§ 37. THE REFORMATION IN THE ORISONS. 143
license under the name of liberty. Not unfrequently congregations are deceived by foreign adventurers who impose themselves upon them as pastors.
The democratic autonomy explains the curious phenomenon of the mixture of religion in the Grisons. The traveller may pass in a few hours through a succession of villages and churches of different creeds. At Coire the city itself is Reformed, and the Catholics with their bishop form a separate town on a hill, called the Court (of the bishop).
There is in Graubiinden neither a State church nor a free church, but a people's church.^ Every citizen is baptized, confirmed, and a church member. Every congregation is sovereign, and elects and supports its own pastor. In 1537 a synod was constituted, which meets annually in the month of June. It consists of all the ministers and three representatives of the government, and attends to the examination and ordination of candidates, and the usual b.usiness of administration. The civil government watches over the preservation of the church property, and prevents a collision of ecclesiastical and civil legislation, but the administration of church property is in the hands of the local congregations or parishes. The Second Helvetic Confession of Bullinger was formally accepted as the creed of the Church in 1566, but has latterly gone out of use. Ministers are only required to teach the doctrines of the Bible in general conformity to the teachino' of the Reformed Church. Pastors are at liberty to use any catechism they please. The cultus is very simple, and the churches are devoid of all ornament. Many pious customs prevail among the people. A Protestant college was opened at Coire in the year 1542 with Pontisella, a native of Bregaglia, as first rector, who had been gratuitously educated at Zurich by the aid of Bullinger. With the college was connected a theological seminary for
1 A Volkskirche or Gemdndekirche, which embraces the whole civil community.
144 THE SWISS EEFORMATION.
the training of ministers. This was abolished in 1843,^ and its funds were converted into scholarships for candidates, who now pursue their studies at Basel and Ziirich or in German universities. In 1850 the Reformed college at Coire and the Catholic college of St. Lucius have been consolidated into one institution (Cantonsschule) located on a hill above Coire, near the episcopal palace.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Reformed clergy were orthodox in the sense of moderate Calvinism ; in the eighteenth century Pietism and the Moravian community exerted a wholesome influence on the revival of spiritual life.^ In the present century about one-half of the clergy have been brought up under the influence of German Rationalism, and preach Christian morality without supernatural dogfmas and miracles.
The Protestant movement in the Italian valleys of the Grisons began in the middle of the sixteenth century, but may as well be anticipated here.
§ 38. The Reformation in the Italimi Valleys of the Grrisons.
Vergerio.
I. P. DoM. Rosius DE Porta: Dissertatiohistorico-ecdesiastica qua ecclesiarum colloquio Vallis PrcegaUice et Comitatiis Clavennce olim comprehensarum Meformatio et status . . . expom'tur. Curiae, 1787 (pp. 56, 4°). His Historia Reformations Eccles. Rhaticaricm, Bk. II. ch. v. pp. 139-179 (on Vergerio). — Dan. Gerdes (a learned Reformed historian, 1698-1765) : Specimen ItalicB Reformatcf. L. Batav. 1765. — * Thomas McCrie (1772-1835, autlior of the Life of John Knox, etc.): History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italij. Edinburgh, 1827. 2d ed. 1833. Republished by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, 1842. Ch. VI., pp. 291 sqq., treats of the foreign Italian churches and the Reformation in the Grisons. — F. Trechsel: Die protest. Antitrinitarier, Heidelberg, 1844, vol. II. 64
^ The last professors of theology were Antistes Kind (my pastor), and Dr. Schirks, both able and pious men.
- On this movement see Munz, Die Briidergemeinde in Biinden, in " Der Kirchenfreund," Basel, Nos. 19-21, 1886. Johann Baptist von Albertini (d. 1831), one of the bishops and hymnists of the Moravians, and a friend of Schleiermacher, descended from a Biinden family.