8. Expansion and Conflict
EIGHT EXPANSION AND CONFLICT
From his arrival in 1519 until the introduction of the Reformation with the Lord’s Supper at Easter 1525, Zwingli’s story was largely about his relationship with the city of Zurich. The abolition of the mass and the creation of a new order in 1525 was not an endpoint in that story, but these events mark a transition to what would prove to be the remaining six years of his life, during which time his reforming ideas would spread across the Confederation, far into the Empire and west to France. Older narratives of the Reformation tend to pigeon-hole Zwingli as an urban reformer, the creator of a godly city-state.1 John Calvin in Geneva is generally credited with establishing a more international reach. By 1525, however, the reforms arising out of Zurich were spreading through both urban and rural territories, where they were by no means uniformly interpreted. Zwingli was not the identifiable leader of a movement, as Luther was; but he was the principal inspiration for a form of Christianity that was attracting adherents from diverse social groups.
The rapidly changing circumstances from 1525, as the Reformation moved from being focused on Zurich to becoming a Swiss and German event, were reflected in Zwingli’s life. No longer concentrated alone on achieving internal reforms through the support of the magistrates, Zwingli’s attention shifted to a broader canvas. The adoption of the Reformation in Zurich raised questions about the health of the Confederation. What did it mean to have a powerful Confederate depart from the Catholic Church and descend into heresy? What would religious strife mean for this loose body of states?
The Catholic states – principally the Five States of Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne and Zug – together with the church hierarchy and their Austrian allies, were determined to roll back the assault on the Roman Church. Zurich had to be punished. The unknown factor was the cities of Bern and Basel, which remained Catholic but had strong evangelical movements. Neither city seemed inclined to plunge the Confederation into a religious war. For his part, Zwingli was certain that Reformation was God’s will for the Swiss as an elect people, and convinced that exposure to the gospel would win over the common folk. He was increasingly persuaded, however, that Catholic rulers would have to be overcome if the Word of God was to be preached to the people, and his own thinking was becoming increasingly martial.
Having seen his thought incised in the purged churches of Zurich, performed in the new liturgies by which the sacraments were administered, and printed in his Commentary on True and False Religion, Zwingli still had to attend to a bewildering range of challenges. The creation of a new Church required the construction of institutions, the overcoming of resistance, and the building of alliances. Zwingli experienced the period from 1525 until the first war in 1529 not as the linear story that the historian seeks out, but as a series of interlocking and coterminous events and developments that he could neither dictate nor control.
For the remaining six years of his life, Zwingli sought to balance the creation of a new order of society with unrelenting conflict with Anabaptists, Catholics and Lutherans, all within the context of efforts to create a broader Protestant alliance that would both defend the Reformation and enable its aggressive expansion. In the midst of this maelstrom, he switched from the offensive to the defensive with head-spinning rapidity. He churned out a constant flow of letters and tracts as he communicated beyond the city walls; he was deeply involved in the politics of Zurich through his connections with sympathetic magistrates; and he preached several times a week and led the efforts to interpret and translate scripture, leading to the crowning achievement of his Reformation, the Zurich Bible of 1531.
FONT OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE
As his expanding and extensive library evidenced, Zwingli continued his lifelong passion for reading and study. Books were the currency of his life.2 As preacher at the Grossmünster, he was well remunerated and spent a good deal of money on acquiring new works and having them bound. Books also came as gifts or in exchange. By the end of his life, Zwingli had about 400 books, and at his death these were transferred to the library of the Grossmünster. The sum raised went towards care for his children.
Not only was he involved in the daily work of the Prophezei, but Zwingli devoured and annotated works of history, philosophy, literature and science. His collection of books, which has survived, bears witness to endless hours of study, which, as Myconius tells us, was often late into the night. His love of learning was channelled into his efforts to reform schools and create a humanist world of study for both Church and community. Erasmus was ever before him as his model, and throughout the torrid events from 1525 until the end of his life, reading was a vital and cherished part of his life.
As we have seen in his frequent evocations of the Swiss past, Zwingli was a lover of history. It was not merely nostalgia, but a conviction that the great historians of antiquity had much to teach about the contemporary world. Often in his letters he encouraged his readers to study the Greek and Roman historians, and he had a particular love of Flavius Josephus (37–100 ce). Zwingli had been reading the Roman-Jewish historian since his days in Glarus, when he acquired a set of his writings. He wrote to an unidentified person:
I remind you of Josephus because you will find most of what he has produced in the Holy Scriptures, with the exception of the Jewish War: you should read him first and foremost, for he is the writer who demonstrates that we should never shun God’s mercy and should never invoke his wrath.3
Greek literature, he continued, was not to be advised at this point,
considering your age and your health, although I used to read the Greek writers in my spare time – with no other literature do I feel so comfortable – but I will make a note of what may be useful and send it to you later.
Every aspect of Zwingli’s work was informed by study, whether alone or with his circle of friends. History was alive and spoke to the present: ‘speaking the truth’. The great societies of the past recorded their histories, enabling them to flourish and prosper. That memory was imperative for the Swiss. Reformation was recovery of the past, but as accurately and authentically as possible. In a summary of Josephus, Zwingli offered the moral obligation of the past for the present: ‘what historians should make their chief aim is to be accurate and hold everything else of less importance than speaking the truth to those who must rely upon them in matters of which they themselves have no knowledge’.4 The educated person who served politics and the community was a seer of the truth, an interpreter of history.
To be a prophet of the Word was to be a prophet of the wisdom of the past. Zwingli’s extensive library of works mapped an expansive mental and spiritual world that formed the heart of his life. In many respects, there was no separation of library from household, Church and Council chambers. For Zwingli, books and pulpit were means by which God spoke to humanity.
CAPTAINS AND PROPHETS
As we saw above, in the spring of 1524 Zwingli had begun to move away from Erasmian pacifism towards an increasingly aggressive stance vis-à-vis the hostile Confederates and their allies in Austria and the Empire. His resolve only deepened with the introduction of the Reformation in 1525, which isolated and endangered Zurich. Zwingli had begun to understand the wider international ramifications of the reform movement in terms of international politics. He was part of an epistolary network that spread through southern German cities such as Augsburg, Nuremberg and, crucially, Strasbourg. He was fed news of events in the Empire, including the alliances among princes and cities sympathetic to the Reformation. In Basel, his primary source was his friend Oecolampadius, who was closely connected to colleagues in his native Germany.
