James Pounder Whitney

“ The Reformation had brought a new cause of division into the Confederacy. Religious disunion-save in the occasional form of heresy- was an unlooked-for thing, and the Federal authority scarcely knew how to treat it. The Forest Cantons were keen enemies of change; they regarded the Zurich innovations as threatening to themselves. On the other hand Zurich naturally regarded herself as free to make what changes she wished. ”

“ The rapid spread of the False Decretals, in themselves an expression of existing tendencies rather than an impulse producing them, shew us the system in process of growth. Their rapid circulation would have been impossible had they not fitted in with the needs and aspirations of the age. They embodied the idea of the Church’s independence, and indeed of its moral sovereignty, two conceptions which, when the ecclesiastical and civil powers worked in alliance, helped to mould the Christian West into a coherent society, firmly settled in its older seats and also conquering newer lands. ”

“ What is said, therefore, as to the origins of English Feudalism also applies, with due allowance for great local differences, to Germany, France, and Italy; even indeed to Spain, although there the presence and the conquests of the Muslims impressed a peculiar stamp upon its institutions.
The period with which we have to deal is more than most periods what is sometimes called transitional; but this only means that it is more difficult than other periods to treat by itself. History is always changing and transitional, but keeps its own continuity even when we find it hard to discern. ”

“ Since the abbey was under the protection of the Empire as well as of the four Cantons, and of these Luzern and Schwyz supported Käuffi, the illegal action of Zurich and of the townsmen could not but lead to war.
Nor did this incident stand alone: the delicate constitutional question of the Free Bailiwicks added to the intensity of feeling. Nearly all the villages in the district had declared (May, 1529) that they would follow Zurich, which was openly encouraging their violent changes; in all but religion they would obey their lords, the Catholic majority of the Cantons. ”

“ Normans and Danes were to bear witness, before our period ends, to the spirit and the strength in which it wrought. As is always the case when two powers are attempting the same task in different ways and by different means, there was inevitable rivalry and strife between Empire and Church as they grew together within one common society. But such generalisations give, after all, an imperfect picture. Beneath them the details of ecclesiastical life, in Papacy, diocese, parish and monastery, are also part of the common history, and have received the notice which they can therefore claim. ”

“ So long as unity was based upon ecclesiastical organisation, there had been scope for difference of opinion within one Church; but now, when organic unity was lost, exact agreement of theological opinion and the names of certain leaders were made the essentials of the unity which it was sought to secure. Luther was the obstacle, as insisting that union of any kind should depend upon absolute agreement. But it is hard to see how Luther could have come into union with Zwingli, without joining in his political schemes; since the demand for a union between them was primarily political. ”

“ Politics, Religion, and Thought in all its many-sided fields, summed up for the future Western world all the remnants of the past which were most essential and fruitful for generations to come. They were the three great forces that made for unity and, with unity, for civilisation. ”

“ Nothing could better prove the ecclesiastical anarchy into which Switzerland had fallen, and the chance that a reforming Papacy would have had of preserving unity and yet securing progress. Luzern, whence these proposals came, was afterwards a centre of the Counter-Reformation. They were rejected by Zurich, but resulted in the Disputation at Baden (May-June, 1526) . Zwingli, however, it was easy to see, cared little for unity or peace, compared with the carrying out of his own far-reaching plans. ”

“ The Helvetic Reformation, like the German, was the outcome of both the national history and the Renaissance. The history of Switzerland had been a record of free communities in town or country, more than holding their own under changing local dynasties and weakening imperial power. Gradually a sense of national unity emerges, but earlier local connexions are long retained. The Teutonic communities of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwaiden separately gain their independence in ways common enough elsewhere, and then become the centre of the later confederation. ”

“ But the growth of unity of thought and interests, of constitutions and social forms, is harder to see and to express; it is easier to estimate the work of Ecgbert, Edward the Elder, and Aethelstan than the more many-sided achievements of Alfred and Dunstan, or the more pervasive influence of the great Northern school which gave us Bede and Alcuin. But the peculiarity of England’s position is most significant for constitutional growths, and it is, therefore, in connexion with English affairs that the origins of Feudalism are best investigated and discussed. ”

“ In the Common Lands, the religious offenders should not be punished; the majority were to decide for or against the Mass and on other questions; only men of honour and moderation should be sent there as bailiffs. The Austrian alliance was renounced, and its very documents were cut into shreds and burnt; the Five Cantons were to pay a war indemnity according to the decision of arbitrators, and, if it remained unpaid, Zurich and Bern might close their markets to the Five Cantons. Finally the abolition of pensions and mercenary service was recommended to the Five Cantons. ”

“ For the present we are in the period of formation, watching processes mostly beneath the surface and sometimes tending towards, if not actually in, opposition among themselves. Thus, the Imperial protection of the Church, working superficially for its strength, tended, as a secondary result, to weaken and secularise it, and therefore in the end, to produce a reaction. And, when it came, that reaction was caused as much by the inner history of the leading nations as by the central power of Rome and the Papacy itself. ”

“ These crude ideas of reform were not however confined to Wyttenbach, and it was only in order to minimise his debt to Luther that Zwingli mentions this earlier indebtedness. But he had made closer acquaintance with Church abuses; for Heinrich Göldli, a Swiss of the Papal Guard and a trafficker in benefices, had bought the reversion of Glarus, and Zwingli had to pay him a pension of 100 gulden before entering upon his charge.
In classics Erasmus was his guide; good letters and sound theology were to go together; the spirit of the German Renaissance was to inspire theology ”

