Gossip and the value of social knowledge

Abstract

This chapter argues that although gossip was condemned in theory as an inherently disruptive and primarily female form of communication, in practice it provided essential and highly valued information for anyone who sought to navigate St Gall’s social world. The chapter explores how male and female gossipers of all social levels—from St Gall’s Protestant reformers to Rütiner’s most frequent female informant, the elderly midwife Anna Bösch—used gossip to present themselves as bearers of privileged social knowledge and to raise ‘communicative capital’. The chapter then turns to gossip about crime to show that where such talk survives, it can also shed new light on well-known early modern sources.