IGNIS
Sign inCreate my account
IgnispediaThe IGNIS encyclopedia

Zwinglianism

The Zurich Reformation of Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531): a purely memorial Supper, baptism as a mere sign, rule by the Council, the Marburg break (1529), death at Kappel (1531) and the condemnations of Trent.

Ignispedia

Zwinglianism is the doctrine and movement born of the Reformation led at Zurich by Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531): the first Swiss Reformation, a few years before Calvin's at Geneva, and the most radical of the three great 16th-century Reformations in its stripping of worship.[1] Its sharpest article of faith can be summed up in one exegetical equation: in "This is my body" (Mt 26:26), the verb "is" means "signifies" — the bread and wine of the Supper do not contain Christ, they recall him.[2]

From 1519 to 1531, Zurich became at his urging a Reformed theocracy: the city Council, and neither bishop nor pope, decided doctrine, abolished the Mass, smashed images, dismantled the organ, dissolved monasteries and made baptism a mere sign of belonging.[3] The experiment ended in blood: Zwingli died sword in hand as chaplain to the Zurich troops at Kappel, on 11 October 1531; his body was quartered and then burned by the victorious Catholic cantons.[4]

The Catholic Church condemned each of its distinctive theses: Eucharistic memorialism (Trent, 13th session, 1551), the reduction of baptism to a sign with no gracious effect (7th session, 1547), the denial of transmitted original guilt (5th session, 1546) and the denial of the sacrifice of the Mass (22nd session, 1562).[5] Zwinglianism as a separate confession did not survive its founder: gathered up by Heinrich Bullinger, it merged into Calvinism through the Zurich agreement of 1549, but its Eucharistic memorialism remains today the de facto position of much Evangelical and Baptist Protestantism.[6]

The humanist priest turned reformer (1484-1522)

An Erasmian formation

Zwingli’s birth house at Wildhaus, built around 1450. Photograph by Evacc. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ulrich Zwingli was born at Wildhaus, in the Swiss Toggenburg, on 1 January 1484, the third of eight sons of a family of rural notables; a cousin of his mother was abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Fischingen.[7] A pupil at Basel, Bern and then Vienna, he became Master of Arts at Basel in 1506 and absorbed the humanism of Erasmus, whose criticism of ecclesiastical abuses and call for a return to the Greek sources of the New Testament he admired.[8] Ordained priest, he served Glarus from 1506 to 1516 — accompanying Swiss mercenaries as chaplain as far as Marignano (1515), an experience that left him lastingly disgusted with mercenary service — then the pilgrimage shrine of Einsiedeln (1516-1518), where he began preaching against abuses.[9]

Zurich's Grossmünster: the pulpit conquered (1519)

Elected pastor of the Grossmünster in December 1518, Zwingli took office on 1 January 1519 and innovated at once: instead of following the lectionary, he commented on the Gospel of Matthew verse by verse, from Erasmus's Greek text.[10] The following autumn, plague ravaged Zurich and struck him down in turn: he came close to death in September 1519 and composed his famous "plague song," in which he offers himself to God, healed or dying.[11]

Zurich’s Grossmünster, Zwingli’s pulpit from 1 January 1519. Photograph by Dietmar Rabich, 2011. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

"Do as thou wilt, Lord: I am thine in sickness as in health." — Ulrich Zwingli, Plague Song, September 1519[12]

The break with Rome (1522)

Zurich in 1576, half a century after the sausage affair: woodcut panorama by Jos Murer. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The public turning point dates to Lent 1522: at a meal at the printer Froschauer's house, Zwingli witnessed an ostentatious eating of sausages in the middle of the fast — the "affair of the sausages" — then justified the transgression in his treatise On the Choice and Freedom of Foods (April 1522): the Church's fasting prescriptions do not bind in conscience; Scripture alone commands.[13] That same year, he secretly contracted a marriage with Anna Reinhart, widow of a Zurich notable, whom he would marry publicly on 2 April 1524: ecclesiastical celibacy was abolished de facto at Zurich.[14]

The Reformation imposed by the Council (1523-1525)

The 67 Articles and the Zurich disputations

To answer the vicar general of Constance, who accused him of heresy, Zwingli published in January 1523 his 67 Articles (Schlussreden): Christ alone saves, the Gospel alone binds, the Mass is no sacrifice, images are idolatry, the clergy may marry.[15] The first Zurich disputation, on 29 January 1523, was held before the city Council and some six hundred hearers: the Council ruled that Zwingli had taught nothing heretical and that the canton's preachers should preach only what can be proved from Scripture.[16]

"The sum of the Gospel is that our Lord Christ, true Son of God, made known to us the will of his heavenly Father and redeemed us from death by his innocence." — Ulrich Zwingli, 67 Articles, Articles 1-2, January 1523[17]