Looking to the Empire, Zwingli revived deep hostility towards the Habsburgs, viewing Emperor Charles V and his brother Archduke Ferdinand as the principal threat to reformation. The pope was Antichrist, but Zwingli did not share Luther’s fixation on the papal abomination. In turn, growing sympathy for Swiss theology in the southern German cities, as propagated by preachers, book traders and influential laity, brought Zwingli more influence and more contacts. Sympathetic audiences were not limited to the towns. By 1525, the Zurich reformer was learning of the pro-evangelical princes in the Empire, principally the young Landgrave Philipp of Hesse. Such connections opened up the possibility of a religious alliance that extended beyond the Rhine into the German lands. Wolfgang Capito and Martin Bucer in Strasbourg were vital links, enabling Zwingli to remain attuned to the rapidly changing circumstances. Strasbourg was a centre of evangelical sympathies in the Rhineland.5 In August 1526, Zwingli was informed by Capito of an alliance formed by Philipp of Hesse, the elector of Saxony and the imperial cities to defend the evangelical faith against the attempts by Catholics to enforce the 1521 Edict of Worms, which condemned Luther and banned his teaching.6
Philipp’s interest in Zwingli seems to have been piqued in the summer of 1526. The wildcard was Duke Ulrich of Württemberg (1487–1550), who had been deposed in 1519 and had engaged in a long campaign for his restoration, spending some time in exile in the Swiss Confederation.7 In 1523, he adopted the evangelical faith, and two years later joined with peasants in their insurrection. Although Zurich was officially neutral, troops from the city travelled north to fight for Duke Ulrich. Zwingli was sympathetic to Ulrich’s cause, although he had not supported his city’s dispatch of military support. The duke’s efforts failed and further exile followed; but by 1526, Philipp of Hesse had taken up his cause, and Württemberg was a key factor in his reaching out for Swiss support.
Possible alliances were all the more attractive for Zwingli as the situation in the Confederation deteriorated. Following the Reformation in Zurich, the Catholic Five States wanted nothing to do with the city on any diplomatic level. The gravest danger for the city lay less in the threat of attack than in its loss of influence within the Confederation.
Representatives from Zurich were not permitted at the Swiss Diet, and additionally the city risked being cut off from involvement with the eastern lands and Mandated Territories, where the evangelical faith was spreading thanks to preachers sent out by Zurich.8 Zurich’s room for manoeuvre was provided by its role in the political structures of the Confederation, but its support for heresy threatened its inclusion on the list of players.
Zwingli began to set down possible ways forward, and his ‘Plan for a Campaign’ (‘Plan zu einem Feldzug’) appeared at the end of 1525 or early 1526.9 His plans were less a coherent strategy than a somewhat loosely conceived collection of observations on the implications of the Reformation in Zurich.10 The text provides our first insight into Zwingli’s association of religion, diplomatic relations and war (although – mindful of his extremely controversial position – he did not put his name to the work). ‘The pious state of Zurich,’ it declared, ‘prefers to lose city, possessions, land, equipment, bodies and lives rather than depart from what it knows to be the truth.’ Zwingli advocated an anti-Habsburg alliance and understood that Bern, the most powerful of the Swiss Confederates, was crucial to Zurich’s survival. He sought a diplomatic strategy to isolate the Catholic states and break their resistance, arguing that Zurich’s opponents could only attack if they were supported by the Austrians or Habsburgs, which was unlikely. Following the lead of Philipp of Hesse and Ulrich of Württemberg, Zwingli increasingly looked to France for aid, despite Francis I’s defeat at Pavia in 1525 at the hands of Charles V. The Zurich reformer had dedicated his Commentary on True and False Religion to the French king, and he now believed that France, with its hostility to the Habsburgs, was needed to divert Charles V from Swiss affairs. Zwingli hoped that Bern and Basel, although still Catholic, would support Zurich if it came to war. His optimism proved a misstep, as both cities soon made it clear that they would not intervene militarily. Bern’s primary interest was peace.
Zwingli’s joint role as preacher and military campaigner appeared in his enumeration of their respective duties: preachers should declare the gospel and pray for its propagation; military leaders were to be courageous, decisive and cannily grasp how victory depends on good timing.11 Zwingli, who had been trained in the use of arms in his youth, had a clear sense of what virtues made a leader in battle. To be prepared, the state must select the best military commanders and equip its soldiers with the most modern weapons. A student of ancient Roman treatises, he revealed himself remarkably well informed on military tactics, and insisted that attack was the best form of defence. Conflict to protect the faith might be necessary, but must not be sought recklessly. The most arresting conclusion we can draw from his text is that Zwingli was ready to sacrifice the Confederation for the sake of true religion.
‘THIS HAS NEVER BEEN FULFILLED’
As Christianity had long experienced, persecution and martyrdom could be the lifeblood of the Church. After their defeat at the disputations in Zurich during 1525, the Anabaptists in Zurich were in dire straits, with most of the leading figures in prison. The more resilient refused to recant, while others took a lower road, seeking to avoid dank prisons either by retracting their words or, as would prove to have been the case in many instances, by dissembling. But the expulsion, criminalizing and persecution of the Anabaptists would not diminish their challenge to Zurich’s godly community, and groups would grow up in rural areas and across the Confederation – from Appenzell and St Gallen in the east to Bern in the west.12 Anabaptism was not a monolithic movement, for it demonstrated a spectrum of convictions about the Church, magistrates and protests in the rural communities. Its members were at one, however, in their rejection of Zwingli’s defence of infant baptism as a sign of entry into the covenant.
Swiss Anabaptists largely held to a separatist ideal of the Christian community, which they understood as a gathering of the faithful, committed to an unblemished life of faith away from the political and social compromises of Zwingli’s covenant. In turn, Zwingli detested their rejection of God’s Church in the world, and denigrated them on every count. The radicals neglected the poor, he noted, and did not live according to the example of the Apostles in Jerusalem.13 They were prone to slanderous gossip and ‘are found to do all things without counsel for the sake of their belly and of idleness’.14 To his interlocutors, Zwingli defended his own Christian virtue, insisting: ‘I myself pray anxiously about the Anabaptists, and often I plead before the Council for them, and our prayers have accomplished this.’15
The situation was all the more galling – and personal for Zwingli – since he was repeatedly accused by Catholics of being the father of Anabaptism. At the same time, the Anabaptists held up before him what they saw as his failings. Felix Manz’s witness before the Zurich Council on 17 January 1525 had been devastating, for in attacking his interpretation of scripture, he hit Zwingli where it hurt:
Your shepherds [the Zurich clergy] . . . have always negotiated with me on the following basis, namely that one should let scripture speak and that we should never add to it nor delete anything from it. This has never been fulfilled. They have certainly presented their opinion, but they have not based it on passages of scripture. We have not been able to come to speak, and scripture could not be heard. In addition, if the clergy thinks that someone wants to say something about the truth, they choke the speech in his throat and attack him, demanding scriptural citations, which they themselves should have presented to support the truth. This is what they do; God knows this well.16
His beloved Anna was likely to have been a model of female piety for Zwingli: wife and mother, keeping the holy household and raising the children in the faith. As such, his expectations of Christian domesticity were of his age. On the role of women, too, however, the Anabaptists challenged Zwingli’s vision.17 Anabaptists were hardly pro-feminist, but women often engaged in teaching and pastoral care, for which they risked their lives. One of the most prominent was Margret Hottinger, who referred to an advocate of infant baptism as ‘a child of the devil’18 and who was imprisoned in Zurich in November 1525 for almost six months.19 Although she never recanted, Hottinger escaped death and left Zurich for St Gallen in 1526, where she earned grudging respect from Reformed chronicler Johannes Kessler:
There arose wild and arrogant error through the women of the Anabaptists, particularly one young woman from Zollikon in the land of Zurich named Margret Hottinger . . . who lived a disciplined way of life, so that she was deeply loved and respected by the Anabaptists.20
In late autumn 1525, Balthasar Hubmaier, now the leading Anabaptist theologian, turned up in Zurich. Hubmaier had been baptized in Waldshut at Easter 1525 by Wilhelm Reublin and had founded an Anabaptist community in the city.21 Hubmaier left Waldshut in early December, the day before the city surrendered to the Austrians, who were the town’s overlords, after an insurrection and brief independence. With the roads to Basel blocked, he arrived in Zurich and lodged with the Anabaptist widow Anna Widerker.
