RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Reformation
to the German cantons; the second, to the French; the third, to both jointly. Zwingli (q.v.) began his reformatory preaching against various abuses, at Einsiedeln, in 1516, and then, with more energy and effect, at Zurich, in 1519. At first he had the consent of the bishop of Constance, who assisted him in putting down the sale of indulgences in Switzerland; and he stood in high credit even with the papal nuncio. /But a rupture occurred in 1522, when Zwingli attacked the fasts as a human invention; and many of his hearers ceased to observe them. The magistrate of Zurich appointed public disputations in Jan. and Oct., 1523, to settle the controversy. On both occasions, Zwingli, backed by the authorities and the great majority of the people, triumphed over his papal opponents. In 1526 the churches of the city and the neighboring villages were cleared of images and shrines; and a simple mode of worship was substituted for the mass. The Swiss diet (like the German) took a hostile attitude to the Reformed movement, with a respectable minority in its favor. To settle the controversy for the republic, a general theological conference was held at Baden, in the Canton Aargau, in May, 1526, with Johann Eck (q.v.), the famous antagonist of Luther, as the champion of the Roman, and CEcolampadius of the Reformed cause. The result was in form adverse, but in fact favorable, to the cause of the Reformation, which was now introduced in the majority of the cantons, at the wish of the magistrates and the people, by QEcolampadius in Basel, and by Haller in Bern, also, in part, in St. Gall, Schaffhausen, Glarus, Appenzell, Thurgau, andtheGrisons; while in the French portions of Switzerland Guillaume Farel and Viret (qq.v.) prepared the way for Calvin. But the small cantons around the Lake of Lucerne, Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, and Zug, steadfastly opposed every innovation. At last it came to open war between the Reformed and Roman Catholic cantons. Zwingli's policy was overruled by the apparently more humane, but in fact more cruel and disastrous, policy of Bern, to force the poor mountaineers into measures by starvation. The Roman Catholics, resolved to maintain their rights, attacked and routed the small army of Zurich in the battle of Cappel, Oct., 1531. Zwingli, who had accompanied his flock as chaplain and patriot, met a heroic death on the field of battle; and CEcolampadius of Basel died a few weeks after. Thus the progress of the Reformation was suddenly arrested in the German portions of Switzerland, and onethird of it remains Roman Catholic to this day. 'But it took a new start in the western or French cantons, and rose there to a higher position than ever. Soon after this critical juncture, the great master mind of the Reformed Church — who was to carry forward, to modify, and to complete the work of Zwingli, and to rival Luther in influence — began to attract the attention of the public. * John Calvin (q.v.), Frenchman by birth and education, but exiled from his native land for his faith, found a new home, in 1536, in Geneva, where Farel had prepared the way. Here he developed his extraordinary genius and energy as the greatest theologian and disciplinarian of the Reformation, and made
Geneva the model church for the Reformed communion and a hospitable asylum for persecuted Protestants of every nation. His theological writings, especially the Institutes and Commentaries, exerted a formative influence on all Reformed churches and confessions of faith; while his legislative genius developed the Presbyterian form of government, which rests on the principle of ministerial equality, and of a popular representation of the congregation by lay elders. Calvin left in Theodore Beza (q.v.) a worthy successor, who, with Heinrich Bullinger (q.v.), the successor of Zwingli in Zurich, labored to the close of the sixteenth century for the consolidation of the Swiss Reformation and the spread of its principles in France, Holland, Germany, England, and Scotland.
3. France: While the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland carried with it the majority of the population, it met in France the united opposition of the court, the hierarchy, and popular sentiment, and had to work its way through severe trial and persecution. Many of the first professed Protestants were either put to death or sought safety in exile. It was only after the successful establishment of the Reformation in French Switzerland that the movement became serious in the neighboring kingdom. The first Protestant congregation was formed at Paris in 1555, and the first synod held in the same city in 1559. In 1561, at the theological conference at Poissy, Theodore Beza (q.v.) eloquently but vainly pleaded the cause of the Protestants before the dignitaries of the Roman Church, and there the name " Reformed," as an ecclesiastical designation, originated. In 1571 the general synod at La Rochelle adopted the Gallican Confession (q.v.), and a system of government and discipline essentially Calvinistic, yet modified by the peculiar circumstances of a church not in union with the State (as in Geneva), but in antagonism to it. The movement unavoidably assumed a political character, and led to a series of civil wars, which distracted France till the close of the sixteenth century. The Roman Catholic party, backed by the majority of the population, was headed by the dukes of Guise, and looked to the throne, then occupied by the house of Valois. The Protestant (or Huguenot) party, numerically weaker, but containing some of the noblest blood and best talent of France, was headed by the princes of Navarre, the next heirs to the throne. The queen-regent, Catharine, during the minority of her sons (Francis II. and Charles IX.), although decidedly Roman Catholic in sentiment, tried to keep the rival parties in check, in order to control both. But the champions of Rome took possession of Paris, while the Prince of CondiS occupied Orleans. The shameless and cold-blooded massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day, Aug. 24, 1572, disabled but did not annihilate the Protestant party, and the ascent to the throne of Henry of Navarre, who, after the assassination of Henry III. in 1589, became king of France as Henry IV., seemed to decide the triumph of Protestantism in France. But the Roman Catholic party, still more numerous and powerful, and supported by Spain and the pope, elected a rival head, and threatened to plunge the
Reformation