Bern disputation

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Action or Acta contained disputation zuo Bernn in Üchtland , printed in Zurich (1528)

The Bern Disputation (also Bernese Religious Discussion ), which took place from January 6th to 26th, 1528, was an officially ordered disputation between supporters of the Reformation and representatives of the Old Believing Church . As a result, Bern introduced the Reformation and ultimately helped it achieve its breakthrough in Switzerland.

prehistory

→ Main article: Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Switzerland

In Bern there were also reformatory currents in Zurich before the beginning of the Reformation. Jörg Brunner, originally from Germany, preached in the Kleinhöchstetten church as early as 1522, as did his predecessor, the German priest Johann Wecker, who had been active in Kleinhöchstetten since 1498, in the spirit of Martin Luther. Brunner was sued and a court of councils and theologians convened on August 29, 1522 in the Barfüsserkloster acquitted him. Later, the poet and painter Niklaus Manuel worked with anti-clerical carnival games, Ulrich Zwingli's friend and correspondent Berchtold Haller , canon and popular priest at Bern Minster since 1520 , preached in the Reformation sense from 1525 at the latest, with great encouragement from the citizens. The majority in the city council, however, took a conservative position until the Baden disputation of 1526 and resisted affiliation with the Zurich Reformation. It was not until the council election of 1527 brought a majority change that the council decided to legitimize the Reformation through a large-scale religious conversation , following the example of the Zurich disputations .

In November 1527 representatives of the federal estates as well as numerous southern German cities were invited. The four bishops of Basel , Constance , Lausanne and Valais responsible for the Bernese area were expressly invited to participate . If you don't show up, you should lose all rights in Bern. The result was already anticipated by the stipulation that only the Holy Scriptures may be the basis of the disputation.

With the announcement ten theses were published on which the disputation should be based. They were written by Haller and Franz Kolb and confessed to the sole rule of Christ in the church, to the Reformation principle of scripture and to justification through Christ alone. On this basis, theses 4-10 rejected Roman Catholic doctrines and customs such as the doctrine of transubstantiation , purgatory and celibacy .

procedure

In addition to the Great Council and the almost 300 clergy of the city and the rural area, numerous foreigners took part in the disputation in the old Barefoot Church. The 60-strong delegation from Zurich was headed by Zwingli. Other prominent Reformed theologians were Johannes Oekolampad from Basel, Joachim Vadian from St. Gallen, Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito from Strasbourg, Ambrosius Blarer from Constance, Paul Fagius from Isny ​​and Konrad Sam from Ulm. Although the four bishops stayed away, as did representatives of the Catholic towns in Central Switzerland, theologians of the old faith were also involved, with Konrad Träger and Johannes Buch as spokesmen. The Presidium suppressed personal attacks and ensured that all verbal contributions were immediately recorded.

Result

At the end of the disputation, 235 of the Bern clergy signed the ten theses, 46 of which they rejected. Shortly thereafter, on February 7, 1528, the council issued a mandate with which the ten theses were used as the norm for teaching in Bern, mass and images were abolished and the jurisdiction of the bishops was declared ended. The introduction of the Reformation came to an end in 1532 with the Bern Synod , a reformed church order. As the patron of the Geneva Church and the reformatory efforts in the Bernese Aargau , Valais and Neuchâtel , Bern ensured the consolidation and further expansion of the Reformation in Switzerland. In St. Gallen , Mulhouse , Biel and Lindau (Lake Constance) , the authorities also issued Reformation mandates with reference to the disputation.

swell

  • Bern Synodus with the closing speeches of the Bern disputation and the Reformation mandate (translated by Markus Bidder), Bern 1978 (documents of the Bern Reformation).
  • Wilhelm H. Neuser (Ed.): Bern Theses from 1528 . In: Reformed Confessions. Vol. 1/1: 1523-1534 . Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 2002, pp. 197-205.
  • Action or actual disputation to Bernn in Üchtland. Zurich, 1528. doi : 10.3931 / e-rara-2777

literature

  • Gottfried Wilhelm Locher : The Berner Disputation 1528: character, course, meaning and theological content . In: Zwingliana 14 (1978), 542-564 ( PDF file ).
  • Gottfried Wilhelm Locher: The Bern Disputation 1528 . In: 450 Years of the Bern Reformation. Contributions to the history of the Bern Reformation and to Niklaus Manuel . Edited by the Historical Association of the Canton of Bern, Bern 1980/1981 (Archive of the Historical Association of the Canton of Bern, Vol. 64–65), pp. 138–155.
  • Irena Backus: The principle "sola scriptura" and the church fathers in the disputations of Baden (1526) and Bern (1528) . Zurich: Theol. 1997 (first in English 1993).

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