The Reformation in 16th century Europe moved forward on many fronts. Sometimes it moved forward in secret to avoid detection. Other times it moved forward in great cathedrals with dynamic preachers. It also advanced in quiet scholarship and the rediscovery of the Bible.
It advanced among both peasants and privileged. It sometimes advanced in fierce theological debate, and other times in violent combat. Today we look at the Reformation in Switzerland, where it advanced in all those ways. We will look at its two most noted leaders, Ulrich Zwingli at Zurich and John Calvin in Geneva.
Zwingli was a mountain man born on New Year's Day in 1484, just a few years before Columbus discovered the new world. Zwingli's family lived in the village of Wildhouse, about 40 miles outside of Zurich. This is his childhood home. His father was a mountain farmer and bailiff.
Zwingli had seven brothers and six sisters. Young Ulrich was a gifted musician, able to play six instruments. He would go from here to be educated at Basel, Vienna, and Bern.
And then in 1506, at age 22, he was ordained in the Catholic Church and appointed parish priest in the Swiss community of Glarus. As a young priest, Zwingli accompanied the Swiss troops to the Battle of Marignano in Italy in 1515, an experience that marked him for life. The Swiss regularly hired themselves out as mercenary soldiers to other countries. and even to the Pope. Zwingli saw over 6,000 Swiss young men killed at Marignano.
He was outraged. He turned against the mercenary service. We're selling blood for gold, he railed. We're sending our young to be slaughtered. The Swiss economy depended on hiring out soldiers, so Zwingli's message wasn't popular.
It cost him his church at Glarus. So he became priest at Einseilden, a busy Swiss pilgrimage center with a popular shrine to the Virgin Mary. Here he began to have growing doubts about Catholic practices. And here he experienced another personal turning point.
Zwingli met the great humanist scholar Erasmus, who came out with his Greek New Testament in 1516. Zwingli bought it and devoured it. He taught himself Greek. Nothing but God shall prevent me from acquiring Greek, he said. not for the sake of fame, but for the sake of the Holy Scriptures.
He copied Paul's epistles in Greek and carried them with him wherever he went and even memorized them. Here's a sample page where you see Zwingli's extensive notes in the margin. margins.
This intensive study of the Bible made him question Catholic doctrine even more. Zwingli knew about Luther and the ferment he was causing in Germany, and now, independently, Zwingli was coming to many similar conclusions. On New Year's Day, 1519, his 35th birthday, Zwingli became People's Priest at the Grossminister, or the Great Cathedral, in Zurich.
He was now a man obsessed with the Bible. So instead of following the prescribed text of the lectionary, he took the Gospel of Matthew and started preaching straight through the book. That was a bold move in that day.
First year at Zurich, the city was struck by the dreaded plague. Zwingli was away recovering from illness. Against advice, he rushed back to attend to his people. He contracted the plague and suffered three agonizing months. One-third of Zurich's 9,000 citizens died during that plague.
It marked still another turning point for Zwingli. Now, in a deeper way, he knew of God's grace and the meaning of pastoral compassion. At the same time, his questioning of Rome continued. Zwingli had received a yearly payment from the Pope. He now refused that income.
In his sermons, Zwingli directly challenged Catholic teachings he could not find in the Bible, such as indulgences, purgatory, the position of Mary in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. of the mass. He held the people of Zurich spellbound. One listener said, he felt as if lifted up by the hair and suspended in space. A curious episode proved pivotal.
At Froschauer's print shop, the men worked late one evening preparing for the Frankfurt Book Fair. They were hungry and ate sausages during Lent, thereby breaking Lenten fasting rules. As one historian described it, that was like desecrating a flag would be for a us today. Zwingli, instead of condemning this action, wrote a pamphlet supporting it.
His gap with Rome was widening. Then Zwingli married. He had petitioned his bishop for permission.
It was refused. So he married anyway, a widow, Anna Reinhardt. She brought three children to their marriage.
They would also have four more of their own. Zwingli continued his studies and circulated his Reformation views, but this was not an age of religious pluralism. There was one church.
Zwingli, like Luther in Germany, was going against centuries of tradition. His teachings could only provoke intense controversy. The Zurich City Council convened a public disputation on January 29, 1523, to debate his views. Representatives came from the Bishop of Constance and the surrounding region.
Zwingli presented 67 Reformation articles. The Council backed Zwingli and decreed that he and other pastors in the region were to preach nothing but what can be proved by the Holy Gospel and the pure Holy Scriptures. As a result, drastic changes were implemented in Zurich.
