1. Mountain Valley
ONE MOUNTAIN VALLEY
The Alpine resorts created by the extraordinary feats of nineteenth-century railway construction and the chic cultures of modern-day St Moritz and Klosters are far removed from the mountainous world Huldrych Zwingli knew as a child.1 The breath-taking elevations and verdant valleys belied a harsh struggle for existence in a world of subsistence farming subject to rapacious overlords, who were frequently prominent churchmen and religious houses. A possible escape lay in promises of money and adventure for mercenaries in the service of the king of France or the pope. The formation of the young Zwingli was dictated by a deep-rooted attachment to land and people, by the faith of his parents, by an acute sense of the depredations in God’s world, and by ever-present violence.
EARLY JOURNEYS
Ulrich Zwingli, as he was named (after his father) at his baptism, was born on 1 January 1484 in Wildhaus, an Alpine village in the Toggenburg valley. The surrounding landscape is stunning, with valleys that give way to towering mountains and open sky. Zwingli lived in the shadow of a mountain range whose seven peaks were named after the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire. From the snow-covered heights of the neighbouring mountain of Säntis, views reach into both modern Austria and Germany. Zwingli’s first biographer, his friend and colleague Oswald Myconius (1488–1562), observed that the beauty and drama of the land filled the young boy with a powerful sense of the nearness of God, drawing ‘something of divine quality directly from the heavens near which he lived’.2
The farmhouse in which Zwingli was born still stands. The sturdy wooden building has a large living room on the ground level and several smaller rooms above for sleeping. The size of the house indicates that his family was relatively prosperous, people of some importance in the village. Another biographer who also knew his subject recorded that Zwingli’s father came from a ‘good, old family’, was deeply pious and served as mayor. Attachment to the Church ran deep in his family. Zwingli’s beloved uncle Bartholomäus was a priest in the church at Wildhaus – which had purchased the rights over the parish, including the ability to select the priest. His mother’s cousin had been abbot of the monastery at Fischingen.
Zwingli’s childhood was not the troubled one of Martin Luther. The Swiss boy was the third of 10 children – six boys and four girls. His parents seem to have lived to a reasonable age, with his father last mentioned in 1513. A letter from his brothers written in 1519 suggests that his mother, Margaretha Meili, was no longer alive.3 We know that the two youngest brothers were dead by 1522, while his other brothers appear to have survived the vicissitudes of childhood and youth. Two joined Ulrich in becoming priests. One of the few surviving indications of Zwingli’s contact with his siblings accompanies a sermon of 1522 on the Virgin Mary: in the preface, addressed to his brothers, he defended himself against accusations of immorality and warned them against the soul-destroying temptations of mercenary service.4 His brothers appear to have embraced the Reformation, as did the abbot of St Johann, another uncle, who continued to correspond with his nephew after Zwingli had moved as a priest to Zurich in 1519 and who became a fierce advocate of reform in Toggenburg. As Zwingli tells us, his uncle loved him as if he were his own child.5
Zwingli’s occasional references to his childhood suggest a happy youth and deep affection for his relatively prosperous family. Later in life, he would recall the goodness of God being like a father offering his son grapes from the vineyard. In one of his last letters, Zwingli wrote to a life-long friend and mentor, asking him to look after a cousin with whom he had lived as a child and who was now gravely ill.6 Zwingli gave thanks that his parents had provided him with a Christian upbringing and had taught him to endure privation and suffering with good spirit. He once recalled:
My grandmother often told me a tale of how Peter and Jesus shared a bed together. Peter always went to bed earlier and left the Lord. Every morning the woman of the house came and clutched Peter by the hair and woke him up.7
No doubt he spoke from memory of sharing a bed with his brothers. Zwingli would attribute his love of his native land to stories he had been told as a child about the heroic deeds of the Swiss in their struggles against foreign rulers.
Zwingli’s later writings, particularly when speaking of divine providence, remind us of his love of nature, particularly of the mountainous lands where he grew up.8 In commenting on Psalm 104, he was moved to say of David, its author:
He portrays both the wisdom and the providence of God so that you see God as creator balancing the mountains in his mighty hand, putting each in its place, drawing out the valleys between and the cool streams in the valleys, spreading out the fields, and thrusting back the turbulent sea into its own depths, so that there may be no confusion from its unruliness. He then assigned settlers to each region, adding provision abundantly.9
To the end of his life, Zwingli spoke of God as a benevolent, providential deity.
