Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Switzerland
The Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Switzerland took place in a somewhat different time frame than in Germany (→ Reformation ). The work of Huldrych Zwingli from 1519 can be seen as the beginning and the end of the confessionalization with the Second Villmerger War in 1712. The Reformation itself took a different course in Switzerland because the old Confederation had a different social structure than the empire . To this day, the Evangelical Reformed churches that emerged from the Swiss Reformation differ from the Evangelical Lutheran churches that emerged from the German Reformation . In accordance with the character of the Confederation as a confederation of states , the Reformation in Switzerland originated in different centers and was inspired by various reformers.
Most significant in world history were the personalities and teachings of Johannes Calvin , the founder of Calvinism , who made Geneva a “Protestant Rome” from 1536 , Ulrich Zwingli, who worked in Zurich from 1519 , and Heinrich Bullinger , who worked with Calvin in 1549 the Consensus Tigurinus reached the unification of the Reformed and Calvinists on the question of the Lord's Supper. While the Lutheran Reformation was limited to Germany and Northern Europe, the Swiss Reformation had an international impact via the Netherlands and Great Britain to the USA . The Reformation Anabaptist movement , from which the Mennonites ultimately emerged , has its roots in Switzerland and, despite persecution, spread from here.
From the perspective of Swiss history, the Reformation brought about the definitive end of the expansion phase of the Old Confederation (→ emergence and growth of the Old Confederation ) and ushered in a phase of internal conflicts and a solidification of the political structure. At the same time, however, the independent Reformation path also accelerated the separation from the German Empire, which was clearly shown in the rejection of the Augsburg Confession and the sideline in the Augsburg religious peace of 1555. For the reformed cantons, taking over the power and income of the church in their sphere of influence was an important step on the way to a premodern statehood.
Huldrych Zwingli and the Zurich Reformation
Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) came from the upper Toggenburg and was the son of a mountain farmer who was active in local politics as an elected Ammann . This may have had an influence insofar as Zwingli thought and acted decisively more politically than the German reformer Martin Luther . After studying in Basel , Bern and Vienna, Zwingli worked as a priest in Glarus and Einsiedeln . Zwingli was spiritually influenced by the humanism of Erasmus of Rotterdam .
Even as a priest in Glarus Zwingli was dragged into the political events of the day, because he as a military chaplain of the army Canton of Glarus on the campaigns of the Confederation in the Mailänderkriegen accompanied against the French and in the battles of Novara and Marignano participated. Zwingli fought the rampant in the Confederation because of the great demand for Swiss mercenaries mercenary services as a source of vices, disbelief, brutalization of morals and corruption, much like Nicholas of Flue . Zwingli thus set himself in a deliberate opposition to an entire population group of the former Confederation, which benefited economically strongly from the traveling and the associated pension payments of the great powers. Through the pensions, the great powers bought the loyalty and influence of the powerful families in the cantons in order to obtain alliances or pay alliances. The Habsburg-French opposition that had built up since 1516 also split the Confederation into two camps, each of which was looking for a pay alliance with France or Habsburg or the emperor.
In 1518 Zwingli seems to have come into contact with Martin Luther's views for the first time. He disseminated the views and writings of the most important German reformer and agreed with him in declaring the Bible alone to be infallible.
As a critical spirit and a declared opponent of France, Zwingli was called to Zurich, the suburb of the Confederation and head of the German party, where he began to preach on January 1, 1519. The Zurich plague in the summer of the same year seems to have been an important impetus for radical change for Zwingli as well as for his fellow Zurich citizens. In contrast to Luther, who only strived for the renewal of the church, Zwingli now preached the reform of all life and demanded an "improvement" of people. As Zwingli's first political success, Zurich was the only estate in the Old Confederation to prevent France from recruiting mercenaries in 1521, which caused a sensation in the rest of the Confederation.
In 1522, the Reformation really got off the ground in Zurich when a conflict arose between Zwingli and the Bishop of Constance , Hugo von Hohenlandenberg , on the occasion of a violation of the fasting law, the famous Zurich sausage meal at the printer Christoph Froschauer . Zwingli refused to punish the offense because the fasting commandment came from the Catholic Church and not from the Gospel . Although the Small Council of Zurich opposed Zwingli, the craftsmen of the guilds supported it in the Grand Council. Zwingli then published his revolutionary concerns in several writings, in which he rejected the existing church as a whole in principle, since the word of God "teaches itself" and does not need the church.
The political authorities of Zurich followed Zwingli's teachings and instructions after two disputations in 1523 and allowed the pictures and altars to be removed from the churches (→ Reformation Iconoclasm ), the mass changed and the monasteries closed. Zwingli was a lot more radical than Luther and only allowed the Word of God in the church, even the organs were broken off because Zwingli rejected music in the church as a distraction. The income and goods of the church were confiscated by the city of Zurich and mainly used for the training of theologians as well as for the poor and sick. Although Zwingli's political influence was great at times, he never held a political office. The city council of Zurich, i.e. the political authority, decided or at least approved all political and church reforms. Zwingli and his colleagues only provided the theological basis for church reform. So at no time was Zurich a “state of God”.
Klaus Hottinger , participant in the sausage dinner and iconoclast in Zurich, was expelled from the city of Zurich for the intended sale of a cross for charity, went carelessly to the county of Baden , was arrested there and in 1524 was the first Reformed man to be beheaded in Lucerne.
The translation of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible into the vernacular was an important step for the Swiss Reformation. In 1531, the Zurich Bible was printed five years before the Wittenberg Bible, a complete edition in a Swiss-German version. The translation made by Zwingli and Leo Jud attached great importance to philological accuracy. The originally characteristic old-fashioned Swiss German language disappeared after 1665 due to several revisions. The biographies of the Zurich theologians created in the context of the Zurich High School represent a particularly enduring literary tradition . The first biography of Huldrych Zwingli by Oswald Myconius , which first appeared in print in 1536, was the beginning of the tradition, which extended into the 18th century .
For the life of the people in Zurich, moral discipline was the decisive innovation. Moral mandates from the city authorities forbade swearing, swearing, playing with cards and dice, jewelry and luxury, entertaining amusements and carnival . Almost all old folk customs and the veneration of the city saints Felix and Regula were forbidden, merrymaking and alcohol consumption as well as prostitution were wholly or largely prevented in the proverbial Reformed austerity. Nevertheless, the Reformation in Zurich can be considered democratic for those times, as the Great Council of guild and patriciate representatives was representative of the majority of the population in the city of Zurich.
Resistance to the Zwinglian Reformation came from the peasants and from the Anabaptists , a split from Zwingli's movement. For this reason, compulsory church was introduced in 1529 and attending foreign masses was prohibited. Anabaptists who practiced the so-called rebaptism were even punished with death and cruelly persecuted. Zwingli was therefore suspected by critics and contemporaries of being a despotic theocrat . Although Zwingli exercised significant political influence, it was always the ordinary Zurich city authorities that ultimately made the political decisions.
The spread of the Reformation in the Swiss Confederation until 1529
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Ulrich Zwingli was a person with a strong political mind. He hoped to be able to reform the entire Swiss Confederation along the lines of Zurich. His goal was to build a grand coalition against the Pope and Habsburg and to include German and Scandinavian Protestants as well as France and the Republic of Venice .
For the further Reformation of the Confederation, however, Berne was politically more important than Zurich, because the Confederation, with the exception of Zurich, was on the side of France in the European struggle for Italy (→ Italian Wars ) and Zurich was therefore politically isolated. The councils of the city of Bern, like those of Zurich, had been in a canonical conflict with the bishops of Constance and Lausanne since 1521 , as they claimed the final decision in church disputes. The councils therefore sympathized with Zwingli and Luther's attacks on the Catholic Church, but originally did not want to risk a break with Rome. The Bern reformers Berchtold Haller and Sebastian Meyer encountered strong resistance and only stayed in the city at Zwingli's encouragement. As later also in Basel, anti-Catholic carnival games played a major role in spreading Reformation ideas among the population, taking up grievances in the clergy, the indulgence trade and current scandals from the church. In Bern, the reputation of the church and the monasteries was also severely undermined by the Jetzer trade .
