'\Huldrych (or Ulrich) Zwingli' (1484 to 1531) was the leader of the Swiss Reformation and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches. Independent from Luther, he arrived at similar conclusions by the way of studying scripture with his knowledge as excellent humanist scholar.
Zwingli's Reformation was supported by the magistrate and population of Zürich (including the influential Abbess of the Monastery of our Lady) and lead to big changes also in civil and state matters in Zürich.
While the main direction of the Swiss Reformation was similar to the Lutheran Reformation, there are also some differences:
- While Luther wanted to remove those religious customs which contradicted Scripture, Zwingli supported only religious customs supported in Scripture. This is visible until today in several areas:
- church buildings: Lutheran churches retain "Catholic style" art, Reformed churches are sober and decorated only with Bible verses
- church structure: Lutheran churches have an episcopal structure, the structure of Reformed churches is presbyterian, synodal or congregational.
- liturgy: the Lutheran liturgy has some relations to the Catholic liturgy while the Reformed liturgy concentrates on Scripture and sermon.
- The Lord's Supper is interpreted as symbolical act of remembering by the Reformed churches with no real presence of Jesus Christ in wine and bread: this lead to the definitive break between Luther and Zwingli.
- Lutheran Reformation grew under the protection of German princes, while the Reformation in Switzerland began through convincing the republican magistrate and people of Zürich (and later of other town republics), who in turn adapted the civil laws according to Reformed tenets. Zwingli and, one generation later, John Calvin were not only religious but also political leaders, though neither held a political office.
A party of believers known as the Anabaptists arose in 1523 among followers of Zwingli, rejecting Infant Baptism or pedobaptism, supporting the idea of Believer's Baptism and supporting the concept of Separation of Church and State. Zwingli did not share their views.
Text to integrate from Schaff-Herzog Encyc of Religion:
Huldreich Zwingli was born at Wildhaus near Zürich, in the valley of the Toggenburg, on January 1, [1484]]; and died not far away at Cappel on October 11, 1531. His first name shows the variants Ulric, Ulrich, Ulricus, Huldricus, and Huldrych, while his last name, which appears in Latin as Zwinglius and in English as Zwingle, was originally Zwilling ("Twin"). His father, Ulrich Zwingli, was chief magistrate of the village; his father's brother, Bartholomew, was the village priest.
His mother's maiden came was Margaretha Meili, and her brother, Johannes (d. 1524), was abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Fischingen, while a near relative was abbot of Old St. John's, near Wildhaus. Zwingli was the third of eight sons. In 1487 his uncle Bartholomew moved to Wesen on the Walensee, where he was pastor and dean, and took his nephew into his house and sent him to the village school. Noticing the child's promise, he determined to educate him for the Church, but in agreement with the new ideas; so he sent him to the school of Gregory Buenzli in Klein Basel, in 1494, and in 1498 to that of Heinrich Woelfli (Lupulus) in Bern. Like Martin Luther, Zwingli was a born musician and fond of company. These qualities induced the Dominicans to invite him to live in their monastery, but when his father and uncle heard of this, they sent him to Vienna. For the next two years he studied there, and in 1502 he matriculated at Basel, took his B.A. degree there in 1504, and his M.A. in 1506, teaching meanwhile in the school of St. Martin's Church. In 1506 he became pastor at Glarus, where he remained for ten years.
Zwingli soon evinced his capacity as a preacher, denouncing the evils of the time, the chief of these, to his patriotic mind, being the hiring out of the Swiss to any one other than the pope as mercenaries, an occupation whichoften resulted in their moral ruin. Because some of his congregation were carrying on this traffic, his opposition made his position so uncomfortable that he was glad to accept a call to Einsiedeln, only a few miles away, and the chief place of pilgrimage for Switzerland, South Germany, and Alsace. There he met many prominent men, and clarified his thinking on the burning questions of the day. He had a candid mind, and his faith in traditional orthodoxy had already received several shocks. Thomas Wyttenbach was the first to question in his hearing the traditional base of the Church's teaching, in 1505-06, and later he came upon a service book containing the liturgy as used in Mollis, near Glarus, two hundred years before, and found that it expressly stated that the cup was to be administered to a babe after its baptism. When on a campaign in Italy as chaplain of the Glarus contingent in the papal army, he discovered that the Milan liturgy differed in many points from that used elsewhere.
