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The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of
Religious Knowledge, Philip Schaff Vol. XII:
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HULDRYCH
ZWINGLI (1484–1531)
Swiss reformer
- Father of the Swiss Reformation
Huldreich Zwingli,
the Reformer of German Switzerland as preacher of Evangelical truth,
contemporary with, but independent of, Martin Luther, was born at Wildhaus
(near Zurich), in the valley of the Toggenburg, Jan. 1, 1484; and died at
Cappel (10 mi. South of Zurich) Oct. 11, 1531. His first name is variously
rendered Ulric, Ulrich, Ulricus, Huldricus, and Huldryeh, while his last name,
which appears in Latin as Zwinglius and in English as Zwingle, was originally
Zwilling (" Twin "). His father, Ulrich Zwingli, was the chief magistrate of
the village. His father's brother, Bartholomew, was the village priest. His
mother's maiden name was Margaretha Meili, and her brother, Johannes (d. 1524),
was abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Fischingen, while a near relative,
probably an uncle, was abbot of Old St. John's, near Wildhaus. Zwingli was the
third of his parents' eight sons. In 1487 his uncle Bartholomew moved to Wesen
(about 10 mi. South of Wildhaus) on the Walensee, where he was pastor and dean,
and then, or a little later, he took his nephew into his house and sent him to
the village school. Being a friend of the New Learning, and noticing the
promise of the child, he determined to educate him for the Church, but in
agreement with the new ideas; accordingly he sent him to the school of Gregory
Buenzli in Klein Basel, in 1494, and in 1498 to that of Heinrich Woelfli
(Lupulus) in Bern. There the lad particularly distinguished himself, and made
many friends. He, like Luther, was a born musician and fond of company. These
qualities induced the Dominicans to invite him to live in their monastery, but
when his father and uncle heard of this, they took him out of the city, lest he
should become a monk, and sent him to Vienna. For the next two years he studied
there (1500-02), and in 1502 he matriculated at Basel, took his B.A. degree
there in 1504, and his M.A. in 1506, teaching meanwhile in the school of St.
Martin's Church. In 1506 he became pastor at Glarus, where he remained for ten
years.
Being a scholar, Zwingli applied himself to his books and
laid deep and wide foundations. He also manifested his abilities as a preacher,
and with flaming zeal denounced the evils of the time, the chief of these, to
his patriotic mind, being the hiring out of the Swiss to any one other than the
Pope to fight as mercenaries, an occupation which, in numerous cases, resulted
in their moral ruin. Because some of the leading persons in his congregation
were carrying on this traffic, his opposition awoke their animosity and made
his position so uncomfortable that he was glad to accept a call to be preacher
at Einsiedeln, only a few miles from Glarus, and the chief place of pilgrimage
for Switzerland, South Germany, and Alsace. There he met with great numbers of
people, including many prominent men, and thus he clarified his thinking on the
burning questions of the day. He had a candid mind, and his faith in
traditional orthodoxy had already received several shocks. Thomas Wyttenbach
was the first one to question in his hearing the traditional base of the
Church's teaching, in 1505-06, and a little later he came upon a service book
containing the liturgy as used in Mollis, near Glarus, two hundred years
before, and found that it expressly enjoined that the cup was to be
administered to a babe after its baptism. Again, when on a campaign in Italy as
chaplain of the Glarus contingent in the papal army, he discovered that the
Milan liturgy differed in many points from that used elsewhere. Meditation on
these points showed him that the Church had really not taught absolutely the
same truths from the beginning, nor had it observed everywhere the same
practices. Like all other Humanists, he read Erasmus, and from him learned that
the source of doctrine was the Bible and not the Church. By 1516 he had
learned, thanks to Erasmus, to read the New Testament in the original language.
He began to drink truth from the fountain rather than through the more or less
troubled stream of tradition. Then, when he met leading men at Einsiedeln, and
found that the corruption of the Church, clergy and theology was a common
theme, he ventured to discuss these matters in the pulpit. He also exalted the
Bible above the Church as the guide into truth, and Jesus Christ above the
Virgin Mary as the intercessor with the Father, and in so doing he acted
independently of Luther, in fact, he was unaware of him at this juncture. In
later times, Zwinglli always pretended to be ignorant of what Luther wrote, and
it was his constant boast that he had started the Reformation in Switzerland
independently of Luther. It was a drawback to the general cause of the
Reformation that these two Reformers did not fraternize. Because Zwingli would
not accept Luther's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, Luther declared him to be of
a different spirit; and Zwingli found much in Luther's teachings with which he
strongly disapproved.
