Cromwell to Cromwell E-Book

John Schofield

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The English reformers of the 1530s, with Thomas Cromwell at their head, continued to have a strong belief in kingly rule and authority, in contrast to their radical approach to the power of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. Resisting the king was tantamount to resisting God in their eyes, and even on a matter of conscience the will of the king should prevail. Yet just over 100 years later, Charles I was called the 'man of blood', and Oliver Cromwell famously declared that 'we will cut off his head with the crown on it'. But how did we get from the one to the other? How did the deferential Reformation become a regicidal revolution? Following on from his biography of Thomas Cromwell, John Schofield examines how the English character and the way it perceived royal rule changed between the time of Thomas Cromwell and that of his great-great-grandnephew Oliver.

Leseprobe

For Nicola and Richard

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to Tony Morris, who, when I was thinking about doing something on these lines but had only fuzzy ideas, suggested the title and has been supportive ever since.

Inexpressible thanks for the labours of S.R. Gardiner over a century ago in producing what must be one of the greatest achievements ever in historical writing. If, in the sections on the Stuarts, his name appears more frequently in the notes than any other, that implies no disrespect to modern authorities. They have been consulted as well, and most of them recommend reading Gardiner anyway.

I am grateful to all other scholars who have studied and written about the Tudors and the Stuarts. A great deal of material has been consulted for this work, but it is impracticable to list every remotely relevant or worthwhile article, book or monograph, and there is no point in padding out the footnotes and bibliography simply to try and impress.

Thanks to Newcastle University and particularly Professor Tim Kirk, Head of the School of Historical Studies, for accepting me as a guest member and visiting scholar, thereby allowing me to do the necessary research for this book; and to the staff of Newcastle and Durham University libraries. Also to John Cannon, Emeritus Prof. at Newcastle, for kindly offering to read through the manuscript and for his many helpful suggestions, and to Simon Hamlet, Abigail Wood and their colleagues at The History Press for bringing the work into print.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Preface

1The European Background, 1517–31

2The Tudor Cromwell, his Times and Aftermath, 1509–58

3Elizabeth, 1558–1603

4James, 1603–25

5Charles I, 1625–42

6Civil War, 1642–49

7Oliver Cromwell and the Interregnum, 1650–58

Epilogue: The Reformer and the Revolutionary

Notes

Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.Thomas Cromwell. (Courtesy of Ipswich School archive)

2.Oliver Cromwell, from a painting by an unknown artist. (Author’s Collection)

3.Henry VIII by Hans Holbein. (Author’s Collection)

4.Portrait engraving of Cardinal Wolsey. (The History Press Archive)

5.Edward, Prince of Wales. (Author’s Collection)

6.Thomas Cranmer by Gerlach Flicke. (THP Archive)

7.Lady Jane Grey. (THP Archive)

8.Portrait engraving of Mary, Queen of England. (THP Archive)

9.The burning of John Rogers, 4 February 1555, the first of Mary’s martyrs. (THP Archive)

10.The martyrdom of Archbishop Cranmer, 21 March 1556. (THP Archive)

11.Seal of the Exchequer in the reign of Elizabeth I. (THP Archive)

12.Great Seal of Elizabeth I. (THP Archive)

13.Portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh. (THP Archive)

14.Frontispiece to Saxton’s maps of England, from the engraving by Augustine Ryther, 1579. (Author’s Collection)

15.Mary Queen of Scots, the ‘Brocas’ picture. (THP Archive)

16.Portrait engraving of Robert Cecil. He warned King James that the ‘storm comes before it breaks’. (THP Archive)

17.‘Eliza Triumphans’, from the engraving by William Rogers, 1589. (Author’s Collection)

18.James I & VI and Anne of Denmark. (THP Archive)

19.Prince Henry of Wales, eldest son of James and Anne. He died of typhoid in 1612 aged eighteen, leaving his less gifted brother Charles (the future Charles I) as heir to the throne. (THP Archive)

20.Portrait engraving of Francis Bacon. (THP Archive)

21.Charles I and Henrietta Maria. (THP Archive)

22.Print of a Van Dyck painting of Charles I, reproduced by Hollar at the time of the king’s execution in 1649. (THP Archive)

23.Charles I, from the engraving by William Hole, 1625. (Author’s Collection)

24.‘The Sovereign of the Seas’ from the engraving by John Payne, 1637. (Author’s Collection)

25.John Hampden, from Nugent’s Life of Hampden. (Author’s Collection)

26.John Pym, from a miniature by Samuel Cooper. (Author’s Collection)

27.Oliver Cromwell, from a miniature by Samuel Cooper, in the Baptist College at Bristol. (Author’s Collection)

28.Statue of Oliver Cromwell, by Thorneycroft, erected at Westminster in 1899. (Author’s Collection)

29.John Milton, from an engraving by Faithorne. (Author’s Collection)

30.Charles II in middle age. (THP Archive)

31.Coronation of Charles II in Westminster Abbey. (THP Archive)

PREFACE

This work is a sequel to the recent biography of Thomas Cromwell. It examines how the principles of the Reformation changed and evolved in England, in some cases out of all recognition.

English reformers in the 1530s, led by Cromwell, had a near reverence for kingly rule and authority. Resisting the king was tantamount to resisting God. Even on a matter of conscience, the will of the king should prevail. Yet just over 100 years later, Charles I was called the ‘man of blood’, and Oliver Cromwell famously declared that ‘we will cut of his head with the crown on it’.

Now the core question – how did we get from A to B? How did the deferential Reformation become a regicidal revolution? This book is one man’s quest for an answer.

That answer, so I am persuaded, cannot lie entirely in Ship Money, or Archbishop Laud or even in the disdain Charles I showed for Parliament. These are the immediate causes of the Civil War; but something else, something deeper, must account for the difference in psyche and mindset between the deferential reformers of the 1530s and the godly revolutionaries of the 1640s.

This is a big subject, but knowing how readers and publishers appreciate brevity, I have aimed for a succinct account that highlights the salient and most significant developments in church, state and society between the two Cromwells. This book is not a general narrative of the Tudor and early Stuart periods; rather it concentrates on the core question above and selects the most germane material.

This work focuses on England. Events in Scotland and Ireland will be treated as and when they are relevant to the main subject, but details of the Scottish and Irish reformations are left to those more qualified to discuss them.

