THE SWISS AND HUMAN THOUGHT
The Swiss have had always a natural bent towards the heterodox. They
have the spirit of that exile from Erin who, landing in New York and
being asked as to the state of his political soul, demanded: "Is there
a government here? If so I am agin it." Some of the minor Swiss
heterodoxies have been of great value in urging the world to think.
Was it not a Swiss doctor (Tronchin) who first preached the gospel of
fresh air, preached it so successfully that he managed to open the
windows of the Palace of Versailles itself? And another Swiss doctor
(Tissot) who dared to tell well-to-do people that their chief cause of
ill-health was overfeeding? The open window and the sparing platter
are part of the commonplaces of hygiene to-day. When first suggested
in Switzerland they had an almost impious novelty.
As far back as the fifteenth century the Council of Basel set up an
opposition Pope, Duke Amadeus VIII. of Savoy (which cannot be
separated in history from Switzerland in those days). He was crowned
Pope at Basel in 1440. After nine years he gave up being an opposition
Pope. His was a mild note of dissent to that which was to come later,
when Switzerland provided the most startlingly new theological ideas
of the Reformation and of the Revolution. Zwingli and Calvin: Rousseau
and Voltaire--those are four names of men intimately associated with
Switzerland who were destined to have a vast effect on the thought of
the world, in regard both to moral and social ideas. Two of them were
Swiss born, two Swiss by adoption.
Ulrich Zwingli was born at Wildhaus in the Canton St. Gall, which had
before sheltered that stormy saint, Columban, and his disciple Gall.
Zwingli was educated at Basel and Vienna, and was, while at Basel, a
friend of Erasmus. In 1506, having taken holy orders, he became pastor
of Glarus and at once began to show a reforming spirit. His
indignation was aroused first at the mercenary wars in which Swiss
soldiers engaged--he had accompanied Swiss forces into Italy as
chaplain on two occasions--and so sternly did he inveigh against
participation in such wars that he had to give up his pastorate at
Glarus and take refuge at Einsiedeln Abbey. There he turned his
attention to the abuses of the Church, and his reforming sermons soon
attracted wide attention. Rome seems to have viewed his outbreaks
against her discipline more with sorrow than with anger, and he was
frequently tempted with offers to accept high office in the Church in
Italy. He refused, and in 1518 became pastor of Zurich and began
definitely his career as a Church reformer. He was not a follower of
Luther. Still less was he a follower of Calvin, who settled in Geneva
in 1538. Zwingli was a moral and social as well as a religious
reformer, and his system of thought was at once more advanced in idea
than that of Luther and less narrow in method than that of Calvin. At
Zurich he set up a theocratic Republic of austere simplicity, but not
of the savage gloom of the later Calvinist regime at Geneva.
Earnestness of religious opinion smothered national patriotism in the
mind of Zwingli. He organised a "Christian League" of the Protestants
of Switzerland and some of the German Protestant cities. The Roman
Catholics then formed a defensive alliance with Ferdinand of Austria,
an ally of the Vatican. Zurich declared war on the Catholic Forest
Cantons. The Swiss were obviously reluctant, however, to engage in
this fratricidal religious war. At Kappel, where the Roman Catholic
and Protestant armies lay facing each other, a band of the Catholics
got hold of a large bowl of milk, and, lacking bread, they placed it
on the boundary line between Zug and Zurich. At once a group of Zurich
Protestant men came up with some loaves, and both parties ate cheerily
together the _Milchsuppe_, forgetting the duty to slaughter one
another for the love of God urgently impressed upon them by their
Christian pastors. At Solothurn, again, a religious war was breaking
out, and indeed the first shot had actually been fired, when
Schultheiss Nicolas von Wengi, a Roman Catholic, threw himself before
the mouth of a cannon, and exclaimed, "If the blood of the burghers is
to be spent, let mine be the first!" Wengi's party at once desisted,
and matters were settled peacefully.
