Ulrich Zwingli

10 Key excerpts on "Ulrich Zwingli"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Fallible Heroes

  Inside the Protestant Reformation

  • Stephen Fortosis, Harley T. Atkinson(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wipf and Stock

    (Publisher)

  7

  Ulrich Zwingli

  Leader of the Swiss Reformation

  “

  Thirteen small composed a simple and brave nation. Who would have looked in those sequestered valleys for the men whom God would choose to be the liberators of the church conjointly with the children of the Germans? Who would have republics, placed with their allies in the center of Europe, among mountains which seemed to form its citadel, thought that small unknown cities—scarcely raised above barbarism, hidden behind inaccessible mountains, on the shores of lakes that had found no name in history—would surpass, as regards Christianity, even Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome? Nevertheless, such was the will of Him who ‘causeth it to rain upon one piece of land, and the piece of land whereupon it raineth not, withereth.’” (Amos 4:7).

  239

  —Merle d’Aubigné

  The winds of reformation change quickly made its way from Germany into Switzerland. Known at the time as the Swiss Federation, the country consisted of thirteen independent states or cantons. Ulrich Zwingli was the leader of the Protestant Reformation in German-speaking Switzerland, and along with Martin Luther and John Calvin was one of the three “Fathers of the Reformation.” Though he did not get quite the credit Luther and Calvin did for the Protestant Reformation (some would say undeservedly so), he fought for ecclesiastical change before Luther did. He rejected Catholic doctrine and practices such as the sale of indulgences, clerical celibacy, purgatory, the Mass, and priestly mediation. Zwingli also vehemently opposed the use of Swiss mercenaries to serve in Catholic wars. Calvin would later surpass him as a theologian and Swiss reformer but would stand squarely on the broad shoulders of Zwingli.

  Zwingli’s Early Years

  Less than two months after Luther’s birth, Zwingli was born on New Year’s Day, 1484

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Theology of the Reformers

  • Timothy George(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • B&H Academic

    (Publisher)

  35 Zwingli continued to guide the Zurich Reformation until his untimely death in 1531. The founding of a theological school, a tribunal of morals (originally a court to settle matrimonial disputes), the translation of the Bible into the Swiss German dialect, the spread of the Reformation to other cantons, especially Bern and Basel, helped to consolidate Zwingli’s reforming efforts. During the last years of his life, Zwingli’s writings became more explicitly theological as he struggled to define his distinct Reformation stance against Roman Catholic apologists such as Fabri and John Eck, the radical Anabaptists who openly split with him in 1525, and Luther, who increasingly regarded him with suspicion and mistrust.

  Zwingli as Theologian

  Zwingli’s role in the history of Christian thought has never been clearly assessed. Claiming that Zwingli’s contribution to the history of theology “will require no more than a brief report,” a recent historian of theology assigns only three pages to the Zurich reformer.36 The reasons for this neglect are obvious. Zwingli composed all of his Reformation writings hurriedly, within less than a decade. He was overshadowed during his lifetime by the great Luther and succeeded by the more effective Calvin, which prompted one scholar to dub him the “third man” of the Reformation. He never wrote anything comparable to the Institutes . Most of his sermons were delivered extemporaneously; only a few were later revised for publication. Likewise, his table talk was lost to posterity for lack of devoted fans who jotted down his every word.

  What then is the scope of Zwingli’s theology? His humanist background and his bent toward rationalism have led some scholars to see him as the forerunner of modern liberal theology. Paul Tillich related Zwingli’s theology to the bourgeois ideal of health: “If you are psychologically healthy, then you can have faith, and vice versa.”37 More recent investigations have stressed the Christological focus and spiritualist tenor of his thought.38

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Unquenchable Flame

  Discovering The Heart Of The Reformation

  • Michael Reeves(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • IVP

    (Publisher)

  3 Soldiers, sausages and revolution: Ulrich Zwingli and the Radical Reformers

  Martin Luther was not alone as a prophet of reformation. Within two months of Luther’s birth, ‘God’s mercenary’, Ulrich (or Huldrych) Zwingli, was born in the pretty Swiss alpine village of Wildhaus.

