“What are you working on lately, Byron?” asked my friend.

“Zwingli.”

“What?”

“Huldrych Zwingli.”

“Huldrych who?”

“Huldrych Zwingli. He was something like the first Reformed Presbyterian.”

“Oh! Never heard of him.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) is the greatest Reformer no one has heard of. He was indeed something like the first Reformed Presbyterian. The year 2019 marks 500 years since the start of what we now call the Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation. Zwingli started that. Not John Calvin. Not John Knox. It was Huldrych Zwingli.

Of the truly great Reformers, those whose legacies embrace vast families of today’s churches worldwide, Zwingli is the least known. He rates but a single sentence in the Philosophers and Religious Leaders volume of Lives and Legacies: An Encyclopedia of People Who Changed the World (ed. Christian D. von Dehsen, Oryx Press, 1999). Likewise for World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored and Explained (ed. John Bowker, DK, 2006). Pity the poor editors, for Huldrych Zwingli was indeed a world changer whose great work invites exploration.

Born the year after Martin Luther (1483–1546), whose fame preceded his, and murdered while John Calvin (1509–1564) was still a Roman Catholic, Zwingli is overshadowed by these better-known leaders. Though his ministry proved tragically brief, fair-minded accounts of the Protestant Reformation pay him heed.

For years I have used Timothy George’s Theology of the Reformers (Broadman & Holman, 1988) as a textbook at Geneva College. The first edition of this well-crafted volume offers four theo-biographies: Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and Menno Simons. A revised edition (2013) added only one more figure: William Tyndale. Zwingli rates as one of those few. In the 16th Century, his was the voice that first sounded out the doctrines and piety that, in fuller form, are cherished by Reformed Presbyterians.

So, back to my friend’s question: “Huldrych who?”

Pastor, preacher, poet, and politician, Huldrych Zwingli is perhaps best remembered as preacher. On a Sunday morning 500 years ago (Jan. 1, 1519), his 35th birthday, this newly appointed “people’s priest” made a shocking announcement to the congregation of Zurich’s Great Minster Church. He proposed to preach through the New Testament page by page, and in sermons he himself had prepared!

Why the shock? In those days bishops preached, not priests. Priests were the local representatives of the bishops, and bishops the actual pastors of the church. In their lowly role in parish work, most priests were satisfied to recite the text of the Roman mass—the Latin service of the Lord’s supper—and be done. Ill-trained in Latin, many priests could scarcely get through the mass. Poorer churches routinely heard mass in half-memorized, half-bowdlerized, and less than half-understood Latin. If there was a sermon at all, it was read from a book of homilies published by the bishops. Those sermons weighed heavily on moral duty, Roman sacraments, devotion to the virgin Mary and the saints, and the duty to obey—always—Holy Mother Church.

Preaching had fallen on hard times. In the early 16th Century, even bishops rarely preached. Though the duty was theirs, especially in their mandated Sunday-by-Sunday visitations to the congregations of the diocese, many bishops neglected both the visits and the preaching. A few well-educated priests sometimes took up the preaching task, but only with the bishop’s permission.

For Zurichers assembled in the Great Minster Church that auspicious January day, preaching by priests was odd but not without precedent. Zwingli pressed the oddity beyond all precedent. He would preach, but not the homilies published by the bishops. The sermon that Lord’s Day expounded the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1:1–17. A genealogy is an unlikely text for a spellbinding sermon, but Zwingli proved himself a spellbinder.

Week by week, sermon followed upon sermon, all on Matthew’s Gospel. Report spread of this unusual priest who put wings on words and made Matthew sing. His preaching soon drew listeners from far and wide. Even Pope Leo X, Luther’s nemesis, heard about it and smiled. Master Huldrych Zwingli was, after all, a known and devout priest skilled in Latin and Greek, a friend of the great Erasmus, and, unlike that Saxon rebel Luther, a loyal son of the Roman Church. So, the pope indulged him, even extending him a stipend for his work.

Zwingli preached what we would now call expository sermons. His sermons explained and applied the sacred text, page by page, in what the ancient church called lectio continuo, continuous reading—no skipping troublous texts! He treated faith, doctrine, and piety with a winsome wit and an evangelical clarity that Zurichers had scarcely known.

After Matthew’s Gospel, he turned to the book of Acts, showing how the apostles themselves preached. This helped explain to doubters why Zurich’s “people’s priest” preached as he did. Then, to clear up the raging question of the relationship between faith and works, he took up Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. Soon Zurich’s city council commanded all the priests in the canton to preach only what they found taught in holy Scripture, just as Master Zwingli did. By 1525, his skills in Hebrew now strong, Great Minster’s preacher turned to the Old Testament.

