11. ‘It is certain that Zwingli died in great sin and blasphemy’: Remembered and Forgotten
ELEVEN ‘IT IS CERTAIN THAT ZWINGLI DIED IN GREAT SIN AND BLASPHEMY’
REMEMBERED AND FORGOTTEN
Zwingli’s sudden death confirmed the fears and expectations of friends and foes that his bellicosity could lead to disaster. No sooner had the news reached Zurich than narratives of martyrdom and blasphemy started to circulate. Had this preacher of God really wanted to wield the sword, not in the spiritual language of the Apostle Paul but on a battlefield? Had he died serving the Word that he believed would transform the world, or had blind ambition and a toxic mixture of spiritual and temporal authority laid low the ideals of the Reformation? All were certain that they had experienced that judgement of God of which Zwingli had preached. The question was what it had meant. The preacher had denounced the conscience-binding strictures of the Church, mercenary service and pensions, moral turpitude and faint-heartedness, but divine wrath had seemingly fallen on him. Leo Jud rushed to defend his friend, taking to the pulpit to blame the feckless political leaders who had never embraced gospel reform.1 Despite the defeat, he claimed, it was a victory that men were willing to suffer and die for the truth. Such was the danger that Jud’s friends suggested that he make his way to the church dressed as a woman.
The city of Zurich was in a state of disbelief and chaos. Hatred of the clergy, and Zwingli in particular, fostered violence. Demands for the restoration of the old faith were heard in the streets, and the authority of the magistrates tottered. Proud Zurich was on its knees, unable to defend itself against a hostile army outside its walls, and now a supplicant of the victorious Catholics who had played David against the supposed Goliath of Zwingli’s city. Perhaps the prophet had misread his beloved Bible. His friends were worried.2
Zwingli’s death cast a long shadow over his legacy for his immediate followers, and indeed for centuries to come. He had embraced power and force, believing it God’s will, and had perished believing that propagation of the Word required the destruction of its enemies. Whether he had died a martyr or an inveterate heretic, his demise on the battlefield put a sudden end to a tumultuous life. For supporters, it was the sacrifice of a prophet who had overturned the tables in the temple. As Martin Luther had predicted, the return of God’s Word would bring conflict, not peace. The forces of Antichrist would be roused to the final battle. Zwingli concurred, but – unlike his contemporary – believed that struggle might ultimately involve swords and halberds. His courage had not failed him in his willingness to die for his convictions. By contrast, Luther remained in the safety of Saxony, and Calvin would counsel martyrdom for others.3 In the decades after his death, Zwingli was rarely forgotten, even when it was still unwise or imprudent to mention his name. Heinrich Bullinger, quickly summoned to rescue the Reformation, declared the fallen reformer the ‘Swiss Apostle’.4
In many respects, Zwingli came to represent the divided soul of the Reformation: an arresting vision of the godly community, beset with the need to establish its own boundaries and cleanse itself of dissent. The godly community depended on the sword, and nearly vanished in military defeat. Zwingli’s memory would be shaped and narrated around a set of contested convictions: that he had freed the Church from servitude of pope and priests; that he had returned the Church to scripture; that his controversial teachings on faith and the sacraments were biblical and faithful to early Christianity; and that he had sought to restore, not destroy, his native land. Bullinger kept alive the flame of fidelity and orthodoxy, but even Bullinger’s closest allies, including John Calvin and Philipp Melanchthon could not share his conviction. For them, Zwingli had divided the Reformation by parting company with Luther and insisting on the exclusive rightness of his cause.
FIRST BIOGRAPHY
Oswald Myconius, friend and colleague, had been instrumental in Zwingli’s appointment to Zurich at the end of 1518, and the two remained close. Myconius wrote the first biographical account of Zwingli following Kappel, offering a carefully crafted life of his friend. The vita would become widely known across Europe, and was eventually translated into English in 1561.5 Myconius was an educator and preacher who ultimately led the Church in Basel.6 Unlike Zwingli, he was held in low regard by Erasmus, who once referred to him as ‘homo ineptus’.
The biography took the form of a letter to one ‘Agathius Beronensis’, whose identity remains unknown.7 The recipient obviously regarded Zwingli highly and was shocked by the way in which the reformer had been traduced by his opponents, including Luther. Myconius structured his biography around a series of questions to portray Zwingli’s character, the origins of his reforms, his relationship to Luther and his death. The vita was a loving memorial to a friend who had been, above all, a true minister of Christ.
The reformer’s youth was of particular interest to Myconius in establishing the natural virtues of a boy gifted and patriotic. His teachers and studies were recounted in considerable detail, as were the periods of intense study in Glarus and Einsiedeln. One is struck, however, by what is missing: we find little attention to Zwingli the priest. Myconius’ purpose was clear: he did not want to allow that Zwingli was ever a papist. Rather, he sought to craft a narrative in which everything from Zwingli’s youth had led seamlessly to his call as a reformer. The conversion at Einsiedeln, so decisive to Zwingli in his own autobiographical remarks, finds no place in Myconius. No conversion was ever necessary, as Zwingli had always taught the truth.
