Wikipedia: History of Huldreich Zwingli

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Text to integrate from Schaff-Herzog Encyc of Religion:

1. Early Life and Education.

Huldreich Zwingli, the
Reformer of German Switzerland as preacher of
Evangelical truth, contemporary with, but independent
of, Martin Luther, was born at Wildhaus (42 m. e.
by s. of Zurich), in the valley of the Toggenburg,
Jan. 1, 1484; and died at Cappel (10 m. s. of Zurich)
Oct. 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 the
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 (about
25 m. e. by w. of Zurich), while a near relative,
probably an uncle, was abbot of Old St. John's, near
Wildhaus. Zwingli was the third of his parents'
eight sons. In 1487 his uncle Bartholomew moved
to Wesen (some 10 m. s. of Wildhaus) on the
Walensee, where he was pastor and dean, and then, or a
little later, he took his nephew into his house and
sent him to the village school. Being a friend of
the New Learning, and noticing the promise of the
child, he determined to educate him for the Church,
but in agreement with the new ideas; accordingly 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. There the lad
particularly distinguished himself, and made many friends,
as he, like Luther, 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 took him
out of the city, lest he should become a monk, and
sent him to Vienna. For the next two yearn he
studied there (1500-02), 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.

2. Initial Doubts at Einsiedeln of Roman Catholicism.

Being a scholar, Zwingli applied himself to his
books and laid deep and wide foundations. He also
evinced his capacity as a preacher, and with flaming
zeal denounced the evils of the time, the chief of
these, to his patriotic mind, being the hiring out of
the Swiss to any one else than the pope to fight as
mercenaries, an occupation which, in numerous
cases, resulted in their moral ruin. Because some
of the leading persons in his congregation
were carrying on this traffic, his
opposition awoke their animosity and
made his position so uncomfortable
that he was glad to accept a call to be
preacher at Einsiedeln, only a few
miles from Glarus, and the chief place
of pilgrimage for Switzerland, South Germany, and
Alsace. There he met with great numbers of
people, including many prominent men, and thus he
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 (q.v.) was the first
one to question in his hearing the traditional base of
the Church's teaching, in 1505-06, and a little 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 enjoined that
the cup was to be administered to a babe after its
baptism. Again, 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 really not taught absolutely the same truths
from the beginning, nor had observed everywhere
the same practises. Like all other Humanists, he
read Erasmus, and from him learned that the source
of doctrine was the Bible and not the Church.
When, therefore, he could read the New Testament
in the original in 1516, thanks to Erasmus, he drank
truth from the fountain rather than through the
more or less troubled stream of tradition. Then,
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, and in so doing he acted
independently of Luther, for, as a matter of fact, he
had not heard of him. Zwingli always pretended 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 these two Reformers 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 that he strongly
disapproved.

3. Leut-priestship at Zurich and Marriage.

It is not likely that Zwingli was brought into any
trouble by his doctrine at Einsiedeln; rather it was
welcome and increased his reputation. So, when
the position of leut-priest (preacher and pastor) in
the Great Minster in Zurich fell vacant in the latter
part of 1518, he was suggested for the place. Then
was brought to light a fact which has ever since
been a humiliation to his friends and a source of
triumph to his foes. 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. He was written to on the subject and his
reply is extant. He denied the charge of seduction,
but frankly admitted the charge of habitual
incontinence, and he does it in a jesting tone which shows
that he had no conception that his offense was any
other than a trifling one. The chapter of the Great
Minster agreed to this view and elected him, and
it was, therefore, as a confessedly libidinous man
that he came to Zurich, but only the pure in heart
can see God; the Gospel had not yet entered his
heart. It so happened that in his parish was a
beautiful widow, Anna Reinhard (b. 1484), a Zurich
innkeeper's daughter, who had married (1504) Hans
Meyer von Knonau, scion of a Zurich patrician
family, who had died in 1517. Her son, Gerold, was in
the Great Minster Latin school when Zwingli came
to Zurich and made the acquaintance of the mother.
When their intimacy passed the bounds of propriety
is unknown, but certain it is that from the spring of
1522 Zwingli and Anna Reinhard were living together
in what was euphemistically called 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 since, 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, and probably did, live faithful to
these women, and the women to them. When,
however, the relations between Zwingli and Anna Rein-
hard were formed, many Protestant priests had
married their mistresses or other women, and it
was expected that Zwingli, who was the head of the
reformatory movement in Zurich, would show equal
courage and set a good example. Why he did not
has been explained on the ground of 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 Apr. 2, 1524.
Between 1526 and 1530 four children were born to
him, but there are no direct descendants of his now
living.

