Oath in Switzerland

The oath was one of the legal and religious foundations of old European society, and in the territory of present-day Switzerland it played a central role in both judicial procedure and the constitution of communities and lordships. Linking word and gesture—often in the form of a conditional self-curse—it bound the legal order to the divine order. While the medieval Church and canon law distinguished between the assertory oath and the promissory oath, the oath is regarded as a single institution; until the early modern period little distinction was made between a false oath and a breach of oath, both being punished as perjury by ecclesiastical and secular authorities.