The leitmotiv of the biography is Zwingli’s humanist learning in the service of the faith. Almost all other aspects of the life are sublimated to this image of the learned prophet. Myconius recounted with pleasure the breadth and depth of Zwingli’s knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics; however, these were never an end in themselves, but rather ways of delving deeper, in the Erasmian spirit, into the Christian mysteries. It was from the ancients that he learned about the horrors of war. Strikingly, Erasmus is barely mentioned, and we gain the impression of Zwingli that he was an autodidact.
Several aspects of the life emerge in sharp relief: Zwingli’s unrelenting opposition to mercenary service and pensions, his musical gifts, the endless insults and violence to which he was subjected, and his independence from Luther. There is little about the man’s piety or pastoral work: rather, we find a politically astute prophet of the Word whose death revealed an unflinching obedience to God’s will. Above all, Zwingli was a deeply moral and principled person – a scholar, educator and, ultimately, military leader. We read only briefly about his battle with the Anabaptists and his sanctioning of their executions. Finally, Myconius was adamant that Zwingli had not sought war, only recognizing that it could not be avoided. He was a prophet, resolute, learned and passionate. Although written shortly after Zwingli’s death, the biography was not printed until 1536, and appeared to howls of protest from Lutheran and Catholic opponents.
TROUBLED FRIENDS
News of Zwingli’s death reached Zurich by midnight on 11 October, and it took little time for the rumours to spread among his friends and reformers in other cities. In Basel, Oecolampadius, who himself had only weeks to live, lamented to Martin Frecht in Ulm:
Dearest brother, I cannot hide from you the pain that has overcome me that our Zwingli has fallen at the hands of dreadful enemies and in their fury was torn apart. Thus, I know well how the spread of this news through the world will be met with wild, rollicking joy that will scandalize the weaker brethren.8
Oecolampadius immediately addressed the consuming question: was death in battle justified? The Basel reformer, with some reservations, believed so:
It pains me most that insults abound everywhere and no one defends him. The death of our brother is not dishonourable. It is nothing new among the Swiss that armed clergy should accompany the banner into battle. Our brother was not a military captain, but a good citizen, a true shepherd who wanted to die with his own people. Who among his detractors had an ounce of his high-mindedness? Also, did he not go under his own impulse onto the battlefield.9
Oecolampadius acknowledged that he and Zwingli had differed on how to prosecute Reformation. There were many, he wrote, who had warned the Zurich reformer against his warlike tendencies. Yet, Zwingli would have been a coward to have remained at home, and was well versed in the ways of combat. Nevertheless, Oecolampadius had counselled restraint:
Relying on our friendship, I repeatedly appealed to him not to engage in things that had little to do with the gospel. He wrote back that the morals of his people were little known to me. He had seen the sword drawn and would do the duty of a true shepherd. He would not act rashly.10
Those words, his Basel friend recalled, were his last to him. Oecolampadius was adamant that war had never been Zwingli’s intention, but that he had been willing to employ force to further the gospel. ‘He erred, which I regret to say, and I did not concur with his view. Yet, he was by no means the worst of men.’11
Oecolampadius’ life was also memorialized in an account written by Wolfgang Capito, reformer in Strasbourg and close friend. To counter rumours that the Basel reformer had despaired and taken his own life, Capito provided a moving death scene, in which Oecolampadius committed his soul to heaven in the presence of 10 weeping friends.12 Capito portrayed Oecolampadius (in contrast to Zwingli) as the gentle, humanist ideal of a scholar and churchman, renowned for his piety and learning. No hint of combat in this great man.
Oecolampadius’ anguish, mixed with regret, was shared by others. Ambrosius Blarer in Constance wrote to Martin Bucer in Strasbourg in grief, accompanied by a clear uneasiness about what had transpired:
Oh my dear brother! The burning pain of my soul continually places before my eyes the fall of our Zwingli, that incomparable pillar of the Church of Christ. His death not only fills all pious men and friends of the gospel with deep grief, but leaves us anticipating a grievous blow to our Christian states.13
He shared his misgivings with Bucer:
It has always worried me, I say freely, and filled me with concern that this man with his irrepressible attitudes was ever more armed for war so as to enter battle with the foolishness of Mars. About this, however, I remained silent, as I thought it was through some unfathomable decree of God that Zwingli with word and weapons proclaimed Christ.14
The Augsburg medical doctor and magistrate Geryon Sailer wrote to Bucer expressing admiration for Zwingli’s achievements, but casting doubt on the course of events. Had the reformers not done that of which they had always accused the Catholics? Had they not lusted for war and blood? Now they had been laid low by their own sword:
Would it not have been better to have made concessions to the Five States [Catholic Confederates] and their officials, rather than to have set in motion a bloodbath of these unfortunate people? What madness to follow this way to make Christians! If the eternal Word and the preaching of the cross is not able to achieve this, then how can weapons? If one resorts to the sword, so does the victor cry and the defeated are vanquished. And while one might take up the sword to defend a neighbour, a preacher of God’s Word should not do this. His role is to remind through word and deed. Zwingli had such a great reputation and could have done so much more.15
Martin Bucer, sharing these concerns, wrote back to Ambrosius Blarer in Constance:
