The
History of Protestantism |
Chapter 1 | . . . | ZWINGLI HIS DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S
SUPPER. Turn Southward Switzerland Reformation from Above Ulric Zwingli His Preparation Resume of his Career The Foreign Service The Gospel the Cure of his Nation's Evils Zwingli at Zurich His varied Qualities Transformation of Switzerland A Catastrophe near The Lord's Supper Transubstantiation Luther's Views Calvin's Views, Import of the Lord's Supper on the Human Side, Its Import on the Divine Side Zwingli's Avoidance of the two Extremes as regards the Lord's Supper. |
Chapter 2 | . . . | DISPUTATION AT BADEN AND ITS
RESULTS. Alarm of the Romanists Resolve to Strike a great Blow They propose a Public Disputation Eck chosen as Romanist Champion Zwingli Refused Leave to go to Baden Martyrs Arrival of the Deputies Magnificent Dresses of the Romish Disputants The Protestant Deputies Personal Appearance of Eck and Ecolampadius Points Debated Eck Claims the Victory The Protestants Gather the Fruits Zwingli kept Informed of the Process of the Debate Clever Device A Comedy Counsels Frustrated Eck and Charles V. Helping the Reformation. |
Chapter 3 | . . . | OUTBREAK AND SUPPRESSION OF ANABAPTISM IN
SWITZERLAND. Rise of Anabaptism in Switzerland Thomas Munzer His First Disciples, Grebel and Manx Summary of their Opinions Their Manners and Morals Zwingli Commanded to Dispute with them Coercive Measures Anabaptism extends to other Cantons John Schuker and his Family Horrible Tragedy Manx His Seditious Acts Sentenced to be Drowned in the Lake of Zurich Execution of Sentence - These Severities Disapproved of by Zwingli The Fanaticism Extinguished by the Gospel, A Purification of the Swiss Church, Zwingli's Views on Baptism Matured thereby. |
Chapter 4 | . . . | ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM AT
BERN. Bern prepares to Follow up the Baden Disputation Resolves to institute a Conference Summoned for January, 1528 Preparations and Invitations The Popish Cantons Protest against holding the Conference Charles V. Writes Forbidding it Reply of the Bernese German Deputies Journey of Swiss Deputies Deputies in all 350 Church of the Cordeliers Ten Theses Convert at the Altar Fete of St. Vincent Matins and Vespers Unsung The Magnificat Exchanged for a Mourning Hymn Clergy Subscribe the Reformed Propositions Mass, etc., Abolished Reforming Laws Act of Civic Grace The Lord's Supper. |
Chapter 5 | . . . | REFORMATION CONSUMMATED IN
BASLE. All Switzerland Moved The Oberland Surprise and Anger of its Herdsmen Basle Its Importance Ecolampadius Protestants of Basle Petition for Abolition of Mass Popular Conflicts Temporizing Policy of Council Citizens take Arms New Delays by the Council New Demands of the People The Night of the 8th of February The City Barricaded Two Thousand Men in Arms The Senate's Half-concession The Idols Broken Idols of Little Basle Edict of Senate Establishing the Reform Ash-Wednesday Oath of the People Exodus of the Priests Departure of Erasmus. |
Chapter 6 | . . . | LEAGUE OF THE FIVE CANTONS WITH AUSTRIA
SWITZERLAND DIVIDED. The Light Spreading The Oberland in Darkness The Gospel Invades the Mountains League of the Five Cantons with Austria Persecution Begun Martyrdom of Pastor Keyser The Christian Coburghery The Breach among the Swiss Cantons Widening Dean Bullinger The Men of Gaster Idols that won't March Violence of the Popish Cantons Effort of Zurich to Avert War-The Attempt Abortive War Proclaimed Zwingli's Part in the Affair Was it Justifiable? |
Chapter 7 | . . . | ARMS NEGOTIATIONS PEACE. Zurich Girds on the Sword Mustering in the Popish Cantons 4,000 Warriors March from Zurich Encamp at Kappel Halt Negotiations, Peace Zwingli Dislikes it Zwingli's Labors His Daily Life His Dress, etc., Arrangement of his Time, His Occupations Amusements Writings. |
Chapter 8 | . . . | PROPOSED CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC FOR DEFENCE OF
CIVIL RIGHTS. Another Storm brewing in the Oberland Protestantism still spreading in Switzerland A Second Crisis Zwingli proposes a European Christian Republic Negotiates with the German Towns, the King of France, and the Republic of Venice Philip of Hesse to be put at the Head of it Correspondence between Philip and Zwingli League for Defense of Civil Rights only Zwingli's Labors for the Autonomy of the Helvetian Church. |
Chapter 9 | . . . | GATHERING OF A SECOND
STORM. Persecution renewed by the Five Cantons Activity of Zwingli Address of the Reformed Pastors - Bern proposes Blockade of the Five Cantons Zwingli Opposed No Bread, etc. Zwingli asks his Dismissal - Consents to Remain Meeting at Bremgarten The Comet Alarming Portents Zwingli's Earnest Warnings-Unheeded. |
Chapter 10 | . . . | DEATH OF ZWINGLI. Forest Cantons decide on War Assembling of their Army Zurich dispatches 600 Hen Tedious Debates in the Council A Night of Terror Morning The Great Banner Clings to its Staff Depression 700 mustered instead of 4,000 Zwingli Mounts his Steed Parting with his Wife and Children Omens The Battle Bravery of the Zurichers Overwhelmed by Numbers The Carnage Zwingli Mortally Wounded Dispatched by Camp Followers Tidings of his Death Grief and Dismay |
BOOK
ELEVENTH
PROTESTANTISM IN SWITZERLAND FROM ITS ESTABLISHMENT IN ZURICH
(1525) TO THE DEATH OF ZWINGLI (1531).
CHAPTER 1
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ZWINGLI HIS DOCTRINE OF
THE LORD'S SUPPER.
Turn Southward Switzerland Reformation from
Above Ulric Zwingli His Preparation Resume of his Career The Foreign
Service The Gospel the Cure of his Nation's Evils Zwingli at Zurich His
varied Qualities Transformation of Switzerland A Catastrophe near The
Lord's Supper Transubstantiation Luther's Views Calvin's Views, Import of
the Lord's Supper on the Human Side, Its Import on the Divine Side Zwingli's
Avoidance of the two Extremes as regards the Lord's Supper.
FOLLOWING in the track of the light, we have reached
our farthest limit toward the north. We now turn southward to those lands where
the Reformation had its first rise, and where it fought its greatest battles.
There every step it took was amidst stakes and scaffolds, but if there its
course was the more tragic, its influence was the more powerful, and the changes
it effected the more lasting. In France thousands of confessors and martyrs are
about to step upon the stage, and act their part in the great drama; but first
we must turn aside to Switzerland, and resuming our narrative at the point where
we dropped it, we shall carry it forward to the death of Zwingli.
We have
traced in former pages the dawn of Protestantism among the hills of Helvetia.
Not from Germany, for the name of Luther had not yet been heard in Switzerland;
not from France, nor any neighboring country, but from the skies, it may be
truly said, the light first shone upon the Swiss. From a herdsman's cottage in
the valley of the Tockenburg came their Reformer, Ulric Zwingli. When a child he
was wont to sit by the evening's hearth and listen with rapt attention to the
histories of the Bible recited by his pious grandmother. As years passed on and
his powers expanded he found access to the book itself, and made it his daily
study. The light broke upon his soul. Continuing to read, it shone clearer every
day. At last, but not fill years after, his eyes were fully opened, he saw the
glory of the Gospel, and bade a final adieu to Rome.
Personal contact
with evil can alone give that sense of its malignity, and that burning
detestation of it, which will prompt one to a life-long struggle for its
overthrow. We can trace this principle in the orderings of Zwingli's lot. He was
destined to spend his days in constant battle with two terrible evils that were
tarnishing his country's fame, and extinguishing his country's virtue. But
reared in the Tockenburg, artless and simple as its shepherds, he was not yet
fit for his destined work, and had to be sent to school. We refer to other
schools than those of Basle and Vienna, where he was initiated into the language
and philosophy of the ancients. First stationed at Glarus, he there was brought
into contact with the horrors of the foreign service. He had daily before his
eyes the widows and orphans of the men who had been drawn by French and Italian
gold across the Alps and slaughtered; and there, too, he saw a not less
affecting sight, the maimed and emaciated forms of those who, escaping the
sword, had brought back to their country worse evils than wounds, even the vices
of corrupt and luxurious nations. At Einsiedeln, to which by-and-by he removed,
he received his second lesson. There he had occasion to mark the ravages which
pilgrimages and image-worship inflict upon the conscience and the morals. He had
time to meditate on these two great evils. He resolved to spare no effort to
uproot them. But his trust for success in this work was solely in the Gospel.
This alone could dispel the darkness in which pilgrimages with all their
attendant abominations had their rise, and this alone could extinguish that love
of gold which was draining at once the blood and the virtue of his countrymen.
Other and subsidiary aids would come in their time to assist in this great
battle; but the Gospel must come first. He would teach the individual Swiss to
bow before a holy altar, and to sit at a pure hearth; and this in due time would
pour a current of fresh blood into the veins of the State. Then the virtue of
old days would revive, and their glorious valleys would again be trodden by men
capable of renewing the heroic deeds of their sires. But the seed of Divine
truth must be scattered over the worn-out soil before fruits like these could
flourish in it. These were the views that led to the striking union of the
pastor and the patriot which Zwingli presents to us. The aim of his Reform,
wider in its direct scope than that of Germany, embraced both Church and State,
the latter through the former. It was not because he trusted the Gospel less,
but because he trusted it more, and saw it to be the one fruitful source of all
terrestrial virtues and blessings, and because he more freely interpreted his
mission as a Reformer, and as a member of a republic felt himself more
thoroughly identified with his country, and more responsible for its failings,
than it is possible for a subject of an empire to do, that he chalked out for
himself this course and pursued it so steadfastly. He sought to restore to the
individual piety, to the nation virtue, and both he would derive from the same
fountain the Gospel.
Having seen and pondered over the two lessons put
before him, Zwingli was now prepared for his work. A vacancy occurred in the
Cathedral-church of Zurich. The revival of letters had reached that city, and
the magistrates cast their eyes around them for some one of greater
accomplishments than the chapter could supply to fill the post. Their choice
fell on the Chaplain of Einsiedeln. Zwingli brought to Zurich a soul enlightened
by Divine truth, a genius which solitude had nursed into ardor and sublimity,
and a heart burning with indignation at the authors of his nation's ruin. He
firmly resolved to use his eloquence, which was great, in rousing his countrymen
to a sense of their degradation. He now stood at the center of the Republic, and
his voice sounded in thrilling tones through all Switzerland. He proceeded step
by step, taking care that his actual reforms did not outrun the stage of
enlightenment his countrymen had reached. He shone equally as a pastor as a
writer and as a disputant. He was alike at home in the council-chamber, in the
public assembly, and in the hall of business. His activity was untiring. His
clear penetrating intellect and capacious mind made toil light, and enabled him
to accomplish the work of many men. The light spread around him, other Reformers
arose. It was now as when morning opens in that same Swiss land: it is not Mont
Blanc that stands up in solitary radiance; a dozen and a dozen peaks around him
begin to burn, and soon not a summit far or near but is touched with glory, and
not a valley, however profound, into which day does not pour the tide of its
effulgence. So did the sky of Switzerland begin to kindle all round with the
Protestant dawn. Towns and hamlets came out of the darkness the long and deep
darkness of monkery and stood forth in the light. The great centers, Bern
(1528), Basle (1529), Schaffhausen (1529), St. Call (1528), abandoned Rome and
embraced the Gospel. Along the foot of the Jura, around the shores of the lakes,
east and west of Northern Switzerland, from the gates of Geneva to the shores of
Constance did the light spread. The altars on which mass had been offered were
overturned; the idols burned like other wood; cowls, frocks, beads, and pardons
were cast away as so much rubbish; the lighted candles were blown out and men
turned to the living lamp of the Word. Its light led them to the cross whereon
was offered, once for all, the sacrifice of the Eternal Priest.
We halted
in our narrative at what might be termed the noon of the Zwinglian Reformation.
We saw Protestantism fully established in Zurich, and partially in the cantons
named above; but the man who had had the honor to begin the work was not to have
the honor of completing it; his brilliant career was soon to close; already
there were signs of tempest upon the summit of the Helvetian mountains;
by-and-by the storm will burst and obscure for a time not destroy the great
work which the Reformer of Zurich had originated. The catastrophe which is but a
little way before us must be our second stage in the Swiss
Reformation.
The last time Zwingli came before us was at Marburg in 1529,
where we find him maintaining against Luther the spirituality of the ordinance
of the Lord's Supper. Before resuming our narrative of events it becomes
necessary to explain the position of Zwingli, with reference to the Sacrament of
the Lord's Supper, and this requires us to consider the views on this head held
by Luther and Calvin. It is possible clearly to perceive the precise doctrine of
the Sacrament taught by any one of these great men only when we have compared
the views of all three.
The Lord's Supper began early to be corrupted in
the primitive Church. The simple memorial was changed into a mystery. That
mystery became, century by century, more awful and inexplicable. It was made to
stand apart from other ordinances and services of the Church, not only in
respect of the greater reverence with which it was regarded, but as an
institution in its own nature wholly distinct, and altogether peculiar in its
mode of working. A secret virtue or potency was attributed to it, by which,
apart from the faith of the recipient, it operated mysteriously upon the soul.
It was no longer an ordinance, it was now a spell, a charm. The spirit of
ancient paganism had crept back into it, and ejecting the Holy Spirit, which
acts through it in the case of all who believe, it had filled it with a magical
influence. The Lord's Supper was the institution nearest the cross, and the
spirit of reviving error in seizing upon it was actuated doubtless by the
consideration that the perversion of this institution was the readiest and most
effectual way to shut up or poison the fountain of the world's salvation. The
corruption went on till it issued, in 1215, in the dogma of transubstantiation.
The bread and wine which were set upon the Communion tables of the first century
became, by the fiat of Innocent III., flesh and blood on the altars of the
thirteenth.
Despite that the dogma of transubstantiation is opposed to
Scripture, contradicts reason, and outrages all our senses, there is about it,
we are compelled to conclude, some extraordinary power to hold captive the mind.
Luther, who razed to the ground every other part of the Romish system, left this
one standing. He had not courage to cast it down; he continued to his life's end
to believe in consubstantiation that is, in the presence of the flesh and
blood of Christ with, in, or under the bread and wine. He strove, no doubt, to
purify his belief from the gross materialism of the Romish mass. He denied that
the Lord's Supper was a sacrifice, or that the body of Christ in the elements
was to be worshipped; but he maintained that the body was there, and was
received by the communicant. The union of the Divinity with the humanity in
Christ's person gave to His glorified body, he held, new and wholly unearthly
qualities. It made it independent of space, it endowed it with ubiquity; and
when Zwingli, at Marburg, argued in reply that this was opposed to all the laws
of matter, which necessitated a body to be in only one place at one time, Luther
scouted the objection as being merely mathematical. The Reformer of Wittemberg
did not seem to perceive that fatal consequences would result in other
directions, from asserting such a change upon the body of Christ as he
maintained to be wrought upon it in virtue of its union with the Divinity, for
undoubtedly such a theory imperils the reality of the two great facts which are
the foundations of the Christian system, the death and the resurrection of our
Lord.
Nor was it Luther only who did homage to this dogma. A yet more
powerful intellect, Calvin namely, was not able wholly to disenthrall himself
from its influence, he believed, it is true, neither in transubstantiation nor
in consubstantiation, but he hesitated to admit the thorough, pure spirituality
of the Lord's Supper. He teaches that the communicant receives Christ, who is
spiritually present, only by his faith; but he talks vaguely, withal, as if he
conceived of an emanation or influence radiated from the glorified humanity now
at the Right hand, entering into the soul of the believer, and implanting there
the germ of a glorified humanity like to that of his risen Lord. In this
scarcely intelligible idea there may be more than the lingering influence of the
mysticism of bygone ages. We can trace in it a desire on the part of Calvin to
approximate as nearly as possible the standpoint of the Lutherans, if so he
might close the breach which divided and weakened the two great bodies of
Protestants, and rally into one host all the forces of the Reformation in the
face of a yet powerful Papacy.
Zwingli has more successfully extricated
the spiritual from the mystical in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper than
either Luther or Calvin. His sentiments were a recoil from the mysticism and
absurdity which, from an early age, had been gathering round this Sacrament, and
which had reached their height in the Popish doctrine of the mass.
Some
have maintained that the recoil went too far, that Zwingli fell into the error
of excessive simplicity, and that he reduced the ordinance of the Lord's Supper
to a mere memorial or commemoration service. His earliest statements (1525) on
the doctrine of the Sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, may be open to
this objection; but not so his latter teachings (1530), we are disposed to
think. He returned to the golden mean, avoiding both extremes neither
attributing to the Sacrament a mystical or magical efficacy, on the one hand,
nor making it a bare and naked sign of a past event on the other.
In
order to understand his views, and see their accordance with Scripture, we must
attend a moment to the nature and design of the Lord's Supper as seen in its
institution. The primary end and significance of the Lord's Supper is a
commemoration: "Do this in remembrance of me." But the event commemorated is of
such a kind, and our relation to it is of such a nature, that the commemoration
of it necessarily implies more than mere remembrance. We are commemorating a
"death" which was endured in our room, and is all expiation of our sin; we,
therefore, cannot commemorate it to the end in view but in faith. We rest upon
it as the ground of our eternal life; we thus receive his "flesh and blood"
that is, the spiritual blessings his death procured. Nay, more, by a public act
we place ourselves in the ranks of his followers. We promise or vow allegiance
to him. This much, and no more, is done on the human side.
We turn to the
Divine side. What is signified and done here must also be modified and
determined by the nature of the transaction. The bread and wine in the
Eucharist, being the representatives of the body and blood of Christ, are the
symbols of an eternal redemption. In placing these symbols before us, and
inviting us to partake of them, God puts before us and offers unto us that
redemption. We receive it by faith, and he applies it to us and works it in us
by his Spirit. Thus the Supper becomes at once a sign and a seal. Like the
"blood" on the door-post of the Israelite, it is a "token" between God and us,
for from the Passover the Lord's Supper is historically descended, and the
intent and efficacy of the former, infinitely heightened, live in the latter.
This, in our view, exhausts, both on the Divine and on the human side, all which
the principles of the Word of God warrant us to hold in reference to the
Eucharist; and if we attempt to put more into it, that more, should we closely
examine it, will be found to be not spiritual but magical.
