HOME ARTICLES & COMMENTARY: TOC: The Rise of Church-State Alliances: Imperial Edicts & Church Councils: 306-565 The Rise of Protestant Alliances of Church and State: Ulrich Zwingli and the Reformation in Switzerland to 1531 The Constitution and the Commandments The Classical Temple Architecture of Washington, DC A History of Religious Tests: 312 to 1961 American Founders on Church-State Alliances The Bible and the Quran: A Scriptural Comparison Religion and Women's Suffrage Religious Tradition and Interracial Marriages Slavery and the Churches Gays & Social Conservatism as a Coercive Tool of the State Einstein's Religion The Changing Religious Identification of America Moral Hypocrisy in the Bible Belt Ring Species, Evolution and why Intelligent Design isn't science. Who am I : Why this project? : Contact me INFO & EYE OPENERS FROM OTHERS: Court Holdings on Church and State Historical Revisionism: On David Barton's Christian Nation Biblical Archeology Review Special: Captivity, Exodus, and Conquest Sexual Orientation in Nature The Biological Basis of Morality by Edward O. Wilson MEDUSA HEADWEAR  Buy High Quality PolarTech 200 Fleece Headwear From the Author | AND THEIR ALLIANCES OF CHURCH AND STATE Born on New Year's day in 1484, the first prominent leader of the Swiss Reformation was Ulrich Zwingli. His birthplace is the village of Wildhaus in the Toggenburg Valley of the Swiss canton (like a small independent state) of St. Gallen. Because of family status, his grandfather and then his father serving as the town's chief magistrate, Zwingli received the best education their money and connections could get. With the Italian Renaissance flourishing to the immediate south, that meant a classical education. A remarkably bright and energetic child, Zwingli's genius was apparent to those about him. His education was handled by his Catholic parents and his humanist uncle. His parents were very traditional Catholics while uncle Bartholomew Zwingli, Deacon at Wesen, strongly supported humanism as the new and better way of looking at this life. At ten, Zwingli began studying Latin in Basel under Gregory Binzli at the school of St. Theodore's. At fourteen he entered college in Berne, Switzerland which was headed by Heinrich Wölflin, Switzerland's most esteemed classical and Renaissance scholar. There Zwingli excelled in all his studies. At sixteen, he began three years of study at the University of Vienna at a time when it was a center of humanism under the intellectual influences of Konrad Celtes, Johannes Cuspinian, and the patronage of Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian. Celtes was also an influence upon Joachim Vadian, the religious humanist who, as an ally of Zwingli, brought the reform movement to the area of Switzerland known as St. Gallen. In 1502, after visiting his home of Wildhaus for a while, Zwingli returned to his classical studies at Basel. He taught Latin at the nearby school of St. Martin's and also earned a Masters of Arts degree. Unlike most of the Protestant reformers, he did not choose to earn a divinity degree. Home of the famed scholar and humanist Desiderius Erasmus, Basel, like Vienna, had been influenced by the Italian Renaissance, becoming a literary center and a relatively fresh marketplace of ideas for north of Italy. Arriving in 1505, one of his teachers at Basel was influential and outspoken professor Thomas Wyttenbach. The professor openly criticized indulgences, celibacy, and the mass . Wyttenbach saw the mass as idolatry. Wyttenbach told his students,"The hour is not far distant in which the scholastic theology will be set aside, and the old doctrines of the Church revived. Christ's death is the only ransom for our souls." (See J. H. Merle D'Aubigne's The History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. In contrast to Luther, who loathed the humanism of the Renaissance, Zwingli became a classical scholar who held humanism and republicanism in high regard. This also reflected the political systems of the two nations; Germany being monarchal and Switzerland leaning towards democratic republicanism. Reform minded humanists like Erasmus, Wyttenbach and Pico della Mirandola made deep impressions upon Zwingli. Mirandola's writings inspired Zwingli to be critical and question authority. Like Luther, Zwingli also fell in love with music, playing the flute, the lute, the harp, the violin and the dulcimer. Even the Mountain Horn! In the future, his opponents would use his love of music (and those women!) to attack him as worldly, carnal and unworthy of anyone's ear. Like humanist critics and most of the Swiss clergy, Zwingli thought vows of celibacy and the prohibition of marriage for clergy and nuns were unscriptural and went against nature. According to Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, cited in Will Durant's (The Reformation, page 403-404), one bishop charged his priests and monks four guilders per child; and supposedly collected 1522 guilders that year. Celibacy demanded of people a task that went against human nature in most persons, both socially and sexually. Good works like vows of celibacy and pilgrimages were thought by reformers to be irrelevant to obtaining salvation. They were the fruits of faith. It was by faith that one obtained redemption and forgiveness. While the Renaissance turned on the lights and actually helped enable the Reformation to emerge through its acceptance of debate in art, religion and philosophy, the Reformation turned down of the lights of knowledge and liberty. The Reformation built but another version of Augustine's City of God, complete with the dogmatic and contemptuous attacks on this world and this life's worth. Some make the claim that religious liberty began with the Reformation. Reformers wanted religious freedom for themselves and their followers but like the Catholic and Byzantine Churches, they banned dissent and threatened harsh punishments for the guilty. None of the great reformers accepted or supported any kind of religious choice as a civil policy. They were intolerant in the same fashion as the mother church was. The Reformation brought with it a demand for religious freedom from Catholicism, not for true religious liberty. Like Roman and Byzantine emperors who teamed up with the church hierarchy, Reformation leaders were okay with the harsh punishments meted out to religious dissenters. Zwingli's classical and humanist education led him initially to a belief in the noble pagan and the salvation of unbaptized infants. The ex-Manichean 'Saint' Augustine actually believed unbaptized babies went to hell where they belonged because of original sin. In Zwingli's Heaven, he expected to see unbaptized holy men, classical philosophers, Neoplatonists, pious polytheists and others who were believed to have been inspired by the Holy Ghost. An interesting view of many religious humanists is that classical philosophy was a forerunner of the Gospel, laying the groundwork. Although revolutionary, as the Renaissance period was, this eclectic view was not altogether new but had been lost in time. As the Church historian Philip Schaff notes, "Justin Martyr, Origen, and other Greek fathers saw in the scattered truths of the heathen poets and philosophers the traces of the pre-Christian revelation of the Logos, and in the philosophy of the Greeks a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. The humanists of the school of Erasmus recognized a secondary inspiration in the classical writings..." To the classical philosopher, virtue and truth were humanity's highest goals. To the pagan priest or classical philosopher, Christianity offered very little that was new. God-men born of unions between deities and humans, virgin births, healings and resurrections has always been part of pagan lore. Hercules was the son of a human woman and Zeus, the Father of Gods. (Interesting: the Library of Congress exhibit points out, "Benjamin Franklin was responsible for suggesting the country's first emblem -- a native rattlesnake -- and its first personification -- Hercules." Franklin was not alone in this idea. The Marquis de Barbi-Marbois painted the "Allegory of the American Union" in 1784. This water color on paper exhibited online by the Library of Congress is at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. It depicts Hercules in the middle of an arching bridge that has on it what appear to be thirteen state seals.) In medieval Europe, openly questioning spiritual and temporal authorities could get you killed. Your head might then be stuck on a pike at the city gates as a reminder to all. Many of the hanged were left strung up for the birds to pick clean till "the wind whistled through their bones" as a warning for all to hear. The smell of death, decaying flesh, was a powerful reminder of the fate of those who challenge authority. On top of all this barbarism, and after the civil authorities hung, drowned or beheaded you, the Church might then want a piece of you, too. Burning an already dead heretic seemed to be part of the day's sense of justice. Bodies were even dug up to be burned at the stake. Some were dug up to be put on trial. When early Czech-Bohemian reformer Jan Hus, (John Huss) was burned at the stake by the authority of the Council of Constance after given a promise of safe passage by the authorities. England's reformer John WyCliffe (or WyClif) was burned in effigy with him. When Queen Mary I (Bloody Mary) became Queen of England, she instituted an inquisition upon Protestantism. That included unearthing the bones of German reformer Martin Bucer's bones and burning them publicly in the marketplace. Bucer emigrated to England after becoming disillusioned with the sacramental conflict between Zwingli and Luther and became a professor at Oxford. Following the traditions of mad-hatters on religion, even before his death in the Swiss civil war, Zwingli was burned in effigy in angry Catholic communities. In his last year at Glarus, Zwingli came under the influence of Erasmus who had arrived in Basel in 1515. He was the most famous northern humanist of the times. Zwingli read everything Erasmian he could get his hands on and established a modest correspondence. Erasmian humanism was a marriage of solid Catholic doctrine and liberal, classical education with an emphasis on freedom of debate. While humanism in the Italian Renaissance flourished outside the universities, it was just the opposite in the northern renaissance. While the Italian Renaissance was classical and notably pagan in some of its themes, the northern one, arriving later in the period, was an attempt at joining classical with Christian. Erasmus noted Zwingli's classical education and humanist thinking, writing to him, "I congratulate the Helvetians, that you are laboring to polish and civilize them by your studies and your morals, which are alike of the highest order." (see J. H. Merle D'Aubigne) This eclectic philosophical mix brought Zwingli many attacks from those dedicated to the endorsement and protection traditional medieval Catholicism. The court of Erasmus was made up of an interesting group of religious humanists who were also educators. One was Oswald Geisshussler, whose name Erasmus Hellenized to Myconius. Myconius would play an important role in the Swiss Reformation after Zwingli's early death. Another bright intimate of Erasmus was John Hausschein, whose name was Hellenized to Oecolampadius, meaning "the light of the house". Oecolampadius played an important role of bringing the reformation to the canton of Berne. Another of the party of Erasmus was humanist philosopher, musician and poet Heinrich Glarean, who was also called Glareanus. Like Erasmus, like Luther, these men originally believed in the Church and just wanted to repair her from within; breaking away wasn't in their initial plans. Naively, they believed humanism and religious dogma could coexist. A different culture altogether from that of Italy's, the north was unable to fully embrace Renaissance humanism. They went half way and were lukewarm humanists, unable to free themselves from more than a millennia of threatening religious thought. They merely changed the names and faces; altars, liturgy and doctrine changed but the authoritarian, anti-world, anti-science, and anti-freethinking core remained. Martin Luther, sounding like the Curia on this matter, wrote of Copernicus in hisTischreden (Table Talk), saying "There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must needs invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth." Copernicus was an Astrologer. Imagine that. Today's creationists like young-earthers and old earth "intelligent design" advocates are similar in their hard line regarding modern cosmological, evolutionary, and geological matters. With nationalism emerging throughout Europe, serious differences eventually arose between Zwingli and the French in Glarus. The break from Glarus came because Zwingli was against a treaty with France and Glarus had a strong French party. Opposing the treaty of November of 1516 made his position an impossible one in Glarus. He was also deeply troubled regarding the hiring out of Swiss mercenaries to fight other nations' wars. French soldiers were killing Swiss soldiers hired by Italy. Swiss soldiers, sometimes fighting other Swiss mercenaries, were dying for other nations. Swiss were killing Swiss. The youth of Switzerland were dying on the battlefields of the Papal States. The turning point, disgusting the entire Swiss confederacy, was the slaughter of 12,000, possibly 22,000 Swiss at the Battle of Marignano. Moments before launching into battle, 30,000 Swiss soldiers genuflected and prayed before the warmongering Cardinal Schinner. Francis I's French army also lost 4000, possibly 8000. This is awful stuff. |
"If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that is pleasing to him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God."
When discussing the form of government Americans should have after the statist Articles of Confederation had quickly outlived their use in the new nation, the democratic-republican models derived from classical Greece and Rome took center stage. Nothing governmental from the Bible was suggested in the Federalist letters. Falsely, some religious spin machines claim the separation of powers comes from the Bible but they are clearly classical and enlightenment ideas in origin. John Adams put together a book called In Defense of the Constitutions of the United States in which he examined many of history's governments. Besides examining Rome and Greece, he explored the many cantonal governments of Switzerland. Adams' book also has a chapter on Polybius, the ancient Greek historian that analyzes the Roman Republic's separation of powers. In his book, Adams claims our constitution is a product of natural reasoning, not any "conversations with the heavens". Claims of conversations with the heavens had been the problem, not the solution, of issues like justice, equality, democracy and liberty. Adams, like many of the founders was classically educated. David McCullough writes in his book on Adams, regarding many of the founders, "They had the models of the Greek and Latin ideals -- honor, virtue, the good society, .. They didn't just read Cicero, Cicero was part of them. They were marinated in it." It is claimed John Adams said of Cicero, "All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined". And so it was with the northern humanists influenced by the Renaissance; friends of Zwingli called him Switzerland's Cicero.
"The chief purpose in the establishment of states and constitutional orders was that individual property right might be secured. It is the peculiar function of state and city to guarantee the free and undisturbed control of his own property." (Cicero, De Officiis, 44 BCE)
Zwingli's teaching of Biblical supremacy got the attention of the Papacy so the authorities first tried to silence him with bribes. With Switzerland providing the Papal States with the best soldiers in Europe, the authorities wanted to do this quietly and behind the scenes. (Both the Church and civil authorities had been using Germanic soldiers since late antiquity. Rome allied with Germanic tribes to fight off invaders like the Huns. It was Prussian-German mercenaries that Britain hired to help stop the American Revolution) More successful than most nations regarding their independence from the influence of Rome in civil matters, the Swiss liked to think of themselves as independent thinking, leaning democratical, and able to manage their own affairs with their own methods. As early as the twelfth century, the clergy paid taxes in Switzerland. In 1370, in the Pfaffenbrief agreement, Zurich, Lucerne, Zug, Uri, Unterwalden, and Schwyz, as a unified confederacy for the first time, made ecclesiastics and their properties subject to the jurisdiction of the state. That also meant paying taxes. The Pfaffenbrief was a end result of a dispute between the provost Bruno Brun of the Zurich cathedral and Peter von Gundoldingen, the mayor of Lucerne. Brun had imprisoned Gundoldingen and refused to recognize any civil authority. This kind of problem, in which the church demanded supremacy in all matters, is what saturated European politics for over a thousand years. The cantons used this agreement to fend off ecclesiastical and secular authorities from without.
"It laid down two principles: all cases within the confederation, except matrimonial and ecclesiastical, must be tried before the local judge, who had jurisdiction even over aliens (thus ignoring both the imperial courts and foreign spiritual courts); it contained resolutions relating to the public peace, and forbade waging wars without the consent of the government. At the same time, ecclesiastical jurisdiction was not annulled, and cases in which one of the clergy was defendant were usually tried in the episcopal courts. By requiring the oath of allegiance from the clergy, moreover, the Pfaffenbrief indirectly tended to subordinate the clergy to the State in matters applying equally to clergy and laity. By thus delimiting, in an important sphere of law, what appertained to the State and what to the Church, and by favoring the claims of the former rather than of the latter, the Pfaffenbrief marked the first real and successful Swiss attempt to restrict by means of the secular law the unlimited extension of ecclesiastical power." (See New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge)
Then, in 1510, Pope Julius acquiesced to the canton of Geneva's council and let them regulate their monasteries, convents, beliefs and public morals, making Geneva a state in charge of religious matters. With this agreement, the Pope laid the foundation for one of Christian history's harshest theocracies; Calvin's Geneva. Protestant alliances with the state became as dictatorial as Catholic ones. The Reformation under Henry VIII was as tyrannical as the Papacy. Calvin's theocracy was like the Taliban's; cruel and unusual punishments with spies and secret police searching for sinners.