Martin Luther's writings were read and discussed in Bern from 1517 onwards; the propagation of reformatory ideas lasted over ten years, not least because the city had no printing works until 1537 and was dependent on external printers (in Zurich and Basel) to distribute council mandates.
After several surveys in the landscape dominated by Bern, however, the councils recognized that Reformation ideas were spreading more and more. In 1526 there was also a majority in favor of the Reformation in the Grand Council for the first time. A majority in the Small Council only came about when some supporters of the Catholic side were excluded. In 1528 the councils set up a disputation in Bern, to which Zwingli and other reformers from Upper Germany were invited. As a result, the council decided to carry out the Reformation in the entire sphere of influence of Bern and, if necessary, enforced it by force. In what is now western Switzerland, the French reformer Guillaume Farel worked with the support of Bern . He won Neuchâtel in 1530 and preached for the first time in 1532 in the city of Geneva, an ally of Bern .
From Bern, by far the largest town in the Swiss Confederation, the Reformation was also enforced in its subject areas in Aargau and, after 1536, also in the French-speaking region of Vaud . The new faith also penetrated from Bern into the southern areas of the Principality of Basel, where the federal cities of Biel , La Neuveville and the Erguel and Moutier valleys were reformed. Only the northern areas of the prince-bishopric, which today form the canton of Jura , and the Laufental remained catholic .
From 1518/22 Johannes Oekolampad worked in Basel for the cause of the Reformation. The humanist Erasmus von Rotterdam, known throughout Europe, lived and worked here since 1514 . Although Basel was a center of humanism and the early reformation, in the episcopal city, given the much more direct control of the bishop, criticism of the church was not initially able to assert itself as clearly as in Zurich. After contacts with Zwingli, Luther and the Alsatian reformer Martin Bucer , Oekolampad joined Zwingli's position on the question of the Last Supper . In the Bern disputation in 1528 he fought alongside Zwingli. In Basel, however, unlike in Zurich and Bern, the Reformation was not implemented at the instigation of the city government, but through a real revolution of the city population and the guilds. In 1528 the guilds achieved freedom of belief for the Reformed. On February 8, 1529 riots broke out after the carnival and a violent iconoclasm swept over the city. The artisans organized in guilds finally forced the council to introduce the Reformation. The catholic-minded mayor and his followers as well as the cathedral chapter had to flee the city. Erasmus von Rotterdam also left Basel because he did not agree with the radical Reformation of Oekolampad. The Principality of Basel survived the Reformation, the bishop was financially compensated for the loss of the city and his rights, but the legal dispute over the Basel Minster, which was actually the diocese's episcopal church, lasted until 1639.
In the cities of Schaffhausen and St. Gallen , the Reformation took hold in the 1520s. In St. Gallen, a place close to the Confederation, the humanist Joachim von Watt , a friend of Zwingli, became mayor in 1526 and opposed the resistance of the Prince Abbot of St. Gallen , who was also allied with the Confederation, in the city and parts of the Fürstenland through the new faith. In Schaffhausen, Sebastian Hofmeister , who had to flee Lucerne in 1522/23 because of his reformatory ideas , suggested the reform. As in Basel, however, it initially failed due to the resistance of the Catholic ruling class. Only after long vacillations and violent tumult did the moderate Erasmus knight succeed in asserting the new faith in 1529. Of the city cantons, only Solothurn and Freiburg remained in the camp of the Old Believers.
In the rural cantons, the spread of the new faith was rather hesitant due to the more conservative attitude of the population and political leadership. The sometimes extensive economic dependence on mercenaries, which Zwingli heavily criticized, also played a role. The original cantons in particular fiercely resisted the Reformation. The old fronts in the dispute between rural and urban cantons (→ Stanser verdict ) were relocated. Only in Glarus and Appenzell was the reform partially implemented under the influence of the trading centers of Zurich and St. Gallen. In Glarus, several rural communities did not come to a clear decision, so that it was up to each community whether they wanted to introduce the Reformation or not. With the exception of a few communities in the north of the canton, the new faith prevailed until 1529. A similar procedure was chosen in Appenzell, so that in 1525 every parish had to decide for or against the reform. This confessional division finally led to the political division of the canton in Appenzell in 1597 ( land division ).
While the 13 towns, with the exception of Glarus and Appenzell, decided either for or against the Reformation, the situation in the associated towns and in the common lordships was much more complicated and the form of parity or the community principle was often applied. In the Free State of the Three Leagues , Chur was the center of the reform, since Johannes Comander had been working at the Martinskirche there since 1523 . Like Basel, Chur was also the seat of a bishop (→ Diocese of Chur ), who was also sovereign in the Church of God . The bishop's attempt to try Comander as a heretic failed. In a disputation in 1526 at the Bundestag of the Three Leagues in Ilanz , Comander led the Reformation to victory. As a result, the Three Leagues left the choice of religion to the high courts. The second Ilanz articles of 1526 had constitutional significance for the Three Leagues, which severely restricted the Bishop of Chur's sovereign rights. Other-facing locations turned entirely to the Reformation, so Biel , Neuchâtel and the city of St. Gallen , or fighting the spread of the new faith more or less successful as the Abbey of St. Gall or under the influence of the bishop of Sion standing Wallis .
In the common rulers, the Reformation spread differently depending on the geographical location. In Thurgau , the county of Baden , Freiamt , in Rapperswil , Uznach , Windegg , Sargans and the Rhine Valley , more than half of the population converted to the new faith in 1530, as the influence of the Reformation centers in eastern Switzerland was very strong here. In western Switzerland, Bern ensured an almost complete conversion in the common lordships of Murten , Echallens , Orbe and Grandson . Only in the Ennetbirgische Vogteien in Ticino could the influence of the Inner Places and the neighboring Italian dioceses successfully prevent the reform. In Locarno, under the teacher Giovanni Beccaria , a Protestant congregation was able to form from 1540, which also included nobles, merchants and craftsmen. But those who wanted to hold on to the new faith had to leave Locarno in 1555 and fled to Roveredo in Graubünden. The 160 refugees actually wanted to move to their co-religionists in Chiavenna , which the Duke of Milan denied them. Most of them moved to Zurich, where they were accepted and were able to work in trade and handicrafts. For economic reasons, some of them moved on to Basel, Bern and Strasbourg . The most violent disputes with the Reformed took place in the subject areas of the Three Leagues in Valtellina , as the Bishop of Como, with Spanish support, vigorously tried to prevent the reform from penetrating Italy. The conflict ultimately led to the murder and expulsion of the Reformed from the Graubünden subject areas (→ Veltliner Mord ). Of particular importance for the Reformation in Italy was the establishment of the Landolfi printing works in Poschiavo in the Church of God in 1549. Numerous Reformation works were printed here in Italian and distributed to Italy.
At the federal level, the influence of the Reformation was initially limited by the proportion of votes in the Diet. In 1524, the daily statute in Lucerne decided that the entire Swiss Confederation should remain with the old faith. Nevertheless, at first only a few cantons took measures against the spread of the Reformation ideas.
In 1526 a disputation was held in Baden at the request of the Catholic towns with the aim of forcing Zurich back to the old faith. Zwingli refused to participate, so that Johannes Oekolampad quarreled with the Catholic representative Johannes Eck . The Catholic side was able to win the Baden disputation ; However, since this event provided decisive impulses for the later reform in Bern and Basel, it must nonetheless be viewed as a failure for the Catholic side. The disputation in Bern in 1528 took place under more favorable conditions for the Reformed side, as no prominent representatives of the Catholic side wanted to take part. Accordingly, the position of the Reformed disputants Zwingli, Haller , Bucer and Capito prevailed and Bern, the most powerful state in the Confederation, also introduced the Reformation to Zurich.
The Survey of the Peasants in Switzerland 1523–1526
In the course of the Reformation in the Confederation, there were various unrest and uprisings among peasants and peasants in the ruled areas of the cities of Zurich, Bern, Basel, Solothurn and Schaffhausen as well as in the prince abbey of St. Gallen and in the common rule of Thurgau. The main demands of the country folk were the abolition of serfdom , a reduction in taxes, compulsory labor and political participation.
