Reforming Priesthood in Reformation Zurich: Heinrich Bullinger’s End-Times Agenda [1 ed.] 9783666570926, 9783525570920

Citation preview

Jon D. Wood

Reforming Priesthood in Reformation Zurich Heinrich Bullinger’s End-Times Agenda

Reformed Historical Theology Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis in Co-operation with Emidio Campi, Irene Dingel, Elsie Anne McKee, Richard Muller, Risto Saarinen, and Carl Trueman

Volume 54

Jon D. Wood

Reforming Priesthood in Reformation Zurich Heinrich Bullinger’s End-Times Agenda

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

“The Humanities Facilitating Fund” awarded by The George Washington University and the Department of Religion

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.de. © 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting: 3w+p, Rimpar Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2197-1137 ISBN 978-3-666-57092-6

Contents

1 Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Preliminary Remarks on Christian Tradition as an End-Times Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 End-Times Idiom in the Development of Ancient Priesthood . 1.4 Late Ancient Foundation for Early Medieval Eschatology . . . 1.5 Resurgent Apocalypticism in the High and Later Middle Ages . 1.6 Apocalypticism through Renaissance Humanism and Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 The Peculiar Significance of the Zurich School of Eschatology .

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3 End-Times Interplay of Doctrine and Lifestyle . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Significance of the Two Foci of the Reformed Clerical Office . 3.2 Introduction to the Episcopi-Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The What and How of Doctrina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 The What and How of Vita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Differentiating Doctrina and Vita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Consolidating a Pan-Zurich Identity beyond Local Distinctions 3.7 Eschatologized Humanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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59 59 60 62 66 68 71 74

2 Clergy and Confessionalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Concerning Confessionalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Brief Introduction to the Sermones Synodales . . . . . . . . 2.3 Bullinger and the Cultivation of Zurich Eschatology . . . . 2.4 End-Times Idiom and its Political Impediments . . . . . . 2.5 Covenant as the Framework of Christian Society . . . . . . 2.6 Contextualizing Ministry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Eschatologized Confessionalizing: The Practicalities . . . . 2.8 Church-State Tension and the Zurich Identity after Kappel

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Contents

3.8 Clergy, Confessionalization, and a Reprise of the Exchange with Jud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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81 81 84 86 88 90 92 94 98 100

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101

5 Justification Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 (Re-)Sacralizing Zurich’s Clergy in Accord with Sacredness as Non-Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

105 105 118

6 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Abbrevations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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8 Bibliography . . . . Primary Sources . . Zurich Bibles . Other Works . Secondary Sources

139 139 139 139 142

4 Zurich Ministry From Prophethood to Priesthood . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Complications of Clerical ‘Priesthood’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 The Significance of Reviving the Priesthood . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Caveats to Bullinger’s Concept of Reformed Priesthood . . . . . 4.4 The Sacral Institution of Social Discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Communalization and Popular Concerns about Priesthood . . . 4.6 Early Evangelical Preference for the Term ‘Preacher’ . . . . . . . 4.7 Bullinger and the Re-Establishment of Priesthood . . . . . . . . 4.8 Reformed Priesthood as a Necessary Pillar of Zurich Civilization 4.9 Priesthood and the Urgency of Salvation History . . . . . . . . . 4.10 ‘Drunkenness’: An Illustration of the Eschatological Framework for Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1

Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

1.1

Preface

What era ever lacks for heralds of upheaval? Even beyond the conspicuous cultural legacy of Abrahamic prophets, examples abound. Demosthenes, an Athenian, denounced the fatal undertow of nascent Hellenism; Romans such as Cicero decried the decline of public morals and, more particularly, of the Senate; late ancient aristocrats fretted over the menacing advance of Christianity and of barbarians more generally, these being signs of awful times of cosmic significance. A later observer may cluck that the sky did not end up falling, for all the volume of prognisticators. Still, there is some grain of truth in dire prophecies; any end to the way things are involves transformative drama. Ends and reconfigured beginnings constitute all historical narrative. Even now, the state of things has once again endowed an End-Times idiom with currency. Media outlets are replete with warnings that remark upon any combination of subjects from climate change to the upheavals of race relations, gender politics, and international diplomacy. Even the outlook of religion altogether can raise alarms in the demographic wake of ‘nones’ who are increasingly detached from the establishments of prior generations. Of course, just because the sky has never yet fallen, this does not logically eliminate the possibility of some utmost calamity still to come. That is not the historian’s business. It is, however, germane to observe the fact that there is in any age a tendency to highlight cataclysmic possibilities, which seems to constitute a typically human way of expressing the experience of historical change. This lends itself in turn to caricature. An EndTimes way of speaking would seem to exclude sober thoughtfulness and complex engagement with the here and now. This phenomenon can leave an imbalanced legacy among readers/hearers, even where the heralds themselves operated with surprising nuance. The career of the sixteenth-century Swiss theologian Heinrich Bullinger illustrates again this fact that historical drama features rhetoric oriented around a sense of an end fraught with cosmic significance. His legacy also illustrates the

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Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

degree to which such a discourse can linger afterwards in caricatures that fail to convey the nuance of its native context. Bullinger worked as a Christian leader in an almost unimaginably unsettling era. Deeply held assumptions, attitudes, and the institutions that had constituted a more or less stable and meaningful world underwent dramatic reconfigurations – even among those purporting to preserve some erstwhile consensus. It must have been a bewildering time in which to live. Historians today know not to be too severe in assessing the apocalyptic recriminations and other exuberant images of doom lobbed by individuals and groups in the sixteenth century. End-Times urgency was never the private proclivity of any one party vis-à-vis others. Still, Bullinger has a reputation for some special measure of intensity in this kind of rhetoric. It is not an altogether unfair assessment. Even in his sixteenth-century context, Bullinger did utter notably frequent, stark dichotomies along with condemnations of an apocalyptic ‘Antichrist’ in the form of the Roman Papacy. There are, however, some facts that artificially skew, even caricature, Bullinger’s reputation. The peculiar confluence of printing presses and market forces have something to do with it. It may be fair to observe that Luther managed those phenomena somewhat more successfully than did Bullinger (cf. Pettegree: 2015). In any case, the market for Zurich theology in sixteenth-century England illustrates the disproportionate emphasis in the reception of Bullinger’s literary output. Of all the Zurich-based material that could have been translated for sixteenth-century English readers, the End-Times theme looms quite prominently.1 Bullinger’s vast exegetical oeuvre is reduced to a commentary on 2 Thessalonians. Sixteenth-century English book-buyers were advised that in this work they would see an account of “the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Antichrist, that is, of Mohammed and the Bishop of Rome” (Bullinger: 1538, title page; cf. HBBibl 1.82). At the culmination of Bullinger’s career, English readers would also have encountered his Hundred Sermons upon the Apocalypse (1573; HBBibl 1.355–356). With the exception of the important English translations of his Decades and a handful of other moral and political statements, Bullinger’s works in English implied an author almost obsessively concerned with the terrifying edge of history. It seems reasonable to consider that English printers and bookbuyers sampled from Bullinger’s works in order to meet demand for widespread interest in something promising to disclose the titanic significance and eternal ramifications of their own tumultuous days, along with some prospect of marketably salacious details of a demonic regime. This is just the sort of selective bias 1 It would take another study altogether to present the development of a commercialized appetite for eschatology in British print throughout the Reformation; for now, it is instructive merely to note the much more apocalyptic tone of John Knox when compared to his Swiss or Genevan colleagues.

Preliminary Remarks on Christian Tradition

9

in the Bullingerian tradition that requires special vigilance among subsequent generations of historians. Bullinger did notably communicate in an End-Times idiom, but it is also entirely possible to overstate that case in some ways that undermine the historical importance of such an idiom for Bullinger and for the Reformation more broadly. The idiom is no mere rhetorical excess of the age – the kind of stark discourse that might have met with commercial success, but which played little fundamental role in the actual work of building stable institutions of a nuanced worldview. A closer analysis of some key components of Bullinger’s printed œuvre and his private memoranda reveal ways in which his End-Times idiom permeated a surprisingly complex agenda in shaping lasting institutions. It is not the case that Bullinger ‘nevertheless’ achieved careful conceptual balance that helped to (re-)shape institutional leadership – as if he accomplished such things despite, or over against, his concerns for the decisive turning point of history. On the contrary, Bullinger’s broader eschatological thinking positively, crucially, and practically influenced institutional development. My hope is that this study can prove something of a test case that may in turn illuminate some undervalued features of Zurich Reformation and of Reformation as it unfolded in many varieties across all of Europe – and perhaps even across Christian tradition more broadly. I focus my analysis upon that telling institution of Protestant polity, the ordained ministry.

1.2

Preliminary Remarks on Christian Tradition as an End-Times Narrative

Reformers in many settings have derived much from the perennial Christian concern for transformation of the ages. Renaissance humanists certainly did so. The humanist narrative assumes that a supposedly barbarous ‘middle age’ is yielding at last to a miraculous resurgence in humane cultivation. Even the famous humanist dictum about returning to the sources – that is, revitalizing the best of an otherwise forgotten past – can be amenable to the Christian myth of final restoration of paradise. Erasmus shared the humanists’ typical disdain for febrile excesses of apocalypticism. He considered it retrograde to the civilizing agenda. But even Erasmus referred to the inquisitorial suppression of books as an apocalyptic manifestation of a world at once demonic and passé. This suppression was, he said, an act of “bow[ing] down to that beast” in contrast to “the glory of Christ, which is just beginning to blossom again at the present time as superstition and the futile but deadly old rites of mankind lose their force”

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Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

(Erasmus: 1993, 101).2 Incidentally, the eschatological influence on humanism continues even today – and even among avowedly non-religious groups, which commonly use a lexicon of aspirational utopia.3 Sixteenth-century humanists were not novel in imagining their cause as an epochal transformation. Christianity became a religion in its own right by elaborating on the theme of a divine plan for the end of the ages, involving Jesus as a history-fulfilling Messiah. Bernard McGinn has observed that “Christianity was born as an apocalyptic religion, whether or not New Testament scholars will ever be able to agree on how far Jesus himself was actually a preacher of the last times. This seems to be reason enough for historians of Christian thought to be concerned with the history of apocalyptic eschatology, both in terms of its definition…and its subsequent history” (1994, viii). Christian writings typically assert that Jesus’ death and resurrection already accomplished some sort of decisive change and that Jesus’ eventual Second Coming will consummate this transformation for the whole cosmos. Ancient Christians, for all their differences, defined the movement’s overall profile with the conviction that conduct in the present must reflect the light of an eschatological revelation – in other words, an apocalypse (cf. 1 Pet 1:10–20). The End-Times calculus did not entail quietism. Some of the most ancient Christian literature of the early second century, such as letters of Ignatius of Antioch or Didache, attest to End-Times fervor right alongside great concern for establishing and protecting the institution of episcopacy. Ancient Christian thinking and acting make less historical sense when isolated from that ancient sense of a transformative disclosure of divine purpose for the cosmos. This phase of antiquity has influenced all subsequent paths in the development of Christian movements. Any treatment of the social or institutional ramifications of Christianity must account for assumptions about some kind of transformation of history itself. Commenting upon the ancient emergence of the apocalyptic genre, McGinn notes that such writings “are products of a learned elite. Sociologically speaking, they appear to be tied to challenges to more traditional priestly authority by scribes with the skills to compose and interpret sacred writings” (1992, 6). Organizational principles of priesthood and prophetic literacy appear to be an ongoing concern wherever eschatological thinking takes shape in society. In other words, stark us-versus-them dichotomies that can be common in apocalyptic scenarios must not be read only as religious community-versus-world but also as indicative of a complex internal struggle to define rightly the institutional rela2 The reference to the ‘beast’ is a clear reference to Revelation (and therefore also to the trailblazing book of Jewish apocalypticism, Daniel). 3 Beyond the obvious connection to the humanist author of the original Utopia (Thomas More), note that the word humanist, which once described the spiritual-minded reformers of early modernity, has now come to imply materialist secularism.

Preliminary Remarks on Christian Tradition

11

tions of the community itself. If these principles were operative in Christian antiquity, they were doubly important in early modernity in light of humanist efforts to reclaim the best of literate antiquity. My research into End-Times idiom and associated changes to institutional priesthood contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of Reformation history, despite the narrow parameters of the test case of Heinrich Bullinger’s career in Zurich. Sensitivity to theological discourse must emphatically include varieties of End-Times idiom, rather than dismissing such to a periphery. Preference for more particularly celebrated (and/or less embarrassing) loci of theology can contribute to skews in the intellectual history. Even that most conspicuous Protestant doctrine of ‘justification by faith’ entails ramifications for institutional leadership that are lost to view without attention to the End-Times context. On the other hand, assumptions often embedded within theories of secularization or broader confessionalization can skew religious speech of historical persons to the level of mere superficiality. Attending to an End-Times idiom allows the historian to make a rather comprehensive assessment of thoughts, actions, and motivations of historical persons and groups. I hope to strengthen the case for coordinating aspects of intellectual and social history in ways that foster comprehensiveness, that fairly respect the expressions of past groups in their own sense of context, and that avoid slippage toward any denominational or secularist triumphalism. A brief explication of my intended use of the terms apocalyptic and eschatology may be helpful now. The technical term apocalyptic most fundamentally denotes a revealing of something otherwise hidden from view. It hearkens to a specific type of religious writing that developed among Hellenistic Jews awaiting final transformation of the age in the face of suffering, exile, and/or occupation. Often the seer of such a vision writes pseudonymously as a figure of biblical antiquity (such as Enoch or Daniel), but the target audience successfully perceives in this quasi-historical disclosure the key to its own circumstances. The Christian book of Apocalypse (or Revelation) does not employ pseudonymity, but it otherwise shares many features typical of the Jewish apocalyptic genre, including some explicit repurposing of the book of Daniel for the early Christian community of Asia. Not only does the initiated community see beyond coded tropes of the past to understand the references to the present, they also recognize that – all worldly signs to the contrary – they stand on the verge of a divine reversal of appearances that will vindicate them and bring judgment against their oppressors.4 In other words, apocalyptic as a genre is typically eschatological. Eschatology itself implies any theological/philosophical system attempting to 4 The Apocalypse of John similarly draws on the coded language and imagery of earlier biblical texts, even though it explicitly addresses the Christian churches of Asia Minor.

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Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

define an end, and therefore the punctuated sense, of all human experience. I intend to combine the eschatological and apocalyptic terms with my broader expression ‘End-Times idiom.’ I want to convey a comprehensive rationale, a worldview, emcompassing the deeply felt poetic and discursive theological convictions. Such a matrix encourages certain kinds of action within communities whose members consider themselves called to persevere in light of an imminent upending of history. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Christian apocalyptics as a genre is always eschatological, but the reverse is not necessarily so. Strictly speaking, eschatology concerns ‘last things.’ Finality can work in many ways and it need not involve disclosure or revealing of the sort of cosmic cataclysm and vindication commonly associated with the apocalyptic genre. Nonapocalyptic Christian eschatology usually appears in contexts in which violence against Christians has diminished.5 Without conditions of persecution, there may be less urgent need to speak in a coded way to preserve awareness of divine favor in a world of ostensible God-forsakenness. One prominently non-apocalyptic mode of construing decisive finality is so-called ‘realized eschatology,’ which emphasizes the transformative in-breaking of spiritual truths that upend the experience of the present. Ominous tropes such as broken seals and flying horsemen can be entirely allegorized and personalized. Realized eschatology nevertheless continues to transform the meaning of all things in the light of a defining point. The broad interpretive latitude of eschatology helps to explain the enduring importance of End-Times discourse in Christian traditions, despite the ups and downs of apocalypticism. Considering the great degree to which Renaissance and Reformation agents drew upon antiquity – including the distinctive contributions of ancient Christians in reconceiving an End-Times idiom – Bullinger’s agenda for priesthood takes on special significance. Bullinger engaged with his contemporary humanists within this longer story of Christian development. In contrast to caricatures that may exaggerate or otherwise mistake his own End-Times thought and action, Bullinger made a nuanced eschatology seem compatible with a sharp apocalyptics, all while shaping the institutional course of Protestant Zurich.

5 To be sure, a minority subgroup may perceive itself as persecuted – and thus go on to embrace apocalyptic rhetoric – even in a time hailed by other Christians for its peace and triumph.

End-Times Idiom in the Development of Ancient Priesthood

1.3

13

End-Times Idiom in the Development of Ancient Priesthood

End-Times idiom has always involved institutional structures. An early example appears in the second-century movement known as ‘New Prophecy’ (also known as Montanism after its charismatic leader, Montanus). This movement coalesced around claims of special revelation: the heavenly Jerusalem would soon descend among the faithful in Phrygia of Asia Minor. Montanus and his two female fellow prophets, Prisca and Maximilla, seem to have asserted a sort of prophetic class in conflict with the priestly establishment. Efforts arose within the network of churches to curtail perceived apocalyptic excesses. This conflict did not itself give rise to episcopacy, but it certainly did push that institutional development in new ways. It is also true that the Montanists defined their own institutional leadership as a kind of prophethood over against these bishops. This era is now widely regarded among historians as the crucible of ‘proto-orthodoxy.’ Bishops moved to sequester New Prophets from the demographic majority by dint of excommunication. Corresponding action against the threat posed by the prophets Prisca and Maximilla may also help explain some proto-orthodox retrenchment from female leadership of the sort mentioned a century earlier in the writings of the Apostle Paul.6 Furthermore, the leaders of proto-orthodox episcopacy expressed critique of the New Prophets through some rather critical reception of the book of Revelation (that is, the Apocalypse) (McGinn: 1992, 18). Circumstances grew even more, not less, fraught when the institutions of the Roman Empire came to favor Christianity. This time of transition deeply influenced ongoing Christian eschatological ways of thinking, particularly with respect to church and state. In the course of the fourth century, prior visions of a cataclysmic end to Roman government could now carry overtones of outright sedition against God’s providential hand. Eusebius of Caesarea, a Constantinian apologist, confidently extolled the present Christian culmination of the ages. In this light, it makes sense that the embarrassing phenomenon of apocalyptics receded. Eusebius did not go quite so far as to reject the book of Revelation outright, but neither did he find it as firmly canonical as Paul’s epistles.7 Other fourth-century bishops, such as Cyril of Jerusalem and John Chrysostom, were 6 In the indisputably Pauline Letter to the Romans, for example, Paul not only refers to a woman serving as a deacon (Phoebe, in Romans 16:1), but also to a female apostle (Junia, in Romans 16:7). 7 After listing the four Gospels, Acts, the Pauline epistles, 1 John, and 1 Peter, Eusebius writes in 3.25 of his Ecclesiastical History: “To these may be added, if it is thought proper, the Revelation of John…. These are classed as Recognized Books.” In 3.39, Eusebius clarifies that the author of Revelation is not John the Evangelist, but rather a certain Asian presbyter named John. Cf. Eusebius: 1989, 88f, 101f. Irena Backus overstates Eusebius’ supposed reluctance to place Revelation within the canon (2000b, 5f).

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Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

not so magnanimous. In the wake of opposition to Montanist New Prophecy and in defense of the structures of Christian empire, the book of Revelation (with its apocalyptic challenge to the institutional structures) barely retained a place in the Christian canon. Eschatology more broadly also continued to present difficulties for Christian institutional life. Again, it is significant that the perceived excesses of a ‘prophetic’ sect galvanized the development of the ‘priestly’ episcopal structure of proto-orthodoxy.

1.4

Late Ancient Foundation for Early Medieval Eschatology

Perhaps because of the weaker presence of Montanism in the West, Westerners upheld the apostolic authorship of the book of Revelation more consistently than Eastern Christians did. In fact, an important Western interpretive tradition flourished around the book.8 This is not to say that straightforward apocalypticism was a constant, but the acceptance of Revelation (with all its dramatic images and themes) shaped an enduring Western legacy (McGinn: 1983, 269). Late antique contributions by Tyconius, Augustine, and Jerome provided a stable foundation for Western elaboration. This conceptual matrix endured until the High Medieval transformation around 1100. To overlook this late ancient and medieval background would be to miss critical aspects of later Renaissance and Reformation developments. Tyconius wrote amidst upheavals of fourth-century North Africa. His writings are no longer extant, but his influence may be seen in quotations and references among later Christian thinkers. Tyconius was a Donatist partisan. As a regional minority opposed by the Roman Empire and the episcopal authorities favored by that state, Donatists could have been expected to echo the sharp apocalypticism of New Prophecy. Montanists had prophesied concerning an imminent descent of God’s kingdom down from heaven. Tyconius, however, articulated a distinctly non-millennialist interpretation of Revelation. For Tyconius, the ‘thousand years’ of Revelation 20 did not stand for an imminent age of worldly perfection; rather, it concerned an indefinite span of all history of the institutional church. Further unlike Montanism, Donatism did not develop into conflict between Christian prophets versus Christian priesthood/episcopacy. In fact, the essential point of Donatists’ dissent regarded the rigorous purity of authentic episcopacy. Donatists defined themselves through their clerical structure in opposition to the perceived corruption of the Roman church. In this vein, Tyconius considered the apocalyptic ‘millennium’ as the period of the ‘first Resurrection’ of Christ’s body, 8 For more on the wide-ranging role of apocalyptics in medieval culture, see, for example, Emmerson: 1992, 293–332.

Late Ancient Foundation for Early Medieval Eschatology

15

defined ecclesiologically (Fredriksen: 1992, 28).9 The case of Donatism illustrates some important facts of church conflict and development in an eschatological mode. Such contexts do not always break into simplistic camps of supporters versus detractors of apocalypse, or of prophets versus priests. An embattled minority may espouse apocalyptic dissent that still vigorously defends institutional episcopacy. In a Western context that largely assumed the genuine apostolic Johannine authorship of Revelation together with Johannine epistles, Tyconius linked the term ‘Antichrist’ with imagery of the beast(s). This was more than an interesting aside; it supplied Tyconius’ optic for all of Scripture, and through it, all of human experience.10 He established seven interpretive rules, the first of which identified Christ with his body as the Church and the seventh of which identified Satan with his body as the anti-Church (the corpus diaboli) (Backus: 2000b, xiii, xv). He made no use of the sort of literal millennium emphasized among earlier apocalyptic interpreters, but he retained the eschatological and even apocalyptic vision of history as two warring camps. For Tyconius, the ‘Antichrist’ was not an identifiable individual or group, and not even principally the wicked pagans, but rather all the wicked (especially among ostensible Christians) who persecuted the true church defined by the ritual purity of its priesthood. Tyconius considered it a preeminent biblical truth that the final phase of human history was presently underway; in his view, this served to elevate the importance of institutional agency in the here and now. True believers who upheld authentic episcopacy faced off against the Lamb’s beastly counterfeit (cf. Rev 13:11). Augustine famously hammered against the Donatist movement in North Africa, and yet he assimilated much of Tyconius’ thinking. Circumstances did favor a growing sense of eschatological urgency. By Augustine’s later adulthood, many Western imperial Christians found themselves under real or threatened persecution at the hands of Germanic Arian Christians (themselves a legacy of an earlier era of the Roman Empire that had favored semi-Arianism). The context does bear a certain likeness to the travails of earlier Donatists. Some of Augustine’s peers gravitated to the hope and vindication of apocalypticism. That Augustine did not take an apocalyptic stance in the mode of earlier doomsdayers has had enormous implications for Western history. Following Tyconius, Augustine highlighted the non-literal millennium.11 He explicitly linked this ‘millennium’ with the entire indeterminate period of Church history between Christ’s 9 For the textual basis of the term ‘first resurrection,’ see Revelation 20:5–6. 10 The popular assumption that the ‘Antichrist’ is a prominent character in the book of Revelation testifies to the entrenched Western conflation of Revelation with Johannine texts elsewhere in the Christian Bible. The term ‘Antichrist’ (or ‘antichrists’) does not appear at all in Revelation. It is only found in 1 John 2:18 and 22, 1 John 4:3, and 2 John 1:7. 11 N.b. Book 20 of his City of God.

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Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

first and second Advents.12 Augustine would become one of the most influential theological writers in the Western tradition, and his eschatology prompted countless discourses through future centuries on the nature of the church (including its organization, its clerical staff, and its relation to political structures). Jerome, Augustine’s contemporary, supplied another editorial touch to what became the dominant eschatological matrix of medieval Western Christendom. A Christian bishop named Victorinus of Pettau (or Poetovia) had been martyred in approximately the year 304 during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. As one of the last martyrs of pagan Rome, Victorinus had left a commentary on Revelation that offered the millennial consolation of apocalypticism. Through Jerome’s mediation, however, this millennium underwent an allegorical transformation (Matter: 1992, 38f).13 The thousand years referred no longer to a future period of cataclysm, but rather to the ethical life of faith transforming experience in the here and now. With increasing coherence, Western Christians conceived of ‘church’ in terms of an End-Times opposition of the corporate bodies of Christ and Devil defined by competing clerical institutions. They envisioned an otherwise apocalyptic ‘millennium’ in allegorized service to the collective church and to each constituent soul. This interpretive approach appears in such diverse authors as Primasius and Bede. This more or less definitive vision among early medieval Western Christians featured eschatology without some of the sharper edges of apocalyptics. Early medieval Western Christians believed that the events of their lives punctuated a single era of the ‘first resurrection.’ There is no significant body of literature speculating about phases of human history proceeding through eras symbolized by apocalyptic bowls, seals, or the like.14 The book of Revelation and the related apocalyptic materials throughout Scripture were no longer a sourcebook of historical predictions, but they remained a guide to Christian existence by providing spiritualized insight into Christ’s reign as exercised through the institutional Church.

12 See, e. g., Book. XX.8 in Augustine: 1984, 911. 13 It is not surprising that Jerome, who spent a considerable portion of his life in Eastern Christendom, would have assimilated the ethicized allegorizing so typical of late ancient Eastern Christians, including the enormously influential legacy of Origen. 14 This mentality of living in an indeterminate ‘millennium’ may have a great deal to do with the fact that early medieval scribes generally produced chronicles rather than analytical histories.

Resurgent Apocalypticism in the High and Later Middle Ages

1.5

17

Resurgent Apocalypticism in the High and Later Middle Ages

The period around the year 1100 was vibrant and vexed. Sharper aspects of apocalypticism returned the fore in Western Christianity.15 Most germane to the present study was the growing influence of monastic reformers, especially mendicants. Robert Lerner has asserted that the scholastic need for instructional tidiness amidst confusion contributed to a newly historicized approach to Revelation (1992, 55). Perhaps so, and perhaps the economic boom and urbanization of the era gave some new gravitas to traditionally monastic ideals of ‘evangelical’ (and counter-cultural) collective poverty. Apocalypticism became conspicuous within theological discourses articulated by scholastics at emergent universities. This likely served as the most popularly accessible idiom of scholasticism itself. The glossa ordinaria in the early twelfth century already illustrates the desire of theological commentators to stretch and organize the predictive capacity of Revelation. By 1329, for example, Nicholas of Lyra treated Christian history not in the customary way, as an indeterminate span following the Resurrection, nor even as an earthly fulfillment begun at Constantinian Nicaea. To his mind, Revelation spoke of specific events surrounding his own fateful days (Backus: 2000b, xvi). The scholastics’ tidy didactic groupings sharpened reaction to some wide-ranging anxieties then gripping Western Christendom. In the late eleventh century, Pope Gregory VII had sought to reform moral and administrative aspects of Christian existence, but concomitant tendencies toward papal supremacy only exacerbated church-state difficulties. Pope Gregory’s tumultuous demise was not an encouraging omen. Shortly thereafter, popes promoted Crusading conquests in the hope that they could harness (or at least distract) the passions then distressing European realms. Whatever accomplishments Crusaders may have achieved, they certainly did not bring peace to Christendom. Already in the early twelfth century, competing blocs put forward simultaneous claimants to the papacy, an office now believed to be more determinative than ever in matters of salvation. Western Christians clung to a hope that seemed to be emerging from just the other side of their current turmoil (McGinn: 1978, 157). A critical voice of organizational sense (and hope) in this time of transition was Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202). His colossal influence through Christendom exceeds what one might expect from a small monastic enclave in Calabria. Joachim achieved celebrity in his own time. Like Augustine long before him, he agreed that the apocalyptic ‘millennium’ ought not to be read in any literal sense, but rather as an indeterminate ‘plenitude.’ Nevertheless, Joachim also characterized that plenitude as a discrete historical period identified as the ‘age of the 15 A convenient sampling of this cultural development may be found in McGinn: 1998.

