The Swiss were then the one free people of Europe. Republican government by popular magistrates prevailed in all the cantons. Liberty was not quite democratic, for the cantons ruled several subject provinces, and in the cities a somewhat aristocratic electorate held power; nevertheless there was no state in Europe approaching the Swiss in self-government. Though they were generally accounted the best soldiers of the {147} day, their military valor did not redound to their own advantage, for the hardy peasantry yielded to the solicitations of the great powers around them to enter into foreign, mercenary service. The influential men, especially the priests, took pensions from the pope or from France or from other princes, in return for their labors in recruiting. The system was a bad one for both sides. Swiss politics were corrupted and the land drained of its strongest men; whereas the princes who hired the mercenaries often found to their cost that such soldiers were not only the most formidable to their enemies but also the most troublesome to themselves, always on the point of mutiny for more pay and plunder. The Swiss were beginning to see the evils of the system, and prohibited the taking of pensions in 1503, though this law remained largely a dead letter. [Sidenote: September 13-14, 1515] The reputation of the mountaineers suffered a blow in their defeat by the French at Marignano, followed by a treaty with France, intended by that power to make Switzerland a permanent dependency in return for a large annual subsidy payable to each of the thirteen cantons and to the Grisons and Valais as well. The country suffered from faction. The rural or "Forest" cantons were jealous of the cities, and the latter, especially Berne, the strongest, pursued selfish policies of individual aggrandizement at the expense of their confederates.
As everywhere else, the cities were the centers of culture and of social movements. Basle was famous for its university and for the great printing house of Froben. Here Albert Dürer had stayed for a while during his wandering years. Here Sebastian Brant had studied and had written his famous satire. Here the great Erasmus had come to publish his New Testament.
But the Reformation in Switzerland was only in [Sidenote: 1521-9] {148} part a child of humanism. Nationalism played its rôle in the revolt from Rome, memories of councils lingered at Constance and Basle, and the desire for a purer religion made itself felt among the more earnest. Switzerland had at least one great shrine, that of Einsiedeln; to her Virgin many pilgrims came yearly in hopes of the plenary indulgence, expressly promising forgiveness of both guilt and penalty of sin. Berne was the theater of one of the most reverberating scandals enacted by the contemporary church. [Sidenote: The Jetzer scandal] A passionately contested theological issue of the day was whether the Virgin had been immaculately conceived. This was denied by the Dominicans and asserted by the Franciscans. Some of the Dominicans of the friary at Berne thought that the best way to settle the affair was to have a direct revelation. For their fraudulent purposes they conspired with John Jetzer, a lay brother admitted in 1506, who died after 1520. Whether as a tool in the hands of others, or as an imposter, Jetzer produced a series of bogus apparitions, bringing the Virgin on the stage and making her give details of her conception sufficiently gross to show that it took place in the ordinary, and not in the immaculate, manner. [Sidenote: 1509] When the fraud was at last discovered by the authorities, four of the Dominicans involved were burnt at the stake.
But the vague forces of discontent might never have crystallized into a definite movement save for the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli. [Sidenote: Zwingli] He was born January 1, 1484, on the Toggenburg, amidst the lofty mountains, breathing the atmosphere of freedom and beauty from the first. As he wandered in the wild passes he noticed how the marmots set a sentry to warn them of danger, and how the squirrel crossed the stream on a chip. When he returned to the home of his father, a local magistrate in easy circumstances, he heard {149} stirring tales of Swiss freedom and Swiss valor that planted in his soul a deep love of his native land. The religion he learned was good Catholic; and the element of popular superstition in it was far less weird and terrible than in Northern Germany. He remembered one little tale told him by his grandmother, how the Lord God and Peter slept together in the same bed, and were wakened each morning by the housekeeper coming in and pulling the hair of the outside man.
Education began early under the tuition of an uncle, the parish priest. At ten Ulrich was sent to Basle to study. Here he progressed well, becoming the head scholar, and here he developed a love of music and considerable skill in it. Later he went to school at Berne, where he attracted the attention of some friars who tried to guide him into their cloister, an effort apparently frustrated by his father. In the autumn of 1498 he matriculated at Vienna. For some unknown cause he was suspended soon afterwards, but was readmitted in the spring of 1500. Two years later he went to Basle, where he completed his studies by taking the master's degree. [Sidenote: 1506] While here he taught school for a while. Theology apparently interested him little; his passion was for the humanities, and his idol was Erasmus. Only in 1513 did he begin to learn Greek.
If, at twenty-two, before he had reached the canonical age, Zwingli took orders, and became parish priest at Glarus, it was less because of any deep religious interest than because he found in the clerical calling the best opportunity to cultivate his taste for letters. He was helped financially by a papal pension of fifty gulden per annum. His first published work was a fable. [Sidenote: 1510] The lion, the leopard, and the fox (the Emperor, France, and Venice) try to drive the ox {150} (Switzerland) out of his pasture, but are frustrated by the herdsman (the pope). The same tendencies—papal, patriotic, and political—are shown in his second book, [Sidenote: 1512] an account of the relations between the Swiss and French, and in The Labyrinth, [Sidenote: 1516] an allegorical poem. The various nations appear again as animals, but the hero, Theseus, is a patriot guided by the Ariadne thread of reason, while he is vanquishing the monsters of sin, shame, and vice. Zwingli's natural interest in politics was nourished by his experiences as field chaplain of the Swiss forces at the battles of Novara [Sidenote: 1513] and Marignano. [Sidenote: 1515]
Was he already a Reformer? Not in the later sense of the word, but he was a disciple of Erasmus. Capito wrote to Bullinger in 1536: "While Luther was in the hermitage and had not yet emerged into the light, Zwingli and I took counsel how to cast down the pope. For then our judgment was maturing under the influence of Erasmus's society and by reading good authors." Though Capito over-estimated the opposition of the young Swiss to the papacy, he was right in other respects. Zwingli's enthusiasm for the prince of humanists, perfectly evident in his notes on St. Paul, stimulated him to visit the older scholar at Basle in the spring of 1516. Their correspondence began at the same time. Is it not notable that in The Labyrinth the thread of Ariadne is not religion, but reason? His religious ideal, as shown by his notes on St. Paul, was at this time the Erasmian one of an ethical, undogmatic faith. He interpreted the Apostle by the Sermon on the Mount and by Plato. He was still a good Catholic, without a thought of breaking away from the church.
[Sidenote: October, 1516-December, 1518]
From Glarus Zwingli was called to Einsiedeln, where he remained for two years. Here he saw the superstitious absurdities mocked by Erasmus. Here, too, {151} he first came into contact with indulgences, sold throughout Switzerland by Bernard Samson, a Milanese Franciscan. Zwingli did not attack them with the impassioned zeal of Luther, but ridiculed them as "a comedy." His position did not alienate him from the papal authorities, [Sidenote: September 1, 1516] for he applied for, and received, the appointment of papal acolyte. How little serious was his life at this time may be seen from the fact that he openly confessed that he was living in unchastity and even joked about it.
Notwithstanding his peccadillos, as he evidently regarded them, high hopes were conceived of his abilities and independence of character. When a priest was wanted at Zurich, [Sidenote: January 1, 1519] Zwingli applied for the position and, after strenuous canvassing, succeeded in getting it.