Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln For ten years, 1506-1516, Zwingli was parish priest of the little town of Glarus.1 Most Swiss towns were no larger than some English or French villages; and Glarus, although the capital of an independent state (Ort\ was simply a small rural market town of less than 2000 inhabitants. If it was fortunate to have attracted the services of a master of arts from Basle,
Zwingli was at least equally fortunate to secure such a living when only 23 and without pastoral experience. Many of his contemporaries waited much longer before obtaining a cure of souls like this with a house and a guaranteed income.
Family influence, after the habit of the age, had much to do with it. The same uncle, Bartholomew, who had been responsible for much of his nephew's education, and was rural dean at Weesen, as such was able to put forward a name in the proper quarters. It is also not unlikely that the suggestion was supported by Zwingli's former tutor, Gregory Biinzli, who was also influential in the neighbourhood. Further, an arrangement had to be made with a well-known citizen of Zurich, Heinrich Goldli,2 who was one of the many pluralists of the day and who had to be compensated for loss of his expectancy to the benefice.
The incoming minister had hardly started the study of theology at the university, and may well not have intended to continue it. This, however, was quite usual - the universities habitually themselves sent lists of recommended students to Rome, expecting graduates from the faculty of arts to be provided with benefices. It was not until the Council of Trent, sixty years later, paid attention to the problem of clergy-training, that the 1 There is little to add to the monograph of G. Heer, Ulrich Zwingli ah Pfarrer von Glarus
(Zurich, 1884).
2 Heinrich Goldli (or Goldlin), a natural son of one of the canons of the Great Minster, was a canon of Embrach and parish priest of Baden, and held the offices of equerry, chamberlain and attendant to the Pope. His services to Rome had been rewarded by the grant of eight
'reservations', benefices which were at his disposition if falling vacant in an 'odd' month.
Glarus happened to fall into this category, and Zwingli agreed to pay Goldli 10 gulden annually for the renunciation of his rights. This may have been dangerously close to simony.
Z vii, 479 n. 4; Farner 1, 243, 247. O. Vasella, Die Wahl Zwinglis ah Lent priest er von Glarus,
ZSK 51 (1957), 27-35-
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln seminary system came into operation. As a university student, Zwingli had, along with the others, received a formal token snip of the hair which made him a clerk, clericus. This, however, did not mean admission even to the minor orders of doorkeeper, exorcist, reader and acolyte which preceded ordination as subdeacon, then deacon and priest. Any bishop, but only a bishop, could confer the sacrament of Orders; it was, indeed, one of the chief episcopal prerogatives and was often performed by a suffragan bishop after the payment of the appropriate fees to the bishop's Official.
All the necessary ceremonies could be completed in one day, but the common practice was for the three Ember days after Holy Cross Day
(14 September) to be used. This, apparently, was applied in Zwingli's case.1
There is no suggestion that Zwingli regarded his ordination as priest, with all the spiritual authority and power that this implied, as anything more than a routine requirement. The teaching of the church had been known to him all his life; he was doing as his friends and relations had done, and even the intense moment of his first mass, at Wildhaus, on 29 September, seems to have aroused no special emotions. His first sermon was preached at Rapperswil. He knew what he was doing, just as later he knew equally well what he was criticising. For ten years he was a normal parish priest - saying mass every day, reading the services from the Breviary, hearing confessions, baptising, marrying, burying, taking the reserved sacrament to the sick while pious observers knelt and crossed themselves, taking part in processions, administering extreme unction to the dying. In all this, the young man had the help of three or four assistants, older presumably than himself. It was all quite nice, smug and unexceptional.
Glarus2 was a place of some political importance. It was the capital of a state which had been accepted into the Confederation in 1352 on somewhat subordinate terms to Zurich and the three original' Forest Cantons', but by 1456 it was fully integrated, taking precedence immediately after Zug.3 There could not be a more typically Swiss assignment for a young man. There were relics4 of St Fridolin and St Hilary in the parish church to be exhibited, there were boys to be taught to read, and there were
1 If so, he was some four months short of the canonical age of 23. No record of his ordination, almost certainly at Constance, has been preserved.
2 For an early enthusiastic and uncritical assessment see J. H. Tschudi, Beschreibung des Loll.
Orths und Lands Glarus (Ziirich, 1714). J. Winteler, Geschichte des Landes Glarus, 2 Bde.
(Glarus, 1952, 1954) 1, 204-341.
3 It also shared in the administration of the Mandated Territories (eidgenossische Vogteien), a matter of some importance later. Staehelin 1, 44.
*• There was an altar with an indulgence for prayers said before it; there were a few other relics and church bells newly cast from the bronze of Burgundian cannon captured in 1466. Koehler
Zwingli) 29.
ZWINGLI sermons to be preached, this in itself being a somewhat unusual activity for a parish priest. Although a state capital, Glarus could hardly have been more rural in habits and outlook. Cattle were the chief source of livelihood and of exchange, so it was as well that the new pastor was himself a countryman.
Glarus was a fighting state. It had helped to secure independence by sending the largest contingent to resist the Habsburg forces at Nafels
(9 April 1388), and its inhabitants well understood that security implied vigilance and armed defence, and also that successful warfare was profitable. In the main street of the little town that was the young priest's new home there were strong, rough, violent men accustomed to bloodshed and to settling arguments with edged weapons; there were lots of children and some loose women, plenty of noise and smells, and hardly anyone who could read or write.
The new priest was determined to take his work seriously. While at Basle, he had already directed his thoughts towards the Bible, and now, markedly under the influence of the renowned and much-admired Erasmus, he was coming to appreciate for the first time the purity and simplicity of the Gospel narrative. His parishioners, including the inhabitants of three quite distant villages, were his spiritual children for whom he was answerable to God. Early in his incumbency, he arranged for some regular instruction in Latin to be available in Glarus by forming a small grammar school there.* There were already a few boys who had learnt their letters, and for these he arranged tuition in elementary Latin, probably by a chantry priest who charged fees for his services. Zwingli himself shared in this teaching, but with a heavy programme of private study added to his normal parish duties, which he did not neglect, he obviously could only devote limited time to it. He also prepared a few boys, such as Aegidius
Tschudi, for the university.2
These years at Glarus were ones of deliberate and effective reading and reflection, in some respects the most fruitful part of his life, since he had, and made good use of, ample time and opportunity to devote himself to his books. In view of later events, it is worth noting that when the income from the indulgence-endowed relics in his Church allowed it, he forwarded the construction in 1510 of a special chapel foi their suitable exposition. It is from the Glarus residence that we have the first letter3 to 1 G. Heer, 'Geschichte des hoheren Schulwesens im Kanton Glarus' in JHVG 20 (1883), i-492 Aegidius (Gilg) Tschudi (1505-72), who always remained a Catholic, became one of the first historians of the Confederation. Another member of the family and possible pupil, Valentin
Tschudi (1499-1555), later also priest in Glarus, was highly appreciative of Zwingli's activity and example. H. Triimpy, Glarner Stadenten im Zeitalter des Humanismns JHVG 55
(1952), 273-84.
3 z vii, 1-4.
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln him that chance has preserved, written from Cologne on 13 July 1510 by Heinrich Loriti (Glarean). Among sixteenth century scholars letterwriting was very much a conscious form of linguistic exercise. Letters were written with a view, if not to publication in the modern sense, at least to wide circulation. They were a recognised way of demonstrating literary style as well as conveying information. They followed, rather carefully, certain conventions of presentation and can seldom be read as if they were entirely private and objective communications, as is shown by many references to additional, possibly even contradictory, information to be supplied by the messenger. Thus, conscious artificiality and serious gaps diminish the otherwise overriding interest of the letters. When, later, they deal less with literature and more with religion and politics, these limitations become more serious. The prince of sixteenth-century letterwriters was Erasmus, to whom the well-turned phrase came so easily and so naturally and who outrageously flattered his rich and powerful potential patrons in his letters while keeping careful copies of what he wrote.
Zwingli did not, apparently, go as far as this, with the result that most of his own communications are lost: we have, as it were, many 'in' letters, without the replies.