Regarding terminology, the words ‘evangelical’, ‘reformer’ and ‘Protestant’ are used interchangeably to avoid repetition, ‘evangelical’ being understood in its sixteenth-century sense, meaning Gospel. The ‘new learning’ was another term used in Tudor times to describe Protestantism.

If the early sections of Chapter 2 read like a résumé of Thomas Cromwell’s life, this is because I cannot assume that all those who pick up this book have read the previous one. Apologies to those who find this material rather familiar, but it would hardly do to begin with Cromwell’s fall.

1

THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND, 1517–31

LUTHER

On a late spring evening, on 4 May 1521, a mystery visitor arrived under escort at Wartburg Castle near Eisenach in Germany. He was ushered into a room hastily prepared for him, and given books, paper and a writing table. The castle’s occupants were told that a certain Knight George (Junker Jörg) would be staying with them for a short while. Only a carefully select few knew his real name – it was Martin Luther, the notorious heretic and excommunicate.

Luther had been at the diet of Worms in obedience to a summons from the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. In the emperor’s presence Luther defended his writings and refused to recant when directed to do so. For this he was placed under the imperial ban, though Charles did honour his promise of safe conduct, and Luther was allowed to return home. For his own protection, however, and with the knowledge of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony where Luther lived, Luther’s friends staged a mock kidnap and spirited him away to Wartburg. With a beard to help his disguise, he remained several months there in seclusion from the outside world, concentrating on his translation of the New Testament and many other writings.1

Safe though he was in Wartburg, at least for the time being, Luther knew that his struggles with opponents were far from finished. ‘We must resist that most atrocious wolf with all our strength’, he urged his friend, George Spalatin, referring to his old adversary on the indulgence crisis, Cardinal Albrecht.2 Rumours soon reached him of disturbances among students, artisans and peasants, supporting Luther and hostile to the German clergy. The authorities were seriously alarmed. Among Luther’s Wartburg works was a commentary on the Magnificat, and one line of Mary’s song – ‘He has put down the mighty from their thrones’ – may have struck his mind (Luke 1:52). But if Luther was ever tempted to take advantage of the simmering unrest in Germany by calling the people to arms, he resisted it. Troubled by reports of strife in his native Wittenberg, in December 1521 he composed his Sincere admonition … against insurrection and rebellion. Luther was convinced that divine judgement was about to fall on the papist kingdom, and if the pope and his cardinals were afraid of risings throughout Europe, then that served them right for having corrupted the Gospel. Nevertheless, Luther would never endorse insurrection, either for the sake of religion or in any other cause. Insurrection lacks all discernment: for ‘when Mr Mob breaks loose he cannot tell the wicked from the good, he just lays about him at random’. Therefore, said Luther:

I am and always will be, on the side of those against whom insurrection is directed, no matter how unjust their cause. I am opposed to those who rise in insurrection, no matter how just their cause, because there can be no insurrection without hurting the innocent and shedding their blood [emphasis mine].

In times of trial or persecution, Luther appealed to Christian readers to commit matters to God and wait patiently on Him. The way to defeat the pope and his bishops is to continue the work already begun, to preach and believe the Gospel – ‘better this way than a hundred insurrections’. Rebellion is the devil’s work, cunningly contrived to disgrace the Gospel.3

The Reformation that Luther had begun was primarily a controversy over St Paul, and particularly Paul’s great theological treatise, the epistle to the Romans. For years Luther had been immersed in Paul’s writings before being convinced that the medieval Roman Church of his time, with her Masses, penance and indulgences, had become the bastion of a false and corrupted Christianity. Justification by faith alone was no mere theological theory; it was a way of salvation radically at odds with the one taught by the church’s leaders: a gift of divine grace, freely offered, received by faith, impossible to earn by any good work or human merit. This discovery led Luther to attack the Roman Mass, clerical celibacy, traditional teaching on penance and papal authority in the church. But he did not attack the authority of kings and civil powers.4

Luther’s spiritual trials and breakthroughs have been admirably and exhaustively explained by his definitive modern biographer, Martin Brecht, so they can be passed over very quickly here.5 Besides, Luther’s teaching on salvation and justification quickly became a Protestant consensus. But there was something else in Paul’s epistle that would exercise the minds of generations of Protestants throughout Western Europe in diverse ways, namely the apostle’s directive in Romans 13 to the church to honour and obey the civil power. This will be the chief subject of this book: the various reformers’ views on church and state, and the curious, frequently difficult connection between reform and revolt; how these views changed and evolved as the sixteenth century unfolded; how religious reform sometimes leads to strife and sometimes does not; how some reformers befriend the state while others set themselves against it; and so on.

This was a slightly uncertain area for the Reformers, because whereas the New Testament is quite definite on matters of theology and doctrine, that is not always the case with secular affairs. The men who wrote the New Testament could not foresee either the conversion of Constantine or the collapse of the Roman Empire. Consequently, they did not give precise instructions on how a Christian kingdom should be constituted; they probably never expected to see such a thing on earth. Reformers who believed in the primacy of Scripture, therefore, had no conveniently itemised list of Scriptural commands on this subject that they were supposed to follow, which left them feeling their own way to some extent.

When Luther returned to Wittenberg he set his face against religious and political radicalism in his Invocavit sermons. He put a summary and permanent end to outbreaks of image-smashing in Saxony. He forcefully reminded some of his more zealous brethren of the need for patience when introducing even necessary reforms. The need of the hour was for good preaching to win the hearts and minds of the people to the new faith. Allowing the laity to receive the wine as well as the bread at communion was right and good, but compelling it would merely be a new form of legalism. Even the hated Mass should be reformed by persuasion rather than by force. The sermons made a strong impression, and Luther won over most of his hearers.6

Along with his chief ally and co-worker, Philip Melanchthon, Luther now began building the evangelical church, and reforming the University of Wittenberg to become a centre of evangelical education and scholarship. Luther was also putting together his ideas on church and state, and he made the second as well as the first an institution of divine authority. What motivated him to do so was his deference to Scripture and the call of the apostles to the church to be subject to the civil power, for it is ordained of God to govern the world (Romans 13:1–7; 1 Peter 2:13–17). On a personal level Luther had no love and precious little respect for most of Christendom’s princes. Affairs of state, he noted, ‘are usually administered by those least capable of the task’. Civil government among the heathen was just as good as and probably better than in much of Western Christendom, which, in Luther’s opinion, was singularly unlucky with its rulers: ‘very few princes are not fools or scoundrels’, and a prince is ‘a rare prize in heaven’. However, the world is an evil place and deserves its bad princes. ‘Frogs must have their storks’ (this from the Aesop fable, where the greedy frogs demand a king, and for their troubles they get a stork which eats them all up).7

