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New Frontiers in History
The Swiss Reformation
The Swiss Reformation was a seminal event of the sixteenth century which created a Protestant culture whose influence spread across Europe from Transylvania to Scotland. Offers the first comprehensive study of the Swiss Reformation and argues that the movement must be understood in terms of the historical evolution of the Swiss Confederation, its unique and fluid structures, the legacy of the mercenary trade, the distinctive character of Swiss theology, the powerful influence of Renaissance humanism, and, most decisively, the roles played by the dominant figures, Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger. Marked by astounding creative energy, incendiary preaching, burning political passions, peasant revolts, and breath-taking scholarship, as well as by painful divisions, civil war, executions and dashed hopes, the story of the Swiss Reformation is told with extensive use of primary sources. Explores the narrative of events before turning to consider themes such as the radical opposition, church and community, daily life in the Confederation, cultural achievements and the Swiss place in the wider European Reformation world.
392 pages, Paperback
First published September 20, 2002
2 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Gordon
146 books28 followersTitus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History
http://divinity.yale.edu/gordon
bruce.gordon@yale.edu
Denomination: Presbyterian
A native of Canada, Bruce Gordon taught from 1994 to 2008 at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he was professor of modern history and deputy director of the St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. His research focuses on European religious cultures of the late-medieval and early modern periods, with a particular interest in the Reformation in German-speaking lands. He is the author of Calvin (Yale University Press, 2009), a biography that seeks to put the life of the influential reformer in the context of the sixteenth-century world. It is a study of Calvin’s character, his extensive network of personal contacts and of the complexities of church reform and theological exchange in the Reformation. The Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press, 2002) (an “Outstanding Publication” for 2003 by Choice Magazine) studies the emergence of the Reformation n the multi-lingual world of the Swiss Confederation and its influence across Europe in the sixteenth century. His book Clerical Reformation and the Rural Reformation (1992) examined the creation of the first Protestant ministry, which took place in the Swiss city of Zurich and its numerous country parishes. In addition, he has edited books on the development of Protestant historical writing, the relationships between the dead and the living in late-medieval and early modern society, the Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger, and, most recently, on biblical culture in the sixteenth century. He was the principal investigator of a major grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom on Protestant Latin Bibles of the Sixteenth Century. The project explores the new translations of the Old and New Testaments by Protestant scholars into Latin during the Reformation and the questions posed by these extraordinary works for our understanding of translation, authority, material culture, confessional identity and theological formulation. The monograph is currently being completed. He has started work for Princeton University Press on a study of the reception of Calvin’s Institutes from the Reformation to the modern world. His teaching includes a lecture course on Western Christianity from the early church to the scientific revolution, and seminars on the culture of death, sources and methods of religious history, the Reformation, Calvinism, and the Reformed tradition from Zwingli to postmodernism. He teaches in the Department of History and in Renaissance Studies and works with graduate students on a wide range of topics in early modern religious history. He is on the board of various publishing series: St Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Ashgate), Zürcher Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte (Theologischer Verlag Zürich), and Refo500 Academic Studies (Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht). He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 2012 received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (Presbyterian)
Read a feature article about Professor Gordon.
Education
B.A. (Hons) King’s College
M.A. Dalhousie University
Ph.D University of St. Andrews
Books
1. Shaping the Bible in the Reformation. Books, Scholars and Their Readers in the Sixteenth Century, ed with Matthew McLean (Brill, 2012).
