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.In addition to his powerful anticlerical,or anti-papal, message (he once compared the pope to a sea serpent), he alsoemphasized the need for faith in place of a reliance on works and the absolute centralityof Scripture to the Christian life.The Swiss Reformation began with an event.52 In Zurich, on Ash Wednesday inApril 1522, a group of evangelical sympathizers met in the house of the printerChristoph Froschauer and ate sausages, thus deliberately breaking the Lenten fast.Zwingli himself did not partake, but he published a sermon soon afterward thatmade it clear he did not think that Catholic laws such as those pertaining to fastswere crucial to salvation.The sermon was a turning point in the Swiss Reformation,for not only did it place the issue of evangelical reform atop the political agendaand thereby necessitate the intervention of the magistracy, it also spelled out thetwo central themes of Zwinglian theology: first, the nature of Christian freedomand its relationship to unnecessary laws; and second, the role of Scripture as the 26 Foundationsstandard of religious truth.But the sermon was not the first time Zwingli haddefended these ideas.Since 1520, he had been preaching against what he termedthe invented, external worship of Catholicism, and that included devotion ofsaints, religious festivals, some forms of tithes, monastic orders, and clerical celibacy(indeed, he married a widow in 1522).In the Apologeticus Archeteles (1522), hisfirst major statement of faith, Zwingli opened with an appeal to his countrymen todefend the freedom of the gospel against human doctrines and false prophets,whether they be bishops, popes, or general councils.The only certain guide wasScripture.Nor was Zwingli the lone voice of evangelical reform in Zurich.Leo Jud(1482 1542), who had been Zwingli s colleague in Einsiedeln and had translatedsome of Luther s Latin works into German, was also preaching against false lawsand superfluous images, and in 1522 he performed a vernacular baptism in theGreat Minster.Both men were able to preach in this manner because Zwingli had the support of thecity magistracy.The reasons for the close cooperation between the reformers and thecouncil will be the subject of a subsequent chapter, but even at this early stage the pointmust be made that the Zurich Reformation was an archetypical magisterial Reforma-tion, guided and enacted by the political elite.For its part, the council protectedZwingli from the declarations of the Swiss Diet, which demanded the suppression ofLuther s books and associated teaching, and the commissions of the bishop ofConstance, who as the ruling prelate of Zurich was responsible for religious affairsin the city.For his part, Zwingli promised to preach the holy gospel and pure holyScriptures in line with the council s mandate and avoid issues that gave rise to unrest.As early as his fast sermon of 1522, Zwingli counseled restraint, advising his readers thatsince the practice was not bad or dishonorable, one should peacefully follow it, as longand as much as the greater portion of men might be offended at its violation. 53By way of this incremental and closely managed process of reform, the Reformationtook shape in the city.By April 1525, at which stage the Mass according to the Romanrite was abolished, the Zurich council, working together with Zwingli, had overseen theremoval of religious images and statues from the city churches, secularized themonasteries and rechanneled the income, reduced the number of religious holidaysand put an end to a number of traditional processions, suspended the jurisdiction of thebishop of Constance, established an independent marriage court, and instituted yearlysynods for the regulation of the Zurich church and its dependent clergy.Zurich was thefirst fully reformed Protestant commune.54In the manner of Luther and Karlstadt at Leipzig, Zwingli used a public disputationas a forum for the defense of his ideas.And the same convictions were at the core.Likethe Wittenberg theologians, Zwingli preached that all Christians had the right, and to acertain extent the ability, to judge whether an idea or a practice was in line with theteachings of Scripture.He also believed that the best way to gather support for themovement was to address the laity directly, to make reform a public concern rather thana private quarrel.What was unique about the first disputation in Zurich (January 29,1523), however, was that it was not instigated by the reformer but the city council.Itwas a judicial hearing, its main purpose being the preservation of civic order, and thereason it had been called into being was to deal with the charges brought againstZwingli by the bishop of Constance.55 And yet it was not the bishop who would pass Foundations 27judgment on Zwingli but the council itself, empowered by the evangelical premise thata decision could be made by a lay tribunal if Scripture remained the final judge in allthings, a point made with some symbolic force at the start of the disputation when threefolio texts were placed before the assembly: a Greek New testament, a Hebrew OldTestament, and the Latin Vulgate.In truth, the first Zurich disputation was something of a kangaroo court, for theCatholic clergy were little more than observers and the council had essentially decidedbefore the event that unless it could be proved that Zwingli was spreading heresy it wouldallow him to preach the gospel clearly and purely as he claimed to have done to thatpoint.For Zwingli, however, the disputation was a coup, for he was able to set the agendawith 67 articles outlining his vision of reform.With these articles the foundation ideas ofSwiss Protestantism were put on full display, including the role of faith in justification,the primacy of the Word of God, the futility of good works in the search for salvation, andthe church as a community of the faithful.The first disputation did not result in theintroduction of the Reformation; many issues, such as those relating to the mass andreligious images, were not dealt with until after a second disputation in October 1523.But the basic framework for the Reformation had been put in place, and the underlyingrationale behind the initiative with the council claiming it was acting in the name ofGod in aid of peace and Christian unity never wavered.56If there was one theological precept of the early Swiss Reformation that set it apart itfrom the movement in Saxony, where Luther s theory of justification was systematicallydismantling late medieval Catholicism, it was the principle of Scripture alone (solaScriptura).Though fundamental to all Reformation thought, and the first string inWittenberg s bow at Leipzig, no reformer of the first order made such consummate useof the principle as Zwingli in Zurich.By the time of the Froschauer incident in 1522 hehad already gone beyond his early humanist disposition to search for a greater clarityand truth in primary texts.Ancient authorities such as the church fathers might bedrawn upon to confirm a point of theology, but the source of the faith must be HolyWrit, which was revealed to all men under the inspiration and guidance of the Spirit.On the basis of this profoundly enabling idea, Zwingli was able to convince theZurich council to intervene on the side of reform and provide the political supportrequired for the preaching of the Word
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