Zurich
Swiss city whose council adopted Zwingli’s preaching in 1523 and abolished the mass in 1525. The first Anabaptists baptised here, and the city drowned Felix Manz in 1527.
Zurich was a self-governing city of the Swiss Confederation, ruled by a burgomaster and two councils. In January 1523 those councils heard Huldrych Zwingli, preacher at the Great Minster, defend his teaching and decreed that he should continue (Acts of the First Zurich Disputation decree of 29 January 1523 (Selected Works, pp. 92–94)). In January 1527 the city’s court sentenced Felix Manz to be drowned for baptising adults (Zurich council records sentence of 5 January 1527 (Egli no. 1109, pp. 529–530)). See Zwingli and the Reformation in Zurich and the First Anabaptists.
What happened here
- 29 January 1523, firm dateZwingli and the Reformation in Zurich
Zwingli, preacher at Zurich’s Great Minster, defends his teaching in sixty-seven articles before the city council on 29 January 1523. The council rules that he is to go on preaching, and by Easter 1525 it has abolished the mass in the city.
- 21 January 1525, firm dateThe First Anabaptists
In January 1525 former followers of Zwingli at Zurich begin to baptise adults on confession of faith. The council answers with banishment and, from 1526, with death by drowning; Felix Manz is drowned in 1527. The Schleitheim articles of that year state what they believed.