2. Calvin. 1509‐1564 (Yale University Press, 2009)
3. Architect of Reformation. An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504‐1575, co-ed. (Baker Academic, 2004)
4. Translation and Edition of Hans R. Guggisberg, Sebastian Castellio. Defender of Religious Toleration (Ashgate Press, 2003)
5. The Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press, 2002)
6. The Place of the Dead in Late Mediaeval and Early Modern Europe, ed. with Peter Marshall (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
7. Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth‐Century Europe, 2 vols., ed. (Scolar Press,
http://divinity.yale.edu/gordon
bruce.gordon@yale.edu
Denomination: Presbyterian
A native of Canada, Bruce Gordon taught from 1994 to 2008 at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he was professor of modern history and deputy director of the St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. His research focuses on European religious cultures of the late-medieval and early modern periods, with a particular interest in the Reformation in German-speaking lands. He is the author of Calvin (Yale University Press, 2009), a biography that seeks to put the life of the influential reformer in the context of the sixteenth-century world. It is a study of Calvin’s character, his extensive network of personal contacts and of the complexities of church reform and theological exchange in the Reformation. The Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press, 2002) (an “Outstanding Publication” for 2003 by Choice Magazine) studies the emergence of the Reformation n the multi-lingual world of the Swiss Confederation and its influence across Europe in the sixteenth century. His book Clerical Reformation and the Rural Reformation (1992) examined the creation of the first Protestant ministry, which took place in the Swiss city of Zurich and its numerous country parishes. In addition, he has edited books on the development of Protestant historical writing, the relationships between the dead and the living in late-medieval and early modern society, the Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger, and, most recently, on biblical culture in the sixteenth century. He was the principal investigator of a major grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom on Protestant Latin Bibles of the Sixteenth Century. The project explores the new translations of the Old and New Testaments by Protestant scholars into Latin during the Reformation and the questions posed by these extraordinary works for our understanding of translation, authority, material culture, confessional identity and theological formulation. The monograph is currently being completed. He has started work for Princeton University Press on a study of the reception of Calvin’s Institutes from the Reformation to the modern world. His teaching includes a lecture course on Western Christianity from the early church to the scientific revolution, and seminars on the culture of death, sources and methods of religious history, the Reformation, Calvinism, and the Reformed tradition from Zwingli to postmodernism. He teaches in the Department of History and in Renaissance Studies and works with graduate students on a wide range of topics in early modern religious history. He is on the board of various publishing series: St Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Ashgate), Zürcher Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte (Theologischer Verlag Zürich), and Refo500 Academic Studies (Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht). He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 2012 received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (Presbyterian)
Read a feature article about Professor Gordon.
Education
B.A. (Hons) King’s College
M.A. Dalhousie University
Ph.D University of St. Andrews
Books
1. Shaping the Bible in the Reformation. Books, Scholars and Their Readers in the Sixteenth Century, ed with Matthew McLean (Brill, 2012).
2. Calvin. 1509‐1564 (Yale University Press, 2009)
3. Architect of Reformation. An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504‐1575, co-ed. (Baker Academic, 2004)
4. Translation and Edition of Hans R. Guggisberg, Sebastian Castellio. Defender of Religious Toleration (Ashgate Press, 2003)
5. The Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press, 2002)
6. The Place of the Dead in Late Mediaeval and Early Modern Europe, ed. with Peter Marshall (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
7. Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth‐Century Europe, 2 vols., ed. (Scolar Press,
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 24, 2015
For more than half a century from the 1520s to the 1570s, the rural backwater that was the Swiss Confederation found itself, rather unexpectedly, at the heart of the European Reformation. This was primarily down to the influence of one dominating figure, the Toggenburg preacher Huldrych Zwingli. Zwingli arrived in Zurich in 1519 and proceeded to combine radical sermonising with canny political networking, a combination that would prove decisive. He set the terms of the theological debate for the Swiss states and beyond, but he was holding too much together by sheer force of personality: after he was killed on the battlefield in 1531, things slowly but inevitably fell apart. By the mid 1570s, Zwinglianism had been subsumed in a wider Protestant culture that was dominated instead by the ideas of Calvin.
(We don't count Calvinism as Swiss, by the way. Calvin himself was French, and Geneva was essentially an independent republic – though it did become allied with the Confederation during this period.)
The basic narrative of the Swiss Reformation can be found in many other, general books, where it is usually treated (quite rightly) as part of a much broader European movement. What I wanted from this study was to get some idea of how ‘Swiss’ the ideas of Zwingli and Bullinger were – to what extent they arose from and reflected the socio-politico-geographical circumstances of the Swiss Confederation. Gordon has a go at addressing this question, and although his answer involves a lot of shrugging he does at least try to describe the main points of contemporary Swiss society in order that readers can reach their own conclusions. These sections are the most interesting, especially for non-specialists: the first chapter, which outlines the history of the Confederation and discusses some of the main intellectual and religious currents in sixteenth-century society; and the final two chapters, which reflect on ‘the culture of the Swiss Reformation’ in a much wider sense.