In some ways this first surviving letter of 1510 tells us a good deal.
Heinrich Loriti was then 22, four years Zwingli's junior. He was to live to be over seventy and was to remain a Catholic and an exile from the homeland that gave him his name, Henry of Glarus. For him already in 1510
Zwingli is humanissimus, devoted to letters, and their contact is about books. Troubles in Venice, he reports, make Ptolemy's works unobtainable in Cologne where he was studying. There are, however, some maps available, to which Portuguese discoveries have made significant additions.
The writer is conscious of the desirability of knowing Greek, for which the grammar of Chrysoloras was still the standard text and almost the only one available. A pilgrimage to the ancient basilica and to the tomb of the unsaintly St Charles the Great at Aachen, in which Zwingli took part, is taken for granted as a natural exercise for a young man. Finally, he announces his desire to exchange Cologne beer for Basle water (and wine), proceeding to explain elaborately that the Cologne university course was
'modern', based on Duns Scotus, full of word-spinning and futile mockery. He preferred the 'old way' of Basle. With the letter, he sent a copy of some lyrics that he had written. He refers, like so many of his contemporaries, to Pico della Mirandola who was to influence his later thought, and indicates in passing that he does not wish to become Zwingli's immediate neighbour as parish priest of Mollis.1
A great many letters are like this, the writer dashing irrelevantly from 1 z VII, 1-4.
ZWINGLI one literary topic to another, and they show us what the young men of the day were thinking about. 'Humanissime' - every indication is that during the years 1506 to 1510 any moment that could be spared from routine parish business was devoted by Zwingli to intense study, to reading and commenting upon such books as could be purchased for him in Basle or Germany. The Latin classics came first - Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Caesar,
Pliny, Aulus Gellius, Valerius Maximus,1 for certain. Like Erasmus and Colet, he admired and used the writings of Lactantius, the 'Christian
Cicero', whom he regarded almost as a Father of the church and whose views on providence formed a basis for his later thought about predestination.2 Zwingli had a young man's passion for buying books, which it was now possible to do, and he later defended his retention from 1515 of a papal pension3 on the somewhat weak grounds that he used it for this purpose. Book-buying went on, and there was now time for deep study which was to be denied him later - the quiet years at Glarus and Einsiedeln were invaluable to one with so retentive a memory. After his death, most of his books were acquired from his widow for the Great Minster library, and a number, complete with his own marginal annotations, have never left Zurich. Koehler listed and analysed all that could be found of these books in an invaluable monograph,4 but there were many more.
Later in life, two thirds of what he kept were theological, but at Glarus the proportion was much more in favour of the Latin classics.
There was, almost inevitably, the newest edition of St Augustine's City of God printed at Basle in 1515 by Petri,5 much annotated by Zwingli; there were the works of Jerome and Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzen and Chrysostom among the Fathers, all mixed with the Satires of Juvenal, Laurentius Valla's translation of Homer, the writings of Pico della Mirandola, Plutarch's Lives, the Quodlibeta of Duns Scotus and, significantly, practically everything published by Erasmus.6 There was the early and unsatisfactory Lexicon Graecum of Suidas, and Reuchlin's Rudimenta Hebraica. Making every allowance for the conventions of the age, the nature and content of these books indicate an exceptionally studious and active mind. Peculiarly interesting is the book now in the Cantonal Library of Aarau, the Vulgate, printed apparently in 1479, and given by Zwingli to Hans Fries. There are many marginalia, but their attribution is uncertain. It is, however, a cause for reflection that the man
1 He relied very closely on this writer for his knowledge of Roman history.
2 ZWA xiii, 375-89.
3 See below, 76.
4 This appeared, not easily accessible, in 1921 - Koehler, Bibliothek, 84 NblW (1921). For the marginalia, ZKG 40 (1922), 41-73, Bd. 42 (1923), 49-76, Bd. 45 (1926), 243-76.
5 Eight volumes of the 1506 (Basle) edition of the writings of St Augustine were given him by John Froben. Below 64.
6 J. Rogge, Zwingli und Erasmus. Die Friedensgedanken des jungen Zwingli (Stuttgart, 1962),
27-8.
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln who in later life was so often to proclaim with assurance that his teaching was not only exclusively Bible-based but easily deduced from the Bible, was himself diligently studying the Bible and the Fathers for some ten years without showing any public signs of repudiation of the traditional church interpretation thereof.
Apart from routine duties, the Glarus-Einsiedeln incumbency is almost entirely one of continuous humanist study. His correspondence is almost exclusively literary, and the fashionable exchanges with such scholars as Glarean, Vadian, William Nesen, Peter and Aegidius Tschudi, Peter
Falck, Conrad Grebel and Erasmus himself, indicate where his interests lay. These fragmentary survivals of what must already have been quite a considerable correspondence are concerned mainly with poetry, Latin pronunciation, Aristotle, the study of Greek, and there are also some references to the University of Vienna. Wide reading and care for Latin style resulted in the acceptance of the young priest into the little learned group of northern humanists. He also took care to build up his knowledge of Greek which, while unusual,1 was not as good as that of Erasmus who was himself no great Greek scholar. Then came the study of Hebrew, laying the foundations of his knowledge of that language which he was later to develop considerably.
What began as part of the emulation of fashionable youth, the desire and determination to be associated with the current interest in classical antiquities and linguistic elegance, became merged with biblical studies.
Zwingli undoubtedly had linguistic ability and was conscious of his trilingual attainments. The gift of tongues was that of the Holy Spirit, and when, in later life, he pondered on the story of Pentecost, his easy ascendancy over many of his opponents in knowledge of Greek and Hebrew strengthened his conviction that he was among the elect.
There was thus a certain serene normality about the thirty years of his life which preceded fame and notoriety. The country-bred youth from the Toggenburg with his strong local accent, graduate, priest, scholar, humanist, interested in letters, in his countrymen, in his parishioners, thought deeply about his reading, his duties and the state of the church in the light of his increasingly intensive study of the Bible. There was a good deal to think about, the more so if he considered, as he did, the history and background of his own people. Where was the seat of government ? What held his society together ? The government of which the Emperor Maximilian was the head counted for little: such laws as there were rested on local traditions and customs, supplemented by federal agreements and enforced by councils, local administrators and officers, able to secure peace
1 In 1519 he could be said to be 'Latinae linguae doctissimus, Graecae non indoctus.. .semigreculus'. Z vn, 141, 226.
ZWINGLI and safety for person and property by the use, where necessary, of armed force. It was while Zwingli was at Glarus that the Swiss Confederation came to consist of the thirteen independent cooperating units that lasted until 1798. Appenzell was admitted as a full independent member (ein vollberechtigte On) on 17 December 1513,1 in spite of the fact that it was surrounded on all sides by the lands of the Prince Abbot of St Gall. No one at the time could have perceived that this was the end of an era of expansion for the Confederation, least of all the parish priest of Glarus.
In 1513 Zwingli returned to his parsonage after direct involvement in war and politics in circumstances which powerfully affected alike his future career and his convictions. No thoughtful inhabitant of central
Switzerland could be indifferent, at the opening of the sixteenth century, to the fate of northern Italy. Savoy, Milan and Venice provided markets, sources of supply and opportunities for trade to their northern neighbours.
The claim of Louis XII of France to be the lawful ruler of Milan was disputed by the Sforza dynasty of dukes, who were actually in possession, and by the Emperor as overlord. The neighbouring dukes of Savoy asserted authority over considerable areas of the Vaud which Berne regarded as its own and was soon to secure by war. The episcopal city of Geneva occupied a key-position in this rivalry; it could not stand alone, but with the alliance and help of Berne and the neutrality of France it might, and ultimately did, become independent.
In the east, Venice, needing security for its northern line of communication, had become involved in 1509 in hostilities with the States of the Church, that aggressive central Italian group of principalities, duchies and cities over which the Pope was temporal autocrat. To the north lay
Rhaetia, the home of the Grey Leagues (Graubilnden) of independent peasants allied with the Swiss Confederation and with uncertain frontiers.