While at Einsiedeln, Zwingli attacked the superstitions attached to pilgrimages. The area had a famous shrine at a Benedictine convent that was a pilgrim favorite. Tens of thousands visited every year, giving up their hard earned savings just as they did to the sellers of indulgences, for some desperately needed miracle, forgiveness, or some time off for a friend or relative thought to be in Purgatory. The money maker was a black image of the Virgin Mary that supposedly fell from heaven (the blackened state was due to the years of candle burning). Stories spread far and wide on the miracles performed by the blessed Virgin. Zwingli was able to persuade the Benedictines to remove an inscription from the gates. The inscription stated "Hic est plena remissio omnium peccatorum a culpa et a poena", promising a complete remission of sins. Zwingli believed that for those justified by faith, it was already a done deal so the pilgrims were wasting their earnings by giving with the expectation of remission.
Attending the lectures of Professor Wyttenbach at Basel had made a lasting impression on Zwingli. In September of 1518, the Pope's seller of indulgences came over the Alps to Switzerland. The Franciscan monk Bernardin Samson was the high commissioner of sales to the Swiss so when he arrived, Zwingli warned the people of Einsiedeln that the monk was taking their money for empty promises, the institution was unscriptural and only benefited the Church. They were being cheated. Franciscans had the job of selling indulgences for the Papacy. One of the ways the Papacy funded its building projects and wars was to commission indulgences. Samson first arrived in the village of Zug and stayed for three days. Large crowds flocked to him, seeking remission of their sins by way of payments. People paid for the remission of sins and received an officially stamped document from Rome saying so. With the poor far outnumbering the rich and the rich always being the most important customers, Samson's attendants told the people, "Good folks, do not crowd so much! make way for those who have money! We will afterwards endeavor to satisfy those who have none". Amazing! (See D'Aubigne) People were desperate and credulous. It was predatory to exploit the illiteracy and superstition of the peasant masses. Praying to and adoring Mary or asking for the protection of a saint, previously the roles of pagan genii and muses, had been pounded into their heads since their infancy.
Samson proceeded to Lucerne, Unterwalden, the Oberlands, and Berne, where he slipped in after being forbidden entrance, and then on to Bremgarten. In Bremgarten he was forbidden to sell his merchandise by Heinrich Bullinger, the Dean of the Bremgarten Church. Even with Samson's Papal troops in tow, the Dean would not budge. Samson showed him the Papal Bulls and demanded that he open his church for the sales of indulgences. Bullinger, father of future reformer and Zwingli's successor Henry Bullinger, retorted, "I will not permit the purses of my parishioners to be drained by unauthenticated letters; for the bishop has not legalized them"After the squabble - "Rebellious priest! Impudent brute!", (See D'aubigne) - Bullinger turned and left the room, not intimidated in the slightest by his summary excommunication and threats of being brought before the diet. Little did Samson know how difficult Zurich would be. And what of the unauthenticated Papal Bulls? Does Bullinger's excuse give credence to draining the parish's purses if the Papal Bulls were indeed authentic? The reformers doctrinal claim was indulgences have no scriptural foundation; selling indulgences was invented by men, not God.
After Zwingli was elected to the Great Minster on December 10, 1518, Zurich's magistrates banned the sale of indulgences in Zurich's territories. Even the Bishop of Constance and his Vicar Johann Faber sided with Zwingli but not for the same reasons: they wanted the bu$ine$$ for themselves! Bullinger, still stoked by his encounter with Samson did indeed show up in Zurich when Samson did. At the outskirts of town, Samson was notified by the council deputies that he could not enter Zurich, but he tricked his way into a meeting with the authorities. This strategy backfired as the peddler was forced to withdraw the excommunication of the Bullinger. Angrily, Rome's snake-oil salesman left the hall of the council and then the city after being treated as a thief and a con-man. Samson was soon recalled by the Pope and his traveling salesman career was over.
The indulgence issue was much bigger in Germany so the Pope was backing off. Luther's attacks on orthodoxy included the selling of indulgences in Germany byJohann Tetzel, but Zwingli went beyond Luther's strategy, with a longer list of issues. Missteps, underestimation, and poor planning taught the Church this problem wasn't going away anytime soon so a retreat was in order. Burning another John Huss at the stake would not do the job this time. Steadily rising conversion rates to the reform doctrines, most especially the conversions of those powerful lawmaking civil magistrates, had caught the Papal authorities off guard. The Papacy's long unquestioned dominion over the civil magistrates and church dioceses of western Europe since late antiquity was in jeopardy. The emergence of nationalism, strengthened borders, and the challenging humanism of the Renaissance made the situation even more dangerous for the authority of the Papacy. It created the atmosphere necessary for the rise of the magisterial reformation of the sixteenth century. The humanism of the period had energized nobles, scholars, magistrates, and the clergy to hold open disputations with hundreds of the people present so this religious movement had to be taken seriously. The emerging nationalism enabled civil authorities to legislate and dominate in ecclesiastical matters in order to assert state sovereignty against foreign intrusion, both secular and religious.
Now the state, energized and supported by the patriotism of the people plus the nobility's calls to put a stop to all foreign interferences, was taking the upper hand in this ancient alliance of religion and government; of the clergy and the civil lawmakers. A growing belief in many parts of Europe and England was that Rome was a foreign interference that diminished the region's sovereignty and independence. So the Zurich council really became a Christian organ of government endorsing and protecting the Protestant Reformation. The citizen now had the freedom to be a Protestant, while the Church was stripped of its liberties, special privileges, and its self-governing authority in civil matters. Church-state alliances with religious tests, authoritarian dogma, and tyranny weren't going anywhere but assumed the same role under Protestants as they did under Catholics. Regardless of the change in doctrines and the structure of the church government, authorities predictably sought to determine the religious beliefs of their societies.
The American founders, especially Jefferson and Madison, noted the danger of such alliances. Jefferson wrote in his letter to Jeremiah Moore on August 14, 1800,"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man" Madison noted the tyranny of the magisterial reformation in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments speech before the Virginia legislature in 1785. The speech was designed to put a stop to the Patrick Henry wing's attempt to establish state supported Christian teachers through taxation; to privilege Christianity above other religions, which is what today's religious right is all about.
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."..."Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinion."
Madison continued, calling Patrick Henry's law a "melancholy mark" and a "Bill of sudden degeneracy"
Beginning with the Nicene Imperialists of the Byzantine and Roman churches, and then continuing with the Protestant reformers - there was no true religious liberty in any of their realms. You confessed the faith of your principality or else you risked your rights, your property, your family's welfare and possibly your life in the worst of times. If you switched religions, someone still wanted to harm you for being a heretic. If you changed your religion, you might have to emigrate. Change back and then the other side wants to harm you. Islam also has this maniacal intolerance towards backsliders, threatening converts to Christianity or Judaism with death. The harsh religious laws promulgated by Protestant alliances of church and state are no different than the Roman and Byzantine ones directed against pagans, Jews and heretics in their endless attempts to snuff out their beliefs. All that talk about the Reformation being the bringer of religious freedom is revisionist propaganda. Freedom from the Papacy did not translate to actual religious liberty. Just as it was dangerous to be non-trinitarian in late antiquity, it was also dangerous in Protestant Europe. The Geneva theocracy's John Calvin approved the death sentence of Michael Servetus, a non-trinitarian Christian of the sixteenth century. No Protestant leader promised, practiced or supported full religious liberty. Reformation leaders and activists wanted religious choice and liberty but it wasn't for others and was never meant to be. There is only one way. On religious tolerance, the Bible, like the Quran is clear: there is none to be allowed, upon penalty of eternal doom. Mercy is not to be extended to the religiously incorrect.
On top of banning the sale of Papal indulgences, the Zurich Council further ordered all preaching to be supported by the written Word of God. The council ordered that nothing could be preached "that they had not drawn from the sacred fountains of the Old and New Testaments." (See D'aubigne). Most of the Catholic clergy had never heartily studied the Bible, concentrating on scholasticism instead, which is why so many cantons couldn't send an expert to some debates. And when they did show, they were sometimes beaten badly by the superior knowledge of the reformers. The Papacy had only a handful of expert theological doctors and this led to some defeats in public disputations. Reformers now had access to Bibles in both the original Greek and Hebrew and their own language in some places. After addressing corruption and sin in the church, one of the promises of the Counter-Reformation was to educate the throngs of ignorant monks, priests, and nuns. The villagers knew that their priest was no more educated than they were and this brought disrespect to the Church and an increasing loss of cultural and spiritual relevance. These declarations by the magistrates meant that some long entrenched customs were in danger if the reformers had free reign to speak.
"The life of Christ has been too long hidden from the people. I shall preach upon the whole of the Gospel of St. Matthew, chapter after chapter, according to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, without human commentaries, drawing solely from the fountains of Scripture, sounding its depths, comparing one passage with another, and seeking for understanding by constant and earnest prayer. It is to God’s glory, to the praise of his only Son, to the real salvation of souls, and to their edification in the true faith, that I shall consecrate my ministry." (See D'aubigne)
The majority of those assembled were disappointed with his scriptural plans for the church; it was the newness that bothered the traditionalist. Canon Hoffman claimed"This way of preaching is an innovation. One innovation will lead to another, and where shall we stop?" Canon Hoffman considered it his duty to put the brakes on such a program, "This explanation of Scripture will be more injurious than useful to the people." Zwingli answered that it was not a novel idea but one based in primitive Christianity as demonstrated by the homilies of Chrysostom and Augustine. (See D'aubigne) Failing to influence Zwingli, Hoffman later wrote to the provost, begging him to forbid Zwingli from disturbing the faith of the people. The petition by Hoffman went nowhere and Zwingli had a free voice for a couple of years. Curiously, Hoffman was at Zwingli's bedside when he had the plague in 1520 in order to convert him; Hoffman wanted to prevent him from dying in his error. Again he sought the authority of the provost to pressure Zwingli to renounce his errors before he died; "He is at death's door....I entreat you to save his poor soul!", but the provost again left Zwingli in peace.
Zwingli stuck to his teaching plan and began with the Gospel of Matthew. Zwingli's sermons derived from the actual Greek and Hebrew which he translated and elaborated upon for the people. He could also show the errors of the Latin because he better understood the original tongues as well as the Latin. His inspiration began with John Chrysostom´s homilies on Matthew. Augustine used scripture for his arguments, too. Chrysostom, like Cyril of Alexandria, was a highly unpleasant and fanatical man. Its a good bet that the Erasmian Zwingli didn't repeat Chrysostom's raging anti-Semitism found in his homilies against the Jews. Luther did so and did so outrageously in his book, The Jews and Their Lies. Needless to say, Hitler enjoyed Luther's book and used Christianity as Chrysostom and Luther did to attack Jews and their religion. From the time of Hitler's appearance in German politics until the mid 1930s, Hitler flashed the Christianity card around in his speeches and writings just as slick and deceptive right wing politicians always do with religion. Luther's rants were continuing the official church driven anti-Semitism begun by the regional but unique Council of Elvira (in 306) and the growing alliance of church and state under the Emperors Constantine through Justinian, 306-565.) Elvira canons outlawed socialization, sex, marriage, sharing a meal with and sometimes even working for a Jew. Ironicly, while the Christians were tightening the screws on Jews, pagans and heretics, the Imperial court was legalizing Christianity under Galerius and then under Constantine when Constantine was acclaimed emperor by his soldiers in 306. Who would have guessed at the time of the Edicts of Toleration of 311 and 313 which finally granted Christians religious liberty, they were beginning a process of limiting the religious and civil rights of others? Who could have guessed at the time of these edicts that in eighty years, Christians in the government, in alliance with the clergy, will have outlawed almost every religion but a Christianity based on the Nicene Creed? As Jefferson noted in his letter to Moore, and it is worth repeating, "The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man"
Zwingli attracted large and eager crowds thirsting for the what they considered the true Word of God, not the recycled doctrinal scraps they'd been fed for centuries. It was not long before a supporter donated the use of a printing press for his literary endeavors. Zwingli could now share his ideas throughout all of Switzerland with booklets and tracts. A Heretic with a printing press! Zwingli also addressed mandatory tithing, arguing that it should be voluntary, not a legal obligation. Mandatory tithing; now that's a faith based initiative you can bank on! Before the Zwinglian reformation, going to Church involved mostly the ritual ceremony of the mass and having communion. With Zwingli, the sermon was the center of the Sabbath's spiritual experience. They were excited by learning the actual words and stories of the Bible. Zwingli had vowed, in his 1520 letter to his ally Myconius, "Christum ex fontibus praedicare, purum Christum animis inserere" which means "to preach Christ from the fountain .. to insert the pure Christ into the hearts".
Zwingli was spoken of as one who preached from the true fountain of God's Word. The Protestant Reformation is responsible for breaking the hegemony of Catholicism but did not really support true religious liberty principles. The Reformation's original but short lived innocence was rooted in the openness of the Renaissance's humanism. After reformers demanded religious liberty for themselves and their followers, these same reformers curtailed the same liberties for others with an alliance with the authority of the state. On the issues of liberty and equality, they were the same kinds of wolves in sheep's clothing as late antiquity's church fathers were, demanding religious liberty for themselves and then denying it to others.
Zwingli was now making many enemies; assassination plots were hatched and well armed men guarded him around the clock. Streets were patrolled, intelligence was gathered, spies reported, threats were assessed, and strategies were planned. Around the same time, Pope Leo X summoned Zwingli to Rome to explain himself. Being a nationalist on top of being a religious reformer, Zwingli simply ignored the Pope as foreign intervention by an authority without any jurisdiction.
In April of 1521, Zwingli was appointed Canon, one of the chief administrators of the Great Minster and its educational facilities. With this position came increased authority in both civil and ecclesiastical spheres. This new position set the stage for a Zwinglian alliance of church and state, of Reformed Church doctrines and the laws of the civil magistrates. This secularly dominated state church paradigm was not new with Zwingli or Luther. John Wycliffe, in the 1300s, laid down how the church would be allied with, but under the control of the state. This reversed the model where the church had the upper hand over civil authorities. The eastern European reformer John Huss later taught the same things (1400s). This kind of church-state alliance must have been a reaction against the alliance, with the Catholic Church having the so much power over the civil authorities. In both models the alliance creates governments and laws which have little respect for the liberties of conscience. Liberty is a threat to religious authority and the control it wishes to exert. Talk of liberty threatened Protestant alliances of church and state, too. When Protestants make laws requiring members of government to be Protestants, you create a despotic government in regards to the principles of liberty.
