Swiss Reformed Church

The Swiss confederates control most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains by 1460, particularly after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of Näfels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries.

The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounts to de facto independence within the Holy Roman Empire.

The Old Swiss Confederacy had acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffers a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano.

This ends the so-called "heroic" epoch of Swiss history.

The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons leads to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel).

Felix Manz, another radical leader, was born in Zürich, where his father was a canon of Grossmünster church.

Though records of his education are scant, there is evidence that he had a liberal education, with a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, Greek and Latin.

Manz had become a follower of Zwingli after he came to Zürich in 1519.

When Grebel joined the group in 1521, he and Manz had become friends.

They questioned the mass, the nature of church and state connections, and infant baptism.

After the Second Disputation of Zürich in 1523, they had become dissatisfied, believing that Zwingli's plans for reform had been compromised with the city council.

Grebel, Manz and others have made several attempts to plead their position.

Several parents refuse to have their children baptized.

A public debate is held on January 17, 1525, and the council decides in favor of Zwingli.

Anyone refusing to have their children baptized is required to leave Zurich.

The radicals ignore these measures and on January 21, they meet at the house of the mother of Manz.

Grebel and a third leader, George Blaurock, perform the first recorded Anabaptist adult baptisms: Grebel baptizes Blaurock, and Blaurock in turn baptizes the others.

This makes complete the break with Zwingli and the council, and forms the first church of the Radical Reformation.

On February 2, the council repeats the requirement on the baptism of all babies and some who fail to comply are arrested and fined, Manz and Blaurock among them.

Zwingli and Jud interview them and more debates are held before the Zurich council.

Meanwhile, the new teachings continue to spread to other parts of the Confederation as well as a number of Swabian towns.

Although the council had hesitated in abolishing the mass, the decrease in the exercise of traditional piety has allowed pastors to be unofficially released from the requirement of celebrating mass.

As individual pastors alter their practices as each sees fit, Zwingli is prompted to address this disorganized situation by designing a communion liturgy in the German language.

This is published in Aktion oder Brauch des Nachtmahls (Act or Custom of the Supper).

Shortly before Easter, Zwingli and his closest associates request the council to cancel the mass and to introduce the new public order of worship.

On Maundy Thursday, April 13, 1525, Zwingli celebrates communion under his new liturgy.

Wooden cups and plates are used to avoid any outward displays of formality.

The congregation sits at set tables to emphasize the meal aspect of the sacrament.

The sermon is the focal point of the service and there is no organ music or singing.

The importance of the sermon in the worship service is underlined by Zwingli's proposal to limit the celebration of communion to four times a year.

For some time, Zwingli has accused mendicant orders of hypocrisy and demanded their abolition in order to support the truly poor.

He suggests the monasteries be changed into hospitals and welfare institutions and incorporate their wealth into a welfare fund.

This is done by reorganizing the foundations of the Grossmünster and Fraumünster and pensioning off remaining nuns and monks.

The council secularizes the church properties and establishes new welfare programs for the poor.

Zwingli requess permission to establish a Latin school, the Prophezei (Prophecy) or Carolinum, at the Grossmünster.

The council agrees and it is officially opened on June 19, 1525 with Zwingli and Jud as teachers.

It serves to retrain and reeducate the clergy.

The Zurich Bible translation, traditionally attributed to Zwingli and printed by Christoph Froschauer, bears the mark of teamwork from the Prophecy school.

Scholars have not yet attempted to clarify Zwingli's share of the work based on external and stylistic evidence.

On November 6–8, the last debate on the subject of baptism took place in the Grossmünster.

Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock defend their cause before Zwingli, Jud, and other reformers.

There is no serious exchange of views as each side will not move from their positions and the debates degenerate into an uproar, each side shouting abuse at the other.

The Anabaptists, also called Rebaptizers, whose movement originates in Zollikon, outside Zürich, when Conrad Grebel performs the first adult baptisms there early in 1525, is rapidly on its way to becoming a mass movement.

Converts submit to a second Baptism, which is a crime punishable by death under the legal codes of the time.

The Anabaptists, who repudiate their own infant Baptism as a blasphemous formality, deny that they are rebaptizers.

They consider the public confession of sin and faith, sealed by adult Baptism, as the only proper Baptism.

further, they hold that the church, as the community of the redeemed, should be separated from the state, which for the Anabaptists exists only for the punishment of sinners.

They break with Zwingli for his apparent subservience to the magistrates and his reluctance to proceed swiftly with a complete reform of the church.

They share, however, Zwingli’s opinion that infants are not punishable for sin until an awareness of good and evil emerges within them, and that then they may exercise their own free will, repent, and accept Baptism.

Balthasar Hubmaier, named doctor of theology after studies at the German universities at Freiburg and Ingolstadt, and appointed cathedral preacher at Regensburg in 1516, moves in 1521 to Switzerland, where, at thirty-six, he soon becomes a leader of the fledgling Protestant Reformation.

Persecuted even by the liberal Zwinglians, he is arrested in 1525 at Zürich, where he makes an enforced recantation of his Anabaptist beliefs.

French reformer William Farel participates in the disputation in 1528 that turns Bern to the Reformation.

