ZWINGLI, HULDRYCH. - Initiator of the Protestant "reformation" in Switzerland, b. 1 Jan. 1484 at Wildhaus (lordship of Tonnenberg, domain of the abbey of St. Gall) into a well-to-do family, third of eight brothers, d. in the battle of Kappel on 11 Nov. 1531.
Destined for the ecclesiastical life, he was entrusted for his first instruction to a priest uncle, attended his first schools at Basel and Bern; in 1498-1500 he moved to the University of Vienna, recently reformed along humanistic lines; there followed an obscure period, according to some one of confinement, according to others one of travels, during which he is said to have stayed also in Paris. From 1502 to 1506 he was again at Basel, where he completed his theological studies and at the same time began teaching in the preparatory schools. Here he had as professor of theology Wyttenbach, a supporter of the via antiqua in theology, opposed therefore both to Scotism and to Occamism, a follower of the positions of pre-Thomistic Augustinian scholasticism, and in 1506 he obtained the title of "magister sententiarum". A young man of lively intellect, jovial, fond of study, he was elected parish priest at Glarus, where he attended with zeal to his pastoral duties, without however neglecting his studies and taking part in the discussions of the learned world. Since Glarus was a recruiting center 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 obtained a pontifical pension of 50 florins to continue his humanistic studies. The Swiss blood, however, that he had seen flow at the battle of Marignano had aroused in him a deep unease, and once he had returned to his homeland he opposed the recruitments in the service of foreigners. Just then the French party, intent on enlisting militias for France, prevailed among his parishioners. Z. was forced to withdraw and in Apr. 1516 he moved as chaplain to the abbey of Einsiedeln, a famous sanctuary and center of pilgrimages. From this year date his direct relations with Erasmus, and their influence can be seen in his preaching. The exuberance of religious practices in the Sanctuary, which among the faithful often bordered on superstition and among the clergy on simoniacal practices, had soon aroused scandal in the young Z., opening his mind to the ideas of reform advocated by Erasmus: simplification of Christianity along biblical lines, elimination of many dogmatic developments, placing in the foreground ethical commitment rather than doctrinal zeal and the practice of devotions. In Jan. 1519 Z. moved to Zurich as parish priest of the Grossmünster, and in his preaching he insistently criticized indulgences, commented on the New Testament according to the "pure Gospel", coming under the influence of Luther's writings, which he regarded as substantially in line with Erasmian reformism, and in any case not in antithesis to it. Both for this reason and because of the psychological repercussions of the danger of the plague, from which he had barely escaped, Z. did not declare himself openly for Luther, by then condemned, nor did he yet come to open conflict with the Church. This took place in 1522, with a sermon against the obligation of fasting and with a letter to the bishop of Constance in favor of the marriage of priests, taking up conjugal cohabitation with a widow, whom he "married" publicly in 1524. Z. had known how to win the support of the city bourgeoisie, which was in tense relations with the bishop and with the ecclesiastical class, by presenting the reform of the Church not in purely theological-ecclesiastical terms, but by taking advantage of the aspirations of the lay citizen class, appealing to lay forces for its implementation, as Luther had done. Thus he obtained as early as 1520 that the Council of the city publish an ordinance requiring preaching to adhere solely to doctrines "founded on the Bible", and in 1522 that it prohibit any service to a foreign power, explicitly including the Holy See, which was recruiting militias in Switzerland. From 1522 onward Z. contested ever more radically, beyond ecclesiastical celibacy and fasting, also the popular devotions to the Madonna and the Saints, the dogmatic and disciplinary authority of Councils and Popes, the veneration of images, the Mass as sacrifice; consequently a pastoral letter of the bishop of Constance and the Federal Diet itself prohibited the preaching of errors and novelties. The support of the city council then made itself validly felt, especially in connection with two religious disputations (24 Jan. and 26-28 Oct. 1523) organized by the Council of Zurich, in which Z. defended his doctrine before the envoys of the bishop. 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 Nov.), in which he systematically reaffirmed the reasons for his sermons, theoretically preparing his reform, centered on the radical elimination of Catholic ceremonies, of blessings, of sacred images, of the Mass itself (beginning in 1525); suppressing monasteries, transforming the system of benefices, transferring (from 1525) to the city the collection of alms, instituting a tribunal for matrimonial cases composed of laymen and ecclesiastics, whose competence was later extended to controversies over benefices. The government of Zurich for its part had freed Z. from all dependence on the authority of the bishop of Constance, had introduced the German language into the liturgy, established the public reading of the Bible, abolished ecclesiastical celibacy (from 1524). Z. published in March 1525 the Commentarius de vera et falsa religione, which was the first and only systematic exposition of his theology, revealing the consequences of his philological-humanistic exegesis and at the same time the influence he had undergone from the Anabaptist Carlstadt; there is found in fact his symbolic conception of the Sacraments, including Baptism and the Eucharist, denying, as regards the latter, the real presence, which Luther maintained. The Eucharist is thus for Z. a simple commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ, not a renewal. The Gospel text (Mt. 26:26) "this is my body," is according to Z. to be understood as "this signifies my body." Hence his radicalism with regard to images, and to the Lutheran Mass itself, furnishing examples and arguments to the iconoclasm of the Anabaptists. Yet it was precisely with them that Z. entered into lively polemic, at the same time promoting against them energetic repressive measures on the part of the State, without being able to contest their accusation brought against him of inconsistency in 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, however, Z. was polemicizing 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 heated 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 spread by Johann Hausschein, called Oecolampadius (v.). Despite the reserve of Erasmus, by then having withdrawn from Luther and from the radical innovations the latter promoted with De libero arbitrio, the Council of Basel in 1527 recognized the free exercise of the reformed cult alongside the Catholic one, overcoming the feeble resistance of the bishop and the Chapter in rivalry with one another 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 with the spoken and written word but with the political-diplomatic pressure of the Council of Zurich, in 1528 the Bernese patriciate reformed the Church in Z.'s sense, abolishing the Mass, with repercussions also on Basel, where in Feb. 1529, following riots promoted by Oecolampadius, the Catholic members of the council were made to resign and the abolition of the Mass was decreed. A similar political pressure strengthened Z.'s preaching in Valais, in St. Gall, whence the abbot and monks were expelled, in the cantons of western Switzerland, and in the Rhenish lands themselves. Also many rural cantons, among them those of Graubünden and Appenzell, had followed the example of Zurich, imposing the new doctrine as the state religion or at least granting it freedom of worship and propaganda. However, 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, firmer in their own religious traditions and more closely bound to Rome also by manifold interests. They, strengthened also by the theological disputation of 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), drew together in the political-military valesia league (Nov. 1528), in opposition to the analogous one formed by Zurich with Constance, Bern, Basel and in 1529 with Strasbourg.