It is
not likely that Zwingli was brought into any trouble by his doctrine at
Einsiedeln; rather it was welcome and increased his reputation. So, when the
position of leut-priest (preacher and pastor) in the Great Cathedral in Zurich
fell vacant in the latter part of 1518, he was suggested for the place. Then it
was brought to light certain facts that resulted in humiliation before his
friends and became a source of triumph to his foes. Like the clergy about him,
he believed himself absolved from the obligation of chastity by which he was
bound due to his vow of celibacy. Lapses from sexual purity were too common to
be considered objections in a priest, but the charge against him was made that
he had seduced a girl of good family, and this was considered a valid reason
for rejecting his nomination. He was written to in regard to these claims and
his reply on the subject has been preserved. He denied the charge of seduction,
but frankly admitted the charge of habitual sexual impropriety, and he does it
in a jesting tone which shows that he had no conception that his offense was
any other than a trifling one. The assembly ot the Great Minster (Cathedral) in
Zurich agreed to this view and elected him. Therefore, when he came to Zurich
to assume the role of leut-priest, he was a confessedly lustful man, but only
the pure in heart can see God; the Gospel had not yet entered his heart. It so
happened that in his parish was a beautiful widow, Anna Reinhard (b. 1484), a
Zurich innkeeper's daughter, who had married (1504) Hans Meyer von Knonau, from
a noble family in Zurich, He died in 1517. Her son, Gerold, was in the Great
Minster Latin school when Zwingli came to Zurich and made the acquaintance of
the mother. When their intimacy passed the bounds of propriety is unknown, but
certain it is that from the spring of 1522 Zwingli and Anna Reinhard were
living together in what was euphemistically called a " clerical marriage." Such
arrangements, while not put on par with marriage, were entered into without
stigma, as it was assumed that without an extraordinary supply of divine grace
it was not possible for a priest to live in purity; and in fact, very few did,
so it was deemed preferrable for the morals of the community that priests
should have nominal wives. They were expected to, and probably did, live
faithful to these women, and the women to them. When, however, the relations
between Zwingli and Anna Reinhard were formed, many Protestant priests had
married their mistresses or other women, and it was expected that Zwingli, who
was the head of the reform movement in Zurich, would show equal courage and set
a good example. Why he did not has been explained on the ground of his
reluctance to face the monetary and social complications involved in a commoner
marrying a widow of the nobility; but at last he married her, on Apr. 2, 1524.
Between 1526 and 1530 four children were born to him, but there are no direct
descendants of his now living.
Zwingli held the leut-priestship from 1519 to 1522, and till the
end of his life retained the preachership in the Great Minster. His fame spread
through all German Switzerland and southern Germany. His sermons as printed are
long, rambling, and dull, though clear and simple in style, but, in the process
of the expansion they have undergone, all their liveliness has probably been
removed. Having uncommon Biblical and patristic scholarship, a frank, candid,
independent, and progressive nature, and a great desire to advance the
interests of his country in religious, political, and social matters, he won
general approval from the start, not only as a preacher but as a man. When a
preacher of indulgences named Bernhardin Samson appeared on the scene (1519),
Zwingli successfully opposed him - a course which received the approval of the
hierarchy, for the fathers of Trent recognized that there were abuses connected
with the proclamation of indulgences When the plague broke out in Zurich in
1520, Zwingli labored so diligently among his people that, worn out, he fell
sick himself and looked into the eyes of death. He used the position won by his
devotion and independence to advance reform, but very cautiously and by
attacking externals first. Thus he showed that fasting in Lent had no
Scriptural support, which teaching was eagerly taken up by those who wanted to
have good meals all the year round; next, that tithes had only state and church
laws to rest upon, but no Scripture, this teaching being heartily welcomed by
those who paid taxes and groaned under them. He had his say in regard to the
proper way to treat beggars, who were considered by the good people about him
as aids in devotion and pathways to heaven, but whom he denounced as nuisances
and would have changed into self-supporting members of the community, and he
showed how this might be done. Next came simplification of the Breviary and
plans for a liturgy in the vernacular and a much altered service for the
administration of the Lord's Supper. Proceeding step by step, with the assent
of the magistrates in Zurich, he eventually alarmed the local hierarchy, who
appealed to Constance, where their bishop lived, and the bishop sent to Zurich
an investigation committee which sat Apr. 7--9, 1522, but found no advantage
against the manifest satisfaction of the citizens with the positions Zwingli
had taken. It was evident that the wave of reform had passed from Germany into
Switzerland.