  The Alps are lovely – Zwingli always thought so – but it was not easy to scratch a living off them in the fifteenth century, and many Swiss found that easier money could be had through becoming a hired mercenary. And they were clearly good at it: the brave and disciplined Swiss pikemen and William Tell-like crossbow-marksmen were feared across Europe for their military prowess. Glory days were soon to follow with Julius II, a pope who spent more time in armour at the head of papal armies than he did saying Mass in Rome. He wanted Swiss muscle to make up his personal bodyguard, and to provide the backbone of his army.

  None of this might have seemed very relevant to Ulrich Zwingli when, aged 22, he became the parish priest of the little town of Glarus. He was set on a comfortable career path in the church. Yet Glarus was virtually a military camp, providing some of the biggest contingents of men for the papal army. A fierce patriot anyway, Zwingli decided to join his men as an army chaplain, and go to fight for the Holy Father and Mother Church. The experience would change him forever. In 1515, they met the gigantic army of King Francis I of France at Marignano, outside Milan. It was a slaughter in which over 10,000 Swiss died. Zwingli’s romantic view of the noble Swiss fighting with honour for a holy cause was drowned in their blood. He realized he had misunderstood both warfare and the pope. The shock forced him to wonder what else he might have misunderstood.

  A strange new world

  Once back home in Glarus, he realized that he had spent years reading Bible commentaries, but that he had not read the Bible itself. So in 1516 he bought a copy of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, hot off the press, and took the revolutionary step of trying to understand it. It hardly sounds revolutionary today, but that only shows how profoundly the Reformation changed Europe. At the time, to go straight to the Bible and seek to understand it was considered dangerously subversive. Without the pope’s guidance, people could make the Bible say anything. Worse, it implied that the pope was not God’s appointed interpreter of Scripture. It was a slippery slope to schism, to walking away from the embrace of Mother Church. Zwingli experienced more than the thrill of rule-breaking, though. As he opened his New Testament he enjoyed what hardly anyone in Europe had enjoyed for a millennium: he could read the very word of God, the real thing, the very words the Holy Spirit had given to the apostles to write. He was so excited he copied out most of Paul’s letters and memorized almost the entire New Testament in Greek.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Italian Reformers and the Zurich Church, c.1540-1620

  • Mark Taplin(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Zurich reformer’s iconoclastic reputation, put about by his Lutheran and Catholic opponents, may well have left many Italian evangelicals with a one-sided view of the man and of the reforms for which he was responsible. 157 In fact, the emphasis of Zwingli’s Reformation was on continuity with existing practice wherever possible; the legacy of medieval Christendom was not rejected out of hand. As has been demonstrated recently, the institutions of the remodelled Zurich church were firmly grounded in the reforming traditions of the 15th-century diocese of Constance, while canon law continued to inform its approach to such issues as the regulation of marriage. 158 The Zurichers were similarly cautious in their handling of sensitive doctrinal questions, in particular the fundamentals of triadology and Christology. Zwingli had no wish to see the church’s traditional stance on those matters altered. In his first Berne sermon of 1528, he drew on Augustine’s analogy with the faculties of the human soul to illustrate the interrelationship of the three persons of the Godhead, while in the Fidei ratio he affirmed his belief in the Trinity as set out in the Nicene and Athanasian creeds. 159 On numerous occasions Zwingli endorsed the Chalcedonian understanding of Christ’s person, against those who accused him of teaching Nestorianism. 160 In his final works he even sought to tone down the radicalism of his Eucharistic views, reappropriating much of the language traditionally applied to the sacraments

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  A History of Christianity

  An Introductory Survey

  • Joseph Early(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • B&H Academic

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Seventeen Zwingli and the Radical Reformers

  A fter Luther took the daring first step and inaugurated the Protestant Reformation, other religious leaders began to follow suit. Along with parts of Germany, the Swiss Confederation was receptive to the Reformation. In fact, Switzerland was the home of three great Reformation movements, led by Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), the Anabaptists, and John Calvin (1509–1564). Since Zwingli was the first prominent Swiss Reformer and the earliest Radical Reformers were his former students, they will be discussed together in this chapter. John Calvin will be discussed in a separate chapter.