Hubmaier had reason to make for Zurich: as we have seen, he was once a friend of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, and he had tried to maintain cordial relations with them. He did not advocate the perfectionist separate Church, maintaining – like Zwingli – a more negative assessment of human abilities.22 He held that the Spirit does not regenerate the faithful to lives of total moral rectitude, and that the Church therefore remains full of sinners in need of repeated reconciliation. For Hubmaier, temporal authority was justified in using legitimate force to defend the faith, while individual Christians had no right of resistance to God’s appointed rulers.23
But too much baptismal water had flowed over the font since those earlier times, and Hubmaier’s freedom in Zurich was short lived. Quickly arrested by officials, he was called upon to recant, which he did following a private disputation. The drama, however, was not over. At the end of December, Hubmaier publicly recanted his recantation, and he did so from the pulpit of the Grossmünster, Zwingli’s church.24 He had been supposed to read a scripted statement of repentance in front of the congregation, but the staged event went badly wrong. Seized by Zurich officials, he was imprisoned in the Wellenberg, the city prison in a tower in the middle of the River Limmat, and tortured. During his time in prison, Hubmaier requested a debate with Zwingli on baptism. Remarkably, his request was granted.25 In their exchange, he reminded the reformer of his earlier remarks that infant baptism was not scriptural, poignantly commenting: ‘If you do not [demonstrate infant baptism from scripture], the pastor will complain that you have used against him a sword.’26 Zwingli emphatically countered that Hubmaier had misheard him and that he had never spoken thus. The prisoner was finally released in April 1526, having recanted one more time. Taking no chances, the Zurich magistrates had Hubmaier expelled from their lands.27 Having travelled to Moravia, he was arrested by the Austrian authorities and burnt at the stake in Vienna in March 1528. His wife, Elsbeth, was drowned in the Danube three days later.
Polemic and persecution operated within concentric circles: just as Zwingli and Zurich were condemned by the Catholics, so they denounced the Anabaptists, as Zwingli adopted the medieval legacy of extirpating heretics from the community through banishment and, now, death.28 The Anabaptists were not simply heretics, but were regarded by the magistrates as seditious, deserving of capital punishment. On 7 March 1526, the Council declared that denial of infant baptism was punishable by drowning.29 The same day, 18 women and men, including Konrad Grebel, Felix Manz and Margret Hottinger, were sentenced to indefinite imprisonment on bread and water and with beds of straw until recantation or death, with the threat that any who rebaptized would be drowned ‘without mercy’.30 The persecuted had become the persecutors, and Zwingli fully supported death for the Anabaptists. ‘Thus patience has endured enough and finally erupted,’ he wrote to Vadian, adding ominously, ‘whoever will be baptized hereafter will be submerged permanently’.31
Punitive decrees did not suppress the movement. In the face of their oppression, the Anabaptists took up itinerant ministry, and those who fled, including Konrad Grebel, played a key role in spreading Anabaptist ideals and in forming a powerful resistance to the church order in Zurich. Grebel himself died only six months later, in Maienfeld in Graubünden, but Manz and Georg Blaurock were active in Grüningen; Hans Pfistermeyer in the Aargau; Margret Hottinger in St Gallen and Wilhelm Reublin, Martin Weninger and Jakob Groß in various locations.32 The former Benedictine prior Michael Sattler had returned to Zurich lands to preach in nearby Bülach. Numerous other men and women languished in prison during 1526, refusing to recant. Zwingli was relentless in condemning the Anabaptists in print and from the pulpit, backing threats from the Council that they would be put to death.
In December 1526, Manz and Blaurock were arrested in Grüningen and handed over to Zurich officials. Manz was executed on 5 January 1527, drowned in the Limmat, while Blaurock was beaten with rods and forced out of the city. He was told that, should he return, he would suffer the same fate as Manz, whose execution was an episode of ritualized high drama.33 As he was taken from the Wellenberg to the fish market, Manz declared that he was to die for the truth. A boat then took him to the middle of the river, which ran through the centre of the city. Manz rejected the admonitions of a pastor to recant, and encouraged by his family, he called out Christ’s words, ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’, before being tossed into the waters with his hands bound. In the 2019 film Zwingli, the reformer and his wife watch the execution; while we do not in fact know where the reformer was when Manz died, we do know that he had not protested against the magistrates’ decision.
In his last letter, Manz provided a damning indictment of the unnamed Zwingli:
Unfortunately, we find many people these days who exult in the gospel and teach, speak and preach much about it, yet are full of hatred and envy. They do not have the love of God in them, and their deceptions are known to everyone. For as we have experienced in these last days, there are those who have come to us in sheep’s clothing, yet are ravaging wolves who hate the pious ones of this world and thwart their way of life and the true fold. This is what the false prophets and hypocrites of this world do.34
Zwingli found the words for his repudiation of the Anabaptists in the Gospel of John: ‘They went from us but they did not really belong to us.’ He was mistaken, for they had once been his friends. And they had justified their search for a purer Church with his own words. By 1532, five more Anabaptists would suffer Manz’s fate.
Zwingli’s condemnation of the Anabaptists coalesced in print in his Elenchus or A Refutation of the Tricks of the Anabaptists, published in late July 1527 – his last and most comprehensive effort to destroy his hated opponents. The fiercely polemical text, written in dialogue form, ran to two hundred pages and attempted a root-and-branch repudiation of their beliefs and actions in response to the Schleitheim Articles, drawn up in February 1527 by a small group led by ex-Benedictine Michael Sattler (d.1527) as a record of Anabaptist shared convictions.35 The seven articles formed a statement on key issues rather than a full confession of faith.36 Printed along with the account of Sattler’s martyrdom – he was executed in Rottenburg in 1527 – together they created a new genre of Anabaptist literature, in which Sattler was the very embodiment of the persecuted, separated body of Christ.37
The godly would have no contact with either the fallen world of politics or the wider mass of the unregenerate, as the fourth article of the Schleitheim Articles starkly declared:
A separation shall be made from the evil and from the wickedness which the devil has planted in the world. We simply will not have fellowship with evil people, nor associate with them, nor participate with them in their abominations.38
Sattler cut away any middle ground, utterly repudiating Zwingli’s concept of the mixed, visible Church where the godly and ungodly would coexist in this world, only to be separated in the next. That compromise – unacceptable to the Anabaptists – was nothing less than a deal with the devil.
Flight and martyrdom had become defining experiences of Anabaptism, reflecting a spirituality and theology of suffering that is evident in the hymn ‘Lord God! To Thee Be Blessing’ by Georg Blaurock:
The foe beat hard upon me
Where in the field I lay;
He fain from it would drive me,
Lord, Thou didst vict’ry stay;
With weapon sharp he on me pressed,
That all my body trembled,
From force and falsehood stressed.39
Zwingli only became aware of the meeting in Schleitheim in late spring 1527; but, obsessed with his opponents, he sprang into action. He provided in dialogue form a largely accurate translation of the Schleitheim Articles, although he complained that he frequently struggled with Sattler’s German.40 His systematic treatment of the articles offered refutations of his opponents and defended his own positions. Central to A Refutation was Zwingli’s emphasis on God’s grace and the renewed case for infant baptism. He concluded with the bond of election and covenant. God’s election of Israel did not limit salvation to the Israelites, because God is free to choose whomsoever he will.41 Election to the body of Christ precedes justification and faith.