I feared for Zwingli. The gospel triumphs through the cross. One deceives oneself when one expects the salvation of Israel through external means with impetuosity, and triumph through weapons . . . It greatly unsettles me that our Zwingli not only recommended the war but did so incorrectly, as it appears to have been the case, and if we are rightly informed.16
Leo Jud, who, directly following Zwingli’s death, had denounced the Council in Zurich for betraying the reformer, could not restrain his anger. In 1532, he addressed the readers of his translation of Zwingli’s commentary on the Psalms:
He lives and will live for eternity, this most virtuous hero. He leaves behind a glorious monument that no fire can destroy, no flame consume . . . Against his wishes, he took to the battlefield and his life was stolen by his enemies. For life and holiness he endured all danger and was exposed to great hatred. What shame! What ingratitude! Neither his fame nor his memory will be lost. Against the ill-will and insults of the enemies of his memory, his memory will remain glorious and imperishable.17
WITTENBERG
No tears were shed in Wittenberg. Famously, Martin Luther referenced Matthew 26: ‘For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’ He added, ‘it is certain that Zwingli died in great sin and blasphemy’.18 On 28 December 1531, Luther wrote to his friend and fellow reformer Niklaus von Amsdorf:
The Zwinglians have reached an accord with the other Swiss, but under the most shameful conditions, in addition to the ignominy and disaster of so unhappily losing the leader of their doctrine. But this is the end of the glory which they sought by blaspheming Christ’s Supper. And they still do not repent, although they revoked practically everything in the peace conditions and justified the papists in everything. Indeed they were forced to rescind all alliances with foreign princes such as the landgrave. It says [Phil. 3:19]: ‘they are the enemies of Christ’s cross . . . whose glory is in confusion.’19
In his Table Talk, we find an account of Luther being asked by a student about Zwingli’s eternal fate:
I wish from my heart Zwingli could be saved, but I fear the contrary; for Christ has said that those who deny him shall be damned. God’s judgment is sure and certain, and we may safely pronounce it against all the ungodly, unless God reserve unto himself a peculiar privilege and dispensation. Even so, David from his heart wished that his son Absalom might be saved, when he said: ‘Absalom my son, Absalom my son’; yet he certainly believed that he was damned, and bewailed him, not only that he died corporally, but was also lost everlastingly; for he knew that he had died in rebellion, in incest, and that he had hunted his father out of the kingdom.20
In early January 1532, Luther mistakenly commented that Karlstadt had been appointed Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, reflecting his contempt for both men. On the same day, he wrote to Wenzel Link in Nuremberg that they had seen a second judgement of God – first Thomas Müntzer (Luther’s enemy, who was executed in 1525) had been struck down, and now Zwingli:
I was a prophet when I said that God would not long tolerate these rabid and furious blasphemies of which those people were full, ridiculing our ‘breaded’ God, calling us carnivores and blood drinkers and bloody Thyesteans, and calling us other horrible names.21
Nevertheless, in 1538, during a relative lull in the ongoing hostilities between the Swiss and Wittenberg over the Lord’s Supper, Luther was able to write to Bullinger: ‘After I had seen and heard Zwingli in Marburg, I took him for an excellent man, so also Oecolampadius, so that news of their fates devastated me.’22
Luther’s hostile response to Zwingli caused enormous offence in Zurich, but friends from across the German lands counselled patience, advising Bullinger and others not to respond defensively and make the situation worse. Wolfgang Capito in Strasbourg wrote to Bullinger:
What one should do with Luther’s fury I hardly know. In sum, something like this: either be silent, so that the nothingness of his anger is revealed or let one man answer who was not such a close friend of Zwingli’s.23
The generally hostile remarks from Wittenberg were echoed in writings from other Lutherans across German lands. In 1556, the fiery preacher Georg Melhorn in Regensburg produced mocking doggerel with a harsh truth: ‘Zwingli, who vacillates in the spirit, goes to war with his weapons. His enemies hear that he has fallen. They shoot him with insults and stab, quarter and burn him. So does God punish the Zwinglian.’24
THE SUCCESSOR
Heinrich Bullinger, unanimously chosen as Zwingli’s successor, was a respected 27-year-old minister and schoolmaster at the former monastery of Kappel.25 He had known Zwingli since 1523 and had great respect for a man he regarded as a father figure. Taking up the office of preacher in the Grossmünster, his task was to rebuild a broken Church and society.
If the magistrates of Zurich thought they had appointed a subaltern to do their bidding, they were quickly disabused. Bullinger held a public address in January 1532 pointedly entitled ‘On the Prophetic Office’.26 The young preacher looked back and forwards. The biblical prophets had not perished at Kappel, but remained in Zurich as Zwingli’s successors. The young successor did not hesitate to name Zwingli, and offered a full-blooded defence of his predecessor. There would be no turning back from the reforms of the 1520s.
Bullinger’s words were the only eulogy for Zwingli, whose adopted city had not in any way commemorated his death: there was no funeral and no grave. Bullinger told the assembled magistrates and citizens that Zwingli was a true Christian, who had stood in the line of biblical prophets. By tearing down false religion, notably the idolatry of the mass and veneration of the saints, Zwingli had declared God’s covenant with humanity. He had fulfilled the role of the prophets of Israel, for he had called for the restoration of true religion by destroying the false.27 The errors of the Zurichers had not been Zwingli’s: they were the sins of the descendants of Jacob, of the unfaithful Israelites of the city.
