ZWINGLI, HULDRYCH. – Initiator of the Protestant «Reformation» in Switzerland, b. on 1 January 1484 at Wildhaus (lordship of Tonnenberg, territory of the Abbey of S. Gallo) into a prosperous family, the third of eight siblings; d. in the battle of Kappel on 11 November 1531.
Destined for the ecclesiastical life, he was entrusted for his elementary education to a priest uncle; he attended the early schools in Basel and Bern; in 1498-1500 he went to the University of Vienna, recently reformed in a humanistic direction. A period of obscurity followed, described by some as one of confinement and by others as a period of travel, during which he is said also to have stayed in Paris. From 1502 to 1506 he was again in Basel, where he completed his theological studies and at the same time began teaching in the preparatory schools. There he had Wyttenbach as his teacher of theology, a supporter of the via antiqua in theology, and therefore opposed both to Scotism and to Occamism, a follower of the positions of Augustinian pre-Thomistic scholasticism; in 1506 he obtained the title of «magister sententiarum». A young man of lively intelligence, jovial and fond of study, he was elected parish priest at Glarona, where he devoted himself zealously to pastoral duties, without neglecting his studies and while taking part in the discussions of the educated world. Since Glarona was a recruiting centre for the Swiss militias, he took part with his parishioners in the Italian campaign in the service of the Pope (1513-15), for which he also received a papal pension of 50 florins to continue his humanistic studies. The Swiss blood, however, which he had seen shed in the battle of Marignano, had aroused in him a profound disturbance, and on returning to his homeland he opposed recruitment for service to foreign powers. At precisely that time the French party prevailed among his parishioners, intent on recruiting militias for France. Z. was forced to leave and in April 1516 went as chaplain to the Abbey of Einsiedeln, a celebrated sanctuary and centre of pilgrimages. His direct relations with Erasmus date from this year, and his influence can be discerned in Z.’s preaching. The exuberance of the religious practices at the Sanctuary, which among the faithful often strayed into superstition and among the clergy into simoniacal practices, soon scandalised the young Z., opening his mind to the reforming ideas advocated by Erasmus: the simplification of Christianity in a biblical sense, the elimination of many doctrinal developments, and the placing of ethical commitment in the foreground instead of doctrinal zeal and the practice of devotional observances. In January 1519 Z. went to Zurich as parish priest of the Grossminster, and in his preaching persistently criticised indulgences and commented on the New Testament according to the «pure Gospel», under the influence of Luther’s writings, whom he considered essentially to be in the line of Erasmian reformism and, in any case, not opposed to II. Both for this reason and because of the psychological effects of the danger of the plague, from which he had narrowly escaped, Z. did not openly declare himself for Luther, who had by then been condemned, nor did he yet enter into open conflict with the Church. This occurred in 1522, with a sermon against the obligation of fasting and a letter to the bishop of Constance in favour of the marriage of priests; he began to live conjugally with a widow, whom he publicly «married» in 1524. Z. had succeeded in winning the support of the urban bourgeoisie, which was in tense relations with the bishop and the ecclesiastical estate, by presenting Church reform not in purely theological-ecclesiastical terms, but by exploiting the aspirations of the urban lay estate and appealing to the lay forces for its implementation, as Luther had done. Thus, as early as 1520, he obtained from the city Council the publication of an ordinance requiring preaching to adhere solely to doctrines «founded on the Bible», and in 1522 he obtained a prohibition on any service to a foreign power, explicitly including the Holy See, which recruited militias in Switzerland. From 1522 onward Z. increasingly and radically contested, in addition to ecclesiastical celibacy and fasting, popular devotions to the Madonna and the Saints, the doctrinal and disciplinary authority of Councils and Popes, the veneration of images, and the Mass as sacrifice. Consequently, a pastoral letter from the bishop of Constance and the Confederate Diet itself prohibited the preaching of errors and novelties. The support of the city council then made itself effectively felt, especially in connection with two religious disputations (24 January and 26-28 October 1523) organised by the Council of