Luther knew where the hearts of far too many princes lay:

If they would so manage that their dancing, hunting and racing were done without injury to their subjects, and if they would otherwise conduct their office in love towards them, God would not be so harsh as to begrudge them their dancing and hunting and racing. But they would soon find out for themselves, if they gave their subjects the care and attention required by their office, that many a fine dance, hunt, race and game would have to be missed.8

But despite his generally poor view of Christendom’s political leaders, Luther could not ignore the commands in the New Testament to honour the civil power. So he accepted the legitimacy of princes, their right to rule, their usefulness in keeping civil peace and restraining evil. Rulers were entitled to obedience from all their subjects, including the clergy, in civil affairs. The authority of the princes, however, did not allow them to bind consciences or determine articles of faith; so when German princes like Duke George tried to suppress Luther’s New Testament, their mandates were invalid and may be ignored. Luther never required unconditional obedience to princes. At Worms he had effectively been ordered to recant in the presence of the emperor, but he did not do so. In matters of faith and conscience, ‘God must be obeyed rather than men’ (Acts 4:19; 5:29). So the Christian may refuse to obey a command from a ruler to take part in idolatrous worship, and if the consequences are imprisonment or worse, they must be patiently endured. On no account, however, no matter what the circumstances, should the Christian resort to insurrection.

Luther accepted the right of a Protestant nation to defend itself if it came under attack from a Catholic power, but he would not support an attack in the other direction in the cause of religion. Luther would, and frequently did, fight fiercely with his pen, but he would not use the sword in the cause of the Gospel. He did not object on principle to a Christian joining the army and serving his prince as a soldier in a just war, repelling an invader or maintaining civil peace at home; but he should never contaminate the name of Christ by stirring up or joining rebellion. All this is far more than a concern for law and order, though that is involved. This is sola fides – faith alone – applied to the political sphere. It is a trust in God, who, perhaps despite appearances, is neither idle nor indifferent to human affairs. God has promised to hear the cry of the afflicted – ‘Vengeance is mine, I will recompense’ (Romans 12:19) – and He should be trusted to deal with tyrants in His own way. The private citizen, especially if he is a Christian, has no right to do God’s avenging work for him. Rebellion will always cause massive harm and do no good.

Luther was not the first man in Western Christendom to mull over the meaning of Romans 13, but few doctors of the church before him had so strongly emphasised the civil power as a divine ordinance. Luther was rebutting papal claims to temporal sovereignty, and also developing his so-called ‘two kingdoms’ theme – the spiritual and secular, both divinely ordained. The first, covering matters of faith and conscience, was largely the responsibility of the church, while the second was instituted to deal with civil affairs. Because the civil power was ordained of God, as Paul says, it could not be intrinsically evil, so Luther had no objection to a Christian becoming a civil officer, magistrate or a prince. This meant that a Christian could straddle both kingdoms, but this was not a crude attempt to get the best of both worlds; Luther’s wish was that princes would not oppress their subjects for the sake of conscience, while the evangelical church would accept the authority of princes in civil affairs, and not interfere with it as the popes and bishops had done. Church and state could then coexist reasonably harmoniously and with mutual respect, each in its own sphere free from uncalled-for intrusion by the other.

The much talked-about ‘two kingdoms’ idea has often been critiqued for being a little too theoretical and impracticable for the sixteenth century, when most princes coveted some degree of control over the church. Imagine, for example, suggesting to King Henry VIII that affairs of the church were none of his business. Others have also noted that in later Lutheran church settlements the prince was frequently the head, nominally at least, of the state or territorial church. Complications could also arise if someone prominent in the church was appointed to a leading role in the civil arena. Whatever its anomalies, however, the ‘two kingdoms’ was a genuine attempt to define the roles of church and state clearly. It also excluded any idea of a rule of the godly or the ‘elect’ on earth, or a millennial golden age. Luther did not expect the two kingdoms one day to merge into one. From now until the end of time, the church must take the civil power as she finds it: sometimes it would be favourable to evangelical religion, sometimes not. The church will have to suffer patiently where necessary; but she should not clash with, rise in rebellion against, or seek to dominate the state.

The Lutheran Reformation was a spiritual event. Luther’s mission, as he saw it, was to restore and proclaim the Gospel that the medieval church had lost; he was not a political or social reformer. As he said: ‘It is not in my power to fashion the hearts of men … I can go no further than the ears; their hearts I cannot reach … We should preach the Word, but leave the results to God’s good pleasure.’9 Luther hoped, of course, that the Gospel would produce fruit before long: a more virtuous society, greater charity and love to neighbour, less greed in commerce, better conditions for the poor, and so on. As a general rule, however, he was content to concentrate on the spiritual message of salvation and faith in Christ, and let it bear its own fruit in its own way in its own time.

For agitators and radicals of all kinds, whether political or religious, Luther had neither time nor patience, only exasperation and contempt. His innate conservatism made sure that there was no root-and-branch reform to the liturgy or the structure of the church. A visitor to Wittenberg in 1522 who went to Sunday services might have been forgiven for thinking that not a lot had happened recently. Many saints’ days and feast days, though admittedly not all, were kept. Images, crucifixes and candles still adorned the interior of the church; priests dressed for the most part as priests had always dressed; and although a discerning listener would notice a few small changes, much of the liturgy was unaltered. No major difference would be apparent until the sermon began: and then a new Gospel would be heard, a new way of salvation, a gift of God to be received by faith in Christ the Mediator and Redeemer; while pilgrimages, monasticism, praying to saints, vows of celibacy, and all talk of earning or meriting grace would be roundly condemned. If our imaginary visitor had made Wittenberg his home, over the next few months and years he would have seen more reforms to the external worship and life of the church: the laity receiving bread and wine rather than bread only at communion; a new liturgical order of service for the Mass; priests marrying and raising families; congregational singing accompanying the traditional liturgy; and the use of the German language in services without the traditional Latin being completely abolished. But these changes were brought in gradually, after explanation and persuasion in sermons, so as not to alarm the good citizens unnecessarily.10

The Reformation of the church under Luther may be likened to a house undergoing a change of ownership. The papacy, the cardinals and the medieval scholastic theologians were turned out of doors; the apostles were put in the best rooms, and their writings made the title deeds; while the church fathers, at least up to the time of St Augustine, were accepted as honoured guests. But much of the furnishing was retained. The beauty of holiness – church artwork, images, sacred music and liturgy – Luther preserved, with certain modifications. He even sought to improve on it. A deep lover of music, who wrote some of the first evangelical hymns and melodies, it irked him to think that the pope might have all the best tunes; so he worked closely with two musicians of the Elector’s chapel, Conrad Ruppsch and Johann Walther, to see ‘all the arts, especially music, used in the service of Him who gave and made them’.11 So the house was left substantially intact. Then along came a man who wanted to raze the entire building to the ground.

