A Brill Calendar: January 1

Zwingli and the Holy Writ

Few buyers of a ‘Comprehensive Encyclopaedia of Intellectual Traditions and Scholarship’ should read such a colossal tome cover to cover.

After digesting the feat of ‘Aasen, Ivar’ – a Norwegian linguist who designed one of the two official languages of his country – and the one of ‘Abauzit, Firmin’ – a Frenchman who saw his essay ‘Apocalypse’ published in Diderot’s ‘Encyclopédie’ – a straighforward quest from A to Z tends to be too intimidating; it is seldom that such perusal would reach ‘Zwingli, Ulrich’ (his Christian name also written as ‘Huldreich’).

This Swiss humanist (born at Sankt Gallen, on January 1, 1484 – died at Kappel, October 11, 1531) became pivotal in the Protestant Reformation in the ‘Confoederatio Helvetica’, where he was born. Unlike Luther’s German and Calvin’s French views & convictions, Zwingli’s Swiss ‘Weltanschauung’ didn’t result in separation. Also unlike them, Zwingli didn’t die in his bed, but on a battlefield as an army chaplain.

Before being ordained a Roman Catholic priest and before ‘Luther’ became a by-word in Europe, Zwingli had graduated in 1504 from Basel University, an institution still in its early decades. He was a warm-hearted pastor of his flock, with a taste for ‘bonae litterae’; Desiderius Erasmus found in him a younger, admiring correspondent.

Then, in 1516, in-between positions, Zwingli reached suddenly a new, evangelical understanding of Holy Writ. On his 35th birthday, January 1, 1519, a congregation assembled in the Grossmünster Church in Zürich heard the first of his series of superb and well-delivered homilies on the New Testament as it may inspire daily life and guide worldly matters; the first time he presented publicly the metamorphosis of his thought. True believers who gave Zwingli their enraptured attention must have been convinced of the idea and hope that this would be a Soul-lifting and Happy New Year!