At a later period, alas, religious fervour waxed stronger, and
Swiss Protestant and Swiss Catholic killed one another with almost as
much savagery as modern Balkan Peninsula Christians, wrangling as to
whether the path to Heaven runs through an Exarchate or a Patriarchate
Church.
[Illustration: GENEVA FROM THE ARVE.]
Zwingli attempted to reconcile the differences between the Lutheran
Protestants and his own followers; and there was a famous Conference
between the two reformers at Marburg at the invitation of the
Landgrave Phillip of Hesse. The attempt was a vain one. But Zwingli
went on with a plan he had formed to unite in diplomacy, if not in the
exactness of religious belief, all the Protestant States of Europe. In
the development of this plan civil war within Switzerland was
fomented, and Zwingli was killed in 1531 fighting with the Protestant
forces of Zurich against the Roman Catholics of the Forest Cantons.
Zurich was badly defeated in the battle, and militant Protestantism
received for a while a check. Bullinger, who succeeded Zwingli, did
not concern himself with politics to any great extent, but perfected
the Zwinglian system of religious thought. Bullinger will be best
remembered to English-speaking people as the friend and correspondent
of that Lady Jane Grey who was sacrificed on the scaffold by Queen
Mary of England. Three letters from Lady Jane Grey to him are still
treasured at Zurich. Of Bullinger's treatise on "Christian Marriage"
dedicated to her, she translated a portion into Greek, and presented
it as a Christmas present to her father. Bullinger's sermons and
letters were to her, she wrote once, "as most precious flowers from a
garden." She asked his advice as to the best method of learning
Hebrew, and regarded him as "particularly favoured by the grace of
God." At the block she took off her gloves and desired that they
should be sent on to her Swiss friends.
Calvin was not Swiss-born, but reached Basel in 1535 as an exile from
France. He had been destined for the Roman Catholic priesthood,
changed his plans and became a lawyer, and at Paris was drawn into the
orbit of the French Reformation. Persecuted in France, he retired to
Switzerland, and in 1535 published his _Christianae Religionis
Institutio_, which set forth his gloomy system of religious faith
with, as its most startling belief, the idea that God predestined
certain people for eternal salvation and certain others for eternal
damnation. In 1536, at the invitation of a local Reformer named
Farel, Calvin settled in Geneva. It was at the time the head of
"French" Switzerland, as Zurich was the head of "German" Switzerland,
and was a gay pleasure-loving city. The attempt to impose upon the
Genevan citizens the gloomy austerities of Calvinism led to frequent
riots, and at last the civil government banished both the apostles of
sadness, Calvin going to Strasburg. In 1541 he was back at Geneva with
an understood commission to reframe the religious and social life of
the city. He set to work with grim fanaticism, aiming at a "Kingdom of
God on Earth" framed on the lines of the old Judaic theocracies, with
himself as the prophet and autocrat.
Very terrible was the tyranny of this gloomy presbyter, though the
state he set up won the unqualified admiration of John Knox, that
kindred soul who carried to Scotland the tenets of Calvinism and set
up there a similar theocracy. "They liked a preacher who could weep
and howl well in the pulpit," records Buckle, describing the reign of
Calvinism in Scotland. In Geneva there was, according to John Knox,
"the most perfect School of Christ that was ever in the earth since
the days of the Apostles." The whole populace was expected to weep and
howl in abasement before a terrible God. No human pleasure was too
paltry to escape the ban of these ministers of gloom. Some of the
statutes of Geneva at the time are humorous to read nowadays, mournful
as was the spirit they showed at the time. A few examples of the
prohibitions current in Calvin's time:
That no Citizen, Burger, or Inhabitant of this City dareth be
so hardy to go from henceforth to eat or drink in any Tavern.
That none be so hardy to walk by night in the Town after nine
of the clock, without candlelight and also a lawful cause.
That no manner of person, of what estate, quality or condition
soever they be, shall wear any chains of gold or silver, but
those which have been accustomed to wear them shall put them
off, and wear them no more upon pain of three score shillings
for every time.
