Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
The Church was as genial and corrupt in Switzerland as in Italy. She
gave patronage and considerable freedom to the humanists who
gathered around Froben and Erasmus at Basel. It was part of the
moral tolerance of the age that most Swiss priests enjoyed the
services of concubines. `06181 One Swiss bishop charged his clergy
four guilders for every child born to them, and in one year garnered
1522 guilders from this source. `06182 He complained that many priests
gambled, frequented taverns, and got drunk- `06183 apparently
without paying an episcopal fee. Several cantons- Zurich in
particular- set up civic supervision of churchmen and taxed monastic
properties. The bishop of Constance claimed all Zurich as his feudal
fief, and demanded of it obedience and tithes; but the papacy was
too enmeshed in Italian politics to support his claims effectively. In
1510 Pope Julius II, in return for some Genevese legions, agreed
that the town council of Geneva should regulate the monasteries,
convents, and public morals within its domain. `06184 So, seven
years before Luther's theses, the essence of the Reformation was
achieved in Zurich and Geneva- the supremacy of secular over
ecclesiastical authority. The path was cleared for Zwingli and
Calvin to establish their diverse mergers of Church and state.
II. ZWINGLI
-
A visit to the birthplace of Huldreich or Ulrich Zwingli suggests
the not invariable rule that great men are born in small houses. The
most rational and unsuccessful of the Reformers began life (January 1,
1484) in a tiny cottage in the mountain valley village of Wildhaus,
fifty miles southeast of Zurich, in the present canton of
Saint-Gall. A low gable roof, walls of heavy boards, little
mullioned windows, floors of massive planks, low ceilings, dark rooms,
creaking stairs, sturdy beds of oak, a table, a chair, a shelf for
books: this historic home bespeaks an environment in which natural
selection was rigorous, and supernatural selection seemed an
indispensable hope. Ulrich's father was chief magistrate in that
hidden hamlet, and his mother was the proud sister of a priest. He was
the third of eight sons, who competed for the admiration of two
sisters. From his boyhood he was destined for the priesthood.
His uncle, dean of the church at near-by Wesen, shared with his
parents in his education, and gave Zwingli a humanistic bent and
breadth that sharply distinguished him from Luther and Calvin. At
ten the boy was sent to a Latin school at Basel; at fourteen he
entered at Bern a college headed by an outstanding native
classicist; from sixteen to eighteen he studied in the University of
Vienna in its humanist heyday under Conrad Celtes. He lightened his
labors by playing on the lute, harp, violin, flute, and dulcimer. At
eighteen he returned to Basel, and took theology under Thomas
Wyttenbach, who, as early as 1508, attacked indulgences, clerical
celibacy, and the Mass. At twenty-two (1506) Zwingli received his
master's degree, and was ordained priest. He celebrated his first Mass
at Wildhaus amid joyful relatives, and, with a hundred guilders raised
for him, bought appointment `06185 to a pastorate in Glarus, twenty
miles away.
There, while zealously performing his duties, he continued his
studies. He taught himself Greek to read the New Testament in the
original. He read with enthusiasm Homer, Pindar, Democritus, Plutarch,
Cicero, Caesar, Livy, Seneca, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and wrote
a commentary on the skeptical humorist Lucian. He corresponded with
Pico della Mirandola and Erasmus, called Erasmus "the greatest
philosopher and theologian," visited him reverently (1515), and read
him every night as a prelude to sleep. Like Erasmus, he grew a sharp
nose for ecclesiastical corruption, a genial scorn for doctrinal
bigotry, and an ardent refusal to think of the classical
philosophers and poets as burning in hell. He vowed that he "would
rather share the eternal lot of a Socrates or a Seneca than that of
a pope." `06186 He did not let his sacerdotal vows exclude him from
the pleasures of the flesh; he had some affairs with generous women,
and continued so to indulge himself until his marriage (1514). His
congregation did not seem to mind, and the popes paid him, till
1520, an annual pension of fifty florins for supporting them against
the pro-French party in Glarus. In 1513 and 1515 he accompanied the
Glarus contingent of Swiss mercenaries to Italy as their chaplain, and
did his best to keep them faithful to the papal cause; but his contact
with war at the battles of Navarro and Marignano turned him strongly
against any further sale of Swiss valor to foreign governments.