  Though Zwingli and Luther failed to reach agreement at the Marburg Colloquy, Luther had a strong influence on Zwingli, Zurich, and other Swiss cantons. Like Luther in Saxony, Zwingli sought to reform Zurich with the aid of the government. Some of his followers, however, desired a complete separation of the church from the civil government. These people became known as the Anabaptists (rebaptizers).

  The Swiss Situation

  In the early sixteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire claimed modern Switzerland as part of its domain. The Swiss, however, did not accept the sovereignty of the empire and announced their independence in 1499. The country now known as Switzerland was composed of sixteen independent city-states, or cantons. Though independent, the cantons formed a defensive league to protect themselves from their more aggressive neighbors. When determining matters that would affect all the cantons, each canton had one vote. The smaller cantons, therefore, could combine their votes against the larger ones. The southern cantons were known for providing mercenaries to European monarchs and the papacy.

  Each canton could pick its own religion. The smaller, more rural cantons tended to remain loyal to the Catholic Church. Beginning in 1471, these cantons supplied many of the Vatican’s Swiss Guards. The larger cantons, such as Zurich, Basel, and Geneva, became havens for humanists and were more inclined to support reform.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Great Tradition

  Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being

  • Richard M. Gamble(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Regnery Gateway

    (Publisher)

  Ulrich Zwingli 1484–1531 “Rank, beauty and wealth are not genuine riches, for they are subject tochance. The only true adornmentsarevirtue and honour.” O F THE U PBRINGING AND E DUCATION OF Y OUTH U lrich Zwingli was a native of Switzerland and a contemporary of Martin Luther and Erasmus. He entered the priesthood and served as an army chaplain and then at the Minster in Zurich. He was influenced by Luther, but his theology, politics, and path to reform were distinctly his own. He was also more truly a Christian humanist than Luther, having been shaped by the writings of Pico della Mirandola and Erasmus. Zwingli collected a large, comprehensive library, including many classical texts and Erasmus’s recently published Greek New Testament. Like Luther, but unlike Erasmus, Zwingli rejected papal authority, preached salvation by faith alone, and sought to adhere to Scripture alone as the source for doctrine, worship, and governance. In the 1520s, the citizens of the canton of Zurich defied the jurisdiction of the bishop of Constance and reorganized their church, changing doctrine and stripping down the liturgy. Zwingli moved even farther than Luther had toward a purely symbolic understanding of the Eucharist, and Philip Melanchthon’s efforts to mediate between these reformers’ views could not achieve reconciliation and build unity within emerging Protestantism. The patriotic Zwingli died bearing arms in the second battle of Kappel in 1531 during the civil war between the Protestant and Catholic cantons. T HE S ELECTION Zwingli addressed Of the Upbringing and Education of Youth (1523) to the young nobleman Gerold Meyer von Knonau. By his own admission, the treatise is haphazard, but he feared that if he waited he would never complete a full and careful treatment of education. Zwingli does not map out a curriculum much beyond mastery of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Instead, he focuses on character

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  God in Dispute

  "Conversations" among Great Christian Thinkers

  • Olson, Roger E.(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Baker Academic

    (Publisher)

  All the non-Catholic reformers shared just a few basic beliefs in common: salvation is by grace through faith alone and without works, Scripture stands above all church traditions, and every true Christian is a priest unto God and requires no human mediator to commune with God. But the Protestants and Radical Reformers disagreed even on these basic principles. The Anabaptists, for example, believed that the magisterial Reformers like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin did not take Scripture seriously enough as above all church traditions because they retained some of the developments of theology and worship after the New Testament church. Zwingli, for example, seemed to have doubts about infant baptism but held on to it to please the Zurich city council.