There was more to come. Zwingli was not one among the company of prophets: he was the true prophet. Bullinger poured forth humanist praise: ‘In this man one found once and for all and absolutely what one had sought among the true prophets of God.’ The Romans, he added,
would take pleasure in their Cicero for his rhetoric, praise their Brutus for the struggle for freedom, admire the Greeks for their generals and lawgivers: to value a Themistocles, a Pericles or a Solon. With greater truth and right we extol our Zwingli, who brought about most extraordinarily the restoration of freedom and the renewal of holy studies.28
Bullinger’s defence was robust, but subtle and also deeply political. He offered no apology for what Zwingli had actually done, and did not mention any particular theological doctrines. He made no reference to specific events or to the manner in which his predecessor had died. Bullinger’s purpose was not merely to praise the dead. Like Myconius, he fashioned a memory of Zwingli that spoke to the present and future. Zwingli was not only a prophetic hero in the establishment of the Reformation, but also a form of the Church to come.
Bullinger’s defence was also directed against contemporary Catholic writers who rejoiced in Zwingli’s death. Most prominent was the chronicler, dramatist and mercenary Hans Salat (1498–1561), who described in detail the grisly treatment of the reformer’s body, and in particular how the body had been submitted to a mock trial befitting a heretic before being dismembered.29 Bullinger understood that he had to make the case that Zwingli was neither a heretic nor a traitor to his native Swiss Confederation. In a brief work, wittily entitled ‘Salt for Salad’, written in the early months of 1532, Bullinger delivered his most polemical and passionate defence of Zwingli, whose blood, like that of Abel, cried out from the ground:
Zwingli lives however, just as scripture speaks of Abel, though dead, still being alive. He remains in his faith and in his writings, which are being read throughout the world – everyone knows what he wrote, taught, believed and preached. Therefore, with your bitter, harsh and fabricated writings you achieve nothing. Have you read his books? If so, you know perfectly well that he never contradicted piety. If you have not read them, so is it an odious offence upon you that you dare to assert what you neither know nor understand.30
THE DEFENCE OF ORTHODOXY
Oswald Myconius’ vita appeared in print in 1536, in an edition of the correspondence between Zwingli and Oecolampadius.31 The collection of letters was deliberately provocative, published as a defence of the Swiss teaching on the Lord’s Supper. It did not fail to rile Luther and his followers, leading to renewed hostilities. One of the editors, Theodor Bibliander (1506–1554), was a remarkable linguist who succeeded Zwingli in teaching the Old Testament in Zurich alongside Konrad Pellikan. Bibliander provided an extensive preface in which he robustly defended the memories of the two men, arguing that he sought to refute the ‘false accusations and dire calumnies’, as well as the ‘vile prattle’ directed against the persons and books of Oecolampadius and Zwingli. His purpose, Bibliander continued, was to reveal to all learned men how the two reformers had contributed to religion, restored the Church, and furthered the causes of erudition and piety.
Above all, Bibliander was devoted to ensuring that his teachers were absolved of accusations of false religion and that their books were restored to the ‘community of the faithful’.32 The two men were subjects of great calumny, derided as teachers of ‘depraved doctrine’:
Therefore, now that we have made it clear enough concerning the reason of dogma that Zwingli and Oecolampadius followed, there appears no trace of impiety, no treachery to the orthodox faith, no struggle against the foundations of the Catholic faith, but rather their [teaching was] conducive to the security of pious discipline.33
Bibliander did not avoid the vexed question of Zwingli’s death and the relationship of faith and war. In describing the Second Kappel War, he spoke of how ‘necessity dictated that the city of Zurich defend by arms its own ends, its own citizens, its own fortunes, and its own head against enemies’.34 It had essentially been a struggle for survival, not for religious hegemony:
Zwingli did not want to be absent from the common danger. He had always truly taught piety for the fatherland, fortitude of the soul in repelling danger, obedience to the magistrate and preservation of the faith in order that no one might deny his service to his own city when it was forced into battle contrary to all right and law.35
Further, his actions were fully justified,
for martial licence is included in the divine Word, as well as the responsibility of exhorting the soul to act bravely in the just and honest cause of war, such that not without a great reason did God also want the priests of the Israelite people to be in military orders.
Zwingli and Oecolampadius were ‘heralds of truth’, and ‘to this end, he [Zwingli] understood that the place of the herald of truth was no less on the battlefield than it was at home’.36
Deftly, Bibliander addressed the charge that Zwingli had hypocritically condemned mercenary service and advocated war. For the author, the distinction lay in the righteousness of the cause: ‘I do not ignore how execrable are mercenaries and unjust war.’ He went on:
And when unjust war brought rash and tumultuous conflict beyond expectation that they [the Catholics] fought against Zurich inauspiciously, Zwingli lay dead together with the best and strongest men, his soul returning to God from the battle line to which he had honourably come . . . And his body was treated inhumanly by the most harsh enemies, for whom he had wanted only salvation.37
Zwingli’s death was for the salvation of his enemies, and not merely to defend his cause.