After three years of
preaching, Zwingli judged that the time was ripe for a bolder step.
Consequently he prepared sixty-five theses, not at all like the ninety-five of
Luther, which were on the single topic of indulgences and were intended
primarily for a university audience, while Zwingli's theses were for a popular
audience and covered all the points of the " Gospel," as he called it. In
accordance with the Swiss plan that before radical measures were taken in a
canton there was to be a public debate as to their expediency, presided over by
the burgomaster, a meeting was held in the town hall of Zurich on Jan. 29,
1523. All the clergy were invited, and the frankest expression of opinion was
courted. As a matter of fact, there was no real debate, but only a dialogue
between Zwingli and the vicar-general of Constance. The decision of the
magistracy was that the doctrines Zwingli had preached were enjoined on all
priests in the canton. This was satisfactory so far, but only as an entering
wedge. Zwingli kept on applying the " Gospel " to practical matters and began
preparations for a second discussion, which was held Oct. 26-28, 1523, this
being still less a debate between the Old and the Reform Church parties, since
it was almost entirely in the hands of the latter. Of special interest is the
part which the radicals among the followers of Zwingli played. They accepted
his whole program, but they were for immediate application of its practical
teaching, and wished Zwingli to accept some of its logical consequences-both of
which courses were hostile to his cautious nature. The decisions of the
magistracy after this discussion were, however, radical enough to suit any but
a radical, for they removed the images and pictures out of the churches, made
the vernacular the language of the religious services, and, still more
startlingly, stripped the mass of all its incrustations through the centuries
and brought it back, as far as possible, to its first institution. A third
disputation was held Jan. 19--20, 1524, but this was a last desperate attempt
of the Old Church party to stem the tide of change which Zwingli had set in
motion. By the end of 1524 church life in Zurich was quite different in many of
its outward manifestations from that in any other Swiss city. The convents for
men and women had been abolished, and the music had been silenced in the
churches, a strange turn of events for one so fond of music as Zwingli, and
defensible only on his theory that the Reformed Church should have no practice
which recalled the Old Church as music did. The mass alone stood, and that was
so wrapped up with the life of the people that he hesitated to destroy it
before the people were fully prepared to accept a substitute. At last the
decree went forth that on Thursday of Holy Week, Apr. 13, 1525, in the Great
Minster, the Lord's Supper would be for the first time observed according to
the liturgy Zwingli had composed. On that eventful day men and women sat on
opposite sides of the table which extended down the middle aisle, and were
served bread on wooden platters and wine from wooden beakers. The contrast to
the former custom was shocking to many, yet the new way was accepted. With this
radical break with the past, the Reformation in Zurich may be said to have been
completed.
No sooner
had the Reformation been established than internal troubles nearly disrupted
the State. First came the peasants with their undoubted grievances, although
they did not give the trouble they made in Germany, both because their demands
were less radical, and because the authorities, on the advice of Zwingli, were
more conciliatory. But the other disturbing element, the detested, the dreaded,
the misunderstood and persecuted Anabaptists, were the real trial. They did not
originate in Zurich, but the earliest members of the party in Zurich were
members of Zwingli's congregation. He had taught them to ask Scripture proof
for doctrines and practices seeking church acceptance, and they accordingly
asked him to give such proof for infant baptism. Because he could not, he was
at first inclined to grant that logically the practice had no Scriptural
support; but when they pressed him to declare himself plainly, they only
stirred his anger. He fell back upon the assumptions of the Old Church, and for
a man so radical on all other points he showed a singular reluctance to accept
the consistent teaching of his Anabaptist friends. It was only when it became
manifest to him that rejection of infant baptism would lead to churches being
established around a membership composed of the spiritually regenerate, and to
necessity of "unchurching" all who could not make a public confession of an
experience of grace and the abolition of secular authority in religious
matters, that Zwingli felt compelled to oppose it with all his might. He sought
to silence them by sermon and treatise, and because they would not keep silence
he became their persecutor. This attitude can be explained only by his
acceptance of the propriety of suppressing what is deemed to be erroneous, even
at the expense of life, on the claim that it is better that a few should die
for their erroneous faith than that they should be allowed to live and
propagate their errors. This doctrine was accepted by Protestants and by Roman
and Greek Catholics in the sixteenth century, and the Protestants alone have
since repudiated it.
