Peter Falckβnotary, soldier, diplomat, politician, pilgrim, humanist and bookmanβwas one such generous spirit, as his books still demonstrate five centuries later. Peter Falck was born in Fribourg, Switzerland, around He came of bourgeois stock: his father Bernhard d. In Falck returned to Fribourg and began a career in public service.
His rise was steady, aided by marriage to Anna von Garmiswil d. The following year Falck served first as Feldschreiber [regimental secretary] and later as Kriegsrat [war councilor] in the troops raised by Fribourg for the Swabian War between the Swiss Confederacy and the Holy Roman Empire.
He served as Gerichtsschreiber [court clerk] until , as Vogt [bailiff] of the nearby municipality of Villarepos in , and Schultheiss [mayor] of another municipality, Murten, from to From there he traveled to Venice on a joint Swiss-papal mission to discuss the possibility of peace in Italy.
He and his companions made it as far as Rimini, where bad weather delayed them for several days; they finally pushed on by ship through stormy conditions and enemy territory to drop anchor in Venice on Christmas Eve.
Busy waging war in Lombardy, the Venetian government first ignored the envoys, then assured them of its friendship, and after some further to-ing and fro-ing condescended to put that assurance in writing. Arriving in Rome at the end of January, the envoys found Pope Julius indisposed and sinking. XII ] Wagner no.