The mass was rejected. Instead of familiar golden chalices, simple and unadorned wooden cups and plates were now used for communion. Instead of a sacrifice, in which the bread and wine were transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ, as the Roman Church taught, the church at Zurich now believed Christ was spiritually, not physically, present to believers who approached him in true faith.
Zurich rejected monastic vows and the government took over the monasteries. Their goods were used to take care of the needy, their buildings changed into schools and hospitals. There was a daily distribution of food to those in need. The sick, widows and orphans were provided public support.
The reformers insisted that with a change of beliefs there also had to come a change in behavior, not only personal but social as well. There were to be no beggars in Zurich. Those who needed work were provided jobs.
In a cleansing of the temple, visible reminders of Catholic worship were taken down. Zwingling and the council were not directly involved at first, but later approved the removal of Catholic elements not found in the Bible. A major crisis for Zwingli developed from among his most gifted students.
They rejected infant baptism as unbiblical and re-baptized themselves as adults. For this they were called Anabaptists. The city council held public debate.
and rejected their Anabaptist views. These Anabaptists would neither submit nor leave. So on January 5, 1527, the city council drowned Anabaptist leader Felix Muntz.
Against the waters of baptism he sinned, they said, so by water shall he die. Felix was only the first of this new movement to be killed for their then radical beliefs. It's now October 15, 1916. 1829. Zwingli rides to a meeting of vast strategic importance in Germany. The Reformation was spreading in Europe.
It was a threat that could no longer be ignored by Rome. Could the Zwingli Protestants in Switzerland and the Luther Protestants in Germany establish a united front against the gathering Catholic resistance? Philip of Hesse convened the Marburg Colloquy at his castle and brought Luther and Zwingli to meet face to face. They took up 15 issues.
Amazingly, they agreed on 14. They disagreed on the Eucharist and how Christ's presence was to be understood. They both rejected Catholic teaching but couldn't reconcile their own differences. Thus, the Lord's Supper, given by Jesus to unite his followers, became the issue of the Eucharist. over which these two separated. Zwingli's reform had spread mostly to the urban areas in Switzerland.
The rural areas remained mostly Catholic. Each formed an alliance. They saw each other as a grave threat.
Both sides organized for conflict. It was the beginning of over 100 years of religious wars in Europe between Protestants and Catholics. The opposing troops met in raging battle at Koppel, south of Zurich.
Each side was convinced its own security and the truth of the Christian faith was at stake. Ironically, Zwingli, who had opposed mercenary service, now accompanied the other side. the Zurich troops into this civil war. Zwingli's men were outnumbered three to one. They put forth a stubborn resistance, but they were no match for their stronger opponents.
Zurich lost over 500 lives, including Ulrich Zwingli. It was October 11th, 1531. This memorial marks the place where Zwingli fell. His last words, they may kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul. His enemies quartered his body.
then burned it. And then they mixed his ashes with the ashes of swine and threw them to the wind. But Zwingli's work was irreversible in Zurich.
His reforms were advanced by his able associate, Heinrich Bullinger. Another major Reformation center in Switzerland was Geneva. The key leader there was the Frenchman John Calvin.
He would become as controversial as Zwingli, but for quite different reasons. John Calvin was born July 10th, 1509, in the small French town of Noyon, about 70 miles north of Paris. This house, now a Calvin Museum, is where he was brought up.
Calvin never really knew his mother. She died when he was a small boy. His father was a prominent lawyer with close connections to the local bishop, so his father acquired two chaplaincies for Calvin when he was only 12. The income from these chaplaincies would provide him the best education available, and young Calvin was marked to become a priest.
His preparation for the priesthood brought him to study at the great University of Paris. It was a demanding environment that drew out Calvin's intellectual brilliance. Here he adopted strict personal habits he would maintain the rest of his life.
Eating little, sleeping less, and studying long. But Calvin's plan to be a priest was rudely interrupted when his father sent him away to study law instead. Later, Calvin returned here to Paris, not only as a lawyer, but as a young man seriously considering the Reformation teachings that were stirring up all of Europe.
Calvin's friend, Nicholas Kopp, gave an inaugural address at the University of Paris on November 1st, 1533. It boldly set forth Reformation ideas that the French authorities would not tolerate. Calvin's association with Kopp was well known and both were forced to flee Paris. Calvin escaped through a window disguised as a vine dresser and slipped out of town.
Calvin, now a fugitive, walked to Angoulême, about 270 miles south of Paris. Here he found refuge, and here his Reformation convictions deepened. Calvin stayed in the home of his friend and fellow Reformation sympathizer, Louis du Tellet.