In 1516 the French faction in Glarus won the upper hand, and Zwingli
moved to a pastorate at Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz. His
preaching there took a Protestant tinge even before Luther's
rebellion. In 1517 he called for a religion based exclusively on the
Bible, and he told his archbishop, Cardinal Matthaus Schinner, that
there was scant warrant in Scripture for the papacy. In August 1518,
he attacked abuses in the sale of indulgences, and persuaded
Benedictine monks to remove, from their lucrative shrine of the
Virgin, an inscription promising pilgrims "full remission of all
sins in guilt and punishment alike." `06187 Some pilgrims from
Zurich brought to their pastors an enthusiastic report of his
preaching. On December 10, 1518, he accepted a call to be vicar or
"people's priest" at the Grossmunster, or Great Minster, of Zurich,
the most enterprising city in Switzerland.
He was now approaching maturity in morals and mind. He undertook a
series of sermons expounding, from the Greek text, all the New
Testament except the Apocalypse, which he disliked; he had little in
him of the mysticism that shared in forming Luther. We have no
portrait of him from life, but his contemporaries described him as a
handsome, ruddy-faced, full-blooded man, with a melodious voice that
captured his congregation. He did not rival Luther in eloquence or
exegesis; yet his sermons were so convincing in sincerity and
clarity that soon all Zurich responded to his influence. His
ecclesiastical superiors supported him when he resumed his campaign
against the sale of indulgences. Bernhardin Samson, a Franciscan friar
from Milan, had crossed the Saint Gotthard Pass in August 1518, to
become the Tetzel of Switzerland. He offered Pope Leo's indulgence
to the rich on parchment for a crown, to the poor on paper for a few
pennies; and with a wave of his hand he absolved from the pains of
purgatory all souls that had died in Bern. Zwingli protested; the
bishop of Constance seconded him; and Leo X, learning something from
events in Germany, recalled his lavish apostle.
In 1519 plague struck Zurich, taking a third of the population in
half a year. Zwingli stayed at his post, toiled night and day in the
care of the sick, caught the infection himself, and came close to
death. When he recovered he was the most popular figure in Zurich.
Distant dignitaries like Pirkheimer and Durer sent him
felicitations. In 1521 he was made head priest of the Grossmunster. He
was now strong enough to proclaim openly the Reformation in
Switzerland.
III. THE ZWINGLIAN REFORMATION
-
Almost unconsciously, but as a natural result of his unusual
education, he had changed the character of the pastorate in his
church. Before him the sermon had counted for little; Mass and
communion had been nearly all the service; Zwingli made the sermon
dominate the ritual. He became teacher as well as preacher; and as his
confidence grew he drove home ever more forcefully his conviction that
Christianity should be restored to its early simplicity of
organization and worship. He was deeply stirred by Luther's revolt and
writings, and by Huss's treatise On the Church. By 1520 he was
publicly attacking monasticism, purgatory, and the invocation of
saints; furthermore, he argued that the payment of tithes to the
Church should be purely voluntary, as in Scripture. His bishop
begged him to withdraw these statements; he persisted; and the
cantonal council supported him by ordering all priests within its
jurisdiction to preach only what they found in the Bible. In 1521
Zwingli persuaded the council to forbid the enlistment of Swiss
soldiery by the French; a year later the prohibition was extended to
all foreign powers; and when Cardinal Schinner continued to recruit
Swiss troops for the pope, Zwingli pointed out to his congregation
that the Cardinal wore a red hat not without reason, for "if it were
wrung you would see the blood of your nearest kindred drip from its
folds." `06188 Finding no text in the Testament for the avoidance of
meat in Lent, he allowed his parishioners to ignore the Church's rules
for Lenten fasts. The bishop of Constance protested; Zwingli
answered him in a book, Archeteles (beginning and end), which
predicted a universal rebellion against the Church, and advised the
prelates to imitate Caesar, fold their garments about them, and die
with grace and dignity. With ten other priests he petitioned the
bishop to end clerical immorality by allowing sacerdotal marriage
(1522). He was at this time keeping Anna Reinhard as his mistress or
secret wife, In 1524 he publicly married her, a year before Luther's
marriage to Catherine von Bora.