Zwingli's
grand maxim as a Reformer eminently was the authority of Holy Scripture. Luther
rejected nothing in the worship of God unless it was condemned in the Bible:
Zwingli admitted nothing unless it was enjoined. Following his maxim, Zwingli,
forgetting all human glosses, Papal edicts, and the mysticism of the schools,
came straight to the New Testament, directed his gaze steadfastly and
exclusively upon its pages, and gathered from thence what the Lord's Supper
really meant. He found that on the human side it was a "commemoration" and a
"pledge," and on the Divine side a "sign" and "seal." Further, the
instrumentality on the part of man by which he receives the blessing represented
is faith; and the agency on the part of God, by which that blessing is conveyed
and applied, is the Holy Spirit.
Such was the Lord's Supper as Ulric
Zwingli found it in the original institution. He purged it from every vestige of
mysticism and materialism; but he left its spiritual efficacy unimpaired and
perfect.
CHAPTER 2
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DISPUTATION AT BADEN
AND ITS RESULTS.
Alarm of the Romanists Resolve to Strike a great
Blow They propose a Public Disputation Eck chosen as Romanist Champion
Zwingli Refused Leave to go to Baden Martyrs Arrival of the Deputies
Magnificent Dresses of the Romish Disputants The Protestant Deputies
Personal Appearance of Eck and Ecolampadius Points Debated Eck Claims the
Victory The Protestants Gather the Fruits Zwingli kept Informed of the
Process of the Debate Clever Device A Comedy Counsels Frustrated Eck and
Charles V. Helping the Reformation.
THE victories that we narrated in a foregoing Book of
this History (Book 8.) caused the utmost alarm among the partisans of the
Papacy. The movement, first despised by them, and next half welcomed as holding
out the hope of a little pleasurable excitement, had now grown to such a head
that it threatened to lay in the dust the whole stately fabric of their riches
and power. They must go wisely to work, and strike such a blow as would sweep
Zwingli and his movement from the soil of Helvetia. This, said they, making sure
of their victory before winning it, will react favorably on Germany. The torrent
once stemmed, the waters of heresy will retreat to the abyss whence they issued,
and the "everlasting hills" of the old faith, which the deluge threatened to
overtop, will once more lift up their heads stable and majestic as
ever.
An event that happened in the political world helped yet further to
impress upon the Romanists the necessity of some instant and vigorous step. The
terrible battle of Pavia projected a dark shadow upon Switzerland, but shed a
gleam of popularity on Zwingli, and indirectly on the Reformation. A numerous
body of Swiss mercenaries had fought on that bloody field. From five to six
thousand of their corpses swelled its slain, and five thousand were taken alive
and made prisoners. These were afterwards released and sent home, but in what a
plight! Their arms lopped off, their faces seamed and scarred; many, through
hunger and faintness, dying by the way, and the rest arriving in rags! Not only
was it that these spectacles of horror wandered over the land, but from every
city and hamlet arose the wail of widow and the cry of orphan. What the poet
said of Albion might now be applied to Helvetia:
In that day of their sore calamity the people
remembered how often Zwingli had thundered against the foreign service from the
pulpit. He had been, they now saw, their best friend, their truest patriot; and
the Popish cantons envied Zurich, which mainly through Zwingli's influence had
wholly escaped, or suffered but slightly, from a stroke which had fallen with
such stunning force upon themselves.
The Romanists saw the favorable
impression that was being made upon the popular sentiment, and bethought them by
what means they might counteract it. The wiser among them reflected, on the one
hand, how little progress they were making in the suppression of Lutheranism by
beheading and burning its disciples; and, on the other, how much advantage
Zwingli had gained from the religious disputation at Zurich. "They deliberated,"
says Bullinger, "day and night," and at last came to the conclusion that the
right course was to hold a public disputation, and conquer the Reformation by
its own weapons leaving its truth out of their calculations. They would so
arrange beforehand as to make sure of the victory, by selecting the fitting
place at which to hold the disputation, and the right men to decide between the
controversialists. The scheme promised to be attended with yet another
advantage, although they took care to say nothing about it, unless to those they
could absolutely trust. Zwingli, of course, would come to the conference. He
would be in their power. They could condemn and burn him, and the death of its
champion would be the death of the movement.[2]
Accordingly at a Diet held at Lucerne, the 15th
January, 1526, the Five Cantons Lucerne, Uri, Schwitz, Appenzell, and Friburg
resolved on a disputation, and agreed that it should take place at Bern. The
Bernese, however, declined the honor. Basle was then selected as the next most
suitable, being a university seat, and boasting the residence within it of many
learned men. But Basle was as little covetous of the honor as Bern.
After
a good deal of negotiating, it was concluded to hold the disputation at Baden on
the 16th May, 1526.[3]
This being settled, the cantons looked around them
for powerful champions to do battle for the old faith. One illustrious champion,
who had figured not without glory on the early fields of the Reformation, still
survived Dr. Eck, Vice-Chancellor of Ingolstadt. Our readers have not forgotten
the day of Leipsic, where Eck encountered Luther, and foiled him, as he boasted;
but finding Luther perversely blind to his defeat, he went to Rome, and returned
with the bull of Leo X. to burn the man who had no right to live after having
been confuted by Eck. Dr. Eck was a man of undoubted learning, of unrivalled
volubility in short, the best swordsman Rome had then at her service. The
choice of the Popish cantons unanimously fell on this veteran.
Eck was to
reap from this passage-at-arms more solid laurels than mere fame. On the side of
Rome the battle had begun to be maintained largely by money. The higher clergy
in Suabia and Switzerland piously taxed themselves for this laudable object. The
Suabian League and the Archduke of Austria raised money to hire the services of
men willing and able to fight in these campaigns. There was no reason why the
doctor of Ingolstadt should give his time, and endanger, if not life, yet those
hard-won honors that made life sweet, without a reasonable recompense. Eck was
to be handsomely paid;[4] for, says Bullinger, quoting a very old precedent, "he
loved the wages of unrighteousness." The doctor of Ingolstadt accepted the
combat, and with it victory, its inseparable consequence as he deemed it.
Writing to the Confederate deputies at Baden, Dr. Eck says, "I am full of
confidence that I shall, with little trouble, maintain against Zwingli our old
true Christian faith and customs to be accordant with Holy Scripture," and then
with a scorn justifiable, it may be, in so great a personage as the
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ingolstadt, when descending into the arena
to meet the son of the shepherd of the Tockenburg, he says, "Zwingli no doubt
has milked more cows than he has read books."[5]
But Dr. Eck was not to encounter Zwingli at Baden.
The Council of Zurich refused leave to their pastor to go to the conference.
Whispers had come to the ears of their Excellencies that the Romanists intended
to employ other weapons besides argument. The place where the conference was to
be held was of evil omen; for at Baden the blood of the Wirths [6] was yet scarcely dry; and there the Popish cantons were
all-powerful. Even Eck, with whom Zwingli was to dispute, had proclaimed the
futility of fighting against such heretics as the preacher of Zurich with any
other weapons than "fire and sword."[7] So far as the "fire" could reach him it had already been
employed against Zwingli; for they had burned his books at Friburg and his
effigy at Lucerne. He was ready to meet at Zurich their entire controversial
phalanx from its Goliath downwards, and the magistrates would have welcomed such
meeting; but send him to Baden the council would not, for that was to send him
not to dispute, but to die.
In coming to this conclusion the lords of
Zurich transgressed no law of charity, and their conclusion, hard though it was,
did the Romanists of Switzerland no wrong. Wherever at this hour they looked in
the surrounding cantons and provinces, what did they see? Stakes and victims.
The men who were so eager to argue at Baden showed no relish for so tedious a
process where they could employ the more summary one of the sack and rope. At
Lucerne, Henry Messberg was thrown into the lake for speaking against the nuns;
and John Nagel was burned alive for sowing "Zwinglian tenets." At Schwitz,
Eberhard Polt of Lachen, and a priest of the same place, suffered death by
burning for speaking against the ceremonies. At the same time Peter Spongier, a
Protestant minister, was drowned at Friburg by order of the Bishop of Constance.
Nor did the man who had won so many laurels in debate, disdain adding thereto
the honors of the executioner. But a short week before the conference at Baden,
Eck presided over a consistory which met in the market-place of Mersburg, and
condemned to the flames as a heretic John Hugel, the Pastor of Lindau. The
martyr went to the stake singing the Te Deum, and was heard amid the fires
offering the prayer, "Father, forgive them."[8]
When the appointed day came the deputies began to
arrive. Twelve cantons of the Confederacy sent each a representative. Zurich had
received no invitation and sent no deputy. The Bishops of Constance, of Coire,
of Lausanne, and of Basle were also represented at the conference. Eck came
attended by Faber, the college companion of Zwingli,[9] and Thomas Murner, a monk of the order of the Carmelites.
The list of Protestant controversialists was a modest one, embracing only the
names of Ecolampadius from Basle, and Haller from Bern. In neither of these two
cities was the Reformation as yet (1526) established, but the conference just
opening was destined to give a powerful impulse to Protestantism in both of
them. In Bern and Basle it halted meanwhile; but from this day the Reformation
was to resume its march in these cities, and pause only when it had reached the
goal. Could the Romanists have foreseen this result, they would have been a
little less zealous in the affair of the conference. If the arguments of the
Popish deputies should prove as strong as their dresses were magnificent, there
could be no question with whom would remain the victory. Eck and his following
of prelates, magistrates, and doctors came robed in garments of damask and silk.
They wore gold chains round their necks; crosses reposed softly and piously on
their breasts; their fingers glittered and burned with precious jewels;[10] and their measured step and uplifted countenances were
such as beseemed the bravery of their apparel. If the plays of our great
dramatist had been then in existence, and if the men now assembling at Baden had
been a troupe of tragedians, who had been hired to act them, nothing could have
been in better taste; but fine robes were slender qualifications for a
discussion which had for its object the selection and adoption of those
principles on which the Churches and kingdoms of the future were to be
constructed. In the eyes of the populace, the Reformers, in comparison with the
men in damask, were but as a company of mendicants. The two were not more
different in dress than in their way of living. Eck and his friends lodged at
the Baden parsonage, where the wine, provided by the Abbot of Wettingen, was
excellent. It was supplied without stint, and used not less so.[11] Ecolampadius put up at the Pike Inn. His meals were
quickly dispatched, and the landlord, wondering how he occupied his time in his
room, peered in, and found him reading or praying. "A heretic, doubtless," said
he, "but a pious one withal."
Eck was still the same man we saw him at
Leipsic his shoulders as broad, his voice as Stentorian, and his manner as
violent. If the logic of his argument halted, he helped it with a vigorous stamp
of his foot, and, as a contemporary poet of Bern relates, an occasional oath. In
striking contrast to his porter-like figure, was the tall, thin, dignified form
of his opponent Ecolampadius. Some of the Roman Catholics, says Bullinger, could
not help wishing that the "sallow man," so calm, yet so firm and so majestic,
were on "their side."
It is unnecessary to give any outline of the
disputation. The ground traversed was the same which had been repeatedly gone
over. The points debated were those of the real presence, the sacrifice of the
mass, the adoration of Mary and the saints, worshipping by images, and
purgatory, with a few minor questions.[12] The contest lasted eighteen days. "Every day the clergy of
Baden," says Ruchat, "walked in solemn procession, and chanted litanies, to have
good success in the disputation."[13] Eck reveled in the combat, and when it had ended he
claimed the victory, and took care to have the great news published through the
Confederacy, exciting in the Popish cantons the lively hope of the instant
restoration of the old faith to its former glory. But the question is, who
gathered the spoils? We can have no difficulty in answering that question when
we think of the fresh life imparted to Bern and Basle, and the rapid strides
with which, from this time forward, they and other cities advanced to the
establishment of their Reformation.
Eck felt the weight of Zwingli's arm,
although the Reformer was not present in person. The Popish party, having
appointed four secretaries to make a faithful record of the conference,
prohibited all others from taking notes of the debate, under no less a penalty
than death. Yet, despite this stern law, evening by evening Zwingli was told how
the fight had gone, and was able, morning by morning, to send his advice to his
friends how to set the battle in order for the day. It was cleverly done. A
student from the Vallais, Jerome Walsch, who professed to be using the baths of
Baden, attended the conference, and every evening wrote down from memory the
course the argument had taken that day. Two students did the office of messenger
by turns. Arriving at Zurich overnight, they handed Walsch's notes, together
with the letters of Ecolampadius, to Zwingli, and were back at Baden next
morning with the Reformer's answer. To lull the suspicions of the armed sentries
at the gates, who had been ordered to keep a strict watch, they carried on their
heads baskets of poultry. Even theologians, they hinted, must eat. If Dr. Eck,
and the worthy divines with him, should go without their dinner, they would not
be answerable for what might happen to the good cause of Romanism, or to those
who should take it upon them to stop the supplies. Thus they came and went
without its being suspected on what errand they journeyed.
After the
serious business of the conference, there came a little comedy. In the train of
the doctor of Ingolstadt, as we have already said, came Thomas Murner, monk and
lecturer at Lucerne. The deputies of the cantons had just given judgment for
Eck, to the effect that he had triumphed in the debate, and crushed the
Zwinglian heresy. But Murner, aspiring to the honor of slaying the slain, rose,
in presence of the whole assembly, and read forty charges, which, putting body
and goods in pledge, he offered to make good against Zwingli. No one thought it
worth while to reply.
Whereupon the Cordelier continued, "I thought the
coward would crone, but he has not shown face. I declare forty times, by every
law human and divine, that the tyrant of Zurich and all his followers are
knaves, liars, perjurers, adulterers, infidels, thieves, sacrileges, gaol-birds,
and such that no honest man without blushing can keep company with them."[14] Having so spoken he sat down, and the Diet was at an
end.
Thus we behold, at nearly the same moment, on two stages widely
apart, measures taken to suppress Protestantism, which, in their results, help
above all things to establish it. In the little town of Baden we see the
deputies of the cantons and the representatives of the bishops assembling to
confute the Zwinglians, and vote the extinction of the Reform movement in
Switzerland. Far away beyond the Pyrenees we see (March, 1526) the Emperor
Charles sitting down in the Moorish Alcazar at Seville, and indicting a letter
to his brother Archduke Ferdinand, commanding him to summon a Diet at Siftres,
to execute the Edict of Worms. The disputation at Baden led very directly, as we
shall immediately see, to the establishment of Protestantism in the two
important cantons of Bern and Basic. And the Diet of Spires (1526), instead of
an edict of proscription, produced, as we have already seen an edict of
toleration in favor of the Reformation. The Chancellor of the University of
Ingolstadt and the head of the Holy Roman Empire, acting without concert, and
certainly not designing what they accomplish, unite their powerful aids in
helping onward the cause of the world's emancipation. There is One who overrules
their counsels, and makes use of them to overthrow that which they wish to
uphold, and protect that which they seek to destroy.
CHAPTER 3
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OUTBREAK AND
SUPPRESSION OF ANABAPTISM IN SWITZERLAND.
Rise of Anabaptism in
Switzerland Thomas Munzer His First Disciples, Grebel and Manx Summary of
their Opinions Their Manners and Morals Zwingli Commanded to Dispute with
them Coercive Measures Anabaptism extends to other Cantons John Schuker
and his Family Horrible Tragedy Manx His Seditious Acts Sentenced to be
Drowned in the Lake of Zurich Execution of Sentence These Severities
Disapproved of by Zwingli The Fanaticism Extinguished by the Gospel A
Purification of the Swiss Church Zwingli's Views on Baptism Matured
thereby.
THE river of Reform was rolling its bounteous floods
onward and diffusing verdure over the barren lands, when suddenly a foul and
poisoned rivulet sought to discharge itself into it. Had this latter corrupted
the great stream with which it seemed on the point of mingling, death and not
life would have been imparted to the nations of Christendom. Zwingli foresaw the
evil, and his next labor was to prevent so terrible a disaster befalling the
world; and his efforts in this important matter claim our attention before
proceeding to trace the influence of the Baden disputation on the two powerful
cantons of Bern and Basle.
Zwingli was busy, as we have seen, combating
the Papal foe in front, when the Anabaptist enemy suddenly started up and
attacked him in the rear. We have already detailed the deplorable tragedies to
which this fanatical sect gave birth in Germany.[1] They were about to vent the same impieties and enact the
same abominable excesses on the soil of Switzerland which had created so much
misery elsewhere. This sect was rather an importation than a native growth of
Helvetia. The notorious Thomas Munzer, thrown upon the Swiss frontier by the
storms of the peasant-war in Germany, brought with him his peculiar doctrines to
sow them among the followers of Zwingli. He found a few unstable minds prepared
to receive them, in particular Conrad Grebel, of an ancient Swiss family, and
Felix Manx, the son of a prebend. These two were Munzer's first disciples, and
afterwards leaders of the sect. They had been excellently educated, but were men
of loose principles and licentious lives. To these persons others by-and-by
joined themselves.[2]
These men came to Zwingli and said to him, "Let us
found a Church in which there shall be no sin." Grebel and Manx had a way
peculiar to themselves of forming an immaculate society. Their method, less rare
than it looks, was simply to change all the vices into virtues, and thus
indulgence in them would imply no guilt and leave no stain. This was a method of
attaining sinlessness in which Zwingli could not concur, being unable to
reconcile it with the Gospel precept which says that "denying ungodliness and
worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present
evil world." "In whatever crime or vice they are taken," said Zwingli, "their
defense is ever the same: I have not sinned; I am no more in the flesh, but in
the spirit; I am dead to the flesh, and the flesh is dead to me." The wisdom of
Zwingli's reply to Grebel's proposal was as great as its words were few. "We
cannot," said he, "make a heaven upon earth."[3]
Re baptism was rather the badge than the creed of
this sect. Under the spiritual pretext of emancipation from the flesh, they
denied the office and declined the authority of the pastors of the Church and of
the magistrates of the State.[4] Under the same pretext of spirituality they claimed a
release from every personal virtue and all social obligations. They dealt in the
same way with the Bible. They had a light within which sufficed for their
guidance, and made them independent of the Word without. Some of them threw the
book into the fire saying, "The letter killeth." "Infant baptism," said they,
"is a horrible abomination, a flagrant impiety, invented by the evil spirit and
Pope Nicholas of Rome."[5]
The freaks and excesses in which they began to
indulge were very extraordinary, and resembled those of men whose wits are
disordered. They would form themselves in a ring on the street, dance, sing
songs, and tumble each other about in the dust. At other times, putting on
sackcloth, and strewing ashes on their heads, they would rush through the
streets, bearing lighted torches, and uttering dismal cries, "Woe! woe! yet
forty days and Zurich shall be destroyed."[6] Others professed to have received revelations from the
Holy Spirit. Others interrupted the public worship by standing up in the midst
of the congregation and proclaiming aloud, "I am the door; by me, if any man
enter in, he shall be saved." They held from time to time nocturnal revels, at
which psalms and jovial ballads were sung alternately, and this they called
"setting up the Lord's table."