That no women, of what quality or condition soever they be,
shall wear any verdingales, gold upon her head, quoises of
gold, billiments or such like, neither any manner of embroidery
upon her sleeves.
That no manner of person, whatsoever they be, making
bride-ales, banquets, or feasts shall have above three courses
or services to the said feasts, and to every course or service
not above four dishes, and yet not excessive, upon pain of
three score shillings for every time, fruit excepted.
Theatres, the dressing of the hair, music, games, skating, dancing,
were all forbidden; so were pictures and statues. A governing body
called the _Consistoire_, with Calvin at its head, had the right to
send its spies into every home to detect ungodliness. When the plague
came to the city to match with a physical ill this moral blight,
Geneva became a very hell upon earth. Torture was used to extort
confessions from the accused. Whilst the plague was at its worst the
sword, the gallows, the stake were always busy. The jailor asserted
that his prisons were filled to excess, and the executioner complained
that his arms were wearied. Within a period of three years there were
passed fifty-eight sentences of death, seventy-six of banishment, and
eight to nine thousand of imprisonment, on those whose crime was
infringement of the Church statutes. Offences against himself
personally Calvin treated as blasphemy, and blasphemy was punishable
with death.
Upon the death of Calvin the government of Geneva fell into the hands
of Beza, a man of more human feeling, and Calvinism modified a little
of its savage gloom. Later the influence of the Zwinglians exercised a
further moderating influence, and the Swiss Reformed Church began to
get a little of the spirit of the New Testament.
After the fame of the Reformers had waned Switzerland drew the
attention of all Europe to her cities again by the writings of
Rousseau and Voltaire, the chief makers, I should say, of the French
Revolution. Rousseau was the son of a watchmaker of Geneva and was
born in 1712. He was a turbulent child and ran away from home to
France at the age of sixteen. He returned to his native city a quarter
of a century later. Rousseau was a revolutionary critic of society,
and his _Origin of Inequality_, _Emile_, and _The Social Contract_
attacked all the foundations of the then existing society. The last
named formed the basis of the Constitution of 1793. In _La Nouvelle
Heloise_, a romance the scenery of which is laid at Vevey and
Montreux, Rousseau argued for a return to more natural methods of
living. That romance gave the stimulus to the romantic works of Goethe
and Schiller.
Voltaire was a Swiss by adoption and not by birth. He did not settle
down at Ferney near Geneva until he was sixty years of age (1751): but
that left him twenty-four years of life to spend there. Fear of the
French Court sent him out of France. He seemed to have carried no
fear with him. He braved the Consistory of Geneva--then still
upholding much of the Calvinist tradition--and actually established a
theatre in the gloomy city. Apart from the crowds of distinguished
visitors whom Voltaire's reputation brought to Geneva, he was a useful
citizen. He was the sponsor of two important local industries. On his
estate at Ferney he bred silkworms, and presently he had weavers from
Geneva to weave stockings of silk. The first pair was sent to the
Duchesse de Choiseul. His correspondence with the Duchesse would turn
a modern advertiser green with envy. Voltaire also started a watch
manufactory, and again he advertised his watches in cunning letters
and circulars to such people as Catherine the Great. In a short time
the Ferney watchmaker's export trade spread everywhere, even to China
and to North Africa.
Voltaire, Rousseau--these two names kept all eyes on Switzerland for a
generation, and brought to Switzerland practically all the serious
thinkers of the day. There was one notable exception. Boswell records
a vain pilgrimage that he made to Ferney. His mission was to reconcile
Voltaire and Johnson. Voltaire described Johnson as a "superstitious
dog." Johnson, asked by Boswell if he thought Rousseau as bad a man as
Voltaire, said, "Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of
iniquity between them." Dr. Johnson never went to Geneva. He would
have paid as little homage to Calvinism as to Voltairism.
[Illustration: L'EGLISE DE LA MADELEINE, GENEVA.]