Similarly, no one was very clear about the line of demarcation between the numerous communities of Valais and the duchy of Milan. At the same time, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden were anxious to control the southern route, which meant the conquest or submission of the Maggia and Ticino valleys and the occupation of the northern shores of Lakes Maggiore,
Lugano and Como. In this exercise, undertaken aggressively to secure the indispensable north-south trade route, the central states had learnt that much of the north Italian plain was at their mercy. Berne had obtained security by the overthrow of Charles the Rash and was poised for aggression. Charles' son-in-law, Maximilian, had suffered a humiliating defeat in the Swabian war and was certainly not anxious to renew the combat, the more so since Basle had entered the Confederation in 1501.
1 Nabholz/Klaui, 90-5; R. Fischer, W. Schlapfer, F. Stark, Appenzeller Geschichte (Urnasch,
1964) 1, 300.
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln Military success indeed had nearly proved disastrous to the Swiss themselves, for the states had almost come to blows over the allocation of the gains of war, but this had been averted in time by the influence of the astonishing, or at least charismatic, character of Niklaus von der Flue.1 In 1510, then, when Zwingli had been four years in Glarus, Switzerland had, to use modern terminology, become a Great Power, unconquerable at home and able to wage successful war against any neighbour. There was no disciplined force in the world to equal a Swiss army. Given anything like equal numbers, victory was almost assured by its impenetrable squares of pikemen whose ranks could not be broken by cavalry charges and whose collective discipline was matched by individual bravery; by the devastation that could be caused by the fearful halberds and axes of men who came to kill relentlessly and not to take prisoners; and by the marksmanship of the crossbowmen.
Self defence had involved compulsory military service in each selfgoverning unit; security had demanded and obtained cooperation, first and foremost in preventing invasion of the homeland. In fifteenth and sixteenth century conditions, defence and aggression were neither distinguished nor distinguishable, and men from Glarus had learnt, as the English had discovered in the fourteenth century, that warfare paid handsome dividends, at any rate in the short run. There was little outlet for either industry or ability in the central states. Lumbering, while laborious, was scarcely profitable, for western Europe was well supplied with timber, and almost the only other means of livelihood in the countryside was cattle rearing. Far too little grain or grapes could be cultivated to satisfy even the frugal needs of growing families. A little spinning and weaving went on in a very few centres such as Zurich and St Gall, and there were tolls to be obtained from merchants in transit and some small profit in the carriage of goods. But it was all quite insufficient; life was extremely hard, and the peasant was usually miserably poor.
This poverty was emphasised by the existence of wealthy neighbours.
The France of Louis XII was on its way to becoming the richest of European countries; while north Italy, in Guicciardini's words, 'not only abounded in inhabitants, merchandise and riches but she was distinguished by the magnificence of many princes, by the splendour of many noble and beautiful cities, by the presence of the papacy and the majesty of the church...she shone by her industry and her arts, she deservedly enjoyed among all peoples a distinguished reputation and renown'.2 There was obviously there much that was to be had for the taking, as the French had
1 K. Durrer, Bruder Klaus. Die altesten Quellen u'ber den seligen Nikolaus von Flue, sein Leben und seinen Einfluss, 2 Bde. (Sarnen, 1917-1921).
2 F. Guicciardini, La Storia d'Italia (ed. A. Gherardi) 4 vols. (Florence, 191$) 1, 94.
ZWINGLI already demonstrated. The men who returned from Morat and Nancy laden with booty whose value they had not realised soon learnt that it was possible in one short campaign to bring back enough to be rich for life. If there was no excuse by way of self defence for an incursion into Franche
Comte or Ticino, there were tempting offers from kings and nobles anxious for bodyguards and permanent military striking forces. The Italian princes had long since hired soldiers, but from 1500 the French were the best paymasters. Ever since the demonstration of Swiss toughness at St Jakob an der Birs in 1448, French governments had recognised the military potentialities of their neighbours. There had been Swiss volunteers with the French army led by Charles VIII into Italy in 1494-5 where their exploits were noted with full appreciation, so much so that when
Louis XII decided in 1499 to advance his claims to the Duchy of Milan and to depose Ludovico il Moro, his agents hired some 10,000 Swiss adventurers to support the French side. Maximilian had followed suit, so that, at the siege of Novara in April 1500 Swiss faced Swiss. They were unwilling to fight as they had promised. Hence Milan passed into French occupation and the Sforza ruler was sent to Loches a prisoner. It was not a creditable episode.
The Inner States took advantage of the situation to occupy the key position of Bellinzona and much of the territory around Lake Maggiore.
This corporate occupation by the Inner States of the Blenio valley with Lugano and Locarno was accepted by Louis XII at Arona in 1503.1 It was valuable territory, but the cost in Swiss blood had been so high that there was some agreement at a Diet2 in July 1503 that foreign service and foreign bribery were objectionable and were to be avoided. This was not, however, practical politics. The Swiss balance of payments could be maintained only by an export policy of armed men some of whom inevitably would never return, but those who did brought to their homes and villages the means of a life a little above, and sometimes appreciably above, subsistence level.
All this was specially true of central Switzerland. The men of Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zug and Glarus were willing volunteers because their families needed the gold they could bring, or send, home. The inhabitants of walled cities where a secure market concentrated trade, where government offices attracted taxation, where necessary household and farm articles could be fabricated for gain and where the rare luxury could secure a high price, scarcely understood that the hill men must move or perish.
A great deal depended upon the attitude of the authorities for there was 1 EA 3, ii, 746-9, 1305-14.
2 Of the twelve states together with Appenzell and the city of St Gall. EA 3 ii. 1314-1316 - the so-called Pensionenbrief or Badener Verkommnis.
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln little difficulty in inducing men to fight. Warfare was to be expected and soldiers did not so much volunteer for service as individuals as willingly allow themselves to be drafted by their natural superiors. Hence the locally elected or semi-hereditary governors could produce small companies of well-armed trained fighters, and they soon learnt to ask a good price for their services and a commission as well. The intense local solidarity of the village communities, communes or Gemeinden, made local acquiescence easy.
In face of strong local feeling the Confederation as a whole was powerless.
Among the princes anxious to buy soldiers was, inevitably, the Pope.
The Borgias had made the States of the Church into a coherent and cohesive dominion1 ready when opportunity offered to extend its boundaries. The Pope for whom Zwingli prayed devoutly in the parish church of Glarus was Julius II (1503-13), the tough old warrior who enjoyed every minute of political intrigue and delighted in the use of armed force.
Erasmus, the pacifist, disliked both the man and his policies, criticising him bitterly in the anonymous Julius Exclusus for his militancy.2 He was the Pope whom Sir Thomas More had in mind when he warned Henry
VIII: 'The Pope.. .is a prince as you are, and in league with all other Christian princes ',3 and Julius II was just this all his life. All his efforts had been devoted to the successful consolidation of the States of the Church; he was at least as much at home on the battlefield and in camp as he was in St Peter's or Consistory. In particular, he had led armed opposition to Venice, securing Faenza, Rimini and Ravenna, as well as maintaining a hold on Bologna.
The League of Cambrai (1508) which had facilitated this was not made to last, and if French domination in Italy was to be avoided the Pope must find further support elsewhere. The Emperor Maximilian, who had tried in vain to secure either territory or papal coronation in Italy, was entirely unreliable and could be ignored. In 1509 the Swiss arrangement with France, dating from 1474 and renewed in 1499, allowing for recruitment of mercenaries, lapsed. The situation in Italy was thus extremely fluid.
The Swiss were ideally situated to help the papacy, and there were long discussions about relationships with the Holy See. Julius II's policy now was to weaken the northern states of Italy and reduce French influence there. This suited the expansionist interests of the central Swiss states admirably. Papal pay was good, mercenary warfare in Italy consisted much more in manoeuvring than in fighting, and simple piety might be allied to personal profit.
1 The process has been well described by M. E. Mallett, The Borgias (London, 1969).
2 The Julius Exclusus of Erasmus trans. P. Pascal, ed. J. K. Sqwards (Indiana University Press,
1968).
3 The Lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore.. .by William Roper ed. E. V. Hitchcock (London: Early
English Text Society, 1935), 68.
