jesuit François-Humbert Voisard (1749-1818) wrote the Abrégé as the first history in French of the bishops of Basel and dedicated it to his students. Entirely focused on the ecclesiastical history of Basel and Porrentruy, the text’s structure reveals its pedagogic nature: a short question introduces each chapter, and the text that immediately follows provides a more or less lengthy reply to the question. According to Gustave Amweg’s Bibliographie du Jura bernois, Voisard’s Abrégé survives in five copies and has not been published to this day. This manuscript has been corrected, annotated, and ends with an index of the bishops and the clerical institutions of the Basel episcopacy (pp. 459-460). Ownership notes inscribed on the front pastedown document its provenance: “Ce livre appartient à Henri Joliat, étudiant en rhétorique. Porrentruy, le 3 mai 1819 / Et / Schwartzlin Père / et /à l’abbé Vautrey à qui il a été remis par M. l’abbé Marquis en 1813”.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
One of the five copies of the Abrégé de l’histoire des évêques de Bâle by the Jesuit, François-Humbert Voisard (1749-1818), a history textbook organized according to questions and responses and dating from 1781. Except for the address of the dedication, the preface of this volume uses nearly the same terms as those in a second copy in the Bibliothèque cantonale jurassienne (MP 10 / A 3269). It differs, however, in lacking annotation and correction. In addition, the copy is incomplete, since it stops suddenly at the beginning of the fourth part, dedicated to the bishops of Basel and of Porrentruy (p. 360). Before coming to the library of the Collège de Porrentruy in 1842, the manuscript belonged to a certain Quiquerez (back pastedown), probably Jean-Georges, mayor and notary of Porrentruy, and then to his son, Auguste (1801-1882), a Jurassien engineer, historian, archeologist, and geologist, as indicated by his ex-libris (p. V1).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The Porrentruy lawyer François-Joseph Guélat (1736-1825) is one of the most well-known chroniclers to have described life in the Jura at the moment of the Revolution. Divided into three manuscript volumes, the text was published in 1906 by B. Boéchat et Fils in Delémont, with the title Journal de François-Joseph Guélat 1791-1802. The first volume starts in 1791 and runs to 1793 (28 July). The year is given at the top of each page, above the left margin, where are mentioned the days and events related to the adjacent text.
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The Porrentruy lawyer François-Joseph Guélat (1736-1825) is one of the most well-known chroniclers to have described life in the Jura at the moment of the Revolution. Divided into three manuscript volumes, the text was published in 1906 by B. Boéchat et Fils in Delémont, with the title Journal de François-Joseph Guélat 1791-1802. The second volume starts in 1793 and runs to the end of December 1795. It uses the same layout as the previous volume, which is hardly surprising, since at the beginning they formed a single unit, as shown by the older, continous pagination. Likewise, the long table of contents at the end refers to both volumes (pp. 125-163).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The Porrentruy lawyer François-Joseph Guélat (1736-1825) is one of the most well-known chroniclers to have described life in the Jura at the moment of the Revolution. Divided into three manuscript volumes, the text was published in 1906 by B. Boéchat et Fils in Delémont, with the title Journal de François-Joseph Guélat 1791-1802. The third volume runs from 1796 to 1802, and, like the preceding volume (MP 15 / A1451-2) concludes with a table of contents (pp. 159-177).
Online Since: 12/14/2022
The Porrentruy bourgeois and notary François-Joseph Guélat (1736–1825) is the author of the text carried by this manuscript, and is chiefly known for his memoirs on life in Jura during the revolutionary period (cf. MP 15 / A1451-1-3). According to the old pagination and the table of contents, which was probably added at the moment of binding (pp. 169-170), this manuscript is incomplete. The copy is carefully prepared, the single-column text is marked by a pencil-traced frame, and the chapter titles are inked in elegant calligraphy. This is not Guélat’s autograph manuscript, but rather a later copy, produced after 1838, as suggested by the date linked to the name of Charles Roedel (the copyist?) enscribed in an inverse pyramid at the end of the list of the bishops of Basel (p. 148).
Online Since: 12/14/2022