Liberty and the freedom of the Christian emerge as familiar themes in Zwingli’s thought, again taking us back to his years in Toggenburg. Authority over the valley had been acquired by the great monastery at St Gallen in 1468, only 16 years before Zwingli’s birth. The Toggenburgers, however, were fiercely independent and jealous in guarding their rights. In the early 1490s, the abbot sent 8,000 soldiers into Toggenburg to enforce his claims over the land and Church. In Zwingli’s first work, ‘The Labyrinth’, he made a pointed reference to the greed and ambition of the abbot, with the cleric portrayed as a bear that is ‘an ugly sight’ and an ‘untamed animal’.10 Zwingli’s father was a passionate defender of the traditional rights of the valley inhabitants and of the independence of their Church, leading to a tradition of Swiss historians attributing Zwingli’s patriotism to the experiences of his youth.11
Zwingli’s father was determined that his young son, who demonstrated considerable aptitude, should receive a good education, which required proper instruction. He first entrusted the boy to his uncle Bartholomäus, who had left Wildhaus to serve as the priest in Weesen, some 25 kilometres away. Zwingli was extremely attached to his uncle and would remain in contact with him long after he left Weesen, regarding him as a model priest and mentor who had instilled in him the ideal of the faithful shepherd. Bartholomäus would indeed be remembered for establishing a fraternity to care for the children of labourers.12
Zwingli was fortunate in his educators. At the age of 10, the boy was sent to the city of Basel, much farther from home, to be taught by Gregorius Bünzli, whom the reformer would later fondly recall as an inspirational teacher. Bünzli eventually succeeded Zwingli’s uncle as priest in Weesen.13 In the university city, Zwingli was introduced to the study of Latin, music and dialectic, and his first biographer described the emergence of a remarkable student:
He made such progress in character and letters that in the disputations, which were then customary, he carried off all the honours from all the boys and youths in the school. On this account he incurred the greatest hatred on the part of the older boys. His proficiency in music was beyond that expected of his years, as is likely to be the case with those especially gifted by nature in any art.14
Zwingli distinguished himself to such a degree in Basel that his teacher sent him home with a recommendation that he study with Heinrich Wölfli (1470–1532) (Latinized as Lupulus), a distinguished scholar in Bern.15 Zwingli was fortunate to have found yet another mentor and role model, significantly a dedicated scholar of the new humanist learning who was eager for reform of the Church. Lupulus’ reforming sentiments belonged solidly in the late-medieval world: he made regular pilgrimages to the Benedictine abbey at Einsiedeln and supported the indulgence preacher Bernhardin Sanson, as he traversed the diocese of Constance. Lupulus’ biography of Bruder (Brother) Klaus (Niklaus von Flüe), published in 1501, may have laid the ground for Zwingli’s lifelong lofty view of this saintly fifteenth-century Swiss monk, whose wisdom and guidance were held to have been crucial to establishing an earlier peace within the Confederation.16
Zwingli studied under Lupulus for almost two years, once more forging an enduring relationship: after Zwingli’s death, Lupulus wrote a series of poems in honour of his former pupil.17 While in Bern, young Ulrich cultivated his skills in Latin and grammar, the foundations of which had been laid in Basel; he also commenced his study of classical authors and honed his abilities in poetry and prose.18 His musical gifts attracted particular attention. The young man, who had begun to compose his own songs, was approached by the Dominicans with an offer to join their order. Back in Basel, Bünzli got wind of this prospect and became alarmed. Together with Zwingli’s father, he decided that Ulrich should be removed from Bern and should go to university.
