The previous section of this Theological Conference paper noted Zwingli’s appointment to the main church in Zurich and the progress of the Reformation in Switzerland.
4. The Final Years
The Reformation in Zurich continued apace. Although he was a keen musician, Zwingli eliminated instrumental music from church, stating that God had not commanded it in worship. He condemned singing in Latin and priestly chanting but encouraged vernacular psalm-singing. Leo Jud, now pastor in St Peter’s in Zurich, at this time publicly called for the removal of icons, pictures and statues from churches. Determined lay people demanded the abolition of customs and practices they considered unscriptural. Jud and Zwingli went out preaching in monasteries and convents and, as a result, many nuns and monks deserted and others were pensioned off. Church properties were put to secular uses and their income went to establish new welfare programmes for the poor. The method used in Zurich became a pattern for helping the poor in years to come.
Ten months after the First Disputation, the Great Council called another, even larger, disputation to settle the matter of images and church decorations. The essence of the mass and its sacrificial character were also discussed. The Council wanted it to be a Confederation affair, so not only were the clergy and lay people of Zurich invited this time, but also academics from Basel, clergy from other dioceses and representatives from all the other cantons. Nine hundred attended, including 350 priests, but neither the bishop nor the other cantons sent representatives. The controversy about images and the mass were discussed, but the arguments led to the question as to who had authority to decide these issues – the Council or ecclesiastical government.
Zwingli was keen that the Reformation would have the support of the Council, whereas his more radical supporters argued that it is the Spirit of God that judges and therefore any changes should be implemented even without the Council’s backing. In the end a middle way was found: pastors were required to preach on the subject of images with a view to changing the views of the people and getting them to remove the images voluntarily. This was acceptable to the Council, who also sent out a summary of evangelical teaching, written by Zwingli, to all clergy and members of the Confederation. The Second Disputation reaffirmed the role of Canton government and strengthened Zwingli’s position.
From then on, the issue in Zurich was no longer whether the Roman Church was right or wrong, but when and how its doctrines and practices should be replaced. In 1525 the Council was requested to do away with the mass. In its place the sermon became the focal point of the service and communion was held four times a year, with the congregation sitting at tables and wooden cups and plates being used.
Around this time Berthold Haller, a faithful preacher in Berne, wrote to Zwingli to say that he could no longer endure the fierce opposition and unjust treatment he was facing and that he intended to resign his pulpit. Zwingli replied, “I too feel discouraged when unjustly assailed, but Christ rouses my conscience by His terrors and His promises. He alarms me by saying, ‘Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me before men, of him will I be ashamed before My Father,’ and He strengthens me by adding, ‘Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father’. O my dear Berthold, take courage.” Haller did take courage and continued to preach and promote the gospel.
Among his other reforms, Zwingli came to the belief that baptism had no power to convert but was a New Testament symbol, equivalent to circumcision, committing children to a Christian lifestyle and parents to educate them accordingly. In 1525 he produced a tract on the subject. The Radicals (who believed that Zwingli was reforming too slowly) at this time rejected infant baptism altogether and began to practise adult baptism as a sign of conversion. They became known as the Anabaptists, and went on to replace public worship with private meetings and discussions about the Bible, and they rejected civil government altogether. Debates were held but to no avail, and in 1526 the Council forbade the rebaptizing of anyone, under penalty of death. The Anabaptists were thereafter cruelly persecuted and driven from Zurich; one of their leaders, Felix Manz, was executed by being drowned in the lake.
The five neighbouring papal cantons (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne and Zug) were deeply unhappy that the Reformation was prospering in Zurich and Berne. In May 1526 they demanded that a public disputation be held in Baden. The Great Council refused to let Zwingli go lest he be murdered and instead Oecolampadius from Basel and Haller from Berne defended the doctrines of the Reformation against the Romanist Dr Eck. Although he could not be there in person, Zwingli was kept informed of proceedings and supported his brethren by prayers and advice. Eck, despite his rhetoric and bombast, was unable to substantiate the position of Rome from Scripture and could only resort to tradition and the Fathers. It was accepted that the Reformers had reasoned best, but in the end Eck’s theses were received by the vast majority and it was formally resolved that Zwingli, as leader of the Reformers, and those who had defended his doctrines at the disputation, should be excommunicated from the “Holy Catholic Church”.
The First Kappel War.
