§ 130.9. The first Treaty of Cappel, A.D. 1529.—In the five forest cantons the Catholics had the upper hand, and there every attempted political as well as religious reform was relentlessly put down. Zürich and Bern could stand this no longer. Unterwalden now revolted, and found considerable support in the other four cantons, and the position of the cities became serious. The forest cantons now turned to Austria, the old enemy of Swiss freedom, and concluded at Innsbrück in A.D. 1529 a formal league with King Ferdinand for mutual assistance in matters touching the faith. Trusting to this league, they increased their cruel persecutions of the reformed, and burnt alive a Zürich preacher, Keyser, whom they had seized on the public highway on neutral territory. Then the Zürichers rose up in revolt. With their decided preponderance they might certainly have crushed the five cantons, and then all Switzerland would have surrounded Zwingli in the support of reform. But Bern was jealous of Zürich’s growing importance, and even many Zürichers for fear of war urged negotiations for peace with the old members of the league. Thus came about the First Treaty of Cappel in A.D. 1529. The five cantons gave up the Austrian league document to be destroyed, undertook to defray the costs of the war, and agreed that the majority in each canton should determine the faith of that canton. As to freedom of belief it was only said that no party should make the faith of the other penal. This was less than Zwingli wished, yet it was a considerable gain. Thurgau, Baden, Schaffhausen, Solothurn, Neuenburg, Toggenburg, etc., on the basis of this treaty, abolished mass, images, and altars.
§ 130.10. The Second Treaty of Cappel, A.D. 1531.—Even after the treaty the five cantons continued to persecute the reformed, and renewed their alliance with Austria. Their undue preponderance in the assembly led Zürich to demand a revision of the federation. This led the forest cantons to increase their cruelties upon the reformed. Zürich declared for immediate hostilities, but Bern decided to refuse all commercial intercourse with the five cantons. At the diet at Lucerne, the five cantons resolved in September, A.D. 1531, to avert famine by immediately declaring war. They made their arrangements so secretly that the reformed party was not the least prepared, when suddenly, on the 9th October, an army of 8,000 men, bent on revenge, rushed down on the Zürich Canton. In all haste 2,000 men were mustered, who were almost annihilated in the battle of Cappel on 11th October. There, too, Zwingli fell. His body was quartered and burnt, and the ashes scattered to the winds. Zürich and Bern soon brought a force of 20,000 men into the field, but the courage of their enemies had grown in proportion as all confidence and spirit departed from the reformed. Further successes led the forest cantons, which had hitherto acted only on the defensive, to proceed on the offensive, and the reformed were constrained to accept on humbling terms the Second Treaty of Cappel of A.D. 1531. This granted freedom of worship to the reformed in their own cantons, but secured the restoration of Catholicism in the five cantons. The defeated had also to bear the costs of the war, and to renounce their league with Strassburg, Constance, and Hesse. The hitherto oppressed Catholic minority began now to assert itself on all hands, and in many places were more or less successful in securing the ascendency. So it was in Aargau, Thurgau, Rapperschwyl, St. Gall, Rheinthal, Solothurn, Glarus, etc.
§ 131. The Sacramentarian Controversy, A.D. 1525-1529.[368]
Luther in his “Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” of A.D. 1520, had, in opposition to prevailing views, which made the efficacy of the sacraments dependent on the objective receiving without regard to the faith of the receiver, opus operatum, pressed forward the subjective side in a somewhat extreme manner. During the earlier period of his career as a reformer, and indeed even at a later period, as his letter to the men of Strassburg shows, he was in danger of going to the extreme of overlooking or denying the real objective and Divine contents of the sacrament. But decided as the opposition was to the scholastic theory of transubstantiation, and convinced as he was that the bread and wine were to be regarded as mere symbols, the text of Scripture seemed clearly to say to him that he must recognise there the presence of the true body and blood of Christ. His anxiety to avoid the errors of the fanatics, and his simple acceptance of the word of Scripture, led him to that conviction which inspired him to the end, that IN, WITH, and UNDER the bread and wine the true body and blood of the Lord are received, by believers unto salvation, by unbelievers unto condemnation.
Carlstadt (§ [124, 3]) had denied utterly the presence of the body and blood of the Lord in the sacrament. He sought to set aside the force of the words of institution by giving to τοῦτο an absurd meaning: Christ had pointed to His own present body, and said, “This here is My body, which in death I will give for you, and in memory thereof eat this bread.” When Carlstadt, expelled from Saxony, came to Strassburg, he sought to interest the preachers there, Bucer and Capito, in himself and his sacramental view. But Luther was not moved by their attempts at conciliation. Zwingli, too, took the side of Carlstadt. In essential agreement with Carlstadt, but putting the matter on another basis, Zwingli interpreted the words of institution, “This is,” by “This signifies,” and reduced the significance of the sacrament to a symbolical memorial of Christ’s suffering and death. In an epistle to the Lutheran Matthew Alber at Reutlingen in A.D. 1524 he set forth this theory, and sided with Carlstadt against Luther. He developed his views more fully in his dogmatic treatise, Commentarius de vera et falsa relig., A.D. 1525, where he characterizes Luther’s doctrine as an opinio non solum rustica sed etiam impia et frivola. Œcolampadius, too, took part in the controversy as supporter of his friend Zwingli when attacked by Bugenhagen, and wrote in A.D. 1525 his De genuina verborum Domini, Hoc est corpus meum, expositione. He wished to understand the σῶμα of the words of institution as equivalent to “sign of the body.” Œcolampadius laid his treatise before the Swabian reformers Brenz and Schnepf; but these, in concert with twelve other preachers, answered in the Syngramma Suevicum of A.D. 1525 quite in accordance with Luther’s doctrine. The controversy continued to spread.Luther first openly appeared against the Swiss in A.D. 1526 in his “Sermon on the Sacrament against the Fanatics,” and to this Zwingli replied. Luther answered again in his tract, “That the words, This is My body, stand firm;” and in A.D. 1528 he issued his great manifesto, “Confession in regard to the Lord’s Supper” (§ [144, 2], note). Notwithstanding the endeavours of the Strassburgers at conciliation the controversy still continued. Zwingli’s statement was the shibboleth of the Swiss Reformation, and was adopted also in many of the upland cities. Strassburg, Lindau, Meiningen, and Constance accepted it; even in Ulm, Augsburg, Reutlingen, etc., it had its supporters.—Continuation, § [132, 4].