18

Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

Son,’ which itself had succeeded the prior (Old Testament) ‘Age of the Father.’ Giving expression to the peculiar hopes and frustrations of his own time, Joachim turned new attention to the imminent period that would follow the present age of the church. Augustine may have spoken correctly in a certain sense about the clerical church, but Joachim asserted that the term millennium would best describe an era of human history to begin after the overthrow of the Antichrist (Lerner: 1992, 57–60). Joachim read Revelation as the promise of an ‘age of the Holy Spirit.’ He understood the angel of Revelation 7:2 to convey a message about an eschatological quasi-pope who would lead the faithful through a transformative cataclysm of apocalypse. This eschatological pope would inaugurate the new spiritual age by abolishing institutional clergy, the very institution in which papacy had theretofore played such a crucial role. In the coming ‘Age of Spirit,’ clerical leadership would be replaced altogether by ‘spiritual men’ (McGinn: 1989, 228). Even though this millennial age would probably only last about six months before Judgment would introduce eternal rest, Joachim’s return to a species of apocalyptics gave ample opening for elaboration and speculation (Lerner: 1992, 57ff; Backus: 2000b, xvii). Christendom between 1200 and 1500 teemed with efforts to pinpoint signs of the times, to anticipate antichrists, and to prepare for the unfolding of the apocalypse. The new mendicant orders of Dominicans and Franciscans understood their role in history with reference to Joachim’s Age of Spirit. Joachim had, after all, described the coming age as led by ‘spiritual men’ of precisely two sorts – preachers and contemplatives. The correlation is obvious, with a Dominican Order of Preachers on the one hand and a Franciscan order that produced mystics such as Bonaventure on the other. The Franciscans in particular elaborated upon Joachite themes. Alexander Minorita already exemplified this tendency in the early decades of the order’s development in the 1200s. He shared Joachim’s historicizing bent, yet with some differences in the details. Rather than an indeterminate plenitude of time, Alexander articulated a Franciscan notion of time in which precisely one thousand years were to pass between the establishment of Christendom under Constantine and Pope Sylvester and the projected end of that era in 1326.16 Another Franciscan, Peter John Olivi (d. 1298), agreed with the literal millennium comparable to the Joachite ‘Age of the Son,’ but he placed more detailed emphasis than did Alexander Minorita on the coming Age of the Spirit. In his own reading of Revelation, Olivi determined that the future age would last for 600 or 700 years, rather than the roughly six-month period envisioned by the Cala16 On the apocalypticism of Alexander Minorita, especially its relation to Joachite influence, see Schmolinsky: 1991.

Resurgent Apocalypticism in the High and Later Middle Ages

19

brian abbot. Given the increasingly bitter hostilities between more and less rigorous factions of the order, Olivi sensed the threshold of the third age marked by the rise of the Antichrist. He seems to have been the first to identify this antichrist explicitly as an amalgamation of emperor and pope in the role of the ‘two beasts’ of Revelation 13 (Backus: 2000b, xviii).17 Western Christendom entered yet another stage of infamous turmoil when the papal court relocated from Rome to Avignon between 1309 and 1377.18 The papacy’s increasingly centralized, and increasingly French, administration drew more and more critical attention, and many observers found that its weighty claims were not balanced by concomitant saintliness. The outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France aggravated tensions. Yet another Franciscan prophet, John of Rupescissa (or Jean de Roquetaillade, d. ca. 1365), summed up the apocalyptic fears of many when he elaborated his thoughts about an imminent antichristian climax.19 Rupescissa argued largely on the basis on Revelation 20. He predicted specific timeframes: in 1366 the Antichrist (emperor and pope) would rage, but by 1369 a sort of anti-Antichrist (a Franciscan pope) would crown a good emperor of Christendom (a king of France) and thereby introduce millennial perfection (McGinn: 1978, 170; cf. also Lerner: 1992, 66f). Rupescissa agreed with the literal view of the millennium, but unlike certain Franciscan forebears, he located the precise thousand years not in the quasi-Augustinian sense of church history post-Resurrection or even postConstantine. For Rupescissa, the exclusive reality of the ‘millennium’ concerned the other side of the advent of an apocalyptic angel-pope. In the tumultuous later phases of medieval history, many Franciscans incurred suspicion as eccentric prophets, and in some cases even as outright heretics. Nevertheless, their message changed Christian Europe. The Great Schism of competing anti-popes (a depressing epilogue to the era of Avignon papacy) underscored the widespread comprehensibility of foreboding and of dread. Even the resolution of a reunified papal institution achieved by the Council of Con17 Although most Franciscans seem to have continued to identify the ‘two beast’ Antichrist as a combination of emperor and pope, by the early fourteenth century, Ubertino de Casale even identified the antichristian office as composed of two papal beasts, Popes Boniface VIII and Benedict XI. 18 One should not forget that the Black Death occurred in this period. Estimates vary, but perhaps as much as forty percent of the total European population was lost to plague alone. The corresponding horrors of famine and war added to the toll. 19 Anything described as ‘antichristian’ in contexts such as this conveys more than the general phenomena of opposition to Christianity. It is a specific theological-apocalyptic notion of the work of a mythic figure known as the Antichrist who, together with assembled demonic forces, engages in open warfare on the Christian Church at the culmination of human history. Thus, ‘antichristian’ as used in the present work connotes a particular sense of ‘anti-Christian.’

20

Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

stance in the early fifteenth century hardly silenced apocalyptic speculations. Sporadic identifications of popes as ‘sons of perdition’ (cf. 2 Thess 2:3–4) reached full bloom in the late medieval (largely Franciscan) apocalyptic antichristologies (McGinn: 1989, 221–51).20 Using the book of Revelation as a lens for viewing all of Scripture and even of the signs of their own times, the people of Western Christendom anticipated cataclysm, and a new world.

1.6

Apocalypticism through Renaissance Humanism and Reformation

Observers of the Renaissance may assume that here arose an era of humancentered optimism that defined itself by reacting against medieval apocalypticism. Scholarship itself is sometimes complicit in giving this impression, especially when historians develop certain variations of the secularization thesis.21 Yes, excesses – particularly among the more radical offshoots of mendicancy – had left ‘a general aura of unease’ about the book of Revelation (Backus: 2000b, xviii). And yes, any reader of the arch-humanist satire Praise of Folly correctly concludes that Renaissance literati revolted against the rottenness they associated with ‘medieval’ Christendom. Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to consider the Renaissance an about-face from an End-Times worldview. Distinctly eschatological implications appear vigorously, if implicitly, in the humanists’ fondness for satire as a genre. Satire is a medium not of simple mockery, but of the reversal of expectations. Humanist satire promoted a vision of transformation wherein the first are last and the last are first. This reflects humanist interest in classical satirists such as Lucian, but it is also highly amenable to the Christian apocalyptic key that opens an otherwise hidden experience of truth. In this and other respects, humanism did influence 20 See especially McGinn’s conclusion on 250f: “The pastor angelicus was saintly in his poverty of life – the great contrast between him and the worldly popes of his era. But the real demonstration that he was indeed the final saint rested on his miraculous powers to do what no one else had done or would ever be able to do before the end of this age, that is, to crown the Last Emperor and thus achieve perfect concord between the two pillars of Christendom, and then, with his aid, to defeat the enemies of Christ, to reform the Church and restore it to pristine poverty and piety, to unite the Eastern and Western Churches, to regain Jerusalem, to convert the Jews and even the Saracens. This was quite a task! It could only be done by a very special saint. And it would only need to be done once.” 21 The Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt originated the secularization thesis in his 1860 tome, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. The thesis has been modified and criticized in many respects since then, but its influence may be perceived to linger until even very recently. It is evident, for example, in the way that Brad Gregory argues that Protestantism necessarily, even if involuntarily, culminated in the radical secularizing of European culture (cf. Gregory: 2012).

Apocalypticism through Renaissance Humanism and Reformation

21

incipient confessional conflicts among Protestants, Catholics, and Anabaptists; and here, too, ‘antichristology’ (albeit variously construed) is one of the more conspicuous, abiding legacies of medieval End-Times discourse. Early modernity is an era that does not make historical sense without the medieval EndTimes matrix of radical transformation, which could even overturn traditional institutions of the church. Everyone hoped for new life in the corpus Christianum (McGinn: 1989, 223). As the centerpiece of their agenda to retrieve the best from antiquity – and thereby to circumvent the supposed worst of the Middle Ages – humanists developed new approaches to their greatest ancient source, the Christian Bible. This was no mere scholarly enterprise, but a vigorous effort to revitalize Christian culture. As proponants of cultural renewal, humanists abhorred the sophistries of scholastics as much as the enormities of non-university-based apocalypticists. While it can be said that humanists focused on the Pauline subset of the Christian Bible, they did also make important claims about the book of Revelation. Erasmus openly criticized Western traditions for placing Revelation on a par with the rest of Scripture. Comments in Eusebius and other ancient testimonies corroborated Erasmus’ stylistic evaluation: John of Revelation was simply not the same author as John the Evangelist. Apostolic authorship had been a mainstay of canonicity in the West, so this observation was quite contentious. By his 1522 edition of Scriptural Annotations, Erasmus even wondered if the apocalyptic vision of a millennium bore traces of ancient Christian heresies. It would be understandable if Erasmus also had in mind certain late medieval apocalypticists when making such claims. As for the book of Revelation, the best that Erasmus could do was to suggest finally that the consensus of the church was enough to preserve canonicity. Even if Revelation was not, according to his own tastes, quite as refined as the other books of Scripture, Erasmus sought to rescue Revelation from the wild-eyed visionaries who threatened to demolish the institutional matrix of Christendom (Backus: 2000b, 6). It is worth remembering, too, that humanists articulated hope of radical renewal while still relying on established patrons such as popes and/or political protectors. Martin Luther knew Erasmus’ opinions on these matters. Though never a humanist himself, Luther seems to have shared some similar reservations about Revelation. Compared to Erasmus, he focused more on the book’s supposed theological weakness than on the question of apostolic authorship. Ironically, the late medieval apocalypticism that had aroused negative attention to the book of Revelation now emerged again when the cause of Reformation ran up against an increasingly hostile papacy. Previous condemnations of papal corruption (from spiritual-Franciscan and/or Wycliffite sources) again became urgently relevant. Luther himself wrote a new preface for an old Wycliffite work reprinted in Wittenberg in 1528. In this preface, he revived some elements of the apocalyptic

22

Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

identifications of the pope as Antichrist.22 Luther did not adopt the Franciscan vision of an angel-pope and/or a Joachite third world-age, but he clearly borrowed some themes of Revelation mediated through medieval apocalyptic traditions. The rise of the papal Antichrist suggested to him the end of the ‘thousand years,’ the imminent march of marauding Turks in a papal retinue (Gog and Magog), and the coming of the Final Judgment. In such respects, Luther saw his own efforts to reform Christianity within an End-Times matrix.23 The Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli also had qualms about Revelation. This may not be surprising for someone affiliated more strongly with Erasmian humanism than was Luther. And yet Zwingli, too, found himself vindicating the book of Revelation in some important ways in the course of ecclesiastical conflict. Contra Zwingli and his colleagues, traditionalist polemicists had argued that the self-proclaimed ‘evangelicals’ – otherwise noted for asserting a strictly biblical standard – were hypocrites. For all their biblical rhetoric, Zwingli and others revealed – so went the polemic – their sinister identity in muttering against the received text of the Vulgate, including the book of Revelation.24 Traditionalists defended papal institutions and doctrines by asserting their own biblical high ground, drawing proof texts pointedly from Revelation. The scene of the ‘24 elders’ in Revelation 5:8–10 is one such example. Whereas evangelical reformers scorned the practice of invoking saints, here was a biblical justification for just such devotion. In the pivotal Zurich disputations of 1523, Zwingli came prepared to address such bones of contention. Zwingli appears to have overcome a degree of humanist reluctance toward Revelation in order to develop and defend theological arguments in his conflict with the papal institution. Apocalypse served as a matrix for a variety of important Zwinglian assertions. Zwingli shared the opinion of many ancient authorities and many humanistic contemporaries who had argued that Revelation was the work of someone other than John the Evangelist. Nevertheless, he continued to affirm that the book remained canonical because it met criteria of authenticity applied to everything biblical; it characterized the community of faith as worshiping God alone. The true Church of Revelation avoided the idolatry that comes with conflating God and creation. Contrary to his polemical detractors, Zwingli argued that the passage in Revelation 5 concerning 24 elders did not establish a warrant for the 22 This was a reprint of a treatise by Wycliffe’s associate, John Purvey, now titled Commentarius in apocalypsin ante centum annos aeditus (1528). Of course, in certain contexts Luther had already begun referring to popes as ‘antichrists’ as early as 1520. 23 Instead of consisting of pope and emperor, Luther’s vision of the traditional antichristological tandem seems to consist of pope and Turks. Cf. Backus: 2000b, 7–11. 24 Ironically, Erasmus was usually lumped together with other evangelicals in this vein of propapal polemics, even though Erasmus himself went to increasingly great lengths to differentiate himself from the evangelical partisans.

The Peculiar Significance of the Zurich School of Eschatology

23

traditional notion of saintly intercession, but rather depicted the worship that God alone receives from all the blessed (ZW 1, 294f).25 Zwingli appealed to Revelation against claims of prerogatives being reserved to special saints in heaven or, for that matter, to ordained priests on earth. He likened the ‘indelible character’ supposedly conferred in the sacrament of priestly ordination to an antichristian ‘mark of the beast’ (ZW 1, 415).26 Zwingli agreed with the prevalent opinion of scholarship concerning Johannine authorship, but he also positively invoked the book as a reflection of proper theology, practice, and institutional structure. He also perceived a juxtaposition of Roman hierarchy and evangelical ministry that intimated the peculiar, pivotal place of reformation ‘in the last times’ (in den lezten zyten).

1.7

The Peculiar Significance of the Zurich School of Eschatology

Zwingli’s vindication of Revelation illustrates some of the defining features of the Zurich Reformation. Among the evangelical hotspots, Zurich proved especially fecund territory in developing an End-Times idiom. Collegial leadership in the movement to reform Zurich’s territorial church operated within an exegetical matrix with strong dependence upon End-Times themes of Revelation, Daniel, Malachi, and Matthew. Notwithstanding historians’ broader profile of the Reformation in the Rhineland, including pervasive apocalyptic themes of Anabaptism as well as the upheavals of 1525, it remains valid to distinguish a discrete ‘Zurich school.’ Irena Backus has focused scholarly attention upon Zurich’s significance in this view of exegetical history (cf. 2000a; 2000b). Building upon her contributions, I intend to clarify more of the positive correlation between EndTimes idiom and the distinctive establishment of Zurich’s institutional framework.

25 The correct day in Zwingli’s title, “Uslegen und gründ der schlussreden oder artikel durch Huldrychen Zwingli, Zürich uf den XIX [sic] tag jenners im MDXXIII jar usgangen,” should be the 29th. The twentieth article concerns God as the sole giver of gifts in His own name. Zwingli quotes his opponents’ claim that the ‘24 elders’ appear to pray on our behalf. Zwingli at first marshals certain opinions (ancient and modern) more critical of the book of Revelation. He adds, however: “Blybe apocalypsis, wie es mag,” and he goes on to point favorably to the image of prayer as the act of all the blessed who worship God alone. Zwingli also points to a supposed homily by Augustine that argues similarly on the basis of Revelation against appeals for the intercessory prayers of godlike saints. 26 The 61st article concerns “recent [literally: in these last times – in den lezten zyten] claims of a special priestly character that Scripture does not justify.” Zwingli says that ministry is an office, not a mark of self-referential privilege: “Es sye denn, daß sy sich des characters begeben wellind, mit dem die diener des untiers bezeichnet werdend. Apoc. XIII.16. and XIV.9.”

24

Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

In Wittenberg, eschatological and/or apocalyptic elements played a much more limited role in building social institutions. Luther famously emphasized anti-papal antichristology, but this did not entail specifically End-Times corollaries for positive reconfiguration of institutional leadership. Melanchthon, for his part, edited a work of world history with eschatological ramifications in 1532, but the treatise served primarily astrological purposes. The Melanchthoninspired industry of practica (essentially almanacs) focused attention on the dialectic of reading through faith to grasp nature’s signs of imminent cosmic breakdown. This practice did not necessitate any eschatologically motivated positive reworking of institutional life (Barnes: 2004, 131–53). Only in the build-up to the Schmalkaldic War did Lutherans begin to write with more reliance on a composite picture drawn from Daniel 7 and Revelation. Even then, they indicated no clear vision for a new society in the here and now (Backus: 2000a, 64–67). Developments in the independent city-state of Geneva also illustrate, by way of contrast, the End-Times idiosyncrasies of Zurich. Calvin never wrote or preached on Revelation and he took a rather critical stance toward the Johannine epistles featuring rhetoric of the Antichrist.27 While he did write a commentary on Daniel in 1561, Calvin steadfastly refused to grant any precise eschatological significance whatsoever to the vision of beasts in Daniel 7. He also opposed the use of Daniel as a direct key to interpreting the book of Revelation. Calvin interpreted Daniel’s prophecies without recourse to papal and/or Islamic antichrists; for him, Daniel’s prophetic reach extended at most to the time of Julius Caesar, and thus lacks direct relevance for discussions of world history after Christ’s first Advent or for an approaching Second Coming (Backus: 2000a, 69– 72). Calvin’s application of biblical End-Times rhetoric had more to do with humanistic appeals to ancient precedents than it did to any templates of an imminent transformation of Christendom.28 Notwithstanding Zwingli’s humanistic qualms about the book of Revelation, early evangelical Zurich quickly became a center of Scriptural interpretation 27 In his 1581 Commentary on Revelation, Nicolas Colladon claimed to have private knowledge of Calvin’s fondness for the book, despite the latter’s steadfast refusal to treat Revelation in any public way. Colladon’s claim is at best difficult to verify, and it probably reflects an effort to give a luster of orthodoxy to a then new direction among Calvinist writers. 28 Calvin’s close friend and colleague, Theodore Beza, published a new Latin edition of the New Testament in 1557 that included annotations defending the canonicity and clarity of Revelation. To some extent, this may reflect the influence of exegetical writings that already had been coming out of Zurich. But Beza did not wander far from Calvin; he utterly rejected any connection to an eschatological millennium in the book of Revelation. Beza’s primary goal was not a constructive eschatology, but the more academic desire to disprove Erasmus’ negative insinuations regarding Revelation’s place in the Christian canon. See Backus: 2000b, 27.

The Peculiar Significance of the Zurich School of Eschatology

25

with an unusually robust End-Times emphasis. As Walter Meyer has demonstrated, Zwingli developed clear eschatological language with institutional ramifications, especially in and after his 1523 works such as Auslegen und Gründe der Schlußreden or Von götlicher und menschlicher grechtigheit. Meyer observes that Zwingli, as the people’s priest – especially in comparison to Luther the professor – would have naturally shown great interest in the details of church and state institutions (1987, 57f, 108). For Zwingli, the collective realm of corpus Christianum was the area where human righteousness correlated with (but never merely ‘relatively’ embodied) the absolute, eschatological telos of divine righteousness. The already-completeness of divine righteousness was precisely the eschaton, the always outside-of-self point of reference necessary for any evangelical soteriology. Absolute divine righteousness supplied a hope of that which is not yet realized. From a berth of complete otherness, this divine righteousness nevertheless illuminated progress in human righteousness within the here and now. The specific here and now of eschatological hope and of progress toward final blessedness is the corpus Christianum, the institutional coordination of institutions of church and state (Meyer: 1987, 215). Zwingli’s death – itself a nearly apocalyptic shock to many Swiss evangelicals – did not diminish this interpretive trend in Zurich. Already by 1542, Leo Jud had prepared a popular paraphrase of Revelation. Its publication was widely influential, in part because this particular paraphrase was inserted into some editions of Erasmus’ Paraphases, even though the Dutch humanist himself had deliberately excluded Revelation (Backus: 2000b, 29f). Jud did not make much of the typical identifications of the pope as Antichrist and he avoided millennial speculation but did utilize End-Times aspects of Scripture in order to orient the community in its proper profile of worship. The erudite Zurich scholar Theodore Bibliander lectured on Revelation in 1543–1544 and collected his thoughts in a 1545 publication titled Relatio fidelis. Bibliander did not oppose Jud’s pastoral emphasis on spiritual formation, but he took a more academic approach. He defended Revelation’s canonicity on the grounds of what he took to be the clarity of its content and its apostolic authorship (contra the opinion of earlier humanists, including Zwingli). Bibliander also, quite significantly, read Revelation as a source of insight for categorizing world history. Here one may note a direct legacy of the later Middle Ages integrated into the constitutive framework of Swiss Protestantism. There are remnants of apocalypticism – Joachite and/or Spiritual Franciscan – in Bibliander’s perception that the corpus Christianum stands in a pivotal, final phase of human history. Working out his own modified interpretive vision of the End Times, Bibliander identified the angel of Revelation 20 not in the tradition of the Franciscan angel-popes, but as heralding the establishment of a literal millen-

26

Situating Reformation Zurich within the End-Times Idiom of Christendom

nium by the ministry of Paul the apostle (Backus: 2000b, 99).29 A summary of his schema may be sketched as follows. The papal antichrist first arose as a usurper in the Carolingian period, 666 years after John the Evangelist wrote his Revelation. This antichrist was unleashed even more fully following a literal millennium of church history, that is, in the era of the Gregorian papacy and the Crusades.30 Next, the papal antichrist was re-bound somewhat in 1429 by the resolution of the Great Schism, 666 years after the outbreak of popes in the Carolingian period. Bibliander asserted that in 1429, humanity entered its final phase before the Last Judgment. Zwingli’s successor as presiding minister among the Zurich clergy, Heinrich Bullinger, received with much appreciation the contributions of his colleagues to the eschatological interpretive trend. The Zurich school of spiritual, pastoral, political, and historical elaborations evidently appealed to him; Bullinger himself already had a history of discussing Scripture’s End-Times imagery.31 Bullinger’s famous In Apocalypsim…conciones centum (Hundred Sermons upon the Apocalypse) was printed in 1557 with an explicit dedication to persecuted evangelical exiles, for whom apocalyptic consolation seemed particularly appropriate. In this work, Bullinger not only thanked Bibliander for his insightful lectures several years earlier, but also stated that the book of Revelation had incited his own diligent study from youth onward. As one early English translation rendered his words: I have verely loved this booke from my youth upward. I have gladly red in it, and bestowed much labour, there upon, observing what thinges it had out of the bookes, of the prophets, and how the prophesies hereof did agree with the other prophesies of the prophets, and doctrine of the Apostles. I have searched finally, after the capacity of my sklender wit, divers stories, which I thought to make for the opening of the sence of this prophecie. I have searched also the opinions of other expositours: And have diligently 29 Here again, we see the typical Reformational position that the Church rightly exists in a dynamic ministry of proclamation, rather than as a self-referential corps of priests insisting on their own ‘indelible character.’ 30 There is some irony in the fact that Bibliander and Bullinger agreed that the ‘beast had been loosed’ around 1100 – a time that actually corresponds with a discernible sea-change in Western Christendom. A modern historian might even use similar words – metaphorically, of course – to signify the sudden, emphatic rise of an apocalyptic mentality in the wake of visionaries like Joachim. On a technical note, the lower-case ‘antichrist’ in this context intends to convey the sense of a series of papal avatars of the one apocalyptic Antichrist. 31 Bullinger lectured on Thessalonians as a young teacher in Kappel in 1526, and he published a short treatise on Daniel as early as 1530. Defense of Reformational doctrine appears always to have flourished in a fundamentally eschatological framework in Bullinger’s mind. This discourse must not be consigned to the peripheral status of an anti-Romanist polemic, nor can eschatology operate in a theological/academic sphere devoid of political ramifications. For Bullinger, a sense of the peculiar place and time of humanity informed all of the details of his vocation.

The Peculiar Significance of the Zurich School of Eschatology

27

compared howse hold matters, which are done now in our tyme, with this narration of John: by all the which things, and chiefly being ayded by the helpe of God which I called for, I have gathered such things as I now do communicate to the godly readers. (1573, Biii; cf. HBBibl 1.356)

Though not a native Zuricher, Bullinger fit well within its distinctive, evangelical context. The remainder of this study explores the important, and often complex, ways in which Bullinger aided the establishment of Protestant Zurich by means of an End-Times idiom. The institutional aspect is of primary concern, especially as it involves the relations of individuals to community, of church to government, of the baptized faithful to the wider world, and, most particularly, of the priesthood of all believers to the institutional subset of ordained ministers.