Fourteen of their number were apprehended
by the magistrates, contrary to Zwingli's advice, shut up in the Heretics'
Tower, and fed on bread and water. On the fourteenth day "an angel opened their
prison door and led them forth."[7] Contrary to what happened in Peter's case, with which they
compared their deliverance, the angel found it necessary to remove certain
planks before he could effect their liberation.
The magistrates, alarmed
for the public peace, ordered Zwingli to hold a disputation with them. The
conference took place on the 17th January, 1525. Zwingli's victory was complete,
and the 8magistrates followed it up by an edict, ordering all infants to be
baptized within eight days.[8] The fanatics no more gave obedience to the command of the
magistrates than submission to the arguments of Zwingli. They neither brought
their children to be baptized nor abjured their opinions. A second disputation,
was enjoined by the council. It was held in the March of the same year, but with
the same results. Victory or defeat came alike to men who had resolved to adhere
to their beliefs whatever arguments might be brought in refutation of
them.
Severer measures were now adopted against them. Some were
imprisoned; others were banished from the canton. Zwingli disapproved of these
coercive remedies, and the event justified his wisdom. Persecution but inflamed
their zeal, and their dispersion carried the fire to other cantons. In St. Gall
their numbers were reckoned at 800; in the canton of Appenzell at 1,200. They
extended also to Schaffhausen and the Grisons, where they gave rise to
disorders. Two of the sect undertook to go and preach in the Popish canton of
Schwitz; the unhappy creatures were seized and burned. They died calling on the
name of the Savior.[9]
In some cases fanaticism developed into madness;
and that madness gave birth to atrocious deeds which did more to open the eyes
of the people, and banish this sect from the soil of Switzerland, than all the
punishments with which the magistrates pursued it. One melancholy and most
revolting instance has come down to us. In a solitary house in the canton of St.
Gall there lived an aged farmer, John Schuker, who, with his family and
servants, had received the "new baptism." Two of his sons were specially noted
for the warmth of their zeal. On Shrove Tuesday the father killed a calf and
invited his Anabaptist friends to the feast. The company, the wine, the
fanatical harangues and visionary revelations in which the night was spent,
would seem to have upset the reason of one of the sons. His features haggard,
his eyes rolling wildly, and speaking with hollow voice, he approached his
brother, Leonard, with the gall of the calf in the bladder, and thus addressed
him, "Bitter as gall is the death thou shalt die." He then ordered him to kneel
down. Leonard obeyed. A presentiment of evil seized the company. They bade the
wretched man beware what he did. "Nothing will happen," he replied, "but the
will of the Father." Turning to his brother, who was still kneeling before him,
and hastily seizing a sword, he severed his head from his body at a single blow.
The spectators were horror-struck. The headless corpse and the blood-stained
maniac were terrible sights. They had witnessed a crime like that of Cain.
Groans and wailings succeeded to the fanatical orisons in which the night had
been spent. Quickly over the country flew the news of the awful deed. The
wretched fratricide escaping from the house, half naked, the reeking sword in
his hand, and posting with rapid steps through hamlet and village to St. Gall,
to proclaim with maniac gestures and frenzied voice "the day of the Lord,"
exhibited in his own person an awful example of the baleful issues in which the
Anabaptist enthusiasm was finding its consummation. It was now showing itself to
men with the brand of Cain on its brow. The miserable man was seized and
beheaded.[10]
This horrible occurrence was followed by a tragedy
nearly as horrible. We have mentioned above the name of Manx, one of the leaders
of the fanatics. This man the magistrates of Zurich sentenced to be drowned in
the lake. In adjudging him to this fate they took account, not of his views on
baptism, or any opinions strictly religious, but of his sentiments on civil
government. Not only did he deny the authority of magistracy, but he gave
practical effect to his tenets by teaching his followers to resist payment of
legal dues, and by instigating them to acts of outrage and violence, he had been
repeatedly imprisoned, but always returned to his former courses on being set at
liberty. The popular indignation against the sect, intensified by the deed we
have just narrated, and the danger in which Switzerland now stood, of becoming
the theater of the same bloody tragedies which had been enacted in Germany the
year before, would no longer permit the council to wink at the treasonable acts
of Manx. He was again apprehended, and this time his imprisonment was followed
by his condemnation. The sentence was carried out with due formality. He was
accompanied to the water's edge by his brother and mother, now an old woman, and
the unacknowledged wife of the prebend. They exhorted him to constancy, but
indeed he exhibited no signs of shrinking. They saw the executioner lead him
into the boat; they saw him rowed out to deep water; they saw him taken up and
flung into the lake; they heard the sullen plunge and saw the water close over
him. The brother burst into tears, but the mother stood and witnessed all with
dry eyes.[11]
In these proceedings Zwingli had no share. This
fanatical outburst had affected him with profound sorrow. He knew it would be
said, "See what bitter fruits grow on the tree of Reform." But not only did he
regard the reproach as unjust, he looked to the Gospel as the only
instrumentality able to cope with this fanaticism. He pleaded with the
magistrates to withhold their punishments, on the ground that the weapons of
light were all that were needed to extirpate the evil. These Zwingli plied
vigorously.
The battle against Anabaptism cost him "more sweat," to use
his own expression, than did his fight with the Papacy. But that sweat was not
in vain. Mainly through his labors the torrent of Anabaptist fanaticism was
arrested, and what threatened fatal disaster at the outset was converted into a
blessing both to Zwingli and to the Protestant Church of Switzerland. The latter
emerged from the tempest purified and strengthened. Instead of an accusation the
Anabaptist outbreak was a justification of the Reformation. Zwingli's own views
were deepened and purified by the controversy. He had been compelled to study
the relation in which the Old and New Testaments stand to one another, and he
came to see that under two names they are one book, that under two forms they
are one revelation; and that as the transplanting of trees from the nursery to
the open field neither alters their nature nor changes their uses, so the
transplanting of the institutions of Divine revelation from the Old Testament,
in the soil of which they were first set, into the New Testament or Gospel
dispensation where they are permanently to flourish, has not in the least
changed their nature and design, but has left them identically the same
institutions: they embody the same principles and subserve the same ends.
Baptism, he argued in short, is circumcision, and circumcision was baptism,
under a different outward form.
Proceeding on this principle, the sum of
what he maintained in all his disputations with the Anabaptists, and in all that
he published from the press and the pulpit, was that inasmuch as circumcision
was administered to infants under the Old Testament, it is clear that they were
regarded as being, by their birth, members of the Church, and so entitled to the
seal of the covenant. In like manner the children of professing parents under
the New Testament are, by their birth, members of the Church, and entitled to
have the Sacrament of baptism administered to them: that the water in baptism,
like the blood in circumcision, denotes the removal of an inward impurity and
the washing by the Spirit in order to salvation; and that as circumcision bound
to the observance of God's ordinances, so baptism imposes an obligation to a
holy life.[12]
CHAPTER 4
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ESTABLISHMENT OF
PROTESTANTISM AT BERN.
Bern prepares to Follow up the Baden
Disputation Resolves to institute a Conference Summoned for January, 1528
Preparations and Invitations The Popish Cantons Protest against holding the
Conference Charles V. Writes Forbidding it Reply of the Bernese German
Deputies Journey of Swiss Deputies Deputies in all 350 Church of the
Cordeliers Ten Theses Convert at the Altar Fete of St. Vincent Matins
and Vespers Unsung The Magnificat Exchanged for a Mourning Hymn Clergy
Subscribe the Reformed Propositions Mass, etc., Abolished Reforming Laws
Act of Civic Grace The Lord's Supper.
THE disputation at Baden had ended in the way we have
already described. The champions engaged in it had returned to their homes. Eck,
as his manner was, went back singing his own praises and loudly vaunting the
great victory he had won. Ecolampadius had returned to Basle, and Haller to
Bern, not at all displeased with the issue of the affair, though they said
little. While the Romanist champions were filling Switzerland with their
boastings, the Protestants quietly prepared to gather in the fruits.
The
pastors, who from various parts of Switzerland had been present at the
disputation, returned home, their courage greatly increased. Moreover, on
arriving in their several spheres of labor they found a fresh interest awakened
in the cause. The disputation had quickened the movement it was meant to crush.
They must follow up their success before the minds of men had time to cool down.
This was the purpose now entertained especially by Bern, the proudest and most
powerful member of the Swiss Confederacy.
Bern had been halting for some
time between two opinions. Ever as it took a few paces forward on the road of
Reform, it would stop, turn round, and cast lingering and regretful looks toward
Rome. But now it resolved it would make its choice once for all between the Pope
and Luther, between the mass and the Protestant sermon. In November, 1527, it
summoned a Diet to debate the question. "Unhappy Helvetia," said some, "thus
torn by religious opinions and conflicts. Alas! the hour when Zwingli introduced
these new doctrines." But was the, state of Switzerland so very sad that it
might justly envy the condition of other countries? As the Swiss looked from his
mountains he beheld the sky of Europe darkened with war-clouds all round. A
fierce tempest had just laid the glory of Rome in the dust. Francis I. and Henry
of England, with Milan, Venice, and Florence, were leaguing against the emperor.
Charles was unsheathing his sword to spill more blood while that of recent
battles was scarcely dry.
The deep scars of internecine conflict and hate
were yet fresh on the soil of Germany. Ferdinand of Austria was claiming the
crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, and fighting to rescue the provinces and
inhabitants of Eastern Europe from the bloody scimitar of the Turk. Such was the
state of Europe when the lords and citizens of Bern assembled in their Great
Council on the Sabbath after Martinmas, 1527, resolved to institute in the
beginning of the coming year a conference on religion, after the model of
Zurich, to the intent "that the truth might not be concealed, but that the
ground of Divine truth, of Christian intelligence, and of saving health might be
discovered, and that a worship in conformity with the Holy Scriptures might be
planted and observed."[1]
The preparations were on a scale commensurate with
the rank of the city and the gravity of the affair. Invitations were sent to the
four Bishops of Lausanne, Basle, Constance, and Sion, who were asked to be
present either in person or by deputy, under penalty of the loss of all rights
and revenues which they claimed within the canton of Bern in virtue of their
episcopal dignity.
The Bernese sent to all the cantons and free towns of
the Helvetic Confederacy, desiring them to send their theologians and learned
men of both parties to the conference, to the end that, freely and without
compulsion to any one, their common Confederacy might make profession of a
common faith. They further ordered that all the pastors and cures in the canton
should repair to Bern on the first Sunday of January, and assist at the
conference from its opening to its close, under pain of deprivation of their
benefices. Addressing the learned men of the State, "Come," said the lords of
Bern, "we undertake for your safety, and guarantee you all liberty in the
expression of your opinions."
One man was honored with a special
invitation, Thomas Murner namely, who, as our readers may recollect, gave so
comic a close to the conference at Baden. His pleasantries threatened to become
serious things indeed to the Swiss. He was daily scattering among the cantons
the most virulent invectives against the Zwinglians, couched in brutal language,
fitted only to kindle the fiercest passions and plunge the Confederacy into war.
Their Excellencies did well in giving the Cordelier an opportunity of proving
his charges in presence of the conference. Murner did not come himself, but took
care to send a violent philippic against the Bernese.[2]
The adherents of the old faith, with one accord,
entered their protest against the holding of such a conference. They claimed to
have won the victory at Baden, but it would seem they wished no more such
victories. The four bishops came first with a strong remonstrance. The seven
Popish cantons followed suit, conjuring the Bernese to desist from a project
that was full of danger, and abide by a Church in which their fathers had been
content to live and die: even the Emperor Charles wrote exhorting them to
abandon their design and await the assembling of a General Council. "The
settlement of the religious question," he added, "does not pertain to any one
city or country, but to all Christians " [3] that is, practically to himself and the Pope. There
could not possibly be stronger proofs of the importance the Romanists attached
to the proposed conference, and the decisive influence it was likely to exert on
the whole of Switzerland. The reply of the Bernese was calm and dignified. "We
change nothing in the twelve articles of the Christian faith; we separate not
from the Church whose head is Christ; what is founded on the Word of God will
abide for ever; we shall only not depart from the Word of God."[4]
All eyes were turned on Zwingli. From far and near
clergy and learned men would be there, but Zwingli must take command of the
army, he must be the Achilles of the fight. The youthful Haller and the
grey-headed Kolb had done battle alone in Bern until now, but the action about
to open required a surer eye and a sturdier arm. Haller wrote in pressing terms
to this "best-beloved brother and champion in the cause of Christ," that he
would be pleased to come. "You know," he said, "how much is here at stake, what
shame, mockery, and disgrace would fall upon the Evangel and upon us if we were
found not to be competent to the task. My brother, fail not."[5]
To this grand conference there came deputies not
from Switzerland only, but from many of the neighboring countries. On New Year's
Eve, 1528, more than a hundred clergy and learned men assembled at Zurich from
Suabia, invitations having been sent to the towns of Southern Germany.[6] The doctors of St. Gall, Schaffhausen, Glarus, Constance,
Ulm, Lindau, Augsburg, and other places also repaired to the rendezvous at
Zurich. On the following morning they all set out for Bern, and with them
journeyed the deputies from Zurich Zwingli, Burgomaster Roist, Conrad
Pellican,[7] Sebastien Hoffmeister, Gaspard Grossmann, a great number
of the rural clergy, Conrad Schmidt, Commander of Kussnacht; Pierre Simmler,
Prior of Kappel; and Henry Bullinger, Regent in the college, of the same
place.[8]
At the head of the cavalcade rode the Burgomaster
of Zurich, Roist. By his side were Zwingli and several of the councilors, also
on horseback. The rest of the deputies followed. A little in advance of the
company rode the town herald, but without his trumpet, for they wished to pass
on without noise. The territory to be traversed on the way to Bern was owned by
the Popish cantons. The deputies had asked a safe-conduct, but were refused.
"There will be abundance of excellent game abroad," was the news bruited through
Popish Switzerland; "let us go a-hunting." If they seriously meant what they
said, their sport was spoiled by the armed escort that accompanied the
travelers. Three hundred men with arquebuss on shoulder marched right and left
of them.[9] In this fashion they moved onwards to Bern, to take
captive to Christ a proud city which no enemy had been able to storm. They
entered its gates on the 4th of January, and found already arrived there
numerous deputies, among others Ecolampadius of Basle, and Bucer and Capito of
Strasburg.
The Bernese were anxious above all things to have the question
between the two Churches thoroughly sifted. For this end they invited the ablest
champions on both sides, guaranteeing them all freedom of debate. They heard of
a worthy Cordelier at Grandson, named De Marie Palud, a learned man, but too
poor to be able to leave home. The lords of Bern dispatched a special messenger
with a letter to this worthy monk, earnestly urging him to come to the
conference, and bidding the courier protect his person and defray his expenses
on the road.[10] If Eck and the other great champions of Rome were absent,
it was because they chose not to come. The doctor of Ingolstadt would not sit in
an assembly of heretics where no proof, unless drawn from the Word of God, would
be received, nor any explanation of it admitted unless it came from the same
source. Did any one ever hear anything so unreasonable? asked Eck. Has the Bible
a tongue to refute those who oppose it? The roll-call showed a great many
absentees besides Eck. The names of the Bishops of Basle, Sion, Constance, and
Lausanne were shouted out in accents that rung through the church, but the
echoes of the secretary's voice were the only answer returned. The assemblage
amounted to 350 persons priests, pastors, scholars, and councilors from
Switzerland and Germany.
The Church of the Cordeliers was selected as the
place of conference. A large platform had been erected, and two tables placed on
it. At the one table sat the Popish deputies, round the other were gathered the
Protestant disputants. Between the two sat four secretaries, from whom a solemn
declaration, tantamount to an oath, had been exacted, that they would make a
faithful record of all that was said and done. Four presidents were chosen to
rule in the debate.[11]
The disputation lasted twenty consecutive days,
with the single interruption of one day, the fete of St. Vincent, the patron
saint of Bern. It commenced on the 6th January, and closed on the 27th. On
Sunday as on other days did the conference assemble. Each day two sessions were
held one in the morning, the other after dinner; and each was opened with
prayer.[12]
Ten propositions [13] a were put down to be debated. They were declarations of
the Protestant doctrine, drawn so as to comprehend all the points in controversy
between the two Churches. The discussion on the mass occupied two whole days,
and was signalized at its close by a dramatic incident which powerfully
demonstrated where the victory lay.
From the Church of the Cordeliers,
Zwingli passed to the cathedral, to proclaim from its pulpit, in the hearing of
the people, the proofs he had maintained triumphantly in the debate. At one of
the side altars stood a priest, arrayed in pall and chasuble and all necessary
sacerdotal vestments for saying mass. He was just about to begin the service
when Zwingli's voice struck upon his car. He paused to listen. "He ascended into
heaven," said the Reformer in a slow and solemn voice, reciting the creed; "and
sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty," pausing again; "from
thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." "These three articles,"
said Zwingli, "cannot stand with the mass." The words flashed conviction into
the mind of the priest. His resolution was taken on the spot. Stripping off his
priestly robes and flinging them on the altar, he turned his eyes in the
direction of Zwingli, and said in the hearing of all in the cathedral, "If the
mass rest on no better foundation, I will neither read it now, nor read it
more."[14] This victory at the very foot of the altar was hailed as
an omen of a full triumph at no great distance.
Three days thereafter was
the fete of St. Vincent. The canons of the college waited on the magistrates to
know the pleasure of their Excellencies respecting its celebration. They had
been wont to observe the day with great solemnity in Bern. "Those of you," said
the magistrates to the canons, "who can subscribe the 'ten Reformed
propositions' ought not to keep the festival; those of you who cannot subscribe
them, may." Already the sweet breath of toleration begins to be felt. On St.
Vincent's Eve all the bells were tolled to warn the citizens that tomorrow was
the festival of the patron saint of their city. The dull dawn of a January
morning succeeded; the sacristans made haste to open the gates of the cathedral,
to light the tapers, to prepare the incense, and to set in order the
altar-furniture: but, alas! there came neither, priest nor worshipper at the
hour of service. no matins were sung under the cathedral roof that
morning.
The hour of vespers came. The scene of the morning was renewed.