Meditation on these points showed him that the Church had not taught the same truths from the beginning, nor observed the same practices. Like all other Humanists, he read Erasmus, and from him learned that the source of doctrine was the Bible and not the Church. When he could read the New Testament in the original in 1516, thanks to Erasmus, he drank truth from the fountain rather than through the troubled stream of tradition. When he met leading men at Einsiedeln, and found that the corruption of the Church in clergy and theology was a common theme, he ventured to discuss these matters in the pulpit. He also exalted the Bible above the Church as the guide into truth, and Jesus Christ above the Virgin Mary as the intercessor with the Father, acting independently of Luther, for he had never heard of him. Zwingli always claimed to be ignorant of what Luther wrote, and it was his constant boast that he had started the Reformation in Switzerland independently of Luther. It was a drawback to the general cause of the Reformation that the two did not fraternize. Because Zwingli would not accept Luther's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, Luther declared him to be of a different spirit; and Zwingli found much in Luther's teachings and proceedings to disapprove.
It is not likely that Zwingli got into any trouble by his doctrine at Einsiedeln; it was welcome and increased his reputation. So, when the position of leut-priest (preacher and pastor) in the Great Minster in Zürich fell vacant in the latter part of 1518, he was suggested for the place. Then certain facts came to light. Like the clergy about him, he believed himself absolved from the obligation of chastity because bound by the vow of celibacy. Lapses from sexual purity were too common to be considered objections in a priest, but the charge against him was then made that he had seduced a girl of good family, and this was considered a valid reason for rejecting his nomination. His reply to the charge extant. He denied seduction, but frankly admitted the charge of habitual incontinence, and did so in a jesting tone which shows that he believed his offense a trifling one. The chapter of the Great Minster agreed and elected him, and it was, therefore, as a confessedly libidinous man that he came to Zürich, but the Gospel had not yet entered his heart. In his parish was Anna Reinhard (b. 1484), a Zürich innkeeper's daughter, widow of the patrician Hans Meyer von Knonau, who had died in 1517. Her son, Gerold, was in the Great Minster Latin school when Zwingli came to Zürich and made the acquaintance of the mother. When their intimacy passed the bounds of propriety is unknown, but from the spring of 1522 Zwingli and Anna Reinhard were living together in what a "clerical marriage." Such concubinages, while not put on a level with marriage, were entered into without stigma, as it was assumed that without extraordinary supply of divine grace it was not possible for a priest to live in purity; and in fact, very few did, hence it was better for the morals of the community that they should have nominal wives. They were expected to be faithful to these women. When, however, the relations between Zwingli and Anna Reinhard were formed, many Protestant priests had married their mistresses or other women, and it was expected that Zwingli, head of the reformatory movement in Zürich, would show equal courage and set a good example. His failure to do so has been explained by his reluctance to face the monetary and social complications involved in a burgher marrying a patrician's widow; but at last he married her, on April 2, 1524. Between 1526 and 1530 four children were born to him, but no direct descendants of his are alive.
Zwingli held the leut-priestship from 1519 to 1522, and till the end of his life retained the preachership in the Great Minster. His fame spread through German Switzerland and southern Germany. His printed sermons appear long, discursive, and dull, though clear and simple in style; in the process of expansion, their liveliness has probably been removed. Having uncommon Biblical and patristic scholarship, a frank, independent, and progressive nature, and a desire to advance the interests of his country in religious, political, and social matters, he won general approval from the start, not only as a preacher but as a man. When a preacher of indulgences named Bernhardin Samson appeared in the canton (1519), Zwingli successfully opposed him-- a course which received the approval of the hierarchy, who recognized the abuses connected with the proclamation of indulgences (cf. the decree concerning indulgences passed by the Council of Trent Dec. 4, 1563). When the plague broke out in Zürich in 1520, Zwingli labored so assiduously among his people that, worn out, he fell sick himself and almost died. He used the position won by his devotion and independence to advance reform, but very cautiously and by attacking externals first. Thus he showed that fasting in Lent had no Scriptural support, a popular teaching; next, that tithes had only state and church laws to rest upon, but no Scripture, this teaching being heartily welcomed by those who paid taxes. He had his say in regard to the proper way to treat beggars, who were considered by the good people about him as aids in devotion and pathways to heaven, but whom he denounced and preferred to change into self-supporting members of the community. Next came simplification of the breviary and plans for a liturgy in the vernacular and a much altered service for the administration of the Lord's Supper. Proceeding step by step, with the assent of the Zürich magistracy, he nevertheless alarmed the local hierarchy, who appealed to their bishop at Constance. The bishop sent to Zürich an investigation committee which sat Apr. 7-9, 1522, but was powerless against the manifest satisfaction of
the citizens with Zwingli's position.