Ulrich matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1498, at the age of 14. The events of the next two years remain somewhat mysterious. Myconius’ account may have originated with Zwingli himself: he seems to have taken to the study of philosophy with relish and to have distinguished himself as a debater, but further than this we cannot go.19 We can say that Vienna was a natural – if distant – choice for a young man from Toggenburg, for the university, the second oldest in the Holy Roman Empire (after Prague), was a major draw for gifted students from the eastern part of the Swiss Confederation.20 In Vienna at the same time as Zwingli was his contemporary, friend and later distinguished humanist, Joachim von Watt (1484–1551), known as Vadian.21 Vadian would play a crucial role in the Swiss Reformation, as church leader and politician.
Although we struggle to find much trace of Zwingli in Vienna, we do know a great deal about the culture in which he lived for two years. Under the patronage of Emperor Maximilian I, the university and city had become a flourishing centre of humanist learning, the study of the Greek and Roman languages, literature, philosophy and history. Most notable was Conrad Celtis (1459–1508), an extraordinary character and inspiring scholar.22 Celtis’ collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts made the imperial library, which he headed, a renowned centre of humanist learning. In 1500, Celtis published an edition of the Roman historian Tacitus’ Germania, which he turned into a clarion call for the political and cultural renewal of Germany and freedom from papal Rome.23
In 1502, Zwingli returned to Basel, now to enter the university there, where he continued his study of the liberal arts; two years later he was awarded the degree of bachelor of arts.24 He had also taken up a teaching post at the parochial school of St Martin’s church, a role he relished. Years later, one of his pupils recalled with gratitude the diligence with which he had been instructed by the young Zwingli and wished he might return to the great joy of learning in those days.25 Myconius wrote of a talented young man in love with learning and the arts:
He mingled both joy with his studies, always of sunny disposition and agreeable in conversation to a remarkable degree . . . he devoted himself to the theory and practice of all forms of musical instruments with no other purpose than to refresh his mind when wearied by long deep study.26
And indeed, Zwingli appears to have learned to play the lute while in Basel.27
The university Zwingli entered was now in a fallow period, after an age when some of the most distinguished scholars had been active in the city on the Rhine. Compared to Vienna, and later Einsiedeln, Basel offered the young student little in terms of a library. As dean of the faculty of arts, Johann Heynlin (1425–?1496) had reformed the curriculum before heading off to Paris, where he introduced the first printing press in France.28 While in Basel, Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522) had prepared a Latin lexicon that would be a vital tool in the revival of classical Latin; he would subsequently emerge as one of the great Hebraists of his age. His lexicon was printed by Johann Amerbach (1440–1513), from a distinguished Basel family. Just as Reuchlin was departing, the young Sebastian Brant (1457–1521) had arrived in Basel from Strasbourg to study philosophy and then law.29 Brant is best remembered as the author of the brilliant satire the Ship of Fools (1494).30 This work, with its biting criticism of the Church and its excesses, was highly influential for Erasmus’ Praise of Folly. The woodcuts for the book were possibly prepared by a young Albrecht Dürer. While in Basel, Brant had become close friends with Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg (1445–1510), considered one of the greatest preachers of his age.
Yet although the university had lost many such leading lights, their legacy remained. In particular, the city was emerging as a leader in printing. Amerbach was the first printer in the city to use Roman type, and his wealth enabled him to produce volumes of the highest quality.31 His apprentice Johann Froben (1460–1527), who became a close friend and collaborator of Erasmus and Hans Holbein the Younger, had already produced the first edition of the Vulgate with a printed illustration in 1495.32
After the completion of his philosophical studies in 1506, Zwingli turned to theology, becoming one of the few candidates for the priesthood with such an extensive education. In theology, the Basel faculty was not especially distinguished. Myconius tells us that Zwingli grew disillusioned with the scholastic positions of his teachers – something that Myconius possibly heard directly from Zwingli, although we cannot know for sure. Nevertheless, as his later theological writings would reveal, the medieval doctors did leave their mark on him. His rejection of them may simply have been later Reformation polemic, as there is no evidence that Zwingli was anything other than a diligent student of Aristotle and the medieval doctors. While his relationship with the Basel theologians remains unclear, careful research has tracked down significant influences on his spiritual and clerical formation during these years, such as the Franciscan Stephan Brulefer, a Paris scholar active in Mainz and Metz, and the ideas of Duns Scotus (1266–1308) for his thoughts on the nature of God.33
We have no direct evidence of a connection between Zwingli and the preacher Johann Ulrich Surgant (1450–1503), but given the relative smallness of the city, and Surgant’s notoriety, there is ample scope to believe that Zwingli might have heard the older man preach.34 Surgant was a strong proponent of clerical reform and strove to revive the spiritual life of his church, St Theodor (where Zwingli had been a pupil from 1494 to 1497), by establishing side altars and setting up a new pulpit, and by using a pilgrimage to Rome to bring back relics to the city.35 Surgant was not a leading theological mind, but he threw himself into his dual duties of running the university and providing for the pastoral care of his congregation. His most enduring work was his Manuale Curatorum, dedicated to the renewal of liturgy and preaching. Printed in Basel, Augsburg and Mainz, the book was remarkably popular and the bishop of Basel declared that it should be in the library of every priest.36 Scholars have speculated that the work was the model for Zwingli’s later liturgical innovations.
