François Bonivard or Bonnivard (1496 - 1570) was a Swiss patriot and a Historien whose imprisonment with the Château of Chillon was the source of inspiration for the poem of Lord Byron, the Prisoner of Chillon (1816).

He was the son of Louis Bonnivard, Moon Seigneur and was born with Seyssel in a family from Savoy. He was educated with Turin as of 1510 by his uncle Jean Aimé de Bonnivard, prior with Saint-Victor with Geneva. The Bonivard young person succeeded and opposed the duke of Savoy Charles III to him which tried to adapt Geneva. The duke then decided to capture Bonivard and to lock up it with Grolée 1519 with 1521.

The captivity was not sufficient to discourage Bonivard, it continued its political combat. In 1530, it is kidnapped by brigands in the Jurassic mountains . The gangsters give it to the duke of Savoy which sends it in the basements of the Château of Chillon. Bonivard remains there until the end of March 1536, date on which the Bernese troops and Genevese decided to encircle the castle.

The duke of Savoy then in load of Chillon had ordered, if the Bernese troops appeared, to subject the prisoners of Geneva to the Estrapade by twice, and to carry out them without hesitation . Panicked with the idea to fall to the hands from the Berneses, confederated known not to make feelings with the prisoners, the Savoyard garrison left the safe life to the prisoners and escaped during the night. The Genevese then forced the doors of the castle to deliver the prisoners, of which Bonivard.

Bonivard went back to Geneva but its priory of Saint-Victoir had been destroyed. Geneva granted to him an annual pension of 200 ecus and raised it with the row of “middle-class man” sitting at the council of the city until in 1537. It Maria four times but remained continuously in a precarious situation. Involved in debt in spite of the assistance brought by its city, Bonivard did not give up however its work of historian. In 1542, it launched out in a project reporting the history of Geneva. Under the influence of the censure, the manuscript of the Chroniques of Geneva was sent in 1551 to Jean Calvin so that this last makes corrections there. The work was however not published before 1831. Bonivard had worked it according to its anti-Savoyard point of view through a reflection which misses neutrality. It denounced there inter alia the actions of the reformers.

In 1551, it bequeathed the whole of its library to the public and its goods returned to the town of Geneva to its death. The date of its death remains nevertheless fuzzy because of a hole in the registers of the city. He would have died in 1570 or 1571.

He wrote the Chronique of Geneva until in 1530 (printed of 1825 with 1831) and some writings of polemic enough prickles, where he attacks at the same time the Roman Church and the reformers.

External bonds

• François Bonivard and his priory Saint-Victor
• the historical and literary work of Bonivard
• François Bonivard