After three years of preaching, Zwingli judged the time ripe for a bolder step. Consequently he prepared 65 theses, not at all like the 95 theses of Luther, which were on the single topic of indulgences and were intended primarily for a university audience. Zwingli's theses were for a popular audience and covered all the points of the "Gospel," as he called it. In accordance with the Swiss plan that before radical measures were taken in a canton there was to be a
public debate as to their expediency, presided over by the burgomaster, a meeting was held in the town hall of Zürich on January 29, 1523. All the clergy were invited, and the frankest expression of opinion was courted. There was no real debate, only a dialogue between Zwingli and the vicar-general of Constance. The decision of the magistracy was that the doctrines Zwingli had preached were enjoined on all priests in the canton. This was the thin end of the wedge. Zwingli kept applying the "Gospel" to practical matters and began preparations for a second discussion, which was held Oct. 26-28, 1523. This was even less of a debate between the Old and the Reform Church parties, since it was almost entirely in the hands of the latter. Of special interest is the part which Zwingli's radical followers played. They accepted his whole program, but favoured the immediate application of its practical teaching, and wished Zwingli to accept some of its logical consequences-- this was hostile to his cautious nature. The decisions of the magistracy after this discussion were radical enough to suit any but a radical, for they removed the images and pictures out of the churches, made the vernacular the language of the religious services, and, more startlingly, stripped the mass of all its incrustations through the centuries and brought it back, as far as possible, to its basics. A third disputation was held Jan. 19-20, 1524, but this was a last desperate attempt of the Old Church party to stem the tide of change. By the end of 1524 church life in Zürich was quite different in many of its outward manifestations from that in any other Swiss city. The convents for men and women had been abolished, and music had been silenced in the churches, a strange initiative for one so fond of music as Zwingli, and defensible only on his theory that the Reformed Church should have no practice which recalled the Old Church as music did. The mass alone stood, and that was so wrapped up with the life of the people that he hesitated to destroy it before the people were fully prepared to accept a substitute. At last it was decreed that on Thursday of Holy Week, Apr. 13, 1525, in the Great Minster the Lord's Supper would be for the first time observed according to the liturgy Zwingli had composed. On that eventful day men and women sat on opposite sides of the table which extended down the middle aisle, and were served with bread upon wooden platters and wine out of wooden beakers. The contrast to the former custom was shocking to many, yet the new way was accepted. With this radical break with the past the Reformation in Zürich may be said to have been completed.
No sooner had the Reformation been established than internal troubles nearly disrupted the State. First came the peasants with their undoubted grievances, although they did not give the trouble they made in Germany, both because their demands were less radical, and because the authorities, on the advice of Zwingli, were more conciliatory. But the other disturbing element, the detested, the dreaded, the misunderstood and persecuted Anabaptists, were the real trial. They did not originate in Zürich, but the earliest members of the party in Zürich were members of Zwingli's congregation. He had taught them to ask Scripture proof for doctrines and practices seeking church acceptance, and they accordingly asked him to give such proof for infant baptism. Because he could not, he was at first inclined to grant that logically the practice had no Scriptural support; but when they pressed him to declare himself plainly, they only stirred his anger by so doing. He fell back upon the assumptions of the
Old Church, and for a man so radical on all other points he showed a singular reluctance to accept the consistent teaching of his Anabaptist friends.
[It was only when it became manifest to him that rejection of infant baptism involved an effort to establish churches of the regenerates, and to effect
the unchurching of all who could not make a public confession of an experience of grace and the abolition of secular authority in religious matters, that
Zwingli felt compelled to oppose it with all his might. A. H. N.] He sought to silence them by sermon and treatise, and because they would not keep
silence he became their persecutor. This attitude can be explained only by his acceptance of the propriety of suppressing what is deemed to be erroneous, even at the expense of life, on the claim that it is better that a few should die for their erroneous faith than that they should be allowed to live and propagate their errors. This doctrine was accepted by Protestants and by Roman and Greek Catholics in the sixteenth century, and the first alone have repudiated it. (For the experiences of the Swiss Anabaptists see ANABAPTISTS.)1. Early Life and Education
2. Initial Doubts
3. Leut-priestship at Zürich and Marriage
Increasing Alienation from the Roman Church
5. The Final Rupture
6. Peasant and Anabaptist Disturbances