Five Cantons, appears from their attempts to prevent it. Immediately
after the resolution of Bern was made known to them, by her public
proclamation, they called together a conference in Luzern, at which
also Freiburg, Solothurn and Glarus were represented. A letter of
warning was there resolved on. The Five Cantons believed, moreover, it
should be drawn up, less in the name of their governments than in that
of the Confederacy. From that very moment, when they began to fear,
lest other states would likewise venture to unite with Zurich, their
strenuous efforts were directed to the preservation at least of a
majority of votes in the General Diet. In this they could not fail.
They were sure of Freiburg, they counted on Solothurn, but Glarus they
endeavored to secure by the same means which had proved abortive with
Bern. Here, however, they seemed to succeed better. In fact, the
general assembly of the canton handed over at their request a sealed
promise not to separate themselves in matters of faith. In this posture
of affairs, they held immoveably firm to the opinion, that whatever
seven or eight out of thirteen states thought fit, should be considered
the decision of the Confederacy. But our whole earlier history shows
how varying the practice was in this respect, how single cantons, how a
united minority of them often refused to acknowledge the resolutions of
the majority; how differently the very Articles of Confederation
themselves, and their right to enforce obedience were explained, or
stretched, to suit particular cases. But, if ever it was their design
to justify the political liberty of each individual member of the
Confederacy, then surely it must be so in matters of religion, which
are nowhere touched on in the letter of these Articles, whilst the
dominion of one over the consciences of the others, is far less in
harmony with their spirit.
So had Zurich looked upon the matter from the beginning. So was it now
regarded by Bern, with a more decided purpose not to surrender the
principle involved. From this time forth two parties began to form
themselves in our country, who were diametrically opposed in their
views of the nature and obligations of the Articles of Confederacy. The
question at first by no means took the same shape as it did in later
times: Shall only _one_ ecclesiastical system, or several, be allowed
within the limits of a single state? much less that which it now holds
in America: Shall the state not concern itself at all about the
religious creed of its citizens? Religion and politics, church and
state were then thought to be inseparably bound together. Only this was
asked: Shall a single state choose its own ecclesiastical system, or be
suffered to change it by its own sovereign authority? or has it no such
right? Must law be given to it perpetually from without, by a power
which stands over it, which even has its head on the other side of the
Alps? The Five Cantons, who adhered to the latter view without
faltering, were not willing to maintain it merely within their own
limits, but wished to have it uttered and acknowledged as a fundamental
principle of the Confederacy, and the minority to submit to the
majority in its application.
This shows itself plainly in the contents of a letter sent by them to
Bern, directly before the Religious Conference held there. "Truly," so
it runs, "with no less fear than wonder have we, dear Confederates,
received your notice of a conference. What can have induced you to make
such a move--you, who not two years ago would have esteemed an
undertaking of that kind contrary to all honesty. Christian order and
law, and a breach of old usages and sworn treaties? and so we esteem
it. Whence comes it? Ah, God mend it! only because you have given too
long a rein to your seditious, wicked preachers. They have persuaded
you to this thing, in order to color somewhat, and in some measure to
plaster over with a deceitful show their defeat at Baden, where by the
might and splendor of the truth, by the Holy Scripture itself, they
were struck to the earth as blind men. Remember what you and yours
swore together with us, for which you gave us sealed documents, yet in
our possession. Therefore, we beseech you, in the most pressing and
earnest manner: Abandon your project. Lot us know, whether you will do
this. On Sunday before New Year the deputies of the VIII. Cantons will
be in Luzern. On that day we will look for your answer to this effect.
But if all this warning is of no avail, then we desire you to summon
your bailiwicks on a certain day previous to the disputation, and give
us notice of that day in due time. Then will our Lords and Superiors
send their embassy to you, and speak with you and yours, not otherwise
than becomes propriety, and is necessary and convenient for us; and, if
God will, you and yours, us and ours will be preserved from great
misfortune and harm. Meanwhile, perhaps, rude speakers may exhort you
not to suffer yourselves to be lorded over by. several cantons, ruled,
taught, and compelled to believe what may be pleasing to them.
