After he finished his education in Basel, Zwingli was offered the opportunity to pastor the parish of Glarus, which he accepted and he embarked on this new chapter of his life in 1506 when he was 22 years old. Erasmus was the friend of popes, the emperors tutor, a correspondent of kings, prelates, civil servants, and scholars alike. Catholic officials from the forest cantons continued to persecute Protestants in these areas, and Protestant governments retaliated in kind. Joel Hurstfield, ed., The Reformation Crisis (New York, 1966) offers the diverse views of a number of scholars, and Hans J. Hillerbrand, The Reformation in its Own Words (New York, 1964) collects in translation a large and widely chosen group of sixteenth-century writings. In the late thirteenth century the three forest cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwaldenall located around Lake Lucerneformed a confederation for mutual defense. J.N. In 1523 Zwingli and the city officials participated in a public discussion of certain key questions which his own reforms and the work of Luther had raised. Zwingli was the object of bitter and grossly insulting invective during his own life and for a century after, so that much of what one knows of him is often based upon the attacks of his enemies. The character of Zwinglis technique and subject-matter may be learned from the remarks of his friend and successor Heinrich Bullinger: He wanted to interpret the Scripture, and not the opinions of men, to the honour of God and His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as well as to the true salvation of souls and the edification of pious and honorable men. Speaking of the impact that Zwingli made in Switzerland the historian Wylie says towns and hamlets came out of the darkness and stood forth in the light. Zwinglis position brought to a head the opposition of a substantial group of reformers led by Conrad Grebel, Balthasar Hubmaier, and Felix Manz. The men of Glarus engaged in the battle under the leadership of their Cardinal-Bishop decked out in a coat of mail and armor. Zwingli then adopted a policy of economic blockade, hoping to cut off the flow of cheap provisions to Zrichs enemies and thus force them to acquiesce. The necessity of Scriptural justification of ecclesiastical institutions and practices, his increasing attacks on the sacerdotal authority of the clergy, and his earliest approaches to sacramental theology thus derived from his own experience of different reform movements, his own studies, and the support of the population of Zrich. In 1522 Zwingli was present at the second stage of Zrich reform, at the house of the printer Christoph Frohschauer when a number of Zrich citizens ate sausage on Ash Wednesday, later justifying their action on the ground that abstinence and fasting were no part of Gods will for hard-working men and women and nowhere in Scripture were such practices prescribed.
A few individuals with distinctive, complex minds and troubled consciences dominate the early history of the Reformation. As he read he was thoroughly convinced of the truth of Gods word, of its infallible authority and of the fact that Scripture is its own interpreter. His personality comes through best, perhaps, in his literary work, although the most lively parts, the sermons, have largely been lost. Texts from the Anabaptist movement may be found in G. H. Williams, Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, Vol. THE MOON AND THE STARS, WHICH THOU HAST ORDAINED; WHAT IS MAN, THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM? Zwingli, who had contracted plague when the epidemic swept through Zrich in 1519, had earned a secure place in popular esteem for his heroic service among the stricken populace. It was into this world of the city-state with its intermittent prosperity and social tensions that Ulrich Zwingli entered in 1518 as peoples priest at the Grossmnster. Zur Gedchtnis der Zrcher Reformation. Zwingli himself commented on his intentions: After the Gospel according to Matthew I continued with the Acts of the Apostles to show to the church in Zrich how and through whom the Gospel had been planted and propagated. .
