In 1525, a Concord of Faith crafted by the Catholic cantons tried to persuade the rebellious cantons that reforming the church had to be done by Catholics from within the Church, and that in Switzerland it would be handled by the Federal Diet. Here again was a church-state alliance with the secular arm, under the guidance of the church, being the dominant force. Education, Indulgences, Papal abuses and others were mentioned as issues that must be remedied. To little and too late, this statement of intent went largely ignored by Zurich. In January of 1526, Faber challenged Zwingli to a disputation in Baden regarding images and the mass. His associate Johann Eck, a seasoned Catholic debater with a phenomenal memory, was eager to debate Zwingli. Eck had debated Luther at Leipzig. With the disputation planned, and because of threats, Zwingli was barred by the Zurich magistrates from going. The highly educated but less competent debater Oecolampadius from Basel took his place. Berthold Haller from Berne was also a voice for the reformed church. Threats against Zwingli's life were common, so safety concerns were always considered regarding any of Zwingli's movements.
And rightly so because the Swiss historian D'Aubigne tells us Faber, Eck, the clergy and Catholic magistrates were in a killing mood:
"Meanwhile, fanaticism was already bestirring itself and striking down its victims. A consistory, headed by that same Faber who had challenged Zwingle, on the 10th of May 1526, about a week before the discussion at Baden, condemned to the flames, as a heretic, an evangelical minister named John Hugel, pastor of Lindau,10 who walked to the place of execution singing the Te Deum. At the same time, another minister, Peter Spengler, was drowned at Friburg by order of the Bishop of Constance."
By this time, Zurich was no longer the lone voice of the reformation in Switzerland. Zwingli's hard work has influenced educated men and layfolk in the other cantons. Dr. Sebastian Hofmeister preached freely in Schaffhausen. In Biel, Zwingli's professor at Basel, Thomas Wyttenbach, still openly opposed graven images and the mass as idolatrous. Oecolampidius, Zwinglian ally and parish priest at St. Martin's in Basel since February of 1525, was continuing the reforms that Capito accomplished up to 1520. Oecolampidius' appointment in Basel came with the order that he could not introduce any religious innovations without the authorization of the magistrates. By August of 1525, Oecolampadius had rejected Luther's Eucharistic belief, coming out for Zwingli's doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Both the Catholic's transubstantiation and the Lutheran's consubstantiation theologies were not scriptural to these reformers; they chose a symbolic view of the Lord's Supper. Berthold Haller and Sebastian Meier joined the humanist and dramatist Nicholas Manuel in steering Bern slowly into the Protestant Reformation. Manuel produced provocative iconoclastic art depicting the destruction of idols and graven images. While still somewhat conservative and against the sudden innovations of Zwingli, Berne allowed any preaching as long as it was supported by the scriptures. This was a small step from tradition but a step nonetheless. Statues and pictures remained in Berne churches; divisive issues such as indulgences, fasting, monasticism, and celibacy vows were avoided for the sake of public peace. But heretical books that preached Wycliffe, Huss, Zwingli or Luther's articles and conclusions were forbidden by council decrees of June 15, 1523 and November 22, 1524. Similar to the secular arm in Zurich's ecclesiastic matters, Berne's magistrates had the final say although behind the scenes religious authorities greatly influenced their decisions. Like Zurich, "The magistracy, however, claimed the right to punish priests disregarding these decrees; the monasteries were placed under civic control, and clerical incomes were regulated" (See WHITNEY) This peace by suppression would not last long because Protestants eventually gained the majority in the councils.
Faber and Eck knew it was time to move decisively in order to suppress the reformation's growing successes. The Catholic cantons, in league with them (and secretly so with the chief authorities of Bern), sent a deputation to the city. On the day after Pentecost of 1526, the deputation arrived and declared, "All order is destroyed in the Church". The chief magistrate of Lucerne complained passionately that "God is blasphemed, the sacraments, the mother of God, and the saints are despised, and imminent and terrible calamities threaten to dissolve our praiseworthy confederation." Many were summoned to the council; it was not a tidy affair because of Bern's continuing neutrality concerning Zurich's reforms. Faber, Eck and their allies could see that Bern was close to accepting more of the reformation so something had to be done. The Catholic cantons demanded that "Berne must renounce the evangelical faith and walk with us". The Bernese council complied, giving Rome a much needed victory. Berne's magistrates stated they would maintain "the ancient christian faith, the holy sacraments, the mother of God, the saints, and the ornaments of the churches." Lutherans, Zwinglians and married priests were banished; censorship increased and books were publicly burned. See D'AUBIGNE.
Meanwhile, D'aubigne reports, "Sinister rumors reached Zwingle from all quarters. His brother-in-law, Leonard Tremp, wrote to him from Berne, "I entreat you, as you regard you life, not to repair to Baden. I know that they will not respect your safe-conduct". It was affirmed that a plan had been formed to seize and gag him, throw him into a boat, and carry him off to some secret place. With these threats and persecutions before them, the council of Zurich decreed that Zwingle should not go to Baden."
Jan Hus was promised safe passage to and from the Council of Constance (convened 1414-1418) but the Catholic council, called by the Emperor Sigismund, still burned him at the stake for his dissenting views. There was good reason not to trust the authorities, civil and ecclesiastic. Luther was promised safe passage to and from the Diet of Worms ("Vermz") in 1521 but was protected by the forces of a supporter, Prince Frederick III, Elector of Saxony. This assembly was yet another example of church and state allying themselves to crush dissent; the council was presided over by Emperor Charles V while the prosecutor was from the office of the Bishop. This alliance of the imperial court and the Catholic clergy of Rome and Constantinople began during the period surrounding the Council of Nicea. Presided over by Emperor Constantine in 325, it was not the first time he made decisions to strengthen and protect. In the previous decade, imperial decrees initiated state funding for the maintenance of the clergy and their churches.
"Eck, . . proclaimed the futility of fighting against such heretics as the preacher of Zurich with any other weapons than "fire and sword." 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."
"Wherever at this hour they [the magistrates] 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. . . Nor did [Eck] the man who had won so many laurels in debate, disdain adding thereto the honors of the executioner."