"Ah, dear Confederates! Neither our Lords and Superiors, nor we, ever
had any disposition to rule and lord it over you. We bring and compel
you to receive no new faith. What is our desire and thought? Only that
you and we may remain with each other, dwell peaceably together and
rule as your and our forefathers did in the old, true, Christian faith.
In this your ancestors and yourselves, your canton and your people have
reached great honor. In this did you become Confederates. In this have
your ancestors and ours, you and we gained many honorable victories.
God be praised therefor! With such a faith, and with the universal
Christian Church we desire to remain, and pray God from the heart that
He would prevent you by His grace from separating, not alone from us
Eight Cantons, but much more from all Christendom."
Yet this letter, although made out in the names of the Eight Cantons,
was not signed by Glarus and Solothurn; not by Glarus, because there
also public opinion was rising up more and more in favor of Zwingli's
reforms, which obliged the deputies to be very guarded; not by
Solothurn, because she hesitated about expressing herself so strongly
to her neighbor Bern, to whom she was bound by so many ties. Its
imperious language, though couched in soothing terms, was ill suited to
prevail with Bern. It roused there a feeling of proud independence, and
how deep a wound it made, appears from the answer:
"You begin your letter to us with reproaches of dishonor. Faithful,
dear Confederates, we had expected better things of you. What we did
was done for the Christian purpose of honoring God. We hope that
treaties have in no wise been violated thereby; but, indeed, we would
commend to your consideration, whether the insolent and haughty letter
of your envoys be in accordance with them. You conjecture that our
preachers have been the occasion of this Conference, in order to repair
their injuries at Baden, and color over their defeat. Dear
Confederates, you should not deem us such persons as ever to rest upon
any class of men the ground and assurance of our true, primitive,
Christian faith. Still less can we discover that we have given them too
long a rein, because you are ill pleased that we suffer the uncorrupted
Word of God to be preached and spread every where amongst us. Far be it
from us to cut ourselves off from the Christian Church, whose head is
Christ himself; much rather would we do, what becomes good Christians,
defend and protect her. And since you remind us of our sealed document,
although we are obliged to give neither you nor others an answer
concerning it, yet we freely admit that we swore on that day an oath,
on account of faith, not of the Confederacy, but in no wise pledged
ourselves to you or others to believe what you or they believe. That
your forefathers and ours entered into the Confederacy and took oaths
of friendship in the same faith we do not deny. But what they at the
same time held in their hearts is known to God alone. Had they become
so well acquainted with the treachery of Antichrist as you and we, they
would hardly have remained so long in error. Since then you invite us
to summon our bailiwicks, so that your envoys may appear before us and
them, know ye, that such a step is not in accordance with the Articles
of Confederation, and we therefore desire you to abstain from it. And
since you suppose there are rude people amongst us, who say they do not
wish to be lorded over by other cantons, nor ruled, nor compelled to
believe--there is truth in it. We are just as unwilling to go beyond
the Articles of Confederation, when asked by you, as you would be, if
asked by us; we will, by no means, suffer or permit this. Finally, we
understand that unfriendly missives against us have been printed in
Luzern, and it cannot be forgotten by you, what was formerly decreed at
the Diet on this account. We pray you, therefore, to put a stop to it,
else we shall be obliged to print replies. This is what we send you in
way of answer to the letter of your envoys, so that henceforth you may
know how to negotiate in the matter, and guard against such insolent,
disgraceful writing."
The Five Cantons responded to this provoking language by unfriendly
measures. They refused their subjects permission to go to Bern, and
denied a safe-conduct to travelers who passed through their boundaries.
The government of Luzern, excited to the highest pitch of hostility by
the passionate Doctor Murner, did not prevent him from attacking Bern
and her government in the most unmeasured style in various libelous
writings, issued by a printing-house of his own. All this increased the
hatred toward that state and the favorable inclination toward Zurich.