Increasing Alienation from the Roman Church.

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
all German Switzerland and southern
Germany. His sermons as printed are
long, discursive, and dull, though clear
and simple in style, but, in the process
of the expansion they have
undergone, all their liveliness has probably
been removed. Having uncommon
Biblical and patristic scholarship, a frank,
candid, independent, and progressive nature, and a
great 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, for the fathers of Trent recognized that
there were abuses connected with the proclamation
of indulgences (cf. the decree concerning indulgences
passed by the Council of Trent Dec. 4, 1563; given
in Schaff, Creeds, ii. 205-206). When the plague
broke out in Zurich in 1520, Zwingli labored so
assiduously among his people that, worn out, he fell sick
himself and looked into the eyes of death. 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, which
teaching was eagerly taken up by those who wanted to
have good meals all the year round; 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 and groaned under them.
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 as nuisances and
would have changed into self-supporting members
of the community, and he showed how this might
be done. 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 Zurich magistracy, he yet alarmed the local
hierarchy, who appealed to Constance, where their
bishop lived, and the bishop sent to Zurich an in
investigation committee which sat Apr. 7-9, 1522, but
availed nothing against the manifest satisfaction of
the citizens with the positions Zwingli had taken.
It was evident that the wave of reform had passed
from Germany into Switzerland.

5. The Final Rupture.

After three years of preaching, Zwingli judged
that the time was ripe for a bolder step.
Consequently he prepared sixty-five theses, not at all like
the ninety-five theses of Luther, which were on the
single topic of indulgences and were intended
primarily for a university audience, while 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 Zurich on Jan. 29, 1523. All the clergy were
invited, and the frankest expression of opinion was
courted. As a matter of fact, there was
no real debate, but 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
satisfactory so far, but only as an entering wedge.
Zwingli kept on applying the "Gospel" to practical
matters and began preparations for a second
discussion, which was held Oct. 26-28, 1523, this being still
less 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 the radicals among the followers of Zwingli
played. They accepted his whole program, but
they were for immediate application of its practical
teaching, and wished Zwingli to accept some of its
logical consequences-- both of which courses were
hostile to his cautious nature. The decisions of the
magistracy after this discussion were, however,
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, still more startlingly, stripped the
mass of all its incrustations through the centuries
and brought it back, as far as possible, to its first
institution. 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
which Zwingli had set in motion. By the end of
1524 church life in Zurich 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 the music had been
silenced in the churches, a strange proceeding for
one so fond of music as Zwingli, and defensible only
on his theory that the Reformed Church should
have no practise 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 the decree
went forth 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 Zurich may be said to
have been completed.

6. Peasant and Anabaptist Disturbances.

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 Zurich, but the earliest
members of the party in Zurich were
members of Zwingli's congregation. He had taught them
to ask Scripture proof for doctrines and practises
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 practise 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.)

7. The Conference at Baden

The years of Zwingli's life from 1524 to 1529 were
extremely busy, and were passed almost entirely in
Zurich. One occasion for a visit outside of it was
very pressing. At Baden, a famous watering-place,
only twelve miles northwest of Zurich, there was a
disputation between the Old Church representatives
and the Zwingli party from May 21 to June 8, 1526
(See BADEN [IM AARGAU], CONFERENCE OF). It
was thought to be dangerous for Zwingli to go
thither because the Old Church party
meditated his death. But though not
present in person, Zwingli had the
closest connection with those from
Zurich who spoke for him, and gave
them daily instruction. The debates were probably
as fair as such debates can be, but things were
exactly reversed from what they were in the Zurich
debates, for the speakers and the audience were
overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Of course each
side claimed the victory. In 1528 Zwingli was in
Bern and played the most prominent part in the
formal introduction, through magisterial action, of
the Reformation into that city.