The Baden Disputation was held from May 21 to June 18. Without the sharp debating skills of Zwingli, Oecolampidius was not able to overcome the strategies of Eck. In fact, according to Irena Backus' "The Disputations of Baden, 1526, and Berne, 1528: Neutralizing the Early Church", Oecolampadius, like Eck, was "very far removed from the Bible" and "happy to subordinate text of the Scripture to Aristotelian distinctions". Ulrich Zwingli would have never gone down that road and as a result, the reformers were defeated as Eck easily handled Oecolampadius and the other reformers that spoke. On top of that, the disputation was rigged; heckling, stamping feet, insults, censoring and constant interruptions by the biased judges handicapped the reformers as they tried to make their points. "The arrangements for the disputation and the local sympathies were in favor of the papal party. Mass was said every morning at five, and a sermon preached; the pomp of ritualism was displayed in solemn processions. The presiding officers and leading secretaries were Romanists; nobody besides them was permitted to take notes" (See Schaff) This not only limited the reform party debaters but prevented any non-Catholic reports of the proceedings. And to top that off, Thomas Murner was chosen to edit the notes and compile an official report of the proceedings. Murner was a Franciscan Monk and a prolific writer of highly insulting satire directed against the reformers. He constantly got under the reformer's skin and angered them; so distressed by his writings, Zurich really wanted his head. Not surprising a soul, the Baden magistrates decided for the Catholics. Zwingli was excommunicated and the Basel magistrates were pressured to depose Oecolampadius and remove him from his pastoral position. Offending books were burnt and Faber even called for Protestant Bibles to be put to the torch. This was another victory for Rome but as the future showed, Faber and Eck read far too much into this victory, naively assuming it was only a matter of time before the movement was defeated for good. It backfired.
"Eck stamps with his feet, and claps his hands,
He raves, he swears, he scolds;
'I do,' cries he, 'what the Pope commands,
And teach whatever he holds.' " (Nicholas Manuel)
The summer of 1526 was a busy time in Europe. Accompanying the Catholic cantons' actions against Bern and the Baden disputation, an imperial edict was issued by Archduke Ferdinand by the authority of his brother, Emperor Charles V. As Protestantism flourished, the harsh decrees of the Edict of Worms seemed useless in light of more serious problems in Europe. Protestant princes courageously professed their faith openly as the new faith became increasingly popular with leaders and representatives in imperial cities. At this point, with the Muslim armies banging down the doors of eastern Europe, Protestantism was the least of Europe's problems. Under Suleiman the Magnificent, the Turkish threat was growing so Catholics and Protestants alike needed to join together as one. Ambassadors were sent all over Europe, including to England's Henry VIII, in hopes of uniting Europe against the advancing Muslim threat. Many believed it was time for another crusade against the infidels of Islam. Parts of the Balkans were Muslim; Constantinople had fallen in 1453 and was renamed Istanbul while its churches were remodeled into mosques. Adriatic and Mediterranean shipping lanes and ports were vulnerable; piracy was a serious problem. Suleiman's navy ruled the sea.
The Pope and the emperor were quarreling, too, so Europe simply didn't have the unity necessary to take on the Protestant movement while the enemies of Christ moved closer. Concluding on August 27, 1526, the First Diet of Speyer signaled a religious truce until a major council was called to settle the issues. This temporarily neutralized the Edict of Worms that ordered Luther's death and the burning of his books. This new imperial edict decreed, "Every State shall so live, rule, and believe as it may hope and trust to answer before God and his imperial Majesty." This decree gave the civil authorities the right to establish whatever religion they wished. A great council was to eventually settle the issue so this was not set in stone; it was a temporary solution. Secular princes such as Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Elector Frederick of Saxony took advantage of the decree, interpreting it as they wished, establishing religious liberty in their realm for the reformed movement. At the council in Homberg held in October, civil authorities and princes began to establish the religion of their choice and the majority's within their territories. This kind of democratical stategy was similar to Zwingli's strategy of Zurich's public disputations. As a result, there came to be different official churches in different prince's realms. With all the distractions within and without, Protestantism was now in a very favorable position for continued growth. Like the Renaissance, the Reformation's success was directly influenced by the military and religious expansionism of the Turkish Muslims.
BERNE'S REFORMATION
By Easter of 1527, Faber and Eck's recent success was about to come undone. Though they boasted of their victory, the brilliant debater Zwingli was not present because they planned on killing him. The Baden result actually energized the reform movement and both Oecolampadius and Haller saw no great loss. With both the Great and Small Councils of Berne now having Protestant majorities, an edict was issued to signal that a change was soon coming. That change would be accomplished by a disputation in Bern. On the Sabbath after St. Martin's day (November 11) of 1527, clergy, scholars and laymen alike met with Bern's Great Council and resolved to hold a disputation on the religious issues of the day beginning on the first Sunday of 1528, "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". (See Wylie).
The disputations were to be modeled on those of Zurich. Bern was going to decide for itself where it stood and where it was going. Invitations were sent to the Bishops of the dioceses of Constance, Lausanne, Sion and Basel. Every canton and free town was asked to send learned men from both sides; pastors in positions of leadership were required to attend with those refusing to attend subject to losing their benefices. Not only were the Swiss Confederates invited, southern German representatives and other foreign deputies were extended invitations. The Berne magistrates further promised, "Come, we undertake for your safety, and guarantee you all liberty in the expression of your opinions." Safe passage promises such as these must have been the target of many satires, jokes and cynics. In these times of volatile religious controversies that often led to violence, no leader, civil or spiritual, could be fully trusted.
Like Faber and Eck, many defenders of Rome thought matters had been settled by the at the Baden disputation. But like the disputation at Leipzig between Eck and Martin Luther, it only gave the Reformation more steam. The four Bishops, the seven Catholic cantons and the Emperor himself protested the disputation plans and demanded that they forsake the plan. Again, the reasoning was based upon an eventual General Council that would settle all these matters for good. Zwingli's answer to Faber in the Zurich disputation was they had learned men in attendance with the pages of the Bible opened for all to judge by so what more was needed? Bern's response was of the same species that Zurich had used to deflect the opposition's concerns: "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." (See Wylie) The response probably pacified none; these were all familiar reform party statements that implied traditions not founded by scripture could be challenged. For Rome, Baden had actually failed to accomplish anything of substance - and Zwingli would be in Berne for the debate!
On New Year's Eve more than one hundred clergy and scholars from Suabia (a part of southern German) rendezvoused in Zurich for the trek to Bern. Also joining the Swiss procession were deputies from the German communities of Lindau, Constance, Ulm, and Augsburg also joined the Swiss procession. Leading the group were Burgomeister Roust, Zwingli, the Zurich deputation, and Henry Bullinger, the future religious leader of Zurich. Because the area to be traveled through was Catholic, the Zurich representatives had asked for a promise of safe passage. Catholics replied with printed tracts on how good the hunting would be in this region. The group was refused a promise of safety so the cavalcade was accompanied by 300 arquebus equipped men. An arquebus is a heavily plated, low velocity gun that predated the rifle. Arriving in Bern on January 4, they joined a growing number of arrivals there for the disputation. Haller lived there in Berne; Oecolampadius and Bucer had also arrived. It is claimed that three hundred fifty clergymen, magistrates, deputies and commoners attended the disputation. The disputation was based on the Ten Theses or Articles presented below. Spread over a period of nineteen days, there were also several carefully timed sermons preached by Zwingli, Ambrosius Blarer, Berthold Haller, Thomas Gasser, Oecolampadius, Konrad Som, Konrad Schmidt, Martin Bucer and Kaspar Megandar.
