Antoine Biétrix (1817-1904) gathered material for the feudal history of the old bishopric of Basel in five volumes that, except for the last, all contain descriptions of families, of castles, and of coats of arms. The fourth volume concerns the “lands outside the limits of the old bishopric of Basel” (table of contents, pp. 303-305). Most often introduced with coats of arms, painted or not, each seigneurial family or village is historically situated.
Online Since: 04/03/2025
Antoine Biétrix (1817-1904) collected five volumes of material for the feudal history of the old bishopric of Basel. The final volume is a copy of the tables of contents of the five volumes of Joseph Trouillat's Monuments de l'Histoire de l'ancien évêché de Bâle (1852-1861). Some texts have been interspersed between the various tables, including a list of historical notes on castles (p. 161), notes on coins (pp. 162-163), notes on destroyed castles (pp. 165-167), and a note on the seigneury of Sierentz (pp. 169-175).
Online Since: 04/03/2025
This notebook contains the description of the Château de Porrentruy (pp. 7-49 – with an addition on pp. 33-34). The text is signed with the initials A.B. (p. 49) for Antoine Biétrix, who is also the author of the two folded plates inserted at the end of the book. The first plate depicts the Château de Porrentruy in the seventeenth century, surrounded by its outbuildings (postern, barracks, treasury, old kitchen, etc.) and is drawn in ink, signed A. Biétrix and dated to 1887 (p. 51). The second shows the floor plan and interior layout of the castle, floor by floor (p. 53).
Online Since: 04/03/2025
The Polish scholar and writer Jan Potocki (1761-1815) is the author of Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, which he wrote in French from the beginning. The Cantonal Library of Jura's copy contains part of the text in one of its final stages, which recounts ten days of the life of Alphonse van Worden (matching the 1814 edition available on Gallica). This copy is probably made from the printed text, and not the other way around, as indicated by François Rosset, who produced the critical edition of Potocki's text. The manuscript, in an elongated format, is introduced by a watercolor depicting the Venta Quemada (p. 6), one of the mythical places that appears in one of the stories that this novel puts together, like the Thousand and One Nights before it.
Online Since: 12/11/2025
Retired for health reasons in 1905, Abbé Daucourt (1849-1926), living in Delémont, began that same year an Armorial de Porrentruy. Completed in 1907, the volume was intended for the library of the town, of which he was a bourgeois. Painted throughout, this 118-plate volume is a compilation of coats of arms, primarily of the nobility, connected with local history. It also includes reproductions of seals, flags, and signatures. Scientifically unreliable, this armorial attests above all to the renewed interest for heraldry that marked the twentieth century, in the specific context of the affirmation of the Jura identity, in which Abbé Daucourt participated.
Online Since: 09/06/2023
This volume is the result of an organized selection of material gathered in the previous version (A3754). It consists of coats of arms, mostly carefully painted directly in the volume or glued in, supplemented by reproductions obtained through different procedures (photographs, lithographs, rubbings…), and even some originals (signatures). The armorial was originally conceived to be divided into several books: bishops (2r-29v), states (30r-35v), the feudal nobility (from f. 36r). Starting with f. 103r, however, the coherence begins to dissolve with the addition of coats of arms of bourgeois families of Delémont, then religious coats of arms connected to the abbey of Bellelay (117r-122v) and Lucelle (123r-127v). From f. 134r, the armorial concerns seals: bishops (134r-143v), clerics (144r-146v), towns and seigneuries (148r-151v and 155r), and nobility (152r-154v), to which are added coins and medals (156r-157v). The volume ends with a series of notes (162r-198v), including comments on the documents reproduced in the preceding sections.
Online Since: 09/06/2023