In 1519, two years after Luther published his theses, Ulrich Zwingli was made priest of the church at Zurich. He had been born a few weeks after Luther and was educated at Basle, Berne, and Vienna. He had also made many friends among the humanists. He was attracted to a clerical life because of its opportunities for study, and initially he became a parish priest at Glarus. Later his friends secured him the appointment to Zurich. In time he became hostile in his attitude toward the requirements of the Catholic religion. He opposed the ascetic life, saint worship, and the belief in purgatory. He accepted the Bible as the supreme authority in religion, and Christ as a sufficient Savior. He preached these as theological truths, but he was morally lax and did not know religion by personal experience. Illness sobered him, and he became interested in bringing about reforms in the city. By 1523 he was debating before the city council and in public the abolition of images in the churches, and contending that the Lord’s Supper was only a memorial of Jesus. As a consequence, the council abolished images, the mass, and the monasteries. Morals courts were set up to take the place of the church courts in cases of conduct and marriage. Zwingli became the power behind the council. He was different from Luther in his outlook on life, in his religious experience, in his aims, and in his methods. Luther was naturally conservative, hoping to save what he could of the old system unless the Bible discredited it. Zwingli wanted to do away with every practice that the Bible did not specifically mention. Zwingli was also a patriot who was ready to fight for his political principles. Thus the troubles he got into came from the Catholic cantons, which threatened war on Zurich, not the pope who saw Zwingli as a minor player. The Swiss Confederation was segregated into two groups: the states that desired democratic government, moral and ecclesiastical reforms, and the abolition of mercenary customs and those that were aristocratic in politics, loyally Catholic, and inclined to hold on to foreign pensions and military payments. War broke out and Zwingli’s Zurich army was defeated at Kappel in 1531. Zwingli was killed in the battle.
Impact: Zwingli’s mantle of leadership fell to Heinrich Bullinger, a friend of John Calvin and a man whose temperate nature brought various groups together and helped further the Reformation in Switzerland.