His text was a heady mixture of theological and exegetical analysis, contemporary observation and ad hominem assaults. Zwingli was certainly not above mud-raking, accusing the Anabaptists of sexual immorality – ‘they consummate spiritual marriage with carnal copulation’ – much as his Catholic opponents continued to caricature Zwingli himself.42
The ferocity of Zwingli’s attack was eye-watering:
for it is not sufficient for them to abuse the gospel for gain and to live at the expense of another, and to give themselves up to such base cunning for the sake of their belly, weaving plot out of plot, but they must not only assail but even destroy the faith of matrons and girls from whose husbands and parents they obtain hospitality.43
Doubtless referring to the executed Felix Manz, Zwingli added: ‘it seems funny to strive with ghosts’.44
Several weeks after the appearance of the Elenchus, the cities of Zurich, Basel and Bern gathered to issue a common statement against the Anabaptists that made their convictions a capital offence:
As the civil contract obliges, individuals should inform upon those favorable to Anabaptism. Whoever shall not fit his conduct to this dissuasion is liable to punishment according to the judgment of the magistracy and the circumstances of the case. Teachers, baptizing preachers, itinerants, and leaders of congregations, or those previously released from prison who had sworn to desist from such things are to be drowned.45
The Zurich reformer was done with these opponents: they were to be driven from the land or from this life.
RULERS, PROPHETS AND PASTORS
From the beginning – and then robustly against the Anabaptists – Zwingli had defended the role of temporal rulers as divinely appointed to preserve the true faith. They were not, however, interpreters of God’s Word. They were not prophets. The message of the Bible was conveyed to the people by the pastors of the Church, men of faith who had been trained in languages and doctrine and duly ordained. Like the kings and prophets of the Israelites, magistrates and pastors were bound together in God’s service, but with distinct responsibilities. The prophetic office was to admonish rulers according to God’s laws, and further, as Nathan excoriated the adulterous David, to rebuke them when they violated their duties.
Pastors were not rulers, although in Zwingli’s hands the boundaries could be invisible to the naked eye, particularly when it came to his own role. Nevertheless, it fell to the magistrates, for example, to punish the Anabaptists for their rejection of both the Church and political authority. Faith and politics were not separate realms, for both are wholly rooted in the Word of God, which works to bring all things into one.46 As aggressively as he attacked corruption and venality in the community (above all by the elites of both politics and Church), Zwingli did not wish to strip society of human righteousness, which belonged to the whole body and not just to those who would separate themselves to build alternative communities. Human righteousness refused to accept self-interest and was the manifestation in time of God’s command to love.47
When the mass was formally abolished in April 1525, the people were given no choice in the matter. Whatever their sympathies, all were required to attend the new Reformed services. Even more dramatically, the former priests had to become preachers, an office for which most had no training whatsoever.48 The choice was stark. Either a priest accepted the changes and swore obedience to the Council, or else he could up sticks and leave the territory. Few could afford the latter option – they might already have families, including children – and most chose to remain in their parishes with their meagre livings.
The results were predictable. In the 120 or so parishes of Zurich’s urban and rural churches, from 1525 the new preachers were almost all former priests, a pattern common across the Swiss and German Reformations.49 Theologically, most had little clue of Zwingli’s teaching and little idea of how to deliver the form of sermons required of them. Furthermore, they were expected to marry and raise children (which many of them already had), becoming models of the Reformation ideal of the pious family.50
The task of bringing the Reformation to the villages of the Zurich territory was immense.51 Zwingli’s vision of an educated pastor in every parish, preaching the Word of God to the people, who were required to attend the services and be instructed by the sermon, was a distant prospect. This considerable ask required a major cultural shift in pastor and people. Furthermore, as the Church was in partnership with – but not subservient to – the ruling magistrates, religion had been highly politicized.52 The pastor or parishioner attended church not only as a Christian, but also as a subject of the Zurich state, and he or she experienced constant reminders of this relationship and its attendant obligations. Parish clergy were charged with preaching and administering the two sacraments, but they were also to read from the pulpit the moral mandates of the civic government that covered all forms of behaviour, from marriage and the raising of children to the regulation of markets.
Zwingli did not delay. In May 1526, the Council mandated the creation of ‘morals courts’ to investigate instances of murder, adultery and prostitution (or suspicions thereof).53 Everyone – wealthy patrician or village dayworker – was subject to the authority of such courts, and this created resentment at all social levels against this new form of intrusion.54 Morals courts were nothing new, for they had a long history in the medieval dioceses of the German and Swiss lands, but their effectiveness and authority had been extremely patchy. Zwingli and the magistrates were essentially taking a medieval practice and giving it new life and purpose, this time with the intention that it should keep a close eye over the lives of the people.55 He even made extensive use of canon law in the formation of positive law.56
Zwingli’s decision to place the discipline of the Church in the hands of the magistrates spoke of his understanding of Church and rulers, whom he saw as the kings of Israel, protectors of the true faith.57 Indeed, Zwingli viewed the visible Church not as a suffering, persecuted minority, but as God’s chosen people of Israel, populated by both faithful and unfaithful, who were not distinguishable in this world. He wholly rejected the Anabaptist conception of a pure or separate body of Christ. Zwingli’s Church was Israel with all its faults, yet, nevertheless, God’s covenanted people. Oecolampadius in Basel saw the matter differently, arguing for the Church to hold the power of excommunication independently of the magistrates. In contrast to Zwingli, he argued that this had been the model of the early Church.58
Determined to exercise greater control over the clergy, the Zurich Council decreed in April 1528, when Bern finally adopted the Reformation, that a synod should be created for the clergy and laity.59 The first meeting brought together approximately 300 participants, of whom just over a hundred were clergy. The others in attendance were members of the Large and Small Councils and lay representatives from the parishes. The disputations held in the city in 1523 provided the model, when it had been declared that the local meeting represented the whole Church. Although Zwingli spoke of the early Church, local practices in the medieval Church provided a more readily accessible foundation for his new institutional reforms. Thus, while the synod as a body of the Church went back to early Christianity, Zwingli’s eyes were fixed on more recent practices. The diocese of Constance had held a number of synods in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries aimed at enforcing ecclesiastical legislation and reforming the conduct and spiritual lives of priests, monks and lay people.60
Prophet and king, Zwingli and the Bürgermeister presided over the synodal meetings, which above all were intended for the reform of the ministers. The duties of the clergy were tightly scripted:61 they were to live in their parishes, preach and administer the sacraments, care for their people and watch over their lives. Their duties to the ruling authorities were clear, and above all obedience was demanded.