Some random observations, mostly for my own benefit:
Though Zurich was at the centre of the Swiss Reformation, it was Basel that was the main cultural and intellectual hotspot – actually, pretty much the only cultural and intellectual hotspot. Basel had the only Swiss university of any importance, and it was also a major printing centre. This is what attracted Erasmus, who lived there on and off from 1514 to 1525 and swore that the Froben printing house had the most beautiful Greek type in the world. Although he did his best to distance himself from the evangelical movement, Erasmus was clearly the godfather of the Swiss Reformation (bad metaphor, they hated godfathers); Zwingli approached theology as an identifiably Erasmian humanist, and his mastery of the ancient Biblical languages, his close reading of the original texts, his cultivation of a sodality of fellow-scholars – all these things Zwingli learned directly from Erasmus.
The Radical Reformation again emerges as the most interesting trend. The early Anabaptists followed Zwingli eagerly, and took him at his word: yes, we must live only by the word of the Bible – Zwingli himself just didn't go nearly far enough for them. Almost immediately there was a separate sensibility which leads directly to the Mennonites of Ontario, the Amish of Pennsylvania. It's one of the striking ironies of the Swiss Reformers that they came to prominence by standing against the bureaucratic structure of the Catholic Church, but almost immediately became incredibly clerical themselves, because of the need to define themselves against the radicals. (There is a novel set in this world that I really want to write – people meeting in secret by moonlight in obscure mountain pastures, dodging Catholics and Reformed authorities alike, heretics burnt on the shores of Lake Zurich, the primacy of newly-printed texts, the importance of the vernacular….)
On the evidence of this book and others like it, the Reformation was a TOTAL SAUSAGE FEST – I don't think a single woman is referred to by name. And yet there are clearly lots of stories to tell – many nuns abandoned their vows when they heard the Reformers' message and went off to get married, while others, their convents forcibly shut down, found themselves with no financial help and no social purpose. Priests' mistresses, who had before been tolerated, could now legally marry their partners and gain some legal protection. There are lots of things like that, where you get only a tantalising glimpse of what must have been going on in individual households and communities.
Gordon's style is pretty dry and academic, it must be said, but he's also synthesised a huge amount of research that is otherwise available only in German and/or in obscure minor journals. I'm grateful for it, and especially grateful for the many suggestions he gives for further reading, both among modern historians and among the contemporary scholars, chroniclers and dramatists of the sixteenth-century Swiss Confederation.
(We don't count Calvinism as Swiss, by the way. Calvin himself was French, and Geneva was essentially an independent republic – though it did become allied with the Confederation during this period.)
The basic narrative of the Swiss Reformation can be found in many other, general books, where it is usually treated (quite rightly) as part of a much broader European movement. What I wanted from this study was to get some idea of how ‘Swiss’ the ideas of Zwingli and Bullinger were – to what extent they arose from and reflected the socio-politico-geographical circumstances of the Swiss Confederation. Gordon has a go at addressing this question, and although his answer involves a lot of shrugging he does at least try to describe the main points of contemporary Swiss society in order that readers can reach their own conclusions. These sections are the most interesting, especially for non-specialists: the first chapter, which outlines the history of the Confederation and discusses some of the main intellectual and religious currents in sixteenth-century society; and the final two chapters, which reflect on ‘the culture of the Swiss Reformation’ in a much wider sense.
Some random observations, mostly for my own benefit:
Though Zurich was at the centre of the Swiss Reformation, it was Basel that was the main cultural and intellectual hotspot – actually, pretty much the only cultural and intellectual hotspot. Basel had the only Swiss university of any importance, and it was also a major printing centre. This is what attracted Erasmus, who lived there on and off from 1514 to 1525 and swore that the Froben printing house had the most beautiful Greek type in the world. Although he did his best to distance himself from the evangelical movement, Erasmus was clearly the godfather of the Swiss Reformation (bad metaphor, they hated godfathers); Zwingli approached theology as an identifiably Erasmian humanist, and his mastery of the ancient Biblical languages, his close reading of the original texts, his cultivation of a sodality of fellow-scholars – all these things Zwingli learned directly from Erasmus.