THE REFORMERANDTHE REVOLUTIONARY

One of Luther’s fiercest early non-Romanist opponents was Thomas Müntzer. At first he appeared to be on Luther’s side, because he supported Luther during the Leipzig dispute with the Roman theologian John Eck in June and July 1519. The main subject debated at Leipzig, however, was not the doctrine of justification by faith or the righteousness of Christ, but the more political issue of papal supremacy in the church. This, Luther had argued, had no Scriptural foundation, though at this stage he might have been prepared to accept the pope as chief pastor of the Western church, provided the pope allowed the Gospel to be freely proclaimed. Müntzer was impressed with the force of Luther’s arguments, but there is little evidence that he was ever equally drawn to Luther’s revised beliefs on justification. Luther himself would later say, from his limited contacts with him, that although Müntzer and his ilk may have taken the name of Christ, they actually denied Him as the Mediator. In Luther’s view this would make Müntzer not just a bad Christian, but downright unchristian.12

A distinctive feature of Müntzer was his forthright, unapologetic claim to be ‘filled with the Spirit’, a conviction his biographer has dated to sometime between May 1519 and July the following year. Müntzer had immersed himself in German mysticism, particularly the works of the medieval writer John Tauler, and the theology of baptism of the Spirit. This was something distinct from normal Christian baptism, and also from conversion. At the risk of over-simplifying an intricate subject, it might be described as a spiritual transformation, frequently accompanied by a vision or some ecstatic encounter, which lifted the ‘spirit-filled’ person to a higher level of holiness, joy and zeal than ordinary believers reached. Luther had also read Tauler in his early days, but he had moved on since then, and he never claimed to be ‘spirit-filled’ in this sense.13

The Leipzig debate had also renewed Müntzer’s interest in church history. He was fascinated by the ideal of an early pristine, apostolic church, in which visions, prophecies and revelations were presumed to be normal. But according to Müntzer, the church ‘remained a virgin only until the time of the death of the disciples of the apostles; after that she became an adulteress’. Müntzer believed the moment had now arrived to restore the church to her past spotlessness, and remove the corrupt tares from the pure wheat. He had been reading the parable in St Matthew’s Gospel, and like many of his time he was convinced that the end times were close at hand (Matthew 13:24–29, 36–43). He seems, however, to have overlooked the fact that in the parable the task of uprooting the tares is assigned to the angels (the harvestmen), not to the church (the servants). Nevertheless, based on Tauler’s mysticism, on an idyllic depiction of early church life, and the pressing need to purge the tares out of the kingdom of God, Müntzer’s radical spiritual renovation was complete.14

Müntzer, therefore, was a man of a different spirit from Luther. Luther’s conversion and his Reformation breakthrough was the outcome of intensive soul exercises and Bible study. Müntzer did not, of course, deny the value of the Bible, but in his Prague Protest of 1521 he attacked priests of the Roman Church, and implicitly Luther as well, for their reliance on Scripture alone. ‘All true parsons must have revelations’, said Müntzer, which ‘these damned parsons [the priests] falsely deny’. He also condemned the clergy’s exploitation of the poor, but soon he was back to his favourite theme: ‘The office of the true shepherd is simply that the sheep should all be led to revelations and revived by the living voice of God.’ Müntzer decried the idea of faith received solely from the written Word – ‘what kind of assurance of faith is this which comes from books?’ Such notions are ‘more insane than insanity itself’.15

Müntzer was drifting further and further away from Luther. He reproached Luther and his friends for their ‘ignorance of the living Word’; they should strive instead for ‘gifts of prophecy’. Müntzer also condemned priestly marriage, now allowed in Wittenberg, and he accused the Lutherans of exalting marriage above true sanctification, and of making marriage ‘Satan’s brothel’. Sexual relations, he said, even between lawfully married couples, hamper true holiness; the soul needs to be free from such ‘lower passions’. It is not clear why Müntzer was getting so pent up about marriage, especially as Luther was still single and still expecting to remain that way. Whatever his reasons were, as Müntzer’s biographer has noted, these are not the words of a former disciple of Luther now growing to maturity and finding his own spiritual feet. This was a man who may have once moved within Lutheran circles, but did so only fleetingly, and without ever making his home there.16

Müntzer led an itinerant life in 1522, wandering from Erfurt to Nordhausen, then to Halle, before settling at Allstedt in spring 1523. There his controversial preaching drew large crowds, many crossing the border from nearby Catholic territories. When Ernest Count of Mansfeld forbad his subjects from attending Müntzer’s fiery sermons, Müntzer wrote to the count calling him a ‘heretical knave and extortionist’ for having forbidden the ‘Holy Gospel’. If the count did not repent, Müntzer would ‘write books against you and have them translated into many tongues, calling you a miserable and stupid man to the Turks, Heathen and Jews’. Müntzer was not afraid of rulers and princes: he warned them that ‘I shall deal with you a hundred times more severely than Luther dealt with the pope’. The letter is signed ominously: ‘Thomas Müntzer, a destroyer of unbelievers.’17

But Count Mansfeld, like Duke George of Saxony, who had likewise forbidden his subjects in Sangerhausen from listening to Müntzer, remained firmly attached to the medieval faith and opposed to the Reformation.18 Crucial for Müntzer would be the attitude of the Dukes of Electoral Saxony who were supporting Luther. An opportunity came when Frederick the Wise and his brother John decided they would hear Müntzer speak for himself at Allstedt castle. What they heard, in July 1524, was nothing less than a call to war.

