Informants and networks

This chapter exploits one of the most unique features of Johannes Rütiner’s Commentationes, namely the fact that Rütiner named his informants, their sources, and the context in which information was exchanged in over seventy per cent of his notebook entries. Combining these ‘references’ with evidence from St Gall’s rich archives, the chapter offers a reconstruction of Rütiner’s information network and outlines its social and geographical dimensions. The chapter argues that even educated St Gallers like Rütiner relied heavily on their personal, and overwhelmingly oral, networks to supply them with information from all over Europe, and occasionally beyond. Rütiner’s place between two powerful, well-connected and well-travelled, but fairly separate social groups within St Gall—the weavers’ guild on the one hand, and a circle of learned men and Protestant pastors on the other—therefore put him in a prime position for collecting information.