This definite rupture with the Church was preceded by two
disputations that recalled the Leipzig debate of Luther and Eck, and
distantly echoed the Scholastic disputations of the medieval
universities. As a semi-democratic republic, Switzerland was not
shocked by Zwingli's suggestion that the differences between his views
and those of his conservative opponents should receive an open and
impartial hearing. The Great Council of Zurich, blithely assuming
theological jurisdiction, invited the bishops to send representatives.
They came in force, and altogether some 600 persons gathered for the
exciting contest in the city hall (January 25, 1523).
Zwingli offered to defend sixty-seven theses.
-
1. All who say that the Gospel is nothing without the approbation of
the Church err....
15. In the Gospel the whole truth is clearly contained....
17. Christ is the one eternal high priest. Those who pretend to be
high priests resist, yea, set aside, the honor and dignity of Christ.
18. Christ, Who offered Himself once on the cross, is the sufficient
and perpetual sacrifice for the sins of all believers. Therefore the
Mass is no sacrifice, but a commemoration of the one sacrifice of
the cross....
24. Christians are not bound to any works which Christ has not
commanded. They may eat at all times all kinds of food....
28. Whatsoever God permits and has not forbidden is right. Therefore
marriage is becoming to all men....
34. The spiritual power so called [the Church] has no foundation
in the Holy Scriptures and the teaching of Christ.
35. But the secular power is confirmed by the teaching and example
of Christ (Luke, ii, 5; Matt., xxii, 21)....
49. I know of no greater scandal than the prohibition of lawful
marriage to priests, while they are permitted, on payment of a fine,
to have concubines. Shame! ( Pfui der Schande! )...
57. The Holy Scripture knows nothing of a purgatory....
66. All spiritual superiors should repent without delay, and set
up the cross of Christ alone, or they will perish. The axe is laid
to the root. `06189
-
Johann Faber, Vicar-General of the diocese of Constance, refused
to discuss these propositions in detail, claiming that they should
be laid before great universities or a general council of the
Church. Zwingli thought this unnecessary; now that the New Testament
was available in the vernaculars, all could have the Word of God to
decide these issues; that was enough. The Council agreed; it
declared Zwingli guiltless of heresy, and bade all Zurich clergymen to
preach only what they could establish by Scripture. Here, as in
Lutheran Germany, the state took over the Church.
Most priests- their salaries being now guaranteed by the state-
accepted the Council's order. Many of them married, baptized in the
vernacular, neglected the Mass, and abandoned the veneration of
images. A band of enthusiasts began indiscriminately to destroy
pictures and statues in the churches of Zurich. Disturbed by the
spread of violence, Zwingli arranged a second disputation (October 26,
1523), which was attended by 550 laymen and 350 clergymen. The outcome
was an order of the Council that a committee including Zwingli
should prepare a booklet of doctrinal instruction for the people,
and that meanwhile all violence should cease. Zwingli rapidly composed
Eine kurze Christliche Einleitung, which was sent to all the
clergy of the canton. The Catholic hierarchy protested, and the Diet
of the Confederation, meeting at Lucerne (January 26, 1524),
seconded the protest, at the same time pledging itself to
ecclesiastical reform. The Council ignored the protests.