No evensong broke the silence. The organist was seated before his instrument,
but he waited in vain for the coming of canon to mingle his chant, as the wont
was, with the peal of the organ. When he looked about him, half in terror, and
contrasted the solitude around him with the crowd of vested canons and kneeling
worshippers, which used on such occasions to fill choir and nave of the
cathedral, and join their voices with the majestic strains of the Magnificat,
his heart was full of sadness; the glory had departed. He began to play on the
organ the Church's mourning hymn, "O wretched Judas, what hast thou done that
thou hast betrayed thy Lord?" and the music pealed along roof and aisle of the
empty church. It sounded like a dirge over the fall of the Roman worship. "It
was the last piece," says Ruchat, "that was played on that organ, for soon
thereafter it was broken in pieces."[15]
The conference was at an end. The Reformers had won
an easy victory. Indeed Zwingli could not help complaining that Eck and other
practiced champions on the Roman side had not been present, in order to permit a
fuller development of the strength of the Protestant argument.[16] Conrad Treger of Friburg, Provincial of the Augustines,
did his best, in the absence of the doctor of Ingolstadt, to maintain the waning
glory and tottering authority of Rome; but it is not surprising that he failed
where Eck himself could not have succeeded. The disputants were restricted to
Scripture, and at this weapon Zwingli excelled all the men of his time.[17]
The theologians had done their part: their
Excellencies of Bern must now do theirs. Assembling the canons and ecclesiastics
of the city and canton, the magistrates asked them if they wished to subscribe
the Reformed theses. The response was hearty. All the canons subscribed the
articles, as did also the Prior and Sub-Prior of the Dominicans, with six: of
their brethren, and fifty-two cures and other beneficed clergy of the city as
well as the rural parts.[18]
Having dismissed the members of the conference with
honor, defraying the expenses of those they had specially invited, and
appointing a guard of 200 armed men to escort the Zurich deputies through the
territory of the Five Cantons, the magistrates set about bringing the worship
into conformity with the Reformed creed which the clergy had so unanimously
subscribed. The lords in council decreed that the observance of the mass should
cease in Bern, as also in those landward parishes whose cures had adopted the
Reformed confession. The sacrifice abolished, there was no further need of the
altar. The altars were pulled down. A material object of worship stands or falls
with a material sacrifice; and so the images shared the fate of the altars.
Their fragments, strewed on the porch and floor of the churches, were profanely
trodden upon by the feet of those whose knees had so recently been bent in
adoration of them. There were those who witnessed these proceedings with horror,
and in whose eyes a church without an altar and without an image had neither
beauty nor sanctity.
"When the good folks of the Oberland come to
market," said these men, "they will be happy to put up their cattle in the
cathedral."
An august transaction did that same building albeit its
altars were overturned and its idols demolished witness on the 2nd of February,
1528. On that day all the burgesses and inhabitants of Bern, servants as well as
masters, were assembled in the cathedral, at the summons of the magistrates, and
swore with uplifted hands to stand by the council in all their measures for the
Reformation of religion.[19] Secured on this side, the magistrates published an edict
on the 7th of February, in thirteen articles, of which the following are the
chief provisions:
1st. They approved and confirmed
the "ten propositions," ordaining their subjects to receive and conform
themselves to them, and taking God to witness that they believed them to be
agreeable to the Word of God.
2nd. They released their subjects from the
jurisdiction of the Bishops of Basle, Constance, Sion, and Lausanne.
3rd.
They discharged the deans and chapters from their oath of obedience, the clergy
from their vow of celibacy, and the people from the law of meats and
festivals.
4th. The ecclesiastical goods they apportioned to the payment
of annuities to monks and nuns, to the founding of schools and hospitals, and
the relief of the poor. Not a penny did they appropriate to their own use.[20]
5th. Games of chance they prohibited; the
taverns they ordered to be closed at nine o'clock; houses of infamy they
suppressed, banishing their wretched inmates from the city.[21]
Following in the steps of Zurich, they passed a law
forbidding the foreign service. What deep wounds had that service inflicted on
Switzerland! Orphans and widows, withered and mutilated forms, cowardly
feelings, and hideous vices had all entered with it! Henceforward no Bernese was
to be at liberty to sell his sword to a foreign potentate or shed his own or
another's blood in a quarrel that did not belong to him. In fine, "they made an
inscription," says Sleidan, "in golden letters, upon a pillar, of the day and
the year when Popery was abolished, to stand as a monument to posterity."[22]
The foreign deputies did not depart till they had
seen their Excellencies of Bern honor the occasion of their visit by an act of
civic clemency and grace. They opened the prison doors to two men who had
forfeited their lives for sedition. Further, they recalled all the exiles. "If a
king or emperor," said they, "had visited our city, we would have released the
malefactors, exhorting them to amendment. And now that the King of kings, and
the Prince who owns the homage of our hearts, the Son of God and our Brother,
has visited our city, and has opened to us the doors of an eternal prison, shall
we not do honor to him by showing a like grace to those who have offended
against us? " [23]
One other act remained to seal the triumph which
the Gospel had won in the city and canton of Bern. On Easter Sunday the Lord's
Supper was celebrated after what they believed to be the simple model of
primitive times. "That Sunday was a high day." Bern for centuries had been in
the tomb of a dark superstition; but Bern is risen again, and with a calm joy
she celebrates, with holy rites, her return from the grave. Around the great
minister lies the hushed city; in the southern sky stand up the snowy piles of
the Oberland, filling the air with a dazzling brightness. The calm is suddenly
broken by the deep tones of the great bell summoning the citizens to the
cathedral. Thither all ranks bend their steps; dressed with ancient Swiss
simplicity, grave and earnest as their fathers were when marching to the
battle-field, they troop in, and now all are gathered under the roof of their
ancient minister: the councilor, the burgess, the artizan; the servant with his
master, and by the side of the hoar patriarch the fresh form and sparkling eye
of youth. On that cathedral floor is now no altar; on its wall no image. No
bannered procession advances along its aisles, and no cloud of incense is seen
mounting to its roof; yet never had their time-honored temple the house where
their fathers had worshipped appeared more venerable, and holy, than it did in
the eyes of the Bernese this day.
Over the vast assembly rises the
pulpit; on it lies the Bible, from which Berthold Haller is to address to them
the words of life. Stretching from side to side of the building is the Communion
table, covered with a linen cloth: the snows of their Alps are not whiter. The
bread and the cup alone are seen on that table. How simple yet awful these
symbols! How full of a gracious efficacy, and an amazing but blessed import,
presenting as they do to the faith of the worshipper that majestic Sufferer, and
that sublime death by which death has been destroyed! The Mighty One, he who
stood before Pilate, but now sitteth on the right hand of God, is present in the
midst of them, seen in the memorials of his passion, and felt by the working of
his Spirit.
The sermon ended, Haller descends from the pulpit, and takes
his stand, along with the elders of the flock, at the Communion table. With eyes
and hands lifted up he gives thanks for this memorial and seal of redemption.
Then a hymn, sung in responses, echoes through the building. How noble and
thrilling the melody when with a thousand tongues a thousand hearts utter their
joy! The song is at an end; the hushed stillness again reigns in aisle and nave
of the vast fabric. Hailer takes the bread, and breaking it in the sight of all,
gives it to the communicants, saying, "This is my body; take, eat." He takes the
cup, and says, "This cup is the New Testament in my blood, shed for you; drink
ye all of it." Within that "sign" lies wrapped up, to their faith, the Divine
and everlasting "thing signified."
They receive, with the bread and wine,
a full forgiveness, an eternal life in short, Christ and the benefits of his
redemption. Faith opens the deep fountains of their soul, their love and sorrow
and joy find vent in a flood of tears; scarcely have these fallen when, like the
golden light after the shower, there comes the shout of gladness, the song of
triumph: "They sing a new song, saying, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to
receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and
blessing: for thou hast redeemed us unto God with thy blood, out of every
kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation: and hast made us unto our God kings
and priests, and we shall reign on the earth."[24] Such was the worship that succeeded the pantomimic rites
and histrionic devotion of the Romish Church.
CHAPTER 5
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Top
REFORMATION CONSUMMATED IN BASLE.
All
Switzerland Moved The Oberland Surprise and Anger of its Herdsmen Basle
Its Importance Ecolampadius Protestants of Basle Petition for Abolition of
Mass Popular Conflicts Temporizing Policy of Council Citizens take Arms
New Delays by the Council New Demands of the People The Night of the 8th of
February The City Barricaded Two Thousand Men in Arms The Senate's
Half-concession The Idols Broken Idols of Little Basle Edict of Senate
Establishing the Reform Ash-Wednesday Oath of the People Exodus of the
Priests Departure of Erasmus.
THE triumph of the Gospel in Bern was felt on sides.
It gave new life to the Protestant movement in every part of the country. On the
west it opened the door for the entrance of the Protestant faith into
French-speaking Switzerland. Farel was already in those parts, and had commenced
those labors which we shall afterwards have occasion to trace to that grand
issue to which a greater was destined to conduct them. On the east, in German
Helvetia, the movement, quickened by the impulse communicated from Bern, was
consummated in those towns and villages where for some time it had been in
progress. From the Grisons, on the Italian frontier, to the borders of the Black
Forest, where Basle is washed by the waters of the Rhine, the influence of
Bern's accession was felt, and the Protestant movement quickened.
The
great mountains in the center of the land, where the glaciers have their seat,
and the great rivers their birth-place, were alone unmoved. Not unmoved indeed,
for the victory at Bern sent a thrill of surprise and horror through the
Oberland. Shut up with their flocks in the mists and gorges of their mountains,
living apart from the world, spending their days without books, untrained to
reflect, nor ever coming in contact with a new idea, these mountaineers so
brave, so independent, but so ignorant and superstitious, had but one aim, even
to abide steadfast to the traditions of their fathers, and uphold Rome. That
Switzerland should abandon the faith it had held from immemorial times they
accounted a shameful and horrible thing. They heard of the revolution going on
in the plains with indignation. A worship without mass, and a church without an
image, were in their eyes no better than atheism. That the Virgin should be
without matins or vespers was simply blasphemy. They trembled to dwell in a land
which such enormities were beginning to pollute. They let drop ominous threats,
which sounded like the mutterings of the thunder before the storm bursts and
discharges its lightning's and hailstones on the plains below. Such a tempest
was soon to break over Switzerland, but first the work of Reformation must
proceed a little further.
Next to Zurich and Bern, Basle was the city of
greatest importance in the Swiss Confederacy. Its numerous and rich foundations,
its university, founded as we have said by Eneas Sylvius, nearly a century
before, its many learned men, and its famous printing-presses enabled it to
wield a various and powerful influence. It was the first spot in all Helvetia on
which the Protestant seed had been cast. So early as 1505, we saw Thomas
Wittembach entering its gates, and bringing with him the knowledge of the sacred
tongues, and of that Divine wisdom of which these tongues have been made the
vehicle. A few years later we find Zwingli and Leo Juda sitting at his feet, and
listening to his not yet fully comprehended anticipations of a renovated age and
a restored faith.[1] The seed that fell from the hand of Wittembach was
reinforced by the writings of Luther, which the famous printer Frobenius
scattered so plentifully on this same soil. After this second sowing came the
preacher Capito, to be succeeded by the eloquent Hedio, both of whom watered
that seed by their clear and pious expositions of the Gospels. In 1522, a yet
greater evangelist settled in Basle, Ecolampadius, under whom the Reformation of
this important city was destined, after years of waiting and conflict, to be
consummated. Ecolampadius, so scholarly, so meek and pious, was to the prompt
and courageous Zwingli what Melancthon was to Luther.
With all his great
parts, Ecolampadius was somewhat deficient in decision and courage. We have seen
him combating alone at Baden in 1526, and at Bern by the side of Zwingli in
1528, yet all the while he had not taken the decisive step in his own city. Not
that he felt doubt on the question of doctrine; it was the dangers that deterred
him from carrying over Basle to the side of Protestantism. But he came back from
Bern a stronger man. The irresolute evangelist returned the resolved Reformer;
and the learned Basle is now to follow the example of the warlike
Bern.
At this time (1528) the Lutherans were in a great majority in
Basle. They were 2,500 against 600 Roman Catholics.[2] Tumults were of frequent occurrence, arising out of the
religious differences. On the 23rd December the Reformed assembled without arms,
to the number of 300 and upwards, and petitioned the magistrates to abolish the
observance of the mass, saying that it was "all abomination before God," and
asking why "to please the priests they should draw down his anger on themselves
and their children." They further craved of the magistrates that they should
interdict the Pope's preachers, till "they had proved their doctrine from the
Word of God," and they offered at the same time to take back the mass as soon as
the "Roman Catholics had shown from the Scriptures that it was good," which
sounded like a promise to restore it at the Kalends of April. The Roman
Catholics of Little Basle, which lay on the other bank of the Rhine, and was
mostly inhabited by Romanists, assembled in arms, and strove to obstruct the
passage of the petitioners to the town hall. The Senate, making trial of soft
words, advised both parties to retire to their homes, and the hour we presume
being late " go to sleep."[3] The council affected to be neutral, the spirit of Erasmus
pervading the higher ranks of Basle. Two days thereafter, being Christmas Day,
both parties again assembled. This time the Reformed came armed as well as the
Roman Catholics. The Roman Catholics were the first to stir; the terrible news
that they were arming circulated from house to house, and brought out the
Lutherans, to the number of about 800. The alarm still flying from door to door
roused others, and at last the number amounted to 3,000. [4] Both parties remained under arms all night. After four
days deliberation, during which the streets were in a state of tumult, and all
the gates were closed except two, which were strongly guarded, the Senate hit on
an expedient which they thought would suffice to restore the peace between the
two parties. They enacted that the "Evangel" should be preached in all churches,
and as regarded mass that every man should be at liberty to act as his
conscience might direct; no one would be prevented giving attendance on it, and
no one would be compelled to do so.
This ordinance made the scales
incline on the side of the Reformers. It was a step in the direction of free
preaching and free worship; the Reformed, however, refused to accept it as a
basis of peace. The agitation still continued. Basle wore the appearance of a
camp, which a sudden blow from either side, or a rash word, might at any moment
change into a battle-field. News of what was going on in Basle flew through the
Confederation. From both the Reformed and Popish cantons came deputies to offer
their meditation. It was whispered among the Roman Catholics that the Lutherans
were bringing in their confederates to fight for them. This rumor raised their
fury to a yet higher pitch. A war of hearths seemed imminent. The Senate made
another attempt to restore the peace. They decreed that a public disputation on
the mass should take place on the second Sabbath after Pentecost, and that
meanwhile in three of the churches only should mass be celebrated, and that only
one mass a day should be said, high mass namely.[5] Now, thought the magistrates, we have found the means of
restoring calm to the agitated waters. Basle will resume its lettered
quiet.
These hopes were doomed to be disappointed. The publication of the
edict evoked a greater tempest than ever. On the reading of it, loud and
vehement voices resounded on both sides. "No mass no mass not even a single
one we will die sooner."[6] Counter-shouts were raised by the Romanists. "We are ready
to die for the mass," cried they, waving their arms menacingly to add to the
vehemence of their voices; "if they reject the mass to arms! to arms!"[7]
The magistrates were almost at their wit's end.
Their temporizing, instead of appeasing the tempest, was but lashing it into
greater fury. They hit on another device, which but showed that their stock of
expedients was nearly exhausted. They forbade the introduction of the German
psalms into those churches where it had not been the wont to sing them.[8] It was hardly to be expected that so paltry a concession
would mollify the Roman Catholics.
The Romish party, fearing that the day
was going against them, had recourse to yet more violent measures. They refused
the decree to hold a disputation on the mass after Pentecost. One thing was
clear to them, that whether the mass was founded on the Word of God or not, it
attracted to Basle large sums from the Popish districts, every penny of which
would be cut off were it abolished. Seeing then, if its proof were dubious, its
profit was most indubitable, they were resolved to uphold it, and would preach
it more zealously than ever. The pulpits began to thunder against heresy;
Sebastien Muller, preacher in the Cathedral of St. Peter, mounted the pulpit on
the 24th January, 1529, and losing his head, at no time a cool one, in the
excess of his zeal, he broke out in a violent harangue, and poured forth a
torrent of abusive epithets and sarcastic mockeries against the Reformed. His
sermon kindled into rage the mass of his hearers, and some Lutherans who were
present in the audience were almost in risk of being torn in pieces.[9]
This fresh outbreak quickened the zeal on the other
side, not indeed into violence, but activity. The Reformed saw that the question
must be brought to an issue, either for or against the mass, and that until it
was so their lives would not be safe in Basle. They, accordingly, charged their
committee to carry their complaint to the Senate, and to demand that the
churches should be provided with "good preachers" who would "proclaim to them
the pure Word of God." Their Excellencies received them graciously, and promised
them a favorable answer. The magistrates were still sailing on two tacks.[10]
Fifteen days passed away, but there came no answer
from the Senate. Meanwhile, a constant fire of insults, invectives, and
sanguinary menaces was kept up by the Roman Catholics upon the Reformed, which
the latter bore with wonderful patience seeing that they formed the vast
majority of the citizens, and that those who assailed them with these taunts and
threatenings were mostly the lower orders from the suburb of the Little Basle.
The Reformed began to suspect the Senate of treachery; and seeing no ending to
the affair but a bloody encounter, in which one of the two parties would perish,
they convoked an assembly of the adherents of the Reformation. On the 8th
February, 800 men met in the Church of the Franciscans, and after prayer to God,
that he would direct them to those measures that would be for his glory, they
entered on their deliberations.
To the presence of "the fathers and
relatives of the priests" in the council they attributed that halting policy
which had brought Basle to the edge of an abyss, mad resolved, as the only
effectual cure, that the council should be asked to purge itself.[11] They agreed, moreover, that the election of the senators
henceforward should be on a democratic basis above-board, and in the hands of
the people.
"Tomorrow," said the council, somewhat startled, "we will
give you an answer."
"Your reply," rejoined the citizens, "must be given
tonight."
No eyes were to be closed that night in Basle. The Senate had
been sitting all day. There was time for an answer, yet none had been
forthcoming. They had been put off till tomorrow. What did that mean? Was it not
possible that the intervening night would give birth to some dark plot which the
Senate might even now be hatching against the public safety? They were 1,200
men, all well armed. They sent again to the council-hall to say, "Tonight, not
tomorrow, we must have your answer." It was nine of the evening. The Senate
replied that at so late an hour they could not decide on a matter of so great
moment, but that to-morrow they should without fail give their answer, and
meanwhile they begged the citizens to retire in peace to their homes.[12]
The citizens resolved not to separate. On the
contrary they sent once more, and for the last time, to the Senate, to demand
their answer that very night. Their Excellencies thought good no longer to
trifle with the armed burghers. Longer delay might bring the whole 1,200
warriors into the Senate House. To guard against an irruption so formidable,
they sent a messenger when near midnight to say that all members of Senate who
were relatives of priests would be excluded from that body, and as to the rest
of their demands, all things touching religion and policy would be regulated
according to their wish.[13]
The answer was so far satisfactory; but the
citizens did not view it as a concession of their demands in full. Their enemies
might yet spring a mine upon them; till they had got something more than a
promise, they would not relax their vigilance or retire to their dwellings.
Dividing themselves into three companies they occupied three different quarters
of the city.