The roots of the University of Bern date to this era, when, as a consequence of the Reformation, a collegiate school is needed to train new pastors.

The Diet of Speyer is convened in March 1529, for action against the Turks, whose armies are pressing forward in Hungary, and will besiege Vienna later in the year, and against the further progress of Protestantism.

The Diet opens on March 15.

The Catholic dignitaries appear in full force, as do various princes and representatives of imperial cities who are leaning towards Luther and Zwingli's reforms.

Ascendant Roman Catholic forces, particularly given Charles V's recent successes against the French in Italy, aim to reverse the policy of religious tolerance adopted in 1526.

The meeting is not attended by Charles.

He sends instructions to his regent, Ferdinand, to pursue a conciliatory line, but his advice does not reach his brother in time.

Ferdinand instead, reads out his own far less conciliatory suggestions in Charles's name at the start of the Diet.

He condemns the way many princes had interpreted the recess issued in 1526 at Speyer.

He specifically denies them the right to choose which religious reforms will take effect in their states, and orders that Catholicism be followed in all states of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Protestants feel that "Christ was again in the hands of Caiaphas and Pilate."

The resultant recess of the Diet neutralizes the recess of the preceding Diet of 1526; it virtually condemns (without, however, annulling) the innovations made; and it forbids, on pain of the imperial ban, any further reformation until the meeting of the council, which is now positively promised for the next year by the Emperor and the Pope.

The Edict of Worms is therefore to be enforced after all, without waiting for a General Council.

The Zwinglians and Anabaptists are excluded even from toleration.

The latter are to be punished by death.

Philip I of Hesse, after the Diet of Speyer had confirmed the edict of Worms, feels the need to reconcile the diverging views of Martin Luther and Huldruych Zwingli in order to develop a unified Protestant theology.

At the Marburg Colloquy, arranged in 1529 to establish doctrinal unity as a preliminary to the political unity of Protestantism, Johannes Oecolampadius defends Huldrych Zwingli's position on the nature of the Eucharist against that of Martin Luther.

It takes place between October 1 and October 4, 1529.

The leading Protestant reformers of the time attend at the behest of Philip.

His primary motivation for this conference is political; he wishes to unite the Protestant states in political alliance, and to this end, religious harmony as an important consideration.

Besides Luther and Zwingli, the reformers Stephan Agricola, Johannes Brenz, Martin Bucer, Caspar Hedio, Justus Jonas, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Andreas Osiander participate in the meeting.

Luther’s failure to reach doctrinal accord with Zwingli, who denies Christ's real presence in any form in the Eucharist, splits the Reform movement.

French preacher Guillaume Farel brings the teachings of the Protestant Reformation to the Neuchâtel area in 1530.

Neuchâtel’s first recorded ruler, Rudolph III of Burgundy, mentioned Neuchâtel in his will in 1032.

The dynasty of Count Ulrich von Fenis took over the town and its territories in 1034.

The dynasty prospered and, by 1373, all the lands now part of the canton belonged to the count.

In 1405, the cities of Bern and Neuchâtel entered a union.

The lands of Neuchâtel had passed to the lords of Freiburg in the late fourteenth century as inheritance from the childless Elisabeth, Countess of Neuchâtel, to her nephews, and then in 1458 to margraves of Sausenburg who belonged to the House of Baden.

Their heiress, Jeanne de Rothelin, and her husband, the Duke of Longueville, had inherited it in 1504, after which the French house of Orléans-Longueville (Valois-Dunois).

Neuchâtel's Swiss allies then occupied it from 1512-1529 before returning it to its widowed Countess Jeanne de Hochberg, chatelaine of Rothelin, dowager duchess of Longueville.

 

The Waldenses, who had withdrawn into Alpine valleys in northern Italy after the burning of eighty of their number at Strasbourg in 1211, have continued to lead a marginal existence.

When the news of the Reformation reached the Waldensian Valleys, the Tavola Valdese decided to seek fellowship with the nascent Protestantism.

A meeting held in 1526 in Laus, a town in the Chisone valley, and decided to send envoys to examine the new movement.

In 1532 they met with German and Swiss Protestants and ultimately adapted their beliefs to those of the Reformed Church.

The Swiss and French Reformed churches had sent William Farel and Anthony Saunier to attend the meeting of Chanforan, which convened on October 12, 1532.

Farel had invited them to join the Reformation and to emerge from secrecy.

A Confession of Faith, with Reformed doctrines, is formulated and the Waldensians decide to worship openly in French.

John Calvin begins publishing his “Institutes of the Christian Religion" in 1536, designed to offer a brief summary of essential Christian belief and to defend French Protestants, currently subject to serious persecution, as true heirs of the early church.

With publication of the small book, which contains only six brief sections, Calvin fully intends to devote his life to further study.

On a trip to Strasbourg in July, however, he is forced to detour through Geneva where he hopes to stay only one night.

The fiery Guillaume Farel, who has worked for five years for the reform of this city, threatens Calvin with a curse from God, and thus persuades him to remain, as minister and teacher, to help organize Protestantism there.

Calvin soon establishes theocratic rule in the city.