What had made him so ready to buck the system?¹ What forces formed his soul? Born in a devout and modestly prosperous family in an Alpine village named Wildhaus, the young Huldrych showed himself to be a precocious child. His proud parents sent him off to study with his uncle, a priestly academic, who guided him well. Studies in the wealthy Swiss cities of Basel and Bern and at the great university of Vienna advanced his Latin and exposed him to the new movement in scholarship we now label Renaissance humanism.

That name is easily misunderstood. The Renaissance (“rebirth”) started in wealthy Italian cities around 1350 AD and slowly spread throughout Europe, occasioned by new economic prosperity, a strange thing called leisure time, and a vast increase in opportunities for education. Humanism was its hard-to-define companion in intellectual life, characterized by deep interest in the high civilization that had preceded the allegedly dark Middle Ages: the classical world of Greek and Roman antiquity.² Humanists wanted to improve society by recovering the best of that ancient past.

The Renaissance humanists’ motto, Ad Fontes (“Back to the Sources”), rallied their efforts to discover the roots, the fountains, from which flowed the best values and virtues in human life. Those fountains were found not only in Cicero and Seneca, but also in holy Scripture. The Renaissance humanist was typically devout, a lover of ancient languages, and ablaze with desire to improve the world by Christian wisdom. Hence, the Renaissance humanists’ Bible was not the Vulgate, the antique Latin version made by St. Jerome in his Bethlehem cave. Rather, in true ad fontes spirit, their Bible came in its Greek and Hebrew originals—now increasingly available in printed form—or in translations made from those same Hebrew and Greek originals.

Zwingli completed the master of arts degree at Bern in 1506. He traveled east to the lake town of Constance, his bishop’s city, where he was ordained to the priesthood. A journey up-country took him back home to Wildhaus to say his first mass, proud family in attendance. He was all of 22 years old.

Humanism and the care of souls now occupied his days and nights.³ His first pastoral charge in Glarus, an Alpine valley town not far from home, lasted 10 years. In Glarus he had time to study theology and Greek. Lots of Greek. His skills grew steadily. So did temptations. Called to a more important charge in Einsiedeln in 1516, he found the pope’s rule of priestly celibacy a tyranny he could scarcely endure. Sexual scandal nearly ruined him, but influential friends vouched for the sincerity of his penitence.

In Mar. 1516, an extraordinary book from Erasmus of Rotterdam arrived at the bookshops. Erasmus was Europe’s most famous scholar, and the first European to make his living by his books. His latest offering was a two-volume work with the odd title Novum Instrumentum Omne. This “New Instrument” really was a New Testament, a printed New Testament, and a New Testament unlike any seen before: It was Erasmus’s own Latin rendition in (modest) dispute with the long-authoritative Vulgate. Moreover, printed on facing pages, culled from a few medieval Byzantine manuscripts, was the Greek New Testament. Astounding!

Before Mar. 1516, if someone wanted to read the New Testament in its original Greek, they would have to find a wealthy monastery, a royal library, or an aristocratic bishop’s study, where these rare and likely incomplete manuscripts were kept under lock and key.⁴ After Mar. 1516, you could go to a city bookshop and buy your own. Who was among the first to read Erasmus’s Greek New Testament? Two important names: Dr. Martin Luther and Master Huldrych Zwingli. Perhaps too poor to buy his own, Zwingli read the copy in a monastery library. Reluctant to abandon such treasure, he wrote out a full transcript of the Pauline Epistles in Greek, dated Mar. 1517. Friends mention him reciting those Greek letters from memory, punctuated by a joke or two. He had memorized all of them.⁵

Renaissance humanism helped form devoutly Christian scholars who could challenge old and mistaken ideas on the basis of older and better ideas. Ad fontes freed the Bible from its long, Latin confinement. It meant that the New Testament’s message of faith and repentance could no longer be hidden under Roman vestments. This bold faith brought an end to the regime of fear, for, as Zwingli discovered, “Christ is the pledge of grace; nay, he is grace itself.”⁶

Today we know well how media technology can redirect an entire world. In those days the world-changing tech proved to be Johann Gutenberg’s moveable type printing press. Gutenberg produced only one book—a grand edition of the Vulgate Bible (1456)—and promptly went bankrupt. But by 1500, European printers had produced millions of books. The best-selling topic was Christianity. By 1525, the now uncloistered Luther shone: the best-selling author in the world. Like hit songs from Elvis, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys, his writings and his German Bible went platinum. The skill of literacy and the thrill of books overwhelmed Europeans. They could read for themselves the truths of God or warm to the hot disputes against them.