They planted six pieces of cannon before the Hotel de Ville;
they barricaded the streets by drawing chains across them; they took possession
of the arsenal; they posted strong guards at the gates and in the towers on the
wall; and kindling immense torches of fir-trees, they set them on high places to
dispel with their flickering beams the darkness that brooded over the city. So
passed the night of the 8th February, 1529, in Basle.
The leaders of the
Romanists began to quail before the firm attitude of the citizens. The
burgomaster, Henry Meltinger with his son-in-law, and several councilors, stole,
under cover of the darkness, to the Rhine, and embarking in one of the boats
that lay moored on its banks, made their escape on its rapid current. Their
flight, which became known over-night, increased the popular uneasiness and
suspicion. "They are gone to fetch the Austrians," said the people. "Let us make
ready against their return." When day broke they had 2,000 men in arms.[14]
At eight in the morning the Senate sent to the
committee of the citizens to say that they had designated twelve senators, who
were to absent themselves when religious affairs were treated of, but that the
men so designated refused to submit unconditionally, and had appealed their
cause for a hearing before the other cantons. The citizens were willing to meet
them there, but on this condition, that the appellants paid their own expenses,
seeing they were prosecuting their own private quarrel, whereas the citizens
defending the cause of the commonwealth and posterity were entitled to have
their charges defrayed from the public treasury.[15] On this point the Senate sat deliberating till noon
without coming to any conclusion. Again the cry of treachery was raised. The
patience of the burghers was exhausted. They sent a detachment of forty men to
inspect all the posts in the city in case of surprise. The troops marched
straight to the Cathedral of St. Peter. One of them raising his halberd struck a
blow with all his force on a side door. It was that of a closet in which the
idols had been stowed away. The door was shivered; one of the images tumbled
out, and was broken in pieces on the stony floor. A beginning having been made,
the idols, one after another, were rolled out, and soon a pile of fragments
heads, trunks, and limbs covered the floor. Erasmus wondered that "they
wrought no miracle to save themselves, for if all accounts were true, prodigies
had been done on more trivial occasions."
The priests raised an outcry,
and attempted resistance, but this only hastened the consummation they deplored.
The people came running to the cathedral. The priests fled before the hurricane
that had swept into the temple, and shutting themselves up in the vestry,
listened with dismay and trembling, as one and another of the idols was
overturned, and crash succeeded crash; the altars were demolished, the pictures
were torn down, and the fragments being carried out and piled up, and set on
fire in the open squares, continued to burn till far in the evening, the
citizens standing round and warming their hands at the blaze in the chilly air.
The Senate, thinking to awe the excited and insurgent citizens, sent to ask them
what they did. "We are doing in an hour," said they, "what you have not been
able to do in three years."[16]
The iconoclasts made the round of Basle, visiting
all its churches, and destroying with pike and axe all the images they found.
The Romanists of Little Basle, knowing the storm that was raging on the other
side of the Rhine, and fearing that it would cross the bridge to their suburb,
so amply replenished with sacred shrines, offered to purge their churches with
their own hands. The images of Little Basle were more tenderly dealt with than
those of St. Peter's and other city churches. Their worshippers carried them
reverently to upper rooms and garrets, and hid them, in the hope that when
better times returned they would be able to bring them out of the darkness, and
set them up in their old places. The suburban idols thus escaped the cremation
that overtook their less fortunate brethren of St. Ulric and St. Alban.[17]
The magistrates of Basle, deeming it better to
march in the van of a Reform than be dragged at the tail of a revolution, now
granted all the demands of the citizens. They enacted, 1st, that the citizens
should vote in the election of the members of the two councils; 2ndly, that from
this day the idols and mass should be abolished in the city and the canton, and
the churches provided with good ministers to preach the Word of God; 3rdly, that
in all matters appertaining to religion and the commonweal, 260 of the members
of the guilds should be admitted to deliberate with the Senate.[18] The people had carried the day. They had secured the
establishment of the Protestant worship, and they had placed the State on a
constitutional and popular basis. Such were the triumphs of these two eventful
days. The firmness of the people had overcome the neutrality of the Senate, the
power of the hierarchy, the disfavor of the learned, and had achieved the two
liberties without shedding a drop of blood. "The commencement of the Reformation
at Basle," says Ruchat, "was not a little tumultuous, but its issue was happy,
and all the troubles that arose about religion were terminated without injury to
a single citizen in his life or goods."
The third day, 10th of February,
was Ash-Wednesday. The men of Basle resolved that their motto that day should be
"Ashes to ashes." The images that had escaped cremation on the evening of the
8th were collected in nine piles and burned on the Cathedral Square.[19] The Romanists, Ecolampadius informs us, "turned away their
eyes, shuddering with horror." Others remarked, "the idols are keeping their
Ash-Wednesday." The idols had the mass as their companion in affliction,
fragments of the demolished altars having been burned in the same
fires.
On Friday, 12th of February, all the trades of the city met and
approved the edict of the Senate, as an "irrevocable decree," and on the
following day they took the oath, guild by guild, of fidelity to the new order
of things. On next Sunday, in all the churches, the Psalms were chanted in
German, in token of their joy.[20]
This revolution was followed by an exodus of
priests, scholars, and monks. The rushing Rhine afforded all facilities of
transport. No one fled from dread of punishment, for a general amnesty, covering
all offenses, had set all fears at rest. It was dislike of the Protestant faith
that made the fugitives leave this pleasant residence. The bishop, carrying with
him his title but not his jurisdiction, fixed his residence at Poirentru. The
monks peaceably departed "with their harems"[21] to Friburg. Some of the chairs in the university were
vacated, but new professors, yet more distinguished, came to fill them; among
whom were Oswald Myconius, Sebastien Munster, and Simon Grynaeus. Last and
greatest, Erasmus too departed. Basle was his own romantic town; its cathedral
towers, its milky river, the swelling hills, with their fir-trees, all were dear
to him. Above all, he took delight in the society of its dignified clergy, its
polite scholars, and the distinguished strangers who here had gathered round
him. From Basle this monarch of the schools had ruled the world of letters. But
Protestantism had entered it, and he could breathe its air no longer. He must
endure daily mortification's on those very streets where continual incense had
been offered to him; and rather than do so he would leave the scene of his
glory, and spend the few years that might yet remain to him
elsewhere.
Embarking on the Rhine in presence of the magistrates and a
crowd of citizens, who had assembled to do him honor, he spoke his adieu to his
much-loved Basle as the boat was unmooring: "Jam Basilea vale!"[22] (Basle, farewell, farewell!) and departed for Friburg, in
Brisgau.[23]
CHAPTER 6
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LEAGUE OF THE FIVE
CANTONS WITH AUSTRIA SWITZERLAND DIVIDED.
The Light Spreading The
Oberland in Darkness The Gospel Invades the Mountains League of the Five
Cantons with Austria Persecution Begun Martyrdom of Pastor Keyser The
Christian Coburghery The Breach among the Swiss Cantons Widening Dean
Bullinger The Men of Gaster Idols that won't March Violence of the Popish
Cantons Effort of Zurich to Avert War-The Attempt Abortive War Proclaimed
Zwingli's Part in the Affair Was it Justifiable?
IT is a great crime to force an entrance for the
truth by the sword, and compel unwilling necks to bow to it. It is not less a
crime to bar its path by violence when it is seeking to come in by legitimate
and peaceable means. This was the error into which the five primitive cantons of
Switzerland now changed. Their hardy inhabitants, as they looked down from under
the overhanging glaciers and icy pinnacles of their great mountains, beheld the
new faith spreading over the plains at their feet. It had established itself in
Zurich; the haughty lords of Bern had welcomed it; Schaffhausen and St. Gall had
opened their gates to it; and even Basle, that abode of scholars, had turned
from Plato and Aristotle, to sit at the feet of apostles. Along the chain of the
Jura, by the shores of the Leman, to the very gates of a city as yet immersed in
darkness, but destined soon to become the brightest luminary in that brilliant
constellation, was the light travelling. But the mountains of the Oberland,
which are the first to catch the natural day, and to flash their early fires all
over Switzerland, were the last to be touched with the Reformed dawn now rising
on Christendom. With the light brightening all round, they remained in the
darkness.
The herdsmen of these cantons saw with grief and alarm the
transformation which was passing upon their country. The glory was departing
from it. They felt only horror as messenger after messenger arrived in their
mountains and told them what was transacting on the plains below; that the
altars at which their fathers had worshipped were being cast down; that the
images to which they had bent the knee were being flung into the flames; that
priest and monk were being chased away; that the light of holy taper was being
extinguished, and that silence was falling on those holy orisons whose melodies
welcomed the morn and greeted the departure of the day; that all those rites and
customs, in short, which, were wont to beautify and sanctify their land were
being abolished, and a defiling and defiant heresy was rearing its front in
their stead. The men of the Forest Cantons learned with yet greater indignation
and dismay that this pestilent faith had come to their very gates, and was
knocking for admission. Nay, it was even penetrating into their grand valleys.
This was not to be borne. They must make haste, for soon their own altars would
be overturned, their crucifixes trampled in the mire, and the light of their
holy tapers extinguished. They resolved to oppose the entrance of the
Reformation as they would that of the plague; but they could oppose it by the
only means of resistance which they understood the faggot and the
sword.
Their alarm was intensified when they learned that Protestantism,
performing a flank movement, was attacking them in the rear. It had crossed the
Alps, and was planting itself in Italy. There was at that time (1530) a little
band of Carmelite monks in Locarno, on the fertile and lovely shores of Lake
Maggiore, who had come to the knowledge of a free salvation, and who, under the
protection of Zurich, whose suzerainty then extended to that part of Italy, were
laboring to initiate the Reformation of their native land. The men of the Five
Cantons saw themselves about to be isolated, shut up in their mountains, cut off
even from Italy, the cradle of their faith. They could sit still no
longer.
But whither shall they turn? They could not wage war themselves
against the Reformed cantons. These cantons were superior in men and money, and
they could not hope to cope successfully with them. They must seek other allies.
By doing so they would break the league of brotherhood with the other cantons,
for they had resigned the right of forming new alliances without the consent of
all the other members of the Federation; but they hoped to conduct the
negotiations in secret. They turned their eyes to Austria. This was the last
quarter from which a Swiss canton might have been expected to seek help. Had
they forgotten the grievous yoke that Austria had made them bear in other days?
Had they forgotten the blood it cost their fathers to break that yoke? Were they
now to throw away what they had fought for on the gory fields of Morgarten and
Sempach? They were prepared to do this. Religious antipathy overcame national
hatred; terror of Protestantism suspended their dread of their traditional foe.
Even Austria was astonished, and for awhile was in doubt of the good faith of
the Five Cantons. They were in earnest, however, and the result was that a
league was concluded, and sworn to on both sides, the 23rd of April, 1529, at
Waldshut.[1] The Switzer of Unterwalden and Uri mounted the peacock's
feather, the Austrian badge, and grasped in friendship the hands of the men with
whom his fathers had contended to the death. The leading engagement in the
league was that all attempts at forming new sects in the Five Cantons should be
punished with death, and that Austria should give her aid, if need were, by
sending the Five Cantons 6,000 foot-soldiers, and 400 horse, with the proper
complement of artillery. It was further agreed that, if the war should make it
necessary, the Reformed cantons should be blockaded, and all provisions
intercepted.[2]
Finding Austria at their back, the men of the Five
Cantons had now recourse, in order to defend the orthodoxy of their valleys, to
very harsh measures indeed. They began to fine, imprison, torture, and put to
death the professors of the Reformed faith. On the 22rid May, 1529, Pastor
Keyser was seized as he was proceeding to the scene of his next day's labor,
which lay in the district between the lakes of Zurich and Wallenstadt, and
carried to Schwitz. He was condemned; and although the cities of Zurich and
Glarus interceded for him, he was carried to the stake and burned. When he heard
his sentence he fell a-weeping; but soon he was so strengthened from above that
he went joyfully to the stake, and praised the Lord Jesus in the midst of the
flames for accounting him worthy of the honor of dying for the Gospels.[3]
Thus did the men of the mountains fling down their
defiance to the inhabitants of the plains. The latter had burned dead idols, the
former responded by burning living men. This was the first-fruits of the
Austrian alliance. You must stop in your path, said Unterwalden to Zurich, you
must set up the altars you have cast down, recall the priests you have chased
away, rekindle the tapers you have extinguished, or take the penalty. The Forest
Cantons were resolved to deal in this fashion, not only with all Protestants
caught on their own territory, but also with the heresy of the plains. They
would carry the purging sword to Zurich itself. They would smother the movement
of which it was the center in the red ashes of its overthrow. Fiercer every day
burned their bigotry. The priests of Rome and the pensioners of France and Italy
were exciting the passions of the herdsmen. The clang of arms was resounding
through their mountains. A new crusade was preparing: in a little while an army
of fanatics would be seen descending the mountains, on the sanguinary but pious
work of purging Zurich, Bern, and the other cantons from the heresy into which
they had sunk.
Zwingli had long foreseen the crisis that had now arisen.
He felt that the progress of the religious Reform in his native land would
eventually divide Switzerland into two camps. The decision of the Forest Cantons
would, he felt, be given on the side of the old faith, to which their
inhabitants were incurably wedded by their habits, their traditions, and their
ignorance; and they were likely, he foresaw, to defend it with the sword. In the
prospect of such an emergency, he thought it but right to themselves and to
their cause that the Reformed cantons should form a league of self-defense. He
proposed (1527) a Christian Co-burghery, in which all the professors of the
Reformed faith might be united in a new Reformed federation. The suggestion
approved itself to the great body of his co-patriots. Constance was the first
city to intimate its adhesion to the new state; Bern, St. Gall, Mulhansen,
Basle, Schaffhausen, and Strasburg followed in the order in which we have placed
them. By the end of the year 1529 this new federation was complete.
Every
day multiplied the points of irritation between the Reformed 'red the Popish
cantons. The wave of Reformed influence from Bern had not yet spent itself, and
new towns and villages were from time to time proclaiming their adhesion to the
Reformed faith. Each new conversion raised the alarm and animosity of the Five
Cantons to a higher pitch of violence. In Bremgarten the gray-haired Dean
Bullinger thus addressed his congregation from the pulpit, February, 1529: "I
your pastor have taught you these three-and-thirty years, walking in blind
darkness, what I myself have learned from blind guides. May God pardon my sin
done in ignorance, and enlighten me by his grace, so that henceforth I may lead
the flock committed to me into the pastures of his Word." The town council,
which a year before had promised to the Five Cantons to keep the town in the old
faith, deposed the dean from his office. Nevertheless, Bremgarten soon
thereafter passed over to the side of Protestantism, and the dean's son, Henry
Bullinger, was called to fill his father's place, and proved an able preacher
and courageous champion of the Reformed faith.[4]
The men of Gaster, a district which was under the
joint jurisdiction of Popish Schwitz and Protestant Glarus, in carrying out
their Reform, threw a touch of humor into their iconoclastic acts, which must
have 'brought a grim smile upon the faces of the herdsmen and warriors of the
0berland when told of it. Having removed all the images from their churches, in
the presence of the deputies from Schwitz sent to prevail on them to abide in
the old religion, they carried the idols to a point where four roads crossed.
Setting them down on the highway, "See," said they, addressing the idols, "this
road leads to Schwitz, this to Glarus, this other to Zurich, and the fourth
conducts to Coire. Take the one that seems good unto you. We will give you a
safe-conduct to whatever place you wish. But if you do not move off we tell you
that we will burn you." The idols, despite this plain warning, refused to march,
and their former worshippers, now their haters, taking them up, threw them into
the flames.[5]
The deputies from Schwitz, who had been witnesses
of the act, returned to tell how they had been affronted. Schwitz haughtily
commanded the men of Gaster to abandon the heresy they had embraced and
re-establish the mass. They craved in reply to have their error proved to them
from the Holy Scriptures. To this the only answer was a threat of war. This
menace made the Protestants of Gaster east themselves for help on Zurich; and
that protection being accorded, matters became still more embroiled between
Zurich and the Five Cantons.
These offenses on the side of the Reforming
cantons were altogether unavoidable, unless at the expense of suppressing the
Reform movement. Not so the acts in which the Popish cantons indulged by way of
retaliation: these were wholly gratuitous and peculiarly envenomed. Thomas
Murner, the ribald monk, whom we have already met at Bern, labored zealously,
and but too successfully, to widen the breach and precipitate the war in which
so much blood was to be shed. He published daily in his "Black Calendar"
lampoons, satires, and caricatures of the Protestants. A master of what is now
known as "Billingsgate," he spared no abusive epithet in blackening the men and
maligning their cause. The frontispiece that garnished his "Calendar"
represented Zwingli suspended from a gallows; underneath which were the words,
"Calendar of the Lutheran-Evangelical Church Robbers and Heretics." The
followers of the Reformation were compendiously classified in the same elegant
publication as "impotent unprincipled villains, thieves, lick-spittles,
dastards, and knaves;" and he proposed that they should be disposed of in the
following summary fashion, even "burned and sent in smoke to the devil."[6] These insults and ribaldries, instead of being
discouraged, were hailed by the Five Cantons and widely diffused, although in so
doing; hey were manifestly scattering "firebrands, arrows, and
death."
Zurich and the Reformed cantons saw war at no great distance,
nevertheless they resolved to make another effort to avert it. In a Diet (21st
April, 1529) held in Zurich, without the Five Cantons, it was resolved to call
on these cantons to with. draw from their league with Austria, to cease
murdering the Reformed pastors, and to silence the shameful vituperations of
Murner. They appointed further an embassage to proceed to these cantons, and
entreat them not to violate the federal compact. The deputies as they went the
round of the Five Cantons with the olive-branch were only scoffed at. "No
preaching!" shouted the men of Zug. "We wish the new faith eternally buried,"
said those of Uri. "Your seditious parsons," said Lucerne, "undermine the faith
as erst in Paradise the serpent swung his folds round Adam and Eve. We will
preserve our children, and our children's children, from such poison." "We,"
said they in Unterwalden, "and the other Wald towns, are the true old
confederates, the real Swiss." As he was leaving the place the deputy saw on the
house of the town-clerk a gallows painted, on which the arms of Zurich, Bern,
Basle, and Strasburg were suspended. At Schwitz only did the council admit the
ambassadors to an audience.[7] Thus the proffered conciliation of their brethren was
rudely and arrogantly put away by the Five Cantons.