In January of 1522, Zwingli was finally able to convince the Zurich council to ban all foreign military service and pensions. In the previous September, a force of six thousand Swiss troops had been dispatched to Milan, Italy to fight for the Pope against the French. Zwingli persuaded the Council to call the troops back - and just in time because they were about to engage a French army with Swiss mercenary soldiers! It would have been Swiss killing Swiss again. Even after the ban, the devious Cardinal Schinner covertly sought out and enlisted troops from Zurich. Zwingli had done a couple of tours of duty as chaplain of the Glarus forces and it was these experiences that persuaded him to change his mind regarding Switzerland's mercenary soldier business. According to his successor's writings, those of Henry Bullinger, Zwingli was at the battles of Novara (1513) and Marignano (1515). Previously, he thought Switzerland had an obligation to help protect the Papacy. Experience changed that. On May 16, 1522, Zwingli published "Vermahnung an die zu Schwyz, dass sie sich vor fremden Herren hutend". The pamphlet sought to influence other Swiss cantons regarding Switzerland's mercenary soldier business. With the invention of moveable type printing presses, pamphleteering became a very popular way for theological and political voices to get their ideas heard. This resulted in many religious and political tract wars. It also resulted in more literacy in the population as talk stimulated the learning of letters. Like the letters Christian fathers and American founders, the tracts of the day give us interesting resources with which to study the nature of the times.
After successfully challenging the legitimacy of pilgrimages and plenary indulgences, Zwingli took aim in 1522 at traditional Lenten fasting from meat. During Lent, March 30, he preached a sermon challenging the tradition of abstinence, showing that the prohibition was invented without Biblical support. Zwingli was blunt, saying,"There are some who maintain that to eat meat is a fault, and even a great sin, although God has never forbidden it, and yet they think it not a crime to sell human flesh to the foreigner, and drag it to slaughter!" (See D'aubigne)
In a society already suspicious or outright critical of the Roman Church, many agreed with Zwingli and immediately took the liberty of eating meat. Zwingli sought to implement change by way of the Council's rulings while some others saw no need for scripture to be ratified by magistrates. Abbots found monks eating meat during lent, too. All this raised a commotion about the spreading of a Zwinglian heresy. His opponents claimed, "Zwingli is the destroyer and not the keeper of the Lord's fold." (See D'aubigne)
With Zurich in the diocese of Constance, the Bishop sent three deputies with some strong words for the Zurich's civil authorities. According to D'aubigne, the word went about, "the bishop's commissioners have arrived; some great blow is preparing; all the partisans of the old customs are stirring. A notary is summoning all the priests for an early meeting tomorrow in the hall of the chapter." In front of Zurich's Small Council and the priests, the Pope's coadjutor Melchior Wattli attacked the latest innovations and commanded the magistrates and the clergy to observe the customs of the Church. D'aubigne notes, "the coadjutor rose and delivered a speech which his opponents described as haughty and violent". Zwingli was able to address the deputies in front of both councils. The Smaller Council resisted. In Swiss cantons, the Smaller Councils were not the places where reformers could find allies. The Great Council in Zurich was more reform-friendly and amounted to a majority when all of the Zurich's magistrates, called the Council of 200, voted. Initially, the Zurich council agreed to require the observance of the traditional Lenten fasts. This ruling of April 9, 1522 enforced the customary fasting, and threatened offenders with punishment, but the ruling also agreed with the reformers that the New Testament did not make any distinctions regarding foods. So, for the sake of peace at this time, people were told to adhere to custom until it was changed by civil authority. The order stood pending a decision to be made by the Bishop, supposedly according to the law of Christ. Priests were ordered to watch for offenders and some arrests were made. Eventually, the council sided with Zwingli. One account, from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, has the meat eaters being prosecuted by the Bishop's attorneys and defended by Zwingli. The charges were dropped. The Council also wanted an explanation from the Pope and the Cardinals regarding the fact that the fast is not in the New Testament. A very well placed Gotcha! Since the council already knew their position, this was really a strategy for buying time. The Council of 200 eventually ruled for Zwingli's interpretation of the Gospel and this individual freedom instead of the authority of the Church's Lenten tradition. But do not forget; with Zwingli's version of religious freedom, a devout Catholic's individual freedom was soon to be threatened by the tyranny of the majority; a republican form of despotism and intolerance. Republicanism without the principles of equality, liberty and rationally proportionate justice for all, regardless of station, is just a newer, gentler form of authoritarianism. Republicanism without a backbone of justice for all brings what many have always found wanting about democracy when not supported by an ethical bill of rights; a "people's constitution", by the people, for the people, protecting all the people equally. The trampling of the minority's rights by the majority can be legal in this kind of republicanism. (Many a state ballot initiative in the USA has been rightly ruled unconstitutional)
Zwingli responded to the first ruling on April 16 with his first publication, a booklet called Von Erikson and Freiheit der Speisen ("Freedom of Choice in Eating"), from his original March 30th sermon. He used scriptures such as I Corinthians 8:8 and 10:25, Collosians 2:16, I Timothy 4:1, Romans 14:1-3, and Romans 15:1-2 to make his case. This brought him more death threats. Soon after this last publication, and somewhat hastily as was his habit during pressuring times, he publishedArcheteles. Archeteles argued for the primacy of the authority of the Scriptures over the authority and customs of the Church. In writing Archeteles to Bishop Hugo von Hohenlandenberg, he came from the position that if the Bible is neutral on something, the decision to act or abstain is up to the individual's judgment. Scripture, said Zwingli, not the customs of the Church, presented the true Gospel and path to salvation. To many reformers, the clergy had usurped its place and obscured the Gospel with church customs, pomp hierarchies, and rituals. Ordinary people did not have Bibles so the church was free to embellish and invent beyond its Biblical role and scope of responsibility. Zwingli claimed that the human inventions were stumbling blocks for the Gospel. In writing to the Bishop he explained, "I have endeavored to conduct them to the only true God and to Jesus Christ his Son. To this end, I have not made use of captious arguments, but plain and sincere language, such as the children of Switzerland can understand." (See D'aubigne). That is hard to argue against but tradition is a powerful force to be reckoned with regardless of the logical veracity of new views.
Reform minded innovators attacking abrupt blockades in front of the Gospel continued in different forms. Later, in theocratic Geneva, John Calvin approved the execution of Michael Servetus who said the Trinity was a hindrance to converting people, especially Jews and Muslims. Judaic and Islamic interpretation of the Commandments makes it near impossible for them to get past the so-called mystery of a consubstantial triune God. It sounds like paganism to them; one is three and three is one doesn't work for the Arian, the deist, the Muslim or the Jew, to whom there is One God. Arianist Christians of old, like today's Arians, the Jehovah Witnesses, agree with Muslims and Jews that making Jesus as God Almighty violates the First Commandment, which states, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me". But Reformers and Protestant leaders, all piping the Nicene Creed executed Arian, non-trinitarian Christians just as Nicene emperors and churches did in late antiquity. Constantine had ordered Arianist Christianity's founder, Arius, captured and executed. He was not captured but his books were outlawed and burned with the hope that his name and ideas would be erased from history. At this time, in the fourth century, Christian historian Eusebius claimed it was God's work to extirpate all writings contrary to Nicene Christianity. Later, Emperor Theodosius the Great took Arianist's civil rights away and ordered their Churches closed and confiscated to become Nicene "orthodoxy" churches. Joining thousands of pagan temples, altars, shrines and rural holy places, nonconformist churches were confiscated and converted. Like the intolerant Constantine regarding Arius, Calvin had Michael Servetus' books burned, too.
With the Council's reversal, the Bishop of Constance issued a mandate in May. To the Zurich magistrates he ordered them to uphold the church's ordinances. To the canons of the churches, without mentioning Zwingli's name, he asked them to help stop the spread of heresy and innovation. The Bishop claimed that the ideas weren't new at all but were simply revivals of previously condemned teachings. He also complained that people were openly discussing the mysteries of God. Not that!! I am reminded of pious emperors like Theodosius who banished the Arianist Bishop Eunomius for being so persuasive an orator, bringing robust discussions to homes, churches and marketplaces. Then there was Emperor Marcianus, who in 451 outlawed the discussion of the nature of God in public and in Church. That was followed by the 451 Council of Chalcedon's declaration that these matters were finally settled and none have the liberty or knowledge to discuss these matters. Orthodoxy's reasoning was that great minds had settled the issue so nobody needed to discuss the matter any farther. The definition of faith from Chalcedon's General Councildeclared,
"Since we have formulated these things with all possible accuracy and attention, the sacred and universal synod decreed that no one is permitted to produce, or even to write down or compose, any other creed or to think or teach otherwise. As for those who dare either to compose another creed or even to promulgate or teach or hand down another creed for those who wish to convert to a recognition of the truth from Hellenism or from Judaism, or from any kind of heresy at all: if they be bishops or clerics, the bishops are to be deposed from the episcopacy and the clerics from the clergy; if they be monks or layfolk, they are to be anathematized."
In the period of the Rise of the Alliance of Church and State in the fourth through sixth centuries, this was a tactic used by the church and state to silence people. In early June of 1522, the Federal Diet in Lucerne sided with the church and condemned the new teachings. Not sure what to do, on June 7, the Zurich Council ordered that none should preach against the monks and their traditions. Zwingli told the council such was an impossible task for him because it meant forsaking the Gospel. After much argument by reformers and monks, preachers and readers, from Churches and convents, the Council ordered, "That Thomas (Aquinas), Scotus, and the other doctors should be laid aside, and that nothing should be preached but the Gospel." (See D'aubigne)
In late June, allies of the reformation journeyed quietly and met with Zwingli at the chapel in Einsiedeln. At this important meeting Zwingli convinced them it was time to lay out some serious challenges. He and ten other priests sent petitions to the Bishop of Constance and the Federal Diet sitting in Lucerne. They asked to be left unmolested to preach the Gospel from the New Testament and to abolish mandatory celibacy for clergy and nuns. Read on July 13, the requests were denied by the Imperial Diet. Unlike the US House of Representatives but like the US Senate, the Swiss assembly was not a proportional representation of the population. Sparsely populated Forest cantons had the same legislative authority as the much more populated ones. Every canton had the same number of representatives regardless of its population. The Bishop of Constance also rejected the supplications. The Bishop of Constance not only wouldn't budge, but wanted Zurich's Council to use their authority to enforce the strict observance of celibacy. Zwingli launched denunciations and sought the support of the Swiss people in fighting for what he termed religious freedom. In the minds of Zurich's leaders, it was time for Zurich to exert its independent spirit. All this was becoming very political and it was time for leadership. Instead of taking the Bishop seriously, the Council took Zwingli seriously, bought time and scheduled a public disputation to be held in January of 1523.
Preserved Smith describes the unique Swiss political situation in Europe in his book, The Age of the Reformation
"The Swiss were then the one free people of Europe. Republican government by popular magistrates prevailed in all the cantons. Liberty was not quite democratic, for the cantons ruled several subject provinces, and in the cities a somewhat aristocratic electorate held power; nevertheless there was no state in Europe approaching the Swiss in self-government."
In one of history's miracles, Roman republicanism never completely left the Roman Province of Helvetia.
With Zwingli's popularity growing, opposition from the Forest cantons increasing, and the Church on the attack, it was a brilliant strategy for the Zurich Council and Zwingli to initiate a public debate of the issues. In a democratic leaning Switerland, influenced strongly by the vestiges of Ancient Helvetia's Roman Republicanism and the Renaissance's classical revival of letters, the people loved this openness. But one still had to be cautious. Not long before, the Italian Renaissance's Pico della Mirandola was going to hold an open disputation on religion and philosophy in Italy. He submitted his topics for discussion to the church authorities but they found too much dangerous heresy and prevented the discourse. Now times were changing and the state was taking a strong hold in the ancient alliance of religion and government. And this was Switzerland, not Germany, Spain, France or Italy. With the vestiges of republicanism still in its culture and the bright light of the Renaissance debates and public disputations, voices would not be silenced so easily in Switzerland.
On September 29, Zwingli went back to Einsiedeln and preached at the Feast of Angels. Originally called Michaelmas after the Archangel Michael, it was a festival that celebrated the angelic hosts who are the defenders of heaven and guardians against the darkness. (A reasonable person might dare ask why an omnipotent God needs an army?) In the late medieval period of western Europe, because it was celebrated around the Autumn Equinox, it took on a more natural theme, incorporating harvest season and prosperity with Michael and his host guarding against the coming darkness in Winter. Those were times when the only lighting that existed after sunset was a candle or the hearth. It was a world lit only by fire and winter meant increasing darkness, cold, and danger to the prosperity of the family. In the life of the peasant, increasing night meant a growing blindness, cold and health vulnerability on top of all those demons, ghosts of dead relatives, saints, angels, Jesus and the Devil that were said to be swarming about their heads, battling for the souls of peasants, bishops and monarchs alike.
Let me add these ideas to the mix of nature and religion in celebrations. Most tribal cultures of the northern hemisphere had late December Solstice celebrations to herald the return of the Sun. In cultures above the Arctic Circle where there were periods when the Sun did not rise, lookouts would man a mountain or high place to watch for the Sun's return. When it was coming close to the horizon again, the tribal leaders and priests were notified and exuberant celebrations were planned. "The invincible Sun has returned!" Pagan northern European solstice celebrations gave us the Evergreen Tree with its reds and greens for our holidays. Romans celebrated the birth of the Sun god on December 25th until the fourth century when celebrating the birth of Jesus was assigned to that date. In the Julian Calendar, the 25th was the date of the Solstice. We have since made the proper adjustments, giving us the Solstice on the 21st of December. The Roman festival was called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, meaning, the birthday of the unconquered sun. Since there were several Sun gods from several cultures in the Roman Empire; from northern Africa to northern Europe, the celebration brought them all together for a grand festival. Surrounding these holidays was the weeks long festival of Saturnalia, the empire's favorite. It was a time of family gatherings, charity, exchanging gifts, role reversals, and candles in every window. It was a national holiday. The government shut down, and everyone was involved. Like our secular holidays which have become congruent with the religious ones of December, the Roman holidays were about a combination of family, community, religion, and of course, excesses of gluttony and intoxication.
That fact that in the Autumn, Zwingli was able to persuade the Zurich Council to schedule a disputation on the charges of heresy and innovation showed its growing alliance with Zwingli from the start. It was a set up, really. The Grand Council had already determined for Zwinglian reformation of the church. Invitations were sent to all the church and state representatives of the cantons. Only Schaffhausen had the courage and interest to sending a deputy representative from the council. The Catholics tried but failed to stop the event from occurring. The Bishop of Constance wanted nothing to do with the debate but he did send Faber, the Vicar General of the diocese to protest but to listen to the claims of the reformers. Assisting him was James d'Anwyl, the grand master of the episcopal court at Constance and two other doctors of divinity. Like the Bishop, Faber, too, had no interest in a detailed debate; "I was not sent here to dispute, but merely to listen!" The assembly in surprise began to laugh. He continued, "The Diet of Nuremberg has promised a council with a year; we must wait until it meets." Zwingli pounced! "What!-is not this vast and learned meeting as good as any council?" (See D'aubigne)
Zwingli's genius was that he presented the arguments openly to the magistrates and the people, fostering republicanism and open debate, while Faber wanted the protection of a general council full of Catholics or letting the scholastics of the universities of Paris, Cologne, and Louvaine decide. In both cases, the people doing the judging were in the Papal pocket. Faber initially protested the relevance of the debate itself but upon hearing the erudite reformer's theses, he was finally compelled to defend the ancient traditions of the Church which were really blurred by the fogs of time.