By contrast, Thomas Wyttenbach’s influence on Zwingli requires no conjecture. Wyttenbach arrived in Basel in 1505 and began lecturing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.37 Zwingli and his friend Leo Jud were his students. According to one biographer:
Zwingli studied with him [Wyttenbach] and said that he learned from him for the first time that the death of Christ was once offered for our sins, by which we have been saved. At that time, he also in Basel disputed openly against indulgences. From him [Wyttenbach] he was taught theology. The more that Zwingli studied theology the more he was drawn to the priestly office so that he could preach to the people.38
In the foreword to the 1539 printed edition of Zwingli’s works, Jud left his own testimony to their teacher, who had died in 1526:
Alongside his rare eloquence he possessed an outstanding clarity of mind that enabled him to see and predict what others would bring forth later, such as the abuse of papal indulgences and other matters with which the pope in Rome has been able to bamboozle the silly people for hundreds of years.39
Wyttenbach remained in contact with Zwingli and became a strong voice in support of the Reformation. In a long letter that he wrote to Wyttenbach in 1523 (largely on the Lord’s Supper), Zwingli expressed his gratitude to his ‘most pious and learned’ former teacher.40
SWORDS AND OATHS
The processes that led to the creation of the Swiss Confederation, the land of Zwingli’s birth, would boggle the mind of even the most sophisticated systems analyst. Unlike other states of the Latin West, the Confederation (Eidgenossenschaft) had no centre and little sense of a collective identity. It consisted of a diverse array of urban and rural territories with their own histories, cultures and institutions that formed a complex web of trade and defensive agreements which united them against traditional external enemies, such as the Austrian Habsburgs. In addition, there were the Mandated Territories, such as Thurgau and the Freie Ämter, lands jointly governed by various Confederates.
The first Confederates (Eidgenossen) were the Alpine regions of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, which in August 1291 formed an ‘Eternal Alliance’ – primarily concerned with developing forms of jurisdiction and mutual defence. Only much later, in the nineteenth century, was the year 1291 recognized as the founding moment for modern Switzerland, chosen as the country prepared to mark its 600th anniversary in 1891. Previously, the genesis of the Confederation had been located in 1307 by the most influential Swiss historian of the early modern period, Aegidius Tschudi (1505–1572), in his ‘Swiss Chronicle’ (Chronicon Helveticum) of 1550.41 The year 1307 was associated by Tschudi with the Rütlischwur, an oath taken by the leaders of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden on a meadow above the Lake of Uri. Although the historical accuracy of this event (first mentioned in 1420) has been much debated, it is entirely plausible that an oath was indeed sworn as part of a concerted action against the Habsburg overlords. The myth of William Tell had emerged among the Swiss in the late Middle Ages to bolster their claims to have resisted tyranny and thus to justify the existence of a Swiss state. Friedrich Schiller’s 1804 play Wilhelm Tell cemented this narrative of heroic revolt for nineteenth-century patriots.42
During the fourteenth century, the Confederation grew to eight members, including the cities of Zurich and Bern, along with Zug and Glarus. The crucial moment for the consolidation of these alliances was the battle of Sempach in July 1386, which followed a period of growing conflict with Duke Leopold of Austria.43 The Swiss, greatly outnumbered, gained the upper hand and broke through the Austrian lines, inflicting carnage and leaving Duke Leopold and many knights slaughtered on the field. Numbers were significant in the development of Swiss identity. Time and again, like the ancient Israelites, they defeated their numerically superior foes. The battle of Sempach came to represent the valour of the Swiss underdogs against the forces of tyranny – a struggle won by God’s favour.44 Two years later, in 1388, the fate of the Austrians was repeated with their devastating defeat at the battle of Näfels. For centuries to come – and feeding into the swelling patriotism of the nineteenth century – Sempach was recalled as a decisive moment in the formation of a Swiss identity and as the beginning of a period of military glory that would extend to the Reformation.