During this period he had a conversion experience that now planted him firmly within the Reformation movement. Years later he described that experience. Since I was so obstinately devoted to the superstitions of the papacy, that it was only with the utmost difficulty that I could be drawn out of such deep mire, God, by a sudden conversion, subdued my mind and made it teachable, for, considering my age, it was far more hardened than it should have been. Calvin now had to weigh the cost of following the path of the reformers. He knew it would cost him a promising career in France, but there was no turning back.
He resigned the chaplaincies he had been given as a youth, forsaking a guaranteed income from the Roman church. He was ready now for whatever God called him to do. At this stage, Calvin could only assume that this would mean using his now obvious gifts as a scholar. Calvin at age 20 had already established established his reputation as a humanist intellectual by his commentary on the Dei Clemencia by the classic Roman writer Seneca.
But now Calvin was consumed with the Scriptures. He prepared a manual for the reformed Christian, his Institutes of the Christian Religion. The first edition was published in 1536 when Calvin was only 26 years old.
It would become the most substantial theological work of the Reformation. It is still widely published and studied today. Calvin hoped that his Institutes would so convincingly explain the Reformed faith that persecution against Protestants in France would stop. But Protestants continued to be hunted down and executed in France.
Calvin and his colleagues had to meet in secret. This is a cave near Portier where they would come to meet for secret worship in celebration of the Lord's Supper. Here's a fascinating artifact from those secret meetings.
This communion chalice was assembled in pieces so it could be disguised. The parts screwed together after the worshipers were safely secluded. This is their miniature two-inch tall copy of the Psalms. It was pinned up and hidden in someone's... hair to be taken to their secret meetings.
Calvin's life took a decisive turn in 1536 when he came here and crossed the Rhone River into Geneva, Switzerland. Calvin never planned to come here, and Calvin's way of thinking, we might say, he got sideswiped by God's providence. Here's what happened.
Calvin was on his way to Strasbourg in Germany, intending to live the quiet life of a scholar. But fighting between the Holy Roman Empire and France blocked the direct route to Strasbourg, causing Calvin to die. to detour here through Geneva.
He planned to stay one night. It ended up 25 years. Geneva had only declared itself in favor of the Reformation a month or so before Calvin came by here. The leader of the reform, the fiery William Farrell, pleaded with Calvin to stay. Calvin refused.
So Farrell scared the life out of him. He threatened that God's curse would be upon Calvin if he did not stay and help when the need was strong. so urgent. Calvin said later, I was so terror-struck that I gave up the journey I had undertaken. So Calvin took up residence in this house, not far from the church of Saint Pierre, where Calvin was appointed as pastor, or more precisely, lecturer in Holy Scripture.
On May 21st, 1536, just weeks before Calvin arrived in Geneva, the city council had officially adopted the Reformation. They decreed the city would henceforth live according to the gospel and the word of God, without any more masses, statues, idols, or other papal abuse. abuses.
From his pulpit here at St. Pierre, Calvin explained the Bible book by book, and he wasted no time seeking to implement the City Council's mandate. Within his first year here, he drew up articles for organizing this new Reformation Church and a catechism for teaching the faith to the citizens. Calvin insisted that the biblical faith was more than just doctrines to be believed, but was a moral way of life to be lived. Some of the Genevan citizens didn't like this.
They thought this outsider Frenchman expected too much from the Bible. much, and resistance to Calvin built quickly. One named his dog after Calvin. Others sent their dogs nipping at his heels. He was verbally assaulted in public.
Obscene songs were sung about him in the taverns. Guns were fired outside his house to frighten him. Rarely in the history of Christianity has a church ever had a pastor so gifted, and rarely has a pastor ever endured such abuse from his own church. Things came to a head in a dispute over the Lord's Supper.
The city council made certain demands. Calvin and Pharrell refused to serve communion. Neither side would give in. This is the city hall today in Geneva, just as it was in Calvin's day. Here, in April of 1538, the city officials decided they'd had enough of John Calvin and William Farrell.
They ordered them out of the city and gave them three days to leave. For Calvin, expulsion from Geneva was a relief. Now, at last, he could devote his life to his studies, away from the tension in Geneva.
But Martin Busser in Strasbourg, taking a page out of Pharrell's Book of Persuasion, convinced Calvin he must obey the calling of God and become pastor of the French Protestant refugees in that city. City. It was here that Calvin married a widow, Idelette de Boer, who brought two children to their marriage. The couple would have one child of their own who died when only a few days old. With Calvin out of Geneva, the distinguished Catholic Cardinal Sardoletto wrote to the Geneva leadership trying to allure the city back to Rome.
The Geneva officials asked Calvin to compose a reply on their behalf. Calvin wrote his masterful reply to Sadaletto. He may have wondered later if he had done too good a job, because the Geneva City Council decided they needed Calvin to be the one to reply. and Pharrell after all and invited them to take up leadership again in their city.