In the meantime Z. had sought to extend the league of the Swiss reformed also beyond the Rhine, as the Catholics had already done, by concluding an agreement with Ferdinand of Austria (alliance of Waldshut, Apr. 1529): he had, however, succeeded in attracting to his side only the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, and not even the latter's skillful mediation had then sufficed 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 desirous of an understanding, had responded with the writing Amica exegesis of Feb. 1527, which however provoked a new and harsher exchange of letters on the meaning of the words of consecration (Apr.-June 1527). The religious colloquy of Marburg (1529), arranged by Philip of Hesse between Z. and Luther, served only to ratify the divergence on the real presence between the two "reformers," who had too different a cultural formation and mentality to understand each other. And when Strasbourg presented its profession of faith (confessio tetrapolitana) to the Diet of Augsburg (1530), this was taken into consideration neither by the Catholics nor by the Lutherans. Despite the lack of efficient German allies, Zurich wished to persist in its policy of pressure on the Catholic territories. When the reformed cities, on the proposal of Bern, decided to close to the Catholic cantons the importation of provisions through their territories, the latter resorted to arms and in the battle of Kappel (11 Nov. 1531) annihilated the Zurich army, abandoned by its allies. Z., who despite his Erasmian pacifism had intervened in the battle with sword and axe, fell in the encounter: his corpse, recognized, was quartered and given to the flames. The Zurichers, shaken by the disaster to which Z.'s policy had led them, in reaction excluded the clergy 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 Graubünden.
In the "reformed" churches the function of head and theological-political inspirer was assumed, after Z.'s death, by Bucer (v. Confessioni di fede protestanti, III).
In the historical-theological evaluation of Z. and his doctrines, one must bear in mind the humanistic formation of the former and the political-social peculiarities of the environment. This was characterized by autonomous communities, governed by a bourgeois patriciate impatient of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, where the idea of a reform of the Church, long felt, was soon nourished by the numerous German exiles who had taken refuge there after 1522. Moreover, Z. had been influenced by pagan and Christian antiquity, by the theological humanism of Erasmus, and by Luther's anti-ecclesiastical polemic. Z. differs from Luther in 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: reduction of original sin to a purely hereditary vice, not deserving of eternal condemnation and without impairment of man's ethical forces; positive value of the law and not merely negative; eternal happiness accessible also to the pagan sages, who had practiced the natural moral law); while on the other hand he reveals himself more radical than the German reformer with his rigid iconoclasm, with his symbolism in sacramental doctrine, with his predominantly philological-literal exegesis, entrusted to individual culture and sensibility. For this reason it was to his writings that the Anabaptists preferably referred, while nonetheless contesting the incongruity of the persecution he unleashed against them.
Bibliography8 works
Gesch. Z. und der Reformation, published by the Z.s-Verein in Zurich since 1897, and Quellen und Abhandl. zur schweizer. Reform.-Gesch., published by the same Z.s-Verein since 1912; biographies: R. Staehlin, H. Z., 2 vols., Basel 1895-97; B. Fleischlin, Z. 1 Person, Bildungsgang u. Werden, Lucerne 1903; W. Koehler, Z. und die Reform. in der Schweiz, Zurich 1919; id., H. Z., ibid. 1923; id., Z.s Bibliothek, ibid. 1921; id., Die Geisteswelt Z., Gotha 1920; on the controversy with Luther: W. Köhler, Z. und Luther, Leipzig 1924. On theological thought: O. Ritschl, Dogmengesch. des Protestant., III, Göttingen 1926; on the confessions of faith: F. K. Müller, Die Bekenntnisschr. der reformierten Kirche, Heidelberg 1903, and also W. Niesel, Bekenntnisschr. und Kirchenordnungen der... reformierten Kirche, Munich 1935; on the controversy with the Anabaptists: C. Bergmann, Die Täuferbewegung im Kanton Zürich bis 1660, Zurich 1916; J. V.-M. Pollet, s. v. in DThC, XV (1950), coll. 3716-3928; O. Farnier, Z. the Reformer, London 1952.