The Ten Theses:
1: That the Holy Christian Church, of which Christ is the only Head, is born of the Word of God, abides therein, and does not listen to the voice of a stranger;
2: that this Church imposes no laws on the conscience of people without the sanction of the Word of God, and that the laws of the Church are binding only in so far as they agree with the Word;
3: that Christ alone is our righteousness and our salvation, and that to trust to any other merit or satisfaction is to deny Him;
4: that it cannot be proved from the Holy Scripture
that the body and blood of Christ are corporeally present in the bread and in the wine of the Lord's Supper;
5: that the mass, in which Christ is offered to God the Father for the sins of the living and of the dead, is contrary to Scripture and a gross affront to the sacrifice and death of the Saviour;
6: that we should not pray to dead mediators and intercessors, but to Jesus Christ alone;
7: that there is no trace of purgatory in Scripture;
8: that to set up pictures and to adore them is also contrary to Scripture, and that images and pictures ought to be destroyed where there is danger of giving them adoration;
9: that marriage is lawful to all, to the clergy as well as to the laity;
10: that shameful living is more disgraceful among the clergy than among the laity.
The Berne magistrates chose the Church of Cordeliers for the debate. Tables were set on a platform for the debaters. Between them were four secretaries that swore an oath to record the proceedings as honestly as they could. This was not done in Baden; people were forbidden to take notes. It was a pathetic example of an open debate and it is easy to see why Haller and Oecolampadius didn't take the loss seriously. These Catholic imposed restrictions would not be allowed in Berne. The debate would be genuinely open and as far as the reformers were concerned, the Word of God would be the judge for all to see and hear. One has to wonder if the reason why Eck, Faber and the theologians didn't show up was because it was to be an actual open affair that they wouldn't be in control of. And to the excitement of the reformed party, Zwingli was there! Eck had claimed he wanted to debate Zwingli but when the chance arrived, he chose not to attend. Thomas Murner, the monk who wrote so many satires and violent tracts about Protestants also chose not to attend, choosing instead to send his vehement thoughts on paper. He had been at Baden and spoke at the end, referring to Zwingli and the reformers as "tyrants, liars, adulterers, church robbers, fit only for the gallows".(See Schaff)
The disputation began on January 6 and lasted twenty days; with one break for the feast of Saint Vincent, which was Berne's patron saint. The decision was now in the hands of Berne's magistrates. The councils of Berne assembled the clergy, high and low, and asked them if they agreed with the Ten Theses. The response was overwhelming, nearly unanimous, with even the Prior and Sub-Prior of the Dominicans subscribing to the Ten Theses. The magistrates then issued their decrees which conformed to the Ten Theses. The Mass was abolished, altars were replaced with plain wooden tables, organs were dismantled, moved, or outright destroyed. Images were crushed to rubble, pictures were destroyed, frescos were painted over. On February 2, the people of Berne met at the cathedral and swore an oath to stand by the council on the matters of the Ten Theses. The magistrates issued their decrees on February 7. There were thirteen provisions that established Protestantism in Berne. They approved the Ten Theses and ordered the clergy and citizenry to conform to them. As Zurich had done, they officially divorced themselves from the Bishop they had been under. The clergy's oath of obedience to Rome was annulled. Priests, monks, and Nuns could now marry; their vow of celibacy nullified and voided by the authority of the state. The secular authorities had said so; the state, in a coalition with the religious leaders made it so. The money they had supported monks and nuns with was now used to create schools and hospitals. While the Protestants made some positive changes, religious liberty was not one. Religious diversity was still against convention and law.
"Zwingli's enemies too were now under his feet; after December 7, 1528, only the barest civic rights without the chance of office were left to non-Reformers ; attendance at Mass even outside the city was punished by fine; to eat fish instead of flesh on Friday was an offense. But a reaction might at any time set in." (See Whitney)
PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC POLITICAL LEAGUES EMERGE
On Christmas day of 1527, Zurich had formed a religious and political league with Constance called Das Christliche Burgerrecht or, Christian Civic League. Constance, with its beautiful Lake Constance lies on the northeast border of the confederation, was refused admission to the Swiss Confederation so Zurich came to its aid. An alliance was founded on theological unity and mutual defense. Other cities soon followed over the next two years and included Bern, St Gallen, Biel, Mühlhausen, Basel, Schaffhausen, and Strasbourg. Reacting to the Protestant alliance as a threat to the integrity of the confederation, a Federal Diet was called and held in Baden on May 28, 1528. A league of five Catholic cantons with Ferdinand, Duke of Austria and King of Bohemia and Hungary was proposed for religious and military reasons. Both the Duke and Emperor Charles V were eager to attack the delinquent cantons, especially Zurich. This particular alliance with the Duke was not openly agreed to at the Diet but was secretly done. The Catholic cantons gathered again in Feldkirch on February 14, 1529 where plans were drawn up for their alliance to counter the Protestant league. Called the Christian Union it was approved and chartered on April 22, 1529. Part of the agreement was that each member would support the other in its prosecution of heretics. This made escaping a jurisdiction useless in places. Prosecuting heretics went both ways, of course. After Basel joined the Civic League on June 25, 1528, it purged Catholics from its Councils. Zurich was right behind Basel in its removal of Catholic officials. The Protestants used religious tests much the same way as the Catholics. Late Roman Emperors also periodically purged the religiously incorrect from their governments. The despotic Emperor Justinian was one of those early Christian emperors that ordered religious purges in his imperial court.
"Zwingli's enemies too were now under his feet; after December 7, 1528, only the barest civic rights without the chance of office were left to non-Reformers ; attendance at Mass even outside the city was punished by fine; to eat fish instead of flesh on Friday was an offence. But a reaction might at any time set in." (See Whitney, Cambridge Modern History
BASEL'S REVOLUTION of 1528
Alarming Faber, Eck and the Catholic cantons, the repercussions of Bern's disputation were felt throughout the confederation. At the same time Protestants received a much needed dose of confidence and courage. In Basel, especially, change was in the air. In May of 1527, the magistrates of Basel had asked both the reformers and the Catholics to put in writing their views on the Mass. Oecolampadius summed it up for the reformers and Augustin Marius did so for the Catholics. After studying the viewpoints, the Council decided to allow each church make up their own mind as to whether they would keep the Mass or not. Immediately, reform churches abolished the Mass and introduced singing in their native language. Psalms in German brought joy to the reformers and their congregations. Catholic churches kept their traditions for a time but the monasteries began to feel the pressure to change from both the city's officials and the reformed party by the end of 1527. Zurich's magistrates dissolved their monasteries in 1524, Berne by 1528 and England's Henry VIII did the same with decrees in 1536 and 1539.