ZWINGLI The Pope, too, had a splendid recruiting sergeant in Matthias Schiner,1 Bishop of Sion from 1499, who was made Cardinal in 1511. This ambitious prelate, who may have hoped to make his bishopric into an independent principality, and who was 'papabile', feared and disliked the French and worked for their expulsion from north Italy.
In 1507 Louis XII had, in accordance with the existing Franco-Swiss treaty of alliance, hired Swiss soldiers who were used against Genoa, an action resented by the Emperor Maximilian and unpopular in Switzerland.
The French king had found his allies both unruly and extortionate, while Bellinzona, which he regarded as his rightful possession, had been forcibly occupied by Uri and Schwyz and had had to be left to them. In place of the French alliance, Schiner succeeded in negotiating a five-year PapalSwiss agreement on 14 March 15102 confirmed by a Diet at Lucerne in October. In addition to providing a bodyguard for the person of the Pope,3 the Swiss agreed, with safeguards, to produce 6,000 men for the papal armies and to enter into no alliance hostile to the papacy. The pay was good, there were spiritual advantages and high expectations. Although the promise was merely to protect the papal states in the event of an attack, a dispute with the Duke of Ferrara was represented as just this, and thus it was hoped to bring in the new ally in an attempt to expel the common
French enemy from Italian soil.4
Little came of this incursion in 1510: the Chiasso expedition, as it was called, was almost a farce; the Milanese defences were too strong, and a disappointed force returned at the end of the year. In 1511, however, having lost control of Bologna, the Pope succeeded in arranging the 'Holy
League' with Spain, Venice and Henry VIII of England for the defence of the States of the Church, and hostilities were renewed. At the same time, the murder of two envoys from Schwyz and Fribourg near Lugano aroused local passions against the French and, in fact, many more than the stipulated 6,000 men were willing to aid the League.5 But again the Pope
1 Less correctly written Schinner. Born c. 1470, a nephew of Nicholas Schiner, bishop of Sion, who made him his Vicar General, he became bishop in 1499 and died on 1 October 1522.
Biichi, Schiner; Biichi, Korrespondenzen (QSG) with useful notes.
2 Biichi, Schiner 1, 177; R. Durrer, Die Schweizer garde in Rom und die Schweizer in pdpstlichen
Diensten I. Teil (Lucerne, 1927), 48. Biichi, Korrespondenzen 1,90; P. M. Krieg, Die Schweizergarde in Rom (Lucerne, i960); EA 3, ii, 481-3, 515-16, 1333-8 (Beilage 16).
3 This body, with uniforms said to have been designed by Michelangelo, was largely disbanded in 1970.
4 E. Gagliardi, Der Anteil der Schweizer an den italienischen Kriegen 1494-1516. Bd. I, 1494i$og (Zurich, 1919).
J. S. C. Bridge, A history of France from the death of Louis XI IV, 1508-1514 (Oxford,
1929), esp. 59-60. C. Kohler, Les Suisses dans les guerres d'ltalie de 1506 a 1512, Publications de la societe d'Histoire et d'Archeologie de Geneve. Memoires et Documents, xxiv (Geneva/
Paris, 1896), 151-7.
5 This was to cause trouble later. The papal stipulations had been precise about numbers and there was no case for additional payment. All the soldiers naturally expected to be rewarded,
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln was disappointed. The Swiss contingents, able to preserve admirable discipline on a field of battle, were little more than a turbulent mob on the march. They had hardly any guns or horses, it was an intensely cold winter, and when it became apparent at Castiglione and Gallarate that Milan was to be effectively defended, they again turned back.1 Como,
Chiasso and Ponte Tresa provided plentiful plunder and some disgraceful excesses on the homeward journey, to the intense resentment of the suffering Italian peasants. None the less, in May 1512, 18,000 or more Swiss volunteers streamed through the Miinstertal to Verona, undeterred by the knowledge that on Easter day, 18 April, a French army under Gaston de
Foix had defeated the papal forces at Ravenna.2 Once again 'the Cardinal' had by the combined appeal of spiritual benefits, a symbolic golden sword, cash down and promises of loot, achieved his aims.3 Maximilian Sforza appeared to claim his rightful duchy, and with imperial, Venetian and Spanish cooperation for once reasonably well timed, the invaders swooped on 14 June on the French defending force at Pavia, swept it away, and went on to enter Milan, while the remnants of the opposing force under La Palice left northern Italy.4
Thus in 1512 the Swiss Confederation, de facto ruler of the Milanese,5 was manifestly a power to be reckoned with. The twelve victorious Orte
(for Appenzell had not yet been admitted to their number) took over the administration of Locarno, Lugano, Mendrisio, Balerna and Domodossola; and the Graubiinden extended themselves southwards in harmony to include Bormio, Chiavenna, Tre Pievi and the Valtelline.6 It was a highly profitable as well as a successful enterprise. and complained when they were not. Maximilian, who had supported the League, noted the greed of the Swiss: 'communities to whom faith and loyalty are unknown' (Bridge, History of France IV, 70 n. 1, citing Le Glay, Correspondance de Tempereur Maxitnilien I" et de Marguerite d'Autriche (Paris, 1839) I, 326-7. Cf. Lettres du Roy Louis XII (4 vols. Brussels, 1712) in, 98: ' Car nous les trouvons comme les malvais villains que plus les prie on et donne de bonnes parolles, et plus sont rudes, fiers, pervers et mauldis et pour ces causes...' (25 Nov.
1511). l Kohler, Les Suisses, 263-80; Durrer, Schweizergarde, 64-6.
2 Zwingli in a letter to Vadian asserted that Hannibal's victory at Cannae had not caused greater alarm and despondency in Rome and Italy than had the news of Ravenna in 1512. Z 1, 32;
VII, 21-2. Cf. Kohler, Les Suisses, 324-7; Durrer, Schweizer garde, 121-6.
3 For this and the ceremonial cap and banners see Durrer, Schweizergarde, 103-8. The sword and cap went to Zurich as Vorort, and the keys of Milan were received by Biirgermeister
Felix Schmid: G. Stucki, Zurichs Stellung in der Eidgenossenschaft vor der Reformation
(Aarau, 1970), 68. Schiner was 'the Cardinal' for the Swiss as Wolsey was for the English or as the Duke of Cumberland in the eighteenth century or the Duke of Wellington in the nineteenth was 'the Duke*.
4 Kohler, Les Suisses 376-82; Durrer, Schweizergarde 144-6. In spite of assertions to the contrary, there is no direct evidence that Zwingli was personally present at this campaign.
Z 1, 24-8; Koehler Zwingli, 36; Geddchtnis c. 193-4; Bullinger, Ref I, 8; Farner 11, 94.
5 Biichi, Schiner 1, 42.
6 A. Gasser, Die territoriale Entwicklung der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft,
1291-ijgj (Aarau, 1932)^44-51.
ZWINGLI The Pavia expedition, although permanently changing the southern frontier of Switzerland, had been almost too successful. A Confederation originally defensive only, now had possessions and commitments in the south as well as in the north. Yet there was neither the experience nor the administrative ability available to do more than conquer and occupy: the great city of Milan and its satellites could not have been effectively controlled by Alpine communities and uncooperative Swiss city states. The prize was too large to be held, although what remained as mandated territory proved in the long run to be an important factor in holding together a people soon to be hopelessly divided by religion.
The rapid departure of the French armies was temporary only. Julius II died on 21 February 1513, and in the following May a fresh French army, now supported by the Venetians as allies, moved into Lombardy and reoccupied Milan. Once again a Swiss contingent, this time a relatively small one, some 4,000 strong, took up a stand at Novara to stem the French tide.
There, on 6 June, this reinforced contingent was decisively and vigorously victorious against French cavalry supported by German Landsknechte.1
The international situation might be confused; there was a new Medici Pope,2 Leo X (1513-21), and there was soon to be a new French king,
Francis I, but at the moment the Swiss seemed to hold the balance of power on the continent by their manifest military strength. Novara had added to their repute. The French were again expelled, and the loot and contributions levied by the Swiss were considerable. Once again war had paid off.