Everywhere the
Reformed deputies were insulted and sent back. It was evident that the Popish
cantons were bent on quarrelling. But we shall mistake if we suppose that they
were animated by a chivalrous and high-minded attachment to the faith of their
fathers. A greed of the foreign pensions, quite as much as devotion to the "Holy
Father," swayed them in adopting this course. The deterioration of manners
consequent on the foreign service was visible in every part of Switzerland, in
Zurich as well as Unterwalden; but it was in the Five Cantons that this
corruption was the deepest, because these were the cantons most addicted to this
disgraceful warfare. The preaching of the Gospel revealed the evils and
iniquities of this practice, and threatened to put an end to it, and of course
to the gold that flowed from it; hence the fierce hostility of the men of the
Oberland to the Reformation.[8] Not only their idols and altars, but their purses also
were at stake.
The patience of the Reformed cantons was well-nigh
exhausted. There was no end of insults, provocation's, and lampoons. The
maltreatment and murder of their brethren in the faith, the return of their
deputies shamefully used, and now the burning pile of Keyser here was enough
to fill up the cup. Zwingli thought that, the question of religion apart, the
public order demanded that these outrages should be stopped. He was told,
moreover, that the mountaineers were arming, that the Austrian auxiliaries on
the frontier were enlisting soldiers, that war was determined on the Popish
side, and that it would be wise in the interests of peace to strike the first
blow. Let us, said Zwingli, attack the Five Cantons on several points at once.
Let us convince them that resistance is useless. Our present peace is only war,
with this difference, that it is the; blood of one side only that is being
sprit. Our war will be peace. Zwingli hoped thus the campaign would be
bloodless. The Council of Zurich on the 3rd of June resolved on war, proclaiming
it in the first instance against Schwitz.[9]
The Reformer's conduct in this affair has been much
criticized. Some historians of great name have blamed him, others have not less
warmly defended him. Let us look a little at what he did, and the reasons that
appear to justify and even necessitate the line of action he adopted. While
taking a leading part in the affairs of the State at this crisis, he continued
to labor as indefatigably as ever in preaching and writing. He sought, in doing
what he now did, simply to take such means as men in all ages of the world, and
in all stages of society, guided by the light of reason and the laws which the
Creator has implanted in the race, have taken to defend their lives and
liberties. The members of that Confederation were Christians, but they were also
citizens. Christianity did not annihilate, it did not even abridge the
privileges and powers of their citizenship. If while they were Romanists they
had the right to defend their lives, their homes, and their possessions against
all assailants, whether within or without Switzerland; and if, further, they had
the right of protecting their fellow-citizens who, guilty of no crime, had been
seized, and in violation of inter-cantonal law were threatened with a cruel
death, surely they retained the same rights as professors of the Reformed faith.
But it may be said nay, it has been said that it was Church federation and not
State federation that ought to have been had recourse to. But at that time the
State and the Church were inextricably mingled in Switzerland: their separate
action was not at that moment possible; and, even though it had been possible,
pure Church action would not have met the case; it would have been tantamount to
no action. The Forest Cantons, impelled by their bigotry and supported by
Austria, would have fallen sword in hand upon the professors of the Gospel in
Helvetin and rooted them out.
Besides, does not the Gospel by its Divine
efficacy rear around it, sooner or later, a vast number of powerful and valuable
forces? It nourishes art, plants courage, and kindles the love of liberty. For
what end? For this among others, to be, under the providence of God, a defense
around itself.
When Christians are utterly without human succor and
resource, they are called to display their faith by relying wholly on God, who,
if it is his purpose to deliver them, well knows how to do so. Then their faith
has in it reason as well as sublimity. But if means are laid to their hand, and
they forbear to use them, on the plea that they are honoring God by showing
their trust in him, they are not trusting but tempting God, and instead of
exercising faith are displaying fanaticism.
Zwingli, it has been further
said, was a pastor, and the call to combine and stand to the defense of their
liberties now addressed to the Reformed cantons ought to have come from another
than him. But Zwingli was a citizen and a patriot, as well as a pastor. His
wonderfully penetrating, comprehensive, and forecasting intellect made him the
first politician of his country; he could read the policy of its enemies better
than any one else; he had penetrated their purposes; he saw the dangers that
were gathering round the Reformed cantons; and his sagacity and experience
taught him the measures to be adopted. No other man in all Switzerland knew the
matter half so well. Was he to stand aloof and withhold the counsel, the
suggestion, the earnest exhortation to action, and let his country be
overwhelmed, on the plea that because he was in sacred office it did not become
him to interfere? Zwingli took a different view of his duty, and we think
justly. When the crisis came, without in the least intermitting his zeal and
labors as a minister, he attended the meetings of council, he gave his advice,
he drew plans, he thundered in the pulpit, he placed even his military
experience acquired in Italy at the service of his countrymen; combining, in
short, the politician:, patriot, and pastor all in one, he strove to kindle the
same ardent flame of patriotism in the hearts of his fellow-citizens that burned
so strongly in his own, and to roll back the invasion which threatened all that
was of value in the Swiss Confederation with destruction. The combination was an
unusual one, we admit, but the times and the emergency were also unusual. That
Zwingli may have always preserved the golden mean when the parts he had to act
were so various, and the circumstances so exciting, we are not prepared to
maintain. But we do not see how his policy in the main can be impugned, without
laying down the maxim that when civil liberty only is at stake is it right to
have recourse to arms, and that when the higher interests of faith and religious
liberty are mixed up with the quarrel, we are bound to do nothing to stand
unarmed and inactive in the presence of the enemy.
CHAPTER 7
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ARMS NEGOTIATIONS
PEACE.
Zurich Girds on the Sword Mustering in the Popish Cantons
4,000 Warriors March from Zurich Encamp at Kappel Halt Negotiations, Peace
Zwingli Dislikes it Zwingli's Labors His Daily Life His Dress, etc.,
Arrangement of his Time, His Occupations Amusements
Writings.
FIRST carne the startling news to the Swiss Reformers
that the Five Cantons had struck a league with Austria. Next came the flash of
Keyser's martyr-pile. This was succeeded by the clang of military preparations.
Zurich saw there was not a moment to be lost. The council of the canton met; it
was resolved to support, religious liberty, and put a stop to the beheadings and
burnings which the Popish cantons ]had commenced. But to carry out this
resolution they must gird on the sword. Zurich declared war.[1]
From Zug sounded forth the summons to arms on the
other side. There was a mustering of warriors from all the valleys and mountains
around. From the rich meadows of Uri, which the footsteps of Ten had made for
ever historic; from that lovely strand where rise the ramparts of Lucerne,
reflected on its noble lake, and shaded by the dark form of the cloud-capped
Pilatus; from those valleys of Unterwalden, whose echoes are awakened by the
avalanches of the Jungfrau; from the grassy plains of Schwitz on the east, armed
men poured forth prepared to fight for the faith of their fathers, and to quench
in blood the new religion which Zwingli and Zurich had introduced, and which was
spreading like an infection over their country. The place of rendezvous was the
deep valley where the waters of Zug, defended all round by mighty mountains, and
covered by their shadows, lie so still and sluggish in their bed.
On the
9th of June, 4,000 picked soldiers, fully armed, and well furnished with
artillery and provisions, under the command of Captain George Berguer, with
Conrad Schmidt, Pastor of Kussnacht, as their chaplain, issued from the gates of
Zurich, and set out to meet the foe.[2] The walls and towers were crowded with old men and women
to witness their departure. Among them rode Zwingli, his halberd across his
shoulder,[3] the same, it is said, he had carried at 1garignano. Anna,
his wife, watched him from the ramparts as he rode slowly away. Crossing the
Albis Alp, the army of Zurich encamped at Kappel, near the frontier of the
canton of Zug.
It was nine of the evening when the Zurich warriors
encamped at Kappel. Next morning, the 10th of June, they sent a herald at
daybreak with a declaration of war to the army of the Five Cantons assembled at
Zug. The message filled the little town with consternation. The sudden march of
the Zurich army had taken it unawares and found it unprepared; its armed allies
were not yet arrived; the women screamed; the men ran to and fro collecting what
weapons they could, and dispatching messengers in hot haste to their
Confederates for assistance.
In the camp of the Zurichers preparations
were making to follow the herald who had carried the proclamation of hostilities
to Zug. Had they gone forward the enemy must have come to terms without striking
a blow. The van-guard of the Zurichers, marshaled by its commander William
Toenig, was on the point of crossing the frontier. At that moment a horseman was
observed spurring his steed uphill, and coming towards them with all the speed
he could. It was Landamman Ebli of Glarus. "Halt!" he cried, "I come from our
Confederates. They are armed, but they are willing to negotiate. I beg a few
hours delay in hopes that an honorable peace may be made. Dear lords of Zurich,
for God's sake prevent the shedding of blood, and the ruin of the Confederacy."
The march of the Zurich warriors was suspended.[4]
Landamman Ebli was the friend of Zwingli. He was
known to be an honorable man, well disposed towards the Gospel, and all enemy of
the foreign service. All hailed his embassy as a forerunner of peace. Zwingli
alone suspected a snake in the grass. He saw the campaign about to end without
the loss of a single life; but this halt inspired him with melancholy and a
presentiment of evil. As Ebli was turning round to return to Zug, Zwingli went
up to him, and earnestly whispered into his ear the following words, "Godson
Amman,[5] you will have to answer to God for this mediation. The
enemy is in our power, and unarmed, therefore they give us fair words. You
believe them and you mediate. Afterwards, when they are armed, they will fall
upon us, and there will be none to mediate."
"My dear godfather," replied
Ebli, "let us act for the best, and trust in God that all will be well." So
saying he rode away.
In this new position of affairs, messengers were
dispatched to Zurich for instructions, or rather advice, for it was a maxim in
the policy of that canton that "wherever the banner waves, there is Zurich."
Meanwhile the tents of the soldiers were spread on the hill-side, within a few
paces of the sentinels of the Five Cantons. Every day a sermon was preached in
the army, and prayers were offered at meals. Disorderly women, who followed the
armies of that age in shoals, were sent away as soon as they appeared. Not an
oath was heard. Cards and dice were not needed to beguile the time. Psalms,
national hymns, and athletic exercises filled up the hours among the soldiers of
the two armies. Animosity against one another expired with the halt. Going to
the lines they chatted together, ate together, and, forgetting their quarrel,
remembered only that they were Swiss. Zwingli sat alone in his tent, oppressed
by a foreboding of evil.
Not that he wished to shed a drop of blood; it
was his eagerness to escape that dire necessity that made him grudge the days
now passing idly by. All had gone as he anticipated up till this fatal halt.
Austria was too seriously occupied with the Turks to aid the Popish cantons just
at this moment; and had the answer sent back by Landamman Ebli been the
unconditional acceptance of the terms of Zurich or battle, it was not to be
doubted that the Five Cantons would have preferred the former. The opportunity
now passing was not likely to return; and a heavy price would be exacted at a
future day for the indolence of the present hour.
After a fortnight's
negotiations between Zurich and the Five Cantons, a peace was patched up.[6] It was agreed that the Forest Cantons should abandon their
alliance with Austria, that they should guarantee religious liberty to the
extent of permitting the common parishes to decide by a majority of votes which
religion they would profess, and that they should pay the expenses of the war.
The warriors on both sides now struck their encampments and returned home, the
Zurichers elate, the Romanists gloomy and sullen. The peace was in favor of
Protestantism. But would it be lasting? This was the question that Zwingli had
put to himself. When the army re-entered Zurich, he was observed, amid the
acclamations that resounded on every side, to be depressed and melancholy. He
felt that a golden opportunity had been lost of effectually curbing the bigotry
and breaking the power of the Popish cantons, and that the peace had been
conceded only to lull them asleep till their opponents were better prepared,
when they would fall upon them and extinguish the Reform in blood. These
presentiments were but too surely fulfilled.
This peace was due to the
energy and patriotism of Zurich. Bern had contributed nothing to it; her
warriors, who had often gone leith on a less noble quarrel, abode within their
walls, when the men of Zurich were encamped on the slopes of the Albis, in
presence of the foe. This want of firm union was, we apprehend, the main cause
of the disastrous issue of Zwingli's plan. Had the four Reformed cantons
Basle, Zurich, Bern, and St. Gall stood shoulder to shoulder, and presented an
unbroken front, the Romanists of the mountains would hardly have dared to attack
them. Division invited the blow under which Reformed Switzerland sank for
awhile.
The Reformer of Zurich is as yet only in mid-life, taking the
"three-score and tell" as our scale of reckoning, but already it begins to draw
toward evening with him. The shadows of that violent death with which his career
was to close, begin to gather round him. We shall pause, therefore, and look at
the man as we see him, in the circle of his family, or at work in his study. He
is dressed, as we should expect, with ancient Swiss simplicity.
He wears
the wide coat of the canon, and on his head is the priest's hat, or "baretta."
The kindness of his heart and the courage of his soul shine out and light up his
face with the radiance of cheerfulness, humorous visitors, of all conditions,
and on various errands, knock at his door, and are admitted into his presence.
Now it is a bookseller, who comes to importune him to write something for an
approaching book-fair; now it is a priest, who has been harshly used by his
bishop, who craves his advice; now it is a brother pastor, who comes to ask help
or sympathy; now it is a citizen or councilor, a friend from the country, who
wishes to consul him on State affairs, or on private business. He receives all
with genuine affability, listens with patience, and gives his answers in a few
wise words. Sometimes, indeed, a sudden frown darkens his brow, and the
lightning of his eye flashes forth, but it is at the discovery of meanness or
hypocrisy. The storm, however, soon passes, and the light of an inward serenity
and truthfulness again shines out and brightens his features.
Towards
well-meaning ignorance he is compassionate and tender. In regard to his meals,
his fare is simple. The dainties of his youth are the dainties of his manhood.
Living in a city, with its luxuries at command, and sitting often at the table
of its rich burghers, he prefers the milk and cheese which formed the staple of
his diet when he lived among the shepherds of the Tockenburg. As to his
pleasures they are not such as have a sting in them; they are those that delight
the longest because the most natural and simple. His leisure - it is not much
is spent in the society of his accomplished and high-souled wife, in the
education of his children, in conversation with his friends, and in music. In
his college-days how often, as we have already seen, in company of his friend
Leo Juda, did he awake the echoes of the valleys beside the romantic Basle with
his voice or instrument! On the grander shores of the Zurcher-See he continued
to cultivate the gift, as time served, with all the passion of an
artist.
He is very methodical in his habits. His time is wisely divided,
and none of it is frittered away by desultoriness or unpunctuality. Both in body
and mind he is eminently healthy. Luther had even more than the joyous
disposition of Zwingli, but not his robustness and almost uninterrupted good
health. The Doctor of Wittemberg complained that "Satan tilted through his
head," and at times, for weeks together, he was unable to work or write. Calvin
was still more sickly. His "ten maladies" wore away his strength; but they had
power over the body only; the spirit they did not approach to ruffle or weaken,
and we stand amazed at the magnificence of the labors achieved in a frame so
fragile and worn. But it was not so with the Reformer of Zurich; he suffered
loss neither of time nor of power from ill-health; and this, together with the
skillful distribution of his time, enabled him to get through the manifold
labors that were imposed upon him.
He rose early. The hours of morning he
spent in prayer and the study of the Scriptures. At eight o'clock he repaired to
the cathedral to preach, or to give the "Prophesying," or to the Professorial
Hall, to deliver an exegesis from the Old and New Testaments alternately. At
eleven he dined. After dinner, intermitting his labors, he spent the time in
conversing with his family, or in receiving visitors, or walking in the open
air. At two o'clock he resumed work, often devoting the afternoon to the study
of the great writers and orators of Greece and Rome. Not till after supper does
he again grant himself a respite from labor in the society of his family or
friends. "Sometimes," says Christoffel, "he sups in those mediaeval
society-houses or guild-rooms as they still exist in many of the Swiss towns
in the company of his colleagues, the members of the council, and other
respectable and enlightened friends of evangelical truth. The later hours of the
evening, and even a part of the night itself, he employs in writing his many
letters." If business is pressing, he can dispense with his night's rest. During
the disputation at Baden, as we have seen, he received each night letters from
Ecolampadius. He sat up all night to write his answer, which had to be sent off'
before morning; and this continued all the while the conference was in session,
so that, as Zwingli himself tells us, he was not in bed all the time that is,
six weeks. But, as Bullinger informs us, on other occasions he could take the
necessary amount of sleep. Thus, with the careful distribution and economy of
his time, combined with an iron constitution and a clear and powerful intellect,
he was able to master the almost overwhelming amount of work which the
Reformation laid upon him.[7]
He complained that the many demands on his time did
not leave him leisure to elaborate and polish his productions. The storms and
emergencies of his day compelled him to write, but did not leave him time to
revise. Hence he is diffuse after an unusual manner: not in style, which has the
terse vigor of the ancients; nor in thinking, which is at once clear and
profound; but in a too great affluence of ideas. He modestly spoke of what came
from his pen as sketches rather than books. Scripture he interpreted by
Scripture, and thus, in addition to a naturally penetrating intellect, he
enjoyed eminently the teaching of the Spirit, which is given through the Word.
Zwingli sought in converse with his friends to improve his heart; he read the
great works of antiquity to strengthen his intellect and refine his taste; he
studied the Bible to nourish his piety and enlarge his knowledge of Divine
truth. But a higher means of improvement did he employ converse with God. "He
strongly recommended prayer," says Bullinger, "and he himself prayed much
daily." In this he resembled Luther and Calvin and all the great Reformers. What
distinguished them from their fellows, even more than their great talents, was a
certain serenity of soul, and a certain grandeur and strength of faith, and this
they owed to prayer.
CHAPTER 8
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PROPOSED CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC FOR
DEFENCE OF CIVIL RIGHTS.
Another Storm brewing in the Oberland
Protestantism still spreading in Switzerland A Second Crisis Zwingli
proposes a European Christian Republic Negotiates with the German Towns, the
King of France, and the Republic of Venice Philip of Hesse to be put at the
Head of it Correspondence between Philip and Zwingli League for Defense of
Civil Rights only Zwingli's Labors for the Autonomy of the Helvetian
Church.
THE peace which negotiation had given Zurich, Zwingli
felt, would be short, but it was precious while it lasted, and he redoubled his
efforts to turn it to account. He strove to carry the sword of the Spirit into
those great mountains whose dwellers had descended upon them with the sword of
the warrior, for he despaired of the unity and independence of his country save
through the Gospel. His labors resulted, during this brief space, in many
victories for the faith. At Schaffhausen fell the "great god," namely, the mass.