Pharrell again badgered Calvin that he had a calling before God to go back and finish his work at Geneva. Calvin's reply, whenever I call to mind the wretchedness of my life there, my very soul must shudder at any proposal for my return. I would rather die a hundred deaths than again take up that cross.
But on Tuesday, September 13th, 1541, three and a half years after they had been kicked out, Calvin and Pharrell returned to a triumphant welcome as spiritual leaders at Geneva. Calvin went to his pulpit and picked up a book. up his preaching at the same place in the Bible where he had left off, without even mentioning the banishment. Calvin stayed for another 23 years until his death. During that time, it is no exaggeration to say that from the time that Calvin was alive, From Geneva, Calvin decisively influenced the future course of Christianity in Western civilization.
Under Calvin, Geneva became known as a woman's paradise because of the laws enacted that punished husbands who abused their wives. Also under Calvin, Geneva's population doubled. Students flocked in to study under Calvin. Refugees from religious persecution poured in to what was becoming known as the renowned Free City of Europe. One who came, an Englishman exiled by Bloody Mary, Bishop John Bale, said, Geneva seemeth to me to be the wonderful miracle of the whole world.
So many from all countries come together as it were to a sanctuary, joined only with the yoke of Christ, and they live so lovingly and friendly. The leader of the Reformation in Scotland, John Knox, came to Geneva and reported it to be the most perfect school of Christ. since the Apostles.
During his lifetime and ever since, Calvin has been heralded by friends as one of the greatest teachers ever. On the other hand, his numerous critics then and now vilify him as nothing short of tyrannical in the personification of evil. Two of the most frequently cited criticisms against him are, Calvin came up with a teaching that God predestined some to heaven and others to hell, and Calvin burned Servetus because he disagreed with him. Yes, Calvin did teach predestination, but he did not by any means invent the doctrine. He followed a history of orthodox interpretation that includes Luther, Aquinas, Augustine, even the Apostle Paul.
At the same time, Calvin preserved an understanding of free will and human responsibility that is far less deterministic than much of modern psychology. Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva during Calvin's death. time, Dr. Francis Higman, director of the Institute for Reformation Studies at the University of Geneva, explains why. Now, Servetus denied that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and that was heresy in the 16th century in anybody's book. And heresy of that order in almost anybody's book in the 16th century was punishable by death.
Servetus had, in fact, already been condemned to death. by the Roman Catholics in France. And it was only because they were so careless, they let him escape from prison, that they did not, in fact, burn him themselves. And then he came to Geneva.
Why? Because he wanted to convert Calvin, which is a very extraordinary point of view. He was slightly crazy, as well as being an amazing genius in his own right.
He arrived in Geneva, and the problem was... What do you now do? Calvin recognized him.
Does he allow this mad heretic to go free? Or, in that case, it looks as if we're more easy on heresy than even the papists. So there was a sort of wheels within wheels.
He got himself into an abominable situation where, in fact, there was no alternative. to press for a condemnation. The other thing of course is that it wasn't Calvin who condemned him. Calvin had no political authority in this city.
He wasn't even a citizen until 1559. He could ask the city authorities to take action and the city authorities themselves took action, consulted the other churches in Switzerland and the other governments in Switzerland, and practically everybody said, yes, it is your responsibility to punish this heretic. And the city government condemned Servetus to burning. and it was a sort of horrible inevitability about the whole thing. Calvin's influence extended far beyond Geneva during his lifetime and ever since. His workload was staggering.
He preached daily, produced commentaries on just about every book of the Bible, continually expanded his institutes, wrote dozens of devotional pamphlets, carried on a vast international correspondence, and trained and sent out hundreds of pastors and missionaries. He did all this while constantly suffering from poor health, including migraine headaches. Calvin's motto summed up his life, promptly and sincerely in the service of God.
And his theology was perhaps best summed up in the words of the Dutch theologian and prime minister, Abraham Kuyper, There is not one square inch of this entire universe of which Christ, the sovereign Lord of all, does not say, This belongs to me. Calvin died May 27, 1564, at the age of 54. We don't know where Calvin is buried because he left specific instructions that he be buried in an unmarked grave. Calvin wanted to make sure that his burial site would never be venerated as a shrine.
However, this Reformation monument... the University Park was erected in the early 1900s to commemorate Calvin and his vast international influence. A 15-foot tall Calvin stands among other Reformation leaders with whom he was associated. But there is a living memorial to this man who never wanted to stay here in Geneva. Today, Geneva is the home to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.
The alliance represents the spiritual descendants of John Calvin. 50 million people in more than 80 countries.