"Oecolampadius, after taking counsel with Zwingli on the best means of suppressing Catholic worship, branded the mass as an act worse than theft, harlotry, adultery, treason, and murder, called a meeting of the town council, and requested them to decree the abolition of Catholic worship." (See Preserved Smith's The Age of the Reformation)
By mid-1528 the reformed party in Basel, mostly Lutherans, outnumbered Catholics. In the city area of Basel, there were four reformed for every Catholic. This made for continuing religious strife because most individuals thought their church should be the State Church. With the Zwinglian victory at the Berne disputation, a great deal of pressure for change mounted in Basel. Just days before Christmas, over three hundred reformers assembled peacefully and petitioned the magistrates of Basel to abolish the Mass because they believed it was an abomination before God. By practicing this idolatry, they were tempting God's wrath. Reformers also sought some kind of control of the Catholic pastors in order to make sure that nothing was taught except that which came from the pages of the Bible. On top of the demands from the Basel's reformed citizenry, there was pressure from the magistrates and reformers of both Zurich and Berne. Not to be pushed around, armed Catholics attempted to block the Protestant's way to the town hall where the council was meeting. The council insisted that it was late and they should all go home and go to bed. Two days later, on Christmas day, both groups assembled again. The Catholics arrived first and the word spread that they were armed. By the time the word had spread to every corner of the city, the armed Protestants numbered three-thousand. For two weeks this went on. Trying to please everyone and avoid bloodshed, the council finally decreed pastors must preach only from the Word of God but the issue of the Mass was a matter of individual choice. Evangelism from the Word of God was to be preached but the Mass was not going anywhere just yet. This was really the continuation of the 1527 policy. On the Mass, none were compelled to attend and none were prevented from attending. This was a more mature and enlightened viewpoint for these times but these were times of deep religious differences that often sparked violence. This kind of tolerance could not last in 1529 because the reformed party, like all religious zealots, would not permit any compromise or choice. Knowing of this powder keg in the making, representatives from other regions came and sought to help bring the dispute to a peaceful solution. Quickly, the Senate made another attempt to bring peace, ordering a disputation on the Mass to take place two Sundays after Pentecost. They also restricted Mass to three churches and they were permitted to celebrate it once daily. The situation was deteriorating because the decree infuriated the Catholics, while the Protestants insisted there was nothing to discuss; the Mass was idolatry and insulted God.
Over this period of supposed deliberation, the Reformed party suspected the senate of deceit; through deliberately stalling in each of the situations before them. Suspicions arose because there were a dozen or so council members that were relatives of the Catholic clergy. On January 24, Sebastian Muller, preacher at the Cathedral of St. Peter, violently raged against the reformers as heretics. His rant was contagious, inciting his congregation to such a boiling point that the reform minded of the congregation feared for their lives. The Protestants knew the Mass had to be addressed soon and sought out the magistrates to do something, one way or the other. Due to continuing threats, insults and floods of invectives from the Catholics, they believed their lives were in danger as long as the issue remained unsettled. Killing heretics was on too many a Catholic mind. The magistrates promised a favorable answer but fifteen days later, they were still indecisive.
On that fifteenth day, February 8, eight-hundred of the Reformed party met in the Church of the Franciscans to draw up a strategy. Time was running out and it looked as if the controversy would end up a bloody one. The council would be asked to purge itself of the "the fathers and relatives of the priests". Furthermore, they wanted the Senate to be democratized so the members would be elected by the people in a transparent democratic process. That evening they placed six military cannons before the Hotel de Ville, took possession of the town's arsenal and controlled the streets by barricading them with chains. Armed guards took possession of the town's gates and towers. To dispel the darkness of the night, they made large torches with Fir trees and set them upon high places. This aggressive strategy caused many of the Catholic leaders to cower; the Burgomeister, his son-in-law and several councilors left Basel by way of the Rhine River in the dead of night. Thinking that this might have been an attempt by them to recruit Austrian soldiers, the armed Protestant force grew to two-thousand by sunrise.
At eight in the morning, the magistrates notified the Protestant committee that they had designated twelve who were to excuse themselves whenever the matter at hand was religious. Unfortunately, those designated refused to accept this unconditionally and were going to appeal for a hearing of their case before the other cantons. Patience was getting thin. The Protestants sent a detachment of forty soldiers to inspect all the posts in the city in case of attack. The troops continued to the Cathedral of St. Peter where one thing led to another after a hidden image rolled out of a closet and broke into pieces. One after another were found, rolled out and smashed to pieces. Some priests resisted but that only quickened the destruction. The destroyed altars, the dismantled pictures and the rubble of the images were all set afire in the town's squares. What would not burn was pounded to dust. The sympathizing public stood by the fires, warming their bodies in the winter night as if it was a social event. When the council heard the excitement, they inquired as to what the reformers had been doing. They responded "We are doing in an hour what you have not been able to do in three years." (See Wylie) After the Cathedral was cleansed, the reformers visited all the churches of Basel, destroying with hammer and axe all the images found. Even the organs were removed.
The magistrates of Basel finally gave in to all the reformer demands. Firstly, the members of the two councils would be elected by the citizens in a free and open election. Secondly, the Mass and images would be abolished and churches were to be supplied with ministers who correctly preach the Word of God. Thirdly, in all matters regarding religion and the public good, two hundred and sixty members of the guilds were to be admitted to deliberate with the Senate. By the tyranny of the majority, a Protestant alliance of church and state had been established. Without the loss of life, but with the loss of any remaining religious choice, a democracy without liberty of conscience and religious equality was created in two days. Now it was the people, not the monarchs or the Popes, who were the despots. Without the ethics and principles of liberty it was still a medieval world steeped in religious discrimination. By the third day, Ash Wednesday, all the remaining statues, pictures and altars were collected into nine piles and burned in the Cathedral Square. The tyranny of the majority ruled.
"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."
"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" 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. Basel 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 Basel this monarch of the schools had ruled the world of letters. But Protestantism had entered it, and he could breathe its air no longer." (See Wylie.
Erasmus was certainly bitter, seeing his beloved university town turned upside down by the heretics. In his letter to Pirkheimer of Nürnberg, May 9, 1529 regarding the Basel reformation he wrote, "The smiths and workmen removed the pictures from the churches, and heaped such insults on the images of the saints and the crucifix itself, that it is quite surprising there was no miracle, seeing how many there always used to occur whenever the saints were even slightly offended. Not a statue was left either in the churches, or the vestibules, or the porches, or the monasteries. The frescoes were obliterated by means of a coating of lime; whatever would burn was thrown into the fire, and the rest pounded into fragments. Nothing was spared for either love or money. Before long the mass was totally abolished, so that it was forbidden either to celebrate it in one's own house or to attend it in the neighboring villages." (See Schaff)
Complicating the Swiss situation even more in 1528, trouble exploded in St. Gallen. The Abbot was dying so Zwingli and the Privy Council sought to exploit the situation. Since it was Zurich's turn to appoint the bailiff for the region, magistrates ordered the Zurich official Jacob Frei to seize the property, introduce the Gospel, and secularize it. This meant more Roman Catholic property was to become state owned. Like Thurgau, St. Gallen was under shifting, multiple jurisdictions. Thurgau was the common land where the evangelical priest Oeschli was arrested as a heretic preacher and then rescued from jail by a town mob. Because the town's people wanted the property when the monastery was dissolved, they broke in before the Abbot died and forcibly took over. Unfortunately for these proactive citizens, the monastery was not only under the rotating jurisdictions of four cantons but it was protected by the authority of the Empire. With this transgression, the Catholic cantons and the imperial court again expressed the desire for war on the reformed party.