The second disputation (26-28 October 1523), conducted with his friend Leo Jud, concerned images and the Mass: the Council ordered preaching against abuses and prepared the cleansing of the churches.[18] The Zurich pattern was set: it is the civil magistrate who judges doctrine and imposes it — a theocratic trait that the Lutheranism of the German princes would also know, but which Zurich pushed the furthest.[19]

The cleansing of worship: images, Mass, organ

In June 1524, images and statues were removed from Zurich's churches; in December 1524, monasteries were secularised and their goods confiscated for the benefit of the city and works of charity.[20] In April 1525, the Council abolished the Mass: the first Evangelical Supper was celebrated on Maundy Thursday, 13 April 1525 — a simple commemorative meal, in German, around a wooden table, with no ornaments or music.[21] The organ was dismantled and all singing banished from worship: Zurich would pray without music for decades.[22]

The Prophezei: the school of pastors

From 1525 onwards, Zwingli founded in the choir of the Grossmünster the Prophezei, a daily school of exegesis where the Old Testament was commented in Hebrew, Greek and Latin before the canton's pastors: it is the ancestor of the Reformed academies and, indirectly, of the University of Zurich.[23] The institution speaks the programme: a Church of the read Word, with no sacrificing priests, formed by doctors.

  1. 1 January 1519
    Taking the Grossmünster pulpit

    Zwingli comments on Matthew verse by verse from Erasmus's Greek: the Zurich Reformation begins in the pulpit.

  2. March-April 1522
    Affair of the sausages and first treatise

    Public transgression of the Lenten fast, then On the Choice and Freedom of Foods: Scripture alone binds.

  3. 29 January 1523
    First Zurich disputation

    The 67 Articles are cleared by the Council: preach only what Scripture proves.

  4. 13 April 1525
    First Evangelical Supper

    The Mass is abolished and replaced by a commemorative meal in the vernacular.

  5. 1-4 October 1529
    Marburg Colloquy

    Final break with Luther over the Eucharistic presence.

  6. 11 October 1531
    Battle of Kappel

    Zwingli falls as chaplain to the Zurich troops; his body is burned.

The break with the Anabaptists (1525-1527)

Disciples turned adversaries

The Zurich paradox is that Zwingli's first organised opponents were his own radical disciples: Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz and Georg Blaurock took sola Scriptura at its word and demanded a Church of confessing believers — hence the end of infant baptism.[24] On 21 January 1525, in a house at Zollikon, Grebel baptised Blaurock on confession of faith: it is the birth certificate of Swiss Anabaptism.[25]

The drowning of Felix Manz in the Limmat, 5 January 1527, in Heinrich Thomann’s contemporary depiction. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Zwingli, who held to infant baptism as the mark of the Christian people and to the bond between Church and city, had the Council decide: mandate of January 1525 ordering the baptism of newborns and the expulsion of the recalcitrant, then the November 1525 disputation, lost in advance for the dissidents.[26] Repression followed: imprisonments, banishments, then the penalty of drowning — derisively called the "third baptism" — applied to Felix Manz, drowned in the Limmat on 5 January 1527.[27] Historians note that Zwingli, though he never signed the sentence himself, never publicly opposed it.[28]

Why Zwingli kept infant baptism

The disagreement is not about age, but about the nature of the sacrament: for Zwingli, baptism washes away no sin and confers no grace — it is a sign of covenant and commitment (Pflichtzeichen), the Christian counterpart of Jewish circumcision (1 Cor 7:14). To refuse baptism to the children of Christians would therefore be to exclude them from the people of God.[29] The three positions present:

PositionNature of baptismChildren baptised?Gracious effect?Key verse
CatholicSacrament instituted by ChristYes, from the earliest ageYes: regeneration, remissionJn 3:5; Acts 2:38-39
ZwinglianSign of covenant and commitmentYes, as members of the Christian peopleNo: mere outward mark1 Cor 7:14 (circumcision analogy)
AnabaptistSeal of confessed faithNo: believers onlyNo: the believer's obedienceMk 16:16 (believe, then be baptised)

The Catholic answer rests on two conciliar texts: Trent's decree on original sin (5th session, 17 June 1546), which defines that baptism truly remits Adam's guilt even in newborns, and canon 13 on baptism (7th session, 1547), which anathematises the rebaptism of children once they reach the age of reason.[30] See the article on the real presence for the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments and the one on Trent for all the decrees.

