#@£*%!!

Joachim Du Bellay, when he passed through Geneva on his way back from Rome, was surprised to observe that the inhabitants of the city never used swearwords. Henri Chamard locates a record of the laws that governed Geneva in 1560, in MS Dupuy 415 held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France:

Item: Des Jurements. Que nul ne soit si osé ne si hardi de jurer le Nom de Dieu, sur peine pour la première fois de baiser terre: & pour la seconde, de baiser terre & de trois sols: pour la troisieme, de soixante sols & trois jours en prison, en pain & eau: & pour la quatrieme, d’estre privé de la ville pour an & jour

Cursing: Let no man be so impertinent and so bold as to take God’s name in vain: the punishment for a first offence is to kiss the ground; for a second offence, to kiss the ground and pay a fine of three sols; for a third, a fine of sixty sols and three days in prison, on bread and water; and for a fourth, banishment from the city for a year and a day.

This is just for swearing; the punishments for blasphemy are even more severe! Du Bellay, who was used to the anything-goes attitude of the Parisians, and the anything-goes-as-long-as-you-know-the-right-people attitude of the Romans, was quite taken aback by all this. Still, he also records that he had never seen so much greed and envy and anger and recrimination – and binge-drinking – as he saw in Calvinist Geneva.