In Zurich, reform marched slowly. It almost did not march at all. In Aug. 1519, bubonic plague—the Black Death—struck the city. Many fled the city. Vacationing at the time, Master Huldrych Zwingli, the people’s priest, bravely sped back to the city to treat the sick, comfort the dying, and bury the dead. Brave it was, but a virtual death sentence. Alas, both he and his brother Andrew contracted the disease. Andrew did not survive. Nor did 2,000 other Zurichers. The trauma drove Zwingli nearer to God:

Help me, O Lord, / My strength and rock; / Lo, at the door / I hear death’s knock.

Uplift thine arm, / Once pierced for me, / That conquered death, / And set me free.

Yet, if thy voice, / In life’s midday, / Recalls my soul, / Then I obey.

In faith and hope / Earth I resign, / Secure of heaven, / For I am thine.⁷

He rose from his sickbed more trusting of the gospel’s truth, more trusted by Zurichers, and more willing to test the trust of Rome.

Did the pope rightly command Christians to fast from meat during Lent? Was his law trustworthy? Rome had long declared breaking the Lenten fast a sin meriting damnation. Some devout Zurichers, now bound to the Word of God alone, dared defy the pope by eating sausages. Zwingli’s meaty sermon on a Lenten Lord’s Day, Mar. 23, supported the dissenters. Did a Christian have the liberty to fast in Lent? Zwingli answered Yes. Did a Christian have the duty to fast in Lent? Zwingli answered No. At that daring no we might wonder that the Great Minster’s rafters did not shake with a violence felt as far as the Vatican.

By April he had expanded that sermon into a published treatise: Concerning Choice and Liberty Respecting Food. In it he developed twin doctrines for the life of the church: (1) the Christian is free from all duties invented by the church without divine authority; (2) the Christian is bound by all duties prescribed by God in sacred Scripture.

Meanwhile, convinced of the error of a church-imposed celibacy, in 1522 Zwingli secretly married a lovely and devout widow, Anna Reinhard, who had settled in his congregation. But secret marriages rarely remain secret. To avert further scandal, a public wedding was held in 1524, making Zwingli the first Reformation-minded Roman Catholic priest to marry openly. In that he bested Luther’s marriage to Katherine Von Bora by a year. The closing remarks of his tract on choice and liberty in food set forth the Protestant principle, as apropos to the tyranny of enforced celibacy as to enforced fasts: “Church officers have not only no power to command such things, but if they command them, they sin greatly.”⁸

If Reformed Presbyterians find that sentence agreeable, no wonder. It is the soul-liberating doctrines of sola scriptura and the regulative principle of worship. Zwingli’s 1522 treatise on food gave them perhaps their earliest Reformed expression in print. Sola scriptura? The Bible is the only infallible rule of Christian faith and practice. The regulative principle of worship? “Whatever is not commanded in the worship of God, by [scriptural] precept or example, is forbidden.”⁹ Within this mortal world, only sacred Scripture stands indefatigably worthy of trust.

That worthy trust did not win all. Loud opposition roused the city’s magistrates. Did this married Master Zwingli teach truth or not? Zurich’s magistrates led the way, convening public disputations on the hotter questions. In this they acted without the Bishop of Constance’s authority.

Bishop Hugo, a Zuricher himself and a jovial fellow, usually turned a blind eye to Zwingli’s daring deeds. But these actions overtaxed his patience. At the First Zurich Disputation, convened on the cold 29th of Jan. 1523, more than 600 citizens, priests, and guests crowded into the assembly hall. High on the agenda was a Zwingli text called The Sixty-seven Articles. Bishop Hugo’s representative, unprepared for debate, commanded everyone to go home to no avail.

With huge folio volumes of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles at his side, Zwingli replied, “I say that here in this room is without doubt a Christian assembly; there is no reason why we should not discuss these matters, speak and decide the truth.” Was Zurich’s assembly just as authoritative as the councils of Rome? Yes, and even those of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon.¹⁰

Zwingli’s Sixty-seven Articles won the majority vote. He himself was commanded “to continue to preach the holy gospel as heretofore, and to proclaim the true, divine Scriptures until he was better informed.” This resolution perfectly matched the preacher’s own resolve to preach Christ ex fontibus (“from the fountain”), and thus to inject purum Christum (“the pure Christ”) into the souls of his hearers.¹¹ A modest Protestantism within Roman Catholicism was now officially underway, with Zurich’s church and city-state stepping in tandem.