To the north of Switzerland, several regions came under the influence of the Reformation. In 1529, the Strasbourg city council abolished the Mass and eventually joined the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League, a coalition for mutual defense. Rome's Bishop, seeing no point in having his headquarters there in Strasbourg any longer, moved his headquarters to Zabern. Most of the secular lordships of the region and many in the cathedral chapter became Protestants. Strasbourg's reformation had gotten off to a quick start in the early 1520s. Due to the work of evangelicals Wolfgang Capito, Martin Bucer, and Matthias Zell; of humanists Sturm and Hedio, the reformation was more quietly established there.
THE SECOND DIET OF SPEYER
In the Spring of 1529, church and state teamed up once again to threaten the growing number of religious dissenters in the region at the Second Diet of Speyer. The Diet addressed the growing Turkish problems and the steadily growing doctrinal schisms in Christianity. The need for reformers to return to the faith of their fathers for a common cause was considered by church leaders to be of the utmost importance for the defense of Europe; it was unpatriotic to disagree with the state's religion. Be a Catholic; be a crusader; defend the empire; fight the devilish Turks for God and Country. Those who dissented on the grounds of religious liberty and choice were set back by the results of the Diet. In the end, the Imperial Diet issued an edict condemning those who denied the miraculous transubstantiation of the Eucharist. Those who preached that the Eucharist was not transformed into the actual flesh and blood of Christ were not to be tolerated. At the time, Protestant political unity was weak because of the conflict between Zwinglians and Lutherans regarding the substance of the Eucharist. The calling of this imperial diet was a crafty strategy to combat and divide the reformers. Luther's theology of Eucharistic consubstantiality was not a rejection of the flesh and blood of Christ abiding in the Eucharist; the difference was the bread was still bread but was consubstantial, coexisting with the body and blood of Christ. With Zwinglians, it was symbolic and remained bread. It was the miracle of the partaker's salvation by faith that was important; that faith was reaffirmed with the celebration of the Lord's Supper. The edict helped to further divide the reformers, who had not yet even tried to resolve this issue. The initial attempt, the Colloquy of Marburg, which was to be held in October of 1529 would fail to bring conformity. Denying the Mass was also addressed at the Diet of Speyer because Strasbourg had just banned the Mass. Shame on them! The Archduke, the Emperor and the Catholic cantons were going to put a stop to these innovations once and for all at this assembly of church and imperial authorities. The edict stridently addressed the doctrines, liturgy, and morals of the church. Anyone who blasphemed God, denigrated the dogma of the Virgin Mary, challenged the transubstantiation of the Eucharist, or denied any of the twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed was to pay a price. These crimes were addressed with civil penalties such as the loss of one's property and permanent exile. The death penalty was an option, too.
This type of church-state alliance was similar to the model the Christianized Roman Emperors and the church leaders of late antiquity used to combat paganism and heresy. Besides loosing one's property while alive, loss of testamentary rights was also a punishment for heresy. When you died, the state took your estate; your family received nothing if you were a heretic or pagan. The officially recognized church amassed a great deal of real estate through these laws. There were laws under Christian emperors stating that you could not leave your estate to a pagan or heretic. The heirs of an estate had to be confessors of the Nicene Creed, the declared creed of the Council of Nicea held in 325. Paintings representing the Council of Nicea show Emperor Constantine, who ordered the council, as a central force and ally of the bishops. Constantine wanted history to see this major Christian council as his handiwork. The same can be said of Theodosius the Great at Constantinople (381), Theodosius the Younger at Ephesus (431), and Marcianus at Chalcedon (451). (See The Rise of Church-State Alliances, Emperors Constantine through Justinian, 306-565CE) All these emperors strengthened the Nicene Creed's authority and condemned the religious choices of theie time. Each council had the emperor defending the faith with the bishops against differing beliefs. The councils mentioned addressed major heresies such as Arianism and Monophysitism. The Imperial Diet of Speyer was no different, with church and empire teamed together to silence dissent and prevent religious diversity. Church and state, when allied, have almost always been enemies of free speech.
At the Imperial Diet, Archduke Ferdinand delivered the Emperor's edict, part of which stated, "Where the edict of Worms, (which had in view the suppression and extirpation of the Reformation,) has been put in force, all religious innovation, as hitherto, remains
forbidden; but where it has been departed from, and where its introduction without tumult is not possible, no farther steps at least, shall be taken in reformation, no questions of controversy shall be discussed, the Massshall not be forbidden, no Catholic shall pass over to Lutheranism, the Episcopal jurisdiction shall not be declined, and neither Anabaptists nor Sacramentalists shall be tolerated." (See Zwingli: or, The rise of the Reformation in Switzerland, Page 337)
Furthermore, offenders would be "punished according to the measure of their guilt in body, life, and property, who despise, spurn, or condemn the eternal, pure, elect queen, the blessed Virgin Mary, or other beloved saints of God who now live with Christ in eternal blessedness, so as to say that the mother of God is only a woman like other women, that she had more children than Christ, the Son of God, that she was not a virgin before or after his birth". (See Schaff)
The Ottoman Caliphate:
Suleiman the Great inherited a very rich and stable empire from his father. After his death, his sons fought over power. This began the decline of the Ottoman Empire which was ended after WW1 when it supported Germany.
After the Diet issued its rulings, the reformed parties of many cities protested "because the majority has no power in questions of conscience". With persecution likely, fourteen cities signed a legal protestation. Of the fourteen cities, nine were Zwinglian. This protestation of April 25, 1529 is where the Protestant label comes from. The protest stated, "Although it be generally known that in our states the holy sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord is administered in a proper and befitting manner, we cannot accept the terms of the edict against the Sacramentalists, because the Imperial letter of convocation has not spoken of them, because they have not been tried, and nothing can be decided on so important a matter before the next general Council." (See Christoffel)
Anabaptists were being drowned, burned and beheaded by both Catholics and Protestants. By grouping heretics with the Anabaptists, a cold and ruthless message was sent to all; they too could be banished, tortured or executed. Soon thereafter, a reform preacher named Jacob Kaiser (or Keyser) was arrested for preaching heresy in the Catholic canton of Schwyz. He was tried, convicted and burned at the stake. Zwingli was for a quick and decisive military action and being persuasive, war was declared on June 9, 1529. Zurich had been ready for months and sent 4000 troops to the border of canton Zug. Bern sent 5000 to be used in defense of Zurich only. More troops, in smaller contingents, were sent to the border of Schwyz. Zwingli accompanied the largest force to the Zug border. From Glarus, where both faiths were actually co-existing without bloodshed, came Landammann Aebli with a desperate plea to hold off crossing the frontier for war. He had spoken with the Catholic leaders and now pleaded, "Dear lords of Zurich, for God's sake, prevent the division and destruction of the confederacy." (See Schaff). From this point began mediation through the Tagsatzung. When Federal Diets were called they were held by the delegates, the Tagsatzung. Although they had limited authority because the cantons were actually sovereign entities in a confederation much like the United States did under the Articles of Confederation, they succeeded in this particular peace endeavor.