But the story of the Swiss Confederation in the late Middle Ages was far from a straightforward struggle with the Habsburgs. Thus, for example, when the ambitious Zurichers claimed and occupied the lands of the count of Toggenburg in the 1430s, its rival Confederates expelled the city from the Confederation. To bolster its position, Zurich made an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor, the Habsburg Frederick III. The forces of the Confederation defeated Zurich in 1443 and laid siege to the city. Frederick sought the support of the French king, who sent a large contingent of mercenaries to support Zurich. Although the mercenaries were victorious in 1444, the victor’s losses were so heavy that the French soldiers withdrew. This extraordinarily bitter struggle, known as the Old Zurich War, was marked by one particularly notorious moment. Zurich’s enemies had laid siege to the Greifensee castle, and when the garrison surrendered, all but two men were beheaded in an act of cruelty that shocked contemporaries and that survived in literary accounts by Swiss authors such as Gottfried Keller. In the end, Zurich sued for peace and was readmitted to the Confederation; but other members remained deeply suspicious of the city’s motives, a bad memory revived with the Reformation.
The Swiss emerged as major players on the European stage in the fifteenth century. The ambitions of Charles the Bold (1433–1477), who dreamed of turning the wealthy duchy of Burgundy into a kingdom, greatly unsettled the Swiss.45 Bern had not joined the recent peace with Austria and instead pursued its own aggressive policy of expansion, which brought it into conflict with the Burgundians.46 Charles reacted militarily. However, to his great cost, he vastly underestimated his opponents, who were bolstered by support from other Swiss Confederates. Charles’ infamy was confirmed when he ordered the execution of the garrison of the castle of Grandson after they had surrendered, hanging the men from trees. In March 1476, the Swiss destroyed the Burgundian army, forcing Charles to flee and to abandon both his artillery and a remarkable collection of treasures, which fell into the hands of the Bernese.47 Worse was to follow: in June 1476, Charles was once more defeated by the Swiss and lost over a third of his army of 30,000 men, many of whom drowned or were picked off by archers as they tried to escape by swimming across a lake.48 Charles met his own end in January 1477, when his much-diminished forces were routed. The duke’s frozen, disfigured corpse was found on the ice of the river, savaged by wild animals; it was recognizable only to his personal physician.
The Burgundian wars had inaugurated the age of the Swiss soldier, acclaimed across Europe for his skill and courage.49 The armies of the Confederation, having now humiliated both the Habsburgs and the Burgundians, acquired a reputation for invincibility, although contemporaries were already voicing concern about this taste for war.50 Triumph came with increasing tensions. Any sense of common cause was belied by a variety of alliances and arrangements that left some of the older states feeling threatened. At a series of meetings at Stans a compromise was reached in December 1481 that established a means for conflict resolution.51 The agreement allowed for the expansion of the Confederation, with the entry of Fribourg and Solothurn, which increased the power of the cities over the rural members.