The Radical Reformation again emerges as the most interesting trend. The early Anabaptists followed Zwingli eagerly, and took him at his word: yes, we must live only by the word of the Bible – Zwingli himself just didn't go nearly far enough for them. Almost immediately there was a separate sensibility which leads directly to the Mennonites of Ontario, the Amish of Pennsylvania. It's one of the striking ironies of the Swiss Reformers that they came to prominence by standing against the bureaucratic structure of the Catholic Church, but almost immediately became incredibly clerical themselves, because of the need to define themselves against the radicals. (There is a novel set in this world that I really want to write – people meeting in secret by moonlight in obscure mountain pastures, dodging Catholics and Reformed authorities alike, heretics burnt on the shores of Lake Zurich, the primacy of newly-printed texts, the importance of the vernacular….)
On the evidence of this book and others like it, the Reformation was a TOTAL SAUSAGE FEST – I don't think a single woman is referred to by name. And yet there are clearly lots of stories to tell – many nuns abandoned their vows when they heard the Reformers' message and went off to get married, while others, their convents forcibly shut down, found themselves with no financial help and no social purpose. Priests' mistresses, who had before been tolerated, could now legally marry their partners and gain some legal protection. There are lots of things like that, where you get only a tantalising glimpse of what must have been going on in individual households and communities.
Gordon's style is pretty dry and academic, it must be said, but he's also synthesised a huge amount of research that is otherwise available only in German and/or in obscure minor journals. I'm grateful for it, and especially grateful for the many suggestions he gives for further reading, both among modern historians and among the contemporary scholars, chroniclers and dramatists of the sixteenth-century Swiss Confederation.
August 18, 2015
Bruce Gordon's survey of the Swiss reformation is a solid and necessary if somewhat dry and diffuse staple in the field. When it was published a decade ago, there was little comprehensive material on the Swiss Reformation in English. What did exist usually emphasized intellectual history and proceeded on a path from Zwingli to Calvin to Calvinism, obscuring the bulk of Swiss thought and practice in the first half of the 16th century. Gordon has set Zwingli and Zwinglianism back at the center of the story, insofar as there is a story. The Swiss Confederation was a loose collection of cities controlling rural hinterlands. Thus, reformation proceeded quite differently (or not at all) between cities, as well as between the cities and the rural areas. This makes for some painful reading in a few chapters, which retrace the same period city by city, but there is little alternative, and Gordon is to be commended for making this information available in one place. The last few chapters are thematic pieces of social and intellectual history, nicely complementing the primarily political-institutional focus of the book.
Major themes:
~ Charismatic preachers were central to the success of reformations. They succeeded in winning over popular support in the villages and key members of urban councils. The reformation impetus often came with significant grassroots support, even if the eventual direction taken was steered by existing power structures in the cities. Nevertheless, adopting reformation as soon as there was an evangelical majority meant that a significant minority of citizens opposed to the measures remained to offer resistance.
~ Anabaptists are presented as a reasonable outgrowth of Zwingli's teachings, particularly the opposition of flesh and spirit. Indeed, groups of more radical reformers cropped up in almost all the places the Swiss reformation took hold. They provided critical early support for reform measures but were eventually unsatisfied with, perhaps even betrayed by, the conservative institutional character of the Reformation. Both sides lost here. The Anabaptists, of course, suffered worse: marginalization, imprisonment, banishment, even execution. But the magisterial reformers alienated some of the most zealous supporters of reform, leaving them with an ambivalent populace.
~ Zwinglianism, not Calvinism, as the key to the first half-century of the Reformed churches. The later prominence of Calvin and Geneva, as well as perhaps the greater ecumenism of the Calvinist side of the Reformed churches, has led to an under-appreciation of Zwinglianism. Most of the first generation of Swiss reformers had personal ties to Zwingli, many through the University of Basle. Reforms were underway in all the major Swiss cities before Calvin came on the scene. Moreover, Geneva was an insignificant town on the edge of Bernese territory. Only gradually did it rise to prominence, largely through the success of the Genevan Academy, not founded until 1559. On the other hand, Basle with its university became an early intellectual hub of the Confederation. Zurich under Bullinger became a nexus of international reform; Bullinger's correspondence shows his hand in cementing reformation in England, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, and elsewhere.