2

Clergy and Confessionalization

2.1

Concerning Confessionalization

The research here underway concerns the connection of End-Times idiom with a reconfiguration of institutional leadership, particularly of ecclesiastical leadership. Institutional re-imagining is a conspicuous interest across much scholarship at the confluence of medieval, modern, Renaissance, and Reformation studies. Religious, political, philosophical, and cultural discourse combined then in extraordinary ways, and remarkable discoveries accelerated urgency. Some felt exhilaration together with those optimistic early humanists. Others sensed an ambivalence of hope and dread. For yet many others, outright fear predominated. Would all these dramatic changes overwhelm society’s very viability? Recurring nightmares about Ottoman invasion – not by any means a mere phantasm of improbability – exacerbated the danger of internal disarray. Every group on the map had something to say about social cohesion; usually one group’s ideal was its rivals’ worst dystopia. To study institution-building is to attempt to discern how people sought to protect and nurture a common good. Visions for social organization in the sixteenth century became quite variegated. Social blocs sometimes emerged as recognizable nation-states; at other times different political outcomes developed. Despite formal diversity, there was a trend toward consolidation and demarcation. Bullinger’s EndTimes agenda played a part within this Europe-wide phenomenon. This process of recalibrating institutional matrices throughout the corpus Christianum (i. e., Christendom) forms a history that cannot be told without theological language. This is not surprising, considering the extent to which early modern Europe was engaged in conversation about its Christian identity, including the place of Christendom in eschatological visions of history. Major confessional blocs – Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Roman Catholic – emerged as confessional points of reference amidst the array of political entities. Ernst Walter Zeeden famously established twentieth-century scholarly

30

Clergy and Confessionalization

lines of thinking on this subject. He characterized Reformational ‘confessionbuilding’ as the spiritual and organizational consolidation of the various Christian confessions that came out of the rupture of [medieval] faith into halfway stable churches in terms of their dogma, constitution, and religious-moral lifestyle. At the same time, confessionbuilding bespeaks the external activity of such consolidated entities in the Christian world of early modern Europe, their self-defense via diplomacy and politics against incursion from without, and also their formation through extra-ecclesiastical powers, especially the power of the state.32 (Zeeden: 1985, 69)

Religious blocs did not develop along a trajectory of modernizing progress from one confession to the next, but rather in roughly simultaneous parallel paths across Christendom (Brady: 2004, 6). This is the pattern of confessionalization. Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling developed this historical perspective while elaborating upon earlier works by Ernst Walter Zeeden along with other works by Gerhard Oestreich on the social dimension of public moral discipline (cf. Reinhard: 2004; Schilling: 1994).33 The confessionalization thesis involves both intellectual and social history, and it holds up to consideration the intertwining of civil and religious experience in order to represent patterns of change in early modern Europe. The confessionalization thesis coordinates intellectual and social dimensions in ways that are helpful to my own project.34 Critics of confessionalization have objected to what they perceive as its heavyhanded emphasis upon elites. For all their claimed authority, elites (of church or of state) never operated in isolation from one another or from the other strata of society. Models of confessionalization must not neglect interactions across the social spectrum. Gender studies and attention to varieties of popular and lay experience have positively enriched the historical picture. One of the impetuses for the early modern recalibration of institutional life was indeed the commoners’ collective clout vis-à-vis political and religious authorities.35 The elites of 32 My translation. The original reads: “Unter Konfessionsbildung sei also verstanden: die geistige und organisatorische Verfestigung der seit der Glaubensspaltung auseinanderstrebenden verschiedenen christlichen Bekenntnisse zu einem halbwegs stabilen Kirchentum nach Dogma, Verfassung und religiös-sittlicher Lebensform. Zugleich ihr Ausgreifen in die christliche Welt des frühneuzeitlichen Europas; ihre Abschirmung gegen Einbrüche von außen mit den Mitteln der Diplomatie und Politik; aber auch ihre Gestaltung durch außerkirchliche Kräfte, insonderheit die Staatsgewalt.” 33 From Schilling, see also his article “Confessional Europe” (1995). 34 A concise treatment of both the limitations and the ongoing usefulness of confessionalization may be found in Lotz-Heumann: 2013, 33–53. 35 Notoriously, peasant rebellions of late medieval pedigree sometimes merged with strains of Anabaptism. Less well known is the fact that Protestant Zurich itself faced internal discord between rural districts and the magistracy. Rural agitation based in Meilen (in Zurich’s territory, near Zug) followed the disastrous Second Kappel War. Commoners there seized initiative during the Zurich Council’s moment of relative weakness, yet without thereby siding

Concerning Confessionalization

31

church and state had to consider how their policies might be received among the people, and people of all kinds did not lack ways of influencing policies.36 Similar to the critique of cultural elitism are concerns about ‘statism’ in the Reinhard-Schilling model of confessionalization.37 Specifically, critics argue that myopic attention to a political apparatus risks obscuring more complex interactions, and that the result of an ‘enlightened,’ modern, secular government must not be taken as a pre-ordained terminus of historical development. Furthermore, whatever political arrangement(s) did emerge in confessionalized societies, religion played an abiding and substantive role. With particular effectiveness in this regard, scholars of sixteenth-century Europe have highlighted Huguenots in France. The Huguenots formed a self-aware religious community and they constructed an institutional matrix within the larger story of confessionalization; and yet this Huguenot matrix lacked the backing of a centralized state.38 This example also usefully serves as a correction to disproportionate attention to Lutheran states and the German imperial parameters of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg and 1648 Peace of Westphalia (Hendrix: 2004, 159f). With respect to my own research, the particularities of confederational, Swiss politics and of the

with Roman Catholic antagonists. This provides a good example of social influence ‘from below.’ The observation that such rural grievances may have been shepherded to some extent by urban malcontents does not obscure the point. Cf. H. Meyer: 1975, 251, and also Maeder: 1974–78, 109–44. For official records of the “Meilener Verkommnis,” see #1797 and #1809 in AZHR. 36 Anti-elitist corrective is an important historiographical point, but one may also make too much of it. Bifurcating society into tidy groups of elites and commoners is more difficult than it may seem at first. The example of sixteenth-century Zurich’s clergy suffices to blur such a distinction. Decades of censorial synod records show that many pastors who were classed with church-state bodies lived in near indigence, in a semi-literate lifestyle of tavern-going, dancing, fighting, and joining themselves on occasion to bodies other than those of the church-state variety. Such clergymen failed to cut an especially elite profile, at least in matters of wealth and moral wherewithal. 37 “The extension of the confessionalization thesis to new groups and new lands in- and outside the German-speaking world has required—just as did its adaptation to Catholicism—a loosening of the tie to state-development, a stronger emphasis on religion, and a questioning of the appropriateness of its dependence on modernization theory” (Brady: 2004, 15). Regarding non-statist confessionalization in France, cf. Holt: 2004, 257–73, esp. 272. Regarding a historiographical re-orientation to the federal-imperial context over against the typical emphasis on the building of various confessional states, see Headley: 2004, 353–56. Cf. also Klueting: 2004, 37–49. 38 One must also admit, however, that the Huguenot failure to achieve official backing of the French court did not result from lack of effort. The much-touted church of the refugees would have gladly accepted a strong degree of state support despite certain principles of ecclesial independence. Calvin’s own letters to Edward VI or the Duke of Somerset, and even his 1536 preface to the Institutes addressed to King Francis I, indicate hopes for courtly support, which he did not view as in conflict with his consistorial model of the church.

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city-state of Zurich must not be viewed as eccentric peripheries to the larger monarchies or Habsburg domains. Such criticisms and counter-examples also help to extricate confessionalization from problematic legacies of nationalism. The merge toward overlap of cultural identity and politically sovereignty entails an array of contingencies. The phenomenon was never an ‘awakening’ of some necessary or hitherto dormant reality, as posited by any nationalist mythos. There was no such thing as a latent nation waiting to arise – again, quite despite the nationalist narrative of timeless continuity that would highlight an appearance of inevitability (Gellner: 1983, esp. 39–52).39 Bullinger’s End-Times idiom occasionally gives an impression of a sequence of necessary eras toward a predetermined fulfillment, but Bullinger himself always also retained a firm grasp on the consequential contingencies of actions and policies. A historian in this matter must take double caution to avoid pigeonholing Bullinger as a proto-nationalist fatalist and to avoid stunting the nuance of confessionalization altogether into a statist inevitability. History must remain alert to contingencies. The criticisms described above have challenged the confessionalization thesis, but with due caution, it retains utility for making sense of the complex roles of religion in building social/political institutions (Schilling: 1995, 642). A case study of Zurich in an era of confessionalization illustrates institutionbuilding that defied a narrative of simple, linear development. Among the many complex points of reference are church and state, marriage and family, elites and commoners, urban and rural interests, and the political identity of the city-state with respect to confederation, to Empire, and to broader Christendom. In this process, Zurich clergy did not act in isolation, but they did play a crucial role. While I acknowledge that no one group can represent all the interests at play, it remains worthwhile to observe transformations within the clerical class, both as objects and agents of the re-formation of the matrix of Zurich. To this end, I focus on the clerical presidency of Heinrich Bullinger. This book is not a biography, but rather a study of the transformation of clerical identity, with particular attention given to Bullinger’s unpublished agenda for the Zurich Synod – the semi-annual gatherings of all Zurich clergy. Juxtaposed judiciously with certain published writings, Bullinger’s unpublished manuscripts shed new light on the critical role of End-Times thought and action in early modern confessionalization.40 39 On the phenomenon of nationalism, also cf. Anderson: 1991 and Hobsbawm: 1990. 40 This Swiss context has the added historiographical benefit of exhibiting a rising consolidation of the confessionalized mentality that nevertheless occurred within a multi-confessional, federal context. To this extent, any study of Swiss confessionalization must not be equated with the evolution of the nation-state. The consolidated people of God in Zurich simultaneously exemplified the rise of early, tentative moves toward ‘the advent of constituted dissent.’ Cf. Headley: 2004, 347–58.

Brief Introduction to the Sermones Synodales

2.2

33

Brief Introduction to the Sermones Synodales

Bullinger envisioned the Zurich clergy collectively as an eschatologically charged ‘faithful and prudent servant’ within a discrete ‘household,’ all of whose members awaited the householder’s imminent return (Matt 24:45–51; cf. Luke 12:42–48). The scope of the servant’s duty in this case defined the limits of the household as the city and territory of Zurich. The coming of the Lord defined the clerical class in turn in the particular light of the ministers’ special responsibility to provide spiritual benefits toward the common good of that discrete society. The clergy in Reformed Zurich cultivated social cohesion through developing new ideas about and modes of poor relief, in inculcating new mores, in discussing the nature and locus of authority (of the church and of the government and of the two in coordination), and in modifying systems of education. Zurich’s class of ordained, religious leadership contributed enormously – if not at all unilaterally – to the development of a confessionalized unit within the Swiss Confederation and within Christendom more broadly. This story unfolded as a continuation of the social sacralization begun in the late Middle Ages. A recognizable territorial church (Landeskirche) of Zurich had already begun to take shape in the fifteenth century. Due to corruption and ineffectiveness on the part of the distant ecclesiastical courts and tumultuous imperial politics, the Zurich magistracy increasingly appropriated power to regulate its own church within its own borders.41 Habsburg overlordship famously declined over Swiss jurisdictions, and the bishops of Constance and archbishops of Mainz maintained ostensible ecclesiastical jurisdiction even as their real influence waned. Notoriously complex dioceses that had borne no direct relation to – and indeed sprawled freely across – political borders now underwent a process of regularization. Political authorities took into their own hands much of the day-to-day duty of overseeing their community’s viability and hope of salvation. This entailed attention to the territorial churches, whose clergy dispensed those things believed to be necessary for the next life. Perhaps a modern observer may suspect that these city councilors acted out of a crass desire to expand their own power. Whatever admixtures may have complicated magisterial motivations, it would still be wrong to dismiss the seriousness with which magistrates took their religious duty toward their community. No one doubted that civic flourishing depended upon divine favor.

41 For example, the Zurich Council gained expanded rights of appointing new members of the college of canons (Chorherren) in 1479, at which point that centrally important ecclesiastical body began to have a more distinctively Zuricher composition. Theretofore, the constitutive 24 benefices had been a preserve of sons of lesser nobility throughout a broader geographical swath.

34

Clergy and Confessionalization

To focus upon Zurich is to observe a Swiss variant of the kind of sacral civic community described by Bernd Moeller (1987, esp. 12). During the Reformation in the 1520s, Zurich preserved its traditional system of chapters (Dekanate) and parishes, even as the magistracy continued to consolidate the church within its own purview.42 The Zurich synod played a crucial role within a newly coordinated effort to ensure the Christian – now specifically ‘evangelical’ – character of its community. Zwingli himself had built on synodal traditions dating to the Council of Constance; the first ‘Reformed’ synod of Zurich was held in April 1528 (cf. AZHR #1391 and #1414). Heinrich Bullinger and Leo Jud then sketched a modified draft of a clerical and synodal constitution, which the Zurich Council approved in November 1532, and which remained at the foundation of Zurich’s religious life for centuries to come.43 As codified in this Prediger- und Synodalordnung, the entire Zurich clergy of the city and the countryside convened along with eight members of the Large Council and the city clerk twice each year, on the Tuesdays after May Day (1 May) and after St. Gall (16 October). Sessions were held behind the closed doors of the hall of government, the Rathaus – a location already rich with symbolic importance – while the head of the clergy (a position held by Bullinger from 1532 to 1575) and the mayor (Bürgermeister) co-presided. Following a prayer of invocation and a roll call of expected attendees, newly elected clergy took their formal oaths of allegiance to the Zurich council. The synod then debated which external auditors to permit in attendance.44 That done, the eight present members of the Large Council contributed their commentary and advice (senatusconsulta).45 The lengthiest portion of the synod sessions came when each member of Zurich’s clergy submitted to mutual ‘episcopal’ discipline (censura). The assembled clergy functioned as a collective bishop, having replaced the traditional episcopal jurisdiction of Constance and having even more redefined the very nature of episcopacy. Zurich’s evangelical clergy together oversaw, and where necessary censured, all pastors and teachers with respect to doctrine and 42 The evangelical clergy of Zurich would have preferred an even more thorough consolidation, but the political authorities honored the legal validity of certain ecclesiastical properties in the countryside that fell to foreign patronage. 43 For this text, see AZHR #1899, 825–37. A more recent critical edition may be found in Campi and Wälchli (eds.): 2011, vol. 1, #59. Pamela Biel provides an English translation in Appendix 1 of Biel: 1991, 207–13. 44 These meetings were guarded with the rigor of state business. In terms of pamphlet wars or otherwise, the material discussed had the potential to unleash a host of social unrest. Attendance by foreign dignitaries and churchmen such as Martin Bucer always called for vetting and pledges of strict confidence. 45 This is the government’s own analog to those private addresses/admonitions (the Fürträge), the privilege of which Bullinger had required as a condition of accepting the post as Zwingli’s successor.

Brief Introduction to the Sermones Synodales

35

lifestyle.46 These closed-door sessions functioned as a crucial venue for coordinating Zurich’s existence as a Christian society. The synod guided the course of the Reformation in Zurich through the pivotal aftermath of 1531. In that year, Catholic opponents within the Swiss Confederation had seized a moment of tactical advantage and had defeated the Zurich army at Kappel and then again at Gubel. Hundreds of leading citizens (notably including Zwingli) had been killed. The victors seized an opportunity for some predictable crowing over the humiliated evangelicals. They also seized control of certain disputed territories. Even though Zurich’s immediate territorial sovereignty technically remained intact, its status and policies fell into a state of confusion. In an admonition that reflected the general tension between city and countryside, the Zurich Council warned its clergy against interfering henceforth in political matters.47 The religious identity of Zurich as a whole, the nature and limits of clerical leadership, and the relationship of that leadership to the scrambling political magistracy all play out within the story of Zurich’s confessionalization. In all of this, Bullinger insisted upon the clergy’s responsibility to interpret Scripture in light of the times. He considered these times frankly fraught with apocalyptic conflict – good versus evil at a cosmic magnitude. Scripture must not be muzzled for the sake of political expediency. Bullinger was in a surprisingly good position to negotiate with Zurich’s political leaders. Magistrates for their part were familiar with his credentials in scholarship and (even more importantly perhaps, in such a context) his knack for interpersonal diplomacy. They were eager to confirm such a successor to Zwingli. Adding to their urgency was the fact that other Swiss states were also actively recruiting him. Bullinger conceded that clergy must desist from meddling in Zurich politics and yet in accepting the post he also wrested from the magistracy a concession that the clerical office must exercise free interpretation (Büsser: 2004, 98f).48 Bullinger thereby preserved crucial clerical contribution in defining Zurich as an evangelical political entity. Bullinger’s clerical leadership began promptly in 1532. He would preside over the semi-annual synod sessions all the way to the time of his death in September 1575. His private preparations included careful accounts of the particulars of his 46 One should also keep in mind – as Bullinger’s synodal tinkering with outlines of episcopal duties indicates – that the rubric ‘doctrine’ was a highly dynamic category not equated simply with propositional orthodoxy. 47 Cf. esp. the fourth article of the Meilener Verkommnis, settled between November 1531 and February 1532, regarding the exclusion of clergy from outright political maneuvering. For the full text, see AZHR #1797, 768ff. Bullinger himself records a version in his manuscript of Reformation history (cf. 1985c [1840], 284–91). 48 Büsser here also reproduces many of the relevant primary texts of Bullinger’s terms for accepting the post of clerical leadership in Zurich.

36

Clergy and Confessionalization

time, place, and compatriots. These notes – collected in the Sermones Synodales – concern a great breadth of topics: public feast days, attendance at proper worship services, ways to strengthen parishes, the suppression of irregular chapels (which he characterized as both superstitious and socially disintegrative), reform in matters of luxury and ruinous consumption (especially of alcohol), the care of the poor and sick, the education of children, and the distinctive dress and duties appropriate to well-ordered social stations. Chapter deans (Dekane) and civil superintendents (Vögte) were to oversee and implement this work in their coterminous districts within greater Zurich. Furthermore, every individual pastor within the collective episcopacy was to serve as an agent of coherent Reformed mentality throughout his parish. Bullinger jotted down preparatory synodal speeches, prayers, memos, and diagrams between 1535 and his death in 1575.49 Related documents, such as his officially sanctioned case-by-case arguments before the Council (the Fürträge)50 and his minutes of the synod sessions themselves (the Synodalakten),51 have received thorough study, upon which I build. However, this scholarship has rarely done more than acknowledge the existence of this other synodal source material. Besides my own transcription of the Sermones, there exists no edited or otherwise printed version of the text. Daniël Timmerman’s recent monograph, Heinrich Bullinger on Prophecy and the Prophetic Office (1523–1538), refers to the Sermones, but this rich source material still warrants further study (Timmerman: 2015). The Sermones disclose particular insight into the identity and function of the evangelical clerical class of Zurich – concerns which do not always appear in the same light in Bullinger’s published theological considerations of ministry per se. A brief technical description of the Sermones Synodales may now be helpful. The Sermones Synodales are presently catalogued as Manuscript D 220 in the Manuscript Division of the Zurich Central Library (Handschriftenabteilung, 49 There are no extant notes from Bullinger’s synod leadership in the years 1532 through 1534. It appears that he only began to record such thoughts systematically in 1535. Nevertheless, there is some possibility that the first three recorded entries in the Sermones Synodales may include earlier selections. The first entry, for example, features some comments that may suggest closer connection to the 1532 controversies regarding the terms of the Second Peace of Kappel. There is a possible reference to Bullinger’s September 1532 opinion about severing ties with the greater Swiss Confederation and/or possible disgust with the Zurich magistracy (which, in April 1533, had been compelled to rescind its 1532 morals-mandate). Further confusion arises in the entry on page 11. The date of ‘1536 Octob’ is rubbed out, and ‘1537 Maius’ is added, perhaps long after the fact, inasmuch as the spring synod of 1537 actually convened not in May but on 24 April (in contradiction, for unknown reasons, to the guidelines of the Synodalordnung). 50 For analysis of this source, see esp. Bächtold: 1982. 51 The protocols of the Synodalakten, or Acta Synodi, are located in the StAZ, E II.1. For analysis of this source, see esp. Gordon: 1992.

Brief Introduction to the Sermones Synodales

37

Zentralbibliothek Zürich). The page dimensions measure roughly 11.5 by 18 cm, with the exception of the entry for 3 May 1569, for which the page folds out to roughly 17 by 27 cm. All pages bear signs of having once been folded up. Perhaps in light of the October 1532 Synodalordnung, according to which all synodal proceedings were to be guarded in secrecy, Bullinger himself carefully folded up his notes, carrying them in a coat pocket to and from synod sessions. The originally loose pages were bound and given their current title in the eighteenth century.52 Someone has penciled in page numbers at the top right of recto pages, but as these numbers are not entirely regular (e. g., they skip the fold-out entry for 3 May 1569), I have used my own numeration system. For greater precision, I have furthermore counted recto and verso as different pages. Beginning with the page already noted as number 1, my final page is number 167 (as opposed to the number 83 indicated in pencil). In the Sermones Synodales, we have Bullinger’s personal notes pertaining to almost all of the 81 semi-annual synod sessions from 1535 to his death. There are only six exceptions: October 1539, October 1541, May 1547 (on page 55, Bullinger states that he had permission from the Council to be absent from that synod session in order to recover his health at the baths in Urdorf), May 1553, October 1564 (when he was suffering from the plague, as he remarks on page 123), and October 1570. On the very few occasions when Bullinger was not present due to the weakness of old age, his notes nevertheless often record which previously written prayers and admonitions were to be recited for him by others. Thus the prayer from October 1567 was to be reread in May 1575; the content of the 1569 entry was repeated in May 1573; and the Admonitio from October 1569 was repeated at the synod session of October 1574. There are two small irregularities in the material bound within Manuscript D 220. First, the entry for October 1552 is found on page 73, and thus occurs before the entry for May of the same year. The May 1552 entry begins on page 75. The other irregularity consists in the fact that the final page (HBSS, 167) appears to be a letter from Bullinger to the Zurich marriage court (Ehegericht). This letter has been mistakenly included in this collection and obviously does not belong with Bullinger’s synodal preparations. The letter is undated, though the particular clarity and steadiness of the handwriting suggest a possible origin in the mid1540s. It is unknown how the letter came to be included in this collection, or if it was ever actually sent by Bullinger to the Ehegericht. Modern scholars should also note that the eighteenth-century title of this bound collection – Sermones Synodales – is misleading. This volume consists less of ‘sermons’ (as most people would understand that term), than they do of 52 That title in full reads Sermones Synodales Venerabilis νυν εν αγιοις Bullingeri propria manu scripti.

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Clergy and Confessionalization

Bullinger’s personal, often fragmentary notes. The largely Latin text is interspersed with marginalia and interlinear commentary in Swiss German.53 The handwriting (with a bit of effort and acclimation) is only seldom indecipherable, but due to the frequent lack of complete sentences and the Reformer’s use of keywords intended strictly to jog his own memory, the modern reader must sometimes utilize informed creativity in order to reconstruct the sense of a passage. For these reasons, the Sermones Synodales do not suit research into early modern rhetoric and and/or sermonic style. What we do possess in the Sermones, however, are records of exhortations that uniquely clarify Zurich’s Reformation agenda. The formal Acts of the Synod (Acta Synodi) principally record the censorial proceedings and thus do not disclose anything quite like these personal notes. Topics of social transformation come clearly to view despite the fragmentary nature of the incomplete sentences and simple keywords. Bullinger consistently reminded his clerical colleagues of their duty to interpret the Holy Scriptures for the time at hand. While reminding pastors of the criteria for doctrine and lifestyle, he cultivated dynamic conceptual innovations pertaining to the clerical class and to Zurich as a whole. Great historical significance for phenomena of confessionalization lies in the way Bullinger’s Sermones Synodales reveal the Reformer reading his context through an eschatological lens. End-Times considerations gave particular – and to our eyes perhaps even counterintuitive – urgency to institution-building and to civicreligious consolidation, as well as to clerical agency within that agenda.

2.3

Bullinger and the Cultivation of Zurich Eschatology

Even within the ‘Zurich school,’ conspicuous for its End-Times bent, Bullinger stood out for correlating eschatological thought with events and action in time.54 This tendency likely had much to do with his concern for history. Few other 53 Synod sessions themselves were conducted in vernacular. One can scarcely imagine all of Zurich’s rural clergy or even the city councilors of that era conversing in fluent Latin. In his synodal notes, Bullinger himself positively exhorts his ministerial colleagues to conduct parish worship in a landtlich (i. e., vernacular) manner. See, for example, the entry for October 1567 in HBSS (page 131 = May 1575). Related to the emphasis upon vernacular accommodation, Bullinger attaches enormous importance throughout the Sermones to interpreting the Word in light of the ministers’ specific time and place. 54 Irena Backus (2000b) christened ‘The Zurich School’ while, oddly, also denying many of the eschatological features that give the group its profile. Leo Jud, she concludes, is pastoral and political without significant “interest in eschatology” (88), and Bibliander’s antichristology “has nothing to do with eschatological hopes; it is motivated primarily by confessional polemics” (102). Backus’ operative assumption seems to be that politics and eschatology are mutually exclusive, as seen in her comment about Bullinger: “Of the commentators that we

Bullinger and the Cultivation of Zurich Eschatology

39

sixteenth-century Reformers matched, let alone exceeded, Bullinger’s regard for events in time. For Bullinger, time was conceivable at all only because its various chapters formed a complete story with a terminus (Moser: 2012, 23 and 30).55 The End-Times optic may well supply the best lens for interpreting this historical aspect of Bullinger’s œuvre. Bullinger believed that people of his context inhabited a moment in which a considerable amount of the world’s allotted time had already elapsed. This present was marked by cultural decay, yet it also indicated proximity to an End that anchors the meaning of anything before it. Note the surprisingly positive upshot of this otherwise dour worldview. To Bullinger’s mind, the entirety of Scripture, and thus the essential significance of all human experience, was now close to being fulfilled and disclosed. Bullinger believed that Daniel and Revelation alike were related to Christ’s own prophecies in Matthew 24–25, along with many other texts that could be combined in a coherent eschatological framework illuminating the present.56 This explains Bullinger’s interest in history; it also underscores his counterintuitive activity in institution-building within a world so close to culmination. Many scholars have commented on Bullinger’s interest in historical time. Attention to an End-Times idiom and optic helpfully supplements such research. Aurelio A. Garcia Archilla has noted that Bullinger construed parallel periods before Christ’s First and Second Advents (1992, 34ff). Garcia Archilla explores this observation with an eye to the foundational importance of the Old Testament for Bullinger’s theological worldview. I do not in the least wish to minimize this point. In light of the fact that the first Protestant Bible printed in Zurich was the 1529 collection of Old Testament prophetic books, who could dispute it? Nevertheless, one may make further conclusions from the parallel between the First and Second Advents. In this view, the entire Old Testament constitutes a sort of pre-eschatological existence, antedating the New Testament. Even more interesting are the specific sub-parallels in Bullinger’s worldview between the last intercanonical period (defined between Malachi and Matthew) and his own present (defined, following the schema of Bibliander, between the Council of Constance and the Second Coming). have discussed he is the least interested in politics and the most interested in the historical and eschatological implications of the two books” (2000a, 74). 55 Moser here points the reader to the rather conventional salvation-historical framework of Reformers as expressed, for example, in Bullinger’s Der alt gloub (1539 [1537]). 56 Not only the famous work In Apocalypsim conciones centum, but also the treatise Das Jüngste Gericht (1555) and the two orations in De fine seculi et iudicio venturo (1557a) underscore the exegetical nexus of eschatology. Bullinger linked Daniel 7 and Revelation with important connecting references through the language of covenant and impending Judgment in Malachi 2, the unfolding identity of the ‘son of perdition’ of 2 Thessalonians 2:3–4, and the apocalyptic prophecies by Christ in Matthew 24–25 (including the highly eschatological parable of the good and bad servants before their master’s return).