REQUEST DECLINED
Just over 20 years after Zwingli’s sudden death in 1531, the St Gallen humanist, politician and friend of the reformer, Joachim von Watt, better known as Vadian, wrote to Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich succinctly addressing the problem of Zwingli’s legacy for the Reformation.38 Zwingli had known Vadian from his early studies in Vienna, and the humanist was a significant influence on the priest’s formation. Vadian had presided at the second disputation in Zurich, in 1523, and had become a leading supporter of the Reformation in his native St Gallen. His relationship to Zwingli had been somewhat problematic on account of the Zurich reformer’s aggressive politics; but his status was unquestioned, and when Heinrich Bullinger came up with the idea of printing a biography of Zwingli, he turned to the eminent figure.
In 1544, following a series of vicious attacks on the Swiss by Luther and his supporters, Bullinger decided that the only effective way of defending Zwingli against charges that he had been a heretic and the destroyer of the Swiss Confederation was to produce a Latin edition of his writings to demonstrate his orthodoxy. Bullinger’s sanguine view was that such an edition should include an accurate vita, defusing charges of moral improbity. What better way to defend the fallen reformer than to have an account of his life written by one who had truly known him, but was not from Zurich? Bullinger wrote to Vadian that he alone possessed the standing to write such a biography.39
At the moment, an edition of Zwingli’s works is being prepared by us in four volumes. [Rudolf] Gwalther is translating the German works into Latin. A most beautiful and useful work will result. Only one thing is missing, that you, most learned Vadian, can provide. A life of Zwingli.40
But Vadian was not to be persuaded. Replying about six weeks after Bullinger’s letter of early May 1544, the St Gallen reformer did not provide the answer the Zurichers wanted. His hesitation arose from prudence:
I must at least say what I mean. It seems to me by no means reasonable that at this time, when so much wisdom has been lost and so many spirits thrown into confusion and afflicted with the most unjust judgements, that a life of Zwingli should be placed in the edition of his works to be soon printed.41
While, in principle, an edition of Zwingli was fully justified, Vadian regarded the effort in Zurich as untimely, guaranteed only to infuriate both Catholics and Lutherans – and possibly lead to the renewal of a Swiss civil war. Bullinger seems to have accepted Vadian’s affirmation of their friendship that accompanied his decline of the offer, and the subject was never raised again. While Bullinger took Vadian’s refusal in good part, he did not give up the idea of producing a life of Zwingli to accompany the intended edition of the reformer’s works. Ambrosius Blarer, who was somewhat unnerved by the prospect of the edition and its ramifications, informed Vadian in September 1544 of Bullinger’s continuing intentions. The head of the Zurich Church wrote to Blarer in October that he was busy preparing the vita, so that the truth about Zwingli might be known. He claimed that his primary purpose was not to praise, but to put the record right.42
Yet what happened next – or rather, what did not happen next – remains a mystery. The collected works of Zwingli were printed in 1545 by Froschauer – but without any vita.43 Bullinger kept the reasons private, or at least his extensive correspondence offers no clues. In the end, he may have heeded Vadian’s warning.
Yet Bullinger bided his time, for he never relinquished the hope of writing an account of Zwingli’s person and reforming career. When he completed the task, it was in the context of a massive history of the Reformation drawn from a remarkable range of sources, written and oral.44 Despite Bullinger’s prodigious use of sources and remarkable erudition, there was never a propitious moment for publication. By the 1570s, Bullinger was an old man, having guided the Zurich Church for over 40 years, but the wounds of the Reformation had not healed. The Reformed and the Lutherans remained locked in bitter quarrels, and the visible churches of the Reformation were as divided as ever. Bullinger’s ‘Reformation History’ was not published, remaining instead in manuscript form, to be circulated among friends, as Vadian had suggested 30 years earlier. The name of Huldrych Zwingli continued to ignite incendiary exchanges, as the Lutherans and Catholics continued to denounce him as a heretic, Nestorius come back to life.
The theme of the prophetic preacher runs through the history, and Bullinger linked Zwingli’s rhetorical gifts with his natural virtue:
In body and face, Zwingli was an attractive man, who preached repentance and amendment of life and the enhancement of Christian love, denouncing all manner of superstition, vice, and idleness, inordinate eating, drinking, clothing, sexual activity and abuse of the poor. Zwingli never ceased to rouse the people to be obedient to the city magistrates and to live as proud Swiss.45
The results, Bullinger freely admitted, were decidedly mixed. The reformer’s sermons were seldom delivered without catcalls and whistling. He was labelled a liar. Yet he had spoken presciently, warning the Swiss against Emperor Charles V. In Bullinger’s hands, Zwingli died a martyr and a true witness for the faith.
GENEVA
John Calvin (1509–1564) tried very hard to have nothing to do with Huldrych Zwingli. In his surviving correspondence of about 1,200 letters, the Zurich reformer is mentioned eight times, and the Frenchman’s voluminous theological tracts contain some six references to him. In comparison to the frequency with which Calvin mentioned or cited Luther, Melanchthon, Bullinger and Erasmus, the name of Zwingli is strikingly absent. Even the medieval Peter Lombard and Bernard of Clairvaux appear more frequently.