Like Luther, Zwingli rejected the farmers' demands as a violation of the prevailing property regime. Unlike the latter, however, he advocated concessions with the governments, so that z. B. 1525 in Zurich the serfdom was lifted. However, Zurich retained the taxes except for the tithe of the second fruit. The rural population was also given a political say in tax issues and in making decisions about war and peace. In Bern and Schaffhausen, on the other hand, no concessions were made to the farmers, whose protest movements are violently suppressed. After the farmers marched up, Solothurn and Basel eased the taxes slightly. In eastern Switzerland and Thurgau, too, the farmers' demands were not met, and initial concessions were later reversed. The unrest among the Swiss peasants was overall relatively harmless compared to the excesses of the German Peasants' War .
The Kappel Wars
The political and religious contradictions within the Confederation between the Catholic provincial towns and the Reformed cities prompted Zurich on December 25, 1527 to conclude a " Christian castle law " with the also reformed imperial city of Constance. Both sides pledged to stand by each other should one side be attacked for belief. Zurich concluded the same alliance with Bern (June 25, 1528), St. Gallen (November 3, 1528), Biel (January 28, 1529), Mühlhausen (February 17, 1529), Basel (March 3, 1529) and Schaffhausen ( October 15, 1529), later also with Strasbourg. The agreements with the federal partners also provided for the protection of the Reformed preachers and subjects in the common rulers. Through this alliance system, Zurich was able to overcome the political isolation as a result of the Reformation.
As a reaction to the reformed city alliance, the Catholic towns of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Zug and Unterwalden sealed a “Christian union” in Waldshut on April 22, 1529 with Ferdinand von Habsburg-Austria , the regent of the lands of the Upper Austrian region. The Habsburg was to provide military aid to the five towns in the event of a conflict with the reformed cities, which were superior in strength.
The disputes between the Reformed and Catholic cantons of the Confederation escalated because of the situation in the common lords. The Catholic localities tried to persecute and punish Reformed believers and preachers as heretics where they were involved in government in order to prevent the infiltration of the new faith. On May 29, 1529, the reformed pastor Jakob Kaiser was burned in Schwyz because he had preached the Reformation in the county of Uznach . Since the bailiwick of the county of Baden would have passed to an Unterwaldner, the Reformed places feared a tough crackdown by the Catholics there too. In June, at Ulrich Zwingli's instigation, a Zurich armed force therefore moved against central Switzerland, the Linth area, the Thurgau and the subject area of the Prince Abbey of St. Gallen (→ First Kappel War ). Zwingli hoped for a violent uprising of the rural people against the Catholic authorities. Despite Zwingli's resistance, however , a compromise was reached at the last minute in the First Kappeler Landfrieden . The Catholic places dissolved their Sonderbund and agreed to a regulation through which each community could individually choose its faith in the common rulership. The so-called "Kappeler milk soup" became a symbol of this last-minute reconciliation. Ultimately, it was the influence of Bern that forced Zwingli to make peace, as Bern in the west had been involved in a conflict with Savoy around Geneva since 1526 and wanted to prevent a solidarity between Savoy, the Valais and the five inner cities in any case.
After Reformed church ordinances in the common lordships of Thurgau , Rhine Valley , Sargans and the Free Offices , however, denominational tensions grew again. On May 25, 1532, Eastern Switzerland also seemed to fall definitively into the Reformation when, under pressure from Zurich and Glarus, the Prince Abbot of St. Gallen sold the monastery and Toggenburg to the city of St. Gallen. This would have made St. Gallen a strong, reformed city-state on the eastern flank of Zurich. The Catholic estates had an absolute majority in the Diet (seven Catholic votes against four Reformed ones; Appenzell and Glarus were denominationally divided), but saw their influence waning, as the majority of the population in the Confederation joined the new faith at this point and with the majority of the cities the economic focus was on the Reformed.
The so-called Müsserkrieg finally brought the renewed escalation. The Milanese condottiere Gian Giacomo di Medici attacked the Graubünden subject areas in the Valtellina in March 1531 with the argument that he wanted to fight the Reformation there. The threatened Drei Bünde approached the Swiss Confederation for military aid, which the Catholic majority refused to accept because the Graubünden people had been proven to have fallen away from the "right faith".
For this reason, Zwingli obtained the imposition of a food blockade against the five towns, which then declared war on Zurich on October 9 (→ Second Kappel War ). When a Catholic army appeared at the border in October, Zwingli went out personally with a Zurich armed force and was killed in the battle of Kappel on October 11, 1531. With the defeat at Kappel, Zwingli's vision of a restructuring of the Confederation under Reformed leadership failed.
The Second Kappeler Landfriede of November 20, 1531 between Zurich or the Reformed towns and the Catholic towns recognized the confessional division of the Old Confederation, but allowed the Reformed to return to the old faith in the common rulers and protected the Catholic minorities. Rapperswil, Gaster, Weesen, Mellingen, Bremgarten AG, the Freiamt, the St. Gallische Fürstenland, the Rhine Valley as well as parts of the Thurgau and the Toggenburg were in part forcibly recatholicized. In Solothurn the Reformed had to leave the canton after an unsuccessful survey, the prince abbey of St. Gallen was restored in 1532 - the city of St. Gallen was now a reformed island in the Catholic princes. The Catholic hegemony in the Swiss Confederation was consolidated on December 17, 1533 by a castle law of the five inner towns as well as Solothurn and Freiburg with the bishop and the seven Zenden des Valais, in which the defense of the Catholic faith was a central aspect.
Consolidation of the Reformation
After Zwingli's death, the Reformed towns were primarily concerned with questions of faith. At the initiative of the Strasbourg reformers Bucer and Capito, the leading Reformed theologians of the Confederation met in Basel at the beginning of February 1536 for a consultation. Bucer and Capito wanted to mediate between the Reformed and Lutherans on the question of the Lord's Supper, but they failed. Nevertheless, the meeting was a success because in the Confessio Helvetica prior, for the first time, common principles of faith were agreed in 27 articles, which were approved by the representatives from Zurich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen, Mühlhausen and Biel. This laid the foundation for an independent Reformed Church. In the same year, under the influence of Bern, the reformers Farel and Jean Calvin achieved a breakthrough in Geneva: Geneva was the last city in the Confederation to be reformed. In the conflict with the Duchy of Savoy, Bern, Friborg and the Valais also conquer Vaud and parts of Northern Savoy. Bern forces the introduction of the Reformation in the area he occupies, abolishes the monasteries and expels the Bishop of Lausanne to Annency in Savoy. The expropriated rulership rights of the Catholic Church become an important pillar of the Bernese power in the French-speaking Vaud. In 1555, too, it was Bern that forcibly introduced the Reformation in the part of the county of Gruyères that fell to it (Saanen, Oron, Rougemont, Château-d'Oex ). With the expulsion of the Reformed from Ticino in the same year, the Swiss Confederation found itself in the more or less definitive territorial confessional distribution that existed until the 19th century.
On various occasions between 1531 and 1555, both Emperor Charles V and the Protestant imperial estates organized in the Schmalkaldic League tried to win the Confederation over to participate in the wars of religion in the empire. However, a close alliance between Lutherans and Reformed failed both because of the religious contradictions (→ Marburg Religious Talks ) and because of the particular political interests of Bern and Zurich. In 1548, for example, Charles V was able to conquer, recatholize and integrate Constance into his domain without the Swiss Confederation intervening. From the point of view of the Catholic provinces, the fact that the elimination of a Reformed imperial city in the Central Plateau weakened the cities in relation to the rural cantons and put a sensitive damper on the Reformation spoke against a war with Habsburg. Furthermore, it was not until 1511 that the Confederation concluded a definitive peace with the Habsburgs in the so-called inheritance , which, in addition to recognizing the territorial status quo, also included a non-aggression pact. During the whole of the Reformation, Bern was also busy expanding its sphere of influence in the West and wanted to keep its back free in the ensuing disputes with Savoy.