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In a Bullingerian view, the New Testament composed by Jesus’ followers may be construed as a sort of literary distillate of eschaton for the covenant community of the Old Testament. Since Bullinger, unlike Calvin, considered the book of Daniel to be of ancient Babylonian rather than Hellenistic provenance, he designated Malachi and Matthew as the intercanonical bookends.57 This choice implies an even more specific parallel between a Maccabean restoration of covenant community on the one hand and the mission of reformation in Bullinger’s own Zurich on the other hand. Both episodes present church institutionbuilding as an anticipatory interlude – a priestly rededication in the time of the Antichrist, just before the consummation of the age.58 Bullinger followed Zwingli in highly valuing the apocryphal, Hellenistic account of 1 Maccabees. Of course, Bullinger’s Protestant understanding of Scripture excluded Maccabees from canonicity. (For similar reasons, he also eschewed any spiritualist-Anabaptist notion that contemporary Zurich could be a locus of further revelation beyond the canonical New Testament.) Maccabees occupied the space just before the First Advent; Reformation Zurich occupied the space just before the Second Advent. Bullinger’s enormous synodal reliance on the intercanonical bookends of Malachi and Matthew serves to highlight the parallel. Zurichers were duty bound to rededicate the church in their quasi-intercanonical situation between the millennium on the one hand and the definitive eschaton on the other.59 Bullinger considered the Maccabees to have partially fulfilled Daniel’s prophecy when they restored priestly service and proper religious community despite the antichristian persecutions by Antiochus. He insisted that Daniel was only now finally vindicated in the period before Christ’s Second Advent – as seen in the work of reforming society and Christian leadership despite papal persecutions.60 57 It is highly suggestive that Bullinger’s Sermones Synodales treat precisely these two books – Malachi and Matthew – so often and so emphatically. This topic will be addressed later. 58 Concerning the infamous tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes and the related ‘church’-established festival of a purified Temple under Judas Maccabaeus, see the dedicatory epistle and the fifth sermon of Bullinger’s Third Decade, Epistola dedicatoria, Decas tertia (HBTS 3.1, 258); also, Sermo V, Decas tertia (HBTS 3.1, 341). Note also the prominence of Antiochus Epiphanes in the preliminary notes of the 1531 and 1540 editions of the Zurich Bible, under the headings “Concerning the Antichrist” and “Concerning the Antichrist and his Kingdom.” 59 “This soteriological unity [i. e., justification always by faith whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament] puts the church in strict parity with the people of the Old Testament, and makes the Old Testament for the church a primary text of the history of God’s dealings with his people. … This conception will open up for Bullinger the Old Testament as a primary locus for interpreting the nature of God’s post-Biblical dealings with his people, and an immediate source of ethical and societal ideas, which will be adapted to the understanding of the subsequent course of Church history, with proper accounting for differences of time, place and circumstance” (Garcia Archilla: 1992, 69). 60 N.b. Garcia Archilla: 1992, 114f. Cf., e. g., the Sermones Synodales entry for 23 October 1548 (HBSS, 60). Recall also that Bullinger found Bibliander’s 1545 Relatio fidelis to be completely consistent with his own reckoning as to a literal ‘millennium’ of years following John’s

End-Times Idiom and its Political Impediments

2.4

41

End-Times Idiom and its Political Impediments

Evaluating the eschatological and even apocalyptic rationale in Bullinger’s published corpus is not a straightforward task. Beyond the surprising complications implicit in his own theology (especially touching the subject of priesthood), one must also reckon with the roundabouts and roadblocks of political exigency. The conflict that had resulted in Zwingli’s death had also established unprecedented parameters for a bi-confessional Swiss Confederation. Catholic and evangelical blocs both realized they could not quite succeed in imposing religious uniformity on all the states. In several respects, of course, the terms of the Second Peace of Kappel favored the Catholic states that had lately defeated Zurich. Swiss evangelicals chafed considerably at having to acknowledge the ‘ancient’ and ‘true, indubitable, Christian faith’ of their Catholic Swiss compatriots, who in turn acknowledged merely the ‘new faith’ of the evangelicals.61 Still, this treaty did at least stipulate that neither side was permitted to defame the other in public.62 This is just the point where Bullinger’s End-Times idiom required subtlety. The Zurich Council feared that hot rhetoric of pope-as-Antichrist might amount to a breach of the 1531 treaty. Censorship – either outright or the threat thereof – was one way the government could keep the peace.63 Considering the central importance of antichristology to the apocalyptic chronologies adopted and adapted by the Zurich school, this mode of censorship prompted recalibration among the clergy. It tended to stunt or shunt some of the more strident apocalypticism, but the Zurich penchant for an End-Times idiom overall remained vibrant. And Bullinger shephered that persistence. Sometimes Bullinger simply concealed his eschatological concerns, and other times he had his treatises printed elsewhere, such as in Basel. Printing in Latin rather than in vernacular German could supply an additional degree of protection from state censorship.64 Bullinger’s Latin Basel publication of the Hun-

61

62

63 64

Apocalypse and the crossing of an even more final threshold after the Council of Constance (itself 666 years after the Beast first had been loosed). ‘Novelty’ in this religious context formed a trenchant polemic against evangelical humanism, which looked precisely to antiquity as bulwark of authenticity. To describe anything in Christianity as ‘new’ unambiguously signaled that it was false, deviant, and a product of either willful deception or woeful ignorance. No one then imagined innovation or novelty in ways that might connote ‘fresh,’ ‘relevant,’ or au courant. Bullinger recorded a copy of the Second Peace of Kappel. See Bullinger‘s “Landtsfrid,” in Bullinger: 1985b [1840], 247–53. Cf. also the related Meilen Agreement (Meilener Verkommnis): “Die Verkomnuss zwüschen der Statt und Landtschafft Zürych,” in Bullinger: 1985c [1840], 284–91. The urgency involved not just politics among states, but also the need to assuage anxieties in rural districts of Zurich itself, where segments of the population continued to resent Zwingli’s prior meddling with state affairs. Treatises in Latin were not given a free pass, of course, but they never aroused as much

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dred Sermons upon Apocalypse (Conciones centum) nicely illustrates these techniques. Propelled in large measure by the apocalyptic sympathies of English Marian exiles, the book circumvented Zurich censorship with spectacular success. The Hundred Sermons ran to sixteen editions in five languages within their first decade in print (Büsser: 2000, 117). Bullinger certainly had ways to articulate an End-Times message despite political impediments. For all that, scholars must not overlook the ways un-published manuscripts reveal additional detail and nuance in Bullinger’s End-Times agenda. Recent critical editions of his correspondence (the Briefwechsel) from the period of the Schmalkaldic War have made available an abundance of useful material along these lines – especially touching on Bullinger’s development of an international, pan-Protestant community in the face of what he construed as a rampant Antichrist (see HBBW 16–18).65 The letters shed special light on an international, Protestant ecumenism, but the unpublished Sermones Synodales are particularly helpful for demonstrating how eschatology shaped his mission of reforming the institutional matrix of the Zurich city-state.

2.5

Covenant as the Framework of Christian Society

To understand Bullinger’s approach to the institutional life of Reformed Zurich, one must address the subject of ‘covenant.’ The concept of covenant has achieved considerable notoriety among Bullinger scholars. J. Wayne Baker famously argued that covenant (foedus, or sometimes pactum) functions as the doctrinal linchpin of all of Bullinger’s theological thinking. He characterized political suspicion for the simple reason that a Latin treatise would have a limited audience of scholars and would therefore have little chance to kindle immediate popular reaction. A case in point: Rudolf Gwalther caused the magistracy some diplomatic difficulty on account of his 1546 German treatise on the Antichrist (Endtchrist), even though much of the offending content had already been espoused in Bullinger’s 1536 Latin commentary on Thessalonians and even though Bullinger himself distributed copies of the work to colleagues abroad in support of the Schmalkaldic cause. Bullinger’s own 1555 treatise on The Last Judgment (Das Jüngste Gericht) was published in Zurich and in German, but it deliberately left out most of the strident antichristological components that would be featured in the 1557 (Basel) Latin edition of the Hundred Sermons (In apocalypsim conciones centum). 65 In late 1546, Bullinger finally decisively rejected the idea of a religiously motivated secession of Protestant states from the Swiss Confederation (to the hypothetical benefit of the Schmalkald Alliance then at war with Emperor Charles V). For more on this, see esp. Bodenmann: 2017, 26 and 32–36. This observation illustrates the degree to which Bullinger was quite capable of developing complex strategies for evangelical Zurich and for Zurich in relation to other states. A fervently End-Times worldview for Bullinger never meant quiescence nor did it culminate in the simplistic, binary categories notable among other apocalyptic revolutionaries such as Thomas Müntzer.

Covenant as the Framework of Christian Society

43

Bullinger as a founding father of Reformed ‘federal theology,’ wherein everything coheres within a system of bilateral rights and responsibilities between God and the religious community (1980, esp. 1–25). In all this, Baker also emphasized Bullinger’s notion that Zurich’s clergy and magistracy formed a parallel to the prophets and judges/kings of Old Testament Israel – a tandem designed to maintain covenant conditions in Christian society (1980, 107). Edward Dowey successfully challenged some key elements of Baker’s analysis with a more thorough search of the source material. Dowey concluded that Bullinger’s career was too broad, his exegesis too biblically comprehensive, and his treatises too rhetorically targeted from one to another to allow for any such systematic federalism. Baker, said Dowey, had allowed his political hobbyhorse to loom too large in the picture (1990, 41–60). Garcia Archilla has also offered constructive contributions to the covenant controversy that are germane to my own research in many respects. His close reading of source material re-establishes Bullinger’s adherence to justification by faith alone, thus disproving Baker’s tendency to sketch a quid pro quo in the relationship between God and humanity (1992, 8–18; see esp. footnote 16). This critique is entirely consistent with Bullinger’s description of justification as a declaration and gift of God alone – with transformative, sanctifying results among covenant members, to be sure, but in no wise the calculus of any mutual give-and-take between God and humans (e. g., Decade 1.6, HBS 3, 127–28 and 135). Garcia Archilla and, more recently, Christian Moser see a persistent salvation-historical cast to Bullinger’s thinking here in ways that Dowey failed to acknowledge in his own critique of the Baker thesis. Covenant is less a systematic principle for Bullinger than an expression of divine initiative in constituting a community of faith through various stages of Christ-oriented development (Garcia Archilla: 1992, 7, 22–36, 153).66 Garcia Archilla has demonstrated the significance of justification by faith alone within Bullinger’s vision of sociopolitical responsibility across all of salvation history. I would add that Bullinger’s persistent eschatological framework pervaded his reforming agenda in every dimension of covenant. Bullinger sought to coordinate church and state in a single society in which all aspects of Christian existence could be reformed. The matrix, of course, was not an assortment of individuals, nor even a church as conceived in isolation from the state, but rather a complete Christian society. Despite his analytical weaknesses, Baker is correct to emphasize Bullinger’s consistently corporate thinking (1975, 155f). Given the enormous significance of covenant as a matrix of salvation-historical human community, one might anticipate that Bullinger’s synodal exhortations would feature covenantal terms. The Sermones Synodales are, after 66 On the significance of historical perspective in covenant thinking, cf. also Moser: 2012.

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all, his direct, uncensored reflections on topics typically associated with the church-state complex. It is therefore all the more striking that Bullinger made few explicit references to the covenant throughout the Sermones. The term foedus appears only eleven times.67 Of those eleven, seven are quotations of or references to Malachi 2:1–9 (the covenant with Levi).68 The same verse is quoted two additional times with the term pactum rather than foedus.69 I am not asserting that Bullinger had no interest in any sense of covenant. Such an argument would fly in the face of nearly all modern Bullinger scholarship. Nevertheless, I do want to argue that the Sermones indicate the heretofore unrecognized clerical significance of the concept of covenant for Bullinger’s Zurich agenda. In the Sermones, Bullinger speaks of a ‘covenant’ in the specific context of the high standards he advocates for Zurich’s ‘priestly’ class. Recall again the decisive biblical description of Levitical priesthood in Malachi in the Old Testament, and its corollary application for Bullinger among the assembled clergy of Zurich. Foedus here does not characterize the matrix of Swiss Confederation as a whole, nor even of territorial Zurich, of which the clergy form a part. This synodal sense of ‘covenant’ conveys the special identity and duty of Zurich’s ministers. Of course, Bullinger also carefully avoided usurping the political prerogatives of the magistrates; but he does not apply the term ‘covenant’ for magistracy anywhere in his Sermones. For Bullinger, foedus delineates clerical responsibility to the eschatological re-formation of Zurich. This must be more than an obvious rhetorical thrust of someone presiding over the assembled Zurich clergy. The term was not a casual choice in Bullinger’s career, and it is significant that he applied it in such a particular way. The End-Times idiom endows this rhetoric with sense and urgency. Precisely because of his conviction that world history

67 Foedus appears in the following entries of the Sermones Synodales: 1535 (HBSS, 2); 1536 (HBSS, 8 and 9); 19 October 1546 (HBSS, 52); 7 May 1549 (HBSS, 62); 24 October 1553 (four instances across HBSS, 78f); 19 October 1557 (HBSS, 95); and 19 October 1568 (HBSS, 138). 68 The four exceptional cases are: 1535 (HBSS, 2), where Bullinger seems to allude to Exodus 23:32 and Deuteronomy 7:2 in suggesting dissatisfaction with the pact of the Swiss Confederation (or possibly the terms of the Peace of Kappel); 19 October 1546 (HBSS, 52), where Bullinger writes that “the magistracy prohibits it on account of the covenant” (“magistratus defendere. Quae causa. Foedus.”), which seems here to refer to the fact that the Zurich magistracy was bound to the Swiss Confederation in such a way as to prohibit entering the fray of the Schmalkaldic War; 7 May 1549 (HBSS, 62), where Bullinger writes that “nothing is by chance, and yet we are most miserable in this covenant” (“nulla fortuna. Sed summa miseria in foedere”), seemingly again voicing frustrations with the Swiss Confederation and its failure to act to help evangelical friends during the Schmalkaldic War; and, lastly, on 19 October 1568 (HBSS, 138), where Bullinger lists the covenant as an element in the increasingly clear development of salvation history. 69 See entries for 1536 (HBSS, 8) and 24 October 1553 (HBSS, 78). These entries provide the only usages of the word pactum anywhere in the Sermones.

Contextualizing Ministry

45

had entered the final phase, Bullinger elaborated a notion of covenanted ministry in Zurich. This discussion also bears upon the scholarly question of what may constitute the ‘central axis’ of Bullinger’s theology. Mark Burrows has commented upon Bullinger’s manner of uniting the poles of justification and sanctification; justification amounted to a status of Christological truth in which sanctification was an experiential process. Bullinger’s reforming career thus revolved around praxis pietatis in terms of participation in Christ (1987: 48–69; cf. Büsser: 2004, 277f). Bullinger’s synodal writings corroborate some of this analysis, with the additional advantage of mooting any danger of construing this as individualist piety. Burrows’ analysis only stands to the degree to which it assumes the idea of Christian community; a theological axis of individual Christians would make no sense in an authentic assessment of Bullinger’s agenda. Perhaps Burrows’ perceived poles of justification and sanctification may relate in some respects to Bullinger’s dynamic criteria of doctrina (including right preaching, administration of sacraments, and care of the poor and sick) and the requirements for a sanctified lifestyle in his discussions of vita. What I want to emphasize here is that Bullinger deliberately included the concepts of justification and sanctification within the specifically eschatological contours of a clerical ministry modeled on the ‘faithful and prudent servant.’ An imminent End did not negate the ministerial mission of reforming Christian Zurich, any more than justification obviated the need for sanctification. On the contrary, it energized that mission. The covenant with Levi in Malachi evokes as well the ‘priesthood’ called to govern in Christ’s authority in Revelation 1, 5, and especially 20. To be sure, Bullinger did not explicitly refer to the book of Revelation in the Sermones Synodales, but passages drawn from Malachi and other books reveal his eschatological framework: present abomination among God’s people, a heightened emphasis on a renewed covenant mediated through priesthood, and an understanding that the day of the Lord was at hand. Bullinger’s praxis pietatis aimed to focus the energies of a covenanted priesthood on reforming Zurich as a Christian society.

2.6

Contextualizing Ministry

The End-Times framework entailed an agenda of fitting ministry to the times at hand. Bullinger used the term tempus (time) and the related adverb tempestive 72 times in his Sermones Synodales, and at least once in nearly every entry from 1538 to 1574. In this context, the word functions consistently as a terminus technicus, indicating not just any time, but always the present moment in an End-Times optic. Bullinger’s exhortations rely on a variety of Scriptural passages oriented

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toward helping his fellow pastors interpret the ‘signs of the times.’70 Wars, famines, and other supposed prophecy fulfillments (generally revolving around a presumptuous and persecuting papal monarchy and its antichristian extensions via the armies of Charles V or the Council of Trent) all confirmed Bullinger’s conviction that he was living in the last days. These days called forth (excitant) vigilant action rather than a resignation that would have neglected or simplified the complexities of institutional leadership.71 Even though the days are evil, wrote Bullinger in probable reference to Ephesians 5:16, nevertheless God’s ministers must work to redeem the present.72 In some way, collective salvation is at stake, and the ordained clergy play a crucial part in it. As co-author of the synod’s constitution, Bullinger placed foundational emphasis on the notion that the ‘archenemy of our salvation’ seeks to overwhelm ‘true worship’ by instigating social disorder ‘in our times,’ when- and wherever the world begins to repent, improve, and seek God’s will. This document urged ministers of the Christian parishes to cooperate with civil authorities via the synod in order to increase authentic Christian lifestyle. Social disorder is a particular sign of the apocalyptic Evil One, and as such indicates the need for building up Christian society.73 There is a dialectic between evil signs of the times and burgeoning reformation: as evils increase, so does the need to reform. As reform begins, evil steps up its assault, and thus conscientious coordination among the institutions of Christian society is all the more important to safeguard that reform. It may seem odd, but it can boil down to something like this: things 70 E. g., most especially, Daniel 7, 8, and 11 and Matthew 24, but also occasionally augmented by selections from 2 Timothy 3–4, 2 Corinthians 6.2, Luke 17 and 21, Ephesians 5.16, Ezekiel 3, Jeremiah 8 and 23, 1 Peter 4:17, and 2 Peter 3. 71 Gordon has rightly noted the consistent pastoral emphasis upon Wachbarkeit, and thus the eschatological stamp in Bullinger’s doctrine of salvation. What I further seek to show is the systematic relation of such an eschatological soteriology to the upbuilding of the institutions of Zurich society. Gordon leaves a much more individualistic impression in his treatment of the Reformer’s soteriology (cf. 2002b, 29–53, esp. 33). 72 E. g., May 1561 (HBSS, 109); May 1564 (HBSS, 121); May 1574 (HBSS, 164). 73 Cf. the Predigerordung in AZHR #1899, 825f: “Demnach der erbfygen unsers heils dasselb ze hinderen nie geruowet, sunder allweg die warheit und den rechten, waren, gottgefälligen gottsdienst, nit allein jetz bi unseren zyten, sunder so dickest die welt je buoss [Buss] / und besserung und sich Gottes willen ze nähern angenommen, mit etwas unmassen und missordnungen ze undergraben und zuo verdunklen understanden; desshalb die gemeldten diener der christenen gemeinden, diewyl etwas mängel und unordnungen yngerissen, uss schuldiger trüw befolhens ampts, in bysyn, ouch mit hilf und gunst unserer darzuo verordneter ratsfründen, sölich, ouch künftig mängel und geprästen damit zuo verbesseren und zuo fürkommen, zuo mererem ufwachs guoter, christenlicher sitten und tugenden, ouch bekerung unseres sündtlichen lebens und versünung göttlichs zorns, in jetzgehaltnem, gemeinem synodo dis nachfolgend erbar, göttlich artikel, restitution und verbesserung, uf wyter unser gfallen uss guotem yfer, mit bystand und grund heiliger, göttlicher gschrift angesehen, geordnet, in gschrift verfasst und uns die zuo verwilligen und zuo bestäten hüt datum für(ge)bracht….”

Contextualizing Ministry

47

are so very bad right now only because they are so good; the coordinated effort to re-form society lies at the heart of it all. In an era well-noted for threats of peasant rebellions and discords that could render a population vulnerable to all sorts of economic and/or military catastrophe, organizing the reform against Satanic disarray (unordnungen) and tumult (uffru˚ren) concerned all inhabitants together. Matthew 24 supplied Bullinger with a favorite biblical reference throughout the Sermones.74 The frequency with which he paired Matthew and Malachi – the first book of the New Testament with the last of the Old Testament – also highlights his view that his own context was part of an eschatological interim. Matthew 24–25 also figures prominently in Bullinger’s overtly eschatological treatises of the 1550s. Throughout the Sermones Synodales, references and quotations drawn from Matthew 24 highlight Jesus’ apocalyptic prophecy. Jesus as he appears in Matthew revives apocalyptic images from the book of Daniel and follows that up with parabolic vignettes illustrating the sudden in-breaking of the End. Such material shapes Bullinger’s presidency of the synod. Over and over again, Bullinger recalls before his fellow clergy the fidelis servus et prudens whom the Lord has placed in oversight over His household so that such a minister may provide nourishment in tempore (in due time). It is also this servant whom the Lord deems faithfully diligent in such provision when He quickly returns. Bullinger treats this text as confirmation of his view of the extraordinary clerical role in social upbuilding. This kind of ministry involves the complete field of episcopal oversight. Episcopacy is itself a cohesive collegiality (rather than a matter of individual figures of authority), and its authenticity requires implementation of a full spectrum of duties associated with doctrine and lifestyle. Synodal notes make it clear that doctrina embraces far more than propositional content and vita entails more than private holiness. Similarly, the faithful servant’s provision of nourishment involve a broad spectrum of prudent administration in God’s household. The cibum or alimentum provided by a minister – as an expression of

74 Bullinger explicitly cites Matthew 24 and/or refers to ‘the faithful and prudent servant’ in 28 entries throughout the Sermones Synodales. Often there are multiple such references within a single entry. See October 1537 (HBSS, 16); 6 May 1539 (HBSS, 21ff); 23 October 1543 (HBSS, 40); 4 May 1546 (HBSS, 49f); 19 October 1546 (HBSS, 52); 23 October 1548 (HBSS, 59); 7 May 1548 (HBSS, 62); 5 May 1551 (HBSS, 70); 20 October 1551 (HBSS, 71); 22 October 1555 (HBSS, 86); 5 May 1556 (HBSS, 87); 20 October 1556 (HBSS, 91); 4 May 1557 (HBSS, 93–94); 3 May 1558 (HBSS, 98); 7 May 1560 (HBSS, 106); 20 October 1562 (HBSS, 115); 19 October 1563 (HBSS, 120); 4 May 1568 (HBSS, 133ff); 19 October 1568 (HBSS, 139); 3 May 1569 = 5 May 1573 (HBSS, 141); 18 October 1569 = 19 October 1574 (HBSS, 144); 8 May 1571 (HBSS, 152); 23 October 1571 (HBSS, 154); 6 May 1572 (HBSS, 155); 20 October 1573 (HBSS, 160f); and 4 May 1574 (HBSS, 165).

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collective ministry – was nothing short of Christ himself, the bread of life for the whole community.75 To achieve this reform of episcopacy, Bullinger repeatedly urged that the collective offering of Christ be accommodated to the particular circumstances of his contemporary Zurich society. More than a rhetorical strategy, this urging reflected his belief that they were in a momentous stage of salvation history. With the eschatologically freighted term tempus, he exhorted the ministers to attend to the particularities of their place and people.76 Again, Bullinger believed his times were especially evil because the fulfillment of biblical prophecies of the Antichrist had culminated in the institution of papal monarchy.77 The deflating progress of the Schmalkaldic War in the Empire, the papal resurgence via the Council of Trent, and the rolling back of reforms in many southern German cities that had traditional ties to Zurich did nothing to diminish Bullinger’s End-Times idiom. Such a context actually reinforced the conviction. It is also hardly surprising that Bullinger preached on Daniel, Matthew, and Revelation in the period from the mid-1540s to the mid-1550s.78 The Zurich clergy were to “recall the times and therefore their duty as ministers. Such times have been predicted by the apostles and prophets, and there is no remedy except the Word. Action is to be prudent.”79 Zurich ministers could – must! – look around at the predicted times and become all the more motivated to apply the Word to their society.80 Bullinger retained a firm conviction that Jesus’ Second Coming was yet to occur and that only at that future point (perhaps not a distant future, to be sure), 75 This is stated explicitly in the entries for May 1564 and May 1569. In this vein, Mark Burrows seems again to have moved scholarship in the right direction when he noted the ethical emphasis of sanctification in Bullinger’s preaching, not as a system of individual merits or of changed essence but of the very presence of Christ in nobis. See Burrows: 1987, 66. 76 E. g., October 1569 (HBSS, 143 = October 1574). 77 E. g., 19 October 1546 (HBSS, 52). The image of the eschatological ‘faithful servant’ also turns up as a foil to the Romanist Council of Trent in Bullinger’s Sermones Synodales entry for 20 October 1551 (HBSS, 71). 78 Bullinger preached on Daniel on Tuesdays, 27 July 1546 to 19 July 1547 (and again, on Tuesdays, 18 May 1563 to 19 June 1565); on Matthew on Sundays, 6 October 1549 to 19 May 1555 (having also preached on Matthew near the outset of his synodal presidency, in 1535); and on Revelation on Tuesdays, 21 August 1554 to 29 December 1556. 79 See the Sermones Synodales entry for 7 May 1549 (HBSS, 62): “MEMINERImus qualia tempora et quod nostrum officium. TEMpora praedicta ab apostolis et prophetis: nullum remedium nisi Verbum…. Modeste prudenter agere.” 80 The convened ministers of the Zurich synod were to seek prudence in acting and applying the Word (prudentia in agendo, applicando), as expressed by Bullinger on 4 May 1557 (HBSS, 93). Another clear illustration may be found in the entry for 3 May 1569 = 5 May 1573 (HBSS, 142): “Who are the prudent ones? Those who establish all things for the place, time, and persons at hand, so that many may be made rich in Christ.… Let us pray diligently for prudence” (“Prudentes, qui pro loco tempore et personis omnia instituunt, ut plures Christo lucrifiant…. Orandum nobis sedulo pro prudentia”).

Eschatologized Confessionalizing: The Practicalities

49

Christians would witness the final overthrow of the Antichrist’s reign. Nevertheless, Bullinger also emphasized an eschatological reality within the present interim. The proclamation of Christ already participates in the final victory (cf. Staedtke: 1975, 73; also Moser: 2003, 72f). Bruce Gordon has therefore rightly highlighted the dimension of ‘realized eschatology’ in Bullinger’s theology (2002b, 29–53). Watchfulness – related to the word overseer, or ‘bishop’ – was far from passive waiting. This watchfulness entailed dutiful action both anticipating and participating in their Lord’s in-breaking in society. Gordon’s analysis must be complemented by a recognition of some broader social ramifications. The salvation of souls was inseparable from collective service in the Zurich republic.81 Bullinger understood that a disciplined corps of ministers was necessary to nurture a new mentality of life together in a transformed corpus Christianum. ‘Realized’ eschatology depended on a qualitatively other reference point across the temporal horizon – albeit a near horizon – and that also necessitated a particular, visible clerical corps in the here and now of Zurich Christianity.

2.7

Eschatologized Confessionalizing: The Practicalities

Confessionalization requires a significant degree of coordination between the institutions of church and state. The fact that Bullinger envisioned the coherence of the city-state as a microcosm of the corpus Christianum indicates that he had no principled opposition to church-state coordination. In fact, he vigorously promoted this kind of coordination not just as an expedient, but as a theological requirement. This stands in stark contrast to various Anabaptist polities of church-state separation; it also stands in contrast, even if less starkly, to the Calvinist model of a consistory. None of this supports a view of confessionalization wherein Bullinger would appear to cede the church to the state altogether.82 It is not correct to view Bullinger as a contributor – deliberately or otherwise – to a system in which the church recedes into mere bureaucracy of a state that makes its own total (and ultimately only secular) claims on the life of its citizenry. It is, however, absolutely correct and germane to note the practicality and agility that Bullinger brought to bear in his specific agenda of coordinating the institutions of church and state. Bullinger contributed to a reformulation of the notion of Christian society such that the church and civil apparatus might buttress each other within a more unified set of borders. Ever since Zwingli had first organized the Reformed synod 81 See the Sermones Synodales entry for 8 May 1543 (HBSS, 38). 82 For more on this point, see my earlier article, “Reconceiving the Clerical Corps: How Heinrich Bullinger Resists the Expectations of Confessionalization” (Wood: 2016, 177–92).

