Zwingli, Huldrych (1484–1531)

Swiss church reformer, a contemporary of Martin Luther who established the Reformed branch of the Protestant movement. The son of a village magistrate, Zwingli was born in the village of Wildhaus in eastern Switzerland. He received an education in the classics at the universities of Basel and Vienna, and was ordained as a priest in 1506, when he became pastor of the town of Glarus. He served as a chaplain to Swiss mercenaries in Italy and in 1516 became vicar of Einsiedeln, an important Benedictine monastery where a large library gave Zwingli opportunity for study and research. Soon after this appointment he began preaching reform of the Catholic Church. Zwingli found no foundation for the Papacy in the books of the Bible and increasingly viewed the Catholic Church as a corrupt and decadent institution.

In 1519 Zwingli was appointed vicar to the Grossmunster church in Zurich. Having studied the New Testament translation of Desiderius Erasmus, he developed his own reformist doctrine, and began preaching criticisms of important Catholic institutions, such as monasticism and the selling of indulgences (remissions of sin). He saw the Catholic Mass as a pagan blasphemy on true Christianity; he rejected the notion of purgatory, the veneration of saints, the practice of fasting during Lent, and the Catholic stricture of priestly celibacy. In 1522, he declared that the Bible, and not the church, provided the authority for all questions of Christian doctrine. Many priests of the city took up his cause, which he set out in the Sixty-Seven Articles in 1523. After witnessing a public debate between Zwingli and a representative of the pope, the city fathers followed his reforming impulse, ordering all priests in the city to comply with Zwingli's instruction and in 1524 removing the statues, relics, musical instruments, and works of art that were now deemed idolatrous from the city's churches. In the next year Zwingli published his major written work, The Commentary on True and False Religion.

Zwingli believed, like Martin Luther, in the key Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. But he differed with Luther in the question of the presence of Christ in the bread and wine of Mass—with Luther holding that Christ is actually present, and Zwingli that the bread and wine are only symbolic representations of Christ's body and blood. The two reformers debated the question at the famous Marburg Colloquy of 1529. The disagreement created a rift in the Protestant movement between Lutheranism and Zwingli's Reformed branch.

In Zurich, the more radical branch of Anabaptists emerged to challenge Zwingli's authority, while the “forest cantons” of Switzerland that remained loyal to the Catholic Church took up arms against the Protestants. In 1531 Zwingli was mortally wounded at the Battle of Kappel. His body was quartered and burned on a manure pile by his enemies, who were determined that no relics of him would remain to inspire veneration by his followers. In the years that followed, the Zwinglian movement gave way to the new doctrines preached by John Calvin.

See Also: Luther, Martin; Calvin John; Reformation, Protestant