These developments within the Church between 1526 and 1529 marked a new stage in Zwingli’s authority in Zurich, attributable only in part to his own actions. A significant political shift in the city rendered the situation for the evangelical cause much more favourable. In 1527, the Small Council, long the seat of the most intense opposition to the Reformation, was given responsibility for church matters, a clear indication that its sympathies had shifted. A more dramatic sign of religious change came the following year, when the magistrates ruled that anyone who rejected the Reformed faith must resign his seat on the Council.62 And there was more. Elections had brought increased numbers of Reformation sympathizers onto the benches, and in 1529 the mandate forbidding attendance at mass was reissued. A last bastion of resistance, the Constabulary, which in contrast to the guilds was made up of patricians, had its representation on the Small Council reduced from 18 to 12, further diminishing the influence of the leading families, which was good news for Zwingli and his supporters.63
ADVISER
Towards the end of his life, Bullinger remembered Zwingli as a fierce preacher, polemicist and hardnose in politics, who was, nevertheless, seen by many reformers as a father figure. The somewhat beleaguered reformer was constantly implored to intercede with the Council on a broad range of matters – from errant sons and marital questions to taxes. Zwingli’s disposition, Bullinger added, was to help others, and he endeavoured to comfort all those who came to him.64 He received his petitioners with a ‘friendly spirit’, and when he could do no more would confess that he had done his best. Bullinger observed something of a naïvety in Zwingli: a readiness to help that was frequently exploited by others. Only experience taught Zwingli to look out for himself.65 Above all, Bullinger described a merciful spirit, a man who neither bore grudges nor was quick to anger.
Bullinger, himself one of the most prolific correspondents of the sixteenth century, observed that Zwingli constantly wrote letters to friends and colleagues who were resident in the German lands, France, Italy and elsewhere.66 A distinctive wax seal guaranteed that the letters were from his own hand, but occasionally he apologized for its absence because he was writing from the home of a friend or colleague. In March 1528, he informed Vadian that ‘in my house there is only one copy of my letters. Everything goes out into the world as it comes out of my mouth, so one should refer to me as speaking rather than writing.’67 His recipients were lay people, churchmen and magistrates, many of whom plied him with questions and sought his advice; and most of Zwingli’s letters contained interpretations of biblical texts and counsel on how to deal with radicals and others in error. Many of his letters are no longer extant. Like most correspondents of his day, Zwingli was concerned about the security of epistles and feared that communications might fall into the wrong hands. Not infrequently, he asked that his recipients destroy the missives after reading them. On occasion, when writing to a humanist friend, Zwingli would write in Greek to protect his thoughts.
The surviving letters tell of Zwingli’s attention to detail, his concern for the work of others committed to the gospel, and his self-awareness as an authority dispensing theological, political and practical advice. Two letters from 1527, between Zwingli and Fridolin Brunner, pastor in Glarus and a student of the Zurich reformer, are illustrative.68 Writing on 15 January, Brunner reported that the gospel was spreading ‘beautifully’ in Glarus and assured Zwingli that he had abandoned all trace of papistry, although he was threatened with violence by his opponents, who supported the mercenary pensions.69 His position, however, was challenging, for although he had preached against the abuses of the Church, the people were reluctant to abandon the belief that the Eucharist was the true body and blood of Christ. Brunner’s experience was hardly novel for a reforming pastor who found himself at odds with many of his parishioners. He added that he had reached a form of compromise with the people, and, borrowing an expression often used by Zwingli, observed that they would drink milk first before receiving solid food. His plan was to proceed slowly with changes to the Lord’s Supper, unless Zwingli advised otherwise. Rather ungenerously, he described his parishioners as ‘imbeciles’, too much influenced by Valentin Tschudi, the learned Catholic priest in Glarus and onetime friend of Zwingli.70 These two figures close to Zwingli in Glarus were locked in confessional strife.
The last part of the long letter was typical of much of the correspondence received by Zwingli from pastors working in the parishes. Brunner presented Zwingli with a ‘knot’ that the pastor could not untie. The issue sprang from two passages in scripture: John 15:5 (‘I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing’) and Sirach 15:16 (‘He has placed before you fire and water: stretch out your hand for whichever you wish’). What, he asked, is the Bible saying about the role of humans in their salvation.71 Does God do everything? Brunner confessed that he was not sure what to teach on predestination, providence and human responsibility.
Zwingli wrote back to the pastor on 25 January that one letter was not sufficient to resolve this dilemma between Sirach and John, but that he would give a condensed reply. He asserted that divine providence governs and sets out all things, and grounded his response on an argument about God’s goodness, wisdom and omnipotence. Essentially, he contended that, because of these characteristics, God always orders all things to the best possible outcome. God cannot be the author of sin, which arises from human lust and lasciviousness. This truth was the sure case against any sense of human free will in the matter of salvation.72 However, such teaching was not easily received, and Zwingli counselled Brunner against presenting these matters to the people too directly, for ‘indeed there are few who are truly pious, and only a few who can reach that height of intelligence’.73
In October 1526, Zwingli replied to Urbanus Rhegius, preacher in Augsburg, concerning election and damnation – a theological issue with significant pastoral implications.74 What about children who are not able to hear the gospel and believe? Are they condemned to hell when they die? No, replied Zwingli, because they are not condemned by any law. If they come from believing parents, they are covered by the faith of the covenant. If they come from parents who do not believe, Zwingli continued, he could not say with certainty; however, if he had to speculate, he would stress the saving power of Christ, emphasizing the greater power of grace over sin. All that are born are made holy through Christ.75
Much of Zwingli’s correspondence was with people of little social standing, who appear to have felt at liberty to write to the reformer about their concerns. Their optimism that he would be able to provide help or resolve disputes or family and financial problems is striking. Even more remarkable is the evidence from their grateful replies that he often was able to assist. The concerns were legion. Could he find accommodation for a son, help facilitate a marriage for a daughter? Frequently, he was asked to look out for the welfare of a child or student, ensuring that they had adequate provision. Heinrich Hässi from Glarus wrote asking Zwingli to help find a doctor for his dying wife, as he had no trust in the ones who were treating her.76 Clearly, Zwingli’s pastoral reputation in Glarus continued long after his departure.
Through Zwingli’s vast body of written work, we find almost nothing addressed to the particular situations of female Christians. Only two surviving letters were sent by Zwingli to female recipients. One is addressed to his wife, Anna Reinhart, and says almost nothing of interest. The other dates from 1523, when he wrote to Margareta Fehr in Einsiedeln to comfort her in her evident anxieties and depression. The advice was fairly general, enjoining her to allow the tranquillity of scripture to relieve her pain. He also addressed a question she had posed about a married priest offering communion to his wife. Such a concern, Zwingli wrote, related to human regulations, not God’s, and therefore she should attend more to questions of envy, bitterness, quarrelsomeness and anger.77 He ended by complimenting her on her diligent reading of scripture.