Zwingli was not against a peace settlement but he didn't trust the Catholics' word or intentions. He expressed his hawkish views in a letter to friends in Bern, May 30, 1529. "Let us be firm and fear not to take up arms. This peace, which some desire so much, is not peace, but war; while the war that we call for, is not war, but peace. We thirst for no man's blood, but we will cut the nerves of the oligarchy. If we shun it, the truth of the gospel and the ministers' lives will never be secure among us." (See Schaff). Being nationalistic and against the papacy's authority in Swiss affairs, he might have liked nothing more than to conquer the Catholic regions and replace their Catholic magistrates. For war to be averted and peace to succeed, the Catholics would have to adhere to some important conditions. On June 11, a day after Aebli's plea, Zwingli sent a communication to the Council of Zurich containing four requirements. Schaff tells us of these conditions in his chapter on the Swiss Civil War between Catholics and Protestants.
"1) That the Word of God be preached freely in the entire confederacy, but that no one be forced to abolish the mass, the images, and other ceremonies which will fall of themselves under the influence of scriptural preaching; 2) that all foreign military pensions be abolished; 3) that the originators and the dispensers of foreign pensions be punished while the armies are still in the field; 4) that the Forest cantons pay the cost of war preparations, and that Schwyz pay one thousand guilders for the support of the orphans of Kaiser (Schlosser) who had recently been burnt there as a heretic."
"The first and most important of the Eighteen Articles of the treaty recognizes, for the first time in Europe, the principle of parity or legal equality of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches,—a principle which twenty-six years afterwards was recognized also in Germany"
The Protestant leaders knew that if they attacked, there would be an overwhelming victory so there were many who wished to continue the military campaign. Events in the near future would prove them right. Two weeks later, the First Peace of Kappel was agreed to. Though not everything the hard liners wanted, the agreement was generally friendly to the reformation. The first article of the agreement was a ground breaker in European law. It was the first time any treaty in Europe placed opposing religions on equal legal standing. This was a bitter pill for the Catholics to swallow after centuries of supremacy.
Of great satisfaction to the reformed party was the end of the Catholic's military and religious alliance with Austria and its Archduke Ferdinand. Like Zwingli, Ferdinand saw war as a legitimate way to bring religious conformity to the people. Like Church fathers and Christianized Roman emperors, many a medieval leader erroneously saw strict strict religious uniformity as a way of securing national unity. Of course, this kind of thinking, religious and political, has led to terrible events. In another important matter, nothing was done about the mercenary soldier situation and the associated pensions. As one of Zwingli's most important nationalist concerns for all of Switzerland, the lack of attention in this matter must have angered him. The end to Swiss soldiers for hire and the foreign pensions was suggested to the Catholic cantons during peace mediations but it was not demanded. The mercenary soldier business had filled their treasuries for generations so there was no interest in ending the highly profitable tradition. What was vastly more important to most of the reformers was having legal recognition for the reformed churches. Having the right to preach the reformation freely in Catholic cantons was achieved but this liberty was a one way street paved with hypocrisy. Protestants still banned Catholic preaching in their regions; in Zurich it was still a crime to celebrate the Catholic mass. If the Protestants wanted any respect, they were going about it all wrong, repeating the sins of Rome with a new hat on.
Building on his successes, Zwingli began working on strengthening the reformation in Switzerland. Zwingli was a forward looking politician who dreamed of a European Protestant league. In December of 1529, Zwingli presided over a council at Frauenfeld in neighboring canton Thurgau. Clergy discipline regarding both doctrines and morals were the main concerns of this meeting. According to authors Jackson, Vincent, & Foster on page 294 of Huldreich Zwingli, the Reformer of German Switzerland, there were five hundred clergymen from Thurgau, St. Gall, Appenzell and the Rhine Valley. In bringing discipline to the clergy, those with Anabaptist beliefs were exhorted to recant or be deposed of their position and stripped of their stipends. The council also addressed reforming more monasteries and turning their properties over to the civil authorities. In the Spring, Zwingli returned to Frauenfeld for another council which addressed clergy salaries which were now paid by the state. Immediately after the Frauenfeld meeting, Zwingli traveled to St. Gall for another council on clergy discipline and excommunication in a Zwinglian Christian magistracy. The state was to punish sin, scandal and public offense. In the Spring of 1530 another council was held in Lichtensteig to again deal with clergy discipline. Clergy discipline was now a responsibility of the state. (See Christoffel)
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY
After harsh polemics and a hostile three year long pamphlet war between the Zwinglians and the Lutherans on the nature and substance of the Lord's Supper, the Protestants finally sat down at the Marburg Castle for the sake of political unity. Marburg was the home of the University of Marburg, founded in 1527 by Landgrave Philip of Hesse. It was the first Protestant university founded in Germany. Like many federal and religious diets, the meeting was a church and state affair. Suggested by John Haner and organized by the Philip, it was the first serious attempt to bring the two factions together. When the hammer came down with the Edict of Speyer earlier in the year it became clear to all that the situation had reached a critical stage. Protestant unity had to be achieved or the movement risked self-destruction. Back on May 9, 1529, following up on Haner's suggestion, Philip wrote to Zwingli, "We are at present busily engaged in bringing together to a suitable place of meeting Luther, Melanchthon, and others, who are nearly of your opinion upon the sacrament, to see if the almighty and merciful God would grant us grace to compare the said article of belief upon the foundation of Holy Scripture, and enable us to live in a harmonious and unanimous understanding upon the point, for at this Diet the papists knew not better to defend their perversions, abuses, and corruptions, than by saying that we who pretend to cling to the pure Word of God arc not united in doctrine and faith among ourselves ; and verily if we were united, their knavery would soon come to an end. Wherefore our most gracious request to you is, that you would use your best endeavours to put the matter upon a right foundation, and bring us all to one Christian and unanimous sentiment." Zwingli replied that he would attend and asked Philip to write the Zurich Councils to grant permission to Zwingli to make the journey. Times were still very dangerous due to the recent defeat of the Catholic cantons and the victories of the treaty of the First Peace of Kappel. Many were still in a killing mood. See Christoffel, page 337
With Faber and Eck once again fashioning a way to suppress Protestants, it was time for the divided reformers to cool down and act. The major players at Marburg were Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Luther and Melanchthon. In all, about fifty attended the conference. Preliminary discussions began on October 1, 1529; to break the ice Luther met with Oecolampadius and Zwingli with Melanchthon. The next day, Luther and Zwingli began their face to face discussions in hopes of resolving the their party's disputes. Zwingli differed from Luther on the Eucharist, seeing it as a symbolic celebration; not as any kind of miracle. Luther's position was that the body of Christ was consubstantial with the bread. Both rejected transubstantiation, that the bread was turned into the actual body and blood of Christ but Luther only went half way, still accepting that the body of Christ was consubstantial with the bread. They argued over the Biblical statement by Jesus, "This is my body, this is my blood". Luther demanded that it be interpreted literally while Zwingli argued for a symbolic, commemorative interpretation. Zwingli was claiming Jesus meant this signifies my body. Zwinglians stated that since the body of Christ is at the right hand of the Father, his body could not be in two places at once. The spirit of Christ could be everywhere but certainly not his body. That made no sense. After a couple of days of heated arguments, the two sides asked forgiveness for their harsh attacks and Philip sought to save the day by having Luther draw up fifteen articles based on the Schwabach Articles that they could all agree on. Fourteen of the articles, with only slight changes required, were accepted by the Zwinglians. Luther had never expected such a degree of agreement. The fifteenth was of course an article on the Lord's Supper. Although they could agree on five points of the article, it was mostly rejected by the Zwinglians. They rejected the notion of any miracle and stood firmly on a doctrine of symbolism. So the amended fifteenth article ended with this statement: "Although we are not at this present time agreed, as to whether the true Body and Blood of Christ are bodily present in the bread and wine, nevertheless the one party should show to the other Christian love as far as conscience can permit." Christian love as conscience can permit, much like the mercy of Allah, has a terrible track record. Permitting others their voices and viewpoints has never been a Judaic, Christian or Islamic virtue or habit. It is both Biblical and Quranic to be intolerant and given to violence towards the adherents of differing religious viewpoints. The case of the Marburg conference was not an exception in religious history, with the two sides were soon exchanging flaming hostilities.
