Zwingli, Huldrych (1484–1531)

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ZWINGLI, HULDRYCH (1484–1531)

ZWINGLI, HULDRYCH (1484–1531), Swiss reformer and church leader. Born into a peasant family in Toggenburg, an Alpine valley in the eastern part of modern-day Switzerland, Zwingli studied at the universities of Vienna and Basel (1498–1506), where he was exposed to the major currents that would shape his theology: late medieval Scholasticism and humanism. Research beginning in the late twentieth century has pointed to the particular importance of Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536) and John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) to his theological formation. Zwingli was ordained to the priesthood and served first in Glarus, one of the smallest cantons of the Swiss Confederation, before going to the great Benedictine monastery of Einsiedeln (1516), whose rich library resources afforded the young priest the opportunity to deepen his knowledge of patristic and medieval writers. He preached at the yearly official pilgrimages made by the citizens of Zurich to the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln, and his sermons made him well known in the city. In 1519 he was called to the Grossmünster in Zurich as a stipendiary priest.

Zwingli's preaching, in which he denounced corruption and called on the people to purify themselves before God, created the mood for reform, but it was a small circle of like-minded priests, printers, and magistrates who pushed the movement forward. Events took shape around two disputations in 1523 for which Zwingli wrote his Sixty-seven Theses, his first major work. Zwingli sought to reform church and society, but he recognized that to do this he required the support of Zurich's magistrates, who in turn needed to be reassured that reform did not imply social revolution. His vision of Christian government was drawn from the Old Testament, with the prophet (Zwingli) advising the ruler (the Zurich town council), who was responsible for enforcing the laws of the state.

Zwingli's position in Zurich was never wholly secure. The establishment of the new Reformed order in Zurich at Easter 1525 was largely due to the influence of a couple of key magistrates who backed Zwingli. At the center of Zwingli's vision was the reform of worship, and the Reformation commenced in Zurich with a celebration of the new liturgy of the Lord's Supper. His reforms, however, revealed a mixture of late medieval and Erasmian impulses; institutional changes, as well as moral legislation, were drawn from the reform councils of the fifteenth century, and, like Erasmus, Zwingli believed that education was the key to the creation of a Christian society.

Institutional reform under Zwingli was halting, largely because from 1525 until his death he was involved in a series of heated polemical exchanges. Zwingli faced opposition from Catholics, his former mentor Erasmus, the so-called Anabaptists, and most famously, from Martin Luther. Virtually all of Zwingli's theological writings were hastily compiled responses to particular crises or attacks. Thus his work cannot be treated as systematic theology. The three major events in Zwingli's career after 1525 were the Baden disputation (1526), which he refused to attend for fear of being arrested and executed, the Bern disputation (1528), which saw the Reformation adopted in major parts of the Swiss Confederation, and the Colloquy of Marburg(1529), where he and Luther came face to face. Zwingli's desire to bring the Reformation to the rest of the Swiss Confederation led to alliance building that made war with the Catholic states probable. This led to the disastrous First and Second Kappel Wars of 1529 and 1531. Zwingli was killed in a surprise attack on the night of 11 October 1531.

On account of their acrimonious falling out with respect to the celebration of the Lord's Supper, specifically the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, the question of Luther's influence on Zwingli has remained, for confessional reasons, highly contentious. Certainly Zwingli keenly followed the "Luther affair" of 1517–1521, and read all the German reformer's works, which were being printed in Basel. On key theological points, such as "faith alone" and "scripture alone," they were in agreement, but Zwingli had an entirely different agenda, which led to a theology of a different character. Zwingli's theology was shaped by two crucial aspects: first, his experience of serving in military campaigns (1513–1515) and observing with horror the effects of the mercenary trade on the Swiss; and second, the form of Christian humanism prevalent in southwestern Germany and the Swiss lands. The type of humanism that shaped Zwingli's thought concentrated on the practical Christian life and reform of the church, emphasizing the role of the Old Testament. To this we can attribute most of the major themes in Zwingli's thought: the utter sovereignty of God, the covenantal nature of God's relationship with humanity, God's demand that his people be "pure," and the centrality of ethics and the life of the regenerated Christian.

Zwingli was not a national reformer; his cause was closely linked with the particular aspirations of Zurich. Nevertheless, the clarity of his thought carried his ideas across Europe, and there can be no doubt that he was the founder of the Reformed tradition.

See also Bullinger, Heinrich ; Erasmus, Desiderius ; Luther, Martin ; Lutheranism ; Marburg, Colloquy of ; Reformation, Protestant ; Zurich .