Of greater interest are the seven surviving letters from women to Zwingli, which reveal both their various circumstances and the active role the reformer took in arranging marriages and other domestic situations. Margaretha and her sister Katherine von Wattenwyl were Poor Clares about to leave their order to marry.78 Zwingli clearly played a part in their engagements. Margaretha became engaged to Lucius Tscharner of Chur in the summer of 1525, and by March the following year a child was on its way. Tscharner himself wrote to Zwingli asking if he knew of a woman who could tend their home during the pregnancy, as he knew nothing of kitchen duties:
As Tschudi says to me, I should go there myself and take my wife with me. I can never do that, because she is about to give birth, God give her grace! And she wrote to Frau Murerin 14 days ago begging her earnestly to inquire for a good and pious woman in good age, who shall cook and need not work in the field, however, but care for [my] wife and the children as well as cook for them. I am no landlord at all! My wife earnestly and friendly begs your pious and good wife to help Frau Murerin to look for [such a woman]. Whatever wage I shall pay her, I will.79
Barbara Trüllerey, abbess of the cloister of Schänis, near Glarus, wrote on 24 February 1524 to ask Zwingli whether he could offer spiritual guidance for a young relative that he might grow up well.80 Further, she sought the reformer’s interpretation of two passages in Matthew: ‘The last will be first and the first last’ (20:16) and ‘Many are called, but few chosen’ (22:14). She referred to Zwingli as ‘preacher of the holy word of God in the praiseworthy city of Zurich’.81 Two years later, Barbara Nithart from Ulm or Constance had a similar concern.82 This time it was a wayward son, who was about to lose the financial support of his family if he did not mend his ways:
I let you know that I have a young son who studies in Zurich. His name is Hans Nithard and he is 19 years old. We have raised him since his youth to [study], which costs a fortune. And I beg you for God’s sake to let me know how he behaves during studies and beyond; whether he is assiduous, or whether he is nonchalant and lazy and possesses no zeal during instruction. Further, whether he only wants to follow dancing and prostitutes and be wasteful with clothes. For he should do nothing without my consent and knowledge. I beg you for Christ our saviour’s sake, that you take him in hand and chasten him and tell his teacher to punish him and to let him do nothing excessive on this earth regarding clothes, drinking or debts. For what he gives him beyond the weekly amount, I do not want to pay at all.83
We have no reply containing Zwingli’s advice on how to deal with this 19-year-old young man. Many years later, the son’s name appeared on the list of magistrates in the city of Constance, so evidently he had not turned out too badly.84 Almost all of the letters from women to Zwingli dealt with family members, usually sons or nephews in need of assistance or patronage. They suggest that Zwingli spent considerable time acting as a paternal figure for fatherless boys in the city, arranging for their education, securing work in local trades and offering counsel when needed.
In a 1518 letter from Einsiedeln to Heinrich Utinger, he had admitted that it was extremely difficult for him to live without the intimacy of a woman, but his letters tell us almost nothing about his beloved Anna and their children.85 Unlike Luther, Zwingli drew a curtain around his family and domestic life.
REVENGE
One of the most dramatic confrontations between evangelicals and Catholics in the Swiss Confederation following the introduction of the Reformation was the disputation held at Baden in May–June 1526.86 The Catholic churchman Johann Eck, Zwingli’s most formidable opponent was present; but Zwingli himself, the man at the centre of the storm, was not. The episode is all the more revealing for Zwingli’s biography precisely because he did not attend.
Disputations, so advantageous to Zwingli’s cause in Zurich, took place in several locations in the Confederation between 1524 and 1526, including Basel, Appenzell and Ilanz in Graubünden, none of which were attended by Zwingli.87 These public events were carefully stage managed and generally arrived at predetermined conclusions.88 This pattern of disputations had served the Reformation cause well, often because of Zwingli’s rhetorical gifts and his ability to maul his adversaries in theological confrontation. In 1526, however, the Catholics got their revenge on Zwingli and his supporters, and the man behind their triumph was the brilliant Eck, long-time opponent of Luther, Karlstadt and Zwingli.89
In March of that year, the theologian and scourge of the reformers was invited by the Swiss Diet to come to participate in a disputation with his opponents. Eck was fully prepared to ride into verbal battle. Three years earlier, he had proposed both a diocesan synod and a debate as a means of destroying the heretics, above all Zwingli. The following year, in 1524, he focused on Zwingli, seeking to lure him into a confrontation along the lines of his encounter with Luther at Leipzig in 1519.90 Eck’s intense interest in Swiss affairs was clear at a meeting in Regensburg in July 1524, when the ecclesiastical and temporal rulers of southern Germany gathered to discuss the implementation of the Edict of Worms. At Regensburg, Eck met Johannes Fabri, who had debated with Zwingli at the first disputation in Zurich, in January 1523, and was now in the service of the Habsburgs. They likely discussed a possible encounter with Zwingli.91
In October 1525, Eck renewed his suggestion of a disputation, and in a letter to the Swiss Confederates signalled his willingness to participate. He underscored the disruption and division caused by the Reformation in the German lands:
So ought the blind heretics who have lost the holy faith fall into the dark abyss of all heresy so that your lords can easily see what a false and devilish faith these hardened men teach, who are full of contradictions. For earlier Zwingli and Oecolampadius doubted the sacrificial character of the mass, but at the same time taught that the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ was to be held in high honour . . . that was in 1523. Not even two years later he not only madly abolished the mass, but he established a heretical form of mass and he himself deprived the people of the heavenly meal. So unstable and fickle are these heretics! They cry out that theirs is the rock of certain faith and eternal truth.92
Fully aware of the growing rift between Zurich and Wittenberg, Eck poured oil on the flames by making Zwingli Luther’s dog:
Zwingli forgets that he had once greatly praised Luther as an admirable and true warrior of God who with great sincerity studied the Bible as it has been on earth for the last thousand years and is in unshakeable truth. If Zwingli held such a high view of Luther as he has written, then why does he not follow and believe Luther?
The Swiss Diet determined that a debate would take place in Baden, only 14 miles from Zurich, but safely in Catholic territory. The Diet’s intentions held no mystery: their enthusiasm was little less than bloodlust to destroy Zwingli, the arch-heretic. The magistrates and reformers in Zurich agonized over whether Zwingli should attend, weighing up the obvious dangers against the recognition that Baden offered a much broader stage on which to confront the Catholic Church and make their claim for a reformed Confederation. Zwingli’s absence would deprive the evangelical party of its most prominent theological voice, of the man who had prevailed in 1523 against the Catholics and in 1525 against the Anabaptists. We do not know whether the reformer or the Council had the final say, but in a letter Zwingli declared that the people of Zurich were strongly against his participation.93
There were good reasons for not going to Baden. The Catholics would be firmly in control and their intention was clearly to humiliate the reformer and the city. Furthermore, Zwingli’s life would surely be in danger, as the Council in Zurich was aware and as friends and colleagues warned. Rumours circulated of a plan to abduct Zwingli from Baden. Death threats had been issued. In the weeks leading up to the disputation, Zwingli engaged in an acidic exchange with his adversary Johannes Fabri, who had denounced the Zurich reformer as a coward. Zwingli appealed to his countrymen by reminding them that Fabri had once referred to the Swiss as ‘cow buggerers’.94
Although he remained in Zurich, Zwingli saw himself as debating Eck from afar, and was so involved in the discussions in the weeks before the disputation that he is reported to have suffered from chronic sleep deprivation.95 In the run-up, he also wrote to those who would attend, with advice on what to say in debate. Once the debate was under way, he was kept informed by a network of colleagues and students, whom he engaged to provide him with every detail of the proceedings. Some students carried letters from and to those participating, although missives conveying Zwingli’s instructions were probably destroyed for reasons of security.96 Such was the concern to conceal any contact between Zwingli and the participants that one letter with instructions for Oecolampadius was brought into Baden by a young man hidden in a hay wagon. Myconius observed that ‘Zwingli laboured more in running about, thinking, counselling, watching, warning, writing both letters and books that he sent to Baden than he would have done had he taken part.’97
The Baden Disputation opened on 19 May 1526 and lasted three weeks. It was an enormous production financed by the Swiss Diet, the bishops and the participating Confederates. The invitation list had included the 13 members of the Swiss Confederation, the associated members and the bishops of Constance, Basel, Sion and Lausanne. Only a smaller number of invitees in fact chose to attend, reflecting in many cases the cost of going to Baden for three weeks.98 Even Erasmus in Basel had been invited, but he declined, citing health reasons. Yet over two hundred delegates did assemble, with the number actually present fluctuating during the sessions. Some were lay representatives from Swiss and southern German states, but the vast majority were clerics, many of whom held university degrees. The participants were isolated from the world around them. The city walls were heavily guarded to prevent infiltration by foreign spies and messengers, although, as we have heard, Zwingli did manage to remain in contact, aided by the opening of the city gates each day to allow farmers to bring food and goods into the city.