At the same time, Zwingli became more acquainted with the Landgrave Philip and the fugitive Duke Ulrich of Wurtemburg, all agreeing there should be a civil and military alliance of Protestant states to combat the papacy and its imperial allies. Previous to the Marburg conference, the magisterial authorities under the influence of Luther refused to form any alliance with the Zwinglians unless they accepted Luther's view on the Lord's Supper. After the conference the divide remained and the Lutherans eventually formed their own alliance. The Schmalkaldic League was formed on February 27, 1531 by Landgrave Philip and John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony.
In 1530, Capito and Bucer wrote the Creed of Strasbourg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau. Known as the Tetrapolitana, it was presented to the Emperor on July 11. Bucer had spent a great deal of energy trying to reconcile Luther and Zwingli and this was no exception. Due to its thesis of consubstantiation regarding the Eucharist and the Lord's Supper, it was rejected by Zurich and Basel at the Evangelical Diet of Basel on November 16, 1530. Zurich and Basel, Zwingli and Oecolampadius stood their ground that the Lord's Supper was a symbolic, commemorative ritual; neither transubstantiation nor consubstantiation was involved. A week prior to the Emperor receiving the Tetrapolitana, Zwingli's own confession was presented to the emperor. He showed no interest in it. Going beyond the scope of the Augsburg Confession, Zwingli's confession of faith claimed supreme authority belonged to the scriptures of the Bible. Like the Augsburg Confession, it was staunchly Nicene-trinitarian just as Catholic Church canon, English state religion and America's colonial charters were. Some religious tests of early British North America required an oath of belief in the consubstantial trinity. Non-trinitarian Christians had been persecuted by trinitarian Christians since the Council of Nicea's condemnation of it. Protestants burned anti-trinitarians at the stake, too. The Geneva theocracy's John Calvin supported Michael Servetus' death sentence at the stake for being a nontrinitarian Christian just as Zwingli supported the drowning of Anabaptist heretics. Whether Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican or Zwinglian, trinitarian belief was central and mandatory. This continued in the American colonies. In some places, European and American, It was impossible for a professional group to exist without following the religious mandates of the state. An example of this kind of old world discrimination is found in The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669) where one's professional group required (by the state) that you believe, "That there is a God." and "That God is publicly to be worshipped." You couldn't even live in Carolina if you did not believe in God. Section Ninety-five stated, "No man shall be permitted to be a freeman of Carolina, or to have any estate or habitation within it, that doth not acknowledge a God, and that God is publicly and solemnly to be worshipped." Following Luther, Protestants saw one's trade or profession as a calling from God so religious test-oaths were instituted as requirements. The United States Constitution banned religious tests in the Sixth Article. Thomas Jefferson notably rejected such mandates, seeing them as being worthless.
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. ... Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia 1781-1782, 1781-82)
It was not long before the First Peace of Kappel began to unravel. The Catholics again made overtures to Austria and to the Emperor Charles V. To many, it was considered treasonous to be making deals with an ancient enemy of Helvetia. In a similar manner, Zurich sought aid from Hesse and Venice. Not making any sense at all, Zurich even sought help from France where King Francis I was actively persecuting Protestants. The Catholics did not hold up their end of the bargain regarding freedom of preaching. Many of history's defeated, like these Catholic cantons, will agree to anything when their lives are on the line. After the dust settles, they go back to their original positions, ready to fight another day. Although the treaty mandated that the bailiwicks of St. Gall, Toggenburg, Thurgau, and Rheinthal had the right to choose their religion by majority vote, the Catholics refused to allow this. Zurich still regarded the celebration of the Mass a crime so they were not in a place to call themselves a role model for religious freedom. This same liberty demanded by Zurich in other cantons was not allowed within its own borders. Things were returning to the same situations that brought about the first confrontation and to make things worse, a professional army of the Milanese official Gian Giacomo Medici from the Duchy of Milan had invaded the Grisons region of southeast Switzerland again. Medici and his bands had been pillaging these areas since 1521. This was called the Musso War. The Catholic cantons refused to help repel the invaders and this is what tipped the scale to war again. Zwingli again urged a decisive military strike but the more moderate Bern officials won the day on May 15, 1531 by convincing the authorities to use a blockade of trade to persuade the Catholics. At this time Protestantism had made great gains in the Grisons so one has to wonder if the Catholics saw this as a way to get even with the Protestants. The invaders were Catholics, too. Because the year had been one with famine and an epidemic of a kind of wasting illness, the strategy was decidedly cold and ruthless. Important provisions were kept from the Catholic cantons. Women, children, the elderly and the infirm would be victimized just as the soldiers and the magistrates would be. Important supplies necessary to maintain livestock were also blocked. This, Zurich's conscience could permit.
