§ 33. THE REFORMATION IN GLARUS. 117
Blumee and Heer : Der Kanton Glariis, aistorisch, geographisch und topographisch beschrieben. St. Gallen, 1846. Dr. J. J. Blumer : Die Reformation im Lande Glarus. In the " Jahrbuch des historischen Vereins des Kantons Glarus." Zurich and Glarus, 1873 and 1875 (Heft IX. 0-48 ; XI. 3-26). H. G. Sulzberger: Die Beformation des Kant. Glarus und des St. GaUischen Bezirks Werdenherg. Heiden, 1875 (pp. 44).
Heinrich Schreiber : Heinrich Loriti Glareanus, gekronter Dichter, Philolog und Mathematiker aiis dem 16ten Jahrhundert. Freiburg, 1837. Otto Fridolin Fritzsche (Prof, of Church hist, in Zurich) : Glarean, sein Leben und seine Schriften. Frauenfeld, 1890 (pp. 136). Comp. also Geiger: Renaissance und Humanismus (1882), pp. 420-423, for a good estimate of Glarean as a humanist.
The canton Glarus with the capital of the same name occupies the narrow Liiiththal surrounded by high mountains, and borders on the territory of Protestant Ziirich and of Catholic Schwyz. It wavered for a good while between the two opposing parties and tried to act as peacemaker. Landammann Hans Aebli of Glarus, a friend of Zwingli and an enemy of the foreign military service, prevented a bloody collision of the Confederates in the first war of Cappel. Tliis is characteristic of the position of that canton.
Glarus was the scene of the first public labors of Zwingli from 1506 to 1516.^ He gained great influence as a classical scholar, poptilar preacher, and zealous patriot, but made also enemies among the friends of the foreign military service, the evils of which he had seen in the Italian campaigns. He established a Latin school and educated the sons of the best families, including the Tschudis, who traced their ancestry back to the ninth century. Three of them are connected with the Reformation, — JEgidius and Peter, and their cousin Valentin.
-^gidius (Gilg) Tschudi, the most famous of this family, the Herodotus of Switzerland (1505-1572), studied first with Zwingli, then with Glarean at Basel and Paris, and occupied important public positions, as delegate to the Diet at Einsiedeln (1529), as governor of Sargans, as Landammann of
1 See above, p. 23 sqq.
118 THE SWISS REFORMATION.
Glarus (1558), and as delegate of Switzerland to the Diet of Augsburg (1559). He also served a short time as officer in the French army. He remained true to the old faith, but enjoyed the confidence of both parties by his moderation. He expressed the highest esteem for Zwingli in a letter of February, 1517.^ His History of Switzerland extends from A.D. 1000 to 1470, and is the chief source of the period before the Reformation. He did not invent, but he embellished the romantic story of Tell and of Griitli, which has been relegated by modern criticism to the realm of innocent poetic fiction.^ He wrote also an impartial account of the Cappeler War of 1531.3
His elder brother, Peter, was a faithful follower of Zwingli, but died early, at Coire, 1532.^
Valentin Tschudi also joined the Reformation, but showed the same moderation to the Catholics as his cousin jiEgidius
1 In Zwingli's Opera, VII. 20 sq. See above, p. 3.
2 The full title of his history is : JEgidii Tschudii gewesenen Landammanns zu Glarus Ckronicon Helveticum oder griindliche Beschreibung der merkwiirdigsten Begegnussen loblicher Eidgenossenschaft, first printed in Basel, 1734, '36, in 2 large fol. vols. The continuation from 1470-1564 is preserved in Ms. in the monastic library at Engelberg. His graphic narrative of Tell, reproduced by John von Miiller and dramatized by Schiller, though disproved by modern criticism, will live in story and song. We may apply to it Schiller's lines : —
" Alles tciederhoU sich nur im Lebeti, Eioig jting ist nur die Phantasie : Was sich nie unci nirgends hat begeben. Das allein veraltet nie."
See Jakob Vogel: Egid. Tschudi als Staatsmarin und Oeschichtschreiber. Mit dessen Bildniss. Ziirich, 1856. Blumer : Tschudi als Geschichtschreiber , 187 i ("Jahrbuch des hist. Vereins des Kant. Glarus," pp. 81-100). Georg von Wyss : Die eigenhandige Handschrift der eidgenoss. Chronik des Aeg. Tschudi in der Stadt-Bibl. in Ziirich ("Neujahrblatt " of the City Library of Zurich for 1889). Blumer and Von Wyss give the best estimate of Tschudi. Goethe says that Tschudi's Swiss History and Aventin's Bavarian History are sufficient to educate a useful public man without any other book.
^ Published from MS. in the " Helvetica," ed. by Jos. Ant. Balthasar, vol. II. Aarau and Berne, 1826 (pp. 165 sqq.).
* See his letters to Zwingli of Dec. 27, 1529, and Dec. 15, 1530, from Coire. In Zwingli's Opera, VIII. 386 and 562.