A dramatic confrontation between Catholics and evangelicals, the event was carefully staged. Unlike the later religious colloquies in the Empire in the early 1540s, Baden was not about finding common ground. The Catholics were out for revenge and sought to demonstrate the truth of the old faith. Before the proceedings were even launched, the delegates listened to a half-hour sermon, in which the preacher inveighed against the evangelicals. Two pulpits were used for the disputation: the old pulpit was used by the Catholic party, and a second – temporary – pulpit was set up for the lead reformer Oecolampadius: the hierarchy was clear. The four men chosen to preside over the sessions were all hostile to the new faith: during the sessions, according to one evangelical witness, they applauded Eck and laughed at Oecolampadius.99
Eck had published seven theses for debate, on the real presence and transubstantiation, the mass, invocation of Mary and the saints, images, purgatory, original sin, and baptism.100 The most extensive exchange concerned the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Eck himself frequently interrupted the speaker with taunts and jibes, shouting out to the public that Oecolampadius was a liar. With his prodigious intellect, sharp tongue and fierce reputation, Eck must have been an intimidating presence. He enjoyed mocking evangelical claims that their arguments were grounded in scripture, by pointing out that a crucial point they were making was to be found in book four of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, not in the Bible.101 The evangelical appeal to the Word of God, he scoffed, had only led to chaos, and he pointed to the slaughter of thousands in the Peasants’ War as the consequence of Luther’s lies.
By the time the disputation ended, on 8 June, there had been 17 days of debate. Eck’s seven theses were upheld by a vote of 84 to 24 (with three abstentions). Even the four Lutherans present voted for Eck, an act not to be forgotten by the Swiss. The Catholic victory was confirmed by decisions to suppress Zwingli’s writings and the proscribed ‘Lutheran’ preaching. Although a final account of the proceedings was supposed to be circulated, no agreed text could be formulated, with Bern and Basel withholding their consent. The Swiss Confederation had been founded as a defensive alliance, but now it was hopelessly torn apart by religion. The disputation at Baden only confirmed that irreconcilable views of Christianity existed without any political or legal framework.
Perhaps the greatest gain for the evangelicals was ironically a product of Zwingli’s absence – the emergence of Johannes Oecolampadius as a spiritual and doctrinal leader of the movement. He had courageously and ably faced Eck in the lion’s den, defending his theology to a scoffing audience, patiently enduring the insults. He was by no means Zwingli’s subaltern. He had relied on the Zurich reformer’s advice, but he had spoken at length, with only a few notes, and had proved able to summon biblical and patristic evidence in support of his case. Indeed, it would become increasingly clear that he and Zwingli did not agree on everything. The event at Baden had been an attempt to destroy Zwingli, but Oecolampadius had acted where the Zurich reformer had hesitated. The triumph of the Catholics, however, was only partial. There had been hopes that doctrinal victory might lead to military action against Zurich to restore the old faith. The unwillingness of Bern and Basel, which were drifting towards Reformation, to participate put an end to such aspirations. The Catholic Confederates could not press home their advantage.102
The Catholic victory at Baden underscored Zwingli’s need to bolster his own position in Zurich, where, despite reversals, the adherents of the old faith and those who continued to receive pensions posed a serious threat. The introduction of the Reformation had by no means quashed opposition.103 Zwingli and his colleagues denounced members of distinguished families, such as the Rubli, Escher and Wellenberg, as traitors who lined their pockets with money from the king of France, the pope and the exiled duke of Württemberg.
The most infamous case in Zurich was that of Jakob Grebel, father of radical leader and former Zwingli friend Konrad Grebel. Jakob Grebel represented the Zurich elite who continued to benefit from foreign pensions, in contravention of the Council’s mandates and Zwingli’s preaching.104 It was claimed that Jakob Grebel had received more than 4,000 crowns from a papal agent and was seeking more.105 A commission of 11 men was set up by the Council to examine the claims against Grebel and others, and Zwingli was invited to submit evidence. The reformer readily obliged and presented oral testimony against a series of prominent figures. Two men, Hans Escher and Heinrich Leu, were imprisoned in the Wellenberg. On account of his status, Jakob Grebel was confined in the Rathaus. The generous treatment accorded the older man did not last long: he was tortured and then found guilty of taking pensions and committing treason. On 30 October 1526, he was executed. Death was not only for Anabaptists, but also for those who defied the Council.
VICTORY
The efforts of the Catholic Confederates to ensure that the records of the disputation favoured their cause led to consternation in Bern and Basel, both of which were enraged by what they perceived as mendacity.106 Zurich was encouraged by the turn of events, and in early 1527 sought to create alliances that would end its isolation in the Confederation. In January, representatives of Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, St Gallen and Glarus were invited to the city to consider the precarious situation among the Swiss.107 It was Zurich’s first diplomatic initiative since the Reformation. As ever, Bern was the crucial player, its cooperation essential to any alliance against the Five States. Bern had saved the Reformation in Zurich and prevented the city from being expelled from the Confederation, but it was not willing to grant the Zurichers a free hand. The Bernese needed stability in the east in order to be able to develop their interests in the French-speaking lands of the west leading to Geneva and Savoy.
Strong evangelical impulses had sprung up in Bern during the earliest years of the Reformation, and in June 1523 the city council, like that of Zurich, had adopted gospel preaching.108 Again like Zurich, Bern was religiously divided, but it lacked a charismatic and politically adept figure like Zwingli to advance the evangelical cause. Nevertheless, the movement grew, and in June 1526, Berchtold Haller, the principal preacher and a friend of Zwingli, was invited to speak before the 200 members of the Bernese Large Council, laying out the evangelical position on the sacraments. His address caused uproar and he immediately offered to resign his position as a canon in the main church and to leave the city; but the magistrates had other ideas. They accepted his resignation, but insisted that he remain to preach the gospel, for which he would be paid from the income of his former canonry.
To resolve the religious tensions in their city, the Bernese magistrates took a page from the Zurich playbook and summoned a disputation to be held in the city’s Franciscan church, which local architects transformed into a hall for 500 observers.109 The disputation was called for January 1528, and the bishops of Constance, Sion, Lausanne and Basel, in whose dioceses the sprawling Bernese territory fell, were invited to attend. Invitations were also sent to the other Confederates, as well as to some of the leading German imperial cities of the south. None of the bishops attended and the Catholic states refused to allow delegates to cross their lands. The Catholic parties had good reason to turn down the invitation. They could continue to ride their great victory at Baden, so why renew the debate? Furthermore, in direct contrast to Baden, at Bern, as the invitation noted, all arguments were to be on the basis of scripture alone.