Marburg 1529: the Eucharistic break

The missed encounter of Protestant unity

Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who dreamed of a politico-military alliance of Protestants against Charles V, brought the two camps together at Marburg from 1 to 4 October 1529: Luther, Melanchthon and Jonas on one side; Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Bucer and Hedio on the other.[31] Of fifteen articles of faith laid on the table, fourteen were agreed — Trinity, sin, justification, Scripture — but the fifteenth, on the Supper, blew everything apart.[32]

Luther, who had had "Hoc est corpus meum" written in chalk on the table, demanded the literal sense: Christ's body is truly present "with, in and under" the bread. Zwingli answered that "is" means "signifies," as in "I am the door" or "I am the vine," and invoked the Lord's word: "It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing" (Jn 6:63).[33]

Marburg Castle, where Philip of Hesse brought Luther and Zwingli together in October 1529. Photograph by A. Savin, 2022. Wikimedia Commons, Free Art License.

"This is my body." — Christ, Mt 26:26: the word over which Luther and Zwingli clashed, one taking it literally, the other as a figure.[34]

"You have a different spirit from ours"

Luther refused even the final fraternal gesture: addressing Bucer but aiming at Zwingli, he let fall that their spirits were not the same — "You have a different spirit from ours" — and the two Reformations parted forever.[35] Twelve years after the 95 Theses, sola Scriptura without an interpreting authority had already produced two incompatible Protestantisms: the precedent would durably serve Catholic apologetics on division as the necessary fruit of private judgment.[36]

PositionChrist in the SupperThe "is" of Mt 26:26Status of the rite
CatholicPresent truly, really, substantially (transubstantiation)Proper, realistic senseSacrifice and sacrament
LutheranPresent "with, in and under" the bread (consubstantiation)Literal sense maintainedSacrament, not sacrifice
CalvinistSpiritually present to faith (pneumatic presence)Spiritual senseSeal of grace
ZwinglianAbsent: mere remembrance"Is" = "signifies"Memorial and public profession

Zwinglian doctrine proper

Scripture alone, interpreted by the magistrate

Title page of the complete Zurich Bible, printed by Christoph Froschauer in 1531 — the fruit of the Prophezei. Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

First pillar: the Bible is the only norm, and whatever it does not prescribe must be abolished in the Church — a sharper principle than Luther's, who retained whatever Scripture did not expressly forbid.[37] Second pillar, properly Zurich's own: it is the city Council that authenticates the interpretation and enforces it by law. The visible Church is no longer a supernatural society governed by bishops, successors of the apostles, but the community of professing believers framed by the Christian magistrate — a practical negation of the Church's divine constitution (Mt 16:18-19; 1 Tim 3:15).[38]

The Supper: a memorial without presence

The heart of the system is memorialism: the Supper commemorates Christ's death and publicly seals the faith of the communicants, but Christ's body, seated at the Father's right hand, cannot be "with" the bread — a Christological argument drawn from the Ascension and from the nature of a true human body, located in heaven.[39] Zwingli developed this doctrine in his great treatise On the True and the False Religion (March 1525, dedicated to King Francis I of France), then in the Subsidium on the Eucharist (August 1525) and the Friendly Exegesis (1527), a reply to Luther's Eucharistic writings.[40]

"If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ, but says that He is present therein only as in a sign, or in a figure, or by His power: let him be anathema." — Council of Trent, 13th session (11 October 1551), canon 1[41]

Catholic doctrine, defined there against the memorialism expressly targeted ("as in a sign, or in a figure"), rests on the Bread of Life discourse — "my flesh is true food" (Jn 6:55) — and on St Paul: "he who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks his own condemnation" (1 Cor 11:29).[42] The Fathers are unanimous from the beginning: Ignatius of Antioch already denounces those who "abstain from the Eucharist because they do not confess that it is the flesh of our Saviour" (Smyrnaeans 7).[43]

Baptism: a sign without effect

As we have seen, Zwinglian baptism does not regenerate: it marks entry into the Christian people without remitting any sin — an untenable position for the Catholic faith, for which "no one, unless he is born again of water and the Spirit, can enter the Kingdom" (Jn 3:5) and for which baptism truly buries with Christ (Rom 6:3-4).[44] The practice of infant baptism, attested from Origen and Cyprian in the 3rd century, presupposes precisely that the sacrament acts of itself, and not through the prior faith of its recipient.[45]

Original sin: a sickness without guilt

In his treatise On Original Sin (1526), directed against the Lutheran Urbanus Rhegius, Zwingli holds that hereditary sin is a sickness, an inclination (Krankheit), not an imputed guilt: newborns are guilty of no fault of Adam's and therefore have nothing to be remitted.[46] Trent answers this thesis in advance (5th session, 17 June 1546): Adam's sin is transmitted by propagation and not by imitation, even to little children, and baptism truly remits it.[47] Scripture is formal: "through one man sin entered the world" (Rom 5:12) and "behold, I was conceived in iniquity" (Ps 50:7).[48]