Some examples from the sixty-seven these presented:
1. All who say that the gospel is nothing without the approbation of the Church, err and cast reproach upon God.
2. The sum of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has made known to us the will of his heavenly Father, and redeemed us by his innocence from eternal death, and reconciled us to God.
3. Therefore Christ is the only way to salvation to all who were, who are, who shall be.
7. Christ is the head of all believers who are his body; but without him the body is dead.
15. Who believes the gospel shall be saved; who believes not, shall be damned. For in the gospel the whole truth is clearly contained.
16. From the gospel we learn that the doctrines and traditions of men are of no use to salvation.
17. Christ is the one eternal high-priest. Those who pretend to be high priests resist, yea, set aside, the honor and dignity of Christ.
18. Christ, who offered himself once on the cross, is the sufficient and perpetual sacrifice for the sins of all believers. Therefore the mass is no sacrifice, but a commemoration of the one sacrifice of the cross, and a seal of the redemption through Christ.
19. Christ is the only Mediator between God and us.
22. Christ is our righteousness. From this it follows that our works are good so far as they are Christ's, but not good so far as they are our own.
24. Christians are not bound to any works which Christ has not commanded. They may eat at all times all kinds of food.
28. Whatsoever God permits and has not forbidden, is right. Therefore marriage is becoming to all men.
34. The spiritual [hierarchical] power, so called, has no foundation in the Holy Scriptures and the teaching of Christ.
35. But the secular power [of the state] is confirmed by the teaching and example of Christ.
37. All Christians owe obedience to the magistracy, provided it does not command what is against God.
49. I know of no greater scandal than the prohibition of lawful marriage to priests, while they are permitted for money to have concubines. Shame!
50. God alone forgives sins, through Jesus Christ our Lord alone.
57. The Holy Scripture knows nothing of a purgatory after this life.
58. God alone knows the condition of the departed, and the less he has made known to us, the less we should pretend to know.
Revitalized and re-energized in the humanist circles of the Renaissance, this republican slant which included the people's ears and counted their opinion as relevant endangered the authority of the Church. The church had previously succeeded with "experts" who were declared unassailable in order that the religious hegemony of the Roman Curia would prevail. Until the advent of the Printing Press less than a century before, this society was highly illiterate and impotent. In a world with printing presses, the availability and diversity of literature rose dramatically. Secular literature began to quickly outpace religious publishing. No longer did monks painstakingly copy manuscripts and treat them as rare treasures unfit for the public to be fanatically guarded by the monks. In the past, the people had no Bibles nor could they read Latin even if they did have one. Now people could read New Testaments printed in their own language; the people could now read it for themselves and make up their own mind. The major reason why the Church had gotten away with so much is because the people had no Bibles in any language they could understand. Because of the long process to copy one, manuscripts were rare and highly valued, being kept in the hands of the clergy or the scholastics of the Catholic universities. The Church claimed the ritual, sacraments and symbols, and images brought Christ to the illiterate. Given the medieval period's long night of illiteracy, this was not an irrational strategy but it also allowed invention and deception to parade as fact. The church ruled with symbols from secrecy like the Wizard of Oz who feared being discovered as an impotent old fool. Zwingli was saying everyone can now personally look at the Word of God and make decisions from their own understandings. With the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg, that game was over for good. The church could no longer hide behind the infallibility of the Pope or the Curia of the church. It could no longer prey on the illiteracy of the masses.
While the church-state alliance of Catholicism was elitist and secretive, Zwingli's Reformed Church's alliances with the state had some basic elements of republicanism. In 1523, the vast majority had no tolerance for or understanding of religious equality and liberties, so the democratic process existed within the confines of the medieval viewpoint with its own constitutions and traditions. There were brushes with modernity for a short time but degradation and abandonment of the ideas came soon. Unfortunately, religious despotism just got a new face with Protestantism. Now there were two religious choices, both authoritarian and both still without mature intellectual concepts of liberty and equality. With Protestantism, the tyranny of the majority enforced by the state replaced the tyranny of the Church. In a way, because of the re-emphasis of classicism in the Enlightenment was, with new lessons learned regarding Church, state, and liberty, the last chapter of the Renaissance. J. P. Whitney explains Zwingli's conception of a theocracy in the Cambridge Medieval History's chapter on the Helvetic Reformation:
"First among his ideas comes that of his prophetical office: he had gained his experience of life as a parish priest; his heart had gone into learning and education; these factors combined to form his vision of a prophet-pastor. From the Old Testament he took the notion of a prophet teaching morality, and not shrinking from politics where they had to be touched; but he added to this the ideal of instruction. He thus brought to his new work the loftiest conceptions of spiritual authority and responsibility. But his view left no room for other authority or for ecclesiastical superiors. The prophet was to do his work in the community,-not the community of the congregation regarded as part of a wider Church, but the political community in which he lived. Preaching-for which his life and training fitted him-was to be the means of teaching; it was well adapted for influencing a democracy and was characteristic of his system, where the pulpit superseded the altar, and where the intellectual element was large."
"The relation of the prophet to his community was tinged by the influence of the Old Testament, and affected by the conditions of Swiss life. It was the prophet's work to teach, to inspire the magistracy ; but it was theirs to carry out the policy. Thus he and they had to work together. This left large ecclesiastical powers to the community, and such the city had already claimed for itself; it gave wide scope to the personal influence of the pastor, both over the political assemblies and over the burgesses themselves. The acquisition of that influence, and the full use of it, were therefore essential to Zwingli's success."
Eclipsing this bright, humanist, and forward looking republican thinking were medieval beliefs that the State, in alliance with the church authorities, had the role of determining the religious beliefs of its citizens. For national unity and security. In late antiquity, Church leaders always had Roman and Byzantine Emperors in their pockets to forged their church-state alliance. In the church-state models north of the empire, law was made when a King ratified a church council's decree or canons. The princes and the nobility worked hand in hand with the Church but as regional nationalism rose in northern Europe, this relationship had diverse faces. Some princes and nobles sided with the Reformers; some stayed with the Catholic Church. As the Reformation grew, princes and electors, taking advantage of the First Diet of Speyer, sought to determine each of their their realm's religion. In the Swiss Confederation it was going to be the civil magistrates that stood in charge of the church-state decisions. In Zurich, the church came under the control of the secular arm but was directed by the highest religious leader, the Bishop, prophet and spiritual soul of Zurich; Ulrich Zwingli!
Reforms in Zwingli's Zurich, Calvin's Geneva, Luther's Germany and Henry the Eighth's England began a new chapter of religious test-oaths. Not freer, just different and just as despotic. These religious tests, still based on an alliance of church and state, united decrees of the state with the wishes and beliefs of the clergy (as always). These beliefs are best summed up in the many Protestant Confessions issued during reformation and Puritan times. These alliances of religion and government found in Protestant regions are the templates of the those found in the colonial charters of Colonial North America. Just as bigoted; just as intolerant; just as antithetical to the US Constitution. They represent the repressive nature of Europe's religious legal order, not a 'New American Order'. Colonists brought an old hat to wear on the new shores of America. And once again, the persecuted became the persecutors. They repeated all the nastiness of European inquisitions against religious dissent. America was in European religious bondage until the ratification of the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Any religious law before that was antiquated, anachronistic, and stuck in the dark ages. The colonies were part of England and the English model of church-state alliances prevailed in New England and Virginia, where the first colonists landed. Since the time of Zwingli and Luther, religious test-oath laws required that only Trinitarian, Bible-believing Protestants could hold public office. Some colonial charters and early state constitutions had religious tests reflecting confessions like the Augsburg, Helvetia and Westminster ones, when adopted by the state, required a declaration of belief in the consubstantial Trinity and the infallibility of the Bible before one could become a public servant. The door was shut to others by Protestants requiring their Protestantism from all. Each colony had a charter that was mostly European in origin and backwardly medieval in tone. Only Protestants continued getting elected because Protestants before them enacted laws forbidding anyone else but Protestants from serving. The new Protestants in power continued the religious test-oaths declaring Protestantism.
Until 1877 in my state of New Hampshire, and in violation of the Sixth Article's supremacy and religious test ban clauses, the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment, you could not be elected to public office unless you were a Protestant Christian. All others were ineligible second class citizens barred from service. New Hampshire was way behind the times and had not come into line with the Federal Constitution's religious liberty guarantees. Not even an appointment could be made if the person could not pass the Protestant religious test-oath. This problem happened as late as 1961 in New Jersey when the United States Supreme Court struck down its generic religious test. This was a generic test-oath, but it still violated the religious test ban clause of the Constitution because the person still had to state a belief in God. Many a bright thinker remained unheard because of these discriminatory alliances of the state and the officially recognized religious leaders. If the majority wanted discrimination and repression then it was implemented by the majority's consensus. In Protestant countries, slavery was okay because the people said so. Women couldn't vote because the majority had accepted this for ages; these were unassailable traditions based on ancient and medieval habit and these discrimination set down in scripture. Protestantism changed little in these people's lives. Abolitionists and suffragists were enemies of God's sacred order. During the American Enlightenment, many of the founders went through the motions in order to have civil power. They joined churches because one couldn't wield political power without doing so. One couldn't have clout in community affairs if one was not a member of an accepted official church. So the founding founders joined churches in which many knew that they were not truly believers in that church's confession. In the enlightenment atmosphere of the middle and late eighteenth century, people didn't think ill of it for the most part. To begin with, most of America at the time was unchurched. Joining a church during this period when it was the only way to have influence in the community is exactly what deists, Unitarians and other nonconformists did in order to enter public service and hold civil power.
On page 26 of his 1963 book, George Washington and Religion, Paul F. Boller wrote, "Actually, under the Anglican establishment in Virginia before the Revolution, the duties of a parish vestry were as much civil as religious in nature and it is not possible to deduce any exceptional religious zeal from the mere fact of membership.* Even Thomas Jefferson was a vestryman for a while. Consisting of the leading gentlemen of the parish in position and influence (many of whom, like Washington, were also at one time or other members of the County Court and of the House of Burgesses), the parish vestry, among other things, levied the parish taxes, handled poor relief, fixed land boundaries in the parish, supervised the construction, furnishing, and repairs of churches, and hired ministers and paid their salaries."
Boller also notes at the asterisk that Bishop William Meade wrote onpage 191 of his Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, "Even Mr. Jefferson and [George] Wythe, who did not conceal their disbelief in Christianity, took their parts in the duties of vestrymen, the one at Williamsburg, the other at Albermarle; for they wished to be men of influence´"
After the disputation in Zurich, the council sided with Zwingli's arguments and declared him not guilty of any heresy. By the ruling of the council, Zwingli was lifted up instead of brought down low as the church leaders had hoped. Furthermore, Zurich declared itself free from the authority of the Bishopric of Constance and as noted above, ordered all priests to teach nothing that wasn't established and proved by scripture. The state had taken over the Church and now guaranteed the salaries of the priests. Few priests protested and many even married. Mass was neglected, babies were baptized in German-Swiss, without any exorcisms. The surrounding pictures and images were also losing importance. With the Council ruling for Zwingli, the new Pope, Adrian, who despised Leo's humanist leanings communicated to Zwingli. At first it was with gracious letters but then they degenerated into the usual papal mandates as he discovered the seriousness of the Zwinglian reformation of Zurich.
Excited by the decision of the council, unruly groups entered Zurich's churches and destroy statues and pictures. This was the beginning of vandal mobs, destruction and seizure instigated by the Magisterial Reformation. One of the situations regarded one Claude Hottinger who brought down a beautifully carved, ornamented and decorated Crucifix at the gates of Stadelhofen. The growing vandalism alarmed Zwingli because he believed that taking down the images and picture should be done peaceably, by professionals and under the authority of the magistrates. In both the towns and the countryside, pictures and images were being torn down by followers of the reformers. History is full of raging mobs of religious vigilantes, burning buildings and killing people for the cause of the one true faith. Zwingli wanted nothing to do with that past age of disorder. The Catholics accused Hottinger of blasphemous sacrilege and wanted Hottinger put to death; Zwingli responded from the pulpit,"Hottinger and his friends are not guilty in the sight of God and worthy of death. But they may be punished for having acted with violence and without the sanction of the magistrates." (See D'Aubigne). The accused were arrested, tried and punished by the Council with two years of exile. Hottinger and his associates left Zurich but this unholy act would not be forgotten by the Catholics.
Rome's positions were defended by Conrad Hoffman, one of the men in the cathedral chapter that helped secure Zwingli's election at the cathedral. Also attending this disputation were some of the leading Anabaptists. Anabaptists took Zwingli's religious revolution very seriously; too seriously and undisciplined for Zwingli's plans. Although they agreed on the mass, images, pilgrimages, invoking saints, monastic orders, auricular confessions, indulgences, compulsory tithes, fasting, and marriage, Anabaptists rejected alliances of church and state to an extreme. They believed the church should be independent from the state and self-governing. They were also the socialists of the day, believing that property should be held in common, basing this on New Testament scripture dealing with private property. Anabaptists, who became the Mennonites of today, also believed in a total separation from secular society. On Baptism, there was a major difference from both Catholics and Reformers. Anabaptists opposed infant baptism. They believed a person is baptized only after their conversion to Christianity; their acceptance of Christ as their Lord and savior. Infant baptism was useless to the sect because a baby can't understand the Gospel and make a decision for Christ. The tension between the Zwinglians and the Anabaptists would continue for some time. Finding them more difficult than Rome at times, Zwingli did his best to distance and disassociate himself from the Anabaptists. In time, a disputation would be ordered in Zurich to discuss the Anabaptist doctrines; terrible persecutions would fall upon them in both Catholic and Protestant territories.
That little book caused quite a commotion throughout the cantons. In the wake of its distribution, the celebration of the mass continued to diminish in importance as sermons began to take precedence. Hoffman complained on this matter so the Council warned Hoffman and his group that to speak or act against the settled matter could cause the loss of their benefices and possibly banishment. On the matter of the Mass, the Council thought it better to hold off on any suppression at this point. The Mass was to be settled at another disputation, tentatively scheduled for December 19, 1523. Instead, it was decided in January of 1524 that a complete settlement would be reached by the Council on Whitsuntide (Pentecost). A committee wanted the images and pictures removed by appointed authorities and Zwingli wanted the mass replaced by a scripturally based sermon and the Lord's Supper. The images were to be removed but the celebration of the Mass remained at this time. In fact, due to the opposition of the Cathedral Chapter and other factions, it was not until April 12, 1525 that Mass was said for the last time in Zwingli's Zurich. When Whitsuntide came on May 15, 1524, the Council banned images, the use of organs, the passing bell, and the last rites of extreme unction. This decision was then sent around to the bailiffs of the country to be implemented. However, if a village's majority wished to keep the images, then that was okay. If they opt for taking the images and pictures down, it was to be done by the pastor and men of community standing.
