Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [111]
Zwingli’s preaching of the Gospel caused such unrest that in 1523 the city council held a public disputation or debate in the town hall. The disputation became a standard method of spreading the Reformation to many cities. It gave an advantage to reformers, since they had the power of new ideas and Catholics were not used to defending their teachings. Zwingli’s party was accorded the victory, and the council declared that “Mayor, Council and Great Council of Zürich, in order to do away with disturbance and discord, have upon due deliberation and consultation decided and resolved that Master Zwingli should continue as heretofore to proclaim the Gospel and the pure sacred Scripture.”7
Zwingli. Ulrich Zwingli began the Reformation in Switzerland through his preaching in Zürich. Zwingli’s theology was accepted in Zürich and soon spread to other Swiss cities. This portrait of Zwingli was done by an unknown artist in the early sixteenth century.
© The Art Archive/University Library, Geneva/Gianni Dagli Orti
REFORMS IN ZÜRICH Over the next two years, evangelical reforms were promulgated in Zürich by a city council strongly influenced by Zwingli. Zwingli looked to the state to supervise the church. “A church without the magistrate is mutilated and incomplete,” he declared. Relics and images were abolished; all paintings and decorations were removed from the churches and replaced by whitewashed walls. As Zwingli remarked, “The images are not to be endured; for all that God has forbidden, there can be no compromise.”8 The Mass was replaced by a new liturgy consisting of Scripture reading, prayer, and sermons. Music was eliminated from the service as a distraction from the pure word of God. Monasticism, pilgrimages, the veneration of saints, clerical celibacy, and the pope’s authority were all abolished as remnants of papal Christianity. Zwingli’s movement soon spread to other cities in Switzerland, including Bern in 1528 and Basel in 1529.
A FUTILE SEARCH FOR UNITY By 1528, Zwingli’s reform movement faced a serious political problem as the forest cantons remained staunchly Catholic. Zürich feared that they would ally with the Habsburgs. To counteract this danger, Zwingli attempted to build a league of evangelical cities by seeking an agreement with Luther and the German reformers. An alliance between them seemed possible, since the Reformation had spread to the southern German cities, especially Strasbourg, where a moderate reform movement containing characteristics of both Luther’s and Zwingli’s movements had been instituted by Martin Bucer (1491–1551). Both the German and the Swiss reformers realized the need for unity to defend against imperial and conservative opposition.
Protestant political leaders, especially Landgrave Philip of Hesse, fearful that Charles V would take advantage of the division between the reformers, attempted to promote an alliance of the Swiss and German reformed churches by persuading the leaders of both groups to attend a colloquy (conference) at Marburg to resolve their differences. Able to agree on virtually everything else, the gathering splintered over the interpretation of the Lord’s Supper. Zwingli believed that the scriptural words “This is my body” and “This is my blood” should be taken symbolically, not literally. To Zwingli, the Lord’s Supper was only a meal of remembrance, and he refused to accept Luther’s insistence on the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus “in, with, and under the bread and wine.” The Marburg Colloquy of 1529 produced no agreement and no evangelical alliance. It was a foretaste of the issues that would divide one reform group from another and lead to the creation of different Protestant groups.
In October 1531, war erupted between the Swiss Protestant and Catholic cantons. Zürich’s army was routed, and Zwingli was found wounded on the battlefield. His enemies killed him, cut up his body, burned the pieces, and scattered the ashes. This Swiss civil war of 1531 provided an early indication of what religious passions would lead to in the