The five Roman Catholic cantons continued in their opposition and formed an alliance with Austria with the aim of preventing Zurich spreading Protestantism over territories ruled jointly by the Confederation. Reformers were persecuted and in 1529 a Zurich minister on a preaching expedition was seized and burnt at the stake. In fear of further persecution, Zurich declared war on the five cantons and, with allies from other cantons, particularly Berne, marched with 30 000 men to Kappel, on the border with Zug, Zwingli accompanying the army as chaplain.
In him the reformer, the statesman and the patriot were one. He appealed to the examples of Joshua and Gideon, perhaps forgetting the difference between the old and the new dispensations. “Let us be firm,” he had written to his peace-loving friends in Berne (30 May 1529), “and fear not to take up arms. This peace which some desire so much is not peace but war, while the war that we call for is not war but peace. We thirst for no man’s blood, but we will cut the nerves of the oligarchy. If we shun it, the truth of the gospel and the ministers’ lives will never be secure among us.” In the camp, Zwingli or one of his colleagues preached daily; prayers were offered before each meal; psalms, hymns and national songs resounded in the tents; gambling and swearing were prohibited, and disreputable women were excluded.
In the end no fighting took place and a peace treaty was signed, the terms of which were dictated by the Reformers – the five states were to renounce their alliance with Austria and freedom of religion was to be allowed in the common territories. Tensions between the parties, however, were unresolved, and Zwingli was concerned that things would flare up again before long.
The Marburg Colloquy.
In the same year the Marburg Colloquy took place. Zwingli’s treatise On the Lord’s Supper had appeared in 1527 and it became evident that he differed from Luther over the question of “the real presence” of Christ in the communion elements. Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, in the hope of uniting the Protestant states in a political alliance, arranged a meeting at his castle at Marburg to try to resolve the differences between the two Reformers. After debate, Luther was asked to list the doctrines both parties agreed on. The resultant Marburg Articles had 15 points, on 14 of which the parties were agreed.
The fifteenth, however, concerned the Lord’s Supper, and Luther could not be moved from a literal belief in the words, “This is My body”. He chalked these words in bold letters on the tablecloth in front of him and asked the other participants to show him that a body is not a body. Oecolampadius and Zwingli reminded him of the scriptures, “I am the vine”, “I am the door”, and, “that Rock was Christ”, but he would not be persuaded. He believed the human body of Christ was ubiquitous – present everywhere – while Zwingli emphasised the difference between Christ’s divine and human natures. When they parted, Luther refused to shake hands with Zwingli, leaving the Swiss Reformer in tears. When Prince Philip again tried to bring them together, the Lutherans said that, while they regarded the Zwinglians as friends, they could not consider them as brethren or even members of the Church of Christ.
Death of Zwingli.
Following the First Peace of Kappel, the Roman Catholic cantons continued to refuse permission for the Reformed faith to be preached in the joint territories. As a result, Zwingli and Zurich, with Berne and Basel, put an economic blockade in place to force them to acquiesce. The five Cantons, however, managed to get necessary supplies and unexpectedly declared war on Zurich, with 7000 soldiers crossing the border at Kappel on 11 October 1531. Zurich on this occasion was totally unready for warfare and Zwingli himself hastily mustered a force of 2000, accompanied by many ministers, and marched the 12 miles to Kappel.
They arrived in scattered groups, exhausted from their march and were defeated after a brief resistance; 500 Protestant soldiers and 23 ministers of the gospel died in battle that day. Zwingli himself was badly wounded. He was asked if he wanted a confessor, and, when his refusal identified him as a Reformer, he was killed by a blow from a sword. According to the inscription on the monument at Kappel he died with these words on his lips: “They can kill the body but not the soul”. Later his body was recognised and, as he was considered by his enemies to be a heretic and a traitor, his remains were quartered, the parts mixed with dung and burned.
Thus died Ulrich Zwingli, 47 years of age, a Swiss patriot, a man enlightened by God in the knowledge of His truth, and endowed by the Most High with the gifts and graces necessary to become His instrument in bringing the Swiss people out of Roman darkness and into the light of the gospel. As a result of the defeat at Kappel the Swiss Reformation was contained for a time within its old geographic boundaries. Reformation in doctrine and practice continued, however, under Zwingli’s friend Heinrich Bullinger, who became his successor in the Gross Munster.