  A momentous change swept though European Christianity with the Reformations of the sixteenth century. Nothing would ever be the same again. The medieval synthesis of church and state was dissolved. The unity of Christianity was shattered. The door was open to radical rejection of authority. Cultural, social, and political revolutions followed the theological changes.

  Followers of the seven reformers of this conversation can be found today. Yet many of them have no idea that they are replicating these men’s ideas and practices. Nevertheless, Lutherans all know who Luther was and revere him as a great hero if not a saint. But one has to wonder what Luther would think of most churches that go by his name today. Zwingli and Calvin have followers throughout the world in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches—an umbrella group of scores of denominations that look back to those Swiss Reformers as the great heroes of the Reformation.

  Liberation theologians and radical Christians of all kinds have considered Karlstadt to be a model of real reform that doesn’t stop with theology; this reform extends into social and political praxis, levels authorities, and gives power to the people. Free churches that value separation of church and state, and believers churches that limit membership to true believers—these churches look back to Grebel and Anabaptists like him with respect. Unitarians and liberal Protestants often remember Servetus as a martyr for rational religion. But to a large extent, the laypeople have forgotten these heroes of the past even as they carry on their traditions.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  A Survey of the History of Global Christianity, Second Edition

  • Mark Nickens(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • B&H Academic

    (Publisher)

  chapter 11 ) presents Christianity in Europe as it developed from 1600 to 1900.

  The Political Situation in the 1500s

  A general reading of the Protestant Reformation period can be confusing because of the different princes and kings, an emperor, and the Holy Roman Empire present during this period. A brief summary, therefore, is in order. The basis of the Holy Roman Empire hearkens back to Charlemagne and his consolidation of much of western Europe in the fourth century. The Holy Roman Empire, by the sixteenth century, consisted of Germany, the countries surrounding it, and northern Italy. (England, France, and Spain were independent kingdoms.) The emperor as a sovereign ruler was only loosely applied, as different regions enjoyed relative independence with a variety of leaders. Examples include the independent Swiss cantons (similar to states). Also, even though Charles V was the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Germany during the time when Luther’s reformation began, Luther’s German prince held the authority to protect Luther since Germany was subdivided into different regions with different local leaders. The emperor also controlled a number of cities outside of the control of local leaders known as Imperial Free Cities, loyal to him and not a regional ruler. (Such was the case with Worms, Germany, which is why the emperor confronted Luther there in 1521 and not in a city controlled by a German prince.) In essence, then, the Holy Roman Empire held together a conglomeration of different ethnic groups and political realities. In some cases, the Holy Roman Empire was united enough to mount armies against invading forces, as it did with the Muslim assault on Vienna in 1529. At other times, the emperor had to wage war against territories within his Holy Roman Empire in order to bring them in line, such as when he attacked the Germany territories that had broken from the Catholic Church and embraced Lutheranism.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Early Barth - Lectures and Shorter Works

  Volume 1, 1905-1909

  • Karl Barth, Hans-Anston Drewes, Henrich Stoevesandt, Hans-Anston Drewes, Henrich Stoevesandt(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Westminster John Knox Press

    (Publisher)

  67 Articles give a peculiar cross-section through the whole view of life as well as the theology of the great Zurich Reformer. It is possible that he appears to be offensive here and there, due to the realistic prose of his position. But I do not think that we are supposed to let ourselves be put off definitively by this rather external side of his personality; a good kernel is inserted into a frequently hard shell; for this reason, upon closer inspection, Zwingli must become dear especially to modern humankind. In light of the current struggles about theology and church, we will do well, at any rate, to listen to his voice.

  28. I. 06

  1. Cited in Rudolf Staehelin, Huldreich Zwingli: Sein Leben und Wirken, nach den Quellen dargestellt, vol. 1, Die reformatorische Grundlegung (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1895), 259.