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of Zurich in 1528, every preacher in the Zurich state pledged his oath of loyalty to the City Council rather than to distant bishops within the Empire. Despite his hopes for a pan-Swiss evangelical state, Zwingli had devoted great energy to the mission of establishing the institutions of the Reformed Church of Zurich. The newly established marriage and morals courts functioned in this light. Synodal censure fortified the morals courts in turn. Such church-state boards inculcated new patterns that re-formed a common identity among all Zurichers. This encompassed not only matters of marriage and divorce (itself a radical departure from legal precedent in Christendom), but also many aspects of dancing, drinking, public festivities, clothing, and games. This transition was still new and uncertain at the time of Zwingli’s death. What sets Bullinger apart from his predecessor in the history of this development is his eschatological thoughtmatrix and, of course, his ability to engender trust in complex relations over the course of a very long tenure. It would be too much to say that Bullinger was the pioneer of confessionalization or that his own agenda was always successfully implemented; nevertheless, his work as presiding pastor of the Zurich synod fundamentally shaped the institutional life of Christian Zurich. Bullinger creatively applied the Zwinglian legacy and his own sense of history to Zurich’s institutions. The Sermones Synodales frequently confirm the legality of the synod on the explicit basis of medieval tradition, most particularly, the Novel 123.10 of Justinian’s sixth-century Corpus Iuris Civilis.83 Just as Zwingli had famously argued that the Disputations of 1523 could claim a type of authentic ecumenicity comparable to the great councils of ancient Christianity, Bullinger saw no hindrance to applying an ostensibly imperial (Byzantine) law to the particular case of Zurich sovereignty.84 While maintaining due caution about ‘statism,’ here we see some truth in Fritz Büsser’s observation that Bullinger contributed in some limited ways to the theory and praxis of the modern nationstate (2004, 339).

83 “Ut autem omnis ecclesiasticis status et sacrae regulae diligenter custodiantur, iubemus unumquemque beatum archiepiscopum et patriarcham et metropolitam sanctissimos episcopos sub se consitutos in eadem provincia semel aut secundo per singulos annos ad se convocare, et omnes causas subtiliter examinare, quas episcopi aut clerici aut monachi ad invicem habent, easque disponere, et super haec quicquid extra regulas a quacumque persona delinquitur emendari” (Nov. 123.10, in Schoell and Kroll [eds.]: 1904, 602). It is interesting to note that both the Justinian and the Zwinglian synodal precedents (see AZHR #1899, Article III, 834) explicitly assume that conditions may improve such that eventually only one session will be necessary per year. Bullinger, for his part, always insists that synod gatherings are to be held twice a year. This may also have to do with Bullinger’s fixed impression that the world stands at the end of the last phase of history. In such light, it would be logical to establish two sessions per year for what little duration remains. 84 See the Sermones Synodales entries for October 1537 (HBSS, 13), May 1538 (HBSS, 18), October 1540 (HBSS, 27), and October 1567 (HBSS, 130).

Church-State Tension and the Zurich Identity after Kappel

51

Bruce Gordon has observed an important paradox, or at least an ‘unresolved tension,’ in this process of retooling the old corpus Christianum (1992, 220). This paradox involves belief in pure Spirit unbound and untainted by finite limitations and also belief in the importance of human engagement in this world here and now. On the one hand, Zwingli had voiced strong opposition to the supposed de-spiritualizing of Christendom that had occurred for the sake of material interests and objects of ecclesiastical institutions. This was the fatal problem of idolatry. On the other hand, Swiss evangelical leaders strove to re-spiritualize society precisely by reforming the visible institutions. In other words, critique of idolatry did not imply detached spiritualism, predestinarian quietism, or any other lack of rigorous concern for institutions per se. Proper institutional consolidation became all the more important as a means of safeguarding the spiritual inheritance of Christendom. One particularly noteworthy way in which Zwingli reformed institutional Christendom involved his arguments for the legal equality of the lay and clerical classes of any Christian civil society. This line of thinking, he believed, could correct a host of idolatrous abuses arising from the notion of clerical privilege. For Zwingli, and then even more emphatically for Bullinger, these reform efforts never amounted to an assault upon the institutional ministry per se. Zwingli’s successor did not vitiate Zwingli’s agenda when he supplemented the idea of shared citizenship with a more fully developed notion of the particular status of the clerical office. Throughout the Sermones Synodales, Bullinger repeatedly alludes to the Epistle of James. “We will have a different judgment,” he says.85 Zwingli had been correct to abhor the clergy’s immunity from the law of civil society, but clergy should by no means infer from this legal equality a notion that they had an equal responsibility to that society under God. The clerical difference consisted in a dauntingly greater responsibility to serve. The clergy were to function as a distinct and visible corps within the Reformed ‘household’ of Zurich, itself a microcosm of Christendom.

2.8

Church-State Tension and the Zurich Identity after Kappel

Hans Ulrich Bächtold has emphasized the essential significance of the period directly following the disastrous Second Kappel War – and therefore the beginning of Bullinger’s long tenure – in forging Zurich’s enduring Reformed identity: “The civil mandate [of 29 May 1532] proclaimed and enjoined that the Zurich 85 See, e. g., the Sermones Synodales entry for 6 May 1550 (HBSS, 65). Often, Bullinger simply points to James, or James 3 in particular, without further elaboration.

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political state located its self-understanding and its very foundation in Reformed Christianity.”86 One must appreciate the significance of a robust, Reformed promulgation, coming at just that time. The terms of the Second Peace of Kappel (Landfrieden) had, famously, allowed the victorious Swiss Catholic parties to maintain their ‘true, indubitable, ancient, Christian faith’ while conceding the right of evangelicals to retain ‘their faith’ – pointedly not even referred to as a Christian faith. Zurichers in Bullinger’s influence responded with the self-defensive posture described by Zeeden as typical of confession-building. As a confessional entity, Reformed Zurich built itself up precisely in terms of its distinctiveness. The fact that all of this occurred in a moment of perceived crisis may also explain how the confessionalizing of Zurich proceeded with such an End-Times orientation. There were voices in the city and the countryside alike that blamed Zwingli and Zwinglian evangelicals for recent unhappy developments. Still, this did not reverse Zurich’s evangelical direction. Under Bullinger’s leadership, in fact, quite the contrary: the year after disaster at Kappel, the Council confirmed the constitutional basis of Zurich’s church-state administration that would endure for centuries (Bächtold: 1982, 35). Bullinger exhorted the assembled clergy at synod sessions so strenuously because, as Bächtold has again observed, he fully recognized the need for each parish pulpit to galvanize a coherent community: “The church was the public forum, the place in which common concerns [of the parish] were handled.”87 Whether through required public reading of magisterial mandates, administering care to the poor and sick, or, more generally, leading by example (bono exemplo praeire), the pastors coordinated Zurich’s cultural and political identity as a Reformed microcosm of Christendom. The various political sub-jurisdictions of the entire sovereignty consisted of parishes working toward a coherent social unity. Bullinger himself seems to have conceived this progressive agenda even more radically than did Zurich’s political leaders or, for that matter, than did some of his own ministerial colleagues. Reality had rent Zwingli’s dream of a unified evangelical banner unfurling over the entire Confederation. Would a strictly evangelical rump-state be an alternative? Complicating that possibility was the fact that late medieval history had given Bern and the other Swiss evangelical states reason to worry that any move toward pan-Swiss Protestantism might prove to be yet another attempt by Zurich to establish hegemony. Such concerns featured conspicuously in the comparatively tepid military action of Bern in 86 “Das Mandat [am 29. Mai 1532] sagte und forderte, dass das Zürcher Staatswesen sein Selbstverständnis und seine Begründung allein im reformierten Christentum finde” (Bächtold: 1982, 26). For the text of this mandate, see AZHR #1853, 797ff. 87 My translation. The original reads: “In der Kirche war die Oeffentlichkeit, also der Ort, an dem die gemeinen Anliegen [von der Pfarrgemeinde] erledigt wurden” (Bächtold: 1982, 60).

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Zurich’s defense during the Second Kappel War. Bullinger recognized these divisions and sought better ways to consolidate his own cause. He did propose, at least tentatively, a Zurich-led nation of evangelicals that might assert its agenda by wresting independence from the alliance currently dominated by victorious Swiss Catholic states. Early on in his tenure, obvious discontent with the Second Peace of Kappel led Bullinger to contemplate a total dissolution of the existing framework of the Swiss Confederation.88 Scholars have rightly noted that this plan never gained momentum. After very private consultations among his closest friends, Bullinger never presented it to the magistracy in any of his official audiences (i. e., in his Fürträge) (Bächtold: 1975, 284–89). Nevertheless, the concept illustrates the kind of consolidating energies that Bullinger exercised in the cause of Zurich Reformation. The consolidating agenda occasionally ran afoul of ministerial opinion as well as political reality. Leo Jud stands out as illustrative of the kind of clerical opposition that Bullinger had to balance within any strategy for Reformed Zurich. The debacle at Kappel opened rifts between evangelical-churchly and magisterial-civil factions that, previously, the force of Zwingli’s powerful personality had largely held together. Realistically, there could not have existed much enthusiasm among Bullinger’s clerical colleagues for the formation of an independent Reformed nation under the aegis of the Zurich council.89 Jud, in fact, bitterly railed against the civil authorities. Jud took the occasion of St. John the Baptist day (24 June 1532) to unleash some especially harsh critiques of the magistrates on account of their acceptance of the terms of the recent Peace of Kappel.90 The magistrates, he argued, were scapegoating the clergy for what Jud 88 Cf. Bullinger’s private, unpublished treatise composed in September 1532, Radtschlag wie man möge vor kriegen sin und der Vorten tyranny abkummenn (1532c, 122r–131v). Bullinger would not completely drop all vestiges of the idea of an evangelical Swiss secession until late in 1546, in the midst of the diplomatic difficulties of the Schmalkaldic War. 89 Suspicion and even hostility died hard between the clergy and magistracy in the years after Kappel. At the synod of April 1535, the assembled ministers censured Bullinger for being too cooperative with political authorities. He was, they warned, “ze mÿllt mitt sinem predgen, soll ettwas dappfferer, rüher, herter und raesser sin insonders das die haendel dess radts antrifft” (StAZ, E.II.1.193). My translation of this is: “Heinrich Bullinger: he is too mild in his preaching; he should be somewhat bolder, less polished, tougher, and more stringent especially as regards the business of the Council.” 90 The terms of the Second Peace of Kappel (i. e., Landfrieden) were disadvantageous to Zurich’s accustomed position of strength (including its evangelical assertiveness). Zurich was humiliated not only by having to acknowledge the ‘true Christian faith’ of its Catholic Swiss neighbors, but also by having to promise not to print any further incendiary treatises against the religion of said neighbors and by being made responsible for burdensome war reparations. In addition, the jointly controlled territories (Gemeine Herrschaften) of the Confederation were outrightly re-Catholicized in some cases or in other cases reduced from evangelical leadership to a state of enforced religious parity (which itself often favored Catholic entrenchment). Jud and other evangelicals were bitterly disappointed with their

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considered to be the poor Christian leadership of the magistrates themselves.91 One can easily imagine that the response to Jud’s sermon was as hearty among his fellow ministers as it was disapproving among the scandalized councilors. The incident came at the culmination of several prior months of seething discontent. Jud had even briefly opposed the very idea of civil oversight over church discipline.92 Already since the establishment of Zurich’s marriage and morals courts of the 1520s, church discipline had been a joint business of magistracy and clergy. In the spring of 1532, Jud vented frustration with the executive authority that the magistrates exercised over religious life. He was not promoting a fully Anabaptist separation of church and state, nor was he pining to return to the traditional, Catholic concept of clerical immunity from civil law.93 At this moment, Jud was articulating his fear of implications arising from restrictions placed by magistracy upon Christian ministers. Magistrates frankly sought to limit potential for incendiary rabble-rousing or the kinds of anti-papal rhetoric that could be seen to violate the recent treaty. Would such domestication of the clergy vitiate integrity of the church? Following Bullinger’s initial appeal for calm, Jud wrote a fervent retort. Jud argued that human authority must not trump God’s scriptural testimony, the proclamation of which constitutes the whole business of ordained ministry. Furthermore, weak-spirited caution must never diminish an authentically Christian pursuit of perfection.94 Jud’s letter reverberates with apocalyptic urgency. Indeed, unregulated zeal at such a moment could well have hastened the end of a Zwinglian church. Bullinger’s success in allaying Jud’s distress offers triumphant testimony to his diplomatic and nuanced End-Times idiom. No surviving text documents the final arguments Bullinger used to corral Jud back into the Zurich model of clerical cooperation with Christian magistracy, but they must have been deeply persuasive. Jud evinced no lingering qualms when serving as co-author of the constitution of the synod in October of that same year. Many Zurich ministers shared similar frustrations, yet without abandoning their hope for a Reformed Zurich in which church and state would be intimately coordinated in a single society. Bullinger voiced ample concerns of his own, some

91 92 93 94

political leaders for seeming to renege on promises made earlier to defend evangelicals at home and in the territories. The magistracy, for its part, was not at all impressed with Jud’s act of impugning their function as protectors of Christian reformation. See AZHR #1864, 805–808. The extant letters of March 1532 between Jud and Bullinger are found in HBBW 2.70, 74, and 75. Hans Ulrich Bächtold overemphasizes the possible Schwenckfeldian/Anabaptist influence on Jud. See 1982, 19 and 24. HBBW 2. 75.

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of which are evident in a fragmentary 1535 entry in the Sermones Synodales. The entry is difficult to interpret, but Bullinger’s words may be read in part as follows: We would have shown gratitude in preaching the gospel, including love of truth and of the fatherland. However, the celebrated glory of the Zurichers has been darkened. They [i. e., presumably the Zurich magistracy and/or perhaps the high-handed victorious party of Swiss Catholics] have overstepped their prerogatives in a manner not unlike that of the Roman popes. Their ordinance has been turned to the detriment of the church, and it is therefore the clerical duty to provide admonishment. What is the nature of this ordinance? They were incautious with the ordinance where prudence was called for. It is contrary and disadvantageous to their faith. We would not have made such an ordinance. “Now you shall not have alliances with them” [Cf. Exod 23:32 and Deut 7:2]. There are no more mandates because of the alliances and the Landfrieden which were written in the provinces [referring perhaps also to the Meilener Verkommnis of November 1531; cf. AZHR #1797. By this law the books of all the pious are betrayed. (HBSS, 2; underlining in the original)95

Bullinger recognized and even shared some of the discontent notable among his clerical peers, but he saved his harshest critique for the confidential setting of the synod, rather than the public pulpit. Bullinger’s remonstrance of 1535 may also include some reference to a magisterial mandate of May 1532, a text that had gone beyond simply reaffirming Zurich’s Reformed faith – as the clergy for their part had advised the magistrates to do – and had added an explicit denigration of papal religion as an ‘abuse’ (cf. AZHR #1853). The move backfired on the magistrates, and the clergy paid the price. The five Swiss Catholic states had responded with mandates of their own that succeeded in crippling most evangelical churches in the joint territories (Gemeine Herrschaften), and this led to further humiliation when Zurich was forced by April 1533 to revoke its own May mandate. In Bullinger’s eyes, the Zurich Council had arrogated practically papal authority over the church to itself. The magistracy had spurned the advice of the church’s ministers and had acted with false presumption. Bullinger insisted that the civil authority, for all its legitimate sovereignty, may not encroach upon the prerogatives of the church’s institutional leadership. In this difficult context, Bullinger continued to ponder church-state relations and the complications of confederational politics. “Now you shall not have al-

95 The original reads as follows: “Gratitudo. Quid praestiterimus in praedicando euangelio. Amor veritatis et patriae. Gloria Tigurinorum celebris. Defruscata. Nimium sibi sumpsere, ut olim Romani Pontifices. Rescriptio enim in detrimentum ecclesiae vergit. Ergo nostrum est ista monere, sumus pastores. QUALIS ILLA RESCRIPTIO Nitt besinnt. Ubi prudent. Irem glouben widerig nachteÿlig: non fecissemus. Iam non potestis foedera habere cum illis. Gheine Mandatenn mee. Den pündten und Lantsfrÿden. Sic redacti in provinciam. Hoc ipso iure omnium libri piorum prodentur” (underlining in the original).

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liances with them,” writes Bullinger in the entry quoted above. This hearkens back to Exodus 23:32 and/or Deuteronomy 7:2, where the God of Israel warns his people not to enter alliances with the pagan peoples of the land. Bullinger expressed disgust with the lack of magisterial prudence in asserting an avowedly anti-papal morals mandate – which was ironic, to say the least, in light of magisterial crackdowns on Zurich clergy for their incendiary anti-Catholic antichristology – but he never doubted the principled objection to papal religion. The problem lay in the terms of the Peace of Kappel that had rendered such statements imprudent. The deeper imprudence lay in the Zurich’s magistrates’ having bound themselves to such terms in the first place. Arguing against the legality of the Peace of Kappel, Bullinger cited the previously binding 1528 Disputation of Bern and the very oath of the Zurich synod. He bluntly stated: “now, here we are not able nor do we subscribe [to the terms of the Peace]. We owe more to God than to you.”96 The ‘you’ in question may refer to the magistracy, or to the magistracy as fettered to the victorious Romanist powers. Zurich, for all its faults, needed to take seriously its duty to protect and foster a society set apart by the cultivation of true religion, and Bullinger directed his career to that objective.97 Unlike the personal memoranda of the Sermones, the official protocols of the Acta Synodi for 1535 do not record any echoes whatsoever of a discussion for an evangelical state unyoked from misalliances or from other Confederational complications. Presumably, that line of thought had ceased to meet the criteria of prudence, even in such a confidential setting.98 The Zurich Council anyway 96 See the Sermones Synodales entry for 1535 (HBSS, 3): “Iam. Hic non possumus subscribere: nec subscribimus. Deo plus debemus quam vobis” (underlining in the original). Cf. Acts 5:29. 97 In some ways, Bullinger went even further than the magistracy. Consistent consolidation of a single household of church and state meant that rights of patronage for religious establishments in the parishes should technically all fall to the Council. While during the period leading up to the Reformation, the Zurich Council had indeed bought as many such rights as possible, it never ceased to recognize the legal prerogatives of patronage when external abbeys and principalities retained their previous claims. Of course, this patronage did not give outsiders the legal right to appoint clergy within the sovereignty of Zurich (though they sought to do just that on occasion), but it did give them rights to economic benefits. The Council brought up this matter at the synod session of 6 May 1544 (see Acta Synodi, StAZ, E.II.1.304). In a section entitled “Die pfru˚ndhuser Nitt lassen zergan,” the Council apparently reiterated grievances of foreign patrons (Laͤ henherren) – probably presented to the Zurich delegates at the most recent Tagsatzung of the Confederation – concerning dilapidation of their properties (and incomes) throughout Zurich’s territory. The Zurich Council admonished the clergy to stop permitting this destructive neglect of foreign rights. For more on this theme, see Gordon: 1992, 90f. 98 The implicit hint at establishing an independent Zurich-evangelical state never again emerges even in the Sermones Synodales. It is not, however, as though Bullinger ceased to characterize Zurich as the primary instantiation of a divinely ordered household on the cusp of its Lord’s return. In fact, that tendency only grew in emphasis. It is also interesting to note that the Reformer could still speak occasionally of the entire Swiss Confederation as his ‘fatherland,’

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lacked the political capacity to create and/or lead a movement for independence, and the Zurich clergy probably harbored too much suspicion of the Council to entrust it any longer with a dream for a unified Swiss evangelical state. What they did all agree upon, however, was that Zurich should be a ‘city upon a hill.’99 Patria can be an ambiguous term in the language of the sixteenth century, potentially referring to everything from the city of one’s birth to the larger linguistic or ethnic regions that were not defined by political borders. In 1535, however, Bullinger clearly identified the political sovereignty of evangelical Zurich as the primary patria that the synod should serve to build up.100 Clergy and magistracy alike agreed that this patria, with all its semantic overtones of a fatherly household, should instantiate Christ’s vision of the city upon a hill. Throughout the tumultuous early 1530s – including Jud’s brief crisis of conscience in matters of cooperation with magistracy – End-Times thinking did not stymie Bullinger’s ability to operate with nuance and diplomatic skill. On the contrary, it refined his concern for institutional structures. For Bullinger, the central eschatological concern was idolatry contending against pure, spiritual worship of the Christian community. This threat appeared most evidently in his concept of the papal antichrist, but it also appeared close to hand in any overreach by state institutions. It all required a careful dance of institutional leadership on the part of magistracy with ministry. By means of the eschatological clerical template of Matthew 24 – the vigilant servant of faith and prudence – Bullinger promoted an agenda for asserting clerical integrity in tandem with political institutions. The institutions of church and state achieved an overall dynamism designed to preclude complacency in any party.

even in the 1560s, when practically no hope remained that the Romanist Orte would embrace the Reformation. Cf. Bächtold: 1975, 289. 99 The Sermones Synodales entry for 1535 (HBSS, 1) cites Matthew 5 in exhorting the synod to help Zurich become a civitas in monte. Significantly, the phrase occurs again (as opidum supra montem) in October 1549 (HBSS, 63). These were particularly relevant years for such imagery in light of the counter-examples of the bloody end in 1535 of the Anabaptist ‘city upon a hill’ of Munster and the fresh memory of the capitulation of the Reformed city of Constance to the Catholic Emperor Charles V as he completed his victory in the Schmalkaldic War (October 1548). Zurich was a tangible ‘city upon a hill’ for countless evangelical refugees from all across Europe. 100 Sermones Synodales entry for 1535 (HBSS, 2).

3

End-Times Interplay of Doctrine and Lifestyle

3.1

Significance of the Two Foci of the Reformed Clerical Office

For Bullinger, the clerical corps had to be dynamic. Foci of prudence and faithfulness, or of doctrina et vita, result in a ministry that resists any complacent propositional or institutional givenness. The ministerial clerical class exists in a perpetual and contextualizing flexibility. Everything that the collective episcopacy is and does correlates to an End-Times otherness. Drawing upon Matthew 24:45–51 and Malachi 2:1–9 throughout his Sermones Synodales, Bullinger elaborated upon doctrina et vita as the twin foci of ministry. In many ways, these points correspond to the Zwinglian prophetic categories of exegesis and application.101 Zwingli for his part had especially highlighted the exegetical-linguistic aspects of a newly Reformed minister-as-prophet. Bullinger’s choice to supplement the concept with such starkly End-Times imagery as the ‘faithful and prudent servant’ already indicates a careful modification of Zwinglian legacy. This development depends as well upon a clerical interpretation of the ‘covenant with Levi.’ In ways that seem more emphatic than in his published theological treatises, Bullinger took the occasion of the synod to develop ministerial identity in the framework of a particular ‘covenant,’ itself understood in an End-Times mode. The theological term covenant most fundamentally concerns Christ and therefore encompasses the entire baptized community. Bullinger shared that conviction among many other Reformed theologians. Similarly, Bullinger could frankly assume as a point of some consensus the fact that eschatology fundamentally concerned Christ, and so pertained to the entire covenant community of the baptized. Where Bullinger nevertheless achieved some distinctiveness, even idiosyncrasy, among Reformed theologians lay in the way in which he applied covenant and eschaton to the clerical identity and function. In the passage from Matthew 24, the Lord finally returns, whereupon the drunken servant 101 See, for example, Opitz: 2007, vol. 2, 493–513.

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is cut to pieces and cast out. In Malachi, the Levitical priest in breach of the covenant is told at last that he “will be put out of God’s presence.” Presupposing an impending Judgment over all the world, the dedicated institutional/ministerial ‘servant’ must bear a special burden of responsibility until that day. That very duty constitutes the profile of a distinctive class within Christian society. This eschatological profile is a particular emphasis of the synod; but it does also appear in varying degrees in many other contexts of Bullinger’s published work. One may look, for example, to Bullinger’s 1557 Basel publication of De fine seculi. Here again Bullinger remarks that the hastening signs of End Times are more and more fulfilled whenever the criteria of clerical faithfulness and prudence are violated – that is, the same eschatological attributes of ministry highlighted throughout his Sermones Synodales (Bullinger: 1557a, 11). In his much more influential and widespread publication Decades, Bullinger similarly characterized institutional ministry for the ‘public weal’ in a time otherwise noted for hastening Judgment (Decas quinta, epistola dedicatoria, HBTS 3.2, 739).102 One perceives in Bullinger’s published and private writings a pattern of eschatological pairings of clerical identity: faithfulness and prudence; Word and Sacrament; faith and love; doctrine and lifestyle.

3.2

Introduction to the Episcopi-Diagrams

Bullinger repeatedly exhorted Zurich’s clergy on the importance of their oversight of their parishes, and also – and in the synod most especially – on the subject of their own, institutional mutual oversight. In doing so, Bullinger was implementing the synod constitution that he and Jud had composed. Zurich’s assembled pastors and teachers were in fact legally obliged to submit together to disciplinary oversight (censura) (see AZHR #1899, esp. 829 and 835). Diagrams and related commentaries became a hallmark of the Sermones Synodales, and they testify to Bullinger’s tireless efforts to establish ministerial identity through standards of mutual oversight. Doctrine and lifestyle (doctrina et vita) are the two disciplinary rubrics. Bullinger’s diagrams of the censorial criteria frequently feature the heading episcopi. The Latin term could be read as ‘bishops’ in English, but it seems instead that Bullinger intended the other possible rendering of the Latin: ‘of the bishop (singular).’ Episcopacy was the collective identity of the institutional clerical leadership, rather than a pinpointed identity of individual ministers. The choice 102 Of course, the eschatological hue is present, if sometimes implicit, in many of Bullinger’s public and private writings already in the ways Bullinger elaborated on ministerial ‘vigilance’ as a corollary of the term episcopus (or ‘overseer’).

Introduction to the Episcopi-Diagrams

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of the term ‘bishop’ not only reiterates some explicitly biblical language, but also highlights an intentional continuity with Christian tradition. Episcopal terminology had played an ineradicable part in the history of Christianity since the earliest centuries. Bullinger also always seems to have implied eschatological connotations when using the word. The word episcopus, after all, is redolent with a sense of anticipatory vigilance in its meaning as ‘one who watches over.’ At synod sessions over the years, Bullinger never tired of exhorting his colleagues to ‘watch out’ (vigilate!).103 In light of the approaching and decisive End, ministry consisted entirely of dutiful service to the community in the mode of a lookout or watchman, as in Ezekiel 3 and Acts 20:26–32.104 Bullinger characterized this vigilance as an exercise of ministry both vis-à-vis the community and as a sort of collective introspection. A quick glance through the Sermones Synodales may leave the impression that the episcopi-diagrams occur in practically every entry and that they are essentially identical wherever they occur.105 The two major headings of doctrina and vita do correspond with the synod’s constitutionally established mandate for overseeing “leer und leben der predicanten.”106 There is real continuity here, but one should not overlook the nuance and even the occasional variation in the ways in which Bullinger applied these rubrics. Bruce Gordon has highlighted the unassuming importance of the pairing, showing that it eludes facile association with public-private and church-state dichotomies (1992, 176). Still, even Gordon’s analysis does not fully explore the subtlety and occasionally varying nuance within Bullinger’s use of these diagrams throughout his career. Precise attention to the episcopi-diagrams contributes to a better historical understanding of Bullinger’s role in building the institution of Zurich clerical identity.

103 Bullinger uses forms of the verb vigilare (to watch out) at least thirty times throughout the Sermones. Cf. also the German marginal note in HBSS, 26 (May 1540): “ich hab dich geordnet uffzu˚saͤ hen,” citing Jeremiah 1.7–10, which speaks of receiving the Lord’s words in order to oversee the nations in terms of the reformational agenda of tearing down and building up. Other related words based on the roots videre, inspicere, and spectare also frequently occur throughout the Sermones. 104 Bullinger had a great deal to say about the precise nature of episcopal vigilance in his repeated references to the ‘faithful and prudent servant.’ Matthew 24:45–51 is not, however, explicitly cited in the Synodalordnung of 1532. In other words, this reflects Bullinger’s personal stamp in applying the synod’s mission. 105 Hans Ulrich Bächtold does not avoid this tempting conclusion. Cf. Bächtold: 1982, 78. 106 Cf. Article II of the Prediger- und Synodalordnung in AZHR #1899, 829.