A Second Zurich Disputation, Oct. 1523, gained popular support against both the mass and the adoration of sacred images, but with a stern command: no churches were to be despoiled of their art. The magistrates waited while the public grew accustomed to the idea of plainer worship. Then in a single week, all the church buildings of Zurich closed for repainting. Reopened, the churches displayed whitewashed walls absent of images. Nothing should distract the congregation from the worship of the invisible God.

In Apr. 1525, city council abolished the mass. A simple table now replaced the Great Minster’s high altar. On the Thursday night before Easter, the first Reformed Protestant communion took place. The break with Rome and pope was now complete. A fully Protestant Zurich was well on its way to becoming a bibliocracy, a city ruled by the Bible.¹²

Alas, Master Huldrych Zwingli, Protestant pastor of the Great Minster, Zurich, had but six years left of life. His Zurich reformation continued its steady march, but Zwingli was not the one to lead it to its clearer expressions of faith and practice. A sword took him. Nonetheless, in the dozen years (1519–1531) allotted him as Zurich’s pastor, he laid the foundations for the piety held dear by Reformed people far and wide. Here is a sample:

▶ God’s mystery of providence encompasses every event without exception.

▶ Bound by sin, humans need a grace from God that frees the will and converts the soul.

▶ In the mystery of predestination, the triune God elects individual sinners to receive grace.

▶ God has appointed preaching to be the principal means of advancing the gospel.

▶ God justifies sinners by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

▶ Church government is neither by bishops nor by congregations, but by synods of pastors.

▶ There is one gospel and one covenant of grace in both testaments, old and new alike.

▶ Baptism is the New Testament’s sign of God’s covenant upon the whole church, adults and children alike, and equivalent to Old Testament circumcision.

▶ In the Lord’s supper, Jesus Christ is made present to the believer, not crassly and bodily, but truly and spiritually, manifested to faith and to faith alone by the Holy Spirit.¹³

Providence sometimes works a hard mystery. On Oct. 11, 1531, much remained to be achieved, but not by Zwingli. In the aftermath of a lost battle for Protestantism, Huldrych Zwingli rested under a tree with other wounded Zurichers. There the famous man was recognized by the enemy and struck through with a sword. His last words were, “You may kill the body, but you cannot kill the soul.” Clerics of the winning side subjected his corpse to a mock trial for heresy and ordered his body hacked to pieces and burnt. He was 47.

His unfinished work fell to others. Among them we may name a few: in Zurich, Zwingli’s abler and gentler disciple, Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575); in nearby Strasbourg, a prodigious monk whom Luther had turned to Protestantism, Martin Bucer (1491–1551). Across the Alps in Geneva, it was a soon-to-arrive wonder from France: John Calvin (1509–1564). In England, it was the brilliant translator, theologian, and martyr, William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536), and a host of Puritans; in Scotland, a fiery preacher named John Knox (c. 1513–1572) with an astonishing power to exalt the humble and to humble the exalted.

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Ulrich, Hyldrych, Huldrych, or Huldreich?

What’s in a name? In polyglot Switzerland, the favored northern language might be labeled “German,” but pronunciation and spelling were up for grabs. Zwingli’s regional dialect is tagged Sweizerdeutsch, “Swiss-German.” Luther called it barbaric. Moreover, native Zurichers spoke one dialect of Sweizerdeutsch, the Bernese another, and natives of Basel still another. No less than six dialects existed.

In an age when the printing press was new, spellings bent toward local usage. In Germany, Hyldrych was Ulrich. Between Hyldrych and Ulrich lay two compromise forms: Huldrych and Huldreich. The name derives from two elements in Old High German: “noble heritage” and “rich.” Our Huldrych, perhaps with twinkling eye, said it meant “rich in grace.”

His surname “Zwingli” gets tampered with, too. Much to its bearer’s dislike, Luther and the Germans spelled it “Zwingel.” England swings it to “Zwingle.” What’s a fellow to do? Zwingli sometimes stepped it to a Latin beat: Udalricus Zwingling when he enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1500; but 29 years later, at the Colloquy of Marburg, he wrote Huldrychus Zwinglius.

Byron G. Curtis is professor of biblical studies at Geneva College.

Notes