The second half of the fifteenth century saw a dramatic rise in the number of young Swiss men entering the military service of foreign paymasters. Mountainous regions were increasingly crippled by insufficient resources to sustain growing communities, and as French and papal recruiters travelled from village to village, they found willing recruits. The numbers are staggering. The Confederation had a population of between 600,000 and 800,000 inhabitants in 1500; it has been reckoned that each year approximately 5,000 Swiss men served as mercenaries between the Burgundian wars (1474–1477) and the battle of Marignano in 1515.52
There was nothing romantic about the mercenary trade: half of those who left for military service are thought never to have returned. And those who did make it home were often maimed and unable to work. Additionally, opponents of the trade, Zwingli included, readily connected foreign soldiering with moral turpitude, not least prostitution and the rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The pensions paid to local officials and urban patrician families were widely viewed as a corruption of older Swiss virtues of loyalty to the fatherland. This theme of a lost innocence – God’s elect, the valorous people of the mountain valleys, had turned to venal rewards – was widespread long before Zwingli began his preaching. Rural communities were often decimated by attrition rates that affected the political and social dynamics of the Confederation. Thus, for example, within the towns, the deaths of leading citizens as they commanded troops in foreign campaigns created opportunities for men from less affluent backgrounds and less prominent families to advance their careers.53
In the figure of Hans Waldmann (1435–1489), Zurich provides us with a telling example of its ambitions to extend its influence. A military hero of the Burgundian wars who had led the Swiss troops to victory at Morat, he had advanced his chances in the world through marriage into an influential family.54 By 1480, he was head of the guilds in Zurich, having greatly enhanced their authority over the patricians who had traditionally ruled the city. He was also deeply implicated in the mercenary business, receiving from the duke of Milan vast payment in return for political favours. Waldmann was a man of fascinating contrasts: deeply pious, he became rich from the sale of mercenaries; eager for power, he used his authority to attempt to reform the city and rural areas. Waldmann was also responsible for greatly extending the control of the magistrates over the affairs and possessions of the Church, a process by which the late-medieval Church would increasingly fall under civic authority. Arrested and tortured on accusations of corruption and sodomy, he was beheaded with a sword, a final recognition of his noble status. He died when Zwingli was only five, but his legacy was of an aggressive, aspirational Zurich that sought to dominate the Confederation.
With the Swabian War of 1499, also known as the Swiss War, the Confederates and the Habsburgs clashed for the final time, bringing a new degree of autonomy.55 The war covered a large swathe of territory from Graubünden in the east to Constance in the Holy Roman Empire. After a series of minor skirmishes, the Swiss inflicted on the forces of the Swabian League and Emperor Maximilian I a humiliating defeat at Dornach, near Basel. Once more, the Swiss were outnumbered, but such was their skill that they succeeded in putting the imperial forces to flight, leaving Maximilian’s commander Heinrich von Fürstenberg dead on the battlefield. The subsequent treaty of Basel granted further lands to the Swiss and a considerable level of autonomy, although formally the Confederation remained part of the Holy Roman Empire. Full independence would come in 1648, with the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’ War.56 The year 1501 did bring significant growth for the Swiss Confederation with the entry of wealthy Basel.
In the fifteenth century, Europe was only beginning to acknowledge the Swiss; and even then, the Confederation itself was not a unified, independent land. It remained a perplexing bundle of members, held together by history and agreements, but essentially composed of fiercely local identities. The Swiss had no language for a republic or for republican thought, and criticism of princes and rulers did not entail any form of political ideal.57 The Swiss identity to which Zwingli appealed was fluid and evolving. There were few centralizing institutions. The most prominent was the Swiss Diet, to which each Confederate sent delegates. Although it had limited powers over the individual states, it oversaw the administration of shared lands and decisions about war and peace.58 The Swiss Diet was always marked by competing interests and rivalries. In that sense, it belonged to a wider tradition of defensive leagues, like the contemporary Hansa on the Baltic or the Swabian League in southern Germany. All these associations were held together by external threats, whether political or economic, and by a desire to preserve peace and order.59
FORMATION OF A PATRIOT
Huldrych Zwingli was born into a land of myths. The heroic accounts narrated by the people and written down by chroniclers were not simply fabrications or imaginary tales: they were stories by which the Swiss came to know themselves as a chosen people, with a distinctive identity. They told of the creation of the Confederation in revolt against Habsburg tyranny. By the time of Zwingli’s birth in 1484, the Swiss had won a fearsome reputation for invincibility on the battlefield, having humbled a Burgundian duke, as well as the neighbouring Austrians. Zwingli was well aware of the heroes, and throughout his life he would speak reverently of the ascetic and mystic Bruder Klaus (1417–1487), later patron saint of Switzerland and canonized in 1947. Bruder Klaus stood for him among the virtuous forefathers of the Confederation, the great figures of the past. By 1479, a deacon at the great Benedictine monastery at Einsiedeln had written the first account of the Swiss, tracing their ancestry to antiquity.60 The humanists of this generation began to speak of ‘Helvetia’, and its physical presence was recorded by Renaissance maps.