With the changing religious requirements for positions of civil authority, it was only a matter of time before Rome's allies and defenders would become ineligible for public service in Zurich. Joachim am Griit, Zwingli's chief opponent regarding the mass, was dismissed in late 1525. In the near future, Zwingli's religious adversaries in the Councils would be removed. By 1526, all Catholics had been purged from the councils; they could not pass the religious test for their office unless they converted to the Zwinglian Reformed doctrine. In the future, denouncing papists became part of English and then some of the colonial religious test-oaths.
Hearing of all these changes, the Catholic cantons appealed to Zurich to cease with innovations. Next, the Forest cantons summoned another Federal Diet at Lucerne in March to discuss the issue. The Forest cantons prevailed, the magistrates forbade the introduction of Zwingli's innovative teachings, and an embassy of rebuke was dispatched to Zurich. Zurich's Council received the deputies, who, complaining of a broken ancient unity, labeled the innovations as unchristian diseases. Zurich replied that it would obey the Federal League but not interfere in matters of the conscience; of the Word of God and the salvation of souls. But that is precisely what Zurich did in the first place when siding with and deciding for Zwingli in matters of reform. Interfering in matters of conscience is exactly what they did. The Diet of Lucerne also offered Asylum to any Catholic fleeing Zurich. This was not the Diet's first attempt to quell religious dissent. "As early as November, 1522, the Federal Diet ordered the bailiffs in the Subject Lands to bring before them the priests who spoke against the faith, thus claiming religious offenses for the higher jurisdiction"(See Whitney). With the failure of the kinder, gentler deputation, the second one was sent with threats of Zurich being severed from the Confederation. On that note, Zurich knew war was possible.
On the matter of the images that upset the Federal Diet so much, D'Aubigne informs us, "The relics, that source of innumerable superstitions, were honorably interred; and then, at the request of the three pastors, the council published a decree, to the effect that honor being due to God alone, the images should be removed from all the churches of the canton, and their ornaments sold for the benefit of the poor. Twelve councilors, one from each guild, the three pastors, the city-architect, blacksmiths, carpenters, builders, and masons, went into the various churches, and having closed the doors, took down the crosses, defaced the frescoes, whitewashed the walls, and took away the images, to the great delight of the believers, who regarded this proceeding (says Bullinger) as a striking homage paid to the true God. In some of the country churches, the ornaments were burnt "to the honor and glory of God". Erelong the organs were taken down, on account of their connection with many superstitious practices; and a baptismal service was drawn up, from which everything unscriptural was excluded."
Philip Schaff put it this way in his chapter on the Reformation in Zurich: "In the presence of a deputation from the authorities of Church and State, accompanied by architects, masons and carpenters, the churches of the city were purged of pictures, relics, crucifixes, altars, candles, and all ornaments, the frescoes effaced, and the walls whitewashed, so that nothing remained but the bare building to be filled by a worshiping congregation. The pictures were broken and burnt, some given to those who had a claim, a few preserved as antiquities. The bones of the saints were buried. Even the organs were removed, and the Latin singing of the choir abolished"
Unfortunately, as it was in late antiquity when Christians destroyed classical buildings and pieces of art in the name of Christ, Protestants, too, destroyed paintings and statues through their religious zeal and intolerance. It is a tragedy that priceless art, architecture, and literature were fanatically destroyed in the name of God. Like the loss of the Library of Alexandria with its storehouse of ancient knowledge, these are great losses that can never be replaced. It is one thing to remove; another to extirpate from existence.
The Forest cantons were absolutely appalled by what they considered pillage and the desecration of the holy churches. On April 8 of 1524 at a meeting in Beckenried, the Catholic cantons of Unterwalden, Uri, Lucerne, Schwyze and Zug reacted to Zwinglian reforms by forming a league to suppress the heresies of Huss, Luther and Zwingli. Later, on July 16, the Catholic cantons stated that they would no longer sit in the Federal Diet with Zurich. Furthermore, from the Diet came the command that the traditions of the Mass, images, pictures, and fasting were binding upon all Swiss. Not disagreeing in the least with the Diet's notion of the state's heavy hand in religious matters, Zurich dodged and claimed doctrinal adherence was up to each canton individually. Not everyone agreed; there were dissenters and the settling of these matters would get chaotic and violent. In Thurgau, of the common lands, those being under multiple jurisdictions, one priest named Oecshli continued to preach reform. Consequently, Oeschli was immediately arrested and detained by Federal officials. Priests tended to be under Zwingli's authority but in Thurgau Zurich held a secondary authority under that of the Federal powers. Nonetheless, parishioners and friends came to Oeschli's rescue that very next day. Setting him free, the turbulent mob went on to the Carthusian monastery in Illingen, entered it, drank heavily from its wine cellar, and eventually set it afire. The brazen and intoxicated mob continued on to Stammheim and Stein, where more images were demolished. History was repeating itself because throughout history the clergy has, both willfully and naively, with the venom of their sermons, provoked angry mobs to violence, - then they claimed innocence. Three of the group's leaders were arrested and beheaded but as far as the leadership of the cantons were concerned, the heretical preachers nourished the hostility that led to the violence. Soon afterward, at a Diet in Zug, some magistrates and clergy proposed military action to punish Zurich for the destruction of images. Bern and Solothurn objected to such a radical plan, so the idea came to nothing.
In August of 1524, Zwingli printed a pamphlet on the Lord's Supper. At the same time, his views regarding images and the mass were getting a great deal of attention. Zurich's councils were convinced by the reformers that images were forbidden by the Bible. They also decided that the Sabbath's religious service was not to be a dark, idolatrous sacrificial ceremony but one of celebrating redemption through Christ's glorious life, death and resurrection. The Councils of Zurich then ordered all the images removed from the Churches. Several Catholic holiday festivals were banned due to being accused of idolatry. In that same year Zurich dissolved its monasteries.
In 1525, coming in line with the decrees of the Zurich Council, the Great Minster turned it's property rights and authority over to the Council. Care of the Cathedral was now the job of the state as were enforcing doctrinal decisions. Just as the salaries of the clergy were paid by the state, the Cathedral was now a property of the state. The Grossmunster joined the monasteries as properties and functioning arms of the state.
The first public disputation with the Anabaptists was held January 17-18, 1525. This was Zurich and Zwingli's chance to set the record straight and to take control of something getting out of hand. The ruling of the Council was very Draconian and Old Testament, rejecting any notion of religious tolerance for the heresies. On the last day, the Council deliberated and decreed that all unbaptized children in the canton of Zurich must be baptized within eight days or their parents were to be banished. Attacking any notions of freedom of religion, speech and association, Anabaptist meetings and activities were outlawed on January 21. Any of the group that was not a citizen of Zurich was also banished from the canton; the leaders Grebel and Felix Manz were forbidden to speak in public. Since the sect rejected the authority of both civil magistrates and religious leaders, of church and state, the Council began a strategy designed to strangle the movement to death.
On March 7, 1526 the Council decreed that if any person is re-baptized as an adult, thereby rejecting the sacrament of infant baptism, they were to be executed by drowning. The religious test of the Council edicts was to demand adherence to, and maintain the traditional dogma of infant baptism. Failing that test, and judged by the state, the Anabaptists were persecuted by Protestants and Catholics alike. All foreigners in the sect were ordered to leave the canton, but there was no safe place for Anabaptists. Ten months later, Manz became the first fatality of the edict, and the first Anabaptist to be executed by the Protestants. Taken from the Wellenburg Prison to the River Limmat, with his hands tied behind his knees and a pole between them, he was taken by boat onto the river and thrown overboard to his death. The baptism of death. Manz had embraced Zwingli's reform and friendship but by the second disputation it was clear to Manz and the Anabaptist leadership that Zwingli's reforms were too weak. At the same time Zwingli thought Luther's reforms too weak. To the zealot, obeying God's Word took supremacy over obeying the Councils of magistrates or churchs. In those two years Manz was arrested several times; the final time with the re-baptized George Blaurock as they were preaching Anabaptist doctrines without authority in the Grüningen region of the canton (Blaurock's birthplace). Like the proceedings of the Inquisition, the accused was given the chance to recant; "to recede from his error and caprice". It was a simple religious test with two grades; pass or fail. In some cases recanting meant the accused would be strangled to death before being burned in order to lessen the suffering. The Protestants had loudly demanded religious liberty for themselves but when in power had no intention of allowing the same to others. Here we have history repeating itself again: early Christians of late antiquity did the same thing. They fought for the right to practice their religion and when they achieved that liberty with the Edicts of Tolerance issued by the Emperors Galerius and Constantine in 311 and 313, they then progressively gained power within the engines of the state and then systematically attempted to stamp out other religions through a powerful alliance of church and state, of Bishops and the Imperial Court.
And rightly so because the Swiss historian D'Aubigne tells us Faber, Eck, the clergy and Catholic magistrates were in a killing mood:
"Meanwhile, fanaticism was already bestirring itself and striking down its victims. A consistory, headed by that same Faber who had challenged Zwingle, on the 10th of May 1526, about a week before the discussion at Baden, condemned to the flames, as a heretic, an evangelical minister named John Hugel, pastor of Lindau,10 who walked to the place of execution singing the Te Deum. At the same time, another minister, Peter Spengler, was drowned at Friburg by order of the Bishop of Constance."
By this time, Zurich was no longer the lone voice of the reformation in Switzerland. Zwingli's hard work has influenced educated men and layfolk in the other cantons. Dr. Sebastian Hofmeister preached freely in Schaffhausen. In Biel, Zwingli's professor at Basel, Thomas Wyttenbach, still openly opposed graven images and the mass as idolatrous. Oecolampidius, Zwinglian ally and parish priest at St. Martin's in Basel since February of 1525, was continuing the reforms that Capito accomplished up to 1520. Oecolampidius' appointment in Basel came with the order that he could not introduce any religious innovations without the authorization of the magistrates. By August of 1525, Oecolampadius had rejected Luther's Eucharistic belief, coming out for Zwingli's doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Both the Catholic's transubstantiationand the Lutheran's consubstantiation theologies were not scriptural to these reformers; they chose a symbolic view of the Lord's Supper. Berthold Haller and Sebastian Meier joined the humanist and dramatist Nicholas Manuel in steering Bern slowly into the Protestant Reformation. Manuel produced provocative iconoclastic art depicting the destruction of idols and graven images. While still somewhat conservative and against the sudden innovations of Zwingli, Berne allowed any preaching as long as it was supported by the scriptures. This was a small step from tradition but a step nonetheless. Statues and pictures remained in Berne churches; divisive issues such as indulgences, fasting, monasticism, and celibacy vows were avoided for the sake of public peace. But heretical books that preached Wycliffe, Huss, Zwingli or Luther's articles and conclusions were forbidden by council decrees of June 15, 1523 and November 22, 1524. Similar to the secular arm in Zurich's ecclesiastic matters, Berne's magistrates had the final say although behind the scenes religious authorities greatly influenced their decisions. Like Zurich, "The magistracy, however, claimed the right to punish priests disregarding these decrees; the monasteries were placed under civic control, and clerical incomes were regulated" (See Whitney) This peace by suppression would not last long because Protestants eventually gained the majority in the councils.
Faber and Eck knew it was time to move decisively in order to suppress the reformation's growing successes. The Catholic cantons, in league with them (and secretly so with the chief authorities of Bern), sent a deputation to the city. On the day after Pentecost of 1526, the deputation arrived and declared, "All order is destroyed in the Church". The chief magistrate of Lucerne complained passionately that "God is blasphemed, the sacraments, the mother of God, and the saints are despised, and imminent and terrible calamities threaten to dissolve our praiseworthy confederation." Many were summoned to the council; it was not a tidy affair because of Bern's continuing neutrality concerning Zurich's reforms. Faber, Eck and their allies could see that Bern was close to accepting more of the reformation so something had to be done. The Catholic cantons demanded that "Berne must renounce the evangelical faith and walk with us". The Bernese council complied, giving Rome a much needed victory. Berne's magistrates stated they would maintain "the ancient christian faith, the holy sacraments, the mother of God, the saints, and the ornaments of the churches." Lutherans, Zwinglians and married priests were banished; censorship increased and books were publicly burned. See D'AUBIGNE.
Meanwhile, D'aubigne reports, "Sinister rumors reached Zwingli from all quarters. His brother-in-law, Leonard Tremp, wrote to him from Berne, "I entreat you, as you regard you life, not to repair to Baden. I know that they will not respect your safe-conduct". It was affirmed that a plan had been formed to seize and gag him, throw him into a boat, and carry him off to some secret place. With these threats and persecutions before them, the council of Zurich decreed that Zwingli should not go to Baden."
Jan Hus was promised safe passage to and from the Council of Constance (convened 1414-1418) but the Catholic council, called by the Emperor Sigismund, still burned him at the stake for his dissenting views. There was good reason not to trust the authorities, civil and ecclesiastic. Luther was promised safe passage to and from the Diet of Worms ("Vermz") in 1521 but was protected by the forces of a supporter, Prince Frederick III, Elector of Saxony. This assembly was yet another example of church and state allying themselves to crush dissent; the council was presided over by Emperor Charles V while the prosecutor was from the office of the Bishop. This alliance of the imperial court and the Catholic clergy of Rome and Constantinople began during the period surrounding the Council of Nicea. Presided over byEmperor Constantine in 325, it was not the first time he made decisions to strengthen and protect. In the previous decade, imperial decrees initiated state funding for the maintenance of the clergy and their churches.
James Wylie, writing in his History of Protestantism, Chapter Two of Book Eleven adds this about Eck's attitudes towards the reformers:
"Eck, . . proclaimed the futility of fighting against such heretics as the preacher of Zurich with any other weapons than "fire and sword." So far as the "fire" could reach him it had already been employed against Zwingli; for they had burned his books at Friburg and his effigy at Lucerne. He was ready to meet at Zurich their entire controversial phalanx from its Goliath downwards, and the magistrates would have welcomed such meeting; but send him to Baden the council would not, for that was to send him not to dispute, but to die."
"Wherever at this hour they [the magistrates] looked in the surrounding cantons and provinces, what did they see? Stakes and victims. The men who were so eager to argue at Baden showed no relish for so tedious a process where they could employ the more summary one of the sack and rope. At Lucerne, Henry Messberg was thrown into the lake for speaking against the nuns; and John Nagel was burned alive for sowing "Zwinglian tenets." At Schwitz, Eberhard Polt of Lachen, and a priest of the same place, suffered death by burning for speaking against the ceremonies. . . Nor did [Eck] the man who had won so many laurels in debate, disdain adding thereto the honors of the executioner."