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3.3

End-Times Interplay of Doctrine and Lifestyle

The What and How of Doctrina

Bullinger always highlighted the term doctrina within his descriptions of episcopal oversight. The word does, of course, carry the sense of the English word ‘doctrine,’ but one must avoid the assumption that Bullinger intended a strictly systematic-theological usage. The synod did not provide a forum for theological discussion, which, in any case, would have fallen rather within the purview of the daily exegetical sessions of the Schola Tigurina.107 Bullinger himself steered the synod onto a pragmatic course. The terms of the synod constitution had provided for a time of consilia immediately following the censura.108 In theory, the assembled ministers had an open floor to bring up matters of doctrine, error, misunderstanding, or other church business. Nevertheless, we see in the records of the synod sessions that theological discussion practically never occurred.109 Bullinger used this time devoted to consilia to tend to ‘other church business,’ principally the reinstatement of repentant offenders to clerical office or the referral of the recalcitrant to civil authorities for punishment. This does not indicate a lack of concern for theological accuracy on Bullinger’s part. Almost all of the Zurich clergy had been priests in the traditional sense until the transition to Reformation, and the new ministers exhibited a range of theological understanding (or appreciation) of the issues at hand. Theology was a vital concern. It would be misleading to assume that Bullinger had no interest at all in using the synod as a means to promote theological clarity. Still, neither the Zurich synod nor even the Schola Tigurina functioned quite like the theological platform of the Genevan congrégation or consistoire. Zurich’s particular churchstate apparatus worked differently: Bullinger could have reasonable confidence that the Schola Tigurina was steadily fulfilling its function of outfitting Zurich 107 Bullinger himself generally referred to the Schola Tigurina as the Letzgen – or, the public lectures – but such sessions are commonly known among historians as “the Prophecy” (Prophezei). Letzgen discussions did, in any case, clearly prioritize Old Testament exegesis, notably highlighting books of prophets. 108 See Article III (“Von dem synodo und wie der gehalten”) of the Prediger- und Synodalordung in AZHR #1899, 836. 109 It is a rare exception to the norm when the Acta Synodi for April 1537 records censure of a certain Hans Muller for various theological aberrations, including his theoretical defense of religious imagery, rejection of the Old Testament, and rejection of civil oversight of the church (StAZ, E.II.1.220–21). The scene does give interesting insight into the varied, and not at all neatly partisan, welter of theological impulses drawing from ideas typically identified with everything from traditionalism to Anabaptism. Insofar as this particular censure was quickly handed over to the magistracy for arbitration, however, we see the degree to which Bullinger was determined to keep the synod on track (as he understood it). Faith and doctrine did not constitute an alternative to the practicalities of lived piety; rather, Bullinger sought always to anchor the theological oversight of the synod precisely within the practical realm.

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with a corps of intellectually well-equipped ministers and, meanwhile, the mandates of the City Council aimed to ensure that rural clergy remained within acceptable doctrinal standards.110 Instead of supplying a systematic-theological forum, the synod managed a broadly practical approach to doctrina. This did meet some practical necessities of that time and place. It preserved a space of working consensus amidst a movement still in process. This approach to theology at the synod also promoted cooperation with other institutions, notably the magistracy. Beyond the level of mundane practicality, it was also a deft maneuver on Bullinger’s part to achieve a dynamic, flexible Reformational agenda. This mode of doctrina could be fitted rather nimbly to circumstances in an End-Times discourse. By not making the synod into a floor of theological debate, Bullinger prevented the escalation of a sectarianism that could have threatened social cohesion, but he also deliberately minimized the dogmatic hardening that could have endangered contextualized applications of Scripture. Contextual, practical theology does not denigrate the systematic and/or propositional enterprise – to which Bullinger himself contributed by way of his published works. Nor does the synod’s practical-contextual approach to theology constitute mere fuzzy thinking or anything like distrust toward the principled importance of theology per se.111 Bullinger considered doctrina as something crucial to the clerical mission. He explicitly stated that error and sin in matters of

110 Bullinger’s frequent injunctions to cultivate diligence in study notwithstanding, rural clergy in these years did not have a totally free hand in their exegesis. At the very least, the synod would have been the official place to seek magisterial permission to espouse any ‘new’ doctrines. Bruce Gordon has further alleged that rural clergy were to read pre-approved postills that had been prepared by city clergy and that were distributed to all country parishes (1992, 113). From a modern religious perspective, one may well abhor the lack of free debate; still, one may appreciate the Zurich solution to what moderns equally abhor (and generally caricature) as the Genevan penchant for acrimonious theological argumentation. In any event, the historian does well to recall the importance of social cohesion for sixteenth-century survival. The Reformation in Zurich, as elsewhere, was never an invitation for individuals to come to atomized religious convictions alone with their God. 111 For numerous reasons, some of which the history of Christianity has itself generated, many observers of Christian ‘doctrine’ today assume that the term concerns philosophical and/or propositional (perhaps even inquisitorial) precision. I have generally preferred to retain Bullinger’s Latin term doctrina, in hopes that the foreignness will rather encourage readers to see it in its broad, dynamic context and beyond the narrowness of theological assumptions. The English term ‘teaching’ could perhaps also work, though even it does not carry the full range of nuance that Bullinger conveys via doctrina. In a somewhat similar vein, Kenneth Appold has argued against the assumption that the period of Protestant orthodoxy was a hardening of initial Reformation dynamism. Appold’s point consists in proving the openness and liveliness of orthodox disputation that resisted uniformity. My point here is similar in emphasizing persistent dynamism, but focuses instead on the inclusion of social dimensions under the rubric of ‘doctrine.’ Cf. Appold: 2004, 88.

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doctrina were even more troubling than error and sin in the realm of vita.112 As did many Reformers, Bullinger placed edifying instruction at the foundation of right living. However, his description of the constitutive elements of the instructional purpose of the synod is quite broad and socially dynamic. Bullinger directed theology along the lines of the kerygmatic liveliness that he took to be the essence of the entire Reformational enterprise in Zurich. This synodal contextuality of doctrina comports completely with his famous later formulation that “preaching the Word of God is the Word of God” (“Die predig deß worts Gottes ist Gottes wort”; Bullinger: 1566, 1v). ‘Theology’ in its synodal context of doctrina was not a philosophical-speculative process, any more than it was an exercise of an isolated enclave of clerics. In the Sermones, Bullinger included an array of interactions between ministers and parishioners under the heading of doctrina. Here one finds preaching the gospel (itself composed of the two elements of poenitentia et remissio peccatorum), correcting offenses among the populace, educating children, caring for the poor, attending to the sick, administering the sacraments, and leading public and private prayers.113 However much Bullinger prized the terminological precision of what we may call doctrine proper, his synodal reflections on doctrina concern the upbuilding of communal life in a broad range of respects throughout the parishes of Zurich sovereignty. Close inspection of the episcopi-diagrams and of concomitant explanatory remarks reveals two applications of doctrina that could connote something explicitly philosophical or propositional. Both of these instances of doctrina occur under the broader heading of the same name. In one of these two narrower usages, doctrina refers to ministerial instruction that must accompany administration of sacraments.114 In the other, Bullinger refers to Luke 24:47 in describing the gospel itself as a doctrine of repentance and forgiveness (poenitentia et remissio peccatorum).115 Even in these cases, however, Bullinger does not suggest timeless propositional rigidity; the message is always fitted to circumstances. The very terms of the Synodalordnung had declared that preaching must

112 See the Sermones Synodales entry for May 1538 (HBSS, 17): “Error et Peccata partim in Doctrina, partim in Vita. Prior exitialior est.” Bullinger could also say, “Let our life be such that we do not tear down by imprudence what we have first built up through good doctrine” (“Vita sit ne diruamus imprudentia quod bona doctrina extruimus”); see entry for 5 May 1556 (HBSS, 87). 113 For the entries for 1536 (HBSS, 9), May 1559 (HBSS, 101), and May 1566 (HBSS, 127), this broader use of the term doctrina goes even further to include a subheading of studium as well. 114 See entries for 6 May 1544 (HBSS, 41), 21 October 1544 (HBSS, 43), 5 May 1551 (HBSS, 69), 3 May 1552 (HBSS, 75), and 3 May 1558 (HBSS, 97). 115 See esp. the entry for October 1537 (HBSS, 13).

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be ‘appropriate’ to the parish.116 In describing particular episcopal duties to administer sacraments and to preach sermons, Bullinger consistently exhorted his colleagues in any dimension of doctrina to accommodate and apply their ministry to their time and place.117 With special urgency of an End-Times construal of that very context, Bullinger gave distinctive direction to Reformed Zurich. Starting in 1548 – in the wake of dramatic reversals for Protestantism in the post-Schmalkald Empire – Bullinger found that circumstances required some experimentation with his synodal episcopi-diagrams. He split the larger heading of doctrina into two parts. From 1548 to 1550, he sketched not two but three major sections: doctrina; the newly minted category of ministerium; and, finally, vita. In this period, doctrina refers to the appropriately applied Scriptural content of repentance and forgiveness (poenitentia et remissio). The elements of parish life devoted to sacred assemblies for prayer and interpretations/explanations (coetus sacri in quibus interpellatio et doctrina) and to administration of the sacraments fall within the new category of ministerium. Here Bullinger also locates the more socially oriented exhortations regarding the education of children and care for the sick and the poor. Only after commenting on these two doctrinal branches does he proceed to the third major heading, vita. It is not entirely clear why Bullinger felt motivated to make this change at this time. In any case, the doctrinal subdivision seems to have left Bullinger unsatisfied. Perhaps the circumstances that had elicited modification just after the defeat of Schmalkald did not retain their timeliness. From 1551 to 1552, he reverted to two major headings for the episcopi-diagrams, where the term ministerium itself enveloped the previous heading of doctrina. Bullinger tinkered one last time with this arrangement. After 1552, the heading ministerium never reappears on its own except as an explicit synonym for doctrina. In the last analysis, Bullinger seems to have preferred the fullest possible spectrum of contextual applicability of doctrina.118 116 “With zeal, earnestness, and faithfulness, each pastor must select, present, interpret, and therefrom teach, exhort, comfort, and admonish as drawn from biblical Scripture, as is appropriate and necessary for his church” (“ein jeder uss biblischer geschrift, das siner kilchen gemäss und notwendig ist, erwöle, das fürtrage, interpretiere, darus lere, ermane, tröste und strafe und das alles mit geist, ernst und trüw”). See Article II of the Synodalordnung, “Von der leer und leben der predicanten,” in AZHR #1899, 829. 117 Bullinger uses accomodare on 9 May 1559 (HBSS, 101) and on 4 May 1574 (HBSS, 164). Far more frequent within his explications of doctrina is the term applicare: 8 May 1543 (HBSS, 37); 6 May 1544 (HBSS, 41); 21 Oct 1544 (HBSS, 43); 5 May 1545 (HBSS, 45); 19 October 1546 (HBSS, 51); 18 October 1547 (HBSS, 53); 8 May 1548 (HBSS, 57); 23 Oct 1548 (HBSS, 59); 7 May 1549 (HBSS, 61); 6 May 1550 (HBSS, 65); 5 May 1551 (HBSS, 69); 3 May 1552 (HBSS, 75); 3 May 1558 (HBSS, 97); 7 May 1560 (HBSS, 105); 21 Oct 1561 (HBSS, 111); 22 October 1566 (HBSS, 128); 18 October 1569 = 19 October 1574 (HBSS, 143); and 8 May 1571 (HBSS, 152). 118 After May 1566, Bullinger’s synodal notes no longer feature diagrams (although elucidations of doctrina et vita persist). He places more discursive emphasis on Scripture’s pastoral/

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The What and How of Vita

Bullinger consistently concluded his exhortations on the subject of episcopacy with a section titled Vita (or, synonymously, Conversatio vitae). Here the Reformer expounded on the clerical duty to lead by way of a lifestyle of holiness. At home and in the congregation, in word, conduct, and even clothing, pastors were to maintain rigorous ethical patterns.119 Bullinger enjoined them to lead not by coercion of conscience, nor, certainly, by an exclusively sacramental prerogative, but rather by the attractive force of example (bono [or sometimes, sancto] exemplo praeire). Bullinger’s mission in the synod involved a great deal of attention to defining the new expectations of this ‘holy example.’ Violent outbursts and tavern-going are recorded among the clerical offenses treated by the censura of nearly every session.120 Already the emphatic repetitiveness of such discipline indicates the challenge involved in shaping a new mentality as to clerical lifestyle.121 Bullinger’s own father – a priest – had enjoyed hunting parties and banquets, and contemporary parishioners had not considepiscopal qualifications with admonishments in light of the ‘signs of the times.’ This change may have had as much to do with addressing complaints of repetitiveness – heard perhaps in the overtones of Bullinger’s defensive references to Paul’s own ‘repetitions’ of Timothy, Titus, and the elders at Miletus, e. g., entries for 7 May 1560 (HBSS, 105) and 6 May 1567 (HBSS, 129) – as it did with Bullinger’s own heightened sense of eschatological urgency. 119 The concern for proper clothing was, of course, no Reformational novelty. Matters of proper dress – indicating social station and appropriate modesty – crucially concerned civic life from the medieval era of urbanization right on through early modernity. One may well note, just as an example, the numerous civic ordinances in Zurich on the subject of zerhowne hossen (that is, clothing that had been artfully slit so as to reveal rich billows of underlying material). See ZK 2.107. Such garments were condemned (and made subject to fines) for the moral fault of self-promoting luxury that is antithetical to life together. For one notable example of Bullinger’s description of clerical lifestyle in words, deeds, and clothing, see Sermones Synodales for 7 May 1555 (HBSS, 83). 120 It is probably a testimony to the long-term success of early modern efforts to nurture a new type of ethical mentality in social life that people today are so astonished by the apparent lack of self-control among sixteenth-century people in general, including ministers. Bullinger’s brother Johannes, for example, was by no means alone when he became enraged and punched out a parishioner ‘mit der fust’ (with his fist). The synod was not strictly stating the obvious when it repeated such admonishments as “ein pfarrer soll nitt schleglen” (a pastor should not punch) (StAZ, E.II.1.194). In many cases, even if not with Johannes Bullinger, such acts were explicitly linked with drunkenness, which shows just how enmeshed clergy were in their society’s typical lifestyle – a lifestyle often revolving around raucous (churchrelated) festivals and taverns. It would be wrong to assume that whatever perceived distance did in fact exist between parishioners and their clergy consisted of bookish and/or holierthan-thou aloofness. 121 It illuminates the era more broadly to note that increased interest in clerical good examples was by no means limited to Protestantism; Carlo Borromeo was just one of many conspicuous sixteenth-century Catholic reformers also devoted to improving the clerical lifestyle.

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ered these activities to compromise his priestly authority (Pestalozzi: 1858, 6). Given the relative novelty of this component of Bullinger’s agenda, one might expect some discontent on the part of the assembled ministers of Zurich. Between the lines, one catches a few notes of likely grumbling there among the convened ministers. Bullinger, for his part, never gives any impression that the message lost any relevance over the years, although his prose does exhibit some occasional exasperation. At one memorable moment of dry wit, Bullinger remarks that Paul encouraged ministerial hospitality, but that some of his colleagues have confused this with indulgent conviviality: “Certain ones are too hospitable. They do not come out of the tavern” (“Quidam nimis hospitales. Kummend nit uß dem wirtzhuß”).122 Bullinger did not seek to level the clergy and the laity; however, he opposed the traditional view that the clergy as a group was distinguished primarily by its sacramental function. His admonishments under the rubric of vita show his zeal to distinguish ministers in a new way of holy lifestyle. They were to live out a special sort of servant-leadership in and for the church-state household. Bullinger positively exhorted the Zurich clergy to model holiness; negatively, this entailed avoiding literal and spiritual ‘drunkenness.’ In just this context, Bullinger consistently emphasized the need for greater diligence in study. He clearly assumed that better study habits would cultivate better discipline throughout all of life – if for no other reason than that time spent reading could not simultaneously be prone to carousing.123 The Sermones Synodales show that this proposal was more than a naïve hope that all pastors could become exemplary scholars. Bullinger exhorted his colleagues toward more rigorous study (principally, though not exclusively, study of Scripture) and did so explicitly as a means to redeem the time (retinere or servare horas). Again, this operates entirely within an End-Times mode. And here again, the negative counter-example to proper episcopacy is the ‘bad servant’ of Matthew 24 who fails in his duty because of drunkenness. Not only does this further underscore the inseparability of doctrina from vita; it also sends an implicitly eschatological signal that time must be redeemed, ‘for the days are evil.’124 Ministerial leadership was urgent at such a time.

122 Sermones Synodales for 4 May 1568 (HBSS, 135). This occurs in a lengthy treatment of episcopal hallmarks listed in 1 Timothy and Titus. Cf. here esp. 1 Tim 3:2 and Titus 1:8. 123 “Nulla studia ordinata. Alijs rebus occupari.” See Sermones Synodales entry for 18 October 1569 (HBSS, 145). 124 Cf. Eph 5:16 and Sermones Synodales entries for 6 May 1561 (HBSS, 109), 9 May 1564 (HBSS, 121), and 4 May 1574 (HBSS, 164). I will be treating more fully the special connection between notions of time (and eschatology) and the significance of ‘drunkenness’ in Chapter Four of this book.

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Differentiating Doctrina and Vita

Given that Bullinger elaborated an active, practical meaning for doctrina, what were his criteria for classing some activities separately under vita? This is not a difference between modes of rationality on the one hand and of action on the other, or between private contemplation and public piety, or even, conversely, between private piety and public instruction. Throughout the episcopi-diagrams, vita itself includes two significant subheadings: domi (at home) and foris (in public). Indeed, doctrine and lifestyle both involve public and private aspects.125 Somewhat more plausibly, one could possibly posit that that the doctrina-vita distinction follows the humanist (especially Erasmian) pattern of the pairing of fides (faith) and charitas (love).126 This hypothesis is still not fully satisfying, however. Bullinger uses the term charitas in the context of the mutual ministerial oversight in the synodal practice of censura. He further uses the term charitas to highlight a particularly eschatological framework, as when referring to Jesus’ predictions that love will become cold in the End Times (cf. Matthew 24:12–13). Nowhere in the Sermones does Bullinger use the term charitas as a synonym for the heading vita. By contrast, this source material gives evidence that Bullinger could easily group both faith and love entirely under the major rubric of doctrina.127 To discern Bullinger’s criteria for distinguishing doctrina and vita, it is useful to examine the clues from his use of Matthew 24 – especially of verses 45 to 51, dealing with good and bad servants and the imminent return of their lord. Bullinger formally exhorted the Zurich clergy twice every year to follow the example of this ‘faithful and prudent servant.’128 Who is this servus fidelis et prudens? He is the one the Lord places over His household with the charge of distributing all necessary provisions in due time (i. e., before a coming Judgment). Bullinger linked fidelis with his category of vita and prudens with doctrina.129 The two categories are conceptually distinct aspects of episcopacy, but they are spoken together to indicate the same sphere of clerical ‘household’ 125 Cf. oratio publica et privata, both under doctrina. 126 Cf. Fritz Büsser’s comments on the influence of Erasmus’ Ratio seu methodus compendio perveniendi ad veram theologiam, in Büsser: 2004, 20. 127 Entries for the dates May 1560 (HBSS, 105) and May 1565 (HBSS, 125) do this explicitly. Among other things, this further underscores Bullinger’s preference for the broadest possible working conception of doctrina, which, as sapientia verae pietatis, cannot be treated apart from caritative aspects of misericordia and aequitas (e. g., 5 May 1556 [HBSS, 87]). 128 The first possible allusion to Matthew 24:45–51 occurs in conjunction with reference to Matthew 25 (the parable of investing talents) in the Sermones Synodales entry for October 1537 (HBSS, 16). The first explicit reference and lengthy verbatim citation of Matthew 24.45– 51 occurs in the entry for May 1539 (HBSS, 21–24). 129 This is explicitly the case in the Sermones Synodales entry for May 1539 (HBSS, 23).

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duty – be that household Zurich as a whole, a constituent parish, or even the pastor’s nuclear family.130 Bullinger commonly characterized his colleagues in ministry as stewards (oeconomici) and fathers (patres).131 This household motif was consistently fundamental to his effort to reform clerical identity in and beyond the synodal context. Pamela Biel argues along these lines when noting Bullinger’s use of the term paterfamilias in sermon 43 of the Decades. The various parishes are to be held together and strengthened by their respective ‘household fathers’ (i. e., ministers) and these fathers are coordinated within the one household of Zurich’s civil sovereignty (1991, 21f). The Sermones Synodales bear out this observation. Alongside Matthew 24, Bullinger frequently also quotes 1 Timothy 3 (especially verse 5), a passage that describes the episcopus as the father of a household.132 A pastor demonstrates in his own household his competency to serve as a father in the church. Bullinger’s Sermones Synodales therefore illuminate the ways confessionalization entailed promoting a coherent, family-like mentality that saw Zurich as a Reformed society within the borders of a politically defined society (cf. Schmidt: 1992, 89). In light of the traditional usage of the term ‘father’ to denote sacramental priesthood of the sort that Bullinger consistently denounced, it is also interesting to note the degree to which Bullinger continued to highlight the ‘fatherly’ profile of episcopacy. With regard to the relational parameters of confessional Reformation more broadly, Scott Hendrix has observed that, “As clergy tried to make their parishioners conform to the teaching and practices of the reigning confession, they contributed to the stability of the social and political order. Seen in the light of social discipline, one impact of the Reformation was to shape people as believers 130 Whereas the noun ‘faith’ (fides) could on occasion elicit more systematic doctrinal discussion, Bullinger preferred the adjective ‘faithful’ (fidelis), redolent of dynamic, obedient service to the coming Lord. The dynamism of doctrine was inextricable from matters of lifestyle. Bullinger’s otherwise maddening tendency to place a subheading of studium here under Doctrina and there under Vita thus becomes more easily comprehensible. 131 The Pauline text of 1 Corinthians 4:1–5 clearly echoes the theme of good stewardship and imminent Judgment found in Matthew 24. For references in the Sermones Synodales to pastors as oeconomici of the church or for descriptions of the pastoral household as an oeconomia, see May 1546 (HBSS, 49), October 1546 (HBSS, 51), May 1549 (HBSS, 61), May 1564 (HBSS, 121), May 1566 (HBSS, 127), May 1568 (HBSS, 134), and May 1571 (HBSS, 151). For references to clergy as patres, see October 1556 (HBSS, 89 and 91), May 1558 (HBSS, 97), October 1562 (HBSS, 115), October 1563 (HBSS, 120), and May 1564 (HBSS, 121). 132 For references to 1 Timothy 3 in the Sermones Synodales, see entries on October 1537 (HBSS, 14), October 1543 (HBSS, 39), May 1545 (HBSS, 45), October 1545 (HBSS, 47), October 1546 (HBSS, 52), May 1550 (HBSS, 65), May 1551 (HBSS, 69), May 1551 (HBSS, 70), October 1555 (HBSS, 85), May 1557 (HBSS, 93), October 1557 (HBSS, 95), May 1558 (HBSS, 97), October 1561 (HBSS, 111; in the text itself wrongly cited as 1 Tim 2), October 1563 (HBSS, 119), October 1566 (HBSS, 128), May 1568 (HBSS, 134), and May 1570 (HBSS, 149).

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and as subjects” (2004, 157). Reformers in Zurich and elsewhere consciously sought to transform traditional ideas of the corpus Christianum. Bullinger’s dynamic synodal agenda for doctrina et vita as the two rubrics for transforming a sacred household testifies to a process that was well underway in the Swiss federation even before the 1555 Peace of Augsburg established the rationale of cuius regio eius religio within the principalities of the German empire. Bullinger’s synodal exhortations especially illustrate how the larger mission of social transformation within any discrete polity required a transformation of the clerical institution. None of this discussion should be taken to validate a historical thesis of quasinationalism or of any other parochial isolationism.133 Bullinger’s prodigious reams of correspondence suffice to place the presiding pastor of the Zurich synod within a conscious context of cooperation – both within the Swiss Confederation and throughout Christendom. Bullinger maintained a dense network of contacts across many borders. Defining the corpus Christianum as broadly as possible was always extremely important to him. One sees this poignantly in his zeal for promoting an international pool of talented candidates for lectureships at the schola tigurina, precisely in opposition to the provincializing (yet ultimately enacted) plan of the Council to limit lectureships to Zurich citizens only (Rüetschi: 2004, 226f). Broad cooperative networks did not constitute an eitheror alternative in Bullinger’s mind when it came to the Christian city-state of Zurich – any more than his concept of a particular covenant of clerical identity could be seen to replace or to moot the covenant community in which the collective episcopacy was to operate. The Sermones Synodales indicate that his fundamental, lifelong agenda consisted in reforming the people of God within the sovereignty of Zurich into one ‘household’; but this never came with a provincializing sense that we could call ‘merely parochial.’

133 This point is not overturned by the fact that Bullinger did briefly consider severing ties to the Roman Catholic ‘Five States’ (Fünf Orte) in order to create a new, Zurich-led, and strictly evangelical political entity. Bullinger secretly circulated this opinion in September 1532 among close colleagues such as Berchtold Haller in Bern and Vadian in St. Gall. When they argued against the idea, Bullinger himself seems to have set it aside and never to have presented it to the Zurich council. Hans Ulrich Bächtold believes this marked the immediate end of such a strategy, but the Sermones Synodales do indicate at least some lingering echoes of the sentiment at the synod of 1535. See Bullinger’s unpublished treatise, Radtschlag wie man moege vor kriegen sin und der v orten tyranny abkummen (1532c, 122r–131v). For a modern German translation of this manuscript, see Bächtold (trans.): 2006, 151–70. Cf. also Bächtold: 1975, 284.

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Consolidating a Pan-Zurich Identity beyond Local Distinctions

Pre-Reformation priesthood tended to center on ceremonial life. The proper execution of rites (especially in auricular confession, baptism, and the Eucharist) was understood to enhance or preserve God’s favor for the community, but it did not necessarily coordinate doctrine and lifestyle in the ways that Bullinger emphasized in his synodal exhortations. Roman traditionalist assertions of papaloriented universality – pointedly juxtaposed with Protestant fragmentation – did not impress Bullinger. In fact, he parried the polemic by returning it in kind.134 Chapels, field churches, and a disparate array of parish practices might operate within a vague presumption of universality, but in fact this presumption devolved into practical fragmentation. A redefined concept of the clerical class functioned at the crux of Bullinger’s mission to reform this problem of Christian social fragmentation. Renewing Zurich as a Christian society throughout the city and countryside meant integrating the parishes, and that meant using the synod as a means to reimagine and coordinate collective episcopacy. No community of worship could define itself apart from the dynamic institutional identity of the Christian church of Zurich. The clergy must collectively embody the one episcopal office of the Lord’s ‘faithful and prudent servant.’ The two categories of doctrina et vita helped accomplish this move away from a sacramental conception of ministry. At the level of expectations for conduct, the late medieval clergyman was not much removed from the common person. A sacramental guarantor may have irritated, offended, or even sometimes physically abused his local parishioners, but he was not thereby invalidated in a ministry defined by its sacramental character. Reformed Zurich, by contrast, depended on the synod to cultivate a new set of expectations for ministerial conduct. Faults of ignorance, violence, luxury, immorality, and a host of connotations associated with the word ‘drunkenness’ could now vitiate clerical identity in ways that had not been true previously. While set principles of conduct were applied to the general populace by means of morals courts, it is worth noting that Zurich’s clergy were held to uniquely high standards. Magistrates could and did apply punishments to moral offenders but they were extremely loath to excommunicate citizens from their Christian identity. By contrast, unrepentant offenders among clergy could be removed from the clerical identity altogether. This is quite different from the traditional mode of removing a priest from active duty while still in principle acknowledging his intrinsic sacramental character. Zurich’s clergy were now defined as a class by their collective application of the 134 Incidentally, the problem of hide-bound localism was not just a Reformed complaint. The reforming bishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo – a contemporary of Bullinger – used synodal reforms to seek to consolidate his diocese.

