HISTORY
OF
THE REFORMATIOK
SECOND BOOK.
THE SWISS REFORMATION.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. Switzerland before the Reformation.
Switzerland belongs to those countries whose historic significance stands in inverse proportion to their size. God often elects small things for great purposes. Palestine gave to the world the Christian religion. From little Greece proceeded philosophy and art. Switzerland is the cradle of the Reformed churches. The land of the snow-capped Alps is the source of mighty rivers, and of the Reformed faith, as Germany is the home of the Lutheran faith ; and the principles of the Swiss Reformation, like the waters of the Rhine and the Rhone, travelled westward with the course of the sun to France, Holland, England, Scotland, and to a new continent, which Zwingli and Calvin knew only by name. Compared with intellectual and moral achievements, the conquests of the sword dwindle into insignificance. Ideas rule the world ; ideas are immortal.
Before the sixteenth century, Switzerland exerted no influence in the affairs of Europe except by the bravery of its inhabitants in self-defence of their liberty and in foreign
2 THE SWISS REFORMATION.
wars. But in the sixteenth century she stands next to Germany in that great religious renovation which has affected all modern history .^
The Republic of Switzerland, which has maintained itself in the midst of monarchies down to this day, was founded by "the eternal covenant" of the three "forest cantons," Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, August 1, 1291, and grew from time to time by conquest, purchase, and free association. Lucerne (the fourth forest canton) joined the confederacy in 1332, Zurich in 1351, Glarus and Zug in 1352, Berne in 1353, Freiburg and Solothurn (Soleur) in 1481, Basle and Schaffhausen in 1601, Appenzell in 1513, — making in all thirteen cantons at the time of the Reformation. With them were connected by purchase, or conquest, or free consent, as common territories or free bailiwicks,^ the adjoining lands of Aargau, Thurgau, Wallis, Geneva, Graubiindten (Grisons^ Rhatia), the princedom of Neuchatel and Valangin, and several cities (Biel, Miihlhausen, Rotweil, Locarno, etc.). Since 1798 the number of cantons has increased to twenty-two,, with a population of nearly three millions (in 1890). The Republic of the United States started with thirteen States, end has grown likewise by purchase or conquest and the organization and incorporation of new territories, but more rapidly, and on a much larger scale.
The romantic story of William Tell, so charmingly told by ^gidius Tschudi, the Swiss Herodotus,^ and by Johannes
1 "The affairs of Switzerland," says Hallam {Middle Ages, II. 108, Am. ed.), "occupy a very small space in the great chart of European history; but in some respects they are more interesting than the revolutions of mighty kingdoms. Nowhere besides do we find so many titles to our sympathy, or the union of so much virtue with so complete success. . . . Other nations displayed an insuperable resolution in the defence of walled towns ; but the steadiness of the Swiss in the field of battle was without a parallel, unless we recall the memory of Lacedsmon."
^ They were called gemeine Herrschaflen or Vogteien and zugeicandte Orte.
^ Or the father of Swiss historiography, as he is also called. His Chronicon Helveticum or Eidgenossische Cltronik (1000-1470) was first edited b}^ Professor
§ 1, SWITZERLAND BEFORE THE REFORMATION. 3
von Miiller, the Swiss Tacitus, and embellished by the poetic genius of Friedrich Schiller, must be abandoned to the realm of popular fiction, like the cognate stories of Scandinavian and German mythology, but contains, nevertheless, an abiding element of truth as setting forth the spirit of those bold mountaineers who loved liberty and independence more than their lives, -and expelled the foreign invaders from their soil. The glory of an individual belongs to the Swiss people. The sacred oath of the men of Griitli on the Lake of Lucerne, at the foot of Seelisberg (1306 or 1308 ?), and the more certain confederation of Dec. 9, 1315, at Brunnen, were renewals of the previous covenant of 1291.^
The Swiss successfully vindicated their independence against the attacks of the House of Habsburg in the memorable battles of Morgarten (" the Marathon of Switzerland," 1315), Sempach (1386), and Nafels (1388), against King Louis XL of France at St. Jacob near Basle (the Thermopylse of Switzerland, 1444), and against Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy at Granson, Murten (Morat), and. Nancy (1476 and 1477).
Nature and history made Switzerland a federative republic.
Iselin, Basle, 173-i and '30, in 2 vols, ^gidius Tschudi of Glarus (1505- 1572) derived the Tell legend from the Weisse Bitch of Sarnen, and Etterlin of Lucerne, and adorned it with his fancy and masterly power of narration. He was a pupil of Zwingli, but remained in the old church. In a letter to Zwingli, February, 1517, he says, "Non cum aliqiio docto lihentius esse velim, quam tecum." Zw., Opera, VII. 21. The MS. of his Chronik is preserved in the city library of Ziirich. It is carefully described, with a facsimile in the Neujahrshlatt of the Stadtbibliotheh in Zurich auf das Jahr 1889 (Ziirich, Orell Fiissli & Co.).
^ On the origin of the Swiss Confederation and the Tell and Griitli legends, see the critical researches of Kopp, Urkunden zur Geschichte der eidgenossischen Biinde, Luzern, 1835, and Wien, 1851, 2 vols. Hisely, Becherches critiques sur Guillaume Tell, Lausanne, 1843. Kopp, Zur Tell-Sage, Luzern, 1854 and '56. Karl Hagen, Die Politik der Kaiser Budolf von Habsburg und Albrecht I. und die Entstehung der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, Bern, 1857. G. von Wyss, Die Gesch. der drei Lander Uri, Schwi/z und Unterwalden, 1212-1315, Ziirich, 1858; Zurich am Ausgange des dreizehnten Jahrh., Ziirich, 1876. A. Rilliet, Les origines de la confe'de'ration Suisse, histoire et le'qende, 2d ed., Geneve, 1869. Dieraucr, Gesch. der Schiceiz. Eidgenossenschaft, Gotha, 1887, vol. I. 81-151.