Zwinglians, Anabaptists and Calvinists - federal expression of the Reformation
The Zurich branch of the Reformation: The Zwinglians
The central point in Zwingli's teaching was the rejection of all elements of the existing church that could not be justified in the Bible. Images of saints, monasteries, processions and pilgrimages, Lent, celibacy, church music, indulgences and the sacraments had to give way. In contrast to Luther, Zwingli also completely rejected Mass and replaced it with a Lord's Supper on four Sundays a year.
The most important point of contention between Luther and Zwingli was the question of the Lord's Supper. While the humanist Zwingli saw wine and bread only as symbols for Christ's blood and body, Luther insisted on the bodily presence of the true body and blood of Christ in wine and bread ( real presence ). Even at the Marburg Religious Discussion held in 1529, no agreement could be reached between Luther and Zwingli on this point. Luther is said to have commented on the difference of opinion with the words "You have a different spirit". The complete autonomy of the parish from the authorities, initially demanded by Zwingli - Luther saw the authorities as God's will - gave way in the confrontation with the Anabaptists to an endorsement of an official church regiment.
After Zwingli's death, Heinrich Bullinger continued his work. In 1566, together with Jean Calvin, he wrote the Confessio Helvetica posterior , the second Helvetic Confession , which summarized the teachings of Zwingli and Calvin in 30 articles. This work was approved for the first time by all Reformed estates of the Confederation (Basel only in 1644) and was also accepted as the basis of faith by the Reformed churches in Scotland, Hungary, Poland and the Netherlands. Through Bullinger's writings, the Zurich direction of the Reformation spread, particularly in England, sometimes in competition with Calvinism.
The left wing of the Zurich Reformation: The Anabaptists
The Anabaptists came from a social class of humanistically educated and resistant people who, after the renewal of the church, also demanded a renewal of society. The Reformed and Protestant state churches rejected this; the theologian Heinold Fast referred to the Anabaptists as the "left wing" of the Reformation in the sense of a radical opposition; However, this name is controversial among researchers because it assigns a certain label to the Anabaptists.
The origin of the Anabaptists goes back to Konrad Grebel and Felix Mantz from Zurich and Georg Cajakob from Graubünden . They got into conflict with Zwingli because in 1524 they demanded a state-free church and, from 1525, against the orders of the Zurich council, they refused to baptize their children. In Zollikon they founded the first congregation, whose members received the baptism of adults and celebrated the Lord's Supper in their homes. The Anabaptists demanded the right to preach, refused the oath and military service as well as integration into the state church of Zwingli and were therefore severely persecuted by the authorities. Mantz was executed in Zurich in 1527 by drowning in the Limmat . In 1585 the council of Bern issued an Anabaptist mandate, which the Anabaptists a. a. punished with the usually fatal galley penalty. Nevertheless, the Anabaptists found supporters among the petty bourgeoisie and farmers and spread in the Zurich Oberland, in today's canton of St. Gallen, in Appenzell, in Aargau and in the canton of Bern. However, to avoid persecution, many Swiss Anabaptists had to emigrate. The first Anabaptists fled to Bohemia and Moravia, later many went to the Bernese Jura - where they were under the protection of the Bishop of Basel -, the Emmental, Alsace, the Palatinate and the Netherlands.
The doctrine and the Church of the Anabaptists spread despite or precisely because of the severe persecution by the authorities and mass expulsions first over all of Germany and later to America. Today the Mennonites form the largest group of the Anabaptists. In the Bernese Jura, the Swiss brothers survived to this day as an independent Anabaptist community (see also: History of Bernese Anabaptism ). The Anabaptist congregations in Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen and other regions, however, were wiped out. Only with the Edict of Tolerance of November 3, 1815, the Swiss Anabaptists were finally tolerated. Since then, the authorities have made their vows an oath and instead of serving in the arms, the Swiss Mennonites can do a nursing service.
Today, Baptists (i.e., advocates of baptism of faith (adult baptism) have become a significant part of the worldwide evangelical movement.
The Geneva branch of the Reformation: Calvinism
The Geneva Reformation did not simply take over Luther's teachings, but had precursors in Geneva, in what is now France and in northern Italy, e.g. B. Geneva Bishop Antoine Champion and the Waldensians , who represented a morally pure and simple Church. The Geneva reformer Farel held Calvin, who was passing through, in Geneva in 1536, because he wanted to win his support in spreading the new faith in the areas of western Switzerland that Bern had just conquered.
Jean Calvin laid out his convictions in 1536 in his main work Institutio Christianae Religionis , which begins with the section: "The sum of true wisdom is the knowledge of God and of ourselves". A main goal of the reformers was soli deo gloria - "Glory to God alone", and personal salvation or the renewal of society was seen as a consequence of biblical truth. God was seen as omnipotent, awe inspiring and gracious and according to the Reformation principle of sola gratia - «by grace alone», Calvin agreed with Luther and Zwingli that God's grace and not membership of a church organization or human merit played the central role in the Got salvation; they attach important importance to the sovereignty of God and, connected with it, to the doctrine of predestination ; this also illuminates the rejection of the indulgence trade .
Calvin understood the true church as the inner unity of all believers of all times, in contrast to the "Roman" view of the Roman Catholic Church as an external institution that made things alone. Like the other reformers, since time immemorial the Orthodox Churches and later the Christian Catholic Church, he rejected the Pope's claim to supremacy over all Christians and denied the truthfulness of all church dogmas that cannot be clearly derived from the Bible (→ sola scriptura ). With this he considered believers from all churches, e.g. B. also Valdenses, and Orthodox, as fellow Christians, contrary to the Roman Catholic view of the time. Accordingly, his theology was directed radically against the "papists" as they are often referred to in his works. He rejected the role of the saints, Mary, and the priests in mediating salvation, since Jesus alone was sufficient (→ solus Christ ), like Luther described the Pope as the pioneer of the Antichrist, and the Roman Church as deformed by man-made but unbiblical doctrines and practices ("We argue with them alone about the true and legal structure of the church") and the mass as a blasphemy of the Lord's Supper, since it devalues "the unique, forever perfect sacrifice" of Christ.
According to the order of man in Genesis in the Old Testament and the New Testament quote, "who does not work will , nothing to eat" was working as an honorable task of man viewed (→ Protestant Ethic ). Centuries later, Max Weber judged this new work ethic to be an essential prerequisite for the industrial revolution . While Calvin speaks the word for a hard-working, modest, grateful life in the institute ("the gifts that God grants us are not our property, but God's gift"), wealth and economic success are also seen in the course of history in the Calvinist context Expression of election considered.
According to Calvin, "Christian freedom" is of the highest importance and its formulation had a lasting effect on modern thinking: Christians are allowed everything and they can enjoy everything with a liberated conscience and with gratitude that does not comply with the Ten Commandments and their formulation in the biblical context, in particular the commandment of love contradicts: "... nowhere is it forbidden to laugh, to be full, to acquire new possessions, to enjoy musical instruments and to drink wine" . The Church must not forbid priests from marriage, impose fasting periods on Christians that prohibit meat, or enact laws on clothing; one should not force anyone into the reformed faith. In contrast to the attitude of the Geneva “libertines”, however, the Christian should exercise his freedom moderately so that it does not lead to harm to others or to the dishonoring of God: Sexuality is an expression of man and woman in creation and as an expression of “one -Being »the spouse is desired and required and should therefore take place within the marriage; Wine consumption is permitted, but drunkenness and gluttony should be avoided as these lead to loss of control, swearing, arguments and sexual debauchery. Board games should not become games of chance for gold and silver; Dance should not lead to «wild circles» (sexual connotation). The pastors of the church should seek regular contact with the faithful and, if necessary, support them in exercising their right freedom through private exhortations, in extreme cases apply for exclusion from the Lord's Supper, whereby Calvin appealed for leniency (“But our forbearance must go much further the imperfection of life (of our brothers) ”), in contrast to the inexorable severity postulated in later historiography. The state authority, on the other hand, had penalties such as fines, imprisonment, exile and the death penalty, whereby anyone who violated the laws and mandates that regulated moral life was punished regardless of the person.