Here collected, in the meantime, all those persons from Eastern
Switzerland and the neighboring parts of Germany, who intended to be
present at the conflict in Bern. On New Year's evening fifteen hundred
and twenty-eight were entertained at the chamber of the Canons by the
government of Zurich. The day following, preachers and scholars, more
than a hundred in number, they set out, surrounded by a troop of armed
men to command respect, for it had been rumored that in the free
bailiwicks, where the Five Cantons swayed the majority of the rulers,
they would be threatened with danger. They reached Bern on the third
evening, where also [OE]colampadius and the theologians of Strassburg,
Bucer and Capito, had already arrived. Religion had put science in
motion. From the union of both, politics were to receive their
direction. The events in Bern were to determine the fate of
Switzerland. Statesmen as well as scholars acknowledged this. The city
had neglected nothing in order to make clear its honor, its rectitude
and its hospitality. The government had exhibited firmness on all
sides. To the Emperor himself, who in a very earnest tone had issued a
positive command to abolish the Conference, it had been replied
respectfully, but decidedly, that the preparations had already gone too
far to permit this.
On the sixth of January the business was opened in the church of the
Franciscans. Of splendid accommodations for one party and mean ones for
the other, as at Baden, there was nothing to be seen. Several times
were the opponents of the Reformers requested to assist each other.
"You see"--said the _landvogt_ Manuel, who was appointed to summon the
speakers according to the rules--"how _they_ confess the articles to be
good, and faithfully keep together; therefore, I pray and warn you once
more, for God's sake, to bring into one place your opposing speakers,
and assist each other by counsel, writing and speaking. This our
gracious Lords will accept with great gratitude as a favorable token of
your good-will."
Into the particulars of the Conference it is not needful to
enter here. The whole story and the result are pictured for us in a
report, still extant, from the pen of a zealous Catholic, who was an
ear-and-eye-witness: "What I have so often said," writes Jacob of
Muenster, priest at Solothurn, to a lawyer in Mayence--"has been
clearly exhibited at this heretical gathering. We are going downwards,
only by our own indolence, and because the head's of our church do
nothing for science. Several of our adherents in Bern, hitherto members
of the government, had implored the bishops even with threats, to send
hither learned men, able to cope with the heretics. No one came; no one
sent. At last appeared a certain Augustinian brother. They call him
Provincial Conrad Freger. He brought with him skill in talking, but of
true eloquence and science I could not discover a trace. When proof
from the Scripture was demanded, he traveled off. I found nothing in
him but a barefaced monk, although others looked for a prodigy. Still
more boisterously did a certain Dominicaster beat about him with
passages of Scripture for several days, but in the end showed that he
understood no Greek. The best among them was the schoolmaster of
Zofingen. They call him The Letter. What he quoted from the writings of
the Fathers, in defence of the church, was worth hearing. He knew more
than all the others put together; yet sufficient power was lacking in
him also. Thus must we mourn over our want of skill and contempt of
science. Oh, if Erasmus had only been present! But I should tell you
something about the heretics. My bile was stirred up--hence, only a
little. They did not appear to me so sure of their cause, that we could
not have frightened them, if we did not gain a victory, by able
speakers, versed in the Scriptures, which, however, we must confess,
are not with us in everything. I often saw them not agreed as to the
answer to be given; one often putting anxious questions to the other,
often whispering to him. Several were only encouraged and roused up by
the pertinacious vehemence of Zwingli. This beast is in fact more
learned even than I had thought. The saucy [OE]colampadius may
understand the Prophets and the Hebrew language better, and perhaps
equal him in Greek, but falls far behind him in fertility of mind,
power, and clearness of representation. How Capito should be rated I
could not discover. Bucer spoke more. And, if he had the same learning
and knowledge of the languages as [OE]colampadius and Zwingli, he would
be far more dangerous, so graceful is his gesture and manner, and so
pleasant his speech. Thus we stood, wretchedly equipped against the
most skillful heretics. Here roared a little mass-priest one moment,
and there again another. Alas! they were taught choral singing and
nothing else. Honor to that schoolmaster Letter! and yet he himself has
not gone beyond the letter. And what was now the issue? Our decided
overthrow. How easy it could have been prevented, had our bishops only
turned their attention more to humane studies than to base wenches.