Yet Calvin would have been much more aware of Zwingli’s works and ideas than he was prepared to admit. From the time of his flight from France, in 1534, until his death in 1564, he lived in the world of the Swiss Reformation.46 Geneva was not part of the Confederation, but it was a supplicant of the much more powerful Bern, where Zwingli’s theology was well entrenched. In the French Pays de Vaud, Calvin faced considerable opposition from pastors who regarded themselves as Zwinglian. And from the mid-1540s, Calvin developed a close friendship with Heinrich Bullinger, despite their differences, and made several visits to Zurich.47
So why did he fail to speak about a man whose legacy was everywhere in the culture occupied by Calvin? He had good reasons to be circumspect. Most significantly, he knew that any invocation of Zwingli’s name poured blood into the shark tank of the endless confessional war between Wittenberg and Zurich. Calvin’s aspirations for a unified Reformation front demanded that Zwingli not be mentioned. Much in line with Vadian’s views on a possible biography, he was convinced that the efforts of Bullinger and others to honour the fallen reformer scuppered any hopes of reconciliation.
Zwingli was, in some ways, emblematic of the problem that Calvin sought to resolve: the divided house of the Reformation.48 Although the roots of the Frenchman’s theology sprang from Zurich, his influences ran from Basel, Strasbourg and Wittenberg. Calvin was fully aware of the cosmopolitan nature of his theology and how it crossed the frontiers of Reformation battles. Through his close relationship with Bullinger, he acknowledged the role of the Swiss, and he needed their backing to sustain his threatened position in Geneva. Yet it would have been disastrous to praise Zwingli as he did Luther, Bucer and Bullinger. Part of the problem was local: Calvin’s opponents in the French-speaking lands invoked the name of Zwingli to attack his teaching. Calvin pointed to the example of a Latin poem composed by the pastor André Zébédée, who wrote in Zwingli’s honour:
It is a sin to expect one greater. Perhaps one should pray that an equal to him might be granted to us in this century. His learned word, his earnestness, and the sharpness of his spirit all flowed together to the praise of the Lord.49
Calvin was enraged, declaring that Zwingli was being defended as if he was the gospel.
Calvin’s issue with Zwingli was not simply political. Although his own views on the Lord’s Supper shifted over the years between the Lutheran and Swiss positions, he was adamant that Zwingli was wrong in his expression of Christ’s presence in the sacrament. On this subject, Calvin had not a single positive word to say about the Swiss reformer. Even in the 1549 agreement made with Bullinger in Zurich on the Lord’s Supper, for which the Frenchman made significant concessions, Zwingli’s name was not invoked. When Pierre Viret, reformer in the Pays de Vaud and later Calvin’s cherished friend, claimed that in his last years the Zurich reformer had changed his views towards a more favourable language of Christ’s presence, Calvin replied abruptly that he had not read those works. Calvin’s defining judgement was that Zwingli ‘was in error’.
Calvin’s few published mentions of the Zurich reformer – none in the Institutes of the Christian Religion – focused on a selection of theological issues. He offered no judgement on Zwingli’s life or death. In biblical interpretation, Calvin remarked that he had read Zwingli’s interpretation of Isaiah, which he admired for its skill, but which on account of its strong philosophical nature often departed from the text. On predestination, while there was considerable agreement, Calvin found Zwingli’s arguments ‘paradoxical’, although he did not explain why. Against these single references, he spoke more frequently about Zwingli and the sacrament, but never positively.
On a small number of occasions, however, Calvin was prepared to pay his respects. In his ‘Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper’, printed in 1541, he described the meeting at Marburg. Although there was no agreement, he said of Luther, Zwingli and Oecolampadius:
For if we are not ungrateful and forgetful of what we owe them, we shall be well able to pardon that [their disagreement] and much more without blaming or defaming them. In short, since we see that they were, and still are, distinguished for holiness of life, excellent knowledge, and ardent zeal to edify the Church, we are always to speak and judge of them with modesty, and even reverence; since at last God, after having humbled them, has in mercy been pleased to put an end to this unhappy disputation, or at least to calm it preparatory to its final settlement.50
Calvin understood that the Zurichers did not trust him on the subject of Zwingli, and that he had offended their feelings on various occasions. But away from the theological difficulties, he was prepared to honour the man as a true reformer of the Church and a voice for the gospel. Zwingli was no Luther, but he was worthy of praise. This view in Geneva found expression in the Icones of Théodore Beza (1519–1605), Calvin’s friend and successor. The Icones was a tribute to the leaders of the Reformation, pairing portraits with encomia.51 Zwingli was placed together with his friend Oecolampadius.
Beza described the two men as ‘the greatest athletes of Christ’ who ‘excelled in doctrine’ and were ‘by far the best of the Alpine peoples’.52 For Zwingli’s death, there were words of praise:
And in the war stirred up by those who could not bear the brilliance of the gospel, a hostile hand caused Zwingli’s fall while he was serving in the army for his own ministry, such that God crowned the death of his servant with a double honour. For what could be a more holy or honourable death, than to die for both the glory of God and for the patria?