Müntzer began in typical vein with another attack on Luther – ‘Brother Fattened-swine and Brother Soft-life’ – for rejecting visions and relying on the written Word alone. Müntzer saw ahead the transformation of the world, and the establishment on earth of a society where the elect are chosen to rule. ‘It is true – and I know it to be true – that the Spirit of God now reveals to many elected pious people that a momentous, invincible, future reformation is very necessary and must be brought about.’ He now turned to the book of Daniel, chapter 2, and the vision of the giant statute signifying the coming kingdoms of the world from Babylon to Persia, Greece, Rome and finally, according to Müntzer, the Holy Roman Empire of the sixteenth century. The smiting of the statute with a stone was a call to destroy the false kingdom of the world. So Müntzer urged Frederick and John to draw the sword. ‘A new Daniel must arise … and go forth, as Moses teaches, at the head of his troops’ (Deuteronomy 20:2). Müntzer may have had himself in mind at this point, though the dukes, both intelligent men, may have recalled that the Old Testament Daniel did not go forth in battle. Undaunted by embarrassing historical minutiae, however, Müntzer urged them to ‘begin government at the roots … to drive Christ’s enemies away from the elect, for that is your appointed task’. He despised the ‘stale posturing about how the power of God should do it without your application of the sword … I, together with pious Daniel, bid the princes not to oppose the revelation of God’; otherwise, ‘may they be strangled without mercy’. Müntzer called for holy war and the slaying of the ‘godless rulers, especially the priests and monks’; the godless ‘have no right to life except that which the elect decide to grant them’.19

Duke John then asked Müntzer whether he would debate theology with Luther. This invitation was declined. Luther was not sorry; by now he was convinced Müntzer was deranged. ‘I cannot stand this spirit’, he exclaimed; Müntzer must be either ‘drunk or mad’.20

But Luther felt obliged to reply to Müntzer’s address, and he did so in a letter to the Saxon princes at the end of July. Luther had no doubt that something sinister was afoot. ‘After wandering around in waterless places, seeking rest but finding none, Satan had made himself a little nest at Allstedt’ (Matthew 12:43). Luther scorned Müntzer’s talk about the need for suffering to arrive at a purer life: for no-one ‘has so much as touched him either with pen, mouth or fist’. His ‘boasting about the Spirit meant nothing, for we have the word of John the apostle to test the spirits’ (1 John 4:1). If Müntzer was ‘filled with the Spirit’, where were the fruits of the Spirit; where is the love, peace, patience, gentleness (Galatians 5:22) in destroying churches and smashing images, ‘which the worst rascals on earth can do’. Luther urged the princes to act decisively with Müntzer if he carried on preaching violence.21

Luther and Müntzer are examples of two men each using the same simple little word ‘faith’, yet meaning entirely different things by it. Luther’s faith was derided by Müntzer: ‘It falls far short of the mark if one preaches that faith must justify us and not works.’ A true Christian must suffer and be transformed, ‘and thus he finally receives edification, even to the extent of the full return of the Spirit’. People like Luther ‘have only poisoned the world more with their fictitious faith than the others [Catholics] had already done with their foolish works’. Müntzer praised those who are ‘filled with an ardent and right serious zeal to uproot false Christians, to break, to scatter and destroy all their wicked faith’.22 Müntzer was now admitting that no common ground existed between him and Luther.23

‘The Christian faith is a certainty, based on Christ’s Word and promise. If anyone is to hear this Word with a true and unfeigned heart, his ear must be cleansed of the clay of cares and lusts.’ So spake Thomas Müntzer.24 His first sentence is, on the face of it, pure Lutheran; but the second is decidedly anti-Luther. For Luther, a true and unfeigned heart can only be a result of saving faith, usually a long-term result. Müntzer had rejected Luther’s faith alone, and was introducing preconditions for faith. In a strange way, he was more medieval than Lutheran in religion.

Besides a theological definition of faith, here was also a clash between the spiritual reformer, albeit a vigorous one, and the revolutionary. The mystical and apocalyptical Müntzer had, to quote Brecht, a ‘mission of fighting all ungodliness and bringing judgement upon it’. Contrast Luther during his Invocavit sermons: ‘I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force; I simply taught and preached and wrote … then slept and drank beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf.’ For Luther, it was the Word of God that ‘broke the papacy more than any king or emperor ever did’. Luther fought with his pen; Müntzer would use the sword as well.25

In July 1524 Müntzer was rousing his followers to cast aside all fear of godless rulers, for God ‘intends to tear them up by their roots’; the time had come to purify themselves, to forsake material things, and a ‘bloodbath’ is about to come. Slowly and reluctantly the Lutheran princes were coming round to the view that armed force might be the only way to restrain Müntzer. Righteous teaching, reflected Frederick the Wise, will not threaten revolt or bloodbath; rather it would give ‘honour and praise to God’s Word and His Spirit’. In August orders were sent to the civil authorities in Allstedt banning Müntzer from seditious preaching. To his horror Müntzer heard that his printing press was to be closed. He was not formally arraigned, but life was becoming difficult for him, and on 7 or 8 August 1524 he left Allstedt furtively by night.26

Müntzer then made his way to Mühlhausen, an interesting choice. The city was in some turmoil due to the activity of a renegade monk called Heinrich Pfeiffer, who had quit his monastery and was preaching against priests, monks and nuns. Radical preaching was accompanied by the smashing of church images and altars. An attempt was made to set up an ‘eternal covenant or league’, effectively a rule of warrior saints like Müntzer and Pfeiffer in place of the existing council. Ten members of the council, as well as two mayors, were forced to flee. Müntzer failed, however, to win sufficient support among the populace, and once again he was forced to move on elsewhere.27

He arrived in Nuremburg in December. It had not soothed his restless spirit to learn that Luther’s more light-hearted supporters had been mocking him, greeting each other jokingly with quips like: ‘Has God spoken to you lately?’, or ‘Do you have the Holy Spirit?’ Perhaps provoked by this, Müntzer took up his pen once more to reply to Luther’s letter to the princes of Saxony. Luther was Dr Liar (Dr Lügner), for using Scripture ‘in a most deceptive way’, and Dr Mockery (Dr Ludibrii), a man with a ‘contrived faith’, and a ‘cunning Scriptural thief’. Luther and his friends can do nothing except babble ‘Believe! Believe!’ Then they live in comfort and luxury. Müntzer was striving ‘for the clear purity of the divine law’, while the godless Luther ‘perverted’ it. (This is an attack on Luther’s emphasis on justification by faith without the works of the law – Romans 3:28.) Luther, now ‘Father Pussyfoot’, fawns and flatters the ‘godless rogues’ (the princes), and tries to ‘conceal himself beneath a false kindness of Christ’. All the while the ‘pope of Wittenberg’ enjoys life ‘with his good Malvasian wine and his whores’ banquets’. This ‘blasphemous monk’ tries to be a ‘new Christ’, and he has ‘confused Christendom with a false faith’. And Luther ‘did this for the sake of a fine thing – that priests might take wives’. Müntzer, revolutionary though he was, had all the antipathy of the papal clergy towards the marriage of priests; such carnal, earthly entanglements, in his opinion, were unworthy of a man of God.28