Thou wilt ask: Is there no longer any hope of mastering this extension
of heresy? It is certainly slim. The Luzernese, at the head of the Five
Cantons, have taken all possible pains to do this, more, in fact, than
all the bishops together; but from our weak defence, the belief has
been impressed on the multitude, that we have nothing to defend, and
the majority has overcome the better minority. Now the Zurichers can
have their own way with them. Thou knowest what cunning they possess
and what immoveable constancy."
After the German Conference, which lasted eighteen days, a shorter one
followed in the Latin language, for the priests of the bailiwicks of
Ælen and Granson. William Farell, a learned Frenchman, who for some
time had been laboring for the Reformation with the most unwearied
zeal, in Western Switzerland, had to do with opponents still more
ignorant than those which fell to his German friends. This part of the
proceedings was so sadly lacking in earnestness and dignity, that the
details of it were not suffered to appear in the Acts of the
Conference, which were immediately put to press and published by the
government of Bern. Zwingli also exerted a powerful influence upon the
city in general, by two sermons. It is narrated, that, during the
delivery of one of them, a priest threw off the mass-robe, which he had
already put on, with the words: "If the mass does not rest on firmer
grounds, I will never celebrate it again." With gratitude the
government of Bern gave a liberal recompense to the foreign scholars
and ambassadors and an escort until they had passed beyond their
borders. Two weeks after the Conference, appeared their detailed
ordinance touching the re-organization of the church-system. In it they
cut themselves loose from all former connection with the bishops:
"Since you"--so they say--"in spite of all prayers and invitations have
staid away from the Disputation, and since you indeed shear the poor
sheep, but have not pastured them, we deprive you of your selfish
trade, and neither we, nor they who come after us, wish to be bound in
any way to you or your successors." All deacons and pastors are
released from their oath to them, and required henceforth to give it to
the government. He who refuses, is to be banished. In regard to the
mass, images and monasteries, they will be dealt with as in Zurich.
Living benefactors of ecclesiastical institutions are allowed to take
back their gifts. For the rest, account shall be afterward rendered to
the government. Yet, it is expressly added: "Not that we wish to
appropriate such gifts to our own use, as they are still to be called
_gifts of God_, but so to dispose of them that our honor and justice
will stand clear before God and the world." Finally, the rules of
fasting and celibacy were abolished, but self-government was demanded
for the freedom restored. On this point the document speaks thus: "And
as we have heretofore punished, in the rate of ten pounds, those who
have eaten flesh and eggs on forbidden days, so will we henceforth fine
at the same rate all who take more than their nature can bear, pouring
it down after the ninth sleeping-cup, and those who drink on and
carouse; when they are guilty of it frequently, heavier punishment is
reserved, to be laid on each one according to circumstances."
From what has just been narrated, we see the influence exerted by
Zwingli upon Bern. Let us now take into consideration the reaction of
Bern upon Zwingli. When he began his great work in Zurich, the path of
its development could scarcely have been marked out before his eyes. He
little thought of political commotion. Even the mischief arising from
desertions and pensions, which he only fought against on account of
their evil effects on religion and morals, could be prevented without
change either in the government of the several states, or in the
ground-work, nature or language of the Articles of Confederacy. The
refusal of Zurich to take part in the French Alliance awakened
displeasure, it is true, among her sister-cantons, but even this was
followed by no direct disturbance of her relations with them. Now came
the division of the bishopric, already an influential step. A new
principle was introduced into the ecclesiastical, which was so closely
interwoven with the political life. But this principle was rejected by
all the other states up to the Conference of Baden. The Five Cantons
and the party belonging to the old faith hoped from this Conference so
glorious an acknowledgment of it in the others, that even Zurich would
be obliged to submit. It happened otherwise. Bern also fell away from
the principle of the Five Cantons. A new idea of the Confederacy began
to form itself in opposition to the old; but even here again some
difference prevailed. The ecclesiastical reform in Zurich had been
effected by appealing to the people and with their aid. By it and
through it, also, the democratic tendency in political life attained
the victory. Toward the close of the year 1527, no more traces of the
activity of a Secret Council are to be found; all business of any
importance had to be brought from the Small before the Great Council,
from whence the people were generally informed of it, and not seldom
asked for their opinion. In particular emergencies, indeed, the Great
Council clothed some of its members with dictatorial power, but only
for a few weeks and under public accountability. But the more
democratic the form of political life becomes, just so much the more
indispensable are culture and the religious elevation of the people.