The Reformation was consummated in Glarus, in the Appenzell, and introduced into
parts of Switzerland which had re-rosined till now under the yoke of Rome. So
much for the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the peace of Kappel. Every day,
as the men of the Forest Cantons looked from their lofty snow-clad summits, they
beheld the symbols of the Roman faith vanishing from the plains beneath them;
convents deserted, the mass abolished, and village after village meeting,
discussing, and by vote adopting the Protestant worship. As yet they had been
able to maintain the purity of their mountains, thanks to the darkness and the
foreign gold, but they were beginning to be defiled by the feet of the
Protestants, and how soon their stronghold might be conquered, and the flag of
the Gospel unfurled where the banner of Rome had so long and so proudly waved,
they could not tell. A Popish historian of the time, describing the activity of
Zwingli and his fellow-laborers, says: "A set of wretched disturbers of the
peace burst into the Five Cantons, and murdered souls by spreading abroad their
songs, tracts, and little Testaments, telling the people they might learn the
truth itself from these, and one did not require any more to believe what the
priests said."[1] While they were barring their gates in front, suddenly, as
we have already said, Protestantism appeared in their rear. A shout came up from
t]he Italian plains that the Gospel had entered that land, and that Rome had
begun to fall. This brought on a second crisis.
We are approaching the
catastrophe. Zwingli, meditating day and night how he might advance the
Reformation and overthrow that terrible power which had held the nations so long
in bondage, had begun to revolve mighty plans. His eye ranged over all
Christendom; his glance penetrated everything; his; comprehensive and organizing
mind, enlarged by the crisis through which Christendom was passing, felt equal
to the task of forming and directing the grandest projects. He had already
instituted a Christian co-burghery in Switzerland to hold in check the Popish
cantons; this idea he attempted to carry out on a grander scale by extending it
to the whole of Reformed Christendom. Why should not, he said, all the
Protestant States and nations of Europe unite in a holy confederation for
frustrating the plans which the Pope and Charles V. are now concocting for the
violent suppression of the Reformation? It was at this time that he visited
Marburg, where he met Philip of Hesse, between whom and himself there existed a
great harmony of view on the point in question. Both felt that it was the duty
of the Protestant States to put forth their political and military strength in
the way of repelling force by force. They meditated the forming of a great
Christian republic, embracing the Reformed Swiss cantons, the free cities of
Southern Germany, and the Protestant Saxon States in Central and Northern
Germany. Zwingli even turned his eyes to Venice, where a Protestant movement of
a promising kind had recently presented itself. He sent an ambassador to the
republic, who came back with a secret assurance of aid in case of need. The
Reformer was not without hope of enlisting France in the league. Overtures to
that effect had in fact. been made by Francis I., who seemed not unwilling to
leave the path of violence on which he had entered, and take under his wing the
Reformation of his country. This Protestant alliance was meant to extend from
the Adriatic to the German Ocean, forming a Protestant power in Central Europe
sufficient to protect conscience and the free preaching of the Gospel. This
display of strength, Zwingli believed, would hold in check the emperor and the
Pope, would be a rampart around the preachers and professors of the Protestant
faith, and would prevent an Iliad of woes which he saw approaching to
Christendom. The project was a colossal one.
At the head of this
Protestant republic Zwingli proposed to place Philip the Magnanimous. Among the
princes of that age he could hardly have made a better choice. It is probable
that Zwingli communicated the project to him in his own Castle of Marburg, when
attending the conference held in the autumn of that year (October, 1529) on the
question of the Lord's Supper. The ardent mind of Philip would be set on fire by
the proposal. He had in fact attempted to form a similar league of defense among
the Reformed princes and cities of Germany. He had fretted under the restraints
which Luther had imposed upon him; for ever as his hand touched his sword's
hilt, to unsheathe it in defense of the friends of the Gospel, came the stern
voice of the Reformer commanding him to forbear. He had been deeply mortified by
the refusal of the Lutherans to unite with the Zwinglians, because it left them
disunited in presence of that tremendous combination of force that was mustering
on all sides against them. Now came the same thing in another form; for this new
defensive alliance promised to gain all the ends he sought so far as these were
political. Switzerland and South Germany it would unite; and he hoped, indeed he
undertook, to induce the princes and States of North Germany also to accede to
the league; and thus what time the emperor crossed the Alps with his legions
and he was now on his way northward, having shaken hands with the Pope over the
proposed extermination of Lutheranism he would find such a reception as would
make him fain again to retreat across the mountains.
Zwingli's journey to
Marburg had been of signal importance to him in this respect. He had correctly
divined the secret policy of the emperor, but at Strasburg he had obtained
information which had given him a yet surer and deeper insight into the designs
of Charles. His informant was the town sheriff, James Sturm, a far-seeing
statesman, devoted to the Reformed cause, and enjoying the friendship of many
men of influence and position in Germany and France. Through them Sturm came
into possession of important documents disclosing the emperor's plans against
the Reformers. Zwingli forwarded copies of these to the secret council of
Zurich, with the remark, "These are from the right workshop."
The
substance of these documents is probably contained in the statements which
Zwingli made to those statesmen who had his confidence. "The emperor," said he,
"stirs up friend against friend, and enemy against enemy, in order to force
himself between them as mediator, and then he decides with a partiality that
leans to the interests of the Papacy and his own power. To kindle a war in
Germany he excites the Castellan of Musso [2] against the Grisons, the Bishops of Constance and
Strasburg against the cities of Constance and Strasburg, Duke George of Saxony
against John, Elector of Saxony; the Bishops of the Rhine against the Landgrave
of Hesse; the Duke of Savoy against Bern, and the Five Cantons against Zurich.
Everywhere he makes division and discord. When the confusion has come to a head
and all things are ripe he will march in with his Spaniards, and befooling one
party with fair words, and falling upon the other with the sword, he will
continue to strike till he has reduced all under his yoke. Alas! what an
overthrow awaits Germany and all of us under pretense of upholding the Empire
and re-establishing religion."[3]
After his return from Marburg, Zwingli corresponded
with the landgrave on this great project. "Gracious prince," wrote he on the 2nd
of November, 1529, "if I write to your Grace, as a child to a father, it is
because of the confidence I have that God has chosen you for great events, which
I dare not utter
. We must bell the cat at last."[4] To which the landgrave answered, "Dear Mr. Huldreich, I
hope through the providence of God a feather will fall from Pharaoh,[5] and that he will meet with what he little expects; for all
things are in the way of improvement. God is wonderful. Let this matter touching
Pharaoh remain a secret with you till the time arrives."[6]
Like a thunder-cloud charged with fire, the emperor
was nearing Germany, to hold the long-announced Diet of Augsburg. The Reformer's
courage rose with the approach of danger. The son of the Tockenburg shepherd,
the pastor of a little town, dared to step forth and set the battle in array
against this Goliath, the master of so many kingdoms. "Only base cowards or
traitors," he wrote to Councilor Conrad Zwick of Constance, "can look on and
yawn, when we ought to be straining every nerve to collect men and arms from
every quarter to make the emperor feel that in vain he strives to establish
Rome's supremacy, to destroy the privileges of the free towns, and to coerce us
in Helvetia. Awake, Lindau! Arouse, ye neighbor cities, and play the men for
your hearths and altars! He is a fool who trusts to the friendship of tyrants.
Even Demosthenes teaches us that nothing is so hateful in their eyes as the
freedom of cities. The emperor with one hand offers us bread, but in the other
he conceals a stone."[7]
Had the object aimed at been the compelling of the
Romanists to abandon their faith or desist from the practice of its rites,
Zwingli's project would have been supremely execrable; but the Reformer did not
for a moment dream of such a thing. He never lost sight of the great fact, that
by the preaching of the Gospel alone can men be enlightened and converted. But
he did not see why States, to the extent to which God had given them the power,
should not resist those treacherous and bloody plots which were being hatched
for the destruction of their faith and liberties. Luther disapproved of this
policy entirely. Christians, he said, ought not to resist the emperor, and if he
requires them to die they are to yield up their lives.
It was by the
stake of the martyr and not by the sword of the State, he never ceased to remind
men, that the Gospel was to triumph. Luther, reared in a convent and trained in
habits of submission to authority, was to a much greater extent than Zwingli a
man of the past. Zwingli, on the other hand, born in a republic, with all the
elements and aspirations of constitutional liberty stirring in his breast, was a
man of the present. Hence the different policies of these two men. It is
impossible to say to what extent the atrocities that darkened the following
years would have been prevented, had Zwingli's plan been universally acted upon.
But the time for it was not yet come; and the Great Ruler by willing it
otherwise has thrown a moral grandeur around the Reformation, which could not
have belonged to it had its weapons been less spiritual and its triumph less
holy.
In the midst of these negotiations for banding the Protestants in a
great European confederacy for the defense of their civil and religious
liberties, Zwingli did not for a moment abate his labors as a pastor. The
consolidation of the Gospel in Switzerland must be the basis of all his
operations. In 1530 he held synods in various parts of the country. At these
measures were adopted for perfecting the autonomy of the Church: the ministers
were examined; incapable and scandalous pastors were removed; superintendents to
watch over moral and administer discipline were appointed; and arrangements set
on foot for giving a competent salary to every minister. In February, 1531, it
was agreed that whenever any difficulty should arise in doctrine or discipline
an assembly of divines and laymen should be convoked, which should examine what
the Word of God says on the matter, and decide accordingly.[8]
CHAPTER 9 Back to Top
GATHERING OF A SECOND
STORM.
Persecution renewed by the Five Cantons Activity of Zwingli
Address of the Reformed Pastors - Bern proposes Blockade of the Five Cantons
Zwingli Opposed No Bread, etc. Zwingli asks his Dismissal - Consents to
Remain Meeting at Bremgarten The Comet Alarming Portents Zwingli's
Earnest Warnings-Unheeded.
EVERY Step of the Gospel nearer their mountains made
the men of the Five Cantons only the more determined to rend the treaty in which
they had bound themselves to their brethren. They had already violated its
spirit. The few professors of the Reformed faith in their territory they drove
out, or imprisoned, or burned. In the common parishes - that is, the communes
governed now by the Reformed, and now by the Popish cantons - they committed the
same atrocities when their turn of jurisdiction came. They imprisoned the
preachers and professors of the Reformed faith, confiscated their goods, cut out
their tongues, beheaded and burned them. Calumnies were next circulated to
inflame the popular wrath against the Protestants; then followed wrathful
speeches; at last was heard the clang of arms; it was evident that another
tempest was brewing among the mountains of the Oberland.
A General Diet
of the Swiss Confederation was convoked at Baden on the 8th of January, 1531.[1] It was unable to come to any decision. Meanwhile the
provocation's which the Forest Cantons were daily offering were becoming
intolerable, yet how were they to be restrained? Behind those cantons stood the
emperor and Ferdinand, both, at this hour, making vast preparations; and should
war be commenced, who could tell where it would end? Meanwhile it was of the
last importance to keep alive the patriotism of the people. Zwingli visited in
person the Confederate cantons; he organized committees, he addressed large
assemblies; he appealed to everything that could rouse Swiss valor. The armies
of Rome were slowly closing around them; the Spaniards were in the Grisons; the
emperor was in Germany; soon they would be cut off from their fellow-Protestants
of other lands and shut up in their mountains. They must strike while yet they
had the power. It would be too late when the emperor's sword was at their gates,
and the Romanists of their own mountains had fallen like an avalanche upon them.
Never had their fathers bled in so holy a cause.
The heroes of the past
seemed all to live again in this one man. Wherever he passed he left behind him
a country on fire.
A Diet of the Reformed cantons was held at Arau on the
12th of May, to decide on the steps to be taken. The situation, they said, was
this: "The Mountain Cantons remain Roman Catholic; they divide Switzerland into
two camps; they keep open the door: for the armed hordes of foreign bigotry and
despotism. How shall we restore Swiss unity?" they asked.
"Not otherwise
than by restoring unity of faith." They did not seek to compel the Five Cantons
to renounce Popery, but they believed themselves justified in asking them to
cease from persecuting the preachers of the Gospel in the common parishes, and
to tolerate the Reformed doctrine in their valleys. This was the demand of the
four Reformed cantons.
The Pastors of Zurich, Bern, Basle, and Strasburg
assembled in Zwingli's house the 5th of September, 1530, and speaking in the
name of the Reformed cantons addressed to their Popish confederates the
following words: "You know, gracious lords, that concord increases the power of
States, and that discord overthrows them. You yourselves are a proof of the
first. May God prevent you from becoming also a proof of the second.
For
this reason we conjure you to allow the Word of God to be preached among you.
When has there ever existed, even among the heathen, a people which saw not that
the hand of God alone upholds, a nation? Do not two drops of quicksilver unite
as soon as you remove that which separates them? Away then with that which
separates you from your cities, that is, the absence of the Word of God, and
immediately the Almighty will unite us as our fathers were united. Then placed
in your mountains, as in the center of Christendom, you will be an example to
it, its protection and its refuge; and after having passed through this vale of
tears, being the terror of the wicked and the consolation of the faithful, you
will at last be established in eternal happiness."
"The minister's sermon
is rather long," said some, with a yawn, in whose heating this address was read.
The remonstrance was without effect. Zwingli earnestly counseled a bold and
prompt blow in other words, an armed intervention. He thought this the
speediest way to bring the Mountain Cantons to reasonable terms. Baden, though
admitting that the Five Cantons had broken the national compact, and that the
atrocities they were committing in shameful violation of their own promises
justified war, thought it better, nevertheless, that a milder expedient should
be tried.
Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, Zug, and Lucerne were dependent for
their daily supplies upon the markets and harvests of the plains. Shut out from
these, they had no alternative but surrender or death by famine. "Let us
blockade these cantons," said Bern. Zurich and Zwingli strongly disapproved of
this measure. It confounded, they said, the innocent with the guilty; whereas
war would smite only the latter. The blockade, however, was resolved upon and
rigorously carried out. The markets of the entire region around were closed, and
the roads leading to the towns blockaded. Instantaneously the Five Cantons were
enclosed in a vast desert; bread, wine, and salt suddenly failed from their
chalets, and the horrors of famine began to reign in their mountains. This
calamity was the more severely felt inasmuch as the preceding year had been one
of dearth, and the "sweating sickness" had visited their valleys, adding its
ravages to the sufferings caused by the failure of the crops.[2]
A wail of suffering and a cry of indignation arose
from the mountains. A General Diet was opened at Bremgarten on the 14th of June,
in presence of the deputies of several foreign Powers. The Five Cantons demanded
that, first of all, the blockade should be raised; till this was done they would
listen to no proposition. Bern and Zurich replied: "The blockade we will not
raise till you shall have ceased your persecutions, and opened your own valleys
to the free preaching of the Gospel." Conciliation was impossible; the
conference broke up, and the breach remained unclosed.
This was a
terrible complication. Nothing but a united and bold policy, Zwingli saw, could
extricate them from it. But instead of this, the Council of Zurich was every day
displaying greater vacillation and feebleness. The lukewarm and timid were
deserting the Reform, its old enemies were again raising their heads. Courage
and patriotism were lacking to meet the ire of the mountaineers, roused by the
half-measures which had been adopted. Ruin was coming on apace. The burden of
the State rested on Zwingli; he felt he could no longer accept a position in
which he was responsible for evils which were mainly owing to the rejection of
those measures he had counseled. He appeared before the Great Council on the
26th of July, 1531, and, with a voice choking with emotion, said: "For eleven
years I have preached the Gospel among you, and warned you of the dangers that
would threaten the Confederacy if the Five Cantons - that is to say, the party
which lives by pensions and mercenary service should gain the upper hand. All
has been of no avail. Even now you elect to the council men who covet this
blood-money. I will no longer be responsible for the mischief that I cannot
prevent; I therefore desire my dismissal."[3] He took his departure with
tears in his eyes.
Thus was the pilot leaving the ship at the moment the
storm was about to strike it. The councilors were seized with dismay. Their
former reverence and affection for their magnanimous and devoted leader revived.
They named a deputation to wait on him and beg him to withdraw his resignation.
Zwingli took three days to consider what course he should pursue. These were
days of earnest prayer. At length he reappeared in the council, his eyes dimmed,
and his face bearing traces of the conflict through which he had passed. "I will
stay with you," said he, "and I will labor for the safety of the State until
death."
For a moment the union and courage of Zurich revived. Zwingli
began again to have hope. He thought that could he rouse to action the powerful
canton of Bern, all might yet be well; the gathering tempest in the mountains
might be turned back, and the iron hand that lay so heavy upon conscience and
the preaching of the Gospel lifted off. He arranged a midnight meeting with the
deputies of Bern at Bremgarten, and put the matter before them thus: "What is
to be done?" said he. "Withdraw the blockade? the cantons will then be more
haughty and insolent than ever; Enforce it? they will take the offensive, and
if their attack succeed, you will behold our fields red with the blood of the
Protestants, the doctrine of truth cast down, the Church of Christ laid waste,
all social relations overthrown, our adversaries more irritated and hardened
against the Gospel, and crowds of monks and priests again filling our rural
districts, streets, and temples." He paused; then solemnly added, "And yet that
also will have an end." The words of Zwingli had deeply impressed the Bernese.
"We see," said they, "all the disasters that impend over our common cause, and
will do our utmost to ward them off."
Zwingli took his departure while it
was yet dark. His disciple, the young Bullinger, who was present, and relates
what was said at the interview, accompanied him a little way. The parting was
most sad, for the two were tenderly attached, and in the hearts of both was a
presentiment that they should meet no more on earth.[4] A strange occurrence took
place at the gate of the town. As Zwingli and his friends approached the
sentinels, a personage in robes white as snow suddenly appeared, and threw the
soldiers into panic. So the guard affirmed, for Zwingli and his friends saw not
the apparition.[5]
The Council of
Zurich sank down again into their former apathy. The pensioners the foreign
gold formed the great obstacle, Zwingli felt, to the salvation of his country.
It had corrupted the virtue and undermined the patriotism of the Mountain
Cantons, and it had bred treachery and cowardice in even the Reformed councils.
Zwingli's appeals grew more stirring every hour. "Ruin," said he, "is at the
door;" but he felt that his words were spoken to dead men; his heart was almost
broken.
In the August of that year a comet of unusual size appeared in
the heavens.[6] As night after night, with
lengthening tail and fiercer blaze, it hung suspended in the west, it attracted
the gaze and awoke the terrors of all. On the night of the 15th of August,
Zwingli and his friend George Muller, the former Abbot of Wettingen,
contemplated it from the burying-ground of the great minister. "What may this
star signify, dear Huldreich?" inquired Mailer. "It is come to light me to my
grave," replied Zwingli, "and many an honest man with me."[7] "With God's grace, no,"
said Mailer.
"I am rather short-sighted," rejoined Zwingli, "but I
foresee great calamities in the future:[8] there comes a great
catastrophe; but Christ will not finally forsake us; the victory will remain
with our cause."
