Zwingli and the Reformation in Zurich

Huldrych Zwingli was canon and preacher at the Great Minster of Zurich (Acts of the First Zurich Disputation decree of 29 January 1523 (Selected Works, pp. 92–94)). He wrote in 1522 that three years earlier he had begun by preaching through the whole Gospel of Matthew, then Acts and letters of Paul and Peter, and that when he began he had not yet heard the name of those whose follower he was now said to be (Zwingli, Archeteles Latin Works 1, pp. 238–239).

In Lent 1522 a witness told the council that sausages had been cut up and eaten in the house of a printer on Ash Wednesday, and that Zwingli was present and did not eat (Zurich council records inquiry of March 1522 (Kidd no. 171, pp. 390–391)). Zwingli then published a tract which argued from Scripture that “according to divine law no kind of food is forbidden to man at any time” (Zwingli, On the Choice of Foods Latin Works 1, p. 110).

On 3 January 1523 the burgomaster and councils summoned the clergy of their territory to appear on 29 January and argue, in German and from Scripture, the matters in dispute, and they invited the bishop of Constance to send representatives (Acts of the First Zurich Disputation the council’s mandate and the opening (Selected Works, pp. 43–45)). For the day Zwingli issued sixty-seven articles, which he offered to defend from Scripture and from Scripture only (Zwingli, Sixty-seven Articles preamble). They say that the gospel does not depend on the approval of the church, that Christ is the only way to salvation and the only eternal high priest, that the mass is not a sacrifice but a remembrance of Christ’s one sacrifice and an assurance of the salvation he has given, that Christians may eat any food at any time, that marriage is permitted to all, and that Scripture knows nothing of a purgatory after this life (Zwingli, Sixty-seven Articles articles 1, 3, 17, 18, 24, 28 and 57).

More than six hundred people gathered in the town hall (Acts of the First Zurich Disputation the council’s mandate and the opening (Selected Works, pp. 43–45)). The bishop’s vicar general, Johann Faber, declined to debate old customs there. Such matters, he said, belonged before a general council or the universities, because changes made at Zurich would not be accepted by Christians elsewhere (Acts of the First Zurich Disputation speech of Johann Faber (Selected Works, pp. 50–52)). That afternoon the council decreed that, since no one had refuted Zwingli from Scripture, he should continue to preach the gospel as before, and that the other clergy should preach nothing they could not defend from Scripture (Acts of the First Zurich Disputation decree of 29 January 1523 (Selected Works, pp. 92–94)).

The council went on by stages. After a second disputation, a mandate of 27 October 1523 left images and the mass as they were for the time being (Zurich council records mandate of 27 October 1523 (Kidd no. 198, p. 438)). The Zurich chronicler Heinrich Bullinger reports that in June 1524 the council had the shrines of the martyrs Felix and Regula removed from the Great Minster and stopped the playing of organs (Zurich council records Egli no. 547, from Bullinger (Kidd no. 203, pp. 442–443)). On 12 April 1525 it ordered that no mass be said any more and that the Lord’s Supper be held according to a printed order; a chronicler notes that the majority was small (Zurich council records Egli no. 684, 12 April 1525 (p. 306; English extract in Kidd no. 205)).

Some of those who had followed Zwingli soon broke with him and with the council; see the First Anabaptists.