Zwingli was not only a faithful servant of the gospel, but a great patriot, as the accompanying verse praised him:
Because blessed Zwingli burned with twin loves,
First of God, then of his country,
It is said that he devoted himself to both,
First to God, then to his country.
How well he paid his offerings to both,
His spirit for the fatherland, his ashes for piety!53
Beyond Swiss lands, the memory of Zwingli became part of the historical identity of the Protestant Reformation. The most influential chronicler of his fate was Johannes Sleidanus (1506–1556), who was appointed by the Schmalkaldic League to write a history of the Reformation.54 Sleidanus, who had long had access to the most significant documents of the age, completed his first volume in 1545, finishing his work in 1554. During that time, he served in various diplomatic roles on behalf of the French and Strasbourg, at one point travelling to England, where he obtained numerous sources. He was also a Protestant representative at the Council of Trent.
In Sleidanus’ account, Zwingli was a martyr to the faith and his country. In describing his death at Kappel, Sleidanus’ words echo those of Oecolampadius. The following is from the Bohun translation:
Among the number of the slain Zuinglius was found. For the custom of Zurich is such, that upon any Expedition, the principal Minister of their Church goes out along with them. Now Zuinglius who was in his own nature a very stout and couragious Man, consider’d likewise with himself, that if he should stay at home, and the battel should go against them, he must needs draw upon himself a great Odium for animating other Men by his Preaching, and yet shrinking back himself in the time of danger, he therefore resolv’d to run the common risque.55
Sleidanus’ account found its way into the greatest Protestant martyrology of the century, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. In the 1576 edition, Foxe provided an account of Zwingli’s death taken largely from Sleidanus, but with slight embellishments that gave the reformer a more Christ-like character of self-sacrifice. Foxe emphasized the manner in which Zwingli was betrayed. Citing Oecolampadius, he portrayed Zwingli as a man knowingly meeting his fate and reluctant to go into battle, but ultimately making the honourable decision.56 Through Foxe, Zwingli the betrayed prophet became part of the Protestant narrative of martyrdom.
‘THE GREAT RABBI OF ZURICH’
In the dedication of a work written at the time of the disputation at Baden in 1526, so during Zwingli’s lifetime, his one-time friend and early opponent Johannes Fabri offered an assessment of Zwingli, expressing views that were widely held by contemporary Catholics.57 ‘The same Luther,’ he wrote, ‘had a follower in Zurich with the name Huldrych Zwingli, who also five years ago began to spread the new learning among the common people. In the beginning he had greatly praised Luther.’58 However, in certain doctrines Zwingli had departed from the Wittenberger, especially on the Lord’s Supper and images, and given birth to a whole number of sects. One of the most frequent accusations levelled against Zwingli was that he was the father of Anabaptism.
Fabri sketched the Catholic portrait of Zwingli as a heretic. The Zurich priest was both a supporter and an opponent of Luther; he was the founder of Anabaptist and other splinter groups; and he destroyed images in the Church. Worst of all, he denigrated the Holy Eucharist with his heretical teaching and destroyed the worship of the Church. Fabri, as Johann Eck had done at Baden, stressed the innumerable contradictions in Zwingli’s theology. In the second chapter of this work, he enumerated 150 points that demonstrated that the Zwinglians and Lutherans were at odds.
Equally repulsive as his theology was the reformer’s character, and Fabri wrote that ‘Zwingli had in Zurich [together with Leo Jud] turned himself into a bishop.’59 He was a tyrant, who repeatedly committed acts of indecency. Referring to the imprisonment of the Anabaptists, who had been Zwingli’s brothers in Christ, Fabri called the reformer a modern-day persecutor, a Decius, Maxentius and Valerian. Even Zwingli’s musical talents were derided. Yes, he played instruments, danced and sang, but he did so as if he alone possessed the Holy Spirit. Further, it was well known that he had violated young women.60
The formidable Johann Eck, who had led the Catholic triumph at Baden in 1526, was Zwingli’s fiercest contemporary critic, a master of polemic and concise theological argument. Like Fabri, Eck focused on Zwingli as arch-heretic and moral reprobate, with an emphasis on his sacramental errors. Central to Eck’s polemic was the claim that became a pillar of Catholic assaults on Zwingli: the division between Wittenberg and Zurich over the Lord’s Supper. If the two sides could not agree on the interpretation of scripture, then clearly the Holy Spirit was not present. By casting away tradition and rejecting the authority of the Church in interpreting scripture, Zwingli had opened the door to chaos, which he had delighted to enter.
Eck was not finished. Not only was Zwingli a heretic and not Christian, but as a scholar he was a fraud. He was no philosopher and was poor in Greek and Hebrew. Invoking the anti-Semitism of his day, he styled Zwingli ‘the great rabbi of Zurich’, while deriding the reformer’s ability to read Hebrew. In other words, he was not even a good Jew. Zwingli, he added, puffed himself up with his knowledge of the language, but did not know even the most elementary principles. Once more, Zwingli had only protested against celibacy because he could not control himself and entered into a relationship with a woman that was not marriage, but whoredom. Finally, Eck attacked Zwingli as a politician, accusing him of having brought the Swiss Confederation to the brink of war. He seized on a phrase often used by Zwingli – ‘the gospel demands blood’. Although Zwingli had meant that one should be prepared to be martyred for Christ, Eck presented the statement as evidence of the bloodlust of the Swiss reformer.
