ABSTRACT
The federal theology movement, which revived the idea of covenant in the sixteenth century, emerged in the Rhineland area of German Switzerland, mainly the areas dominated by the cities of Zurich, Basel, Bern, and Schaffhausen, and in French-speaking Geneva, later the center of Calvinism, immediately upon the heels of the Lutheran Reformation. The heart of the new covenantal politics was to be found in the city republics of Zurich and Geneva, where religious reformation and political transformation went hand in hand. When Martin Luther opened the Reformation, however, the idea of covenant was still submerged within the Corpus Christianum. Zurich was the first free city in Europe to accept the Reformation and to make it the basis for its political community. Reformation initially brought disruption and civil war to the Helvetic Confederation as its members chose between Protestantism and Catholicism. The intensity of the Reformation was burned out after the mid-seventeenth century; covenant ideas remained but sank into the background.