The doctrine of predestination was represented as biblical doctrine not only by Calvin but by all the leading reformers of his time, especially by Luther, but later weakened in the Lutheran Church. The doctrine of predestination as an aspect of biblical theology goes back in the Christian church to at least Augustine and can be found e.g. As well as in the Greek Orthodox confession of Dositheus and was later in Catholic circles represented . For Calvin it was not central enough to be included in his catechism; it takes up four of a total of 80 chapters in his "Institutes", but was later emphasized more strongly in the development of Calvinism. It emphasizes the sovereignty of God over world history and the salvation of individuals. God, wise, just and good, had chosen certain people for salvation and not others from a decision that was unfathomable for people even before the creation of the world. This can be seen in life in those who accept God's calling in faith (→ sola fide ), or who rightly incur punishment by living in godlessness. Calvin stressed that election must be expressed in a Christian life. The fundamental conceptual conflict between a sovereign, omnipotent, good and righteous God, who can only be understood to the extent that he reveals himself to man, in contrast to the evolving concept of the Enlightenment , which declares human reason to be the highest moral authority and them so that the judge over God's righteousness is still effective today.
Unlike Luther and Zwingli, Calvin endeavored to keep the church free from state influences. In the Calvinist parish church (→ Presbyterianism ), the most important task of the preachers was to preach the pure gospel, which often also meant denouncing the sins of the rulers and fighting Machiavellianism. According to Calvin, the state should be just as moral as any individual. That is why Calvin granted the three estates a limited right of resistance , so that Calvinism became one of the most resolute opponents of absolutism (→ monarchists ) and a pioneer of democracy.
Since the Calvinist preacher should have an extremely thorough theological education, an academy was founded in Geneva, which comprised a college and a university with theological, legal and medical faculties. This academy made Geneva the center of Reformed learning in Europe and in the early modern period received the title of "Protestant Rome".
The Reformation prevailed in Geneva until 1541, with Calvin playing an important role in the Council of Churches, the consistory, but never holding a state office in the separation of church and state practiced in Geneva. From 1540 to 1700, Geneva was also an important refuge and new home for Italian and French evangelical refugees. The immigrant families were not only a burden for the city, but also a social and economic enrichment through their education and knowledge in silk production and trade and in the art of watchmaking, which they brought with them and settled in Geneva and the surrounding area.
International expansion of the Geneva Reformation
The deep impression that the «back to the Bible» (→ sola scriptura ) of the Reformed Faith, which was influenced by Geneva in the life of the individual, can be anticipated from the fact that in the following Huguenot Wars hundreds of thousands preferred their property and their homeland, not infrequently theirs To lose life instead of renouncing the faith you have found. The systematic theological foundation and theological training, the correspondence between doctrine and social order, but also freedom of conscience, the right of resistance, the emphasis on the moral obligation of rulers and the approaches to the later further developed concept of human rights contributed to the reformed faith according to the Making the Geneva Model the most widespread Reformed direction in France, the Netherlands and the UK. While in France the Calvinists were called Huguenots (French corruption of "Confederates"), in England they were called Puritans . With their move into the new world, the Geneva Reformation spread to the USA and contributed to the American Revolution. In Scotland, Calvinism became the state religion (→ Presbyterian ), as well as in parts of the Netherlands and in some German principalities. The reformers in the Reformed Swiss cities sought early on a theological agreement with each other and with the Lutherans (→ Helvetic Confession ), and Calvin took a mediating position in the Last Supper dispute between Luther and Zwingli. A lively theological controversy developed between Lutherans and Calvinists in Germany in the early modern period. In Eastern Europe, Calvinism spread primarily among the nobility. Reformation ideas also influenced leading personalities of the Greek Orthodox Church (→ Kyrillos Loukaris ), but were then rejected in a council.
Catholic Reform and “Counter Reformation” in the 16th century
The spread of the Reformation gave rise to a Catholic defensive movement, which was given the term " Counter Reformation " in the late 18th century . On the one hand, it consisted of a reform of the Catholic Church itself, the "Catholic Reformation", and the containment and suppression of the Protestant-Evangelical Reformation.
The beginning of the Catholic reform can be seen in the Council of Trent , which met in 1545 to clarify the theological questions raised by the Reformation. This should in the intention of Pope Paul III. the religious dispute ended, general church reform initiated and the fight against Islam restarted. The ongoing war between France, Habsburg and the Pope made it necessary to interrupt the council in 1549. When the council met again in 1559 after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis , at least the Lutheran Church in Germany was politically recognized by the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555, which made reunification of the Church unattainable. In spite of this, a number of reform resolutions were passed, through which the abuses within the church were declared to be war, without, however, fundamentally affecting Catholic institutions. Numerous teaching contents and dogmas were newly fixed. B. decided that not only divine grace but also good works are necessary to justify people, that the Church is based on the Bible and Catholic traditions, that the Old and New Testaments are to be viewed as dictated by the Holy Spirit, that the Latin version of the Bible according to Jerome is the only authoritative one and that only the Church is allowed to interpret the Bible. In order to put a stop to abuses in the clergy, the official duties of the church servants were redefined, regular visitations were arranged, and the veneration of saints, the cult of relics and indulgences were arranged. To combat the Reformation, the Catholic Church created the Index librorum prohibitorum , in which the "dangerous" books forbidden for believers were listed. The spread of Catholic reform and the containment of the Reformation were the responsibility of the Jesuit order and the Inquisition ; politically, the Counter-Reformation was promoted and financed by the Catholic princes, especially Spain.
Political consequences of the Counter Reformation in Switzerland up to the end of the 16th century
Even before the Counter-Reformation actually began, the Catholic towns tried to recatholize the Canton of Glarus on their own initiative. The project led to the so-called Glarus Trade or « Tschudikrieg » 1560–1564 and brought the Swiss Confederation to the brink of another religious war. The parity was ultimately retained for the canton of Glarus , but Catholicism was guaranteed in the common lordships of Uznach and Windegg , which were co-administered by Glarus, and a cantonal division could be prevented. A Catholic and a Reformed rural community met separately until 1798. At the federal level, this regulation effectively neutralized the Glarus professional voice.
The Catholic towns had refused until 1562 to send envoys to the council in Trento. Only at the third and last round of negotiations before the end of the council in 1563 were the five inner towns represented by Melchior Lussi from Nidwalden and Joachim von Eichborn , Abbot of Einsiedeln . The resolutions of Trento initially had few consequences for the Swiss Confederation, but led to a more determined appearance by the Catholics and thus to a further weakening of the Swiss Confederation's foreign policy. In 1564, for example, Bern had to return Chablais , Ternier and the Pays de Gex to Savoy in the Lausanne Treaty , because the Catholic towns had concluded a special confessional union with Savoy in 1560.
The Catholic towns intensified their cooperation and concluded several special alliances, for example with Pope Pius IV in 1565 and again with Savoy in 1577. In this way, the actually weaker Catholic rural cantons managed to keep the economically and militarily stronger cities of Bern and Zurich in check. In terms of foreign policy, the situation became dangerous due to the pay and pension alliance of 1564 with France. The alliance came about through the work of Lucerne's Ludwig Pfyffer , the so-called «Swiss King », who, as one of the most important Swiss statesmen of the 16th century, decisively determined the politics of the Catholic towns. Since Bern and Zurich did not join this treaty, almost exclusively Catholic confederates fought in the French army. In the Battle of Dreux in 1562, the Swiss regiment intervened decisively in favor of the Catholic King in the French Huguenot Wars . In 1567, the Swiss regiment under the command of Ludwig Pfyffers even saved King Karl IX. before the rebellious Huguenots fleeing from Meaux to Paris.