The strengthening of a sense of right demands as a necessary
counterpoise, an exalted sense of duty. Thus state and church go
together, indissoluble in their mutual relations, in consequence of
which every commotion in the sphere of one, reacts inevitably on that
of the other; but whilst the authority of the state rests upon law and
its severe administration, the power of the church ought to be grounded
only upon conviction, faith, freedom and love, for these are the
requirements as well as the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel. In a
democracy the law must be a most complete defence against the wicked;
the Gospel the basis of all improvement. As the principles of the
church and of the state differ in this way, so do they also in the mode
of their use. This difference was clearly apprehended by Zwingli. We
see it above. The ecclesiastical and political reforms of Zurich had
shaped themselves according to these principles. In all religious
matters, conviction was first sought; in all political, proof that the
letter of the law would justify or demand it, was sufficient. Whatever
may be the relation of the church to the state in other forms of
government, this must continue the most suitable for a democracy. Bern,
on the other hand, was never democratic. It is true, indeed, that even
here ecclesiastical reform was only possible by the removal of some of
the most influential heads of the aristocracy, which, however, did not
succumb as completely as in Zurich, so that even the friends of the
Reformation and of Zwingli, who form the middle class, worked their way
into the government, accepted partly from necessity and partly of their
own accord, aristocratic forms and principles. The closer the
connection between Bern and Zurich now became, the less could a
reaction of the former upon the latter be prevented. The commercial
city was rather disposed to treat with her subjects, the knightly to
issue her commands. In Zurich the Great Council had, through Zwingli's
influence, become the ruling authority; in Bern, as might be expected
from her character, it was always the Small. As long as the Reformation
was confined to Zurich, the ecclesiastical tendency predominated; in
proportion as it passed over to Bern, Basel and other states, the
political gained the upper hand. The question, whether the Church or
the Holy Scriptures ought to decide in matters of faith, was scientific
and historical; that, as to how the Articles of Confederation should be
interpreted; what was the limit of the Diet's authority, and for what
single states might resist a majority of the others, belonged to the
sphere of public law. By the accession of Bern to Zurich, and the
common position, which they had now to assume and maintain against the
Five Cantons, Zwingli was obliged to take up this question touching the
Confederacy, to give counsel, to mingle in politics, to tread the
slippery path with one foot, as it were, whilst the other remained on
the firm foundation of religious principle. The consequences of this
vacillating course are apparent, from the beginning of the year 1528
onward, in the striking change manifest in his mode of dealing with the
affairs of his own canton. The same man, who hitherto had done homage
to the principle of absolute publicity, who expected in favor of
Christianity, as he found it in the Holy Scriptures and drew it
thence, a more lively acknowledgment from the sound sense of the
people than from learned craftiness; from the uncorrupted feelings of
men than philosophical arrogance, to whom Christianity was the most
elevated--the only worthy religion for a nation; who, therefore, had to
look to the people for the maintenance of his reformatory measures;
this same man began now to employ all the arts of a politician, for the
upholding and spread of these same measures of reform--a bold
undertaking, altogether too bold--one that compelled him to play a
double part, in which superhuman effort he at last fell a bloody
sacrifice. As we proceed, this will become more clear and evident from
authenticated facts.