The Baden Disputation was held from May 21 to June 18. Without the sharp debating skills of Zwingli, Oecolampidius was not able to overcome the strategies of Eck. In fact, according to Irena Backus' "The Disputations of Baden, 1526, and Berne, 1528: Neutralizing the Early Church", Oecolampadius, like Eck, was "very far removed from the Bible" and "happy to subordinate text of the Scripture to Aristotelian distinctions". Ulrich Zwingli would have never gone down that road and as a result, the reformers were defeated as Eck easily handled Oecolampadius and the other reformers that spoke. On top of that, the disputation was rigged; heckling, stamping feet, insults, censoring and constant interruptions by the biased judges handicapped the reformers as they tried to make their points. "The arrangements for the disputation and the local sympathies were in favor of the papal party. Mass was said every morning at five, and a sermon preached; the pomp of ritualism was displayed in solemn processions. The presiding officers and leading secretaries were Romanists; nobody besides them was permitted to take notes" (See Schaff) This not only limited the reform party debaters but prevented any non-Catholic reports of the proceedings. And to top that off, Thomas Murner was chosen to edit the notes and compile an official report of the proceedings. Murner was a Franciscan Monk and a prolific writer of highly insulting satire directed against the reformers. He constantly got under the reformer's skin and angered them; so distressed by his writings, Zurich really wanted his head. Not surprising a soul, the Baden magistrates decided for the Catholics. Zwingli was excommunicated and the Basel magistrates were pressured to depose Oecolampadius and remove him from his pastoral position. Offending books were burnt and Faber even called for Protestant Bibles to be put to the torch. This was another victory for Rome but as the future showed, Faber and Eck read far too much into this victory, naively assuming it was only a matter of time before the movement was defeated for good. It backfired.
"Eck stamps with his feet, and claps his hands,
He raves, he swears, he scolds;
’I do,’ cries he, ’what the Pope commands,
And teach whatever he holds.’ " (Nicholas Manuel)
The summer of 1526 was a busy time in Europe. With the horrors of Germany's Peasants War passed, the religious and secular authorities could take aim at other issues. Accompanying the Catholic cantons' actions against Bern and the Baden disputation, an imperial edict was issued by Archduke Ferdinand by the authority of his brother, Emperor Charles V. As Protestantism flourished, the harsh decrees of the Edict of Worms seemed useless in light of more serious problems in Europe. Protestant princes courageously professed their faith openly as the new faith became increasingly popular with leaders and representatives in imperial cities. At this point, with the Muslim armies banging down the doors of eastern Europe, Protestantism was the least of Europe's problems. Clearly, the Turkish threat was growing so Catholics and Protestants alike needed to join together as one. Ambassadors were sent all over Europe, including to England's Henry VIII, in hopes of uniting Europe against the advancing Muslim threat. Many believed it was time for another crusade against the infidels of Islam. Parts of the Balkans were Muslim; Constantinople had fallen in 1453 and was renamed Istanbul while its churches were remodeled into mosques. Adriatic and Mediterranean shipping lanes and ports were vulnerable; piracy was a serious problem. The Pope and the emperor were quarreling, too, so Europe simply didn't have the unity necessary to take on the Protestant movement while the enemies of Christ neared. Concluding on August 27, 1526, the First Diet of Speyer signaled a religious truce until a major council was called to settle the issues. This temporarily neutralized the Edict of Worms that ordered Luther's death and the burning of his books. This new imperial edict decreed, "Every State shall so live, rule, and believe as it may hope and trust to answer before God and his imperial Majesty." This decree gave the civil authorities the right to establish whatever religion they wished. A great council was to eventually settle the issue so this was not set in stone; it was a temporary solution. Secular princes such as Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Elector Frederick of Saxony took advantage of the decree, interpreting it as they wished, establishing religious liberty in their realm for the reformed movement. At the council in Homberg held in October, civil authorities and princes began to establish the religion of their choice and the majority's within their territories. This kind of democratical stategy was similar to Zwingli's strategy of Zurich's public disputations. As a result, there came to be different official churches in different prince's realms. With all the distractions within and without, Protestantism was now in a very favorable position for continued growth. Like the Renaissance, the Reformation's success by directly influenced by the military and religious expansionism of the Turkish Muslims.
The disputations were to be modeled on those of Zurich. Bern was going to decide for itself where it stood and where it was going. Invitations were sent to the Bishops of the dioceses of Constance, Lausanne, Sion and Basel. Every canton and free town was asked to send learned men from both sides; pastors in positions of leadership were required to attend with those refusing to attend subject to losing their benefices. Not only were the Swiss Confederates invited, southern German representatives and other foreign deputies were extended invitations. The Berne magistrates further promised, "Come, we undertake for your safety, and guarantee you all liberty in the expression of your opinions." Safe passage promises such as these must have been the target of many satires, jokes and cynics. In these times of volatile religious controversies that often led to violence, no leader, civil or spiritual, could be fully trusted.
Like Faber and Eck, many defenders of Rome thought matters had been settled by the at the Baden disputation. But like the disputation at Leipzig between Eck and Martin Luther, it only gave the Reformation more steam. The four Bishops, the seven Catholic cantons and the Emperor himself protested the disputation plans and demanded that they forsake the plan. Again, the reasoning was based upon an eventual General Council that would settle all these matters for good. Zwingli's answer to Faber in the Zurich disputation was they had learned men in attendance with the pages of the Bible opened for all to judge by so what more was needed? Bern's response was of the same species that Zurich had used to deflect the opposition's concerns: "We change nothing in the twelve articles of the Christian faith; we separate not from the Church whose head is Christ; what is founded on the Word of God will abide for ever; we shall only not depart from the Word of God." (See Wylie) The response probably pacified none; these were all familiar reform party statements that implied traditions not founded by scripture could be challenged. For Rome, Baden had actually failed to accomplish anything of substance - and Zwingli would be in Berne for the debate!
On New Year's Eve more than one hundred clergy and scholars from Suabia (a part of southern German) rendezvoused in Zurich for the trek to Bern. Also joining the Swiss procession were deputies from the German communities of Lindau, Constance, Ulm, and Augsburg also joined the Swiss procession. Leading the group were Burgomeister Roust, Zwingli, the Zurich deputation, and Henry Bullinger, the future religious leader of Zurich. Because the area to be traveled through was Catholic, the Zurich representatives had asked for a promise of safe passage. Catholics replied with printed tracts on how good the hunting would be in this region. The group was refused a promise of safety so the cavalcade was accompanied by 300 arquebus equipped men. An arquebus is a heavily plated, low velocity gun that predated the rifle. Arriving in Bern on January 4, they joined a growing number of arrivals there for the disputation. Haller lived there in Berne; Oecolampadius and Bucer had also arrived. It is claimed that three hundred fifty clergymen, magistrates, deputies and commoners attended the disputation. The disputation was based on the Ten Theses or Articles presented below. Spread over a period of nineteen days, there were also several carefully timed sermons preached by Zwingli, Ambrosius Blarer, Berthold Haller, Thomas Gasser, Oecolampadius, Konrad Som, Konrad Schmidt, Martin Bucer and Kaspar Megandar.
The Ten Theses:
1: That the Holy Christian Church, of which Christ is the only Head, is born of the Word of God, abides therein, and does not listen to the voice of a stranger;
2: that this Church imposes no laws on the conscience of people without the sanction of the Word of God, and that the laws of the Church are binding only in so far as they agree with the Word;
3: that Christ alone is our righteousness and our salvation, and that to trust to any other merit or satisfaction is to deny Him;
4: that it cannot be proved from the Holy Scripture that the body and blood of Christ are corporeally present in the bread and in the wine of the Lord's Supper;
5: that the mass, in which Christ is offered to God the Father for the sins of the living and of the dead, is contrary to Scripture and a gross affront to the sacrifice and death of the Saviour;
6: that we should not pray to dead mediators and intercessors, but to Jesus Christ alone;
7: that there is no trace of purgatory in Scripture;
8: that to set up pictures and to adore them is also contrary to Scripture, and that images and pictures ought to be destroyed where there is danger of giving them adoration;
9: that marriage is lawful to all, to the clergy as well as to the laity;
10: that shameful living is more disgraceful among the clergy than among the laity.
The Berne magistrates chose the Church of Cordeliers for the debate. Tables were set on a platform for the debaters. Between them were four secretaries that swore an oath to record the proceedings as honestly as they could. This was not done in Baden; people were forbidden to take notes. It was a pathetic example of an open debate and it is easy to see why Haller and Oecolampadius didn't take the loss seriously. These Catholic imposed restrictions would not be allowed in Berne. The debate would be genuinely open and as far as the reformers were concerned, the Word of God would be the judge for all to see and hear. One has to wonder if the reason why Eck, Faber and the theologians didn't show up was because it was to be an actual open affair that they wouldn't be in control of. And to the excitement of the reformed party, Zwingli was there! Eck had claimed he wanted to debate Zwingli but when the chance arrived, he chose not to attend. Thomas Murner, the monk who wrote so many satires and violent tracts about Protestants also chose not to attend, choosing instead to send his vehement thoughts on paper. He had been at Baden and spoke at the end, referring to Zwingli and the reformers as "tyrants, liars, adulterers, church robbers, fit only for the gallows".(See Schaff)
The disputation began on January sixth and lasted twenty days; with one break for the feast of Saint Vincent, which was Berne's patron saint. The decision was now in the hands of Berne's magistrates. The councils of Berne assembled the clergy, high and low, and asked them if they agreed with the Ten Theses. The response was overwhelming, nearly unanimous, with even the Prior and Sub-Prior of the Dominicans subscribing to the Ten Theses. The magistrates then issued their decrees which conformed to the Ten Theses. The Mass was abolished, altars were replaced with plain wooden tables, organs were dismantled, moved, or outright destroyed. Images were crushed to rubble, pictures were destroyed, frescos were painted over. On February 2, the people of Berne met at the cathedral and swore an oath to stand by the council on the matters of the Ten Theses. The magistrates issued their decrees on February 7. There were thirteen provisions that established Protestantism in Berne. They approved the Ten Theses and ordered the clergy and citizenry to conform to them. As Zurich had done, they officially divorced themselves from the Bishop they had been under. The clergy's oath of obedience to Rome was annulled. Priests, monks, and Nuns could now marry; their vow of celibacy nullified and voided by the authority of the state. The secular authorities had said so; the state, in a coalition with the religious leaders made it so. The money they had supported monks and nuns with was now used to create schools and hospitals. While the Protestants made some positive changes, religious liberty was not one. Religious diversity was still against convention and law.
"Zwingli's enemies too were now under his feet; after December 7, 1528, only the barest civic rights without the chance of office were left to non-Reformers ; attendance at Mass even outside the city was punished by fine; to eat fish instead of flesh on Friday was an offense. But a reaction might at any time set in." (SeeWhitney)
"Zwingli's enemies too were now under his feet; after December 7, 1528, only the barest civic rights without the chance of office were left to non-Reformers; attendance at Mass even outside the city was punished by fine; to eat fish instead of flesh on Friday was an offense. But a reaction might at any time set in." (See Whitney, Cambridge Modern History
"Oecolampadius, after taking counsel with Zwingli on the best means of suppressing Catholic worship, branded the mass as an act worse than theft, harlotry, adultery, treason, and murder, called a meeting of the town council, and requested them to decree the abolition of Catholic worship." (See Preserved Smith's The Age of the Reformation)
By mid-1528 the reformed party in Basel, mostly Lutherans, outnumbered Catholics. In the city area of Basel, there were four reformed for every Catholic. This made for continuing religious strife because most individuals thought their church should be the State Church. With the Zwinglian victory at the Berne disputation, a great deal of pressure for change mounted in Basel. Just days before Christmas, over three hundred reformers assembled peacefully and petitioned the magistrates of Basel to abolish the Mass because they believed it was an abomination before God. By practicing this idolatry, they were tempting God's wrath. Reformers also sought some kind of control of the Catholic pastors in order to make sure that nothing was taught except that which came from the pages of the Bible. On top of the demands from the Basel's reformed citizenry, there was pressure from the magistrates and reformers of both Zurich and Berne. Not to be pushed around, armed Catholics attempted to block the Protestant's way to the town hall where the council was meeting. The council insisted that it was late and they should all go home and go to bed. Two days later, on Christmas day, both groups assembled again. The Catholics arrived first and the word spread that they were armed. By the time the word had spread to every corner of the city, the armed Protestants numbered three-thousand. For two weeks this went on. Trying to please everyone and avoid bloodshed, the council finally decreed pastors must preach only from the Word of God but the issue of the Mass was a matter of individual choice. Evangelism from the Word of God was to be preached but the Mass was not going anywhere just yet. This was really the continuation of the 1527 policy. On the Mass, none were compelled to attend and none were prevented from attending. This was a more mature and enlightened viewpoint for these times but these were times of deep religious differences that often sparked violence. This kind of tolerance could not last in 1529 because the reformed party, like all religious zealots, would not permit any compromise or choice. Knowing of this powder keg in the making, representatives from other regions came and sought to help bring the dispute to a peaceful solution. Quickly, the Senate made another attempt to bring peace, ordering a disputation on the Mass to take place two Sundays after Pentecost. They also restricted Mass to three churches and they were permitted to celebrate it once daily. The situation was deteriorating because the decree infuriated the Catholics, while the Protestants insisted there was nothing to discuss; the Mass was idolatry and insulted God.
Over this period of supposed deliberation, the Reformed party suspected the senate of deceit; through deliberately stalling in each of the situations before them. Suspicions arose because there were a dozen or so council members that were relatives of the Catholic clergy. On January 24, Sebastian Muller, preacher at the Cathedral of St. Peter, violently raged against the reformers as heretics. His rant was contagious, inciting his congregation to such a boiling point that the reform minded of the congregation feared for their lives. The Protestants knew the Mass had to be addressed soon and sought out the magistrates to do something, one way or the other. Due to continuing threats, insults and floods of invectives from the Catholics, they believed their lives were in danger as long as the issue remained unsettled. Killing heretics was on too many a Catholic mind. The magistrates promised a favorable answer but fifteen days later, they were still indecisive.
On that fifteenth day, February 8, eight-hundred of the Reformed party met in the Church of the Franciscans to draw up a strategy. Time was running out and it looked as if the controversy would end up a bloody one. The council would be asked to purge itself of the "the fathers and relatives of the priests". Furthermore, they wanted the Senate to be democratized so the members would be elected by the people in a transparent democratic process. That evening they placed six military cannons before the Hotel de Ville, took possession of the town's arsenal and controlled the streets by barricading them with chains. Armed guards took possession of the town's gates and towers. To dispel the darkness of the night, they made large torches with Fir trees and set them upon high places. This aggressive strategy caused many of the Catholic leaders to cower; the Burgomeister, his son-in-law and several councilors left Basel by way of the Rhine River in the dead of night. Thinking that this might have been an attempt by them to recruit Austrian soldiers, the armed Protestant force grew to two-thousand by sunrise.