Absolute providence and predestination

In On God's Providence (August 1530), Zwingli pushes divine sovereignty as far as the predestination of the elect: God, the first cause of all, destined certain men for salvation — a position which Calvin would then radicalise into double predestination, referred here to the dedicated article rather than duplicated.[49] Catholics hold with Trent (6th session, 1547) that God sincerely wills the salvation of all (1 Tim 2:4) and that grace, without ceasing to be free, leaves freedom its real play — without which exhortation, prayer and preaching become theatre.[50]

Worship stripped to the bone

The visible consequence of the theology: no Mass, no images, no organ, no singing, no saints' feasts, no purgatory, no invocation — Christ the sole mediator suffices, and all the rest is "false religion" of human invention, according to the division of the 1525 treatise.[51] The most astonishing trait appears in the Fidei ratio addressed to Charles V at Augsburg (July 1530): Zwingli declares his hope of contemplating in heaven, among the elect, virtuous pagans such as Socrates or Aristides.[52] The Church, without deciding anyone's fate, recalls that salvation comes through Christ alone (Acts 4:12), while hoping with the Second Vatican Council that those who invincibly ignore the Gospel may attain salvation through Christ's grace (Lumen gentium, 16).[53]

Kappel: the theocracy dies in war (1529-1531)

The milk soup and the blockade

The Zurich Reformation soon overflowed into confessional politics: Zurich had its faith adopted by the common bailiwicks and allied with the Reformed cantons (Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen), while the five primitive cantons (Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug) remained Catholic and allied with Habsburg Austria.[54] The first Kappel war (June 1529) ended without battle: the two armies fraternised around the legendary "Kappel milk soup," a common pot set on the border, and concluded a peace leaving each canton master of its faith.[55]

Confessions in the Confederation around 1530: yellow, Reformed territories; blue, Catholic; hatching, mixed. Map by Marco Zanoli, legends in German. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Memorial stone for Zwingli on the Kappel battlefield, marking 11 October 1531. Photograph by Lutz Fischer-Lamprecht. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

But Zurich, to starve the Catholic cantons and force them into the Reformation, imposed on them a food blockade (grain and salt) in 1531: the weapon turned against it, for the Catholic cantons took up arms for their survival.[56]

11 October 1531

Battle of Kappel, woodcut from Johann Stumpf's chronicle, after Hans Asper. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

On 11 October 1531, at Kappel am Albis, the Zurich troops, ill commanded and outnumbered, were crushed by the Catholic cantons. Zwingli, who had marched as chaplain, armed as was then the custom, was wounded and then finished off on the battlefield; his body was recognised the next day, quartered, burned, and his ashes scattered — the treatment reserved for relapsed heretics.[57] The second territorial peace (Zweiter Landfriede) froze the Swiss confessional map for three centuries: each canton kept its religion, the common bailiwicks became mixed.[58]

Posterity: from Bullinger to the worldwide Reformation

Bullinger gathers the inheritance (1531-1575)

Heinrich Bullinger, engraving by Conrad Meyer (1660), Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

On 9 December 1531, the young Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575), a pastor driven out of Bremgarten, was elected Zwingli's successor at the Grossmünster, a charge he would hold until his death.[59] An organising pastor rather than a prophet, he stabilised the Zurich Reformation, drafted the First Helvetic Confession (Basel, 1536) and made Zurich, through his immense correspondence, the nerve centre of European Protestantism.[60]

The Zurich Agreement (1549): fusion with Geneva

John Calvin, who sealed the Zurich Agreement with Bullinger in May 1549. Anonymous 16th-century portrait, Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The decisive event for the survival of Zwinglianism is the Consensus Tigurinus (Zurich Agreement), concluded in May 1549 between Bullinger and Calvin: on the Supper, the Swiss abandoned pure memorialism for Calvinist spiritual presence — Christ truly communicated to faith, with no local presence in the species.[61] From then on there were no longer two Swiss Reformations but a single "Reformed" family, sealed by Bullinger's Second Helvetic Confession (1566), adopted by most of Europe's Reformed Churches.[62]

A memorialism that outlives its confession

As a separate confession, Zwinglianism thus died around the middle of the 16th century, absorbed into Calvinism — which owes to it, however, its Swiss starting point and its iconoclastic rigour.[63] But its Eucharistic thesis largely outlived it: pure memorialism became the ordinary position of Baptists, of much Evangelicalism and of many Christians with no label, for whom the Supper is only a symbolic remembrance.[64] In Europe, the Leuenberg Agreement (1973) even sealed full communion between Lutherans and Reformed, closing — on the Protestant side — the fracture opened at Marburg.[65] On the Catholic side, ecumenical dialogue has never conceded an inch on the real presence, reaffirmed by Paul VI (Mysterium fidei, 1965) and the Catechism (nos. 1374-1376).[66]