Zwingli formulated his doctrine more amply in two Latin treatises:
De vera et falsa religione (1525) and Ratio fidei (1530). He
accepted the basic theology of the Church- a triune God, the Fall of
Adam and Eve, the Incarnation, Virgin Birth, and Atonement; but he
interpreted "original sin" not as a taint of guilt inherited from
our "first parents," but as an unsocial tendency inherent in the
nature of man. `061810 He agreed with Luther that man can never earn
salvation by good works, but must believe in the redeeming efficacy of
Christ's sacrificial death. He agreed with Luther and Calvin on
predestination: every event, and therefore every individual's
eternal fate, has been foreseen by God, and must occur as so foreseen.
But God has fated for damnation only those who reject the Gospel
offered them. All children (of Christian parents) who die in infancy
are saved, even if unbaptized, for they were too young to sin. Hell is
real, but purgatory is "a figment... a lucrative business for its
authors"; Scripture knows nothing of it. `061811 The sacraments are
not miraculous vehicles, but useful symbols, of divine grace.
Auricular confession is unnecessary; no priest- only God- can
forgive sin; but it is often beneficial to confide our spiritual
troubles to a priest. `061812 The Lord's Supper is no actual eating of
the body of Christ, but a symbol of the union of the soul with God,
and of the individual with the Christian community.
Zwingli kept the Eucharist as part of the Reformed service, and
administered it in both bread and wine, but he offered it only four
times a year. In that occasional celebration much of the Mass was
retained, but it was recited in Swiss German by congregation and
priest. During the remainder of the year the Mass was replaced by
the sermon; the appeal of ritual to the senses and the imagination was
subordinated to the appeal of discourse to the mind- a rash gamble
on popular intelligence and the stability of ideas. 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, and a corps
of scholars and divines, led by the saintly Leo Jud, was
commissioned to prepare a German version of the entire Bible. This was
published by Christian Froschauer at Zurich in 1534, four years before
Luther's better version appeared.
In faithful obedience to the Second Commandment, and signalizing the
return of Protestant Christianity to its early Jewish traditions,
the Zurich Council ordered the removal of all religious images,
relics, and ornaments from the churches of the city; even the organs
were banished, and the immense interior of the Grossmunster was left
dismally bare, as it is today. Some of the images were absurd
enough, some lent themselves so readily to superstition as to merit
destruction; but some were sufficiently beautiful to make Zwingli's
successor, Heinrich Bullinger, mourn their loss. Zwingli himself had a
tolerant attitude toward images that were not worshiped as
wonder-working idols, `061813 but he condoned the demolition as a
reproof to idolatry. `061814 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. `061815
Monasteries and nunneries (with one exception) 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 Masses for the dead disappeared. Though not all these
changes were consummated by 1524, yet the Reformation was by 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 November 1524, Zurich formed a Privy Council ( Heimliche Rath )
of six members to prepare settlements of urgent or delicate problems
of government. Between Zwingli and this Council a working compromise
took form: he surrendered to it the regulation of ecclesiastical as
well as secular affairs, and in both fields it followed his lead.
Church and state in Zurich became one organization, of which Zwingli
was unofficial head, and in which the Bible was accepted (like the
Koran in Islam) as the first source and final test of law. In Zwingli,
as later in Calvin, the Old Testament ideal of the prophet guiding the
state was realized.
So quickly and completely successful in Zurich, Zwingli turned an
acquisitive eye upon the Catholic cantons, and wondered whether all
Switzerland might not be won to the new form of the old faith.
IV. ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
-
The Reformation had split the Confederation, and seemed destined
to destroy it. Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, and the Grisons
favored Zurich; the other cantons were hostile. Five cantons- Lucerne,
Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, and Zug- formed a Catholic League to
suppress all Hussite, Lutheran, and Zwinglian movements (1524).
