Switzerland had broken loose from the empire in and here was plenty of fuel for Luther's spark. Ulrich Zwingli (b. 1484) was ordained priest in 1506 and soon distinguished himself as an opponent of moral abuses both in the Church and among the laity. In 1518 he succeeded in expelling the indulgence seller of St. Peter's from the canton of Schwyz; and was pro moted to the great minster of Zurich. Here his learning and zeal, aided by the strongly democratic tendencies of this city of ZUrich, made him into a combination of prophet, priest and poli tician.
The burghers of Zurich had long exercised a disciplinary control over their clergy which was far from usual ; and here also was an important printing press. Zwingli, in his campaign against the wholesale enlistment of young Switzers as mercenaries for foreign countries, was bold enough to preach also "that it is no sin to eat flesh on a fast day, though it is a great sin to sell human flesh for slaughter." This brought him into conflict with the bishop of his diocese (Constance). In 1522, by a custom general among the Swiss clergy, he contracted a connection with the widow of a citizen, and joined with ten other priests in a peti tion to the bishop against the law of celibacy, on the ground that this was commonly broken in Switzerland. In April 1524 he marned her publicly, in defiance of the Church.
Meanwhile the magistrates had arranged a public disputation between orthodox and innovators (Jan. 1523). More than 600 clergy and representative laity attended, and the magistrates decided in Zwingli's favour. In consequence of a second disputa tion in the autumn, all church pictures and images were abolished; presently the monasteries were disendowed, and their funds de voted to schools and the poor. The neighbouring canton of Lucerne sent to warn Zurich against its heresies ; threats were added, and Ziirich began to prepare for war. In 1525 a new form of liturgy was prescribed, severely puritanical; and in 1529 the Catholic worship was forbidden.
succeeded in creating a league of the greater Protestant towns, to which the five forest cantons replied by a "Christian Union" (April 1529). Each party was ready to ally itself with the for eigner; Ziirich with France, the Union with Austria. The Swiss confederacy was thus broken up into two opposing camps. The Catholics were unable to accept the full principle of mutual tolerance; and ZUrich also was aggressive and intolerant. The two armies faced each other at Kappel, but peace was patched up (June 1529). This was only a truce; they met again at Kappel, where Zwingli was defeated and slain (1531). The peace now made granted to each canton the choice of its own religion, and did much also to protect minorities. The country soon settled into much the same division which still obtains: Catholicism reigned mainly in the mountains and Protestantism in the more fertile lands and in the great cities.
Geneva.—Geneva (not yet in Switzerland) deserves separate mention: it owed everything to its neutral position and to the personality of John Calvin (q.v.). The Genevese had lived for centuries under a prince-bishop, though with a good deal of democracy in their civic constitution; thus State and Church were more closely interwoven here than in most other cities.
In 153o the city rebelled against its bishop; in 1534 it entered into a contract for joint citizenship with Protestant Berne; in 1536 it formally committed itself to Protestantism, and two months later Calvin settled in the city. He was a man of preco ciously wide and exact scholarship, bred in the law, and touched with inspiration from Erasmus and Luther at the age of (1533).