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Word through the various expressions of practical instruction and right lifestyle. Collective episcopal oversight helped to coordinate the Christian society of Zurich. Whatever the parish, and whether in the city or the countryside, Zurich parishioners came to expect a consistently higher set of norms for their ministers. This did not dissolve local identities into supra-local homogeneity, nor did the ministerial identity operate unilaterally or aloof from the daily life of the parish. Bullinger’s End-Times mode of application to particularities of circumstance buffered against such possibilities. Bullinger always exhorted ministers to apply criteria of doctrine and lifestyle to the specific time and place of the local parish. Pamela Biel has rightly emphasized the importance of this fundamental locus of the worshiping community: “Going to church in such a society was not a private act; it was a civic duty. The minister and the worship services which he led served as an irreplaceable focal-point for the Christian state, a frequent reinforcement of the identity of Zurich as the people of God” (1991, 116). The Sermones Synodales together with the Acta Synodi provide good evidence of Bullinger’s strategy of using the synod as a means to coordinate – not to erode – the parishes. Synod agenda aimed at promoting a new degree of integrity in the local communities. Illustrative cases concern festivals (whether residual festivals of the traditional church calendar or festivals of consecrated houses of worship) and various irregular chapels and field churches. Bullinger frequently discussed all such topics together in one related conversation. He perceived these events and sites to be hotbeds of superstition (in the socially disintegrative sense of that word recently highlighted among humanists, themselves taking cues from ancient sources such as Quintilian), of political subversion, and of general disruption. It is important to keep in mind that such concerns amounted to much more than mere rhetoric. Associated festivals were often what one might characterize as ‘colorful,’ in a euphemistic way. Bullinger’s concern for well-ordered church life prioritized the harmony of the local community. In October 1537, for example, the Acta Synodi record the results of such festivals: drinking, uproar, fistfights, and sundry breaches of the peace (suffen unfriden schlahen und fridbrüch) (StAZ, E.II.1.225). According to Bullinger, not only must the magistracy enforce existing regulations against such destructive nonsense (unradt), but each parish minister must preach earnestly on the matter from his local pulpit. Even as he dismissed the idea of the priestly sacramental character that had enabled such local divisiveness, Bullinger exhorted ministers to lead by a special clerical standard of holiness. For the sake of nurturing their communities, parish clergy must discontinue local festive turpitude, including drunkenness (trunckenheit), divisiveness (zwÿtracht), discord (schlahen or zangg), and sexual immorality (hu˚rÿ). Bullinger considered the historical proliferation of irregular houses of worship to constitute an eschatological sign of degenerate times. He cites in his Sermones not only the cultic regulation of Deuteronomy 12 against alternative

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worship, but also, with typically warm approval, the Justinianic laws that sought to close pagan temples (entry for May 1538, HBSS, 18). This May 1538 entry concludes simply with the underlined word ‘locksmith’ (Schloͤ sser). Perhaps this was unrelated to the above discussion; perhaps it was a family name meant to jog Bullinger’s memory when it came time to address some matter of church business. Perhaps it amounted to something as mundane as requesting repairs to the city hall (Rathaus) in which the synod convened. In light of the preceding discussion, however, it would seem at least likely that this word ‘locksmith’ here indicated a reminder to request that the Council lock down the ‘chapels contrary to true religion’ (sacella religioni verae contraria). In another address shortly afterwards, Bullinger flatly announced that “we move within the last times, and there are dangers on all sides and machinations against religion.”135 Local-level discord concretized in irregular chapels led Bullinger to exhort parish ministers to “admonish in light of the times” (in tempore monere). Bullinger wrote concerning the chapels: “they stand strongly against our parish churches and against the civil mandate. They are protected by certain individuals, but they only bring aggravation and divisiveness. The matter should be brought to the magistracy so that they may dissolve such chapels in accord with the mandate.”136 The nexus of issues regarding the upbuilding of Zurich’s parish structure continued throughout Bullinger’s long tenure. Bullinger opposed the persistent discord (zangg) and superstition aroused by unmoored ritual, even including certain community celebrations surrounding the sacrament of baptism (Acta Synodi, October 1542, StAZ, E.II.1.289). Bullinger spoke for his fellow clergy when he formally requested that the Council enforce a Christological limit to feast days.137 Bullinger’s focus on a coordinated Christian polity in cooperation with 135 Sermones Synodales entry for May 1539 (HBSS, 23): “Versamur in postremis temporibus undique pericula. Artes contra religionem.” 136 Acta Synodi, October 1538, StAZ, E.II.1.233: “Stond noch starck wider die pfarrkilchen Und wider ußgangene Mandat: werdent och von ettlichen personen geschirmpt. Bringend ergernüß und zwÿtracht. Dorumb sol es für unser herren langen. damitt sÿ verschaffend das sÿ dem Mandat nach hinwaeg gethon werden.” 137 Acta Synodi, May 1539, StAZ, E.II.1.235: “Fÿrtag.) Die fÿrtag bringind vil [Sta..s] und zanggs {i. e., Zank} / meerend ouch und erhaltend vil Superstition. Dorumb bitt Sÿnodus sÿ abzu˚thu˚n / biß ann Sontag und festa Christi. Diewÿl sÿ doch nitt Gottes gepott sind. etc.” The official Zurich mandate of liturgical Christological feast days came out in 1540. See #107 in ZK 2.107, 236. The list was limited to: Christmas proper and the day after (i. e., Stephanstag); Circumcision (1 January); Ascension; Easter Monday; and Pentecost Monday. Unlike Geneva, Reformation Zurich appears never to have made any inclusion of Annunciation. The 1540 Sammelmandat notwithstanding, certain festivals remained prominent, even if unofficially. The day commemorating the consecration of the Zurich Church (i. e., Felix- und Regulatag, 11 September) was continually celebrated throughout Bullinger’s lifetime, despite repeated clerical objections, as when an overpacked bridge full of revelers collapsed in 1566.

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the political authorities always included a careful concern to guard against the deterioration of the parishes (abgon der pfarren). Furthermore, since the specific matter of field churches and chapels did not arise again in the synod after September 1539, one may assume that the Council heeded Bullinger’s pleas in some way or other (Bächtold: 1982, 75).138 Bullinger envisioned a transformed clerical class characterized by cooperative dynamism that would contribute to reshaping the Christian identity of all of Zurich. The particular issues changed over the coming decades, but Bullinger remained determined to bring the parishes together as integrated local communities in their own right and as coordinated units of a single Christian society of Zurich. Doctrina et vita supplied the consistent framework for this transformation.

3.7

Eschatologized Humanism

Erasmus had highlighted very similar qualities of ministry in his 1535/36 handbook for preachers, Ecclesiastes. The fact that the great humanist had personally asserted that this was his most painstaking and important work amplified everything in its pages (McGinness: 2015, 82). Erasmus argued that a priest must comport with the model of the faithful, prudent servant of Matthew 24. He also connected this image to Christ’s words in Matthew 10, whereby the disciples are sent out and told to be at once as ‘simple’ as doves and as ‘prudent’ as serpents. Prudence, of course, is precisely the complex, relational, contextual – and occasionally even canny – side of ministry. “Prudentiae partes sunt, ex temporum, locorum ac personarum circumstantiis dispicere, quid, quibus, quando, qua moderatione sit adhibendum” (ASD, V–4, 64). Bullinger cited Erasmus’ Ecclesiastes throughout his own 1538 Institution of Episcopacy. Clearly, Bullinger understood himself to share Erasmus’ argument that a minister must bear always in mind the two aspects of prudence and faithfulness, à la Matthew 24. There is a striking harmony between both men on the subject of the two main aspects of authentic ‘priesthood.’ Bullinger’s rubric of doctrina throughout his synodal memoranda corresponds with the term ‘prudence’ of Matthew 24. Doctrina (as ‘prudence’) encompasses exegetical teaching, as well as correction of sins (by contextual, rhetorical power, not by force), catechism, sacraments, and care of the poor and sick. Vita, then, corresponds with ‘faithfulness,’ and it includes keywords such as consistent integrity, holy lifestyle, disciplined study, and unwavering words and deeds.139 138 There is, however, one more mention of festivals/chapel consecrations in the Acta Synodi in October 1539; cf. StAZ, E.II.1.238. 139 The occasional inclusion of sacraments within doctrina should urge caution about assuming

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Susanna Hausamman has somewhat overstated the systematic influence of Quintilian on Bullinger; nevertheless, her point in favor of Bullinger’s essential humanism here remains valid (cf. Timmerman: 2015, 154). Instead of the threefold task of the orator described by Quintilian (docere, delectare, movere), it is the twofold office of priestly ministry articulated by Erasmus that seems most fundamental to Bullinger throughout his Sermones Synodales and other writings. These two categories correspond in turn to the humanist rhetorical principles of aptum and ethos. I take my cue in this connection from the work of Erika Rummel, who has presented a convenient demonstration of both terms’ technical standing among humanists (2000, 121ff). The term ethos allowed humanists to indicate any speaker’s due diligence in the moral consideration of the ‘worth’ of the speaker and audience. The adept speaker should be vigilant of his own moral standing while also supporting the moral standing of his audience. This overlaps with Bullinger’s emphasis on the holy lifestyle of faithfulness in the category of vita. The other word of the pair – aptum – involves humanist considerations of contextuality, indeed of ‘prudence.’ ‘Prudence’ as a technical term of humanistic rhetoric implies nuance and appropriateness, whereby a speaker does not say everything in the same way to everyone, but instead wisely communicates by considering audience and setting. This concept of prudence appears to function much the same as does Bullinger’s episcopal heading of doctrina. Here again we have a nexus of synonymous terms constituting a set of pairs: prudence, aptum, and doctrina on the one hand and faithfulness, ethos, and vita on the other.140 The humanist legacy of prudence/aptum constitutes more than a superficial parallel to Bullinger’s thinking on the clerical office. It is systematically important. This legacy helps explain some of the ways in which the Erasmian concept of ‘priesthood’ became notable for Bullinger – indeed, in ways that were not true for many of his contemporaries. Bullinger would have been quite aware of accusations against humanists that highlighted their supposed protean inconsistency in doctrinal matters. Commentators of various theological leanings tended to consider humanistic ‘prudence’ not as a virtue but rather as a dangerous character flaw. Ulrich von Hutten rebuked anyone for attempting to sidestep the stark light and dark alternatives of his apocalypticism; Otto Brunfels too close an identification between pairings of doctrina-vita on the one hand and WordSacrament on the other. In a complete parallel, one could expect the element of sacrament to be included under the heading of vita. Nevertheless, Bullinger himself does leave some wiggle room in this matter, inasmuch as the synodal charts of doctrina-vita sometimes include ‘sacraments’ in a middle space between the two – as if the ministerial duties of sacraments could be construed in some respects as indeed part of doctrina and in other respects as part of vita. 140 The technical connotations of ethos may well present the weakest connection to Bullinger, inasmuch as he does not quite replicate the full humanist implications of ‘civility’ or the speaker’s task of accounting for the ‘worth’ of his interlocutors.

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criticized shifty temporizers; and Johannes Fabri, the bishop of Vienna, upbraided the moderate flexibility of the humanist Bishop Jacopo Sadoleto. It is relevant here, as well, to note Calvin’s vehement opposition to dissembling ‘Nicodemites’ and Luther’s dismissal of Erasmus himself as a skeptic. It is therefore all the more remarkable that, for Bullinger, the specifically humanist malleability of prudence served such a positive purpose in redefining Reformed ministry. Prudence implied contextual flexibility, which itself meant that the clerical class could not see itself as dogmatically indifferent to their specific community.141 Throughout his synodal elaborations on doctrina (informed as they are by the model of the prudent servant of Matthew 24), Bullinger reiterates the rhetorical principle of communicating in a manner that must be appropriate for the context.142 Rhetorical rigidity or dogmatism would amount to an assertion of group identity defined by itself rather than by its relationships. It is more than merely interesting that Bullinger embraced this contested legacy of humanism; on the contrary, that he developed this idea of contextual nimbleness, of non-proprietary rhetoric within an emphatically eschatological vision, appears unique in the Reformation. It certainly goes beyond Erasmus’ vision of an ideal clergyman. Most of the time, the more intense the End-Times calculus of a given Reformer, the less prominent contextual flexibility of prudence seems – as infamously illustrated by characters such as Ulrich von Hutten or Melchior Hoffman. Bullinger, however, always anchors his concept of contextuality to the eschatological story of the prudent servant of Matthew 24, in which case prudence necessarily entails a special sense of ‘timeliness.’ These discussions of timeliness invariably connote vigilance about the Lord’s imminent return. Zurich ministers maintained a distinctly sacred identity in light of their unique vocation to speak to communities beyond themselves, given the impending reality of the End Times. This clerical identity in relation to parish communities and in relation to an overarching End-Times point of reference all also involved a special relationship with the civil authorities. And, in fact, the clerical and magisterial classes were connected very precisely in the End-Times point of reference. Authority amounted to a participation in Parousia, in the returning of the lord of the Matthew 24 passage. Without the specifically Christological tandem of kingship and priesthood, the collective episcopacy would not function properly. Society requires the kind of executive, disciplinary authority that does not properly belong to the clergy. In Bullinger’s view, disciplinary coercive power belonged 141 Erasmus had lampooned theological dogmatism in his infamous Praise of Folly, where Folly herself once admonishes that “nothing is more imprudent than unseasonable prudence” (Desiderius Erasmus: 2015, 38). 142 There are numerous variations on Applicanda semper et recte secanda pro personis loco et tempore.

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rather to the Christian magistracy, which participated in Parousia in its own ways. Of course, the magistracy for its part may not arrogate the specific clerical office of eschatological episcopacy. Neither civil nor clerical identity could subsume the other or operate correctly on its own without the other. Clergy and magistracy must cooperate in a relationship with one another for the community; their validity as classes of Christian society must exist, even if somewhat paradoxically, in an entirely non-proprietary mode. Bullinger transformed a humanist agenda through an eschatological lens for the purpose of re-establishing institutional ministry in a Reformed confessional society.

3.8

Clergy, Confessionalization, and a Reprise of the Exchange with Jud

Bullinger’s vision for contextualized clerical leadership adds important nuance to the phenomena associated with confessionalization. Most historians broadly agree with the view that political jurisdictions regulated religious mechanisms of social discipline and clerical bureaucratization with increasing effectveness.143 Scholars who have commented upon Bullinger’s development of ministry from a Zwinglian prophetic model toward a more overtly episcopal model have tended to view this development as evidence of such regulation. Daniel Bolliger, for example, has noted rather starkly that “the ministers were institutionalised communally and became officials of the state” (2004, 176). Such a statement would seem to concede validity to Jud’s frantic objections back in 1532, but it was just such an argument that Bullinger opposed at that time. It seems unlikely that so strong an objection could have been so readily resolved for Jud by Bullinger – as all accounts indicate occurred – if Bullinger’s developing view of ministry had edged at all toward statist officialdom. Simple bureaucratization of the clergy would not have achieved the kind of dynamic relationality that Bullinger promoted. In order better to understand this nuance, one may usefully revisit Bullinger’s 1532 exchange with Jud. Bullinger fully recognized: a) some legitimacy in Jud’s objections and b) the problematic implications of Jud’s initial vote for churchstate separation. As to the former, Bullinger agreed that the church’s leadership must indeed maintain vigilance as to its unique sacred function. This is precisely the point of his insistence on the concept of Christ’s high-priesthood, which he 143 I share Ute Lotz-Heumann’s view that so long as one avoids overestimating its explanatory capacity, confessionalization still helps illuminate macro-historical trends. Cf. Lotz-Heumann: 2013, 33–53. Pages 40ff are especially relevant to the notion of modified applicability of the confessionalization thesis.

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saw as distinct from and operating in functional tandem with the political metaphors of Christ’s reign. To be sure, the state authenticates the church’s clerical status in some respects. Otherwise, the ministry would be self-authenticated in ways that Bullinger deplored among both Anabaptist separatist and Catholic sacramentalist opponents.144 Even so, the sacredness of ministry was not strictly the state’s possession to confer. Bullinger could therefore demonstrate some agreement with Jud. I find it even more interesting, however, to note how Bullinger perceived the pitfalls implicit in Jud’s propositions. It appears that Bullinger anticipated the less obvious ways in which Jud was contributing to the problems that historians would later come to associate with confessionalization. This is ironic because Jud was, after all, arguing for more robust church-state distinction; confessionalization famously implies the increasing domestication of the church within the state. Jud’s connection to confessionalization turns up in his unwitting potential complicity in the confessionalizing trend toward theological ‘purity,’ or dogmatism. Erika Rummel has presented the story of confessionalization as an inexorable descent from once lofty optimism to tragic realities. The Renaissance humanists’ initial use of ‘prudence’ had involved a critique of what they perceived as the arrogance and inflexibility of ‘schoolmen’ – that is, the theological professionals. The process of confessionalization then turned that critique into the polemics of new partisans. Polemicists co-opted the language skills fostered by humanism and pressed them into the service of the increasingly dogmatized agendas of various (Protestant or Catholic) state churches. Confessionalization in this light invariably involved the flattening and hardening of erstwhile rhetorical nuance. Humanism thus finally aided the very monster from whose grip the early humanists had sought to liberate Christendom (Rummel: 2000, passim, esp. 150ff). In 1532, Jud was not arguing for a state church, but he was arguing for just the sort of dogmatic intransigence that states inevitably required for the domestication of their clergy, in line with the shibboleths of their religious polity.145 Bullinger stands as especially indebted to humanism in the way he retained ‘prudence’ in his vision for the Zurich clergy. Yes, Bullinger’s Reformed priest144 Bullinger highlighted the fatal problem of self-authentication already in the title of his 1531 treatise against Anabaptism, Von dem unverschampten fraͤ fel ergerlichem verwyrren unnd unwarhafftem leeren der selbsgesandten Widertoͤ uffern. 145 The case of Geneva is instructive. Under Calvin, Geneva developed a system of church-state distinction that seems to have met many of Jud’s own 1532 preferences. It also became notorious – again, owing much to Calvin’s leadership – to its increasing theological inflexibility. The opposition to dissembling ‘Nicodemites’ is illustrative of a broader emphasis on doctrinal rigor. Calvin’s efforts to distinguish church and state notwithstanding, the church that was noted for its theological precision – or its decontextualized hardening of propositional truth – fairly quickly fell under the unambiguous control of the state shortly after Calvin’s death. On this transition, see Manetsch: 2013, 212ff.

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hood necessarily functioned with, and in some senses under, the authority of the magistracy. And Bullinger did contribute to an overt confessionalizing agenda of the state by composing uniform, state-supported theological statements. No one could dispute his bona fides as a theologian with specifically Reformed doctrinal convictions. This correlates with his synodal emphasis on vita (and therefore ‘faithfulness’) – encompassing, among its other aspects, a measure also of consistency in confessional statements. Still, it is always equally true that Bullinger believed that the Reformed office of clerical institutional leadership must retain contextual flexibility. The sheer open-endedness of ‘prudence’ exceeds the practical grasp of state appropriation. Prudent ministers must dispense spiritual food appropriate to particular circumstances. By harnessing the rhetorical power of early humanist prudence to an End-Times idiom, Bullinger meant to preserve the church’s integrity vis-à-vis the disciplinary or even coercive otherness of the magistracy. It appears that Bullinger recognized the threat of inflexible dogmatism and systematically went about developing an institutional clerical identity designed to mitigate this trend.146 This argument stands in contrast to the thesis that consolidating a clerical corps constituted a tragic loss of church vitality in the course of confessionalization.

146 If so, this means that Bullinger anticipated many of the religious conflicts not only between Catholic and Protestant jurisdictions, but also, and perhaps especially, between Lutheran and Reformed parties. I am especially reminded of Katharina Schütz Zell’s poignant defense of theological integrity within the flexibility of charity. Against the party of Ludwig Rabus, she asserted that dogmatism threatened an essential quality of reform. On Zell, see, for example, McKee (ed.): 2006.

4

Zurich Ministry From Prophethood to Priesthood

4.1

Complications of Clerical ‘Priesthood’

Huldrych Zwingli and his ministerial colleagues (erstwhile priests themselves) demolished traditional priesthood. This was no mere side effect of other concerns; it was crucial in its own right. Evangelical thinking from the outset opposed the canonical concept of ‘indelible character’ whereby – as Christians had understood the rite of ordination for many centuries – God endowed the ‘spiritual estate’ with a permanent mark that empowered the ritual efficacy of priests and exempted them from certain otherwise obligatory duties of subjection to a political sovereignty. Zwingli shared a degree of humanist reservations about the biblical book of Revelation, but on the subject of indelible character he drew a direct equivalence between traditional ordination and the Antichristian ‘mark of the beast.’147 The so-called spiritual estate posed a threat to any proper Christian polity in matters of judicial oversight, taxation, parish communal life, and theology. Zurichers ‘erased,’ so to speak, the ineradicable mark of the traditional, sacramental class. Indeed, at the 1528 Bern Disputation, Zwingli joined other Swiss Reformed theologians in vehemently denying the Catholic argument whereby the character of Melchisedek (from Genesis 14 and Hebrews 5–7) would be taken to validate any priestly sacrificial class other than that of Christ alone.148 Zwingli and other early evangelicals argued that all baptized persons must share in or, to use a term commonly emphasized in many of Zwingli’s writings, ‘participate’ in the uniquely saving sacrificial offering of Christ alone. Transforming clerical identity brought with it some unsettling potential to disintegrate society, which would have run very much at cross-purposes to magisterial reformation. Zwingli’s conflicts with Anabaptism underscored his 147 See esp. Zwingli’s comments on Article 61 in “Ußlegen und gründ der schlußreden oder articklen durch Huldrychen Zuingli, Zürich uff den 29. tag jenners im 1523. jar ußgangen,” in Z 2, 440. In this argument, Zwingli explicitly cites Relation 13 and 14. 148 See “Voten Zwinglis an der Berner Disputation, 6. bis 25. Januar 1528,” in Z 6.1, 379.

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need to clarify just what he intended in this difficult subject. A sectarian distinction of baptized adults from the broader Christian community must not now replace the old distinction between spiritual and temporal estates. The fact that Luther leveraged Swiss Anabaptism into a polemic of suspicion vis-à-vis Swiss evangelicalism as a whole only added urgency to Zurich’s response. On a related note, all Swiss already had to reckon with the fact that segments of the European populace – and certainly among political elites within the Empire – considered comparatively democratic Swiss Confederational politics to threaten social order (Brady: 1985, 58). The result of all of this was that evangelical Zurichers denounced traditional priesthood even as they hastened to defend a vision of Christian civic cohesion and the due order of institutional leadership.149 Zwingli developed a distinctively Reformed agenda when he recast the institutional ministry of the church as ‘prophecy’ rather than ‘priesthood.’ His prophetic emphasis is clear in many ways. It is immediately noteworthy that the first overtly Reformed Bible printed in Zurich was actually a collection of Old Testament books of the prophets. This was a deliberate choice, and it stands in even greater relief against Luther’s famous first biblical translation of the New Testament.150 Zwingli described the hallmark of prophecy as exegetical expertise. He deployed the humanist’s emphasis on the arts of language. Knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and vernacular German allowed for informed interpretation of Scripture such that the clergy communicated God’s words to the community. This re-worked concept of ‘prophecy’ as a cohort of linguistic experts re-secured an institutional corps of ministry against the disintegrative possibilities implicit in sectarian insistence upon fully democratized priesthood. Zwinglian prophecy also more firmly established Reformed ministry in contrast to certain Anabaptist associations of prophecy with charismatic empowerment to predict the future. In all of this, the institutional ministry itself played a critical role in defining the Reformed community. Following Zwingli, Bullinger continued to be alert to Anabaptist challenges. Anti-Anabaptist arguments about the legitimacy of Christian civil government and the theological importance of infant baptism occupy much space in the 149 This urgency was clearly understood already at the earliest expressions of the principle of the ‘priesthood of all the baptized.’ Luther famously defended institutional ministry at the same moment that he challenged the concept of a ‘spiritual estate’ in his 1520 Address to the German Nobility. The concern to secure a clerical corps of evangelical leadership was in no wise a sudden, surprising realization after (and still less a mere backlash against) the uprisings of 1525. 150 Luther’s 1522 German-language “September Bible” achieved great fame as the first ‘Bible’ of incipient Protestantism, even though it consisted only of the New Testament. The Zurichers were actually the first to publish a prophetic “Old Testament” (1529) and also the first Protestants to publish a complete German Bible (1531, as compared to the Luther Bible of 1534).

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secondary literature on Bullinger, but one must not lose sight of the fact that institutional ministry itself constituted an important area of Bullinger’s program for Reformed Zurich.151 Certain Anabaptists had argued that an intellectualist ministry (i. e., the Zwinglian prophet as professional-linguistic exegete) merely revived the old clerical caste in a new guise. Bullinger believed that the way forward must involve explicating the mechanism of pastoral authentication. From where does the authority of the ministerial office derive and how and by whom is it validly conferred? The root problem of any faulty concept of ministry lay in self-authentication, an arrogating to oneself or one’s group of a spiritual proprietary privilege. The old spiritual estate was false, in Bullinger’s mind, precisely because of the proprietary understanding of indelible character radiating from the priesthood of the bishop of Rome. Bullinger realized that the Reformed clerical identity must be free of any hint of self-authentication in order to refute successfully the Anabaptist opposition to Zwinglian exegetical elitism. Ministry required a delicate balance of exegesis and application within the community, and both of these aspects required authentication by God’s rule of Christian society via the magistracy. Lacking a magistracy as some sort of validating ‘other’ within the Christian community, ministry would fall prey to the problems of Anabaptist Spiritualism and papal institutionalism. The common root of these problems was self-authentication. One necessary function of the magistracy as an institution was to use its God-given authority to confer legitimacy upon the ministry. Then, too, the ministry must also constitute a coherent otherness in relation to magistracy. Bullinger’s elaboration of a modified ‘priestly’ identity of the Zurich ministry must be seen in this light. Bullinger’s efforts to guard against clerical self-authentication took at least two simultaneous forms. On the one hand, he insisted that the ‘prophet’ must not speak for himself or speak based on an unmediated personal illumination from God, but only by dint of exegetical fidelity to Scripture. On the other hand, the minister must also assume a broad array of responsibilities in and for the civil community. Daniël Timmerman has argued that this concern about self-authentication lies at the root of Bullinger’s transition toward an increasingly priestly rhetoric of ministry (2015, 151–55). Peter Opitz has also discussed Bullinger’s expansion of the concept of ministry beyond the Zwinglian hallmark of scholarly expertise to encompass a second focus on practical application (2007, vol. 2, 493–513). Opitz acknowledges that Bullinger turned from a rather uniform identification of ministers as ‘prophets’ toward a more episcopal/priestly rhetoric, but Opitz also concludes that this is a distinction without much import. I think there is more significance to the transition than Opitz concedes. Bullinger 151 One may note, for example, his 1531 defense of Reformed clerical identity against Anabaptist objections in Von dem unverschampten fraͤ fel.