Zurich, at which Z. defended his doctrine before the bishop’s envoys. This doctrine received its first formulation precisely in that year (1523) in the two writings Commentary and Proof of 67 Conclusions (14 ff.) and Brief Christian Introduction (17 November), in which he systematically reaffirmed the reasons for his sermons, theoretically preparing his reform, centred on the radical elimination of Catholic ceremonies, blessings, sacred images, and the Mass itself (beginning in 1525); suppressing monasteries, transforming the system of benefices, transferring the collection of alms to the city (from 1525), and establishing a tribunal for matrimonial cases composed of laymen and ecclesiastics, whose competence was later extended to disputes concerning benefices. The government of Zurich, for its part, had freed Z. from all dependence on the authority of the bishop of Constance, introduced the German language into the liturgy, established the public reading of the Bible, and abolished ecclesiastical celibacy (from 1524). In March 1525 Z. published the Commentarius de vera et falsa religione, which was the first and only systematic exposition of his theo-
the consequences of his philological-humanistic exegesis and, at the same time, the influence he had received from the Anabaptist Carlostadio; in fact, it contains his symbolic conception of the Sacraments, including Baptism and the Eucharist, denying, in the case of the latter, the real presence maintained by Luther. The Eucharist was thus for Z. a simple commemoration of Christ’s sacrifice, not its renewal. The Gospel text (Mt. 26:26), “this is my body,” was, according to Z., to be understood as “this signifies my body.” Hence his radicalism with regard to images and to the Lutheran Mass itself, providing examples and arguments for the iconoclasm of the Anabaptists. Yet Z. engaged in vigorous controversy with them, at the same time promoting energetic repressive measures against them by the State, without being able to refute the charge of inconsistency that they brought against him for rejecting the Anabaptist doctrine of the invalidity of infant Baptism and that of the primacy of the Holy Spirit over the letter in the interpretation of the Bible. While Z. was thus engaged in controversy on three fronts—with the defenders of Catholic doctrine and practice, with Luther, and with the Anabaptists—he did not neglect the spread of his doctrine, not only through ardent propaganda but also through political-diplomatic action, proportioning it to the material power of the individual Swiss cantons. Thus, in Basel, where the environment had been prepared by Erasmian humanism, Z.’s doctrine was disseminated by Giovanni Hausschein, Ecolampadio (v.). Despite the reserve of Erasmus, who had by then distanced himself from Luther and from the radical innovations promoted by the latter with the De libero arbitrio, the Council of Basel in 1527 recognized the free exercise of Reformed worship alongside Catholic worship, overcoming the weak resistance of the bishop and the Chapter, who were rivals among themselves, and eliminating the last remnants of their temporal power over the city. Thus in Bern, where Z. had succeeded in winning over the population and the government, not only through speech and writings but also through the political-diplomatic pressure of the Council of Zurich, the Bernese patriciate reformed the Church in Z.’s sense in 1528, abolishing the Mass. This also affected Basel, where in February 1529, following riots promoted by Ecolampadio, the Catholic members of the council were forced to resign and the abolition of the Mass was decreed. Similar political pressure strengthened Z.’s preaching in Valais, in S. Gallen, from which abbot and monks were expelled, in the cantons of western Switzerland, and in the same territories along the Rhine. Many rural cantons as well, including those of the Grisons and Appenzell, had followed Zurich’s example, imposing the new doctrine as the state religion or at least granting it freedom of worship and propaganda. This expansion of Zwinglianism, which also intended, under the guise of religious reform, to give national unity to Switzerland, provoked the resistance of the original cantons around Lucerne and Fribourg, which were firmer in their religious traditions and more closely linked to Rome by various interests. Further strengthened by the theological disputation at Baden between Eck and representatives of Z. (held concerning the heretical concept of the purely symbolic presence of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist), they joined in the political-military valesia league (November 1528), in opposition to the analogous league formed by Zurich with Constance, Bern, Basel, and, in 1529, Strasbourg.