As Zwinglis ideas of reform matured his goal became to use the Scriptures as a guide for not just religious and moral life but also for social and political reform as well, thus setting the tone for the Swiss Reformation and laying the groundwork for the social reform that would be propagated byCalvinin the future. ]The most comprehensive recent study is George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia, 1962). Not only did Zwingli reject the prepared readings in favor of direct explanation of the New Testament, but he began to challenge long-standing ecclesiastical customs, such as the payment of tithes, on the grounds that they had no Scriptural precedent. Zwingli, on the other hand, concentrated his reform ideas upon a practical, almost juridical center, and his work shaped the unique social institution created by the Reformation, the urban theocracy. [6. If the purely confessional interests of many Reformation historians have often clouded that significance, it was not clouded for Zwingli, the citizen-body of Zrich, the magistrates, and the clergy who supported or opposed his reforms. Berne, Basel, Constance, and Zrich had reformed their churches more quickly and thoroughly than the conservative rural cantons.19 These recent differences, of course, exacerbated older tensions between city and country. Zwingli, the city priest, deeply rooted in the life of Zrich, was sympathetic to peasant grievances, and could not conceive of personal reform outside concurrent social change. . It seemed especially profitable for the sheep of my flock, as it contains guiding principles for the Christian Life. The Little Council was composed half of members of the Great Council and half from the remainder of the population. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1901). In addition to commerce, much of Zrichs wealth came from the income of mercenaries and recruiters, a weapons industry, and the lucrative administrative careers of Zrichs citizens in the affairs of the neighboring rural areas. Zwinglis uncle Bartholomew was also a priest, and he later became dean of Wesen. Several reform centers of the early Reformation often turned upon those reformers who would have carried reform even further, and persecuted them mercilessly. He became content, as he grew older, to leave the civil framework of reform in the hands of those powers which had ruled his world for several centuriesthe princes of the independent German states. Its miracle-working statue of the Virgin attracted huge pilgrimages, and the post was an important one. Its masters were the new men engaged in a struggle for control of the state; they used the Marriage Court, devised as an instrument of moral discipline, as an instrument of political rule. Yet the reform movement which gave Switzerland this European prominence cannot be fully understood without a consideration of the social and political events of the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. Zwinglis first open challenge to the authority of the church came in 1522, first over the churchs imposition of fasting and second over the issue of Celibacy. In certain specific areas relations broke down quickly and emphatically. LOUGHBOROUGH: WHAT DOEST THOU HERE ELIJAH?
The public character of the disputation, the presence of official episcopal visitors including the Chancellor Johann Faber, and the city governments decision, that Master Zwingli shall continue to proclaim the Holy Gospel as hitherto, according to the spirit of God, constitute one of the most dramatic moments in Reformation history. In sharing some of the interests and all the intensity of his two great contemporaries, then, Zwingli contributed his own theology and his own concept of the reformed polity. Then came Pauls First Letter to Timothy. in G. W. Bromiley, Zwingli and Bullinger, Vol. In 1525 Zwingli explained his views in a tract entitled On Baptism.13.
tr. The men would huddle around the fire and tell stories of Swiss history. These seasons built a deep love for his country in his heart which would later fuel his work of reform. Ulrich Zwinglis career is the history of the personal intellectual and religious growth of one such individual, yet it is also deeply rooted in the urban life of the city of Zrich and the more complex political history of the Reformation in Switzerland. The complex association of ecclesiastical reform movements with social welfare in the sixteenth century is considerably illuminated by the Zrich Poor Law and its influence. His personal and intellectual reputation enhanced his standing in the eyes of all social groups. It was during his stay at Glarus that Zwingli first became acquainted with the writings of Erasmus, and with his eloquent and fierce denunciations of abuses in ecclesiastical institutions and in society in general. [13. A few weeks later, news of Zwinglis preaching and the episode of the breaking of the Lenten fast reached the Bishop of Constance, who sent a committee of episcopal visitors to Zrich to investigate both problems (below, Selection One). The Confederation increased in members throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Zrich joining it in 1351. Seneca, and Scipio with an avid interest, however, he was yet to discover the beauty of the word of God. )-1536) was the greatest scholar of his day.1 His work on the textual criticism of Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers, his broad and lively secular learning, his scathing attacks on ecclesiastical and social abuses, and his unfulfilled concept of the regeneration of Christian society touched nearly all thinking men of the sixteenth century. The older industriesprincipally textile manufacturing in silk and woolhad suffered during the political turmoil of the 1440s, and Zrich slowly became a commercial, rather than a manufacturing town. Among his reforms, Zwingli had attacked certain articles of sacramental theology, including the character of baptism. Zwinglis humanist scholarship, his direct acquaintance with Pauline theology, and his growing dissatisfaction with practices and institutions for which he was able to find no Scriptural precedent or justification, all governed his preaching and soon made his name renowned throughout the city.