Shortly after this latest broadside against Luther, Müntzer and Pfeiffer returned to Mühlhausen, where activists had not given up trying to impose their form of godly rule on the people. Possessions of monks and nuns were confiscated, and Müntzer sought for himself a place on the council. He also carried on preaching, with the new demand that the people should give up their jewellery, their belongings and even their cash, else the Spirit of God ‘would not dwell in them’.29

Authorities in church and state were becoming ever more alarmed, because Müntzer’s radicalism was not confined to colleges, universities and lecture halls. Since the fourteenth century, Germany and central Europe had experienced sporadic disturbances among the peasant peoples. The Peasants’ War of 1524–25 had begun in the Black Forest due to a complicated mix of causes. Poverty was one, though conditions varied from region to region; serfdom was a burning issue in Upper Swabia, though not in the Tyrol. Grievances were not just economic; they also included social, political and legal matters relating to community self-government, election of local civil officials and the independence of courts. Troubles quickly spread through much of Germany and Austria, though until March 1525 it was more a mass protest movement than a determined rebellion, with demands for social and economic reform rather than a call to arms. Even the word ‘peasant’ is a little misleading because some ‘peasant’ leaders were noblemen, craftsmen, clergy or civil officials.30

The Twelve Articles of the Upper Swabian peasants issued in March 1525, besides setting out some basic demands, were designed to enlist the support of the Wittenberg divines. They professed a loyalty to the Gospel and rejected violent rebellion. They opened with a demand that congregations be allowed to choose their own pastors. The peasants promised to pay the tithe, provided it was ‘distributed to the people and paid to a pastor who clearly proclaims the Word of God’; anything left over should go to the poor. Remaining articles dealt mainly with social reforms – an end to serfdom, permission for the poor to hunt game and have access to woodland, relief from servile labour and punitive taxes, reform of corrupt laws and legal practice. The articles ended with a promise to withdraw any article not in accordance with the Gospel. Taken as a whole the articles seem an illustration of utter reasonableness, and they may have reflected a desire or expectation, following the Reformation, to see the establishment of a Christian commonwealth, more conformable to the spirit of the New Testament than hitherto. Next month, however, the peasants’ moderate image was somewhat tarnished. When Count Ludwig von Helfenstein failed to put an end to unrest in Weinsberg, peasants who had supported the Twelve Articles carried out an act of exemplary popular justice by ‘executing’ the count and other nobles.31

Nevertheless, Luther was heartened when news reached him of peasants in Upper Swabia disbanding, accepting arbitration and agreeing to accept the authority of their lords pending discussions, while the lords in return renounced threats of penalties. Müntzer, however, was now urging the citizens of Mühlhausen to arm themselves in readiness for an attack from hostile princes, led by Duke George. In league with his friend Pfeiffer, Müntzer tried to gain control of the city council in Mühlhausen. As a result of their efforts, an ambitiously named ‘Eternal Council’ was elected. Duke George and Philip of Hesse, fearful of mounting unrest, decided that the state of affairs in Mühlhausen called for punitive action. Frederick the Wise, as usual more moderate, urged an end to the plundering of monasteries, and suggested the restoration of the former council and the banishment of Müntzer. Undeterred, Müntzer sought to rally support from neighbouring territories. His open letter to Allstedt, dated 26 April 1525, roused the godly in ever more militarily ecstatic tones: ‘The whole of Germany, France, Italy is awake.’ Three of the godly ‘need have no fear of a hundred thousand … So go to it, go to it, go to it! … Pay no attention to the cries of the godless … show no pity … the time has come’. It bore a by now familiar signature: ‘Thomas Müntzer, a servant of God against the godless.’ That same day news reached him of an uprising in nearby Langensalza, and immediately he offered his support. This was declined, but the Salza rising was yet another ugly example of a seemingly unstoppable rush into conflict.32

In Wittenberg Luther had now heard about the Twelve Articles. He was not opposed to them in principle, but because of the growing unrest he was not entirely convinced by the evangelical protestations of the peasants either. Nevertheless, he decided to take the peasants’ willingness to be guided and if need be corrected by Scripture at face value, hoping that things might yet turn out for the good. Luther’s Admonition to Peace was printed on 6 May.

Despite misgivings regarding the peasants’ good faith, Luther began with a scorching attack on Germany’s rulers. ‘We have no one on earth to thank for this disastrous rebellion except you princes and lords, and especially you blind bishops and mad priests and monks’. The princes were doubly guilty because besides resisting the Gospel they had callously exploited the poor. ‘You do nothing but cheat and rob the people so that you may lead a life of luxury … The poor people cannot bear it any longer.’ He rejected claims made by Romanist opponents that he and his preaching were to blame for all the trouble – ‘I have striven against rebellion, and have energetically encouraged and exhorted people to obey and respect even you wild and dictatorial tyrants’. Therefore, blame the ‘murder prophets’ (he meant Müntzer and others), who ‘have gone about among the people for more than three years, and no one has resisted and fought against them except me’. Luther urged the princes to be reasonable and not to use force: ‘Do not start a fight … for you do not know how it will end … try kindness first’; otherwise you will risk kindling ‘a fire which no one can put out’.

