TSCHUDI, or Schudy, the name of one of the oldest and most distinguished families of the land of Glarus, Switzerland. From 1029 to 1253 a member of the clan held the office of steward of the abbess of Säckingen on the Rhine, the lady of the manor; and after Glarus joined the Swiss Confederation in 1352 various members of the family held high political offices at home, and were distinguished abroad as soldiers and in other ways. In literature, its most eminent member was Giles or Aegidius Tschudi (1505-1572), who, after having served his native land in various offices, in 1558 became the chief magistrate or “landammann.” Originally inclined to moderation, he became later in life more and more devoted to the cause of the counter-Reformation. It is, however, as the historian of the Swiss Confederation that he is best known; by incessant wanderings and unwearied researches amongst original documents he collected material for three great works, which therefore can never wholly lose their value, though his researches have been largely supplemented and corrected by those of more recent students. In 1538 his book on Rhaetia, written in 1528, was published in Latin and in German— De prisca ac vera Alpina Rhaetia, or Die uralt wahrhafftig Alpisch Rhätia.
His other works were not published until long after his death....
The Beschreibung Galliae Comatae appeared under Gallati's editorship in 1758, and is mainly devoted to a topographical, historical, and antiquarian description of ancient Helvetia and Rhaetia, the latter part being his early work on Rhaetia revised and greatly enlarged. This book was designed practically as an introduction to his magnum opus, the Chronicon Helveticum, part of which (from 1100 to 1470) was published by J. R. Iselin in two stately folios (1734-36); the rest (to 1564) consists only of rough materials. The value of the work rests very largely on the constant use of original documents, no fewer than 750 being printed in Iselin’s edition, though the transcripts do not always in point of accuracy come up to the standard demanded by the modern critical historian. Many ballads are incorporated and also many oral traditions, both being employed to give life and picturesqueness to his story, though often at the expense of historical truth, the stock instance of which is the manner in which he completed and elaborated the Tell legend (see Tell). In many ways his book, save in its flowing and quaint German, is rather like the work of a 14th-century chronicler than a critical history; but it has been the source from which all later Swiss writers have drawn their information, and in many cases preserves the evidence of original documents which have since disappeared. It is in short a history rather resembling that of Livy than that of Hallam or Stubbs.
Subjoined is a list of other prominent members of the family. Dominic (1596-1654) was a Benedictine monk at Muri and wrote a painstaking work, Origo et genealogia gloriosissimorum comitum de Habsburg (1651). Joseph, a Benedictine monk at Einsiedeln, wrote a useful history of his abbey (1823). The family, which became divided in religious matters at the Reformation, also includes several Protestant ministers,— John Henry (1670-1729), who wrote Beschreibung des Lands Glarus (1714); John Thomas (1714-1788), who left behind him several elaborate MSS. on the local history of Glarus; and John James (1722-1784), who compiled an elaborate family history from 900 to 1500, and an account of other Glarus families. John Louis (d. 1784), who settled in Metz and contributed to the Encyclopédie, and Friedrich (1820-1886), the author of Das Thierleben der Alpenwelt, were distinguished naturalists. Among the soldiers may be mentioned Christopher (1571-1629), a knight of Malta and an excellent linguist, who served in the French and Spanish armies; while the brothers Louis Leonard (1700- 1779) and Joseph Anthony (1703-1770) were in the Neapolitan service. Valentine (1499-1555), the cousin of Giles, was, like the latter, a pupil of Zwingli, whom he afterwards succeeded as pastor of Glarus, and by his moderation gained so much influence that during the thirty years of his ministry his services were attended alike by Catholics and Protestants.
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