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Ulrich Zwingli was born Jan 1, 1484 in a village of Wildhaus, fifty miles south -east of Zurich, in the present Canton of Saint-Gall. At twenty-two he was ordained a Priest.
In 1517 he called for a religion based exclusively on the Bible. In 1518 he attacked abuses in the sale of indulgenses, and persuaded Benedictine monks to remove, from their shrine of the Virgin, an inscription promising pilgrims" full remission of sins in guilt and punishment alike".
By 1520 he was publicly attacking monastacism, purgatory, and the inovation of saints; the Great Council of Zurich in 1523 bade all clergymen to preach only what they could establish by Scripture.
Most priests- their salaries being now paid by the state- accepted the Council's order. Many of them married, babtized in the vernacular, neglected the Mass, and abandoned the veneration of images. A band of enthusiasts began indiscriminatley to destroy pictures and statues in the churches of Zurich. Zwingli prepared a booklet of doctrinal instructions for the people ( Eine kleine Christliche Einleitung) which was sent to all the clergy of the canton.
Since an infallible Bible had now to substitute for an infallible Church as a guide to doctrine and conduct, Luther's German translation of the New Testament was adapted to the Swiss-German dialect.
In faithfull obedience to the Second Commandment, the Zurich Council ordered the removal of all religious images, relics, and ornaments from the churches of the City; even the organs were banished. Village churches in the canton were allowed to keep their images if a majority of the congregation so desired. Catholics retained some civic rights, but were ineligible to public office. Attendance at Mass was punishable by a fine; eating fish instead of meat on Friday was forbidden by law. Monasteries and nunneries were closed or turned into hospitals or schools; monks and nuns emerged from the cloister into marriage. Saints' days were abolished, and pilgrimages, holy water, and the Masses for the dead disappeard.
Though not all these changes were consumed by 1524, yet the Reformation was at that time far more advanced in Zwingli and Zurich than in Luther and Wittenberg; Luther then was still a celibate monk, and still said Mass.
In 1529, the Counsil received a demand that the Mass should be forbidden, they deliberated, and when they had not reached a decision on the following day, the crowd moved into the churches with hammers and axes, and destroyed all discoverable religious images.
When a Protestant missionary attemted to preach in the city of Schwyz, he was burned at the stake . Zwingli persuaded the Zurich Council to declare war and led the canton's troops in person. At Kappel they were stoped by one man, Landemann Aebli of Glarus, who begged an hour's truth while negotiating with the League. After sixteen days the good sense of the swiss prevailed and the First Peace of Kappel was signed.
An effort was made to unite the Protestants of Switzerland and Germany. Phillip, Landgrave of Hesse, invited Luther and other German Protestants to meet Zwingli and the Swiss Protestants in his Castle at Marburg, north of Frankfurt.
They could not agree, Luther refused Zwingli's hand, saying, " Your spirit is not our spirit".
Zwingli returned to a Zurich that was becoming restless under his dictatorship, Zwingli's sermons, cluttered with politics, had lost their inspiration and charm.
In 1531, an assembly of Zurich and her allies voted to compel the Catholic cantons to allow freedom of preaching in their territory. The Catholic cantons refused, Zwingli proposed war. The Catholics won and Zwingli was slain.
Heinrich Bullinger succeded and brought the Zurich and Geneva Protestants into one " Reformed Church".
This is for the rest of us who did not know what a Zwillingen Faith was.
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