With its passion for the history of valorous deeds, Renaissance humanism offered ways to craft a Swiss legacy. The first history of the entire Confederation, Petermann Etterlin’s Chronicle of the Praiseworthy Confederation, was printed in Basel in 1507, the year after Zwingli completed his studies in the city.61 A Latin description of the 13 members of the Confederation followed seven years later, the work of the humanist Heinrich Glarean,62 while a four-part history of the Swiss from Julius Caesar to the present day was composed by Heinrich Brennwald between 1508 and 1516.63
Zwingli’s education led him to explore the works of Greek and Roman antiquity and to share the belief that the achievements of that golden age might be recovered.64 Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, so far as they anticipated scripture, were guides to the proper nature of society and the cultivation of the good life. This classical wisdom fed into the history of his own people, beginning with Caesar’s description of the ‘Helvetii’ as a Celtic tribe dwelling on the Swiss plateau. Zwingli and his humanist friends and mentors shared a passion for finding the glorious heritage of the Swiss in antiquity. It was in part from the praise of these Swiss authors for their ancient virtues and fierce resistance to foreign oppression that Zwingli acquired the language of ‘fatherland’.65
Zwingli’s love was not simply for the people of his native Toggenburg, but for the Swiss as a whole, whose mountains and valleys he knew as his fatherland. He always identified Toggenburg as his home, or Heimat; but above all else for him was the Swiss Confederation.66 That would remain true until his death. Although he came to be so closely identified with Zurich, and often spoke proudly of its history and achievements, it was never his fatherland, never his primary point of reference. The Swiss people were the elect, and he spoke to them. He was Swiss, as he wrote to his fellow Confederates in 1524:
The Confederation has never left my heart. I have always rejoiced in its fortune, and grieved in its misfortune. I therefore hope that you will look at this simple and plain writing and consider it worthy not so much because of the cleverness of the words or of the wisdom, but because of the good faith of my character.67
He quoted Bruder Klaus, who had declared that the Confederation could never be conquered, and then continued:
Almighty God gave so much favour and grace to our forefathers that they freed themselves from the arbitrary nobility and lived afterwards in such a brotherly manner that they increased by example in honour and wealth.68
By the time he composed those words, Zwingli was already reviled by his Catholic landsmen for his apostasy and destruction of the Church. His appeal to Swiss unity was made in terms of a new vision of a Christian people that was rejected by his opponents. But his words were about his enduring conviction that the Confederation was not merely an ideal, but a reality which he served as priest and prophet, and for which he would risk his life. He was not naïve. Zwingli’s love of his land and its people was tempered by his anticipation of God’s terrible judgement on the Swiss for prostituting themselves, by receiving corrupting pensions and by serving as mercenaries to foreigners.
Like the ancient Israelites – a comparison Zwingli frequently made – the Swiss were God’s chosen, who had sinned and were to be punished for their greed, lust and idolatry.69 Zwingli yearned to recover the lost world of the virtuous forefathers who had embodied the singular virtues of the Swiss. Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) later recounted Zwingli’s nostalgia:
He showed that our forefathers were so glad about freedom and grace from God that they led God-fearing, pious and Christian lives. They gave so much care for justice that even their enemies had to admit that they were a pious and lawful people. Thanks to them, many people have often found justice who would have otherwise been without any rights. They were Christians, although they had not been rightly taught in many truths [the gospel] . . . They remained unconquered by the princes and lords because they lived honestly and innocently.70
Zwingli’s nostalgia was for a lost age: the age of heroes could be recovered, and as a priest steeped in the Bible and the wisdom of the ancients, he sought to find the way. The history of his land was an act of remembering and forgetting, a practice he would employ with the Reformation. The recalling of a virtuous past required the eradication of unwanted memories.