Luther then turned to the peasants, and although he had sympathy with many of their grievances, he warned them that ‘all who take the sword will perish by the sword’. No one ‘by his own violence shall arrogate authority to himself’; rather he should respect the authorities, as Paul commands (Matthew 26:52; Romans 13:1). The peasants cannot ignite an uprising and call themselves a ‘Christian association’, because a Christian can never be a rebel. Even bad rulers did not justify a bloody rebellion; better to suffer wrongs with patience, as Scripture commands (Matthew 5:39–41, 44; Romans 12:19). If the peasants were unwilling to keep these commands of Jesus and the Apostles, they should strike the word ‘Christian’ out of their title. Luther used his own experiences as an example of how to resist the mighty ones of the world: ‘Pope and emperor have opposed and raged against me … but I have never drawn a sword or desired revenge’; yet God has ‘preserved my life … and made my Gospel grow and spread’. Many rulers were indeed guilty of injustice, but Luther still clung to the hope that bloodshed might be prevented, else ‘God will, as usual in these affairs, use one rascal to punish another’. If the peasants refused to listen to him, ‘I shall pray for you, that God may enlighten you, and resist your undertaking’. Luther then turned once more to the princes, warning them that unjust rulers will not escape divine judgement for ever, for ‘God hates both tyrants and rebels’. Critical and suspicious of both sides, Luther urged peace talks. The adversaries should draw back from the brink, else ‘Germany will be laid waste’. And ‘what have all these innocent women, children and old people, whom you fools are drawing with you into such danger, ever done to you? Why must you fill the land with blood and robbery, widows and orphans? … Beware, dear sirs, and be wise … You still have time to find a better way, by repenting before God, by reaching a friendly agreement, or even by voluntarily suffering for the sake of humanity’. If the protagonists paid no heed, ‘I must let you come to blows; but I am innocent of your souls, your blood or your property’.33

But the chance for peace had now passed, and violence was escalating alarmingly. Castles, churches and convents were sacked, while Erfurt and Salzungen capitulated to the peasant forces. A serious illness to Frederick the Wise briefly threatened a political void in Saxony. Luther and Melanchthon then paid a visit to Eisleben in Thuringia, one of the worst affected areas, to set up a new school there; and they had ample opportunity to see and hear about the worsening situation for themselves. Luther’s detachedness, and his heavily qualified support for the peasants’ demands, had not been well received, and he suffered the unusual indignity of being interrupted by hecklers when he preached at Nordhausen. In Mühlhausen and the surrounding areas Müntzer’s militia were on the rampage, plundering monasteries, castles and property and then carting the spoils back to their base camp.34

Luther’s attitude was now hardening. Sometime between 6 and 10 May he wrote one of his most controversial tracts Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants. He did not renounce his Admonition, but he recognised how dangerously the situation had deteriorated. The peasants had broken their pledge to remain peaceful, and ‘are robbing and raging like mad dogs’. Their Twelve Articles were ‘nothing but lies presented under the name of the Gospel’. Luther blamed Müntzer, that ‘archdevil ruling at Mühlhausen’ for fanning the flames. Rebellion ‘is not just simple murder; it is like a great fire which attacks and devastates the entire land’, filling it with ‘murder and bloodshed; it makes widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down like the worst disaster’. The contagion of revolt had to be destroyed. The following quoted words, frequently distorted, need to be taken in this context. Luther was mustering all good citizens to arms in support of the authorities in the face of rebellion; this is not a call for vigilante gangs to attack the innocent, or for anyone to exact private vengeance. ‘Let everyone who can smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly … nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel’. He must be killed like a ‘mad dog … if you do not strike him, he will strike you and the whole land with you’. Most awful of all, these rebels ‘cloak this terrible and horrible sin with the Gospel, call themselves Christian brethren … they become the worst blasphemers of God … under the outward appearance of the Gospel they honour and serve the devil’. Luther slammed the claims of some peasants’ groups to common ownership of property and goods – ‘They want to make the goods of other men common and keep their own for themselves. Fine Christians they are!’ Yet even now Luther urged princes who were Christian to try one last time and ‘offer the mad peasants an opportunity to come to terms’. Should that fail, let the prince ‘swiftly take to the sword’. There should be no more parleying. ‘This is the time of the sword, not the day of grace.’35

On 14 May the armies of Duke George, Philip of Hesse and the Duke of Braunschweig – 2,500 cavalry and 4,000 infantry – massed outside Frankenhausen, now defended by peasant armies. The princes called for Müntzer to be handed over, and for the peasants to surrender. Both demands were refused. The peasants, full of zeal but no match for superior government forces, were destroyed in a victory overwhelming for the princes, and decisive in the Peasants’ War. The carnage of battle over, Müntzer was found hiding in an attic, and interrogated under torture by George and Philip. According to reports circulating shortly afterwards, Müntzer made a full confession, but this is far from certain; surviving statements of his suggest that he tried to justify himself. The ‘spirit-filled’, apocalyptic preacher was now a condemned man, executed at the end of May.36

Luther had no illusions about the nature of the conflict, nor regrets about the outcome. ‘I killed Müntzer’, he said. It was almost a boast, without a morsel of contrition. ‘His death is on my shoulders [Der tode ligt auff meim hals – literally ‘on my neck’]. But I did it because he wanted to kill my Christ.’37

In some of our history books it is claimed that the peasant fighters were supporters of the Reformation, though why, in that case, they went on the rampage when Luther told them to settle down and be quiet is left unexplained. Many peasants, however, did come from areas that were at least nominally Lutheran. Maybe they did not fully understand Luther, maybe they cherry-picked some of his ideas and discarded others less convenient, or maybe they had become disenchanted with him, feeling he had let them down; the evidence does not allow us to apportion reasons precisely. But burdened with poverty and social injustice, the peasants knew that a reformation of the church was under way, and they apparently expected it to permeate into society as a whole, with economic, social and political reforms following on in train. When high expectations were disappointed, disillusionment set in and a spirit of violence was aroused. Radical apocalyptic preaching did the rest.

Luther’s attitude throughout the troubles has caused controversy over the years. It saddened even some of his friends. One of these was John Rühl, the Mansfeld councillor, who warned him of the widespread feeling that he had connived at the slaying of the peasants. The princes were exacting a savage revenge on the defeated captives, and the unhappy Mayor of Zwickau noted that ‘Doctor Martin has fallen into great disfavour with the common people’. The mayor commended Luther’s Admonition, and he condemned Müntzer, who had ‘so pitiably misled the poor folk’. But he feared that Luther had earned himself the reputation of the ‘hammer of the poor’ by calling for the ‘private and public murder’ of the peasants. ‘Is the devil, and those who do this, to be our Lord God?’ There was no need, the mayor went on, for Luther’s ‘hasty tract … there was enough murdering of peasants already’. The mayor agreed that, as a matter of principle, ‘rebellion should be put down’; but Luther had ‘conceded too much to one side’. If only the princes had ‘followed Martin’s advice [in the Admonition] and allowed some commissioners … to negotiate’. The mayor’s conclusion: ‘Martin has not done well … he has written the truth in condemning rebellion, but the poor have been greatly forgotten.’38