In Switzerland, the Catholic reform was stimulated from 1567 onwards by repeated visits by the Cardinal and Archbishop of Milan , Carlo Borromeo . In 1570 he met leading politicians in the Catholic cantons and was the initiator of almost all counter-Reformation measures in the Swiss Confederation. He particularly criticized the federal practice of living together with the Reformed and the principle of parity, which in individual parishes led to Reformed and Catholics using the churches together. Borromeo suggested, among other things, the sending of a permanent papal nuncio to Lucerne, which became the actual center of the Counter-Reformation. However, the establishment of a Catholic seminary for the Confederation failed due to the quarrels between the Catholic communities and the lack of money, so that Borromeo opened the Collegium Helveticum in Milan in 1579 as the center of priestly training for the Confederation. Furthermore, at his instigation, the orders of the Jesuits and Capuchins founded numerous branches in the Catholic cantons and the areas they control. The Jesuit colleges in Freiburg im Üechtland , Lucerne and Porrentruy soon became centers of Catholic renewal and the fight against the Reformation.
The alliance of the Catholic places with Savoy and the wars against the Huguenots in France also brought the Reformed places closer together. The Catholic towns prevented the admission of the cities of Geneva, Constance and Strasbourg, allied with the Reformed towns, to the Swiss Confederation by the majority of their votes in the Diet. Thanks to the support of Bern, Solothurn and France, which was hostile to Savoy, Geneva succeeded in asserting itself against the Catholic Savoy in 1579 and 1582, but it was not until 1815 that it finally became a member of the Confederation "Protestant Zugwandter" is part of the Swiss Confederation. Recatholization could also be prevented in Mulhouse thanks to the support of the reformed localities. The reformed imperial cities of Constance and Strasbourg (→ millet trip ) were temporarily allied with individual Reformed towns, but could not hold their ground against the overpowering rulers of Habsburg and France in the long term. In the case of Constance, the submission by Habsburg led to forced re-Catholicization. On the other hand, the Catholic places formed an alliance with the Bishop of Basel in 1579 and then also counted him to the Related Places. The alliance enabled extensive recatholicization in the Principality of Basel (→ Baden Treaty 1585 ).
The danger of a religious war rose particularly strongly again in 1572 when, after the Parisian blood wedding, numerous Huguenots fled to the Confederation on the one hand, and Catholic Confederates on the other hand fought the Huguenots as mercenaries for the king. The reformed places therefore saw themselves compelled to close the so-called «Helpful Association» to protect their interests. The Huguenots who fled settled in Geneva, Bern and Zurich and, together with other religious refugees, led to a strong stimulation of trade and the economy.
As early as 1555, Zurich had benefited to a lesser extent from the expulsion of the Reformed from Locarno , as it brought the textile trade with Italy and the new silk industry to the city. All the Reformed, including the von Orelli and von Muralt families, who were later important for the history of Zurich , had to leave the common lordships in Ticino due to the majority vote of the Catholic places in order to maintain Catholicism.
Leaders from both parties worked to split the Confederation in the second half of the 16th century. In 1586 the two camps met for the first time at separate meetings in Lucerne (Catholics) and Aarau (Reformed). In the same year, the Catholic cantons founded the Golden or Borromean League as a collective defensive alliance against possible reformed attacks. Since the federal government should precede all older or newer alliances, the confessional division of the Confederation is sealed. In 1587 Spain, at that time the leading power of the Catholics in Europe, joined this federation and received not only support in the form of mercenaries, but also the right to march through from Lombardy to Germany. The denominational tensions threatened to escalate once and for all when the « War of the Three Heinriche » broke out in France in 1587 and the Reformed Heinrich von Navarra supported and the Catholics Heinrich III. and later the league. At almost the same time, the conflict between Savoy and Geneva broke out again. Since large numbers of mercenaries from all places were employed in the various European theaters of war, the cantons avoided the outbreak of open hostilities within the Confederation.
It was not until Henry IV converted to Catholicism in 1593 and the end of the Huguenot Wars that the situation was relaxed. When in 1597 the denominations clashed in the parity canton of Appenzell , the dispute was resolved through federal mediation by dividing the canton into two half-cantons. (→ Land division (Appenzell) ). When France annexed the Pays de Gex in 1601 and thus for the first time received a common border with the Swiss Confederation, the Catholic pressure on the Reformed places eased considerably, since they had now escaped the Spanish-Habsburg embrace. In 1602, with the exception of Zurich, all the sovereign places and their relatives signed the renewal of the pay alliance with France's King Henry IV. The soldiers' alliance with France almost became part of the Constitution of the Old Confederation, as it bridged denominational differences and forced the Catholic towns to be restrained in their foreign policy, especially with regard to Spain. After the failure of an attempt to overthrow Geneva by Savoy (→ Escalade de Genève ) and the conclusion of a treaty that guaranteed the status quo, the last trouble spot in the west of the Swiss Confederation could be considered resolved in 1603. The focus of confessional conflicts now shifted to the east in the area of the Three Leagues (→ Bündner Wirren )
Switzerland during the Thirty Years War
The three leagues in Raetia, as members of the Confederation, were not included in the land peace of Kappel. Since 1524 the three leagues formed a confederation of their own. Each bunch was divided into innumerable high dishes. Since the Illanz Disputation, the Reformation was permitted in the area of the Drei Bünde, against the resistance of the Bishop of Chur, leading Catholic families and the Habsburgs, which still had rulership rights in numerous high courts in the Prättigau as well as in the Lower Engadine and in the Vinschgau. Nevertheless, the Reformation was able to spread over large parts of the federal territory, only a few of the 48 jurisdictions remained purely Catholic.
Under the Rhaetian landed gentry, however, the denominational split led to bitter party battles, in which the two families von Planta and Salis were the heads of the Catholic-Habsburg and the Reformed French party. The party struggles escalated after the execution of Johann Planta in Chur on December 31, 1572 after a so-called " Fähnlilupf ". Habsburg Spain, Venice, France and Habsburg Austria invested huge sums of money towards the end of the 16th century to bribe the political leadership of the Bunds, in the hope of being able to secure the right to march through the strategically important Bündner passes, or at least the respective opponent of this to refuse.
After the confederation of the Confederations with France in 1602, the Alpine passes in the west and in the center of the Confederation were closed to Habsburg Spain. The exchange of troops and war goods between southern Germany and the Spanish Duchy of Milan or between Milan and Tyrol was now only possible via the Bündner passes. When the Venetian party gained the upper hand in 1603 and concluded a pay alliance with the Republic of Venice and also granted the right to march through, Spain saw its most vital interests endangered. The Spanish governor in Milan, Pedro Henriquez de Acevedo , Count von Fuentes, imposed an economic and trade blockade on the Bunds and had Fort Fuentes built as a dam at the entrance to the Valtellina , at the same time he achieved a renewal of the alliance with the Catholic towns of the Confederation . Spanish and federal Catholic influence also led to a clear decision by the Valais in favor of Catholicism at the extraordinary state parliament in Visp in 1604. All Reformed people had to leave the country or return to Catholicism.
The Reformed cities of Zurich and Bern allied themselves a few years later with the Protestant Margrave Georg Friedrich von Baden , but decided not to join the Protestant Union in the empire. A problem for the reformed places arose above all through the murder of the French king Heinrich IV. 1610, since Maria von Medici in the name of the still underage Ludwig XIII. operated a policy of reconciliation towards Spain. In 1615, Bern and Zurich expanded their alliance system by entering into an alliance with Venice like the Three Leagues in order to counterbalance the Spanish alliance of Catholic towns.
In 1618, the activities of the Spanish and Venetian agents led to the outbreak of open war between the parties in the Three Leagues, which is why their area was practically the only area in Switzerland to be affected by the Thirty Years' War , which began in the Empire during the so-called Bündner turmoil . The reason for the escalation was the so-called criminal court of Thusis , in which numerous leading Catholics and partisans of the Planta family and Spain were murdered under the leadership of the Reformed preachers under Jörg Jenatsch . The Catholic party then gathered its supporters in neighboring Habsburg Tyrol and Spanish Milan and promoted a revolt of the Valtellina subjects against the Bündner rule, which resulted in the murder and expulsion of the Reformed in the Graubünden subject areas, the Veltliner murder . Spain and Habsburg Austria then occupied the Valtellina , Chiavenna , Bormio and the Val Müstair .