Meanwhile, Z. had sought to extend the league of the Swiss Reformed beyond the Rhine as well, as the Catholics had already done, by concluding an agreement with Ferdinand of Austria (the Waldshut alliance, April 1529). He had succeeded, however, in attracting only Landgrave Philip of Hesse to his side, and not even the latter’s skillful mediation was able to eliminate the disagreements between Z. and Luther. Luther had attacked Z.’s Eucharistic symbolism as early as 1526 in the Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood against the Fanatics, and Z., at the urging of the theologians of Strasbourg, who desired an agreement, had replied with the writing Amica exegesis of February 1527. This, however, provoked a new and more bitter exchange of letters concerning the meaning of the words of consecration (April–June 1527). The religious colloquy of Marburg (1529), arranged by Philip of Hesse between Z. and Luther, served only to sanction the disagreement over the real presence between the two “reformers,” whose cultural formation and mentality were too different for them to understand one another. And when Strasbourg presented its confession of faith (confessio tetrapolitana) to the Diet of Augsburg (1530), it was taken into consideration by neither the Catholics nor the Lutherans. Despite the lack of effective German allies, Zurich wished to persist in its policy of pressure upon the Catholic territories. When the Reformed cities, at Bern’s proposal, decided to close their territories to the importation of provisions into the Catholic cantons, the latter took up arms and, in the battle of Kappel (11 November 1531), annihilated the Zurich army, which had been abandoned by its allies. Z., who, despite his Erasmian pacifism, had taken part in the battle with sword and ax, fell in the fighting; his corpse, once recognized, was quartered and burned. The people of Zurich, shaken by the disaster to which Z.’s policy had led them, reacted by excluding ecclesiastics from the political direction of the city. The peace that followed consolidated the de facto situation, halting the expansion of Z.’s “reform” in Switzerland and limiting it to Zurich, Basel, Bern, Schaffhausen, and the Grisons.
In the “Reformed” churches, after Z.’s death, the role of theological-political leader and inspiration was assumed by Bucer (v. Protestant confessions of faith, III).
In the historical-theological assessment of Z. and his doctrines, one must bear in mind the humanistic formation of the former and the political-social peculiarities of his environment. This was characterized by autonomous communities governed by a bourgeois patriciate, impatient of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, where the idea of reforming the Church, long present, was soon nourished by the numerous German exiles who had taken refuge there after 1522. Z. was also influenced by pagan and Christian antiquity, the theological humanism of Erasmus, and Luther’s anti-ecclesiastical polemic. Z. differs from Luther through positions that the latter would have called Pelagian and Catholicizing—the possibility of a rational knowledge of God, with evident derivations from Pico della Mirandola; the reduction of original sin to a purely hereditary vice, not deserving eternal condemnation and without impairment of man’s ethical powers; the positive value of the law, rather than a merely negative one; and eternal happiness as accessible even to wise pagans who had practiced the natural moral law. On the other hand, he appears more radical than the German reformer through his rigid iconoclasm, his symbolism in sacramental doctrine, and his predominantly philological-literal exegesis, entrusted to individual culture and sensibility. For this reason the Anabaptists referred preferentially to his writings, while nevertheless reproaching him for the inconsistency of the persecution he had unleashed against them.
Gesch. Z. und der Reformation, edita dal Z.s-Verein a Zurigo dal 1897 e Quellen und Abhandl. zur schweizer. Reform.-Gesch., edita dalla stessa Z.s-Verein dal 1912; biografie: R. Staehlin, H. Z., 2 voll., Basilea 1895-97; B. Fleischlin, Z. 1 Person, Bildungsgang u. Werden, Lucerna 1903; W. Koehler, Z. und die Reform. in der Schweiz, Zurigo 1919; id., H. Z., ivi 1923; id., Z.s Bibliothek, ivi 1921; id., Die Geisteswelt Z., Gotha 1920; per la polemica con Lutero; W. Köhler, Z. und Luther, Lipsia 1924. Per il pensiero teologico: O. Ritschl, Dogenengesch. des Protestant., III, Gottings 1926; per le professioni di fede: F. K. Müller, Die Bekenntnisschr. der reformierten Kirche, Heidelberg 1903 e anche W. Niesel, Bekenntnisschr. und Kirchenordnungen der... reformierten Kirche, Monaco 1935; per la polemica con gli anabattisti: C. Bergmann, Die Täuferbewegung im Kanton Zürich bis 1660, Zurigo 1916; J. V.-M. Pollet, s. V. in DThC, XV (1950), coll. 3716-3928; O. Farnier, Z. the Reformer, Londra 1952.