At eight in the morning, the magistrates notified the Protestant committee that they had designated twelve who were to excuse themselves whenever the matter at hand was religious. Unfortunately, those designated refused to accept this unconditionally and were going to appeal for a hearing of their case before the other cantons. Patience was getting thin. The Protestants sent a detachment of forty soldiers to inspect all the posts in the city in case of attack. The troops continued to the Cathedral of St. Peter where one thing led to another after a hidden image rolled out of a closet and broke into pieces. One after another were found, rolled out and smashed to pieces. Some priests resisted but that only quickened the destruction. The destroyed altars, the dismantled pictures and the rubble of the images were all set afire in the town's squares. What would not burn was pounded to dust. The sympathizing public stood by the fires, warming their bodies in the winter night as if it was a social event. When the council heard the excitement, they inquired as to what the reformers had been doing. They responded "We are doing in an hour what you have not been able to do in three years." (See Wylie) After the Cathedral was cleansed, the reformers visited all the churches of Basel, destroying with hammer and axe all the images found. Even the organs were removed.
The magistrates of Basel finally gave in to all the reformer demands. Firstly, the members of the two councils would be elected by the citizens in a free and open election. Secondly, the Mass and images would be abolished and churches were to be supplied with ministers who correctly preach the Word of God. Thirdly, in all matters regarding religion and the public good, two hundred and sixty members of the guilds were to be admitted to deliberate with the Senate. By the tyranny of the majority, a Protestant alliance of church and state had been established. Without the loss of life, but with the loss of any remaining religious choice, a democracy without liberty of conscience and religious equality was created in two days. Now it was the people, not the monarchs or the Popes, who were the despots. Without the ethics and principles of liberty it was still a medieval world steeped in religious discrimination. By the third day, Ash Wednesday, all the remaining statues, pictures and altars were collected into nine piles and burned in the Cathedral Square. The tyranny of the majority ruled.
"On Friday, 12th of February, all the trades of the city met and approved the edict of the Senate, as an "irrevocable decree," and on the following day they took the oath, guild by guild, of fidelity to the new order of things. On next Sunday, in all the churches, the Psalms were chanted in German, in token of their joy."
"This revolution was followed by an exodus of priests, scholars, and monks. The rushing Rhine afforded all facilities of transport. No one fled from dread of punishment, for a general amnesty, covering all offenses, had set all fears at rest. It was dislike of the Protestant faith that made the fugitives leave this pleasant residence. The bishop, carrying with him his title but not his jurisdiction, fixed his residence at Poirentru. The monks peaceably departed "with their harems" to Friburg. Some of the chairs in the university were vacated, but new professors, yet more distinguished, came to fill them; among whom were Oswald Myconius, Sebastien Munster, and Simon Grynaeus. Last and greatest, Erasmus too departed. Basel was his own romantic town; its cathedral towers, its milky river, the swelling hills, with their fir-trees, all were dear to him. Above all, he took delight in the society of its dignified clergy, its polite scholars, and the distinguished strangers who here had gathered round him. From Basel this monarch of the schools had ruled the world of letters. But Protestantism had entered it, and he could breathe its air no longer." (See Wylie.
Remember Erasmus? Erasmus was certainly bitter, seeing his beloved university town turned upside down by the heretics. In his letter to Pirkheimer of Nürnberg, May 9, 1529 regarding the Basel reformation he wrote, "The smiths and workmen removed the pictures from the churches, and heaped such insults on the images of the saints and the crucifix itself, that it is quite surprising there was no miracle, seeing how many there always used to occur whenever the saints were even slightly offended. Not a statue was left either in the churches, or the vestibules, or the porches, or the monasteries. The frescoes were obliterated by means of a coating of lime; whatever would burn was thrown into the fire, and the rest pounded into fragments. Nothing was spared for either love or money. Before long the mass was totally abolished, so that it was forbidden either to celebrate it in one's own house or to attend it in the neighboring villages." (See Schaff)
Complicating the Swiss situation even more in 1528, trouble exploded in St. Gallen. The Abbot was dying so Zwingli and the Privy Council sought to exploit the situation. Since it was Zurich's turn to appoint the bailiff for the region, magistrates ordered the Zurich official Jacob Frei to seize the property, introduce the Gospel, and secularize it. This meant more Roman Catholic property was to become state owned. Like Thurgau, St. Gallen was under shifting, multiple jurisdictions. Thurgau was the common land where the evangelical priest Oeschli was arrested as a heretic preacher and then rescued from jail by a town mob. Because the town's people wanted the property when the monastery was dissolved, they broke in before the Abbot died and forcibly took over. Unfortunately for these proactive citizens, the monastery was not only under the rotating jurisdictions of four cantons but it was protected by the authority of the Empire. With this transgression, the Catholic cantons and the imperial court again expressed the desire for war on the reformed party.
To the north of Switzerland, several regions came under the influence of the Reformation. In 1529, the Strasbourg city council abolished the Mass and eventually joined the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League, a coalition for mutual defense. Rome's Bishop, seeing no point in having his headquarters there in Strasbourg any longer, moved his headquarters to Zabern. Most of the secular lordships of the region and many in the cathedral chapter became Protestants. Strasbourg's reformation had gotten off to a quick start in the early 1520s. Due to the work of evangelicals Wolfgang Capito, Martin Bucer, and Matthias Zell; of humanists Sturm and Hedio, the reformation was more quietly established there.
This type of church-state alliance was similar to the model the Christianized Roman Emperors and the church leaders of late antiquity used to combat paganism and heresy. Besides loosing one's property while alive, loss of testamentary rights was also a punishment for heresy. When you died, the state took your estate; your family received nothing if you were a heretic or pagan. The officially recognized church amassed a great deal of real estate through these laws. There were laws under Christian emperors stating that you could not leave your estate to a pagan or heretic. The heirs of an estate had to be confessors of the Nicene Creed, the declared creed of the Council of Nicea held in 325. Paintings representing the Council of Nicea show Emperor Constantine, who ordered the council, as a central force and ally of the bishops. Constantine wanted history to see this major Christian council as his handiwork. The same can be said of Theodosius the Great at Constantinople (381), Theodosius the Younger at Ephesus (431), and Marcianus at Chalcedon (451). (See The Rise of Church-State Alliances, Emperors Constantine through Justinian, 306-565CE) All these emperors strengthened the Nicene Creed's authority and condemned the religious choices of theie time. Each council had the emperor defending the faith with the bishops against differing beliefs. The councils mentioned addressed major heresies such as Arianism and Monophysitism. The Imperial Diet of Speyer was no different, with church and empire teamed together to silence dissent and prevent religious diversity. Church and state, when allied, have almost always been enemies of free speech.
At the Imperial Diet, Archduke Ferdinand delivered the Emperor's edict, part of which stated, "Where the edict of Worms, (which had in view the suppression and extirpation of the Reformation,) has been put in force, all religious innovation, as hitherto, remains forbidden; but where it has been departed from, and where its introduction without tumult is not possible, no farther steps at least, shall be taken in reformation, no questions of controversy shall be discussed, the Massshall not be forbidden, no Catholic shall pass over to Lutheranism, the Episcopal jurisdiction shall not be declined, and neither Anabaptists nor Sacramentalists shall be tolerated."See Raget Christoffel, Page 337
Furthermore, offenders would be "punished according to the measure of their guilt in body, life, and property, who despise, spurn, or condemn the eternal, pure, elect queen, the blessed Virgin Mary, or other beloved saints of God who now live with Christ in eternal blessedness, so as to say that the mother of God is only a woman like other women, that she had more children than Christ, the Son of God, that she was not a virgin before or after his birth". See Schaff.
After the Diet issued its rulings, the reformed parties of many cities protested "because the majority has no power in questions of conscience". With persecution likely, fourteen cities signed a legal protestation. Of the fourteen cities, nine were Zwinglian. This protestation of April 25, 1529 is where the Protestant label comes from. The protest stated, "Although it be generally known that in our states the holy sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord is administered in a proper and befitting manner, we cannot accept the terms of the edict against the Sacramentalists, because the Imperial letter of convocation has not spoken of them, because they have not been tried, and nothing can be decided on so important a matter before the next general Council." (See Christoffel)
Anabaptists were being drowned, burned and beheaded by both Catholics and Protestants. By grouping heretics with the Anabaptists, a cold and ruthless message was sent to all; they too could be banished, tortured or executed. Soon thereafter, a reform preacher named Jacob Kaiser (or Keyser) was arrested for preaching heresy in the Catholic canton of Schwyz. He was tried, convicted and burned at the stake. Zwingli was for a quick and decisive military action and being persuasive, war was declared on June 9, 1529. Zurich had been ready for months and sent 4000 troops to the border of canton Zug. Bern sent 5000 to be used in defense of Zurich only. More troops, in smaller contingents, were sent to the border of Schwyz. Zwingli accompanied the largest force to the Zug border. From Glarus, where both faiths were actually co-existing without bloodshed, came Landammann Aebli with a desperate plea to hold off crossing the frontier for war. He had spoken with the Catholic leaders and now pleaded, "Dear lords of Zurich, for God's sake, prevent the division and destruction of the confederacy." (See Schaff). From this point began mediation through the Tagsatzung. When Federal Diets were called they were held by the delegates, the Tagsatzung. Although they had limited authority because the cantons were actually sovereign entities in a confederation much like the United States did under the Articles of Confederation, they succeeded in this particular peace endeavor.
Zwingli was not against a peace settlement but he didn't trust the Catholics' word or intentions. He expressed his hawkish views in a letter to friends in Bern, May 30, 1529. "Let us be firm and fear not to take up arms. This peace, which some desire so much, is not peace, but war; while the war that we call for, is not war, but peace. We thirst for no man's blood, but we will cut the nerves of the oligarchy. If we shun it, the truth of the gospel and the ministers' lives will never be secure among us."(See Schaff). Being nationalistic and against the papacy's authority in Swiss affairs, he might have liked nothing more than to conquer the Catholic regions and replace their Catholic magistrates. For war to be averted and peace to succeed, the Catholics would have to adhere to some important conditions. On June 11, a day after Aebli's plea, Zwingli sent a communication to the Council of Zurich containing four requirements. Schaff tells us of these conditions in his chapter on the Swiss Civil Warbetween Catholics and Protestants.
"1) That the Word of God be preached freely in the entire confederacy, but that no one be forced to abolish the mass, the images, and other ceremonies which will fall of themselves under the influence of scriptural preaching; 2) that all foreign military pensions be abolished; 3) that the originators and the dispensers of foreign pensions be punished while the armies are still in the field; 4) that the Forest cantons pay the cost of war preparations, and that Schwyz pay one thousand guilders for the support of the orphans of Kaiser (Schlosser) who had recently been burnt there as a heretic."
"The first and most important of the Eighteen Articles of the treaty recognizes, for the first time in Europe, the principle of parity or legal equality of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches,—a principle which twenty-six years afterwards was recognized also in Germany"
The Protestant leaders knew that if they attacked, there would be an overwhelming victory so there were many who wished to continue the military campaign. Events in the near future would prove them right. Two weeks later, the First Peace of Kappel was agreed to. Though not everything the hard liners wanted, the agreement was generally friendly to the reformation. The first article of the agreement was a ground breaker in European law. It was the first time any treaty in Europe placed opposing religions on equal legal standing. This was a bitter pill for the Catholics to swallow after centuries of supremacy.
Of great satisfaction to the reformed party was the end of the Catholic's military and religious alliance with Austria and its Archduke Ferdinand. Like Zwingli, Ferdinand saw war as a legitimate way to bring religious conformity to the people. Like Church fathers and Christianized Roman emperors, many a medieval leader erroneously saw strict strict religious uniformity as a way of securing national unity. Of course, this kind of thinking, religious and political, has led to terrible events. In another important matter, nothing was done about the mercenary soldier situation and the associated pensions. As one of Zwingli's most important nationalist concerns for all of Switzerland, the lack of attention in this matter must have angered him. The end to Swiss soldiers for hire and the foreign pensions was suggested to the Catholic cantons during peace mediations but it was not demanded. The mercenary soldier business had filled their treasuries for generations so there was no interest in ending the highly profitable tradition. What was vastly more important to most of the reformers was having legal recognition for the reformed churches. Having the right to preach the reformation freely in Catholic cantons was achieved but this liberty was a one way street paved with hypocrisy. Protestants still banned Catholic preaching in their regions; in Zurich it was still a crime to celebrate the Catholic mass. If the Protestants wanted any respect, they were going about it all wrong, repeating the sins of Rome with a new hat on.
Building on his successes, Zwingli began working on strengthening the reformation in Switzerland. Zwingli was a forward looking politician who dreamed of a European Protestant league. In December of 1529, Zwingli presided over a council at Frauenfeld in neighboring canton Thurgau. Clergy discipline regarding both doctrines and morals were the main concerns of this meeting. According to authors Jackson, Vincent, & Foster on page 294 of Huldreich Zwingli, the Reformer of German Switzerland, there were five hundred clergymen from Thurgau, St. Gall, Appenzell and the Rhine Valley. In bringing discipline to the clergy, those with Anabaptist beliefs were exhorted to recant or be deposed of their position and stripped of their stipends. The council also addressed reforming more monasteries and turning their properties over to the civil authorities. In the Spring, Zwingli returned to Frauenfeld for another council which addressed clergy salaries which were now paid by the state. Immediately after the Frauenfeld meeting, Zwingli traveled to St. Gall for another council on clergy discipline and excommunication in a Zwinglian Christian magistracy. The state was to punish sin, scandal and public offense. In the Spring of 1530 another council was held in Lichtensteig to again deal with clergy discipline. Clergy discipline was now a responsibility of the state. (See Christoffel)
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY
After harsh polemics and a hostile three year long pamphlet war between the Zwinglians and the Lutherans on the nature and substance of the Lord's Supper, the Protestants finally sat down at the Marburg Castle for the sake of political unity. Marburg was the home of the University of Marburg, founded in 1527 by Landgrave Philip of Hesse. It was the first Protestant university founded in Germany. Like many federal and religious diets, the meeting was a church and state affair. Suggested by John Haner and organized by the Philip, it was the first serious attempt to bring the two factions together. When the hammer came down with the Edict of Speyer earlier in the year it became clear to all that the situation had reached a critical stage. Protestant unity had to be achieved or the movement risked self-destruction. Back on May 9, 1529, following up on Haner's suggestion, Philip wrote to Zwingli, "We are at present busily engaged in bringing together to a suitable place of meeting Luther, Melanchthon, and others, who are nearly of your opinion upon the sacrament, to see if the almighty and merciful God would grant us grace to compare the said article of belief upon the foundation of Holy Scripture, and enable us to live in a harmonious and unanimous understanding upon the point, for at this Diet the papists knew not better to defend their perversions, abuses, and corruptions, than by saying that we who pretend to cling to the pure Word of God arc not united in doctrine and faith among ourselves ; and verily if we were united, their knavery would soon come to an end. Wherefore our most gracious request to you is, that you would use your best endeavours to put the matter upon a right foundation, and bring us all to one Christian and unanimous sentiment." Zwingli replied that he would attend and asked Philip to write the Zurich Councils to grant permission to Zwingli to make the journey. Times were still very dangerous due to the recent defeat of the Catholic cantons and the victories of the treaty of the First Peace of Kappel. Many were still in a killing mood. See Christoffel, page 337
With Faber and Eck once again fashioning a way to suppress Protestants, it was time for the divided reformers to cool down and act. The major players at Marburg were Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Luther and Melanchthon. In all, about fifty attended the conference. Preliminary discussions began on October 1, 1529; to break the ice Luther met with Oecolampadius and Zwingli with Melanchthon. The next day, Luther and Zwingli began their face to face discussions in hopes of resolving the their party's disputes. Zwingli differed from Luther on the Eucharist, seeing it as a symbolic celebration; not as any kind of miracle. Luther's position was that the body of Christ was consubstantial with the bread. Both rejected transubstantiation, that the bread was turned into the actual body and blood of Christ but Luther only went half way, still accepting that the body of Christ was consubstantial with the bread. They argued over the Biblical statement by Jesus, "This is my body, this is my blood".Luther demanded that it be interpreted literally while Zwingli argued for a symbolic, commemorative interpretation. Zwingli was claiming Jesus meant this signifies my body. Zwinglians stated that since the body of Christ is at the right hand of the Father, his body could not be in two places at once. The spirit of Christ could be everywhere but certainly not his body. That made no sense. After a couple of days of heated arguments, the two sides asked forgiveness for their harsh attacks and Philip sought to save the day by having Luther draw up fifteen articles based on the Schwabach Articles that they could all agree on. Fourteen of the articles, with only slight changes required, were accepted by the Zwinglians. Luther had never expected such a degree of agreement. The fifteenth was of course an article on the Lord's Supper. Although they could agree on five points of the article, it was mostly rejected by the Zwinglians. They rejected the notion of any miracle and stood firmly on a doctrine of symbolism. So the amended fifteenth article ended with this statement: "Although we are not at this present time agreed, as to whether the true Body and Blood of Christ are bodily present in the bread and wine, nevertheless the one party should show to the other Christian love as far as conscience can permit." Christian love as conscience can permit, much like the mercy of Allah, has a terrible track record. Permitting others their voices and viewpoints has never been a Judaic, Christian or Islamic virtue or habit. It is both Biblical and Quranic to be intolerant and given to violence towards the adherents of differing religious viewpoints. The case of the Marburg conference was not an exception in religious history, with the two sides were soon exchanging flaming hostilities.