The Three Leagues then called on the Swiss Confederation for help. The Catholic places refused to give any support and tried to prevent the reformed places from intervening in the conflict. However, a federal civil war could again be prevented at the last moment. Under Colonels Hans Jakob Steiner from Zurich, Nikolaus von Mülinen from Bern and Johannes Guler from Bünden, around 3,000 men finally moved over the Casanna and Foscagno passes to Bormio in the upper Valtellina. During the events known as the " Chalice War ", the Reformed plundered the Catholic churches, desecrated altars and murdered priests and religious. During the advance to Tirano , however, the Reformed troops were ambushed and withdrew after the battle of Tirano . The Catholic places did not intervene directly in this conflict, but Reisläufer from the five places were recruited by the Abbot of Disentis and fought on the Spanish side in the Graubünden turmoil. After the Chalice War, the Drei Bünde had to renounce their subject lands and recognize the Habsburg rulership rights in Prättigau, Engadin and Vinschgau. The Three Leagues thus actually came under Habsburg-Spanish control.
In the further course of the Thirty Years' War , the leagues changed coalitions several times between Habsburg-Spain, Habsburg-Austria, the Pope, Venice and France. The passes were taken alternately by French, Spanish and Imperial troops. A decisive turning point was the conversion of the leading Reformed politician Jörg Jenatsch to Catholicism in 1637. This enabled Bündens to be liberated from French occupation and at the same time to form an alliance with the Habsburgs. Although Jenatsch was murdered in 1639, the Drei Bünde regained their lost subject territories and were able to ransom all Habsburg rulers except for Tarasp and Rhäzüns . The Catholic faith in the subject areas was guaranteed even after the return under Graubünden rule. The confessional boundaries were now finally drawn in Bünden, even if a “patchwork” of religions arose as a result of parity in many communities.
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The Confederation itself was not drawn into the Thirty Years' War. In 1632 the Diet rejected an alliance offer by the Swedish King Gustav Adolf . Bern and Zurich did not allow themselves to be drawn into a reformed special alliance with Sweden. In the same year, arbitration tribunals for both denominations were set up to settle future religious disputes in the common lords. So far, the majority of the sovereign places decided. This further eased the tensions between Reformed and Catholics. Nevertheless, the so-called “ Kluser Handel ” in September 1632 brought the Confederation back to the brink of war because of an attack by Solothurn peasants on Bernese soldiers in the Klus near Balsthal . In 1633 Swedish troops violated the confederation's borders by moving from Stein am Rhein on the Swiss side of the Rhine to Constance . The Swiss Confederation saw itself not in a position to intervene due to the lack of a contingent. Due to military weakness, the city of Basel also had to allow an imperial army to pass through.
In 1634, mutual suspicions led the Reformed and the Catholic towns to conduct secret alliance negotiations with Sweden and Spain and to prepare for war. Antistes Breitinger from Zurich in particular wanted to use Sweden's strength to subjugate the Catholic places in the sense of Zwingli. Tensions between the two denominational camps reached a climax. The outbreak of civil war was only prevented by the Swedish defeat in the Battle of Nördlingen .
After further border violations, the Diet of 1638 issued a ban on marching through for foreign troops and decided to enforce this with armed force. In 1647 the cantons concluded the «Defensionale von Wil» , which created a joint council of war and a federal army of 36,000 men. This first all-federal military constitution ushered in the transition of federal politics to armed neutrality . A year later, the Confederation achieved recognition of its independence under international law from the Holy Roman Empire in the Peace of Westphalia .
The Swiss Peasants' War 1653 and the aristocratization of rule
The Thirty Years' War brought the federal farmers unimagined prosperity through the rise in food prices. The peace of 1648 and the associated fall in prices, on the other hand, led to major social problems, as the ruling cities plunged many peasants into misery through the deterioration of coins and the ruthless collection of accumulating debts. However, the discontent among the farmers also had political reasons. Since the Reformation there had been an aristocratization of cities. Since the large farmers in the countryside did not have a share in the management of the state as civil servants or officers like the patriciate in the cities, their political influence waned drastically. The old “securitized” rights of local self-government disappeared and the popular referendums by the government, which were common in the past, ceased to exist. The reduction in rights went hand in hand with a further monopoly of trade and industry by the cities. New direct taxes were added to the old feudal charges, which were levied without the consent of the countryside, mostly to build modern fortifications for the cities or to finance armaments.
The Swiss Peasants' War was triggered in 1653 by a survey in Lucerne's Entlebuch, which also included Aargau, Basel, Solothurn and the western part of the canton of Bern. Under the leadership of the large farmers, especially Niklaus Leuenbergers and Hans Emmeneggers , the farmers demanded an increase in popular rights, financial relief and economic freedoms. Due to the pressure "from below", the denominationally divided ruling cities and towns agreed at the Diet on a military procedure that led to the bloody subjugation of the peasants.
The urban aristocracy emerged stronger from the Swiss Peasants' War and was able to complete the oligarchization of rule, but felt compelled to undertake economic reforms. The towns no longer levied direct taxes until the fall of the Swiss Confederation so as not to provoke the countryside. So there was a lack of money to build up large standing armies and the contemporary bureaucracy.
The Villmerger Wars: End of confessionalization
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After the end of the Peasant War, denominational disputes broke out again between the cantons over minor issues, which also concealed a strong urban-rural conflict. The attempt by Zurich Mayor Johann Heinrich Waser to persuade all federal estates to renew the old leagues in 1655 ultimately failed due to the resistance of the Catholic cantons (→ federal project from 1655 ), which reacted by renewing the Borromean league .
When the canton of Schwyz expelled 37 Reformed people from Arth and even executed some of those who remained, the conflict between Schwyz and Zurich escalated in 1656 despite the mediation of France in the First Villmerger War . The city of Zurich declares war on Schwyz in the hope of being able to achieve a more favorable country peace for the Reformed. The failure of the siege of Rapperswil SG and the lack of cooperation between Bern and Zurich allowed the Catholic places to occupy the common lords of Baden and Freiamt and thus separate the two cities. After the defeat of the Bernese at Villmergen , the reformed places in the Third Land Peace had to accept the previous order and thus the Catholic dominance.
Despite the internal federal disputes, France managed to conclude a pay alliance in 1663 with all XIII villages and allies. In exchange for the possible recruitment of 16,000 mercenaries, the federal towns received financial grants, free salt and grain sales and tariff concessions. During the reign of the French King Louis XIV , the Confederation almost fell to the status of a French protectorate because of its close financial, economic and military ties with France. When France occupied the Free County of Burgundy , which had been neutralized under federal protection since 1522, in 1668 , the cantons renewed the defensive , but did not intervene.
In the Franco-Dutch War of 1674, the Diet declared the Confederation's neutrality. Since then, she has followed the principle that in the mercenary system, all war leaders are to be equally favored. After the Peace of Nijmegen , France received the Free County of Burgundy and thus became a neighbor of the Confederation on the entire western border. As a result, France took aggressive action against federal interests. In 1679, Ludwig XIV had the Hüningen fortress built near Basel and in 1681, Strasbourg , allied with Zurich and Bern, annexed.
The repeal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 let the relations between the Reformed places and France cool down. Over 60,000 Huguenots fled to the Confederation and revitalized the industry. During the Palatinate War and the War of Spanish Succession , the Reformed towns therefore allowed the emperor and the Netherlands to recruit mercenaries. The only success against the advance of France was achieved by Bern in the dispute over the succession in the facing Principality of Neuchâtel , which fell to the Reformed King of Prussia.
The dispute over Neuchâtel and the unhindered passage of imperial troops through Basel in 1709 increased denominational tensions again, as the Catholic towns took the party of France. The threatened economic blockade of central Switzerland by the cities of Bern, Basel and Zurich was to be averted by the construction of a new road over the Ricken through the Catholic abbey of St. Gallen to southern Germany. The refusal of the reformed Toggenburgers to accept the road construction led to an uprising against the Prince Abbot of St. Gallen. While the Catholic towns supported the abbot, Berne and Zurich sided with Toggenburg. In 1712 the two cities opened the Second Villmerger War in the hope of breaking Catholic dominance thanks to material superiority. Thanks to good coordination, Zurich and Bern succeeded in occupying Aargau and the prince-abbey of St. Gallen, which blocked the Catholic places. Due to increasing supply difficulties, the Catholic towns attacked the Bernese near Villmergen in July during ongoing peace negotiations, where they suffered a devastating defeat. In the subsequent Fourth Peace of the Land , the common lords were redistributed. The Catholic places lost much of their influence, the principle of parity was enforced in the common rulers; the Catholic supremacy was broken.