To all this Glarus had contributed its quota of men, whose banner depicted the risen Christ,3 and through them Zwingli obtained first-hand acquaintance with Italian and papal politics as well as with mercenary service. At first, his normal duties as parish priest, humanist classical studies and increasing attention to the Bible were sufficient occupation.
It is also clear that he considered it his duty to take part alongside the armed men of his state in a campaign to which they had been invited by the Holy Father for the defence of the lands of Mother Church. Hence in June 1513 he acted as chaplain or 'field preacher', learning at first hand exactly what these military expeditions meant in practice. Immensely proud of his people, he thought of central Switzerland as a near-paradise, where free men, united by memories of successful resistance to Habsburg aggression, lived in countrified simplicity. This, however, did not correspond to the harsh facts of a campaign in which hired men were fighting papal battles on Italian soil for monetary gain. He had in fact already (1510)
1 E. Gagliardi, Novara und Dijon (Zurich, 1907) 148-66, 335-9.
2 His representative in Switzerland was Ennio Filonardi (created Cardinal in 1536) who henceforth intervened continuously in Swiss affairs. He was well known in Zurich and understood the situation there. J. C. Wirz, Ennio Filonardi der letzte Nuntius in Zurich
(Zurich, 1894).
3 Staehelin 1, 65.
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln commented on the situation in the 'Story of the Ox', a kind of Animal
Farm, his first serious discourse on politics and war characteristically written in elegant Latin verse.
In this narrative,1 the ox, a noble, simple animal, lived in happy simplicity in a peaceful meadow in the company of his faithful dog Lycisca.
Then, through the fence, came trouble-makers - cats. There were other animals in and around this meadow who suffered from the attentions of a predatory lion. These decided to look to brother Ox for some protection and support, using the cunning leopard as their spokesman and the cats as professional advocates. He was, they said, so noble and so strong that if only he would intervene in the jungle outside his meadow he could impose his own terms and restore peace and tranquillity. And in spite of warning barks from the dog, he agreed, easily convinced by feline argument that what he did was on behalf of simple justice and right. The leopard rejoiced in the success of his scheme, hostile animals were driven away and the leopard lived in luxury.
Seeing this, the greedy lion himself stooped to seek the friendship of brother Ox, who, in all simplicity, was ready enough. Then the cats came; they assured him that the lion was dangerous, unreliable and treacherous, all of which the ox accepted and so rejected the leonine advances. Thus the leopard saw his chance: secure in this support, he could take action against his rival in deceit, the fox. Together they rampaged in the fox's territories, reducing him to such a state of alarm that he approached the shepherd, whose hen roost he had previously robbed, with an offer to make proper restitution. And so the shepherd, in spite of deceptions he had experienced in the past, protected the fox from leopard and lion and asked the ox, very persistently, to support him.
All this led to a renewed and confused struggle, the ox leaving the side of the leopard, while some goats entered the territory to take what they might. And in the end, the ox found himself isolated and alone. He was no longer safe: his earlier simple freedom had been corrupted by bribes, gifts and inducements: to it, now, relying only on his own courage, he must return.
It was a very transparent, simple story. The ox, obviously, was the goodnatured bucolic Swiss, deceived into friendship with the French leopard and his partisans, the cats. The lion was the Habsburg monarch, Venice was the fox, the goats were any other interested parties. The whole story clearly implied that involvement with the French had been a mistake, and that even the good shepherd, the Pope, had been not without ulterior motives. Let the gallant Swiss people be content with their
1 Das Fabelgedicht vom Ochsen Z I (io)-22 with the Latin version on alternate pages. The original is StAZ. i. 3. i (2) but is not in Zwingli's own hand.
ZWINGLI secure home-land and eschew entangling alliances and extraneous temptations.
However simplified, it showed that a young scholarly catholic priest was thinking about politics, international affairs and the proper role of his countrymen amid the French, imperial and papal triangle. Ideally the Swiss occupied a walled garden; others should leave them alone to cultivate their garden to the best advantage, and they, in turn, would keep within their garden wall and not interfere with their neighbours. Animals and crops would provide them with a livelihood, and the simple hard work of the fields would breed a hardy, virtuous people. It was a fantasy, but a fantasy tinged as it were with incipient patriotism and nationalism. Emphatically German, yet equally emphatically not subject to the jurisdiction of the Empire, the Swiss peasant, managing his own affairs locally by agreement, was different from, and much better off than, his central German counterpart who was constantly and successfully exploited by landowners, princes and knights. The most unpopular features of European serfdom were largely absent from this intensively traditionalist society. There was little need for money, and gold corrupted those who had it. If only men were content to stay at home, there was God-provided provision for all. Coming of well-to-do farmer stock, never having known severe poverty, Zwingli hardly realised that the soil could not support an increasing population, and that in fact they might have to go outside their garden wall for some essentials.
The Pope, it should be noted, is the good shepherd. If the shepherd is attacked by wicked men, the righteous will come to his help. Nowhere in this little moral story is there any suggestion of a disposition to dispute papal claims. The hierarchy of the church is as much taken for granted as is the structure of western society. Zwingli was, at the time of these his earliest writings, a far more conscientious priest than his admired friend and hero, Erasmus,1 to whom Glarean had introduced him in April 1515.
It was probably immediately after the return of the Pavia expedition that Zwingli wrote a short account of the way his compatriots had set about driving the French from Lombardy, all in somewhat embellished Latin for the benefit of his more learned friends.2 The gathering at Chur, the choice of leaders, the presents brought by the Cardinal, the junction with the Venetians, the ever more precipitous retirement by the French before these fearless young enthusiasts who stripped to swim rivers carrying their deadly halberds, the entry into Pavia, all led to the triumphant conclusion
1 Z v, 721-2 n. 5.
2 Z 1 23 (3o)~37 'De gestis inter Gallos et Helvetios.. .relatio7 cast in the form of an appendix to a letter to Vadian. It was first printed in 1611 and may have been written in 1512. It was hurriedly written, and there are some obvious geographical errors. The * three hours' (p. 37) allotted for composition may be as fictitious as the three days Erasmus had needed to construct a tiny poem for Prince Henry of England in 1499. Allen 1, 6.
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln 'so was all Italy free'.1 Never behindhand with words, the Pope rewarded his supporters by the Bull Etsi Romani pontifices with the title 'Defenders of the liberty of the church'.2 Later in life, but perhaps with recollections of hearing mass said according to the Ambrosian rite in Milan
Cathedral while on this tour, Zwingli made controversial use of the liturgical variations that he noted were acceptable there. It is all admittedly a little conjectural, but about his solid local patriotism and the acceptance of Catholic usages there need be no doubt.
Later still, almost certainly in 1516, Zwingli returned to his animal satire theme in the two hundred or so lines called 'The Labyrinth'.3 This relates how Theseus, the hero, with the help of Ariadne's skein of thread, finds his way through the labyrinth to the giant man-eating Minotaur, whom he fearlessly slays. On the way he boldly encounters the one-eyed lion, the crowned eagle, the cock, the winged lion, the bear with a ring through its nose, and the ox. The labyrinth reflects the quite extraordinarily entangled international affairs as seen from Glarus. Of the animals, the one-eyed lion represents the short-sighted Leo X, the crowned eagle is the emperor, the cock symbolises the French, the winged lion
Venice, while the bear and the ox are the Swiss people. Not many possible readers could have heard of Minos, Theseus, Ariadne and their attendants, or follow the implications of an argument that action without reason is like being without a guide in a labyrinth in which we may wander lost for ever. God alone can save us from ourselves and an evil world and from our wicked desires to quarrel and fight with our neighbours. To this, men are all too readily incited by the wilful selfishness of princes, but peace is far more valuable and should be maintained.
The victory at Novara had been followed up by a Swiss invasion of the Duchy of Burgundy which had taken them to the walls of Dijon in September 1513. There they consented to be bought off at a high price400,000 crowns together with the renunciation of French claims in Italy an agreement made by the French general La Tremoille but later repudiated by his monarch.
There was a good deal of dissatisfaction expressed in Berne and else1 Z 1, 36. 'Ita omnis Italia.. .liberata.' Perhaps 'liberated' might express the implications even better.