A biographer of Philip Melanchthon has agreed in substance with the mayor. Dr James William Richard wished that princes and peasants alike had heeded Luther’s appeals before the troubles began; but although Luther’s concern that the Gospel should never be mixed with violence was entirely genuine, Richard was disturbed by the call to ‘smite, slay and stab’. He regretted, moreover, the undue weight given to Romans 13, as if the Bible had nothing to say on the subject of civil government apart from the duty of the subject to do as he is told. Another balanced judgement is that of Luther’s own biographer, who notes the lack of any real sympathy for the peasants and the hardships they had to endure.39

Predictably, others took a different, less sympathetic line. Catholic opponents continued to blame Luther for all the ills of the world including the violence, while the peasants accused him of betrayal, and their sympathisers attacked him for excessive harshness. Through it all Luther remained unfazed. When friends urged him to retract his words he refused, because ‘a rebel is not worth rational argument … you have to answer people like that with a fist’. He scorned those who tried to lecture him about showing mercy, when I ‘have taught and written more about mercy than any other man in a thousand years’. God’s mercy is indeed offered freely – to the weak, the penitent and the humble; but violent and hardened men must face His wrath. A ruler who strikes down men of blood, said Luther, commits an act of mercy, because he protects good people seeking to live in peace. Luther shrugged off accusations that he was toadying to the princes – he had warned the princes against exploiting the poor, and he would continue to do so. His only concession was to stress that his book Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants was directed specifically against those who had been actively taking part in violent rebellion, and he condemned the wanton cruelty shown by some ‘furious, raving, senseless tyrants’ against prisoners and others not directly involved.40

Martin Luther was a Professor of Theology, not Political Science. Perhaps he was just not cynical enough, or calculating enough, to realise that most princes would simply ignore his calls to look to the genuine needs of the poor, and then take him enthusiastically at his word when it came to rigorously suppressing disturbances. For Luther, the Peasants’ War had been an unhappy and unwanted brush with German politics, and for much of the rest of his life his relations with the peasants were unsurprisingly strained. But of his unconditional opposition to insurrection, and of his words and writings during the conflict, he had no regrets.

ZWINGLI

Huldrych Zwingli was born in Wilderhaus, Switzerland in January 1484. Switzerland was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, though the imperial writ ran there only nominally. Zwingli was a gifted child with a good singing voice and an ear for music, a lover of nature and the countryside. At the universities of Vienna and Basle he studied the medieval theologians, the humanities and the classics, and he was parish priest at Glarus from 1506–16. Influenced by humanist luminaries like Erasmus and Reuchlin, he developed a love of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, which stimulated in him a desire to learn Greek and Hebrew.

At this time Switzerland was an emerging European power. Many Swiss men fought as mercenaries in Europe’s never-ending dynastic wars, some in the armies of Pope Julius II, and Zwingli acted as chaplain or ‘field-preacher’. This experience made him think deeply about politics and international affairs. His growing conviction that mercenary service was immoral and unchristian was brutally reinforced at the battle of Marignano in September 1515, when the Swiss suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the French. A Swiss patriot, Zwingli shared the sense of shock and humiliation felt by his countrymen; he also longed for Swiss unity.

More and more of his time he devoted to Bible study, now in the original Greek, using the new translation produced by Erasmus. Zwingli’s reputation grew as a humanist, a preacher and a fine scholar with a keen insight into political and diplomatic affairs. Slowly but inexorably, Zwingli was losing his trust of the papacy and the medieval church, yearning instead for a return to the pure apostolic faith. He spent two years in Einsiedeln, where miraculous healing powers were ascribed to the ‘black virgin’. Increasingly he distrusted medieval schoolmen and conventional piety. He was no plastic saint, however, and he freely and penitently confessed that he had yielded to the temptations of a harlot. It is a comment on the times that his fling was quickly forgiven and forgotten, and Zwingli was appointed foundation preacher at Zürich, beginning his ministry there on 1 January 1519.41

As well as opposing mercenarism, Zwingli was appalled by wars in Christendom. Much of this he blamed on the popes for inciting Europe’s princes against one another. Only grace, he feared, could turn away the righteous wrath of God that would otherwise be poured out on the sinful people. While preaching in Zürich, he preferred to take themes from the Bible rather than stories of saints, the seven deadly sins or canon law. Soon Zürich closed its gates to the indulgence preachers, and Zwingli began putting church dogmas to the test of Scripture. Zwingli welcomed Luther’s writings, now circulating freely in Zürich, and gradually Zwingli gained the confidence of the civil authorities. Luther, however, was not the only one to influence Zwingli in a Protestant direction, and maybe not even the chief influence; Erasmus had played a key part and so had the church fathers, particularly Augustine. Above all, it was many years of intensive study of the Bible that produced a fully evangelical Zwingli by 1522, three years after Luther’s Reformation discovery. So far as is known, there is no direct equivalent of a dramatic ‘Tower experience’ in Zwingli’s spiritual journey.42

It was during Lent 1522 that a sausage – surely the most notorious sausage in the history of the church – was reportedly eaten in defiance of the fasting conventions. Zwingli did not partake of the forbidden food himself, though he supported those who did. By now he was opposing compulsory clerical celibacy, and early that same year he secretly married Anna Reinhart, widow of Hans Meyer von Knonau. Outwardly Zürich was still Catholic, but support for Zwingli was growing. Soon pilgrimages, relics, the invocation of the saints and also images were renounced as Zwingli gradually persuaded the Zürich Council in favour of the Reformation. Altars were removed and monasteries closed with little opposition, and in 1525 Zürich abandoned the Roman Mass.43

Unlike Germany, the Swiss Reformation did not suffer greatly from social unrest, though when news of the German Peasants’ War reached Zürich, the authorities were naturally concerned. Like all major Reformers, Zwingli preached the duty of obedience based on Romans 13:1, but he also urged the Zürich Council to treat the peasants humanely. The government promised to investigate the peasants’ grievances, and it was this generally conciliatory attitude that did so much to prevent trouble. Zwingli championed social and economic justice as well as justification by faith. He praised farmers and all who worked for their living, and he condemned injustice to the poor. Politicians responsible for inflation, he recommended, deserved to be boiled in oil. (There is no evidence that this recommendation was ever taken on board by the Zürich legislature.) Despite his opposition to wars, however, he was not entirely averse to the use of military force if it would help to expand the Reformation, and he entertained ambitious plans to make Zürich the principal base of an evangelical Swiss confederation. He also founded a theological college known as the Prophezi, the main aim of which was to train men already learned in Hebrew, Latin and Greek for preaching and evangelising.44