The Church's condemnations

A heresy struck by four sessions of Trent

A session of the Council of Trent in Trent Cathedral — here the twenty-third session, 15 July 1563. Painting formerly attributed to Titian. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Zwingli died in 1531, fourteen years before the opening of the Council of Trent: it is therefore not the bull Exsurge Domine (15 June 1520), which targets Luther's 41 propositions, that strikes him by name, but the Council itself, whose decrees target his distinctive theses one by one — proof that the Church read the Swiss reformers closely.[67]

Session of TrentDateZwinglian thesis condemned
5th session, decree on original sin17 June 1546Adam's sin is transmitted by propagation, even to newborns; baptism remits it
7th session, canons on baptism3 March 1547Baptism confers grace; baptised children must not be rebaptised (canon 13)
13th session, canons on the Eucharist11 October 1551Christ is present truly, really, substantially — and not "as in a sign, or in a figure" (canon 1)
22nd session, canons on the sacrifice of the Mass17 September 1562The Mass is a true propitiatory sacrifice, not a mere commemoration

The Index and the constant judgment

Zwingli's works were entered in Paul IV's Index of Prohibited Books (1559), alongside Luther's and Calvin's.[68] Bossuet, in his History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches (1688), made the sacramental quarrels of the Swiss — from Carlstadt to Zwingli, from Marburg to the Formula of Concord — one of his master proofs that the Reformation, deprived of a living judge, varies endlessly where the Catholic Church keeps the deposit.[69] The Second Vatican Council, while calling separated Christians "brethren" and recognising what is true and holy outside the visible frontiers of the Church (Unitatis redintegratio, 3-4), withdrew none of these definitions: the real presence and the sacrifice of the Mass remain proposed as truths of faith.[70]

The Catholic view: what is condemned, what remains true

Catholics do not read Zwingli as a mere villain: they recognise in him a cultivated priest, sincerely scandalised by real abuses — the traffic in indulgences, mercenary service, the ignorance of part of the clergy — and a preacher who put the pulpit back at the centre of parish life.[71] Some of his observations on the miseries of the Church of 1520 were well founded; the Church herself redressed them through the Catholic Reformation and Trent.[72]

But sincerity does not excuse error, and the scale of the damage measures it: by denying the real presence, Zwingli emptied of its substance the worship rendered to Christ in thousands of parishes; by delivering doctrine to the city Council, he subjected the Gospel to power; by banishing image and song, he impoverished the prayer of the simple.[73] His warlike end illustrates, in Catholic eyes, the dead end of a Reformation that had taken up the sword: "All who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Mt 26:52).[74]

"The one Church of Christ [...] subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside her sphere." — Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, 8[75]

It is in this light that the Church looks today on the heirs of Zurich: dialogue without concession on substance, full charity towards persons, and a standing invitation to recover, in the Eucharist, "the whole Christ" whom Trent's canon had defended against the empty sign.[76]

For further reading

Notes and References

  1. "Ulrich Zwingli", Catholic Encyclopedia (1917), vol. 15 — reference notice: founder of the Reformation in Switzerland, born at Wildhaus on 1 January 1484, died 11 October 1531; third of eight sons of a family of notables, father a district officer, humanist formation. Text: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15772a.htm

    1 7

  2. Zwingli's central Eucharistic thesis, formulated from 1524-1525 onwards: in "Hoc est corpus meum," the verb "is" means "significat" (it signifies), as in "I am the door" (Jn 10:9) or "I am the true vine" (Jn 15:1). Systematic exposition: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976; W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986.

    2

  3. On Zurich church government by the Council (disputations decided by the magistrate, mandates enforcing the Reformation): B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002; G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    3 19

  4. Battle of Kappel am Albis, 11 October 1531: defeat of the Zurich troops against the five Catholic cantons; Zwingli, who had come as chaplain, is killed; his body is found, quartered and then burned. See Reformation in Switzerland (historiographical synthesis) and Zurich city documentation: https://www.zuerich.com/sites/default/files/download/2021/1904_Media_Text_Reformation_EN.pdf

    4 57

  5. Overview of the condemnations: 5th session (17 June 1546, original sin), 7th session (3 March 1547, baptism), 13th session (11 October 1551, Eucharist), 22nd session (17 September 1562, sacrifice of the Mass). Texts: Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent; Denzinger-Hünermann, Symboles et définitions de la foi catholique, Paris, Cerf.

    5

  6. On the absorption of Zwinglianism into the Reformed family (Zurich Consensus 1549, Second Helvetic Confession 1566) and the survival of memorialism: B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.; W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, op. cit.