2 'Defensores ecclesiasticae libertatis', W. Oechsli, Quellenbuch zur Schrveizergeschichte
(Zurich, 1901), 348 EA. 3, 2, 632-3. Above 33.
3 Z 1 39 (S3)-6o. The date 1516 explains the allusions, particularly since they fit in with Johannes Adelphius, Ludus Novus published in 1515, where a woodcut illustrates the confident cockerel (France), the crowned eagle (the emperor), the winged lion of St Mark (Venice), the Swiss ox, much as in the earlier poem. If, as Egli argues (Z I, 43-50), the bear means Berne, where French influence was powerful, while the ox refers to central and eastern Switzerland less anxious to forward French aggression and consequently dividing the country so that Swiss were actually serving in opposing armies, the allusions fall into place.
ZWINGLI where at this outcome: there was likewise a feeling that a few leading families had indeed been enriched, but the ordinary soldier had gained little. The French then proceeded to come to terms with Henry VIII of England in June 1514, and Louis XII was preparing to reassert his rights in the Milanese when he died on the last day of this year, to be succeeded by Francis I.
The French attempts to secure exclusive Swiss support failed largely because of resistance from Zurich.1 The Confederates stood by their allies,
Maximilian Sforza, the Emperor Maximilian, the Pope and Ferdinand of Spain, but the tempting French offers were not forgotten. In May 1515 a French army was in Alessandria and an attack on Berne was anticipated.
Morat, Grandson and Neuchatel were hurriedly garrisoned, while some 10,000 soldiers from central Switzerland went to defend Milan.
They were not welcomed by the local inhabitants, and there was division of opinion about their objective. The Bernese leader, Albrecht vom Stein, wanted to meet the French invaders at the frontier, but the men of Schwyz and Glarus refused to agree. When the French forces crossed the Col d'Argentiere in strength with some hired Swiss soldiers in their ranks, it was seen that neither Spanish nor papal support was in sight. The western contingents from Berne, Biel, Solothurn and Fribourg thereupon fell back towards Domodossola. At Rivoli in August discontent and disorder were apparent, and at Novara valuable guns were left behind. Finally, at Gallarate on 8 September, in return for pensions and a large sum in cash, their leaders agreed to abandon Milan and Genoa.2
It was thus left to the men from central and eastern Switzerland, including Basle, Sehaff hausen and a force from Zurich under Btirgermeister
Roist, to hold the line. Zwingli was with his parishioners at Monza where, in the market place near the present Palazzo Arengario, he preached on steadfastness and their duty to support the Pope.3 Thence the now much diminished Swiss army marched towards Milan. Outside the city at Marignano4 they faced Francis I on 13-14 September. The French had superior numbers, perhaps 60,000 men, with excellent cavalry and artillery: for twenty hours there was confused murderous hand-to-hand fighting, but the Swiss pikemen could not capture the artillery that did such slaughter, and when a Venetian force came to join the French, there was nothing for it but to retreat' torn, maimed, wounded, with their banners in tatters, singing funeral dirges instead of songs of triumph'.5 Over 10,000 Swiss lay dead on the field. It was not as obvious then as it was
1 EA 3, ii, 849, 863, 872, 879.
2 EA 3, ii, 902-4, 907-13.
3 ZWA 1, 387-92; Z VII, 540 n. 1.
4 G. Thiirer, Die Wende von Marignano (Zurich, 1965).
5 Allen 11, 149. 'Rediere domum aliquanto pauciores quam exierant, laceri, mutili, saucii, signis dissectis; proinde pro epiniciis celebrant parentalia.'
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln later that the Swiss Confederation had ceased to be a great military power because, manifestly, if the Swiss forces had remained intact that September, a French retreat or defeat would have been certain. But they were not united, and their discipline on the march, as distinct from the battlefield, left much to be desired. The young army chaplain came away with two convictions reinforced - the first, that mercenary service, the sale of flesh and blood for gold, was immoral; the second, that Swiss unity was an indispensable prerequisite for future achievement. It is a sad fact that Swiss soldiers continued to be hired by foreign powers until the nineteenth century, and that the Zwinglian Reformation split the country so profoundly that only the religious indifference of the twentieth century closed the gap.
At the time of Marignano, Zwingli was himself, like many others,1 a papal pensioner and a supporter of Cardinal Schiner, but this meant little.
It was, however, distasteful for him to perceive a political drift away from alliance with Rome and in favour of one with France. Back in Glarus in the autumn of 1515, he reflected deeply, perhaps for the first time, on the religious and human problems of his day. His faith in God and the Christian revelation grew in intensity as reading and experience brought further reflection. His acceptance of the creeds was never in doubt, but now his mind turned even more to exploration of their full meaning and implications.
At Glarus he began to realise that he, like most other clerics, had been accustomed to pay far too much attention to externals and to Bible commentaries instead of to the text itself; logic and verbal dexterity he had learnt at Vienna and Basle, and he knew his 'Sentences' and the jargon of the Thomists. He also knew, and delighted to imitate, the tortuous wordplay of some of the humanists and the delicate subtlety of men like Pico della Mirandola. Hellenistic Greek he was beginning to master, and in 1516 he was one of the first to secure that Novum Instrumentum which was the fruit of Erasmus' painful months in Cambridge. It was rushed out by Froben of Basle in March, and Zwingli rejoiced to be able to visit its editor there before the year was ended.2
Having the new original text before him, ,he determined not to accept traditional interpretations but to concentrate upon the meaning of the words themselves. How new this was and how courageous, our literate and incredulous age can appreciate only with difficulty. It is indeed almost impossible to recapture the thrill of this fine folio volume. Here was the very word of God in the original tongue and something he could use and reverence; no wonder he copied out most of the Epistles of St Paul or that 1 They included Johannes Manz, Felix Frei, Heinrich Utinger, Erhard Weiss and Anshelm
Graf. ZSKG 50 (1956), 362.
2 A. Rich, Die Anfdngeder Theologie Huldrych Zwinglis (Zurich, 1949), 17-18; Z v, 721-2 n 5.
ZWINGLI he soon knew much of the great tome almost by heart. Literate in an illiterate age, humanist-trained and now at home with Greek script, certain that the key to eternal bliss lay in these crisp pages, the young man turned to Jesus as never before. It was this New Testament, added to study of St Augustine's treatise on the Fourth Gospel,1 that opened his eyes and impelled him to fill his sermons with the new-found glad tidings.
The wider significance of this publication, including its influence on Luther, has been much debated, but for Zwingli it was exactly what he needed. He could appreciate the Latinity of the Erasmian commentary, he exulted in the fact that his own knowledge of Greek enabled him to value the discussion of words such as ecclesia, presbyter, poenitentiam agite, and to recognise that Bishop, Pastor, Apostle, were names of offices of service and not of authority. In the introduction he could read that Christ, eternal wisdom, alone could teach with authority and was the sole mediator for salvation. The Vulgate he knew already and extremely well, but here was the real thing, the divine word exactly as the Holy Spirit had guided the pens of the Evangelists. From Erasmus, too, he had already learnt to turn more positively and directly to Christ. Erasmus had long indicated, with that slightly insufferably superior urbanity that was his least attractive characteristic, reservations about the reverence popularly paid to the popular saints. Why go on a pilgrimage to a particular shrine?2 How could a particular image be thought to possess wonder-working powers? From these considerations he moved to more profound topics. What was meant by an almighty and everlasting God ? What was implied by man's free will ? After 1516a somewhat worried priest faced parishioners who trusted that his formulae were all-sufficient, and that their role was passive acceptance of prescribed duties and dogma. He shared his anxieties with correspondents like Vadian, Myconius and Wimpfeling who were similarly interested and concerned. The satire, gentle sarcasm and aloofness that came from the pen of Erasmus were less than he needed: his hope was that Rome would lead a return to the practices and teaching of the Apostles.