The Franciscan poet and polemicist Thomas Murner (1475–1537), priest in Lucerne from 1525 to 1528, labelled Zwingli a ‘church thief’ – a tag that would stick. Murner’s latent admiration for Luther was entirely absent from his judgement of Zwingli. The reformer of Zurich was a thief in that he had robbed the Church in violation of both ecclesiastical and divine laws. He was also a coward, who had not shown up at the disputation at Baden, even though he had been assured of safe passage.
Fierce words came from among the Swiss themselves, and above all from the aforementioned chronicler Hans Salat of Lucerne, who had been active in the Italian campaigns. His chronicle, which covered the years 1517–1534, is a vital source for Catholic attitudes and deeds during the early Reformation in the Confederation. Salat described in detail Zwingli’s years in Glarus and Einsiedeln, and then his arrival in Zurich. There, wrote Salat, under the influence of Luther, Zwingli began to voice criticism of the Church. Particular emphasis was placed on Zwingli’s opposition to pensions. The chronicler’s portrayal of Zwingli touched on elements found in other Catholic writers, but he offered his own perspective. Following the disputation in Zurich in January 1523, Zwingli had become a ‘furious lion’, a ‘crafty fox’ and allegedly the military commander and governor. He was a prophet and bishop, a teacher and a god-like figure for the magistrates.61 It was he who had determined that Zurich would not be represented at Baden.
Zwingli was responsible for everything evil that had taken place. The wretched blockade of the Catholic Confederates and the resulting misery were his doing. With his bellicose nature, he had led the Swiss to armed conflict and was responsible for the Kappel wars. His ambitions were without limit: he wanted to be dictator not only in Zurich, but also in the Confederation and over all the Reformation.62 To that end, Zwingli had devised a plan to defeat the Catholics and the Habsburgs. Salat did give Zwingli some credit: the reformer had been successful because he was such a canny politician, well able to employ the weapons of fury, tact and flattery. Salat was much more interested in Zwingli the political operator than Zwingli the theologian, whose thinking he attributed largely to Luther. In the end, he rejoiced, in verse, at Zwingli’s death, which was a great Catholic victory.
The stream of polemic continued to vilify Zwingli as a heretic, but it largely followed the agenda set by his Catholic contemporaries, with old charges repeated. A novel contribution was made, however, by German humanist and controversialist Johann Cochläus (1479–1552). His own position was not particularly original: indeed, he drew most of his information from Fabri, Eck and Murner in recounting the disputations at Baden and Bern, the Kappel wars and Zwingli’s death. This humanist did, however, gather a vast body of sources, both Catholic and Protestant, which became the foundation for later accounts of the Reformation.63 Once more, the Eucharist lay at the centre of what divided Zwingli’s Reformation from the Catholic Church; however, to emphasize the true depravity of the reformers, Cochläus played Luther and Zwingli off against one another, taking great pleasure in citing Protestant sources in support of the Catholic position politically and theologically, ever attentive to contradictions.
With his death, Huldrych Zwingli passed into the memory culture of the Reformation. In the sixteenth century, the death of a reformer might be followed by struggles among his disciples to claim the leader’s mantle – such was certainly the case with Luther and Calvin. Zwingli’s death was otherwise. For no other figure of the Reformation do we find such simultaneous zeal to remember and to forget. For Heinrich Bullinger and Zurich, and for Lutherans and Catholics, there was good reason to recall Zwingli. For the former, he was the prophet and martyr; for the latter, the embodiment the embodiment of the sure fate of heresiarchs. For diametrically opposed reasons, his supporters and his enemies clung to his memory. But for the wider Reformation, there needed to be a selective forgetting – a way of holding to his theological and spiritual inheritance, uncoupled from hegemony and blood. Zwingli could not be a model for the future. He could be remembered only in light of a legacy now reworked by others.
Heinrich Bullinger was the perfect heir. He resolutely defended Zwingli, while gently revising and remoulding the form of Christianity he had come to lead. No longer were opponents Hittites to be eradicated. The marginal authority of the Swiss within the Reformation was acknowledged. Bullinger was indeed a leader of Protestantism, but through the circulation of his works, his extensive correspondence, and his support for Zurich as a refuge for religious exiles. Zwingli’s heir turned a Swiss story into a European and ultimately transatlantic one. He and his colleagues – Konrad Pellikan, Theodor Bibliander, Konrad Gesner and Rudolf Gwalther – belonged to a Confederation in which there would be little territorial expansion of their faith. Zurich was finished as a belligerent force for the gospel. Their work was as counsellors and teachers in an expanding network of Protestantism, in which they were but one part of a community of beliefs, not a sole authority.
Zwingli’s successors’ world of tense religious coexistence could never have been comprehended by him – or indeed Luther, both of whom had battled for absolutes. Conflict, violence and persecution continued; but Zwingli was now a symbol of the origins of a movement, a founding father, not an authoritative voice. He would be remembered for virtues and principles that said more about his descendants than they did about the realities of the 1520s.