    6

  7. Humanist formation (Basel, Bern, Vienna; Master of Arts at Basel in 1506) and Erasmus's influence, notably his Greek edition of the New Testament: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit., chs. 1-2; Catholic Encyclopedia, art. cit.

    8

  8. Charge of Glarus (1506-1516), with chaplaincies to the Swiss mercenaries (including Marignano, 1515), then Einsiedeln (1516-1518), where preaching against abuses begins: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.; Catholic Encyclopedia, art. cit.

    9

  9. Election to Zurich's Grossmünster in December 1518, taking office on 1 January 1519, continuous commentary on Matthew's Gospel from the Greek text: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.; Zurich city documentation on the Reformation, op. cit.

    10

  10. Zurich plague, autumn 1519: Zwingli, infected in September, comes close to death and composes his Plague Song (Pestlied): G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    11

  11. Ulrich Zwingli, Pestlied (September 1519) — hymn composed during his illness: faithful paraphrase of the poem's movement (abandonment to the divine will, in healing as in death), from the Corpus Reformatorum edition, Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, ed. E. Egli et al., Berlin-Leipzig-Zurich, 1905-.

    12

  12. "Affair of the sausages", Lent (March) 1522, at the printer Christoph Froschauer's, then Ulrich Zwingli, Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen (April 1522): G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.; Reformation in Switzerland, historiographical synthesis.

    13

  13. Secret marriage in 1522 to Anna Reinhart (widow Meyer von Knonau), celebrated publicly on 2 April 1524 in the collegiate church: J. A. Wylie, History of Protestantism, vol. 8 (1526) and vol. 11 (1525-1531); G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    14

  14. Ulrich Zwingli, 67 Articles (Schlussreden, January 1523), written for the first Zurich disputation: Christ the only Saviour, the Gospel the only norm, the Mass not a sacrifice, images to be proscribed, marriage of priests. Edition: Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 88 ff.; presentation: https://www.reformiert-online.net (basic course on the Swiss Reformation).

    15

  15. First Zurich disputation, 29 January 1523, before the Council and some six hundred hearers, facing the vicar general of Constance: Zwingli cleared of the charge of heresy; injunction to preach only what can be proved from Scripture. See the Reformation in Switzerland synthesis and G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    16

  16. Ulrich Zwingli, 67 Articles, Articles 1-2 (January 1523): faithful rendering of the sense (Christ, true Son of God, made known the Father's will and redeemed us through his innocence), from the German text of the Schlussreden, Corpus Reformatorum, op. cit.

    17

  17. Second Zurich disputation, 26-28 October 1523 (with Leo Jud): images and the Mass; the Council orders the fight against abuses and prepares the cleansing: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    18

  18. Removal of images (June 1524), secularisation of the monasteries (December 1524) and confiscation of their goods: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.; Reformation in Switzerland.

    20

  19. Abolition of the Mass (April 1525) and first Evangelical Supper on Maundy Thursday, 13 April 1525: commemorative meal in German, wooden table, no ornaments: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    21

  20. Organ dismantled and singing banished from Zurich worship: Zurich prays without music for decades (until the end of the 16th century) — an iconoclastic trait proper to strict Zwinglianism, softened afterwards by Bullinger then abandoned by Calvinism: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    22

  21. Prophezei (1525), daily school of exegesis in the Grossmünster choir (Hebrew, Greek, Latin), ancestor of the Reformed academies: B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.

    23

  22. Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, Georg Blaurock: Zurich disciples turned partisans of believers' baptism only: G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.; Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO), biographical articles.

    24

  23. 21 January 1525, Zollikon: first believers' baptism (Grebel baptising Blaurock on confession of faith), birth certificate of Swiss Anabaptism: GAMEO; G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    25

  24. Zurich mandate of January 1525 (compulsory baptism of newborns, expulsion of rebaptisers), then the November 1525 disputation: B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.

    26

  25. Felix Manz, drowned in the Limmat on 5 January 1527 under the mandate against the Anabaptists (the "third baptism" in derision): GAMEO, article "Felix Manz"; G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    27

  26. On Zwingli's role in the repression: he did not sign the sentence but never publicly opposed it — "Whether Zwingli consented to the death sentence is not known; he did not openly oppose it" (Christian History, no. 4, Zwingli, Father of the Swiss Reformation, biographical gallery). Text: https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-4/zwingli--father-of-swiss-reformation-gallery-of-family.html

    28

  27. Zwinglian doctrine of baptism as Pflichtzeichen (sign of commitment and covenant), counterpart of circumcision: Ulrich Zwingli, Von der Taufe (May 1525). Exposition: W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, op. cit.

    29

  28. Council of Trent, 5th session (17 June 1546), Decree on Original Sin, and 7th session (3 March 1547), Canons on Baptism, canon 13 — Denzinger-Hünermann, no. 1626: anathema against the rebaptism of children once they reach the age of reason. Text: Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent.