§ 132. The Protest and Confession of the Evangelical Nobles, A.D. 1527-1530.
For three years after the diet at Spires in A.D. 1526 no public proceedings were taken on religious questions. The success of the Reformation however during these years roused the Catholic party to make a great effort. At the next diet at Spires, in A.D. 1529, the Catholics were in the majority, and measures were passed which, it was hoped, would put an end to the Reformation. The evangelicals tabled a formal protest (hence the name Protestants), and strove hard to have effect given to it. The union negotiations with the Swiss and uplanders were not indeed successful, but in the Augsburg Confession of A.D. 1530 they raised before emperor and empire a standard, around which they henceforth gathered with hearty goodwill.
§ 132.1. The Pack Incident, A.D. 1527, 1528.—In A.D. 1527 dark rumours of dangers to the evangelicals began to spread. The landgrave, suspecting the existence of a conspiracy of the German Catholic princes, gave to an officer in Duke George’s government, Otto von Pack, 10,000 florins to secure documents proving its existence. He produced one with the ducal seal, which bound the Catholic princes of Germany to fall upon the elector’s territories and Hesse, and to divide the lands among them, etc. The landgrave was all fire and fury, and even the Elector John joined him in a league to make a vigorous demonstration against the purposed attack. But Luther and Melanchthon pressed upon the elector our Lord’s words, “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” and convinced him that he ought to abide the attack and restrict himself to simple defence. The landgrave, highly offended at the failure of his project, sent a copy of the document to Duke George, who declared the whole affair a tissue of lies. Philip had begun operations against the elector, but was heartily ashamed of himself when he came to his sober senses. Pack when interrogated became involved in contradictions, and was found to be a thoroughly bad subject, who had been before convicted of falsehood and intrigues. The landgrave expelled him from his territories. He wandered long a homeless exile, and at last, in A.D. 1536, was executed by Duke George’s orders in the Netherlands. All this seriously injured the interests of the gospel. Mutual distrust among the Protestant leaders continued, and sympathy was created for the Catholic princes as men who had been unjustly accused.
§ 132.2. The Emperor’s Attitude, A.D. 1527-1529.—The faithlessness of the king of France and the ratification of the League of Cognac (§ [126, 6]) led to very strained relations between the pope and the emperor. Old Frundsberg raised an army in Germany, and the German peasants, without pay or reward, crossed the Alps, burning with desire to humiliate the pope. On 6th May, A.D. 1527, the imperial army of Spaniards and Germans stormed Rome. The so-called sack of Rome presented a scene of plunder and spoliation scarcely ever paralleled. Clement VII., besieged in St. Angelo, was obliged to surrender himself prisoner. But once again Germany’s hopes were cast to the ground by the emperor. Considering the opinion that prevailed in Spain, and influenced by his own antipathy to the Saxon heresy, besides other political combinations, he forgot that he had been saved by Lutheran soldiers. In June, A.D. 1528, at Barcelona, he concluded a peace with the pope and promised to use his whole power in suppressing heresy. By the Treaty of Cambray, in July, A.D. 1529, the French war also was finally brought to a conclusion. In this treaty both potentates promised to uphold the papal chair, and Francis I. renewed his undertaking to furnish aid against heretics and Turks. Charles now hastened to Italy to be crowned by the pope, meaning then by his personal attentions to settle the affairs of Germany.
§ 132.3. The Diet at Spires, A.D. 1529.—In the end of A.D. 1528 the emperor issued a summons for another diet at Spires, which met on 21st Feb., A.D. 1529. Things had changed since A.D. 1526. The Catholics were roused by the Pack episode, halting nobles were terrorized by the emperor, the prelates were present in great numbers, and the Catholics, for the first time since the Diet at Worms, were in a decided majority. The proposition of the imperial commissioners to rescind the conclusions of the diet of A.D. 1526 was adopted by a majority, and formulated as the diet’s decision. No innovations were to be introduced until at least a council had been convened, mass was everywhere to be tolerated, the jurisdiction and revenues of the bishops were in all cases to be fully restored. It was the death-knell of the Reformation, as it gave the bishops the right of deposing and punishing preachers at their will. As Ferdinand was deaf to all remonstrances, the evangelicals presented a solemn protest, with the demand that it should be incorporated in the imperial statute book. But Ferdinand refused to receive it. The Protestants now took no further steps, but drew up a formal statement of their case for the emperor, appealed to a free council and German national assembly, and declared their constant adherence to the decisions of the previous diet. This document was signed by the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, George of Brandenburg, the two dukes of Lüneburg, and Prince Wolfgang of Anholt [Anhalt]. Of the upland cities fourteen subscribed it.