Zwingli was desperate for another opportunity to take on Johann Eck, but the Catholic theologian declined to go to Bern for many of the very reasons Zwingli had used two years earlier. He knew that it would only be a public humiliation. The imperial court at Speyer responded at the last moment that the proposed disputation was illegal and that Bern should wait for the upcoming Imperial Diet at Regensburg. Further, doctrinal matters should only be debated at a legitimate council of the Church.
Zurich Bürgermeister Diethelm Röist gave his consent for Zwingli to attend, and after a fulsome New Year’s feast in the guild hall of the skinners, the reformer set out on the three-day trip to Bern, protected by an armed guard. Zwingli and Röist rode horses, while most of the contingent travelled on foot, covering about 30 miles a day.110 When they reached the Bernese frontier, a company of some 200 crossbowmen and halberdiers greeted them, to ensure their safe passage to the city. The journey to Bern, taking Zwingli briefly into hostile territory, was a jarring reminder that he was a hunted heretic. It was rumoured that when he passed through the village of Mellingen, a shot had been fired at him.111 When he arrived at Bern, Zwingli refused the official quarters provided for him and chose to stay with a family member.
Whereas Oecolampadius had been left to carry the banner at Baden against Eck and Fabri, at Bern the evangelicals turned out in force. Zwingli led a large contingent from Zurich; Oecolampadius came from Basel; and Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito were there from Strasbourg. Also in attendance were Zwingli’s friends Joachim Vadian from St Gallen and Ambrosius Blarer from Constance. The Bernese reformers Haller and Franz Kolb took the lead, but it was Zwingli who had drafted the 10 theses for debate. The disputation then lasted almost three weeks, from 6 to 26 January, and was conducted in German so that both laity and clergy might participate. To avoid the controversy of the not impartial Baden records, the sessions were scrupulously minuted, to the extent that participants were told to speak slowly so that every word might be written down.
According to that official record, Zwingli spoke more than a hundred times. He was not alone, however: despite his commanding presence, other reformers also frequently rose to put the case for the evangelical faith. And Zwingli was careful to allow the Bern reformers Haller and Kolb to lead the debates. Delegates representing Lutheran churches in German cities such as Nuremberg were also in attendance, but rarely intervened. Catholic opposition to this array of supporters of the Reformation was rather meagre. The talented Konrad Träger from Fribourg led the opposition and offered robust objections to the reformers; but with no appeal to church authority or tradition permitted, the Catholics were hamstrung.112 Central to the discussion was the relationship of the Church and scripture, which constituted the first three articles. The theses were upheld by an impressive majority.
The day after the disputation concluded, the Bernese Council issued an edict that the mass was to be abolished and the churches cleansed of images within eight days. During the stripping of the churches, children sang: ‘We have been freed from a baked god.’113 Following the model of Zurich, a committee was created to oversee the orderly prosecution of the decree. By no means everyone in the city was pleased with the turn of events. Fights broke out in the churches, as images, statues, vestments and liturgical vessels were removed. A member of the butcher’s guild threatened to kill anyone who damaged that guild’s altar and complained that the destruction made the church look like a stable. Another rode into a church on a donkey and denounced those who were participating in the desecration of the churches, expressing the hope that their hands would fall off.114 Large bonfires burned in the Münsterplatz as centuries of devotional gifts were consumed in the flames. Objects that could not be burnt or resold were buried. The process of tearing down the fabric of the old church in Bern took over two years. The Franciscan church was turned into a warehouse, while grain was stored in the altar space and choir of the Dominican house.
Zwingli preached twice in Bern: once during the disputation and once when it had concluded. In many respects, his sermons formed a reckoning with both his opponents and his humanist and scholastic past. From the pulpit he offered a fulsome evocation of the Christian faith, drawing on the wisdom of antiquity, his debt to Erasmus, his years of expounding the Bible, knowledge of the church fathers and his rhetorical gifts. Never before or again would he stand before such a distinguished body of reformers – men who would shape the Reformation after Zwingli was dead. His first sermon conjured up the majesty of the providential God and the glory of his creation. It was Zwingli’s moment, and he relished it.
Much of the first part of the sermon focused on the credal words ‘one God, Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth’. God is the source of all goodness and goodness itself. He is perfection and wisdom and thereby generative of these qualities in humanity, which possesses these qualities by participation in God. Socrates had understood that wisdom was to be shared. God is not merely a first principle or a distant creator: his immanence in the world is through his providential ordering of all things:
With God we think of a person who in the building of a house assigns every room and corner its special purpose and use. Everything that he created has been given in advance its purpose. Further, a craftsman knows all of his tools and either uses or leaves them according to his need. He does not forget a single tool, even if for a time he allows it to rust a little . . . In the same way, God knows all His creation.115
To explain God’s presence in the world, Zwingli turned to his beloved Swiss countryside. In the sun that streams down on a mountain valley, God reveals his presence in the world. The poet reformer saw God in the world:
The sun is beheld by all people in the world. It illuminates and makes all fruitful while at the same time warming the earth. The smallest piece of grass, the greatest mountain and trees enjoy the sun and are refreshed by it, and yet none of them are omnipresent. To be with the sun or to walk with it is all that is needed to be warmed and to be alive. And all things under the sun are made alive only by it. And they enjoy and see the sun not merely partially, but as a whole! Even so, God penetrates all things, is everywhere present, pleases and revives them all, and is by all things received, enjoyed and used, even by the unrighteous who do not know him.116
Zwingli preached for a second time on the day after the completion of the disputation. Surrounded by the debris of smashed altars and broken statues of saints, he stood in the pulpit of the Bernese Münster to address the magistrates of the city on their duties as godly rulers. Drawn from Galatians 5, his theme was perseverance and tenacity in the good. He cited Moses, who in 40 years ‘never once doubted God’s assistance’.117 Then there was David, ‘whom neither poverty or misery could move to lose his faith in God’. Alongside such well-known figures of the Bible, he placed Cornelius Scipio, the general and statesman of the Roman Republic, who on hearing that the surviving leadership of Rome was contemplating flight across the Mediterranean after Hannibal’s victory at Cannae, burst into the chamber with his friends, brandishing their swords and swearing that they would abandon neither Italy nor Rome and would protect their homeland. ‘He remained so steadfast until his death,’ noted Zwingli. His example illustrated that ‘virtue begets virtue’.118
Addressing the magistrates directly, Zwingli offered an account of how Reformation should take place. Drawing on his experiences, he claimed that true religion could only begin with the forceful destruction of the old. Crucifixes were to become firewood. Hearts must be purified by the fires that destroy objects of idolatry. In contrast to his actions in Zurich, Zwingli encouraged the Bernese rulers to act quickly and decisively. Christ had overturned the tables in the temple and warned his followers to ‘keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming’. The magistrates were not to hesitate: ‘this filth and dross should now be swept away in order that the huge sums that you more than others have spent on the unspeakable stupidity of the cult of saints should in future be used for the good of the living likenesses of God’.119
Zwingli’s most commanding moment came in Bern, away from his adopted city of Zurich. For a moment, he spoke for a broad sodality of reformers and magistrates. The unity was not to last.