8. Eucharistic Conference with Luther at Marburg.

To this period of Zwingli's life also belongs the
debate with Luther over the Lord's Supper, one of
the great misfortunes the consequences of which
are felt to-day. As Luther said at Marburg, he and
Zwingli were not of the same spirit. Zwingli taught
that the sacraments were signs and symbols of
holy things, but in themselves had no power
to cleanse, so that in the Lord's Supper there
is a bringing back to memory of the work of
grace done by Jesus Christ, who lives before the
believer, though there is no participation of grace
through the sacrament itself. He had a clear mind
upon this point, and the mystical
view in any of its phases had no
attractions for him. Consequently, the
interchange of reading material
between himself and Luther
accomplished nothing, and only angered
Luther. Thus baptism and the Eucharist,
which were intended by Christ to be unifying
practises, produced by their varied interpretation a
breach between the Old Church and Protestants and
between parties among the Protestants. Among the
leaders of the Protestants was Philip the
Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse (see PHILIP OF HESSE),
who desired to see unity among Protestants upon
the Eucharist, and to this end arranged a meeting
in his castle at Marburg between Zwingli and
Luther (see MARBURG, CONFERENCE OF), which had
one good result. Luther discovered that he and
Zwingli had much in common. Although the
territory through which Zwingli had to pass on his
way to Marburg was, with the exception of a
few miles, friendly to Protestants, yet so
panic-stricken
were Zwingli and all his friends at the
possibility of encountering members of the Old
Church on their own ground that the Reformer
considered himself to be doing a bold thing in obeying
the summons of the landgrave. He left Zurich by
stealth, without permission of the government and
with a false statement to his wife as to his
destination, but nothing happened to him. As it was
thought unwise to pit him directly against Luther,
he was introduced to Melanchthon, but nevertheless
the debate was between the German and the
Swiss chief reformers. Both sides boasted of
victory, and the usual interchange of disgraceful
epithets followed the debate which the landgrave hoped
would seal their union.

9. Unsuccessful Plans against the Hapsburgs and the Pope.

After his return to Zurich Zwingli prosecuted more
vigorously those political schemes which were
intended to result in a union of all Protestants, and
also of states which were not Protestant, against the
house of Hapsburg and the pope, in the interest of
religious liberty. The time Zwingli gave to these
negotiations must have been considerable, for he
sought to unite in this "Christian Burgher Rights,"
as he called his league, bodies as widely scattered
as France and the Republic of Venice. What might
have come of this scheme if his life had been longer
continued it is, of course, impossible to say, but in
1530 he saw the making of the Schmalkald League,
which shut off Lutheran membership in the
Christian Burgher Rights, and the final refusal of France
and Venice to enter. Inside of
Switzerland Zwingli's schemes for
religious liberty were equally unsuccessful,
since the Five Forest Cantons, i.e.,
the cantons of Uri, Schwyz,
Unterwalden, Luzern, and Zug, all
adjoining Zurich, refused to allow the
preaching of the Reformed faith within
their borders. War actually broke out;
but at Kappel, ten miles south of Zurich, where the
opposing armies were about to come to blows,
a hasty and ill-considered peace was patched
up. The Forest Cantons refused to ratify the
action of their representatives, and so the bill for the
war was left unpaid by them, and the gospel
preachers were still excluded from their territories. Zwingli
saw clearly that such a peace was transitory, but
though he wished that the cantons might be forced
to keep the promises they had made, he did not
desire to have them forced by the cruel measures which
the Protestant cantons adopted, namely, by
preventing the Forest Cantons from buying necessary
things, especially salt, by blocking their entrance
into the lower levels where alone these things could
be obtained.

