Huldrychi Zwingli Reformation figure Date of Birth: 01.01.1484 Country: Switzerland

Biography of Ulrich Zwingli

Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss church reformer, Christian humanist, and philosopher, was born on January 1, 1484 in Wildhaus, Switzerland. At the age of nine, he lived with his uncle, the village magistrate of Wädenswil. At the age of ten, Zwingli enrolled in a Latin school in Basel, where he studied Latin, music, and dialectics. He continued his education in Bern under the guidance of the brilliant classical scholar Heinrich Wölflin (Lupulus). From 1500 to 1503, he studied at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. After that, he returned to Basel, where he studied theology and obtained his bachelor's degree in 1504 and his master's degree in 1506. Zwingli's mentors, his father and uncle, as well as the humanists Bunzli, Celtis, and Wittenbach, were people of liberal culture who were influenced by Renaissance humanism. Zwingli was inspired by stories of the fighters for the cause of the Swiss Confederation. As he grew older, he became imbued with the spirit of independent research and free speech. Zwingli decided not to join a monastic order; instead, he was attracted to serving as a secular priest (Leutpriester). This gave him the opportunity to guide people in their lives along the path he had discovered for himself by deeply studying the Bible. He served as a parish priest in Glarus from 1506 to 1516 and in Einsiedeln from 1516 to 1519. From 1519 until his death, he served as a priest at the Grossmünster Cathedral in Zurich. In his mature years, Zwingli moved away from scholasticism, the teachings of the Church Fathers, and the works of ancient classics, increasingly turning to the Holy Scripture. In his treatise "On the Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God" (1522), he described his conversion as a gradual turn away from philosophy and theology towards the Bible, in which he found the word of God. He became an evangelical reformer thanks to three factors: accepting the Bible as the sole norm of faith and conduct, accepting Christ as the sole mediator between God and man, and accepting divine grace as the only hope for salvation. In 1520, the experience of severe suffering during illness, acquaintance with Luther's writings, and his own study of Scripture prompted Zwingli to renounce humanism in the spirit of Erasmus of Rotterdam and embark on the path of the Protestant Reformation. As a result, he had to break away from the Roman Catholic Church, humanists, and later the Anabaptists. In 1523, Zwingli laid the foundations for a new church and political structure in the canton of Zurich. He resigned as a Catholic priest and became a Protestant preacher, introducing new forms of worship, new forms of church organization, a new form of Eucharistic celebration, and a new way of life in accordance with the Holy Scripture. He translated the Bible into the Swiss German dialect and presented his reformed confession of faith in the book "Commentary on True and False Religion" (1525), which stands alongside Melanchthon's "Common Principles of Theology" and Calvin's "Instruction in the Christian Faith." Zwingli's teachings not only encountered opposition from Roman Catholicism but also faced vehement attacks from radical Protestant groups (Anabaptists), who accused him of compromise and considered themselves to be the true biblical reformers. Like Luther, he was a conservative reformer and did not share the beliefs of Erasmus' followers, Anabaptists, and mystics. Zwingli died as a martyr for his cause during the Second War of Kappel while serving in the Zurich army as a regimental preacher. His last words were, "What does it matter? They can kill the body, but not the soul" ("Was tut's? Den Leib können sie töten, aber nicht die Seele"). Zwingli perished in the Battle of Kappel on October 11, 1531.