~ The Reformation did not replace pre-existing political fault lines; it merely added another layer on top. Gordon excels at explaining how the varying geographical, political, even military pressures on cities contributed to the course reform took. The reader even gets hints at history from below, as we see peasants, merchants, and artisans blur the boundaries between territories erected by their more confessionally-sensitive magistrates.
~ The Reformation can be seen as a series of ambiguously successful experiments at social engineering. Reformers created new structures and repurposed old ones to carry out a line of morals reform stretching deep into the Middle Ages. A system of synods, rural deans, courts, and councils attempted to keep a closer watch over the lives of both city-dwellers and villagers. However, enforcement required the cooperation of the populace, which was intermittently rendered. Mandates for (sometimes almost daily!) church attendance and against traditional merry-making and participation in "superstitious" Catholic practices met with half-hearted obedience or even defiance.
Major themes:
~ Charismatic preachers were central to the success of reformations. They succeeded in winning over popular support in the villages and key members of urban councils. The reformation impetus often came with significant grassroots support, even if the eventual direction taken was steered by existing power structures in the cities. Nevertheless, adopting reformation as soon as there was an evangelical majority meant that a significant minority of citizens opposed to the measures remained to offer resistance.
~ Anabaptists are presented as a reasonable outgrowth of Zwingli's teachings, particularly the opposition of flesh and spirit. Indeed, groups of more radical reformers cropped up in almost all the places the Swiss reformation took hold. They provided critical early support for reform measures but were eventually unsatisfied with, perhaps even betrayed by, the conservative institutional character of the Reformation. Both sides lost here. The Anabaptists, of course, suffered worse: marginalization, imprisonment, banishment, even execution. But the magisterial reformers alienated some of the most zealous supporters of reform, leaving them with an ambivalent populace.
~ Zwinglianism, not Calvinism, as the key to the first half-century of the Reformed churches. The later prominence of Calvin and Geneva, as well as perhaps the greater ecumenism of the Calvinist side of the Reformed churches, has led to an under-appreciation of Zwinglianism. Most of the first generation of Swiss reformers had personal ties to Zwingli, many through the University of Basle. Reforms were underway in all the major Swiss cities before Calvin came on the scene. Moreover, Geneva was an insignificant town on the edge of Bernese territory. Only gradually did it rise to prominence, largely through the success of the Genevan Academy, not founded until 1559. On the other hand, Basle with its university became an early intellectual hub of the Confederation. Zurich under Bullinger became a nexus of international reform; Bullinger's correspondence shows his hand in cementing reformation in England, Poland, Hungary, Scandinavia, and elsewhere.
~ The Reformation did not replace pre-existing political fault lines; it merely added another layer on top. Gordon excels at explaining how the varying geographical, political, even military pressures on cities contributed to the course reform took. The reader even gets hints at history from below, as we see peasants, merchants, and artisans blur the boundaries between territories erected by their more confessionally-sensitive magistrates.
~ The Reformation can be seen as a series of ambiguously successful experiments at social engineering. Reformers created new structures and repurposed old ones to carry out a line of morals reform stretching deep into the Middle Ages. A system of synods, rural deans, courts, and councils attempted to keep a closer watch over the lives of both city-dwellers and villagers. However, enforcement required the cooperation of the populace, which was intermittently rendered. Mandates for (sometimes almost daily!) church attendance and against traditional merry-making and participation in "superstitious" Catholic practices met with half-hearted obedience or even defiance.
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December 4, 2012This is a very scholarly book and one aiming to describe the event that lead to and was the backdrop to the Swiss Reformation. For me, that is more used to read philosophical and theological rather than perhaps purely historical works, this was a rather slow read with much focus on facts and details. It is certainly a source book for anyone interested in Zwingli, Bullinger and other people that was influential in the making of the Swiss Reformation. The last couple of chapters are a little more reflective and too me more interesting.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews