ABSTRACT
T he story of the beginning of the Reformation in Germany is almost exclusively the story of Luther’s own life, but at about the same moment a parallel movement was started in German Switzerland by one who would admit no indebtedness to Luther. Zwingli (1484-1531) was the son of well-to-do peasant parents, but his education was under the care of his uncle, the Rural Dean of Wesen, by whom he was put to school, and then sent to the University of Vienna. Here he came under the influence of the humanist, Wyttenbach, and was imbued with that love of the new learning that was to fill him with so ardent an admiration for Erasmus and to govern his whole career. It is from this point of view that Zwingli’s later work can best be understood. He had none of Luther’s moral strength—his own life was far from being without reproach—but he had a keen intellectual sincerity that laid bare to him all the abuses of the contemporary ecclesiastical system. Also he had a shrewd eye for practical abuses, and of these he had an early taste, for when in 1506 he was ordained to the priesthood and received the charge of Glarus, he found that he had to pay no less than a hundred gulden before he could enter upon his cure.
