§ 37. THE REFORMATION IN THE ORISONS. 137
with which Coire had close connections. Zwingli sent an address to the "three confederacies in Rhatia," expressing a special interest in them as a former subject of the bishop of Coire, exhorting them to reform the Church in alliance with Ziirich, and recommending to them his friend Comander (Jan. 16, 1525). ^ Several of his pupils preached in Flasch, Malans, Maienfeld, Coire, and other places as carinas 1524. After his death Bullinger showed the same interest in the Grisons. The Reformation passed through the usual difficulties first with the Church of Rome, then with Anabaptists, Unitarians, and the followers of the mystical Schwenkfeld, all of whom found their way into that remote corner of the world. One of the leading Anabaptists of Ziirich, Georg Blaurock, was an ex-monk of Coire, and on account of his eloquence called " the mighty Jorg," or " the second Paul." He was expelled from Ziirich, and burnt by the Catholics in the Tyrol (1529).
The Reformers abolished the indulgences, the sacrifice of the mass, the worship of images, sacerdotal celibacy and concubinage, and a number of unscriptural and superstitious ceremonies, and introduced instead the Bible and Bible preaching in church and school, the holy communion in both kinds, clerical family life, and a simple evangelical piety, animated by an active faith in Christ as the only Saviour and Mediator. Where that faith is wanting the service jn the barren churches is jejune and chilly.
The chief Reformers of the Grisons are Comander, Gallicius, Campell, and Vergerius, and next to them Alexander Salandronius (Salzmann), Blasius, and John Travers. The last was a learned and influential layman of the Engadin. Comander labored in the German, Gallicius and Campell in the Romansh, Vergerius in the Italian sections of the
1 The MS. of this exhortation is in the Archives of Zurich and was first printed in Joh. Jak. Simler's Sammlunri alter und neuer Urkunden zur Beleuchtung der Kirchengeschichte (1759), vol. I. 108-114.
138 THE SAVISS REFORMATION.
Grisons. They were Zwinglians in theology,^ and introduced the changes of Zurich and Basel. Though occupying only a second or third rank among the Reformers, they were the right men in the right places, faithful, self-denying workers in a poor country, among an honest, industrious, liberty-loving but parsimonious people. With small means they accomplished great and permanent results.
John Comander (Dorfmann), formerly a Roman priest, of unknown antecedents, preached the Reformed doctrines in the church of St. Martin at Coire since 1524. He learned Hebrew in later years, to the injury of his eyes, that he might read the Old Testament in the original. Zwingli sent him Bibles and commentaries. The citizens protected him against violence and accompanied him to and from church. The bishop of Coire arraigned him for heresy before the Diet of the three confederacies in 1525.
The Diet, in spite of the remonstrance of the bishop, ordered a public disputation at Ilanz, the first town on the Rhine. The disputation was begun on Sunday after Epiphany, Jan. 7, 1526, under the presidency of the civil authorities, and lasted several days. It resembled the disputations of Ziirich, and ended in a substantial victory of the Reformation, The conservative party was represented by the Episcopal Vicar, the abbot of St. Lucius, the deans, and a few priests and monks ; the progressive party, by several young preachers, Comander, Gallicius, Blasius, Pontisella, Fabricius, and Hartmann. Sebastian Hofmeister of Schailhausen was present as a listener, and wrote an account of the speeches. 2
Comander comjDOsed for the occasion eighteen theses, — an
^ With the exception of Vergerius, who vacillated between Calvinism and Lutheranism. See below, p. 154 (§ 38).
2 His report and Coniander's conclusions are printed in Fiisslin's Beitrage zur Kirchen- unci Reformationsgesch. des Schweitzer] andes, 1741, vol. I. 337-382. A fuller account is given by Campell in his Riitische Geschichte, II. 287-308 (Mohr's German ed.).