Rather slowly he was becoming convinced that nothing could be hoped for from the Pope, but his only positive move was to arrange to be transferred on 14 April 15163 to Einsiedeln, some fifteen rather inaccessible miles to the west, as stipendiary priest (Lentprtester).4
1 In Ioannis Evangelium tractatus. MPL 35, 1379-1976.
2 The Colloquy *A Pilgrimage for Religion's sake', cast in dialogue form, with its transparent references to Walsingham, Norfolk, was extremely popular. C. R. Thompson (trans.) The Colloquies of Erasmus (Chicago, 1965) 285-312.
3 Z 1, 50, VII, 44 n. 3; Egli 4y 1, 16-19. He took up his duties on 26 November.
4 There is no satisfactory rendering of Leutpriester. Professor G. R. Elton Reformation Europe,
1517-1559 (London 1963), 66 rightly says, 'usually and rather inanely translated literally as "people's priest"', and suggests 'common preacher'. This, indeed, is what Zwingli later made of the office in Zurich, but the duties were not primarily those of preaching so much as
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln That Rome was satisfied enough was apparent when Zwingli was appointed a papal chaplain in 1518.1 After Marignano, the Pope was on the losing side, was unable to pay for expensive professional soldiers and came to terms with Francis I at Bologna, making some remarkable concessions to the French monarch. Another striking outcome of the battle was the iPerpetual Peace' (Ewige Richtung) with France of 29 November 1516.
After long negotiations, first a bare majority of the states, and finally the whole thirteen, agreed not to attack, or to be partner to any attack on,
France or French possessions.2 A large sum, a million crowns in all, was paid by way of compensation for losses on earlier expeditions and for the castles of Lugano and Locarno (Bellinzona remaining Swiss).3 Most significant of all, in return for pensions all round, the French king was permitted to recruit mercenaries for service with the French army, a practice that lasted until the French Revolution.
To this arrangement and its implications Zwingli was resolutely opposed. By it independence was exchanged for foreign gold and Swiss young men were taken from the land which nurtured them. To a Toggenburger the whole westernising policy of Berne and its allies was unwelcome and undesirable, and he expressed his opposition freely. This meant that he was in open disagreement with the policy-makers of Glarus and, since he could not change their minds, he would be better away. The move to Einsiedeln was thus welcome to both sides, the more so in that Zwingli did not cease to be rector at Glarus. Instead, in December 1518 he secured the services of Valentin Tschudi as his vicar at a wage, to do what was necessary - a perfectly normal arrangement commonly adopted by monasteries.
At Einsiedeln it was his duty to minister to the spiritual needs of the small number of farmers, servants and tradesmen who gathered round the Benedictine abbey reputedly founded by Meinrad of Sulgen in the ninth century and richly endowed by the Emperors Otto I and Henry I. By 1516 lackadaisical abbots like Gerald of Hohensaxe and Conrad of Hohenrechthe 'cure of souls', including baptising, marrying, burying, giving extreme unction to the dying, hearing confessions and saying mass. The Leutpriester was not, however, the parish priest: he did not receive the tithes or all the oblations and customary payments. 'Public preacher' or 'lecturer' equally do not convey the impression of the pastoral duties expected.
At Einsiedeln Zwingli had to promise obedience to the abbot, was entitled to (free) meals in the refectory and received a stipend of 20 gulden annually together with certain customary fees and oblations. Horses and personal servants were also freely available.
1 The diploma, delivered to him by the papal legate, Antonio Pucci, at Einsiedeln in September
1518, a month after Luther had been summoned to Rome, described Zwingli as 'virtutibus clarens et meritis sicut experiencia et fame laudabilis testimonio commendaris, illam in domini nostri pape et apostolice sedis conspectu gratiam meruisti'. The office of acolyte-chaplain
{acolitus capellanus) had ritual duties attached to it only if the recipient was in Rome, which Zwingli never was. Farner, Zwingli 11, 272; Egli 4, 1, 19-21; Z vn, 95-6.
2 G. Stucki, Ziirichs Stellung in der Eidgenossenschaft vor der Reformation (Aarau, 1970), 96-8.
3 EA 3, ii, 1019-21, 1406-15.
ZWINGLI berg had reduced the 'hermit monks' of the convent to a mere handful of mildly sceptical, nobly born Religious with a shrewd businessman, Diebold
(Theobald) of Hohengeroldseck as administrator and manager.1 It was, and long remained, one of the pilgrimage centres of the western world, a local Canterbury, Compostella or Loreto, if not Rome, with indulgences that rivalled those of St Gall or Mariazell.
Miraculous healing powers were popularly attributed to the image of the 'black Virgin' at Einsiedeln,2 which may have helped to convince
Zwingli that simple and ignorant people worshipped the object which they saw in the shrine. At this time he saw no objection to pilgrimages, and had even personally accompanied a party to Aachen in 1517. At Einsiedeln,
Zwingli, now an experienced priest of over .thirty, was at the height of his intellectual powers. The duties were light but were taken seriously, and the numerous pilgrims from eastern Switzerland found no difficulty in understanding his sermons. Many visitors came home to report that the preacher was saying new things and introducing passages from the Bible, and particularly of the New Testament, into his discourses.3 They also noted that here was someone who advocated less reliance on prescribed prayers and formulae, less attention to conventional acts of piety, less materialism, less care about personal physical welfare - instead he made a passionate appeal for a direct approach to God the Father through God the Son. It was not what they expected to hear at a popular shrine, but there was no mistaking the intense earnestness of the preacher.
His range of knowledge, too, was remarkable.4 He had by now mastered 1 Diebold, monk from 1499, administrator 1513-1525, was a patron of learning and immediately responsible for Zwingli's transfer. To him Zvi ingli later dedicated his treatise on the Canon of the mass (see p. 151). After 1525 he lived in Zurich, married Agnes Hochholzer in 1530, and was killed at Kappel in 1531. Egli 4, 1, 16; Z vn, 48 n. 3, 609-10; J. B. Miiller,
Diebold von Geroldseck, hg. v. O. Ringholz, Mittheilungen des Historischen Vereins des Kantons
SchmyZy 7 (Einsiedeln, Waldshut, 1890). For a time the whole convent consisted of the abbot, who was non-resident, and the administrator. R. Tschudi, Das Kloster Einsiedeln unter den
Aebten Ludwig II. Blarer und Joachim Eichhorn, 1526-156Q (Einsiedeln, 1946) 9-10; Miiller,
7, 9. While in Einsiedeln Zwingli became acquainted with Johann (Hans) Oechsli, later minister of Burg vor Stein am Rhein (see below, p. 145) and Franz Zink (c. 1480-1530). This latter supporter, who assisted in the administration at Einsiedeln, was also minister at Freienbach and was concerned with the arrangements for Zwingli's papal pension. He took part in the Second Disputation at Zurich in 1523, acting as deacon, married in 1527, was present at the Berne disputation in 1528, preached the Zwinglian gospel at Wil and Zurzach and died 31 January 1530. Z vn, 467.
2 Ringholz 38.
3 Looking back in January 1524 Zwingli spoke of the days when he had given himself entirely to Bible-study. *Ich.. .mich hub gantz an die heyligen gschrirft lassen.' Z 1, 379. Among his hearers was Caspar Hedio (above, 19 n. 5) of St Theodore, Basle, who was greatly impressed.
Z vn, 213; Ringholz, 587; ZSK xin (1919), 129-33.
4 * Versare diurna non cessat Gr^corum Latinorumque et philosophos et theologos, qui quidem pertinax labor e^stus illos impudentes vel mitigat, si non extinguit.' Z VII, 111. He also corresponded with the Italian Greek scholar Paul Bombasius, diplomat and cardinal, formerly a lecturer at Bologna. Z vn, 75.
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln the Greek language as well as any man north of the Alps - More, Vadian,
Budaeus, even Erasmus. From the Greek New Testament, and from Tertullian, Jerome and Lactantius, he was drawn to the study of the Greek Fathers, Origen, Cyril of Alexandria and Chrysostom in particular, and he noticed that the earlier they wrote the less their teaching seemed to support current doctrine, especially about purgatory.
