Chapter IV - The Reformation in Zurich, Strassburg and Geneva

Summary

The Reformation in the cities of the Rhineland and of Switzerland has its own character. Here a whole set of circumstances, geographical, political, cultural, gives a different pace and direction to the impulses of change which worked out differently in the landed principalities of Germany or the unified kingdoms of France and England.

By the end of the middle ages, many of the European cities had achieved independence of their temporal or spiritual overlords, and had come to exercise rights of intervention in ecclesiastical affairs which the Reformation extended and accelerated. It counted for much in Switzerland that the diocesan framework bore no relation to the all-important cantonal structure. The balance of internal forces varied from city to city. In Berne there was a persistence of aristocracy, in Strassburg a cathedral chapter and collegiate churches, in Basel a resident bishop, while in Basel also the craft guilds became an instrument of reforming pressure and the presence of a university offered facilities for propaganda which in Zurich and Strassburg devolved upon the parochial clergy. In Switzerland military prowess, prosperity, independence gave stimulus to alertness and self-confidence. ‘My lords of the council’ in Zurich were accustomed to regulate important affairs and to control events after a different manner from the small town politicians of the Saxon cities. Wackernagel’s fine picture of Basel at the beginning of the Reformation, with its great houses, its famous publishers, its artists and scholars, gives due place to the merchants, rich men furnished with ability, who could throng the lectures of Oecolampadius with an intelligent and devout awareness of great issues.