Bible and Sword
Whenever we give heed to the word, we acquire pure and clear knowledge of the will of God and are drawn to him by his Spirit and transformed into his likeness.
Ulrich Zwingli, Sixty-Seven Articles
The Reformation spread over the Alps and poured into Switzerland where it found Ulrich Zwingli—a willing advocate and messenger.
Zwingli was born in Wildhause, Switzerland. His father was the village mayor. Zwingli chose a life in the church and attended school in Basel, Bern, and Vienna. He returned to Basel where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1504 and a master’s degree in theology two years later. In 1506 he was ordained and served as a parish priest in Glarus.
Twice, in 1513 and 1515, he served as chaplain to Swiss mercenaries. Swiss soldiers were often dispatched to foreign armies as part of political pacts. The French, the pope, and the emperor all drew on Swiss soldiers. This meant young soldiers were being traded as a commodity. Zwingli abhorred the practice, but as chaplain he could at least provide spiritual guidance to the soldiers.
The Slow Awakening
Zwingli didn’t set out to be a Reformer. Unlike Martin Luther, who as a monk feared God, death, and judgment, and routinely made himself suffer for his sins, Zwingli struggled with disenchantment.
Many priests in Zwingli’s time knew very little about the Bible. They were taught many things through tradition, with an emphasis on earning salvation through good works. Biblical scholars like Luther discovered a different salvation doctrine than what had been taught them by their teachers. And so it was with Zwingli, who fell in love with the Bible, especially the New Testament in Greek.
He studied a copy of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament. As he learned the Greek language and studied the New Testament, he began to see conflicts between what he had been taught and what the New Testament revealed. Many of the practices and devices of the Roman Catholic Church did not align with New Testament teachings. Zwingli came to believe that every church practice and doctrine had to be supported by the Word of God. If no support for a particular practice or doctrine could be found, it was to be set aside as unbiblical. This is one of the areas where he disagreed with Martin Luther. Luther was a biblicist too. It had been a study in Romans that led to his nailing the Ninety-Five Theses to the Wittenberg door. Yet, in some respects, Luther was a little more lax. Luther’s approach was that if the Bible didn’t prohibit it, then it was allowed. Zwingli, on the other hand, believed that if the Bible didn’t allow it, it was to be avoided.
Migrating from Catholicism
On New Year’s Day of 1519, the parish priest of Glarus became the pastor of Grossmünster, an important church in Zurich. That day he made a surprising announcement. Instead of preaching the prescribed lectionary provided by the Roman Catholic Church, he was going to deliver a series of sermons from the Gospel of Matthew. This was an act of defiance. Zwingli wanted his congregation to hear the Word of God from the Bible itself.
The Bible became his only source of authority, and this put his conscience in conflict with Catholic practices. In 1522, a few of his parishioners defied the ban on eating meat during Lent, a time of penance and self-denial. Unable to find a biblical foundation for abstaining from meat, he joined his parishioners by eating sausage in public, something no priest would do. He also preached a sermon on freedom to accentuate his point.
Like many city-states in Europe, church and state were intertwined. There was no separation between them. Defying church doctrine often brought down the fist of the government. The pope demanded Zurich expel Zwingli, but they were not so inclined. Zwingli arranged to appear before the leaders of the city to defend his doctrine. He presented his Sixty-Seven Articles, arguing that his beliefs were biblical. Article 1 stated: “All who say that the Gospel is invalid without the confirmation of the church err and slander God.”1
In the Sixty-Seven Articles, he established that Christ should be the center of all teaching, denied that popes had a special standing, rejected Mass as a part of salvation, explained that Christians were to pray through Christ and not through saints, argued that salvation comes from Christ and not through good works, endorsed the privileges of marriage for priests and nuns, ridiculed vows of chastity, and dispelled the idea of purgatory. No one in that meeting could have walked away thinking Zwingli was still a Roman Catholic priest.
On January 29, 1523, the city council of Zurich threw their support behind Zwingli, thus disappointing the pope. They stated Zwingli could continue his work and preaching as before.
The next few years saw radical changes in Zurich. In what had once been a Catholic city, priests and nuns began to marry; icons, statues, and images were removed from the churches; and preaching became the focus of the Sunday service. Also eliminated were the Mass and the Catholic version of the Eucharist. A break with Rome had been made, and Zwingli’s influence and doctrine spread to other cities including Bern, Schaffhausen, Basel, Glarus, and others.
Two men, very similar yet very different, met in Marburg. It was 1529 and Philip of Hesse, a supporter of the Reformation, wanted the two champions of the Reformation movement, Ulrich Zwingli of Switzerland and Martin Luther of Germany, to meet and join forces. Could the two agree on key church doctrines? Zwingli and Luther discussed fifteen key beliefs, agreeing on fourteen of those doctrines. The one doctrine that was disputed: the Lord’s Supper. Zwingli taught that it was a memorial with the wine and bread representing the blood and body of Christ, whereas Luther believed in consubstantiation—the real blood and body of Christ mingled with the elements. Luther was somewhere between Roman Catholic doctrine in which the elements were entirely transformed and Zwingli’s view that the wine remained wine and bread remained bread. Fourteen areas of agreement and just one topic in dispute, yet that one theological difference was enough to kill any hope of working together. Luther, who was known to mock other Reformers, left convinced Zwingli was of the devil. Much later, when word reached Luther that Zwingli had died, he rejoiced.
This Means War
In 1529, conflict eventually broke out between armed Catholic and Protestant forces. This was not just a battle over doctrine but over the authority of the district, the definition of church property, and more. Zwingli rode off to the battlefield, leading the troops in prayer and preaching sermons to the Protestant soldiers who were his congregation. Catholic and Protestant forces met on the border between Zürich and Zug. Milk soup was cooked and shared by the parties, and a peace was negotiated. The Catholics provided the milk; the Protestants the bread. This, the First War of Kappel, was resolved through discussion, although tensions remained high. But the peace wouldn’t last.
Zwingli’s country was a Swiss Confederation made up of thirteen cantons (states). These cantons had a great deal of autonomy. Some chose to side with the Catholic Church and others chose to side with the Reformation. In 1531, a group of five cantons declared war on Zurich, resulting in the start of the Second Kappel War. Many pastors did as Zwingli did in the first campaign, yet this time a battle ensued and there was bloodshed. In a battle that lasted only an hour, five hundred men died. One of them was Zwingli. His body was dismembered, his remains burned, and his helmet taken as a trophy. Twenty-four other Protestant pastors died that day. This was just the beginning of a religious war that would continue for decades.