Erasmus remained a source of admiration and imitation. These years brought him the Enchiridion militis Christiani (the Knight's pocket dagger or flick-knife) (1503), a satire which was also a summary of Christian humanism,1 together with the indispensable Adagia(i$o8)and theamusing
Praise of Folly (1511). There were also the Paraphrases of the New Testament from 1517 which were immensely welcomed and built into much of Zwingli's later thought. He began to read and annotate the Greek Fathers, and wider knowledge of their language and ways of thought accompanied growing distrust of the logicalities of the medieval Schoolmen. He discovered how readily the ancients made use of allegory and he became almostfascinated by figures of speech. Tropes, alloeosis, ellipsis, metathesis, aposiopesis, hyperbole, prolepsis, synecdoche, and the rest - all the tiresome lists of the language text-books - were at his fingers' ends.2 Because he could identify them all, he tended to allude to them a little too readily, with, sometimes, a touch of rather patronisingly conscious superiority.
He read widely in Jerome, Tertullian, Lactantius, Lucian, Suetonius, Varro, with Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum as entertainment.3 At the same time he actively continued his study of Hebrew. Started off again possibly by the writings of his youthful hero,
Pico della Mirandola, anxious to be on the side of the angels (and of Erasmus) in the Reuchlin-Pfefferkorn controversy, his copy of Reuchlin's
Rudimenta Hebraica (1506) shows how diligently he was applying himself to this tongue.4 Relatively few clergy of the early sixteenth century knew
Hebrew. One of the achievements of the Christian (or even of the northern) Renaissance was the raising of the study of Hebrew to its highest level.
This was the language of Moses and the Prophets; in some sense it was God's own language, and was supposed to be the origin of others. With its mastery Zwingli's confidence grew steadily. Some of the best Christian
Hebraists of his day, Capito5 or Pellican for example, were among his early correspondents. Zwingli had, what Erasmus lacked, an appreciation of poetry, which later enabled him to apply his knowledge of Pindar to an appreciation of the Psalms. His circle of correspondents widened - Froben
1 Z VII, 192.
2 There are convenient lists with definitions in Z xin, 839-54.
3 Z VII, 42, 43, 47, 48.
4 Z xiv, 878 and notes; Koehler, Bibliothek, 32.
5 Wolfgang Fabricius Kopfel (Capito) 1478-1541, later Reformer in Strassburg. J. W. Baum,
Capito und Butzer Strassburgs Reformator en (Elberfeld, i860).
ZWINGLI and Amerbach at Basle, Beatus Rhenanus at Strassburg, Nesen, Glarean, Fabri, Peter Falck, exchanged with him letters which were also literary exercises. He also come into contact with the writings of John Eck,1 whose skill as a controversialist he was later to know only too well and whose real abilities have been overlaid by Lutheran abuse and by the false supposition that because a man is a controversialist he is little of a scholar.
It was while Zwingli was at Einsiedeln that the notorious John Tetzel was using all the arts of the peripatetic cheapjack to sell indulgences at Jiiterbog, which was the occasion of the issuing of Luther's 95 theses of 31 October 1517 and all that followed from this. While Zwingli accepted, as he still did, the fact of purgatory and the authority of the Pope, he also understood the implications of the nominal safeguards of contrition and confession built into the indulgence theory and was not directly interested in this particular issue. Like other 'benefits' that came from Rome with a price-label attached, the indulgence could be, and was, abused. In the diocese of Constance the special indulgence for contributors to the building of St Peter's, Rome, was being expansively advertised by Bernhardin
Sanson.2 Zwingli liked neither the man nor his wares nor his manner of producing them, and perhaps helped to exclude him from Einsiedeln.3 In this indeed he was reflecting what a good many other clerics were thinking and saying, so that his attack on Sanson was as acceptable as it was moderate.4 The question of indulgences was still an open one, and authoritative definition would be part of that early internal church cleansing for which he still hoped. In that same October he received an invitation to come much nearer to Constance, to Winterthur in the Mandated Territory of Thurgau, to be preacher or lecturer at the city church and headmaster of the boys' school. He declined.5
The patronal festival at Einsiedeln commemorating the legendary consecration of the church there by an angel always attracted numerous visitors, many of whom came from Zurich. By these Zwingli's sermons were heard with marked approval, and the possibilities of attracting him to Zurich were canvassed, particularly by Myconius and Blirgermeister
Marx Roist. He had visited the Limmat city frequently, knew its leading intellectuals, and knew also that its streets and alleys were notorious for 1 The handwriting of the marginal notes to his copy of Eck's Chrysopassus (Augsburg, 1514) make it practically certain after Usteri's investigations (Usteri, Initia) that he was first acquainted with Eck's writings while at Einsiedeln.
2 L. R. Schmidlin, Bernhardin Sanson ah Ablassprediger in der Schweiz 1518-ig (Solothurn,
1898). The spelling 'Sampson', frequently met with, is incorrect.
3 Ringholz, 590.
4 The contrast with Germany is remarkable. The Zurich council readily prohibited this indulgence-preaching in its territory, and later both the Diet of the Confederation and the Bishop of Constance complained of Sanson's activities, whereupon he was quietly recalled to Rome.
5 Z vn, 68-71.
Parish priest: Glarus and Einsiedeln violence and immorality and that there was corruption in high places among the councillors, who had profited corporately by the gains made by Hans Waldmann at the expense of his life.
If Zurich was no better than it might have been, neither, so some people said, was this preacher that so much was being heard of. It was notorious, said the gossips, that he had corrupted a young girl or had an affair with a nun. They were all alike, these celibate Seculars. It was not regarded at the time as a very serious charge (although if a nun had been involved it would have been technically incest), and twentieth-century readers are perhaps a little less shocked than were some a century ago. When he was confronted with the charge, Zwingli, in very involved language, frankly admitted that he had yielded to the advances of a common prostitute.
Regret, remorse, repentance followed rapidly, and this in no superficial sense: his shame, sorrow and feeling of guilt almost overwhelmed him.
The candid admission1 and the statement of the circumstances satisfied the relatively small number of those who cared, and the episode was overlooked and forgotten save by a few who were later to seize eagerly upon anything that would discredit the reformer. The latter he was not yet, but he had become by November 1518 too well known as preacher, writer and correspondent for him not to be considered favourably for a preaching appointment when this became vacant. His opposition to the French alliance, to pensions and to mercenary service was acceptable to the Zurich politicians, and a well-known humanist scholar could be useful as well as suitably placed in a leading city. John Manz, provost of the Great
Minster, died on 24 October 1518. Canon Felix Frei was chosen in his place and the Leutpriester Erhart Battmann became a Canon.2 On 11 December 1518 the chapter of the Great Minster at Zurich, by 17 votes to 7, appointed Zwingli foundation preacher3 with parochial responsibilities. It was as if a young English country parson was attached to St Paul's Cathedral and invited to preach regularly at St Paul's Cross. The choice had not been unanimous. There was an alternative candidate,
Laurence Mar or Mor, a Swabian, described as a gasbag (fumus) and reputedly the father of eight children, but then and later active in the 1 The letter, of 5 December 1518, 'apologia', to Canon Henry Utinger, who was commissioned to report on the matter to the Chapter, is written, deliberately, in somewhat obscure Latin.
Z vii, 110-13; Ringholz, 594; Koehler, Buchy 40-4. It has perhaps received too much attention. Schulthess resisted the temptation to suppress the letter from the first collected edition of Zwingli's works, saying, 'Protestantism stands for truth in all circumstances.'
2 Z VII, 102 n. 2.
3 Leutpriester, 'stipendiary priest', see above 5 n 2. Preaching was not an essential part of his duties: it was a voluntary addition to the regular and punctual saying of mass and caring for the revenues of the Great Minster. Technically the cure of souls rested with the Provost, to whom Zwingli was vicar or deputy. On 26 December 1518 he formally resigned his cure of souls in Glarus and Einsiedeln. Bullinger, Ref. 1, 11; Staehelin 1, 132.
PZI
ZWINGLI pulpit. It is clear that careful enquiries were made and that the appointment was a considered and deliberate one. Zwingli had explained his own conduct frankly and reasonably, and his views on public policy were acceptable. On 27 December he moved permanently to Zurich, a resident alien in an influential position.