The years of
Zwingli's life from 1524 to 1529 were extremely busy, and were passed almost
entirely in Zurich. One occasion for a visit outside of it was very pressing.
At Baden, a famous watering place, only twelve miles northwest of Zurich, there
was a disputation between the Old Church representatives and the Zwingli party
from May 21 to June 8, 1528. It was thought to be dangerous for Zwingli to
personally attend because the Old Church party sought his death. But though not
present in person, Zwingli had the closest connection with those from Zurich
who spoke for him, and gave them daily instruction. The debates were probably
as fair as such debates can be, but things were exactly reversed from what they
were in the Zurich debates, for the speakers and the audience were
overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Of course each side claimed the victory. In 1528
Zwingli was in Bern and played the most prominent part in the formal
introduction, through magisterial action, of the Reformation into that city.
To this period of Zwingli's life also belongs the debate with
Luther over the Lord's Supper, one of the great misfortunes the consequences of
which are felt today. As Luther said at Marburg, he and Zwingli were not of the
same spirit. Zwingli taught that the sacraments were signs and symbols of holy
things, but in themselves had no power to cleanse, So that in the Lord's Supper
there is a bringing back to memory of the work of grace done by Jesus Christ,
who lives before the believer, though there is no application of grace through
the sacrament itself. He had a clear mind upon this point, and the mystical
view in any of its phases had no attractions for him. Consequently, the
interchange of reading material between himself and Luther accomplished little,
and only angered Luther. Thus baptism and the Eucharist, which were intended by
Christ to be unifying practices, produced by their varied interpretation a
breach between the Old Church and Protestants and between parties among the
Protestants. Among the leaders of the Protestants was Philip the Magnanimous,
Landgrave of Hesse (a.k.a. Philip of Hesse), who desired to see unity among
Protestants upon the Eucharist, and to this end arranged a meeting in his
castle at Marburg between Zwingli and Luther, which had one good result. Luther
discovered that he and Zwingli had much in common. Although the territory
through which Zwmgli had to pass on his way to Marburg was, with the exception
of a few miles, friendly to Protestants, yet so panic-stricken were Zwingli and
all his friends at the possibility of encountering members of the Old Church on
their own ground that the Reformer considered himself to be doing a bold thing
in obeying the summons of the landgrave. He left Zurich by stealth, without
permission of the government and with a false statement to his wife as to his
destination, but nothing happened to him. As it was thought unwise to pit him
directly against Luther, he was introduced to Melanchthon, but nevertheless the
debate was between the German and the Swiss chief reformers. Both sides boasted
of victory, and the usual interchange of disgraceful epithets followed the
debate which the Landgrave had hoped would seal their union.
After his return to Zurich Zwingli prosecuted more vigorously
those political schemes which were intended to result in a union of all
Protestants, and also of states which were not Protestant, against the house of
Hapsburg and the pope, in the interest of religious liberty. The time Zwingli
gave to these negotiations must have been considerable, for he sought to unite
in this "Christian Burgher Rights," as he called his league, bodies as widely
scattered as France and the Republic of Venice. What might have come of this
scheme if his life had been longer continued is, of course, impossible to say,
but in 1530 he saw the making of the Schmalkald League, which shut off Lutheran
membership in the Christian Burgher Rights, and the final refusal of France and
Venice to enter. Inside of Switzerland Zwingli's schemes for religious liberty
were equally unsuccessful, since the Five Forest Cantons, i.e., the cantons of
Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Luzern, and Zug, all adjoining Zurich, refused to
allow the preaching of the Reformed faith within their borders. War actually
broke out; but at Kappel, ten miles south of Zurich, where the opposing armies
were about to come to blows, a hasty and ill-considered peace was patched up.
The Forest Cantons refused to ratify the action of their representatives, and
so the bill for the war was left unpaid by them, and the gospel preachers were
still excluded from their territories. Zwingli saw clearly that such a peace
was transitory, but though he wished that the cantons might be forced to keep
the promises they had made, he did not desire to have them forced by the cruel
measures which the Protestant cantons adopted, namely, by preventing the Forest
Cantons from buying necessary things, especially salt, by blocking their
entrance into the lower levels where alone these things could be obtained.