  2. Cf. Staehelin, Zwingli, 166–77, 231, 247–49, etc.

  3. With these titles Zwingli is named in the report of the disputation by E. Hegenwald, in Handlung der versammlung in der löblichen statt Zürich uf den XXIX: Tag jenners von wegen des heiligen Evangelii zwischen der eersamen treffenlichen botschaft von Costenz und Huldrychen Zwingli, prediger des Evangelii Christi, sammt gemeiner priesterschaft des ganzen gebiets der eegenannten statt Zürich, vor gesessnem rat beschehen im MDXXIII jar, in Huldreich Zwingli’s Werke, ed. Melchior Schuler and Johannes Schulthess, vol. 1 (Zurich: Friedrich Schulthess, 1828), 18:105, 114–68, esp. 153. ET: Acts of the Convention Held in the Praiseworthy City of Zurich on the 29th Day of January, on account of the Holy Gospel—Being a Disputation between the Dignified and Honorable Representative from Constance and Huldrych Zwingli, Preacher of the Gospel of Christ, Together with the Common Clergy of the Whole Territory of the Aforesaid City of Zurich, Held before the Assembled Council in the Year 1523, in Selected Works of Huldreich Zwingli (1484–1531), The Reformer of German Switzerland, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson, trans. Lawrence A. McLouth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1901), 40–117, here 111. [Hereafter, Acts of the Convention.]

  4. H. Zwingli, Apologeticus Archeteles adpellatus quo respondetur paraenesi a rev. domino Constantiensi (quorundam procaci factone ad id persuaso) ad senatum praepositurae Tigurinae quem capitulum vocant missae, in Werke, ed. Schuler and Schulthess (1832), 3:26, 27–76, 74–75. ET: Defense Called Archeteles in Which Answer Is Made to an Admonition that the Most Reverend Lord Bishop of Constance (Being Persuaded thereto by the Behavior of Certain Wanton Factious Persons) Sent to the Council of the Great Minster at Zurich Called the Chapter

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, Volume 4

  The Age of the Reformation

  • Hughes Oliphant Old(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Eerdmans

    (Publisher)

  72

  For centuries, even down to our own, the Catholic cantons of Switzerland provided the pope with his Swiss Guard, but generally speaking Zwingli’s preaching has shaped the national policy of Switzerland. Swiss soldiers do not fight on foreign soil. Zwingli’s opposition to mercenary soldiering has become a national policy in Switzerland. It is from Zwingli’s pulpit that Swiss neutrality stems. Ever since, the Protestant pulpit has understood itself to have a prophetic ministry.

  IV. John Oecolampadius (1482-1531) 73

  John Oecolampadius, the Reformer of Basel, was one of the anchormen of the Reformation.74 Along with Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer, and Wolfgang Capito, he was a leading Reformer of the Upper Rhineland. His prodigious scholarship won respect for the Reformation among the intellectuals of his day. Above all, he was an outstanding patristic scholar, who translated for the first time an impressive amount of the writings of the Greek Fathers. He deserves to be recognized among those who have done the most to make Greek Christian thought known in the West.75 Many of his translations were sermons, which he translated to demonstrate what preaching ought to be. Oecolampadius was a highly respected preacher himself.76 What is interesting for our study is that he was one of those chiefly responsible for fashioning the homiletical practice of the Rhenish Reformation.

  On the eve of the Reformation, Oecolampadius had already won a reputation as a preacher. He followed closely in the footsteps of such great preachers as Strasbourg’s Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg and Basel’s Johann Heynlin von Stein.77 He was well schooled in the tradition of Johann Ulrich Surgant’s Manuale curatorum. 78 These preachers were all leaders in the Christian humanist movement, having given themselves to a careful study of the classical patristic preaching manuals such as Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, Ambrose’s De officiis, and Gregory the Great’s Regula pastoralis. Preaching played an important role in the inner-church reform program of these Christian humanists, and it had been to them that the Church had turned for a preaching ministry in those opening years of the sixteenth century just before the Reformation.79

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book