ZUINGLIUS BECOMES CURATE OF GLARIS.
At this time the office of pastor of Glaris having become vacant, Henry Goldli, a young courtier of the pope, and groom of the stable to his holiness, obtained the appointment from his master, and hastened with it to Glaris. But the Glarian shepherds, proud of the antiquity of their race, and of their battles for freedom, were not disposed to bow implicitly to a piece of parchment from Rome. Wildhaus is not far from Glaris; and Wesen, where Zuinglius' uncle was curate, is the place where the market of the district is held. The reputation of the young master of arts of Bâle had penetrated even into these mountains; and the Glarians, wishing to have him for their priest, gave him a call in 1506. Zuinglius having been ordained at Constance by the bishop, preached his first sermon at Rapperswil, read his first mass at Wildhaus on St. Michael's day, in presence of all his relations and the friends of his family, and towards the close of the year arrived at Glaris.
CHAP. III.
Love of War—Schinner—Pension from the Pope—The Labyrinth—Zuinglius in Italy—Principle of Reform—Zuinglius and Luther—Zuinglius and Erasmus—Zuinglius and the Elders—Paris and Glaris.
Zuinglius immediately engaged in the zealous discharge of the work which his vast parish imposed upon him. Still he was only twenty-two years of age, and often allowed himself to be carried away by the dissipation and lax ideas of his age. A priest of Rome he was like the other priests around him. But even at this period, though the evangelical doctrine had not changed his heart, Zuinglius did not give way to those scandals which frequently afflicted the Church.[624] He always felt the need of subjecting his passions to the holy rule of the gospel.
A love of war at this time inflamed the quiet valleys of Glaris where there were families of heroes—the Tschudis, the Walas, the Æblis, whose blood had flowed on the field of battle. The youth listened with eagerness to the old warriors when they told them of the wars of Burgundy and Suabia, of the battles of St. James and Ragaz. But alas! it was no longer against the enemies of their liberties that these warlike shepherds took up arms. They were seen, at the bidding of the kings of France, of the emperor, the dukes of Milan, or the holy father himself, descending from the Alps like an avalanche, and rushing with the noise of thunder against the troops drawn up in the plain.
SCHINNER.
A poor boy named Matthew Schinner, who was at the school of Sion in the Valais, (it was toward the middle of the latter half of the fifteenth century,) singing before the houses, as young Martin Luther shortly after did, heard himself called by an old man, who, being struck with the frankness with which the child answered his questions, said to him with that prophetic spirit with which man is said to be sometimes endowed when on the brink of the grave, "Thou art to be a bishop and a prince."[625] The expression sunk deep into the young mendicant, and from that moment boundless ambition took possession of his heart. At Zurich and Como the progress he made astonished his masters. Having become curate of a small parish in Valais, he rose rapidly, and being sent at a later period to ask from the pope the confirmation of a bishop of Sion, who had just been elected, he obtained the bishopric for himself, and girt his brow with the episcopal mitre. This man, ambitious and crafty, but often noble and generous, always considered any dignity bestowed upon him as only a step destined to raise him to some still higher dignity. Having offered his services to Louis XII, and named his price, "It is too much for one man," said the king. "I will show him," replied the bishop of Sion, offended, "that I am a man worth several men." In fact he turned towards pope Julius II, who gladly received him, and Schinner succeeded in 1510 in linking the whole Swiss confederation to the policy of this ambitious pontiff. The bishop having been rewarded with a cardinal's hat smiled when he saw that there was now only one step between him and the papal throne.
ZUINGLIUS' POEM, "THE LABYRINTH."