    30

  29. Marburg Colloquy, 1-4 October 1529, convened by Landgrave Philip of Hesse to unite Protestants against Charles V; participants: Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas / Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Bucer, Hedio: German History in Documents and Images, file "The Marburg Colloquy of 1529"; W. Köhler, Zwingli und Luther: Ihr Streit über das Abendmahl, 2 vols., Gütersloh, 1924-1953.

    31

  30. Fifteen Marburg Articles, fourteen agreed (including Trinity, sin, justification, Scripture), the fifteenth on the Supper remaining in disagreement: text of the Marburg Articles (Luther's Works, vol. 38, pp. 85-89); recent study: "Eating the Gospel: Sacramental Mediation and the Failure of Eucharistic Unity at Marburg," Religions, 2026. Text: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/17/8/893

    32

  31. On the Eucharistic debate (Lutheran literal sense against Zwinglian "is" = "signifies," with Jn 6:63) and Luther's chalk inscription "Hoc est corpus meum": German History in Documents and Images, op. cit.; W. Köhler, Zwingli und Luther, op. cit.

    33

  32. Mt 26:26: "This is my body" — the words of institution; Jn 10:9 ("I am the door") and Jn 15:1 ("I am the true vine"): the figures adduced by Zwingli for the sense of "is."

    34

  33. Last reported words of Luther at Marburg, aiming at Zwingli through Bucer: "You have a different spirit from ours" ("It is evident that we do not have the same spirit"): Christian History, no. 39, Luther file. Text: https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-39/luthers-will-and-testaments.html

    35

  34. On the scope of the break (two incompatible Protestantisms twelve years after 1517) and its apologetic use: see Answers to Protestant Objections and the Reformation hub article in Ignispedia.

    36

  35. Regulative principle of worship in Zwingli (only what Scripture prescribes is lawful), stricter than the Lutheran principle (what Scripture does not forbid is lawful): W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, op. cit.

    37

  36. On the role of the Zurich magistrate as judge of doctrine and enforcer of the Reformation: B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.; for the Catholic counterpart: Mt 16:18-19 (Peter's primacy) and 1 Tim 3:15 (the Church, "pillar and bulwark of the truth").

    38

  37. Christological argument of memorialism (Christ's true body, ascended into heaven, cannot be locally present in the bread): W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, op. cit.

    39

  38. Ulrich Zwingli, De vera et falsa religione commentarius (March 1525, dedicated to Francis I, printed by Froschauer at Zurich), Subsidium sive coronis de Eucharistia (August 1525), Amica exegesis (1527, reply to Luther's Eucharistic writings). Editions: Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 88 ff.; English translations: Zwingli and Bullinger (Library of Christian Classics, vol. 24), ed. G. W. Bromiley, Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1953.

    40

  39. Council of Trent, 13th session (11 October 1551), Canons on the Most Holy Eucharist, canon 1 — Denzinger-Hünermann, no. 1651: "Si quis negaverit […] sed dixerit tantummodo esse in signo vel figura aut virtute, anathema sit." English rendering quoted in the body. Text: https://origin.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/thirteenth-session-of-the-council-of-trent-1479

    41

  40. Jn 6:55 ("my flesh is true food"), 1 Cor 11:27-29 (eating and drinking unworthily renders one "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord"): scriptural foundations of the real presence, developed in the dedicated article.

    42

  41. St Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 7 (c. 107): heretics "abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ." See also St Justin (1 Apology 66) and St Irenaeus (Against Heresies IV, 18). Texts: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/

    43

  42. Jn 3:5 ("no one, unless he is born again of water and the Spirit"), Acts 2:38-39 (baptism "for the remission of sins [...] to you and your children"), Rom 6:3-4 (buried with Christ through baptism).

    44

  43. Practice of infant baptism attested from the 3rd century: Origen (Commentary on Romans V, 9), St Cyprian (Letter 64 to Fidus, against any delay of baptism), St Augustine (against the Pelagians). Synthesis: Catholic Encyclopedia, article "Baptism": https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02258b.htm

    45

  44. Ulrich Zwingli, De peccato originali ad Urbanum Rhegium (1526): hereditary sin as sickness/inclination (Krankheit), not as guilt imputed to newborns. Exposition: W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, op. cit.

    46

  45. Council of Trent, 5th session (17 June 1546), Decree on Original Sin, canons 2-4: transmission by propagation and not by imitation, even to little children, and true remission through baptism. Text: Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent; Denzinger-Hünermann, op. cit.

    47

  46. Rom 5:12 ("through one man sin entered the world"), Ps 50:7 ("behold, I was conceived in iniquity").

    48

  47. Ulrich Zwingli, De providentia Dei (August 1530): absolute providence and predestination of the elect; God the first cause of all, without being the author of sin (scholastic distinction taken up in his own way). Exposition: W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, op. cit.