The Protestants made a major strategic miscalculation, leaving the Forest cantons with a winning solution. The Emperor had made peace with the Pope and the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria had wanted to invade the Protestants anyway. With Emperor Charles and the Pope at peace, they could all turn their attention to those pesky Protestant heretics. On October 9, 1531, eight thousand soldiers marched to the Zurich border. On the way, they took control of all the valleys and roads, stopping all communication to Zurich. There would be no element of surprise for the unprepared reformers under the leadership of Zwingli; there was only a sense of impending defeat as intelligence trickled into Zurich of the threat. Wylie notes, "Another Popish host, 12,000 strong, spread themselves over the free parishes, inflicting all the horrors of war wherever they came. Word finally reached Zurich that the bolt had fallen, the war was begun; the enemy was at Baar, on the road to Zurich."
Unlike the situation of 1529, Zurich was not prepared and could only muster up 1500 poorly equipped soldiers. Morale was low, too. Many had grown tired of the strictures of the Zwinglian alliance of church and state. After marching to the front at Kappel, the battle lasted several hours and the Protestants were easily defeated. Over five hundred Zurichers were killed, including twenty-six members of its councils and Zwingli himself; twenty-four were pastors. Zwingli was wounded early in the battle and as he lay wounded, a Catholic Captain Vokinger of the canton of Unterwalden recognized him and promptly killed him. According to the account of Johannes Salat, a Catholic historian of the time, he said, "Die, obstinate heretic" as he ran him through with his sword. Although dead, he was still further punished according to imperial law; his body was quartered for treason and then burnt for heresy. After being burned on a pile of excrement, his ashes were mixed with the ashes of swine and then scattered in the winds.
The Second Peace of Kappel, agreed to in November of 1531, reversed the progress of the first. Some credit must be given to the Catholics in the case of this treaty. The Catholic cantons could have demanded more but it appears as if they restrained themselves for the sake of the confederation. They could have tried to federalize religion but did not. Zurich was even left intact in a world where boundaries continually shifted around. What they did demand was certainly painful. Firstly, the Protestant League had to be dissolved and the treaty of 1529 was annulled. Zurich was ordered in December of 1531 to give the rural regions of its canton much more say in the canton's affairs; they had to be consulted before important matters were settled. This was smart because rural regions tended to keep the older faith just as rural regions were mostly pagan in Roman times when Christianity was spreading. In both cases, late antiquity's Christianization and the late middle age's Reformation, new and innovative thinking was first successful in the more urbanized regions. It was the same with the humanism of the Renaissance. In the common territories where jurisdiction alternated between cantons, Catholics took over the jurisdictions but let those that had already converted to Protestantism remain so. Bremgarten and Glarus returned to Catholicism and Bern remained Protestant but trended Lutheran, not Zwinglian. From Bremgarten, Bullinger and his father fled to Zurich where he was elected to succeed Zwingli. In the common territories where Protestants were a majority, Catholics received legal protection but Protestants did not. The sovereignty of each canton was affirmed in their own political, military and religious matters while the notion of a confederation where rule by a majority of cantons was strengthened. (A federalist constitution with a central government similar to that of the United States was finally agreed to in 1848). Costly were the indemnities Basel, Schaffhausen, St Gallen, and Mühlhausen had to pay so Solothurn joined Bremgarten in returning to Catholicism, thereby escaping the costly fine. Zurich and St. Gallen were ordered to restore the Abbey of St Gallen; monks and nuns could return to their vocations at convents and monasteries. Like the deal in the common territories, the Protestants of the Free Bailiwicks Thurgau and Toggenburg could keep their faith but only Catholic minorities were protected. Future religious persecution and conflicts were assured by the inequities of this treaty. These failures of fairness, by both Catholic and Protestants finally lead Europe into the Thirty Years War, which initially began in 1618 as a war between Catholics and Protestants. Between the battles, the pestilence, and the starvation, over seven million lives were taken.
Schaff made some important comments about Luther's treatment of Zwingli after his death. It strengthens the notion that Luther, intolerant and continuously on a rant regarding those he disagreed with, was reformer and lacked the courage to break completely from the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Zwingli certainly was a man of courage even though his notions of religious liberty meant replacing one church-state alliance with another more republican one that, without a just constitutional foundation, has the weakness of allowing the majority to trample the rights of those of the minority.
"We need not wonder that the religious and political enemies of Zwingli interpreted the catastrophe at Cappel as a signal judgment of God and a punishment for heresy. It is the tendency of superstition in all ages to connect misfortune with a particular sin. Such an uncharitable interpretation of Providence is condemned by the example of Job, the fate of prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and the express rebuke of the disciples by our Saviour in the case of the man born blind (John 9:31). But it is found only too often among Christians. It is painful to record that Luther, the great champion of the liberty of conscience, under the influence of his mediaeval training, and unmindful of the adage, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, surpassed even the most virulent Catholics in the abuse of Zwingli after his death. It is a sad commentary on the narrowness and intolerance of the Reformer."
At this point in the historian's narrative there is footnote 293 which reads:
"In his letter to Albrecht of Prussia, April, 1532 (in De Wette, IV. 348-355), Luther expresses a doubt about Zwingli's salvation (on account of his denial of the corporal presence). He scorns the idea that he was a martyr; he regrets that the Catholic cantons did not complete their victory by suppressing the Zwinglian heresy, and he warns the Duke of Prussia not to tolerate it in his dominion. In his furious polemic tract, Short Confession of the Holy Sacrament, written in 1545, a year before his death (Werke, Erlangen ed., vol. XXXII. 399-401, 410), Luther says that "Zwingel" (he always misspells his name) and Oecolampadius "perished in their sins"; that Zwingli died "in great and many sins and blasphemy" ( in grossen und vielen Sünden und Gotteslästerung), having expressed a hope for the salvation of such "gottlose Heiden" as Socrates, Aristides, and the "greuliche Numa" that he became a heathen; and that he perished by the sword because he took up the sword. He adds that he, Martin Luther, "would rather a hundred times be torn to pieces and burned than make common cause with Stenkefeld [Stinkfeld for Schwenkfeld], Zwingel, Carlstadt, and Oeclampadius!" O sancta simplicitas! How different is the conduct and judgment of Zwingli, who, at Marburg, with tears in his eyes, offered the hand of brotherhood to his great antagonist, and who said of him in the very heat of the eucharistic controversy: "Luther is so excellent a warrior of God, and searches the Scriptures with such great earnestness as no one on earth for these thousand years has done; and no one has ever equalled him in manly, unshaken spirit with which he has attacked the pope of Rome. He was the true David whom the Lord himself appointed to slay Goliath. He hurled the stones taken from the heavenly brook so skillfully that the giant fell prostrate on the ground. Saul has slain thousands, but David tens of thousands. He was the Hercules who rushed always to the post of danger in battle ... Therefore we should justly thank God for having raised such an instrument for his honor; and this we do with pleasure."
Above: Overlooking Toggenberg Valley. The village of Wildhaus is located at the bottom of the peak where the picture was taken from. In the present, the area between the two peaks features a beautiful ski resort.