10. Diet of Augsburg and Work in Zurich.

On June 30, 1530, the famous Diet of Augsburg
convened. To it Zwingli sent a brief confession of
faith and tried, probably unsuccessfully, to get it
into the emperor's hands. It was a personal
confession, but is one of the most interesting documents
of the Reformation. In it he thus expresses himself
respecting the Eucharist: "I believe that in the
holy Eucharist-- i.e., the supper of thanksgiving--
the true body of Christ is present by
the contemplation of faith; i.e., that
they who thank the Lord for the
kindness conferred on us in his Son
acknowledge that he assumed true flesh, in it
truly suffered, truly washed away our
sins in his own blood; and thus everything done by
Christ becomes present to them by the contemplation
of faith. But that the body of Christ in essence
and really-- i.e., the natural body itself-- is either
present in the supper or masticated with our mouth
or teeth, as the papists and some who long for the
flesh-pots of Egypt assert, we not only deny, but
firmly maintain is an error opposed to God's Word."
Zwingli played a prominent part in Protestantism
and made Zurich a prominent place. His
educational work was important. He was a born teacher,
and when at Glarus had pupils, some of whose
letters have been preserved and show how well he had
taught them. His little book which was his present
to his stepson reveals the wise pedagogue, and so, as
soon as his other engagements permitted, he
accepted the post of rector of the Carolinum, the
school of the Great Minster in Zurich (1525), and
did much to improve the curriculum, besides
teaching there in the religious department. But not
education and instruction alone claimed his attention.
He was the great man of Zurich, and was consulted
on every topic by everybody from the chief
magistrate to the lowliest citizen. His correspondence
often compelled him to toil late into the night after
the crowded days, and there came from his pen a
stream of treatises, in Latin when he sought the
widest public, or in German when he had his own
nation more in view. These treatises were
sometimes hastily written and are often of little present
interest, but moat of them are still worthy of reading.
They are polemical, as those in exchange with
Luther's on the Eucharist; expository of his
position on theology in general or upon particular
points; practical, giving guidance to the preachers
about him how to preach the Gospel; or patriotic,
noble utterances against war and the mercenary
service. These writings show the broad-mindedness
of Zwingli, and give ground for the claim that if he
were living to-day he would be in all respects a
modern man.

11. Civil War, and Death of Zwingli.

But this life of strenuous endeavor in so many
directions was drawing to its close, not through the
weakening of its bodily powers, not because under
a strain the brain had given way, but because the
fratricidal strife which had been temporarily avoided
broke out again. On May 15, 1531,
the cantons which had accepted the
Reformation assembled, and learning
that the Forest Cantons, which were
strongly Roman Catholic, had flatly
refused to keep the treaty which they
had signed through their representatives the year
before, resolved to bring them to terms by
preventing them from crossing their borders, as they
would have to do if they would purchase wheat, salt,
iron, steel, and other necessary things. It was a
cruel measure, as already said, and Zurich resisted it,
but was outvoted. As soon as this edict came to
execution, it brought the Forest Cantons to
warlike preparation, and since Zurich lay directly in
their path as they descended from the mountains,
they attacked it first. On Oct. 9, 1531, their troops
crossed the Zurich border, which was only twelve
miles from the city, and the news reached there
that evening. Strangely enough, there seems to
have been no apprehension that war was so near,
and, consequently, there was no adequate preparation
for it. It was a mob rather than a little army
of the famous Swiss soldiers which rushed out of
the city. Their objective was Kappel, and there
they were joined the next day, Wednesday, Oct. 11,
1531, by the main army. With it was Zwingli,
dressed in armor, it is true, though he was a
noncombatant, but he staid in the rear of the battle, and
was there because he was the chief pastor of Zurich.
It was a foregone conclusion that Zurich would be
overthrown. She had only 2,700 men against 8,000
and they were very badly led. Overwhelmed, it
took only a short time to be almost annihilated,
and the battle of Kappel was a repetition of Flodden
Field (Sept. 9, 1513). Five hundred Zurichers were
slain, among them representatives of every
prominent family in the city. But the greatest of them
was Zwingli. Wounded first by a spear, and then
struck on the head by a stone, he was put out of his
misery by a sword thrust. He lay unrecognized for
awhile, but when it became known that the corpse
was that of Zwingli, it was treated with every
indignity because he was held to be the author of the
regulations which had brought on the war, which
was not true, and also as the leader of the
Reformation, which was true. The body was given over to
the hangman, who quartered it as if it had been that
of a traitor, and then burned it, as if that of a
heretic. The war ended in a treaty which was, of
course, favorable to the Forest Cantons, though not
so harsh as might have been expected. But all
Zwingli's plans for a league of princes, cantons, and
cities against pope and emperor, and all his hopes
of providing the Old Church cantons with Reformed
Church missionaries were forever ended. Much
that he stood for in church practise and in theology
did not long outlive him. Music was restored to the
churches (1598) and his eucharistic views were
superseded among the Reformed by those of Calvin.
Yet, as he becomes better known, his
clear-headedness, his independence, and his progressiveness will
gain him increasing fame, and men will put him
beside Luther as a leader of the Protestant host.

	Revision 5 . . December 20, 2001 5:58 am by Alan Millar [old encyc text]
	Revision 4 . . (edit) September 5, 2001 6:08 am by (logged).230.131.xxx