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria urged all Catholic states to united
action, promised his aid, and doubtless hoped to restore the
Hapsburg power in Switzerland. On July 16 all the cantons except
Schaffhausen and Appenzell agreed to exclude Zurich from future
federal diets. Zurich and Zwingli responded by sending missionaries
into the Thorgau district to proclaim the Reformation. One of these
was arrested; friends rescued him, and led a wild crowd that sacked
and burned a monastery, and destroyed images in several churches (July
1524). Three of the leaders were executed, and a martial spirit rose
on both sides. Erasmus, timid in Basel, was alarmed to see pious
worshipers, aroused by their preachers, come out of church "like men
possessed, with anger and rage painted on their faces... like warriors
animated by their general to some mighty attack." `061816 Six
cantons threatened to leave the Confederation if Zurich were not
chastised.
Zwingli enjoying his new role of war leader, advised Zurich to
increase its army and arsenal, to seek alliance with France, to
build a fire behind Ferdinand by fomenting revolution in Tirol, and to
promise Thorgau and Saint-Gall the properties of their monasteries
in return for their support. To the Catholic League he offered peace
on three conditions: that it yield to Zurich the famous abbey of St.
Gall; that it renounce the Austrian alliance; and that it surrender to
Zurich the Lucerne satirist Thomas Murner, who had written too
pungently of the Reformers. The League scorned these terms. Zurich
ordered its representatives in Saint-Gall to seize the abbey; they
obeyed (January 28, 1529). In February the tension was raised by
events in Basel.
The Protestant leader in that "Athens of Switzerland" was Johannes
Hausschein, who had Hellenized his name, meaning house lamp, into
Oecolampadius. He wrote Latin poetry at twelve, mastered Greek soon
afterward, and rose to rank second only to Reuchlin as a Hebraist.
In his pulpit at St. Martin's Church and in his chair of theology at
the university, he made a name for himself as a reformer and moralist,
humane in everything but religion. By 1521 he was attacking the abuses
of the confessional, the doctrine of transubstantiation, the
idolatry of the Virgin. In 1523 Luther acclaimed him. In 1525 he
adopted the Zwinglian program, including the prosecution of
Anabaptists. But he rejected predestination; salus nostra ex Deo, he
taught, perditio nostra ex nobis - "Our salvation comes from God, our
damnation from ourselves." `061817 When the Basel Council, now
predominantly Protestant, proclaimed freedom of worship (1528),
Oecolampadius protested, and demanded the suppression of the Mass.
On February 8, 1529, 800 men, assembled in the church of the
Franciscans, sent to the Council a demand that the Mass should be
forbidden, that all Catholics should be dismissed from office, and
that a more democratic constitution should be put in force. The
Council deliberated. On the following day the petitioners came in arms
to the market place. When by noon the Council had still reached no
decision, the crowd moved into the churches with hammers and axes, and
destroyed all discoverable religious images. `061818 Erasmus described
the affair in a letter to Pirkheimer:
-
The smiths and workmen removed the pictures from the churches, and
heaped such insults upon the images of the saints and the crucifix
itself, that it is quite surprising there was no miracle, seeing how
many 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 was pounded into fragments. Nothing
was spared for love or money. `061819
-
The Council took the hint, and voted full abolition of the Mass.
Erasmus, Beatus Rhenanus, and nearly all professors in the
university left Basel. Oecolampadius, triumphant, survived the
outbreak by only two years, dying soon after Zwingli's death.
In May 1529, a Protestant missionary from Zurich, attempting to
preach in the city of Schwyz, was burned at the stake. Zwingli
persuaded the Zurich Council to declare war. He drew up the plan of
campaign, and led the canton's troops in person. At Kappel, ten
miles south of Zurich, they were stopped by one man, Landemann Aebli
of Glarus, who begged an hour's truce while he negotiated with the
League. Zwingli suspected treachery, and favored immediate advance; he
was overruled by his Bernese allies, and by his soldiers, who
readily fraternized, across the cantonal and theological border,
with the soldiers of the enemy. For sixteen days negotiations
continued; finally the good sense of the Swiss prevailed, and the
First Peace of Kappel was signed (June 24, 1529). The terms were a
victory for Zwingli: the Catholic cantons agreed to pay an indemnity