    49

  48. Council of Trent, 6th session (13 January 1547), Decree on Justification: God wills the salvation of all and grace does not abolish freedom (cf. 1 Tim 2:4). Text: Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent.

    50

  49. On the stripping of Zurich worship (Mass, images, organ, singing, feasts, purgatory, invocation of the saints) and the division between "true and false religion": Ulrich Zwingli, De vera et falsa religione commentarius (1525), op. cit.; G. R. Potter, Zwingli, op. cit.

    51

  50. Ulrich Zwingli, Fidei ratio (July 1530, addressed to Charles V at Augsburg): expressed hope of seeing in heaven, among the elect, virtuous pagans (Socrates, Aristides and others). Text: Corpus Reformatorum, op. cit.; English trans.: Library of Christian Classics, vol. 24, op. cit.

    52

  51. Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, 16 (21 November 1964): those who invincibly ignore the Gospel may attain salvation through Christ's grace. Text: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html

    53

  52. On the two Swiss confessional blocs (Zurich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen / the five primitive cantons and the Austrian alliance): Reformation in Switzerland; B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.

    54

  53. First Kappel war (June 1529), concluded without battle by the "Kappel milk soup" (Kappeler Milchsuppe) and the first territorial peace: Reformation in Switzerland; Zurich city documentation, op. cit.

    55

  54. Zurich food blockade of 1531 (grain and salt) against the Catholic cantons, which precipitated the second Kappel war: B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.

    56

  55. Second territorial peace (Zweiter Landfriede, November 1531): each canton keeps its religion, common bailiwicks mixed — the confessional map frozen for three centuries: Reformation in Switzerland.

    58

  56. Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575), elected Zwingli's successor at the Grossmünster on 9 December 1531: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), article "Heinrich Bullinger"; Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 15 (Bullinger article). Text: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Catholic_Encyclopedia,_volume_15.djvu/844

    59

  57. On Bullinger's work (First Helvetic Confession 1536, European correspondence, Zurich stabilisation): Christian History, no. 4, biographical gallery, op. cit.; B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.

    60

  58. Consensus Tigurinus (May 1549), agreement of Bullinger and Calvin on the Supper (spiritual presence to faith, against pure memorialism as against local presence): Zurich city documentation, op. cit.; B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.

    61

  59. Confessio Helvetica posterior (1566), drafted by Bullinger and adopted by the Reformed Churches: B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, op. cit.

    62

  60. On the absorption of Zwinglianism into the Reformed family after 1549: W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, op. cit.; see the article on Calvinism.

    63

  61. On the survival of pure memorialism (Baptists, Evangelicals, Christians with no label): see the article on the real presence and the answers to Protestant objections.

    64

  62. Leuenberg Agreement (1973): full communion between the Lutheran and Reformed Churches of Europe, closing on the Protestant side the Marburg fracture.

    65

  63. Paul VI, Mysterium fidei (3 September 1965) on the doctrine and worship of the Eucharist, and Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1374-1376 (real presence and transubstantiation). Text: https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_03091965_mysterium.html

    66

  64. Leo X, Exsurge Domine (15 June 1520): 41 censured propositions of Luther — a bull prior to the Zurich break (1522-1525), hence with no direct bearing on Zwingli, whose distinctive theses would be struck by Trent. See the article on Lutheranism.

    67

  65. Index of Paul IV (1559): Zwingli's works, like Luther's and Calvin's, are prohibited therein. See the article on Calvinism (same note).

    68

  66. Bossuet, History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches (1688): the sacramental quarrels of the Swiss among the proofs of Protestant variation facing Catholic immutability.

    69

  67. Second Vatican Council, Unitatis redintegratio, 3-4 (21 November 1964): separated brethren, elements of truth outside the visible frontiers — withdrawing none of the dogmatic definitions. Text: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html

    70

  68. On the real abuses that fed the Reformation (indulgences, mercenary service, clerical ignorance) and their redress by the Catholic Reformation: see the article on Trent.

    71

  69. On the Catholic Reformation (new orders, seminaries, the Roman Catechism of 1566): see the article on Trent.

    72

  70. Catholic assessment of the Zurich devastations (parishes deprived of the Eucharist, doctrine subjected to the Council, impoverished prayer): constant judgment of Catholic historiography, cf. Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Ulrich Zwingli," op. cit.

    73

  71. Mt 26:52: "All who take the sword will perish by the sword."

    74

  72. Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, 8 (21 November 1964): the one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. Text: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html

    75

  73. Wording of canon 1 of the 13th session ("the whole Christ"): see [^trentecan1].

    76