Several attempts on his life were made, and the enduring hostility of some segments of the population persisted, the reasons for this opposition having been analyzed most convincingly by Birnbaum. These areas, together with the city itself and several small towns in the district, had a population of around 60,000, about 5,000 in Zrich proper. Accordingly I also interpreted the two letters of Peter, the Prince of the apostles, to show them that the two apostles proclaimed the same message, moved by the same Spirit. [* ]I would like to thank Professor Werner L. Gundersheimer for his kindness in reading an early draft of this essay and making several helpful suggestions. That people should always seek to retain Swiss freedom.8. Letters were sent between Zwingli and his disciples, via couriers who hid the letters under baskets of poultry on their heads, giving Zwingli an opportunity to remotely direct the proceedings. Throughout his life Zwingli spoke the dialect of Swiss-German like a peasant, a dialect which, Luther was later to remark, was a shaggy, tangled German, which makes you sweat before you understand it.7 Zwinglis childhood, although doubtless touched frequently by severe rural Christian discipline, seems to have been both happy and normal. For a wider-ranging sociological interpretation, see Guy Swanson, Religion and Regime: A Sociological Account of The Reformation (Ann Arbor, 1967). Zwingli obeyed the wishes of his father and returned home without delay but he was restless to return to his education and it wasnt long before he went back to school first in Vienna and then later in Basel where he was influenced by some of the brightest minds of the Renaissance, among whom were Erasmus, Oecolampadius, and Wittenbach. Individual studies of aspects of Zwinglis career and thought are Charles Garside, Jr., Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven, 1966); Jacques Courvoisier, Zwingli, A Reformed Theologian (Richmond, 1963). (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1901). Zwingli, a great figure of the Reformation, is inescapably a Swiss figure, tied to the characteristicand in many ways uniqueSwiss world of city and rural canton, political diversity, regional independence, and relations with the powers which surrounded it. The embodiment of this new Word in a Church, then, called into play the balance of forces in Zrich society and, to some extent, altered it. Copyright 2003 2022,
Also in 1523 Zwingli published his treatise On the Education of Youth, and his outline of a Christian policy, On Divine and Human Justice.11 In 1524 Zwingli himself married the widow of a Zrich patrician, and in 1525 there occurred the abolition of the Mass and the institution of an evangelical service in its place. Luther came quickly to the attention of the highest authorities in the Christian world, and only the support of his prince, the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, and the sluggishness of imperial institutions protected him from these powers. To a certain extent, this efficient government succeeded in keeping the tensions of the city under control. Source: Editor's Introduction to Selected Rome was infuriated and tried in vain to silence the reformer. Such religious dissent as was presenthumanist and Erasmian among the learned and the patricians, and social and evangelical among the uneducated and poorprobably did not seem as dangerous as the political and economic problems which the city officials controlled. During Zwinglis own lifetime, then, the final stages of the expansion of the Swiss Confederation took place, as did the internal transformation of the city of Zrich. Lewis Spitz, The Protestant Reformation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966) offers a smaller anthology of source materials.
It was this time, in his home, learning the Bible at his grandmothers side, employed in useful labor on the mountains, that laid the foundations for the work that he would go on to perform as one of Gods light bearers to the world. He continued in this capacity from 1512-1515 and then returned to Switzerland to take up work as the parish priest in Einsiedeln in 1516. The social divisions of the city and its surrounding countryside had begun to divide along religious lines as well. By 1525, the radicals had come to the conclusion that only an understanding, consenting, instructed adult should be permitted to be baptized, since understanding and consent implied a valid and profound commitment to a true Christian life.