On June
30, 1530, the famous Diet of Augsburg convened. To it Zwingli sent a brief
confession of faith and tried, probably unsuccessfully, to get it into the
emperor's hands. It was a personal confession, but is one of the most
interesting documents of the Reformation. In it he thus expresses himself
respecting the Eucharist: "I believe that in the holy Eucharist-i.e., the
supper of thanksgiving - the true body of Christ is present by the
contemplation of faith; i.e., that they who thank the Lord for the kindness
conferred on us in his Son acknowledge that he assumed true flesh, in it truly
suffered, truly washed away our sins in his own blood; and thus everything done
by Christ becomes present to them by the contemplation of faith. But that the
body of Christ in essence and really-i.e., the natural body itself - is either
present in the supper or masticated with our mouth or teeth, as the papists and
some who long for the fleshpots of Egypt assert, we not only deny, but firmly
maintain is an error opposed to God's Word." Zwingli played a prominent part in
Protestantism and made Zurich a prominent place. His educational work was
important. He was a born teacher, and when at Glarus had pupils, some of whose
letters have been preserved and show how well he had taught them. His little
book which was his present to his stepson reveals the wise teacher, and so, as
soon as his other engagements permitted, he accepted the post of rector of the
Carolinum, the school of the Great Minster in Zurich (1525), and did much to
improve the curriculum, besides teaching there in the religious department. But
not education and instruction alone claimed his attention. He was the great man
of Zurich, and was consulted on every topic by everybody from the chief
magistrate to the lowliest citizen. His correspondence often compelled him to
toil late into the night after the crowded days, and there came from his pen a
stream of treatises, in Latin when be sought the widest public, or in German
when he had his own nation more in view. These treatises were sometimes hastily
written and are often of little present interest, but most of them are still
worthy of reading. They are controversial, as those in exchange with Luther's
on the Eucharist; expository of his position on theology in general or upon
particular points; practical, giving guidance to the preachers about him how to
preach the Gospel; or patriotic, noble utterances against war and the mercenary
service. These writings show the broad-mindedness of Zwingli, and give ground
for the claim that if he were living today he would be in all respects a modern
man.
But this life
of strenuous endeavor in so many directions was drawing to its close, not
through the weakening of its bodily powers, not because under a strain the
brain had given way, but because the fratricidal strife which had been
temporarily avoided broke out again. On May 15, 1531, the cantons which had
accepted the Reformation assembled, and learning that the Forest Cantons, which
were strongly Roman Catholic, had flatly refused to keep the treaty which they
had signed through their representatives the year before, resolved to bring
them to terms by preventing them from crossing their borders, as they would
have to do if they would purchase wheat, salt, iron, steel, and other necessary
things. It was a cruel measure, as already said, and Zurich resisted it, but
was outvoted. As soon as this edict came to execution, it brought the Forest
Cantons to warlike preparation, and since Zurich lay directly in their path as
they descended from the mountains, they attacked it first. On Oct. 9, 1531,
their troops crossed the Zurich border, which was only twelve miles from the
city, and the news reached there that evening. Strangely enough, there seems to
have been no apprehension that war was so near, and, consequently, there was no
adequate preparation. It was a mob rather than a little army of the famous
Swiss soldiers which rushed out of the city. Their objective was Kappel, and
there they were joined the next day, Wednesday, Oct. 11, 1531, by the main
army. With it was Zwingli, dressed in armor, though he was a non-combatant
stayed in the rear of the battle. He was the chief pastor of Zurich and his
presence was to be expected. It was a foregone conclusion that Zurich would be
overthrown. She bad only 2,700 men against 8,000 and they were very badly led.
Overwhelmed, it took only a short time to be almost annihilated. Five hundred
Zurichers were slain, among them representatives of every prominent family in
the city. But the greatest of them was Zwingli. Wounded first by a spear, and
then struck on the head by a stone, he was put out of his misery by a sword
thrust. He lay unrecognized for awhile, but when it became known that the
corpse was that of Zwingli, it was treated with every indignity because he was
held to be the author of the regulations which had brought on the war, which
was not true, and also as the leader of the Reformation, which was true. The
body was given over to the hangman, who quartered it as if it had been that of
a traitor, and then burned it, as if that of a heretic. The war ended in a
treaty which was, of course, favorable to the Forest Cantons, though not so
harsh as might have been expected. But all Zwingli's plans for a league of
princes, cantons, and cities against pope and emperor, and all his hopes of
providing the Old Church cantons with Reformed Church missionaries were forever
ended. Much that he stood for in church practice and in theology did not long
outlive him. Music was restored to the churches (1598) and his eucharistic
views were superseded among the Reformed by those of Calvin. Yet, as he becomes
better known, his clear-headedness, his independence, and his progressiveness
will gain him increasing fame, and men will put him beside Luther as a leader
of the Protestant host. |
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