The fourth land peace meant the end of the constant denominational quarrel in the common rulers, but it also allowed political relations between the Catholic and the Reformed cantons to cool down almost entirely. In the renewal of the pay alliance of the VII Catholic cantons with France in 1715, the Catholic places commit themselves exclusively to Louis XIV. In a letter not ratified by the French king, the " Trücklibund ", France was to commit itself to helping Catholics to regain the territories lost in 1712 to help. In spite of the internal tensions, however, the Swiss Confederation's foreign policy by and large proceeded smoothly in the 18th century. Neutrality was respected by all European states without formal recognition. The confessional division of the Confederation was not eliminated even by the French period after 1798 and contributed significantly to the Sonderbund War of 1847. Only the external threat during the Second World War and the spiritual defense of the country eliminated the internal division of Switzerland into a Reformed and a Catholic society.
See also
literature
- Book printing and Reformation in Switzerland , ed. by Urs B. Leu and Christian Scheidegger; Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2018, 445 pages, ill .; ( Zwingliana , Volume 45); ISSN 0254-4407, ISBN 978-3-290-18218-2
- Emil Camenisch: History of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the Italian southern valleys of Graubünden and the former subjects of Chiavenna, Valtellina and Bormio. Bischofberger & Co, Chur 1950.
- Peter Hoover: Baptism by Fire. The radical life of the Anabaptists - a provocation , Down to Earth, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-935992-23-7
- Gottfried W. Locher : The Zwinglische Reformation in the context of the European church history . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1979, ISBN 3-525-55363-3 .
- Rudolf Pfister : Church history of Switzerland . 3 volumes. Zurich 1964/1974/1985.
- Querblicke, Zürcher Reformationsgeschichten , ed. by Peter Niederhäuser and Regula Schmid; Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2019; 203 p., Ill. ( Communications from the Antiquarian Society in Zurich , Volume 86); ISBN 978-3-0340-1498-4
- Caroline Schnyder: Reformation. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Theodor Schwegler: History of the Catholic Church in Switzerland . Schlieren / Zurich 1935.
- Kurt R. Spillmann : Zwingli and the Zurich policy towards the St. Gallen Abbey . Fehr, St. Gallen 1965.
- Mark Taplin: The Italian Reformers and the Zurich Church, c. 1540-1620. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, Routledge, 2017, ISBN 978-1-351-88729-8 .
- Lukas Vischer , Lukas Schenker , Rudolf Dellsperger (ed.): Ecumenical Church History of Switzerland . Freiburg / Switzerland and Basel 1994.
- Leo Weisz : The economic importance of the Ticino religious refugees for German Switzerland. Report house, Zurich 1958.
Web links
- Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg : The Defensionale von Wil (1647) - a stage in the establishment of the Swiss state (* .doc)
Individual evidence
- ^ Anne-Sophie Galli and Martina Läubli: 500 years of the Reformation: How Luther and Zwingli brought about a turning point In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of March 10, 2017
- ↑ Barbara Schmid: The life descriptions of the Zurich clergy and scholars. Transformations of biography at the transition to the encyclopedia . In: Swiss Journal of Religious and Cultural History - Revue suisse d'histoire religieuse et culturelle . tape 111 , 2017, p. 87-108 .
- ↑ Oswald Myconius: From the life and death of Huldrych Zwingli . Ed .: Ernst Gerhard Rüsch. St. Gallen 1979.
- ^ Sabine Schlüter: Book printing and Reformation in Bern ; in: Printing and Reformation in Switzerland , ed. by Urs B. Leu and Christian Scheidegger; Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2018; ( Zwingliana , Volume 45); ISSN 0254-4407, ISBN 978-3-290-18218-2; Pp. 203-232.
- ^ Rudolf Pfister: Die Reformationsgemeinde Locarno, 1540–1555
- ^ Leo Weisz: The economic importance of the Ticino religious refugees for German Switzerland. Report House, Zurich 1958, pages 7–15
- ↑ Horst Penner : Worldwide Brotherhood, Weierhof 1984
- ↑ Peter Hoover: Baptism of Fire. The radical life of the Anabaptists - a provocation , Down to Earth, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-935992-23-7
- ↑ Otto Hermann Pesch -Okumene - History of the Papacy - CHRIST IN THE PRESENT. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 19, 2017 ; accessed on February 18, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Jean Calvin: Comparison of the false church with the real one. In: Institutio Christianae Religionis, IV, 2, 12. Retrieved February 22, 2017 .
- ^ Jean Calvin: Institutio Christianae Religionis. In: Book IV, 2, 12. Retrieved February 22, 2017 .
- ↑ Writer of the Letter to the Hebrews: The Bible, Letter to the Hebrews . S. Chapter 10, verses 4-14 .
- ↑ Genesis 2, verse 15. In: Lutherbibel 1912. Retrieved on February 20, 2017 .
- ↑ - 2 Thessalonians 3 (Luther 1912). Retrieved February 20, 2017 .
- ^ Reformed Covenant - side view. Retrieved February 20, 2017 .
- ^ Jean Calvin: Institutio Christianae Religionis . Book 3, Chapter 19. Geneva 1559.
- ^ Jean Calvin: Institution Chrétienne . French edition. Geneva 1541, p. Chapter 14 .
- ^ Jean Calvin: Institution Chrétienne, Book 2, Chapter 8, Paragraph 41. (PDF) 1559, accessed on March 24, 2017 (French).
- ↑ Denis R. Janz: A Reformation Reader: Primary Texts with Introductions . Fortress Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8006-6310-0 , pp. 259 .
- ^ Jean Calvin: Institution Chrétienne, Book 4, Chapter 12, Paragraph 2. (PDF) Retrieved March 25, 2017 (French).
- ^ Jean Calvin: Institutio Religionis Christianae. In: Book IV, 1, 13. Retrieved February 20, 2017 .
- ↑ Erika Fuchs: Main focuses of Zwingli's theology. In: Ulrich Zwingli Reformer. The current series No. 27. Erika Fuchs, Imre Gyenge, Peter Karner, Erwin Liebert, Balázs Németh:, accessed on February 19, 2017 .
- ↑ Titus Vogt: The idea of predestination in the theology of Martin Luther. (PDF) Reformed Forum, 1999, accessed February 19, 2017 .
- ^ Double Or Nothing: Martin Luther's Doctrine of Predestination by Brian G. Mattson. Retrieved February 16, 2017 .
- ↑ Greek Orthodox Consultation: The Confession of Dositheus, Section 3. Retrieved February 18, 2017 (English).
- ↑ Johannes Calvin: Institutes of Christian Religion. (PDF) Retrieved February 15, 2017 .
- ^ Administrator: The 5 points of Calvinism in terms of content. Retrieved February 20, 2017 .
- ↑ Thomas Straumann: Geneva bankers, highly qualified religious refugees and silk traders: How the Reformation affected the Swiss economy. While the Reformation was in progress, the foundation stone for the later globalized economy and an internationally networked Switzerland was laid , Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Zurich, April 27, 2017
- ^ The Calvinist Connection. Retrieved March 27, 2017 .
- ↑ The Confession of Dositheus. 1672, Retrieved February 18, 2017 .
- ^ Rudolf Pfister: Die Reformationsgemeinde Locarno, 1540–1555. In: Zwingliana. 10, 1955, pp. 161-181.
- ^ Leo Weisz: The economic importance of the Ticino religious refugees for German Switzerland. Report house, Zurich 1958
- ^ Mark Taplin: The Italian Reformers and the Zurich Church, c. 1540-1620. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, Routledge, 2017, ISBN 978-1-351-88729-8 .
- ↑ Ulrich Im Hof : “Ancien Régime”. In: Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte , Vol. 2. Report House, Zurich 1977, pp. 673–784, pp. 698f.