“ Benedict himself was dependent upon the Emperor for help against Byzantines, Saracens and factions in Rome itself. He could not be called a Pope of spiritual influence, but he was an astute politician, and under him the Papacy not only exercised without question its official power but also moved a little in the direction of church reform. As a ruler with activity and energy in days of darkness and degradation, he regained for the Papacy something of the old international position. ”

“ The League appealed to the Swiss and especially to Zurich. Zwingli believed that the Emperor stood behind the castellan, and that movements of troops in Austria foreshadowed an attack upon Zurich-an event which German politics made not unlikely. The Emperor did not indeed himself support the castellan, but he was inclined to approve the war, since it kept the dangerous Swiss employed, and he was not unwilling that Musso should be helped without expense to himself lest, if left without help, the castellan should turn to France. The Swiss Diet was divided by the Graubünden request. ”

“ Dimly to begin with, but with growing plainness, the realms of France, Germany, Italy, Lorraine, and Burgundy are seen taking their later territorial and constitutional shapes. England lay somewhat apart, insular, and therefore separated from the Empire, but by this very insularity everywhere exposed to Northmen and Danes. Here, too, as on the continent, statesman-like kings and far-sighted ecclesiastics worked together. The growth of territorial unity is easiest of all to trace, for it can be made plain in maps. ”

“ To Strassburg-where the preachers Capito, Bucer, and Hedio were already his friends-Zwingli sent (August, 1527) an envoy to discuss its admission to the new League; the admission of Bern, discussed at the Bern Disputation, was merely a question of time; it followed Constance (June 25, 1528) . The Reformation in the Common Lands was now a pressing question, and a clause in the Treaty provided that preachers there should be protected, and no subject punished for his belief; if the majority anywhere decided for Reform, they were to be left free to carry it out. ”

“ The new series of Emperors are concerned with the Papacy more as it affected Germany and Italy than under its aspect of a world-wide power built on a compact theory. The future history of the Empire in its relations to the Papacy turns, then, mainly upon the fortunes of the Church first in Germany and then in Italy: conflict arises, when it does arise, out of actual working conditions and not out of large conceptions and controversies. This is certainly true of our present period and of the Imperial system under Otto. ”

“ Not only France but Venice was to be drawn into the league; and the instructions to Collin, the envoy there, were drawn up by Zwingli himself, as were many other State papers.
The activity and the expenditure of the French agents (Boisregault and Meigret) in Switzerland were great; the Most Christian King had no scruple about negotiations with heretics (who indeed were better than Turks) ; in March, 1531, he was ready to help Zurich secretly. But his great object was to keep the balance even in Switzerland; a war was not in his interest. ”

“ Italy was thickly sown with castelli, around which houses clustered; in Germany, Nuremberg and Weissenburg, Rothenburg on the Taube with other towns are mentioned for the first time now; it was a period of civic growth in its beginnings. Socially too men were drawn into associations with common interests and fellowship of various kinds, beginning another great chapter of economic history. Thus in these centuries men were beginning to realise, first in tendency and afterwards in process, the power and attraction of the corporate life. ”

“ Of the Five Cantons, Unterwaiden was now the bitterest; but Luzern and Zurich-the rival leaders-had made up their mind for war (May 26-28) . Bern, anxious to preserve unity, would not promise Zurich help for an offensive war. The demands of Zurich were indeed excessive; the surrender of the rights of the Cantons to the administration of the Abbey of St Gallen (to which Zurich, Luzern, Schwyz, and Glarus sent a protecting bailiff in turn every two years) , the withdrawal from the Austrian alliance, and the surrender of the Luzern satirist, Thomas Murner. ”

“ To all our contributors, foreign and English, the Editors have been much indebted, and must here express to them most grateful thanks.
In a history which ranges over many lands but is written mainly for English readers there are, naturally and always, difficulties about names, whether of persons or places. In our special period these difficulties are unusually great. Personal names vary from land to land, and the same name appears in different forms: chroniclers and modern writers are a law to themselves, even if any law is to be found. ”

“ But the Cantons were now divided into hostile factions; and outside lay Austria, embittered by the help sent from Zurich to a rising at Waldshut and Swiss support of Duke Ulrich.
At the end of 1524 Zwingli, always fertile in suggestions and skilful in expression, came forward with a remarkable plan. Zurich was to strengthen herself in military equipment-her reputation for military strength was great; she was to seek alliances with France and Savoy; to promise St Gallen and the Thurgau the property of the monasteries in their territory as a price for their support ”

“ When therefore, we speak, as we shall have to speak, of forces which make for the subjection of peasantry to seignorial justice and which substitute the manor with its villeins for the free village, we shall—so at least it seems to us—be speaking not of abnormal forces, not of retrogression, not of disease, but in the main of normal and healthy growth. Far from us indeed is the cheerful optimism which refuses to see that the process of civilisation is often a cruel process ”

“ The Reformation was now no longer a purely civic affair. From the first the Catholic Cantons had been indisposed to treat it as such; among people of simple minds and with an unformed Federal system religious innovation and religious discord put a heavy strain both upon Federal action and other bonds of union. The Federal Diet at Baden (September 30, 1523) had threatened all innovators with punishment, and Luzern in particular had shown by its action the strength of its feelings. The Reformation had thus already divided the Confederation, and no Diet had been held at Zurich since March, 1522 ”

“ Contrasts always quicken the flow of commerce and the tide of thought: travel brought with it greater awakening then than now. Hence thought moved most quickly along the lines of trade, which were, for the most part, those of Roman rather than of later medieval days. We known something of the depopulation due to wars, and of the misery due to unchecked local tyranny, which drove men to welcome any fixity of rule and to respect any precedent even if severe and rough. ”