Portent was heaped upon portent, and rumor followed
rumor. Not a locality but furnished its wonder, prognosticating calamity, and
diffusing gloomy forebodings over the country. At Brugg, in Aargau, a fountain,
not of water, but of blood, was reported to have opened suddenly, and to be
dyeing the earth with gore. The sky of Zug was illumined with a meteor in the
form of a shield, and noises as of men engaged in conflict came from the hollows
of the mountains. In the Brunig Pass banners were seen to wave upborne by no
earthly hand, and stirred by no earthly breeze; while on the calm surface of the
Lucerne Lake spectral ships were seen careering, manned with spectral
warriors.[9]
There was no need
of such ghostly signs; the usual symptoms of approaching disaster were but too
manifest to those who chose to read them. Zwingli perceived them in the disunion
and apathy of the Reformed cantons, in the growing audacity of the enemy, and in
the sinister rumors which were every day brought from the mountains. He raised
his voice once more; it was in vain: the men who trembled before the portents
which their imagination had conjured up, were unmoved by the sober words of the
one man whose sagacity foresaw, and whose patriotism would have averted, the
coming ruin.
CHAPTER
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DEATH OF ZWINGLI.
Forest
Cantons decide on War Assembling of their Army Zurich dispatches 600 Hen
Tedious Debates in the Council A Night of Terror Morning The Great Banner
Clings to its Staff Depression 700 mustered instead of 4,000 Zwingli
Mounts his Steed Parting with his Wife and Children Omens The Battle
Bravery of the Zurichers Overwhelmed by Numbers The Carnage Zwingli
Mortally Wounded Dispatched by Camp Followers Tidings of his Death Grief
and Dismay
IN the beginning of October the preparations of the
Five Cantons for war were completed. Their Diet assembled at Brunnen, on the
banks of the Lake of Lucerne; a vote was taken, and the campaign was decided
upon. Straightway the passes were seized that no one might tell it in Zurich.[1]
The avalanche hung
trembling on the mountain's brow; but a dead calm reigned in Zurich and the
other Reformed cantons, for the rumors of war had suddenly ceased. It was the
calm before the tempest.
On the 9th of October the mountain warriors
assembled ill their chapels, heard mass, and then, to the number of 8,000, began
their march toward the Protestant frontier. They set up their standard at Baar,
between the canton of Zug and the canton of Zurich. The men of Schwytz, Uri,
Zug, Unterwalden, and Lucerne hastened to assemble round it. Their ranks were
swelled by soldiers from the Italian valleys, and deserters from Zurich and
Bern. Another Popish host, 12,000 strong, spread themselves over the free
parishes, inflicting all the horrors of war wherever they came. Tidings reached
Zurich that the bolt had fallen the war was begun; the enemy was at Baar, on the
road to Zurich.
On receiving this startling intelligence on the evening
of the 9th, the council hastily assembled; but instead of sounding the tocsin,
or calling the people to arms, they dispatched two councilors to reconnoiter,
and then retired to rest.
At day-break of the 10th another messenger
arrived at Zurich, confirming the intelligence of the previous day. The Great
Council assembled in the morning, but still professed to doubt the gravity of
the situation.
Messenger after messenger arrived; at last came one who
told them that the enemy had crossed the frontier, and seized upon Hitzkylch. On
hearing this, the councilors turned pale. They were alarmed at last. It was now
resolved, although only after a lengthened debate, to send forward Goeldi, with
600 men and artillery.[2] This was the vanguard; the
main body was to follow. Crossing the Albis, Goeldi and his men arrived at
Kappel during the night. He had instructions not to engage the forces of the
enemy till succors arrived.
Lavatar, the commander-in-chief of the forces
of the canton, earnestly counseled a levy en masse, and the instant dispatch of
a powerful body to the frontier. There followed another tedious debate in the
council; the day wore away, and it was evening before the council were able to
come to the determination to send an army to defend their invaded
country.
The sun went down behind the Albis. The city, the lake, and the
canton were wrapped in darkness; with the darkness came trembling and horror.
The bells were rung to summon to arms. They had hardly begun to toll when a
tempest burst forth, and swept in terrific fury over Zurich and the surrounding
country. The howling of the winds, the lashing of the waves of the lake, the
pealing of the steeple-bells, the mustering of the land-sturm, and the
earthquake, which about nine o'clock shook the city and canton, formed a scene
of terror such as had seldom been witnessed. Few eyes were that night closed in
sleep. In the dwellings of Zurich there were tears, and loud wailings, and hasty
and bitter partings of those who felt that they embraced probably for the last
time.
The morning broke; the tempest was past and gone, the mountains,
the lake, and the green acclivities of the Albis were fairer than ever. But the
beauty of morning could not dispel the gloom which had settled in the hearts of
the Zurichers. The great banner was hoisted on the town-hall, but in the still
air it clung to its staff. "Another bad omen," said the men of Zurich, as they
fixed their eyes on the drooping flag.
Beneath that banner there
assembled about 700 men, where 4,000 warriors ought to have mustered. These were
without, uniform, and insufficiently armed. The council had appointed Zwingli to
be war-chaplain. He well knew the hazards of the post, but he did not shirk
them. He pressed Anna, his wife, to his bruised and bleeding heart; tore himself
from his children, and with dimmed eyes but a resolute brow went forth to mount
his horse, which stood ready at the door. He vaulted into the saddle, but
scarcely had he; touched it when the animal reared, and began to retreat
backwards. "He will never return," said the spectators, who saw in this another
inauspicious omen.[3]
The little army
passed out of the gates about eleven of the forenoon. Anna followed her husband
with her eyes so long as he was visible. He was seen to fall behind his troop
for a few minutes, and those who were near him distinctly heard him breathing
out his heart in prayer, and committing himself and the Church to God. The
soldiers climbed the Albis. On arriving at "The Beech-tree" on its summit they
halted, and some proposed that they' should here wait for reinforcements. "Hear
ye not the sound of the cannon beneath us?" said Zwingli; "they are fighting at
Kappel; let us hasten forward to the aid of our brethren." The troop
precipitated its march.[4]
The battle between
the two armies had been begun at. one o'clock, and the firing had been going on
for two hours when the Zurichers bearing the "great banner" joined their
comrades in the fight.[5] It seemed at first as if
their junction with the van would turn the day in their favor. The artillery of
Zurich, admirably served and advantageously posted, played with marked effect
upon the army of the Five Cantons spread out on a morass beneath.[6] But unhappily a wood on
the left flank of the Zurich army had been left unoccupied, and the mountaineers
coming to the knowledge of this oversight climbed the hill, and under cover of
the trees opened a murderous fire upon the ranks of their opponents. Having
discharged their fire, they rushed out of the wood, lance in hand, and furiously
charged the Zurichers. The resistance they encountered was equally resolute and
brave. The men of Zurich fought like lions; they drove back the
enemy.
The battle swept with a roar like that of thunder through the
wood. The fury and heroism on both sides, the flight and the pursuit of armed
men, the clash of halberds and the thunder of artillery, the shouts of
combatants, and the groans of the dying, mingling in one dreadful roar, were
echoed and re-echoed by the Alps till they seemed to rock the mountains and
shake the earth. In their advance the Zurichers became entangled in a bog. Alas!
they were fatally snared. The foe returned and surrounded them. At this moment
the troop under Goeldi, a traitor at heart, fled. Those who remained fought
desperately, but, being as one to eight to the men of the Five Cantons, their
valor could avail nothing against odds so overwhelming. "Soon they fell thick,"
says Christoffel, "like the precious grain in autumn, beneath the strokes of
their embittered foes, and at length were obliged to abandon the battle-field,
leaving upon it more than five hundred who slept the sleep of death, or who were
writhing in the agony of death-wounds." On this fatal field fell the flower of
Zurich the wisest of its councilors, the most Christian of its citizens, and
the ablest of its pastors.
But there is one death that affects us more
than all the others. Zwingli, though present on the field, did not draw sword:
he restricted himself to his duties as chaplain. When the murderous assault was
made from the forest, and many were falling around him, he stooped down to
breathe a few words into the ear of a dying man. While thus occupied he was
struck with a stone upon the head, and fell to the earth. Recovering in a little
he rose, but received two more blows. As he lay on the ground a hostile spear
dealt him a fatal stab, and the blood began to trickle from the
wound.
"What matters it?" said he; "they may kill the body, but they
cannot kill the soul." These were the last words he uttered.[7]
The darkness fell,
the stars came out, the night was cold. Zwingli had fallen at the foot of a
pear-tree, and lay extended on the earth. His hands were clasped, his eyes were
turned to heaven, and his lips moved in prayer. The camp-followers were now
prowling over the field of battle.
Two of them approached the place where
the Reformer lay. "Do you wish for a priest to confess yourself?" said they. The
dying man shook his head. "At least," said they, "call in your heart upon the
Mother of God."
He signified his dissent by another shake of the head.
Curious to know who this obstinate heretic was, one of them raised his head, and
turned it toward one of the fires which had been kindled on the field. He
suddenly let it fall, exclaiming, "Tis Zwingli!"[8] It happened that
Bockinger, an officer from Unterwalden, and one of those pensioners against whom
Zwingli had so often thundered, was near. The name pronounced by the soldier
fell upon his ear. "Zwingli!" exclaimed he; "is it that vile heretic and traitor
Zwingli?" He had hardly uttered the words when he raised his sword and struck
him on the throat. Yielding to this last blow, Zwingli died (October 11,
1531).[9]
It was on the field
of battle that the Reformer met death. But the cause for which he yielded up his
life was that of the Reformation of the Church and the regeneration of his
country. He was not less a martyr than if he had died at the stake.
When
the terrible tidings reached Zurich that Zwingli was dead, the city was struck
with affright. The news ran like lightning through all the Reformed cantons and
spread consternation and sorrow. Switzerland's great patriot had fallen. When
Ecolampadius of Basle learned that the Reformer was no more, his heart turned to
stone, and he died in a few weeks. The intelligence was received with profound
grief in all the countries of the Reformation. All felt that a great light had
been quenched; that one of the foremost champions in the Army of the Faith had
fallen, at a moment when the hosts of Rome were closing their ranks, and a
terrible onset on the Truth was impending.
Zurich made peace with the
Five Cantons, stipulating only for toleration. In the common parishes the
Reformed faith was suppressed, the altars were set up, mass restored, and the
monks crept back to their empty cells.
Luther, when told of the death of
Zwingli and Ecolampadius, remembered the days he had passed with both of these
men at Marburg, and was seized with so pungent a sorrow that, to use his own
words, he "had almost died himself." Ferdinand of Austria heard of the victory
of Kappel, but with different feelings. "At last," he thought, "the tide has
turned," and in Kappel he beheld the first of a long series of victories to be
achieved by the sword of Rome. He wrote to his brother, Charles V., calling upon
him to come to the aid of the Five Cantons, and beginning at the Alps, to
traverse Christendom at the head of his legions, purging out heresy, and
restoring the dominion of the old faith.
Zwingli had fallen; but in this
same land a mightier was about to arise.
Book 12 Index
FOOTNOTES
VOLUME SECOND
BOOK ELEVENTH
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 1
none
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 2
[1] Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI., act 1, scene 1.
[2] Christoffel, p. 224.
[3] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 275.
[4] Christoffel, p. 225.
[5] Zwing. Opp., tom. 2, p. 405.
[6] See ante, bk. 8, chap. 15.
[7] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 276.
[8] Ibid., p. 278. Christoffel, p. 229.
[9] See ante, bk. 8, chap. 5.
[10] Bullinger, Chron., tom. 1, p. 351.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 281.
[13] Ibid., p. 282.
[14] Ruchat. tom. 1, p. 287. Christoffel p. 231.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 3
[1] See ante, bk. 9.
[2] Ruchat. tom. 1, pp. 231,232. Christoffel, pp. 249, 250.
[3] Zwing. Opp., tom. 2, p. 231, and tom. 3, p. 362.
[4] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 234.
[5] Hottinger, tom. 3, p. 219. Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 232.
[6] Ruchat, 1, pp. 232, 233.
[7] Ibid., p. 234.
[8] Ibid., p. 233.
[9] Ruchat, tom. 1, pp. 234, 235.
[10] Bullinger, Chron., tom. 1, p. 324 apud D'Aubigne, bk. 11, chap. 10. Christoffel. p. 285.
[11] Hotringer, tom. 3, p. 385 apud D'Aubigne, bk. 11, chap. 10. Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 332. Christoffel, p. 285.
[12] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 237. Christoffel, pp. 272, 273.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 4
[1] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 361. Christoffel. p. 188.
[2] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 362.
[3] Ibid., pp. 363-368.
[4] Christoffel, p. 189.
[5] Ibid., p. 188.
[6] Christoffel, p. 189.
[7] Superior of the Franciscans at Basle, and afterwards Professor of Divinity at Zurich. His exegetical powers enabled him to render great service to the Reformation.
[8] Ruchat, tom. 1, pp. 368, 369.
[9] Ibid. Christoffel, p. 189. De'Aubigne, bk. 15, chap. 2.
[10] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 369.
[11] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 371.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Subdivided into twenty in the course of the discussion. Ruchat, tom. 1, pp. 373, 374.
[14] Christoffel, p. 190.
[15] Ruchat, tom. 1, pp. 453, 454.
[16] Ibid., p. 474.
[17] "This beast," so writes a Papistical hearer, "is in truth more learned than I had believed. The malapert Ecolampadius may understand the prophets and Hebrew better, and in Greek he may equal him, but in fertility of intellect, in force and perspicuity of statement, he is very far behind him. I could make nothing of Capito. Bucer spoke more than he did. Had Bucer the learning and linguistic acquirements of Ecolampadius and Zwingli, he would be more dangerous than either, so quick is he in his movements and so pleasantly can he talk." (Christoffel, p. 190.)
[18] Ruchat, tom. 1, p. 475.
[19] Ibid., tom. 1, p. 478.
[20] Ruchat, tom. 1, pp. 479-481.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Sleidan, bk. 6, p. 112. Ruchat insinuates a doubt of this, on the ground that Sleidan is the only historian who records the fact, and that no trace of the monument is known. But we know that a similar pillar was erected at Geneva to commemorate the completion of its Reformation, and afterwards demolished, although the inscription it bore has been preserved.
[23] Christoffel, p. 191. Ruchat, tom. 1, pp. 485, 486.
[24] Revelation 5:9, 10, 12.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 5
[1] See ante, bk. 8, chap. 5.
[2] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 74.
[3] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 75.
[4] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 76.
[5] Ibid., p. 77.
[6] Zwingli, Epp., 2, p. 225 D'Aubigne, bk. 15, ch. 5.
[7] Zwingli, Epp., 2, p. 225.
[8] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 78.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., pp. 78, 79.
[11] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 79.
[12] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 80.
[13] Ruchat, tom 2, p. 81.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 82. Gerdesius, Hist. Evan. Renov., tom. 2, p. 371; Gron. and Brem., 1746.
[16] Ruchat, tom. 2, pp. 82, 83. Gerdesius, tom, 2, p. 872.
[17] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 83.
[18] Gerdesius, tom. 2, p. 372. Ruchat, tom. 2, p 84. Sleidan, bk. 6, p. 117.
[19] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 84. Gerdesius, tom. 2, p. 372. Sleidan, bk. 6, p. 117.
[20] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 84. Gerdesius, tom. 2, p. 372. Sleidan, bk. 6, p. 117.
[21] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 86.
[22] Ibid. Gerdesius, tom. 2, p. 374.
[23] The tomb of Erasmus is to be seen in the Cathedral-church at Basle, in front of the choir. The epitaph does not give the year of his death, simply styling him a "septuagenarian."
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 6
[1] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 103.
[2] Christoffel, p. 235. Bullinger, Chron., tom. 2, pp. 49-59.
[3] Christoffel, p. 420.
[4] Christoffel, p. 413.
[5] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 107.
[6] Christoffel, p. 233.
[7] Ruchat, tom. 2, pp. 109, 110. Christoffel, p. 416.
[8] The deteriorating influence of the foreign service was felt in Germany, though in less degree than in Switzerland. Morals, patriotism, and public order it undermined. We find the German States complaining to Maximilian II. that the mercenaries on returning from foreign service were guilty of the greatest enormities.
[9] Ruchat, tom. 2, pp. 113, 114. Christoffel, p. 420.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 7
[1] Sleidan, bk. 6, p. 120.
[2] Ruchat, tom. 2, pp. 114, 115. Christoffel, p. 421.
[3] The Swiss field-chaplains carried a weapon on service up till the most recent time. Zwingli's halberd, which he had already used in the battle of Marignano, had no other significance than the later side-weapon of the field-preacher. (Christoffel, p. 421.)
[4] Christoffel, p. 423. Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 115.
[5] While Pastor of Glarus, Zwingli had become Godfather of the Landamman.
[6] The treaty was signed on the 26th of June, 1529, and consisted of seventeen articles. Their substance is given by Ruchat, tom. 2, pp. 116-121.
[7] These details respecting the daily life and habits of the Reformer of Zurich have been collected by Christoffel. "They are taken," he tells us, "from accounts, thoroughly consistent with themselves, of several of his friends and acquaintances, Myconius, Bullinger, and Bernhard Weiss. Myconius says, in addition, that he always studied and worked standing." (Christoffel, pp. 373, 374.)
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 8
[1] Christoffel, p. 433.
[2] James von Medicis, a foolhardy adventurer, had seized on the Castle of Musso, at the entrance of the Veltelin, and thence harassed the inhabitants of the Grisons, the majority of whom had embraced Protestantism. His violent deeds are believed to have been prompted by the emperor, who sent him 900 Spanish soldiers, and the title of Margrave. (Christoffel.)
[3] Zwingli, Epp., 2, p. 429. Christoffel, pp. 404, 405. D'Aubigne, bk. 16, chap. 4.
[4] Zwingli, Epp., 2, p. 666. Christoffel, p. 407.
[5] The name for the emperor in the correspondence between the landgrave and Zwingli. This correspondence was carried on in cipher, which was often changed, the better to preserve the secret.
[6] Christoffel, p. 407.
[7] Zwingli, Epp., March, 1530.
[8] Christoffel, sec. 9. 3. D'Aubigne, bk. 16, chap. 3.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 9
[1] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 353.
[2] Christoffel, pp. 445, 446.
[3] Christoffel, p. 447.
[4] Christoffel, p. 449.
[5] Bullinger, Chron., tom. 3, p. 49.
[6] This was Halley's Comet, that makes its appearance about every seventy-six years.
[7] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 387.
[8] Zwingli, Epp., 2, p. 626.
[9] Christoffel, pp. 449, 450.
VOLUME SECOND- BOOK ELEVENTH- CHAPTER 10
[1] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 395.
[2] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 388. Christoffel, p. 452.
[3] Christoffel, pp. 452, 453.
[4] Ibid., p. 453.
[5] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 408.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 412. The student of the classics will remember the words that Epaminondas addressed to his companions when dying "It is not an end of my life that is now come, but a better beginning."
[8] Ruchat, tom. 2, p. 412.
[9] The pear-tree under which Zwingli died has perished. A rough massive block of stone, with a tablet, and an inscription in German and Latin, has taken its place.