Huldrych Zwingli

Life and work

Zwingli studied humanist scholarship, including Greek, which shaped his direct engagement with the New Testament text, before becoming a priest and eventually, in 1519, the people's priest at the Grossmünster in Zurich, where he began preaching systematically through books of the Bible rather than the traditional lectionary.

Zwingli led Zurich toward reform through public disputations rather than singular dramatic acts, persuading the city council in 1523 to abolish the Mass, remove images from churches, and adopt a simplified, scripture-centered form of worship, effectively founding the Reformed (as distinct from Lutheran) branch of Protestantism.

Zwingli and Luther met at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529 in an attempt to unify the Protestant movement but famously failed to agree on the nature of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper — Zwingli holding a symbolic, memorial view against Luther's insistence on Christ's real bodily presence — a division that has persisted between Lutheran and Reformed traditions.

Zwingli was killed in 1531 at the Battle of Kappel, fighting alongside Zurich's forces against Catholic cantons, one of the relatively few major Reformers to die in armed conflict.

Further reading

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Huldrych Zwingli