At the same time, Zwingli became more acquainted with the Landgrave Philip and the fugitive Duke Ulrich of Wurtemburg, all agreeing there should be a civil and military alliance of Protestant states to combat the papacy and its imperial allies. Previous to the Marburg conference, the magisterial authorities under the influence of Luther refused to form any alliance with the Zwinglians unless they accepted Luther's view on the Lord's Supper. After the conference the divide remained and the Lutherans eventually formed their own alliance. The Schmalkaldic League was formed on February 27, 1531 by Landgrave Philip and John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony.
In 1530, Capito and Bucer wrote the Creed of Strasbourg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau. Known as the Tetrapolitana, it was presented to the Emperor on July 11. Bucer had spent a great deal of energy trying to reconcile Luther and Zwingli and this was no exception. Due to its thesis of consubstantiation regarding the Eucharist and the Lord's Supper, it was rejected by Zurich and Basel at the Evangelical Diet of Basel on November 16, 1530. Zurich and Basel, Zwingli and Oecolampadius stood their ground that the Lord's Supper was a symbolic, commemorative ritual; neither transubstantiation nor consubstantiation was involved. A week prior to the Emperor receiving the Tetrapolitana, Zwingli's own confession was presented to the emperor. He showed no interest in it. Going beyond the scope of theAugsburg Confession, Zwingli's confession of faith claimed supreme authority belonged to the scriptures of the Bible. Like the Augsburg Confession, it was staunchly Nicene-trinitarian just as Catholic Church canon, English state religion and America's colonial charters were. Some religious tests of early British North America required an oath of belief in the consubstantial trinity. Non-trinitarian Christians had been persecuted by trinitarian Christians since the Council of Nicea's condemnation of it. Protestants burned anti-trinitarians at the stake, too. The Geneva theocracy's John Calvin supported Michael Servetus' death sentence at the stake for being a non-trinitarian Christian just as Zwingli supported the drowning of Anabaptist heretics. Whether Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican or Zwinglian, trinitarian belief was central and mandatory. This continued in the American colonies. In some places, European and American, It was impossible for a professional group to exist without following the religious mandates of the state. An example of this kind of old world discrimination is found in The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina(1669) where one's professional group required (by the state) that you believe, "That there is a God." and "That God is publicly to be worshipped." You couldn't even live in Carolina if you did not believe in God. Section Ninety-five stated, "No man shall be permitted to be a freeman of Carolina, or to have any estate or habitation within it, that doth not acknowledge a God, and that God is publicly and solemnly to be worshipped." Following Luther, Protestants saw one's trade or profession as a calling from God so religious test-oaths were instituted as requirements. The United States Constitution banned religious tests in the Sixth Article. Thomas Jefferson also rejected such mandates, seeing them as being worthless.
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. ... Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-1782, 1781-82)
It was not long before the First Peace of Kappel began to unravel. The Catholics again made overtures to Austria and to the Emperor Charles V. To many, it was considered treasonous to be making deals with an ancient enemy of Helvetia. In a similar manner, Zurich sought aid from Hesse and Venice. Not making any sense at all, Zurich even sought help from France where King Francis I was actively persecuting Protestants. The Catholics did not hold up their end of the bargain regarding freedom of preaching. Many of history's defeated, like these Catholic cantons, will agree to anything when their lives are on the line. After the dust settles, they go back to their original positions, ready to fight another day. Although the treaty mandated that the bailiwicks of St. Gall, Toggenburg, Thurgau, and Rheinthal had the right to choose their religion by majority vote, the Catholics refused to allow this. Zurich still regarded the celebration of the Mass a crime so they were not in a place to call themselves a role model for religious freedom. This same liberty demanded by Zurich in other cantons was not allowed within its own borders. Things were returning to the same situations that brought about the first confrontation and to make things worse, a professional army of the Milanese official Gian Giacomo Medici from the Duchy of Milan had invaded the Grisons region of southeast Switzerland again. Medici and his bands had been pillaging these areas since 1521. This was called the Musso War. The Catholic cantons refused to help repel the invaders and this is what tipped the scale to war again. Zwingli again urged a decisive military strike but the more moderate Bern officials won the day on May 15, 1531 by convincing the authorities to use a blockade of trade to persuade the Catholics. At this time Protestantism had made great gains in the Grisons so one has to wonder if the Catholics saw this as a way to get even with the Protestants. The invaders were Catholics, too. Because the year had been one with famine and an epidemic of a kind of wasting illness, the strategy was decidedly cold and ruthless. Important provisions were kept from the Catholic cantons. Women, children, the elderly and the infirm would be victimized just as the soldiers and the magistrates would be. Important supplies necessary to maintain livestock were also blocked. This, Zurich's conscience could permit.
The Protestants made a major strategic miscalculation, leaving the Forest cantons with a winning solution. The Emperor had made peace with the Pope and the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria had wanted to invade the Protestants anyway. With Emperor Charles and the Pope at peace, they could all turn their attention to those pesky Protestant heretics. On October 9, 1531, eight thousand soldiers marched to the Zurich border. On the way, they took control of all the valleys and roads, stopping all communication to Zurich. There would be no element of surprise for the unprepared reformers under the leadership of Zwingli; there was only a sense of impending defeat as intelligence trickled into Zurich of the threat. Wylie notes, "Another Popish host, 12,000 strong, spread themselves over the free parishes, inflicting all the horrors of war wherever they came. Word finally reached Zurich that the bolt had fallen, the war was begun; the enemy was at Baar, on the road to Zurich."
Unlike the situation of 1529, Zurich was not prepared and could only muster up 1500 poorly equipped soldiers. Morale was low, too. Many had grown tired of the strictures of the Zwinglian alliance of church and state. After marching to the front at Kappel, the battle lasted several hours and the Protestants were easily defeated. Over five hundred Zurichers were killed, including twenty-six members of its councils and Zwingli himself; twenty-four were pastors. Zwingli was wounded early in the battle and as he lay wounded, a Catholic Captain Vokinger of the canton of Unterwalden recognized him and promptly killed him. According to the account of Johannes Salat, a Catholic historian of the time, he said, "Die, obstinate heretic" as he ran him through with his sword. Although dead, he was still further punished according to imperial law; his body was then quartered for treason and then what remained was burnt for heresy. After being burned on a pile of excrement, his ashes were mixed with the ashes of swine and then scattered in the winds.
The Second Peace of Kappel, agreed to in November of 1531, reversed the progress of the first. Some credit must be given to the Catholics in the case of this treaty. The Catholic cantons could have demanded more but it appears as if they restrained themselves for the sake of the confederation. They could have tried to federalize religion but did not. Zurich was even left intact in a world where boundaries continually shifted around. What they did demand was certainly painful. Firstly, the Protestant League had to be dissolved and the treaty of 1529 was annulled. Zurich was ordered in December of 1531 to give the rural regions of its canton much more say in the canton's affairs; they had to be consulted before important matters were settled. This was smart because rural regions tended to keep the older faith just as rural regions were mostly pagan in Roman times when Christianity was spreading. In both cases, late antiquity's Christianization and the late middle age's Reformation, new and innovative thinking was first successful in the more urbanized regions. It was the same with the humanism of the Renaissance. In the common territories where jurisdiction alternated between cantons, Catholics took over the jurisdictions but let those that had already converted to Protestantism remain so. Bremgarten and Glarus returned to Catholicism and Bern remained Protestant but trended Lutheran, not Zwinglian. From Bremgarten, Bullinger and his father fled to Zurich where he was elected to succeed Zwingli. In the common territories where Protestants were a majority, Catholics received legal protection but Protestants did not. The sovereignty of each canton was affirmed in their own political, military and religious matters while the notion of a confederation where rule by a majority of cantons was strengthened. (A federalist constitution with a central government similar to that of the United States was finally agreed to in 1848). Costly were the indemnities Basel, Schaffhausen, St Gallen, and Mühlhausen had to pay so Solothurn joined Bremgarten in returning to Catholicism, thereby escaping the costly fine. Zurich and St. Gallen were ordered to restore the Abbey of St Gallen; monks and nuns could return to their vocations at convents and monasteries. Like the deal in the common territories, the Protestants of the Free Bailiwicks Thurgau and Toggenburg could keep their faith but only Catholic minorities were protected. Future religious persecution and conflicts were assured by the inequities of this treaty. These failures of fairness, by both Catholic and Protestants finally lead Europe into the Thirty Years War, which initially began in 1618 as a war between Catholics and Protestants. Between the battles, the pestilence, and the famine, over seven million lives were lost.
Schaff made some important comments about Luther's treatment of Zwingli after his death. It strengthens the notion that Luther, intolerant and continuously on a rant regarding those he disagreed with, was a reformer and lacked the courage to break completely from the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Zwingli certainly was a man of courage even though his notions of religious liberty meant replacing one church-state alliance with another more republican one that, without a just constitutional foundation, has the weakness of allowing the majority to trample the rights of those of the minority.
"We need not wonder that the religious and political enemies of Zwingli interpreted the catastrophe at Cappel as a signal judgment of God and a punishment for heresy. It is the tendency of superstition in all ages to connect misfortune with a particular sin. Such an uncharitable interpretation of Providence is condemned by the example of Job, the fate of prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and the express rebuke of the disciples by our Saviour in the case of the man born blind (John 9:31). But it is found only too often among Christians. It is painful to record that Luther, the great champion of the liberty of conscience, under the influence of his mediaeval training, and unmindful of the adage, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, surpassed even the most virulent Catholics in the abuse of Zwingli after his death. It is a sad commentary on the narrowness and intolerance of the Reformer."
At this point in the historian's narrative there is footnote 293 which reads:
"In his letter to Albrecht of Prussia, April, 1532 (in De Wette, IV. 348-355), Luther expresses a doubt about Zwingli’s salvation (on account of his denial of the corporal presence). He scorns the idea that he was a martyr; he regrets that the Catholic cantons did not complete their victory by suppressing the Zwinglian heresy, and he warns the Duke of Prussia not to tolerate it in his dominion. In his furious polemic tract, Short Confession of the Holy Sacrament, written in 1545, a year before his death (Werke, Erlangen ed., vol. XXXII. 399-401, 410), Luther says that "Zwingel" (he always misspells his name) and Oecolampadius "perished in their sins"; that Zwingli died "in great and many sins and blasphemy" ( in grossen und vielen Sünden und Gotteslästerung), having expressed a hope for the salvation of such "gottlose Heiden" as Socrates, Aristides, and the "greuliche Numa" that he became a heathen; and that he perished by the sword because he took up the sword. He adds that he, Martin Luther, "would rather a hundred times be torn to pieces and burned than make common cause with Stenkefeld [Stinkfeld for Schwenkfeld], Zwingel, Carlstadt, and Oeclampadius!" O sancta simplicitas! How different is the conduct and judgment of Zwingli, who, at Marburg, with tears in his eyes, offered the hand of brotherhood to his great antagonist, and who said of him in the very heat of the eucharistic controversy: "Luther is so excellent a warrior of God, and searches the Scriptures with such great earnestness as no one on earth for these thousand years has done; and no one has ever equalled him in manly, unshaken spirit with which he has attacked the pope of Rome. He was the true David whom the Lord himself appointed to slay Goliath. He hurled the stones taken from the heavenly brook so skillfully that the giant fell prostrate on the ground. Saul has slain thousands, but David tens of thousands. He was the Hercules who rushed always to the post of danger in battle ... Therefore we should justly thank God for having raised such an instrument for his honor; and this we do with pleasure."
Preserved Smith's The Life and Letters of Martin Luther
Preserved Smith's The Age of the Reformation
TOC: Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church
Schaff: Zwingli's Training
Schaff: The Reformation in Zurich
Schaff: Spread of the Reformation in Switzerland
Schaff: The Swiss Civil War; Catholics V Protestants
James Wylie - TOC: The History of Protestantism
J. H. Merle D'aubigne TOC: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century
JP Whitney: Cambridge Modern History: The Helvetic Reformation
MacCaffrey: TOC History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution
MacCaffrey: Zwingli in Switzerland
GOOGLE BOOKS:
Preserved Smith: The Age of the Reformation
John McManners: The Oxford History of Christianity
Works of Zwingli & Bullinger
Erasmus: The Correspondence of Erasmus
Arthur Henry Johnson: Europe in the Sixteenth Century, 1494-1598
J. H. Merle D'Aubigne: History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century
Huldreich Zwingli, the Reformer of German Switzerland - Jackson
Joseph Henry Allen: The Age of Revolution
Joseph Henry Allen: Outline of Christian history
Henry Charles Lea: A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Volume 1
Henry Charles Lea: A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Volume 2
Henry Charles Lea: A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Volume 3
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