Zurich

ZURICH

ZURICH. Although there is evidence of settlement around Zurich from the Bronze Age, the Romans were the first to fortify the site and named it Turicum. The legend of the city's foundation dates from the martyrdom of Felix and Regula, Roman Christians and the patron saints of Zurich, who fled to the city from the massacre of their legion in Valais in the third century c.e. They were martyred by decapitation for refusing to pray to Roman gods, whereupon they picked up their heads and carried them up the hill to the spot where they wished to be buried. The Wasserkirche in Zurich marks the spot where they are thought to have been executed. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Zurich's traders exploited the favorable location of the city between the Alpine passes and the Rhine to build the city's wealth from textiles, such as wool and silk. In 1336 the Bürgermeister Rudolf Brun led a revolt that shifted power from the patrician families into the hands of the thirteen guilds. Shortly thereafter, in 1351, still under Brunn's direction, Zurich joined the Swiss Confederation, though it remained an imperial city under the direct authority of the emperor. During the fifteenth century Zurich repeatedly attempted to centralize the Confederation under its control, and the result was civil wars such as the Old Zurich War (1439–1450).

Although it lay in the vast diocese of Constance, Zurich was fairly independent of the bishop and had three major ecclesiastical bodies: the Grossmünster, the Fraumünster, and St. Peterskirche. Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) arrived in Zurich in 1519 and gradually built a reform movement that gained minority, although influential, support from leading families and the guilds. In April 1525 the Reformation was formally adopted and the Reformed church established. It was an institution that remained under the control of the magistrates throughout the early modern period. Zurich developed provision for higher education, but not a university. It remained an important center of trade and a key member of the international Reformed church, but during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Zurich was a provincial city with little influence beyond the Swiss Confederation.

See also Switzerland ; Zwingli, Huldrych .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Flüeler, Niklaus, and Marianne Flüeler-Grauwiler, eds. Geschichte des Kantons Zürich. Vol. 2, Frühe Neuzeit,16. bis 18. Jahrhundert. Zurich, 1996.

Gordon, Bruce. The Swiss Reformation. Manchester, U.K., 2002.

Bruce Gordon