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elaborated his view of Reformed collective episcopacy – and even a carefully modified sense of priesthood – in order to protect the Zurich clergy from any taint of self-referential or proprietary self-authentication.

4.2

The Significance of Reviving the Priesthood

Gérard Roussel’s concept of an école rhénane – a cultural religious zone stretching from Zurich to Strasbourg – helps illuminate aspects of this trend.152 The Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer had a mixed reception in Zurich (to put it mildly), but his influence may have been especially great when he warned against Anabaptists’ apocalypticism – especially insofar as this apocalypticism seemed associated with a concept of prophecy. Encounters with Alsatian peasant movements that had proved susceptible to Anabaptist upheavals (such as that of 1525) may have prompted Bucer’s attitudes. In any case, he clearly relegated the office of ‘prophet’ – here associated more with predictive than exegetical expertise – to the distant, unrepeatable past (1538, 13r). This stands in contrast to Luther’s early view of the heroic ‘prophet of the cross’ and, even more starkly, to Zwingli’s understanding of the prophet as an exegetical and linguistic scholar.153 Bullinger never went quite as far as Bucer, as he always retained an exegeticalprophetic aspect of ministry even where he found it necessary to modify and supplement that model. Nevertheless, it is striking that Bullinger’s writings follow a similar trajectory of caution about the term ‘prophet.’ The Second Helvetic Confession of 1566 asserts that prophets were extraordinary spokesmen of the past, and that “even today (etiam hodie)” some people of this sort may yet be found (Confessio Helvetica posterior, Article 18, in 2009b [1566], 318). The clear implication is that prophecy can entail foreseeing the future, and that on very rare occasions some such people may even appear in the church today. The emphasis in such texts falls on the past and the exceptional rather than the institutional and exegetical idea of prophethood. This is different from the young Bullinger’s famous identification of all ministers as prophets, as evidenced in his 1532 commemoration of Zwingli, De prophetae officio. Backing away from some of the Zwinglian zeal for ‘prophethood’ coincided with Bullinger’s own arc of thinking about ‘priesthood.’ There are good semantic grounds for a smooth transition between the biblical concepts of prophethood and episcopacy – of the seer and the overseer – and it seems that Bullinger 152 See comments on this subject by Daniel Bolliger in “Bullinger on Church Authority: The Transformation of the Prophetic Role in Christian Ministry” (2004, 168). 153 Note, for example, Theses 92–93 of Luther’s 1517 Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.

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intended some overtones of priesthood within that institutional model of episcopacy. Biblical passages on leadership not only pair prophets and priests in the Old Testament but they also frequently combine mention of bishops with presbyters in the New Testament. Already early in his career, Bullinger himself straightforwardly approved a conceptual connection between priesthood and episcopacy.154 Zwingli himself had already noted the connection between the prophet as ‘seer’ and the bishop as ‘overseer,’ and this nexus gave Bullinger his starting point (cf. Von dem predigamt, in Z 4, 394–98). If all of the episcopacy could be considered a kind of prophecy, then there is no reason why it should be conceptually impossible to reverse the perspective – that is, to re-emphasize what is specifically ‘priestly’ about an office touted for its ‘prophetic’ function. Bullinger recognized the potential for awkwardness in this transition. He softened the course by commenting upon the essential equality between prophecy and priesthood within one rightly exercised ministry (Book 2, Chapter 1, in 2009a, 106–109). The priest-prophet identity appears in the Sermones Synodales whenever Bullinger contrasts right with wrong ministry in an End-Times mode. There is therefore a positive alternative to the negative assertion that Antichristian ‘ministers of Baal’ can be called ‘prophets’ or ‘priests’ with equal validity.155 Over the course of his career, Bullinger continued to define Reformed ministerial identity and to differentiate it from errant alternatives. Early Swiss evangelical polemic had focused attention upon the canonical Catholic concept of sacramental priesthood. Those Reformed arguments had also given rise to corollary arguments opposed to Anabaptism with regard to the true nature of institutional ministry. Tridentine rhetoric then especially highlighted papal institutional claims in terms that related apostolic succession to biblical imagery of ‘high priesthood.’ This polemic seems to have energized Bullinger’s efforts to defend Reformed ministry as itself a special kind of priesthood. He wove some new elements into the Zwinglian matrix that had juxtaposed (true) Old Testament prophets with (corrupt) Old Testament priests. Unlike Zwingli’s contrast of priesthood versus prophethood, Bullinger identified ministry altogether – whether it be of Old Testament prophets or priests or of any authentic minister of any time – with the specific priesthood of Melchizedek, whose authority was seen to derive from the unique high priesthood of Christ (Decas quinta, sermo I, in HBTS 3.2, 756; cf also Decas quinta, epistola dedicatoria, HBTS 3.2, 729). This departs quite remarkably from the evangelical position of the 1528 Synod of Bern, where Zwingli had overtly rebuffed suggestions that Melchizedek typified 154 See 1532b, 50v: “The ancients therefore called bishops ‘priests’ in this sense and to this degree, namely, that they might preside over the gospel and the sacred prayers.” 155 Cf. Sermones Synodales entries for May 1559 and October 1568 (HBSS, 101–102 and 137–39).

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the clerical office. The Zwinglian notion of minister-as-prophet no longer sufficed in Bullinger’s context and that fact grew in importance as not only Reformed but also Catholic confessionalization proceeded apace. In the following section, I take a deeper look at Bullinger’s surprising interest in developing a distinctly Reformed concept of institutional ‘priesthood.’

4.3

Caveats to Bullinger’s Concept of Reformed Priesthood

When addressing Bullinger’s developing sense of Zurich ministry as ‘priestly,’ one must keep certain things firmly in mind. Most fundamentally, the concept of clerical indelible character remained an object of pan-Protestant loathing.156 The commencement of the Council of Trent merely reinforced Bullinger’s conviction on this point. Bullinger sought to differentiate Reformed ministry from the papal institution that emphasized the indelible character of its priesthood (understood as agents of Eucharistic sacrifice). Roman priestly prerogatives were channeled through the ‘apostolic succession’ of the Roman pope.157 Bullinger eschewed anything approximating a proprietary claim on clerical validity. Article 18 of Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession unambiguously (and famously) warns that Reformed ministry must utterly avoid any overlap with the sacramental character of Roman priesthood. Immediately after a paragraph asserting that all believers together share in the kingship and priesthood of Christ, Bullinger noted, “We do not now give any minister of the church the title of a sacrificing priest (eines opfferenden priesters)” (1566, 42r–v ; cf. also Confessio Helvetica posterior, Article 18, in 2009b [1566], 319). On the face of it, Article 18 could seem to disprove any ‘priestly’ turn in Bullinger’s view of Reformed ministry. To understand how the Second Helvetic Confession is nevertheless consistent with a new idea of specifically Reformed ministerial priesthood, one must carefully observe Bullinger’s suggestive qualifications within this article. The notion of the priesthood of all believers does not exclude the possibility of an institutional ministry, and the odiousness of the designation of ‘priest’ for any clergyman lies specifically in the ways it could be perceived to derive from a (papal) sacramental prerogative. The word ‘priest’ itself is not the problem, but rather the association of priest with sacramental ‘sacrificer.’ In just this way, Bullinger opposes any sense of priesthood granted by 156 Just to take one of an almost inexhaustible supply of such comments, one may note Bullinger’s 1532 observation that ministry – indeed, ‘priesthood’ – is an office and duty, not a sacramental character enabling Eucharistic sacrifice (1532b, 50v). 157 N.b. esp. Bullinger’s arguments in Decade 5.3 (1551) against claims of ‘apostolic succession’ and the ‘Donation of Constantine,’ as they were used to buttress claims of prerogatives of the Roman pope (Decade 5, in HBS 5, 153).

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an authority other than the unique high priesthood of Christ alone (Confessio Helvetica posterior, Article 18, in 2009b [1566], 319). In other words, it seems that Bullinger was more concerned to avoid any implications of a self-authenticated ministry than he was to reject ‘priesthood’ per se – be it the priesthood of all the believers or even, in some guarded sense, the priesthood of an institutional ministry. One must also note that this set of ideas on priesthood is not unique to Bullinger’s later years, even though it was over many years in the context of the Zurich synod that he regularly pondered and applied it. Already in his 1532 Hebrews Commentary, Bullinger established a remarkable set of principles that he would never dismiss, but only continue to develop. The designation of ‘priest,’ he noted, was in fact “holily used by ancient Christians.” A proper sense of ministerial priesthood overlaps perfectly with prophecy and episcopacy. Proper Christian institutional/clerical priesthood has nothing to do with the papal sacrifice of flesh, but is absolutely a ‘sacred office’ whereby the preached gospel itself ‘immolates the beastly affections’ of the nations as an ‘offering’ to God (1532b, 50r–52r). Bullinger consistently considered the only priest to be Christ, through whom all Christians together participate in priesthood. Vocational ministry functioned as a particular manifestation of this one priesthood. Ministry was, for Bullinger, a service set apart from other vocations and devoted to God for the benefit of society. The institutional class of church leadership was necessary in tandem with civil government, with both serving Christian society in general. The apocalypticism of Bullinger’s specifically anti-papal antichristology added special urgency to his thoughts on clerical function in his own context, but it is important to note the ways he elaborated a vision of priesthood for all times (not just the End Times, and not even just the times since the life of Christ). Already in his 1538 Institution of Episcopacy, Bullinger unambiguously asserted that God has always organized human communities by means of the two principles of civil government and priestly function (Book 2, Chapter 3, in 2009a, 113ff). For Bullinger, this necessarily also entailed numerous instances of blurring the Zwinglian distinctions between prophethood and priesthood, both in his interpretation of the supposed Levitical-priestly prophet schools in the Old Testament and in his positive view of priestly reformers in Christian history, such as Bernard of Clairvaux (HBS 2, 176–77 and 366).158 Priesthood is fundamental to the human social matrix. Both in his 1538 treatise dedicated to King Henry VIII and in his semi-annual sermons before the 158 Cf. dedicatory epistle to King Edward VI, “Dem erlauchten König von England und Frankreich, Herrn über Irland, Fürsten von Wales und Cornwall, Verteidiger des christlichen Glaubens, Eduard VI, Gnade und Friede von Gott dem Vater durch unseren Herrn Jesus Christus,” in Decade 4.3–10, in HBS 4, 382.

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gathered clergy of Zurich, Bullinger explicitly highlighted the ancient Persian, Egyptian, and Indian societies as, in some respects, good examples of this proper organization of society – even though the assertion here made no soteriological claim (cf. entry for October 1556, HBSS, 89, and Book 2, Chapter 4, in 2009a, 117). ‘Kingship’ in Bullinger’s discourse thus represented all legitimate civil authority. This concept of kingship evidently encompassed such diverse polities as the English monarchy and Zurich’s republican councils. ‘Levites’ analogously represented all sacred ministry, including the Reformed clergy of Zurich. This kingpriest tandem does not amount to an apocalyptic Anabaptist dichotomy, with an assembled, separate cohort of genuine Christians over against an Antichristian state. Bullinger is certainly not offering a church-vs.-state antithesis, but rather a cooperative tandem of modes of institutional leadership within and for the sake of the community at large. Bullinger conceived of the priestly and the political forms of leadership as cooperative, with each retaining certain prerogatives that precluded the subordination of one institution to the other. This vision was fully compatible with Bullinger’s efforts to preclude proprietary self-authentication. The magistracy was a necessary ‘other’ to the priestly ministry and vice versa. Neither one had an intrinsic authority apart from that granted by the unique king-priesthood of Christ (Book 2, Chapter 1, in 2009a, 108).159 Within this careful framework, one may even speak of Bullinger’s attempt to re-sacralize the clerical institution.160

4.4

The Sacral Institution of Social Discipline

As the leaders of the church, the clergy were crucial to the implementation of social discipline. There was important correlation between parish morals courts (Chorgericht) and the synod. The former functioned both to reform life in the smallest units of Zurich society and to consolidate that new mentality from one parish to the next; the synod shaped the clergy themselves (Gordon: 1994, 78f). The clergy who appear in synod censure records were very much in step with the mentality of their parishioners. For some good historical reasons, clergy and non-clergy alike were drawn to similar problematic behaviors involving taverns 159 Here Melchisedek serves as the type of Christ the King-Priest. 160 I largely agree with the sacralizing thesis argued by Pamela Biel (1991). To my mind, the prevalence of priestly models throughout the manuscripts of Sermones Synodales and formal publications such as the 1538 Institution of Episcopacy supply only some of the corroborating evidence. I appreciate the careful work of Daniël Timmerman regarding the specific developments of Bullinger’s views regarding prophethood and priesthood, but I do not agree with his dismissal of Biel’s basic argument about a re-sacralized clergy. Cf. Timmerman (2015, 28f).

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and festive revelries. The pastors, however, were now held to even higher standards. Bullinger frequently disparaged lingering superstitions and immoral practices among rural parishioners in the context of even more vigorous exhortations to clergy who were maddeningly prone to the same problems. The fact that clergy under Bullinger’s presidency were expected to play a leading role in social discipline actually heightened the prominence of the sacred, institutional profile of clerical office. The Reformation was an agenda to transform the populace of the entire sovereignty of Zurich; it depended upon the parish morals courts, which depended in turn upon the successful consolidation of a new sacral cohort at the synod. Reformational rhetoric across the map had emphasized confidence in the godly laity and the transformation of society through a renewal of public morality.161 At its heart, this optimism relied on the notion of a priesthood of all believers.162 Even in the early days when Anabaptism and Protestantism were not yet clearly differentiated in the eyes of contemporaries, many Reformers assumed that faithful parishioners among the common people would rise up and rebuke corruption among their leaders. The people of each parish, so it was thought, should be fully capable of discerning proper preaching and therefore of selecting their own (presumably evangelical) ministers. Still, the notion of quasidemocratic parish autonomy did not exclude clerical partnership and even leadership. In 1523, Zwingli argued that matters of church discipline must involve active coordination between a resident pastor and his parishioners (ZW 1, 334).163 Expecting more evangelical discernment on the part of the laity required instruction, formation, and godly example by way of a more thoroughly Reformed clerical cohort. Bullinger’s contribution was not to emphasize institutional ministry as distinct from priesthood of all the faithful, but he did elaborate upon this distinction with his idea that reclaimed priestly sacrality necessarily complemented the transformation of society.

161 Of course, it was always a particularly stinging Catholic polemic to note that Protestant polities continued to face rampant moral failures despite all their rhetoric of godly transformation. 162 Luther’s celebrated appeal to Christian princes in 1520 was itself grounded upon the notion of an evangelical priesthood of believers as participants in the unique priesthood of Christ by virtue of baptism. His 1523 treatise, Das eyn Christliche versamlu¯g odder gemeyne: recht vnd macht habe: alle lere tzu vrteylen: vnd lerer zu beruffen: eyn vnd abzusetzen, argued on the same grounds to support the prerogatives of a local parish in cases of conflict with elites of church and state who opposed the gospel. 163 The 31st article states: “Dass den bann dhein [i. e., kein] besunder mensch ieman uflegen mag, sunder die kilch, das ist, gemeinsame dero, under denen der bannwürdig wonet, mit sammt dem wächter, das ist pfarrer.”

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Communalization and Popular Concerns about Priesthood

Peter Blickle’s research into the transformations of late medieval and early modern Europe has shown that ostensibly magical or superstitious rites were then well-recognized components of Christian culture (1989, 26).164 The transformation of early modernity proceeded less as a shift from paganism to Christianity than as a set of new arrangements of Christianity within a process of what Blickle calls ‘communalizing.’ Communalization meant that local communities coordinated their religious life together as a way to ensure their viability. It implied a degree of ground-up sacred involvement that may have some distant relation to an early Reformational principle of the priesthood of believers. Blickle argues that the phenomenon of communalization was notable across Europe, but that it was most advanced in the relatively independent rural parishes of the inner-Swiss states. The fact that communities in Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden already exercised privileges to which other communities aspired – such as the right to select their own clergy – helps explain their typical reluctance to form a mass movement in support of Reformation ideals (Blickle: 1989, 23). A fundamental, radical principle of Reformation was in some measure already moot in those jurisdictions. Zurich’s rural parishioners, by contrast, had been relatively unsuccessful in quasi-democratic communalization heading into the Reformation period. The result was that they did indeed largely pin their hopes on the new religious options.165 The Reformational language of Zwingli seems to have resonated with commoners’ pre-existing hopes and dreams. In this context, the traditional parish priest, endowed with immunities and prerogatives, reinforced locals’ 164 It could also be noted that such historiography of ‘Christianization’ may well have taken too much at face value the rhetoric of the leading Reformational agenda from the other side of peasant revolts. It was in the interest of all leading Reformers from the mid-1520s onwards to do two things: 1) consolidate an apparatus of church-state cooperation for the maintenance of social order and 2) oppose those who, by nature of their place in the countryside, were not as yet fully incorporated into the new mentality being cultivated by church-state cooperation. Only in the course of this later stage, it seems, were more traditionally universal practices of ‘magic’ and ‘superstition’ pinned to the notion of an ignorant peasantry. One could also note that the cosmopolitan rhetoric of humanists contributed to the association. Lastly, the much later agenda of Enlightenment Europeans probably did much to fix in the modern imagination the assumption that barbarous superstition persists in the religiosity of rural bumpkins. 165 One must not blame medieval church institutions alone for suppressing quasi-democratic tendencies. Underdeveloped independence among the rural Zurich parishes largely resulted from the aggrandizing policy of the city’s political government. It was the Council that had exposed its rural subjects to uncompensated hardships in the Old Zurich War of the 1440s and it was the Council that had unilaterally suspended the solicitation of rural policyopinions as early as the 1480s. A weakness in Blickle’s argument consists in his failure to note this traditional tension within Zurich itself.

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sense of their own powerlessness in a system that seemed more interested in itself than in ensuring communal salvation. Zurich laypersons of the city and countryside alike tended to resent a church structure that – through the hegemonic chapter of canons at the Great Minster and the episcopacy in comparatively distant Constance – had failed to address their need for social involvement. Rural parishioners clamored for reform, and urban leaders such as Zwingli and his colleagues harnessed that energy. Reformation scholars have observed that one of the most remarkable changes in early modernity involved a shift in assumptions regarding who may do what appropriately in matters of religion (Gordon: 1994, 71). In the late medieval period, rites and sacraments could involve lay patronage in various ways, but the priests alone guaranteed both individual and corporate salvation.166 The priestly class was necessarily distinct and exclusive. A church institutional structure built around the notion of an ‘indelible character’ that reserved exclusive power to the clergy left many under-communalized parishes with a sense of frustrating powerlessness. Zwingli, the ‘people’s priest’ of Zurich, expressed the thoughts of many when he argued that priests had arrogated to themselves a ‘power’ that Scripture did not grant.167 ‘True religion’ should rather consist in proclaiming the positive word of Scripture alone. This is radical not only in its biblical scope but also in its supplanting of sacramental prerogative with a ministry of proclamation. Late medieval precedents for locally determined preaching posts thus assumed a new kind of centrality. The proclaimed Word (unlike a reserved sacramental power) was something that parishes generally felt more involved in procuring and overseeing. In the evangelical movement, then, clergy were understood to fulfill the office of preaching in and for their respective communities. A rhetorical dichotomy quickly crystallized between positive and negative concepts associated with contrasting terms of priest and preacher. Opposition to the claims of priestly prerogatives through appeals to the priesthood of all believers bypassed traditional sacramentalism.168 Reformed 166 Hence the importance of elaborate altar construction projects in Blickle’s picture of late medieval religious life. 167 Zwingli even speculated that the much-touted ‘indelible character’ of sacramental priests might in fact reflect the one ‘mark’ that Scripture had positively specified – Revelation’s mark of the beast. See Article 61 in “Uslegen und gründ der schlussreden oder artikel durch Huldrychen Zwingli, Zürich uf den XIX [sic] tag jenners im MDXXIII jar usgangen,” in ZW 1, 414f. (The correct day in the title should be the 29th.) 168 Many Zurichers had rejected priestly prerogatives, but some of these same Zurichers would have been just as content to retain sacramentalism so long as it could be guaranteed to be exercised with pastoral commitment and accountability to their parishes. Gordon has nicely illustrated the point in recounting the matter of a rural evangelical minister who, together with his parish, thought it best to retain the specially stamped and consecrated Eucharistic wafers (Offlete) in order to ensure the maximum efficacy of the sacrament. See Gordon 1992, 136–43, esp. 139.

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religion emerged as a re-centering of religious life around proclamation and ethical response.169 Concerted effort at social transformation aimed to transform the exercise and identity of sacredness throughout corpus Christianum (Schmidt: 1989, esp. 113 and 127). The church and state and populace of Zurich came to function in a more coordinated way than ever before. In fact, they had to. People who had agreed to reject traditional priesthood naturally continued to harbor suspicions that threatened both the centralizing urban authorities and ministerial authority. Reformation prompted a new consolidation of a church-state leadership in the explicit interest of supporting a common religious life throughout all of Zurich. The most obvious example of cooperation between church-state leadership and lay involvement may be the morals courts. On 13 June 1526 the Council established morals courts (Chorgerichte) for each individual parish of the countryside (AZHR #990, 468f). The pastor along with two to four men elected from each community composed these bodies. Like the urban Ehegericht, each parish morals court was under the final authority of the civil government (in this case, the governor [Obervogt] and, finally, the Council), while also serving as a regulated hub of effective moral oversight. Zurich’s new system of church courts no longer depended upon exclusive priestly prerogatives. Historians have rightly noted the indisputable significance of such courts in shaping a new mentality among the people (cf., e. g., Schmidt: 1989, 113). Much of the success of this reform depended upon re-envisioning institutional authority – including evangelical ministry – in such a way as to replace the sacramental, priestly prerogative.

4.6

Early Evangelical Preference for the Term ‘Preacher’

The overall agenda of configuring religious communal existence emphasized the roles of preachers over that of sacramental priests. Implementing a priesthood of all believers could entail some anticlerical sentiments and in any case did erase conspicuous features of a clerical class. Zwingli had led (some might say, coopted) the charge to place Zurich’s clergy within the same legal framework that bound the life of all Zurich citizens together. The so-called ‘spiritual estate,’ Zwingli had argued in 1523, errs wildly when it usurps the legitimate worldly authority that God has placed over people. Granting immunities from taxation 169 I am by no means suggesting that proclamation (with an ethical response) was absent from medieval Christianity or from the Roman Catholic alternatives to Protestant Reformation. Roman Catholics preached the Word and Reformed Christians retained the sacraments. This is rather a question of what constituted the central expression of religious life.

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and courts of civil justice contradicts Scripture.170 Old Testament exegesis supplied a sourcebook for delineating a people of God that should exist together within a political framework of godly rulers. King Josiah was among the most prominent Old Testament examples of a regime whose goodness consisted principally in destroying idols and shepherding religious restoration, whereas priests had repeatedly proven to be poor stewards – and thereby to exemplify the prototypical bad example of religious authority. The early evangelical cause necessitated equal justice under the law for parishioner and clergy alike, and the rhetorical preference for the term ‘preacher’ underscored that point of coordination between Zwinglian theology and the communalizing impulse. Opponents who defended the traditional sacramental clerical character relied to a great degree on Old Testament descriptions of Levitical priesthood. The strategy backfired in that, in Zwinglian polemic, appeals to Old Testament priesthood only reinforced evangelical animus. These were the ones who are repeatedly rebuked by the heroic prophets in any evangelical discourse. Consistent with Blickle’s thesis that communalization led certain parishes into anticlericalism, the very word for ‘priest’ (priester or pfaff) became profoundly pejorative. Zurich evangelicals preferred the term ‘pastor’ (Pfarrer) or even ‘tender’ or ‘watcher’ (Wächter), and they especially promoted the word-oriented ministry of the ‘preacher’ (praedicant/Prediger) as their Reformed alternative to church leadership. The word ‘priest’ indicated in the minds of many precisely the sort of minister who opposed local accountability and the political common life of the sacred community. The 1532 constitution of the Zurich synod exclusively used the word ‘preacher,’ and it relied mostly on New Testament passages when making positive assertions about clerical office. Old Testament prophecies such as Jeremiah 2 and 23 and Ezekiel 13 served the strictly negative function of condemning priestly corruption (see AZHR #1899, 825–37). Reformed ministry must emphasize proclamation and moral accountability and sacred social cohesion. All of this correlates strongly with the Reformed tendency to mine the Old Testament for models of ministry in the form of prophets. Bullinger himself succinctly repeated this position in a celebrated oration at the Grossmünsterstift in January 1532 (2004, 11–47). The prophet must be able to proclaim the Word in what is essentially the same office, whether in the Old Testament or the Christian church.171 Zwingli himself had lived as an exemplary ‘prophet.’ Prophetic imagery emerged as an early and typically Reformed way to avoid the menacing connotations of priesthood. 170 See esp. Articles 34–42 in “Uslegen und gründ der schlussreden oder artikel durch Huldrychen Zwingli, Zürich uf den XIX [sic] tag jenners im MDXXIII jar usgangen,” in ZW 1, 346–70. 171 Bullinger explicitly equates ‘Christian bishops’ with Old Testament prophets (2004, 12).

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Bullinger devoted considerable energy to the synod as a way to protect the demonstrable accomplishments associated with a new prophetic clerical model. He also continued to develop ideas on a special clerical office with a sharp sense of its an eschatological context. Understated yet vigorous genius is evident in the ways he carried forward the Zwinglian legacy following 1531. The Sermones Synodales show his special aptitude for exploring new possibilities for Scriptural patterns, often while leaving the reassuring impression of seamless continuity.172 He was always keenly aware of problems and pitfalls of priestly terminology, even as he carefully exhorted his ministerial colleagues to fulfill their high office in ways that reclaimed a modified concept of institutional priesthood.

4.7

Bullinger and the Re-Establishment of Priesthood

Bullinger significantly changed the evangelical field of acceptable biblical imagery by which to illustrate clerical ministry. This is especially evident in his Sermones Synodales. The better to accomplish this elaboration, he derived possibilities from within impeccably Zwinglian explications of the term bishop.173 Zwingli had explicitly linked the prophetic preacher with episcopacy by reclaiming the latter’s etymological significance as ‘overseer.’ Bullinger developed this connection much further, and, arguably, in some new directions. Seemingly simple repetitions of prophetic words in his Sermones Synodales include marginalia indicating that the text should apply directly to the ‘priests’ (!) of Zurich.174 “And now, O priests, this command is for you!” he said (HBSS, entry for 1536, 8f). There is no room to equivocate here regarding whether Bullinger really meant the word ‘priest’ in this context. In the Sermones Synodales, as also in the relevant, quoted verse of Malachi 2 as it stood in Latin and German versions of the Zurich Bible (of 1531, 1540, and 1543), the word is always ‘priests’ (pfaffen, sacerdotes), and never ‘minister’ or ‘preacher’ or otherwise glossed as ‘prophet.’ Given the stark Zwinglian-era hostility toward the word ‘priest’ when used for 172 This knack for seamless innovation (along with Bullinger’s own self-effacing character) helps explain how so much historiography until recent decades spoke of a monolithic ‘Zwinglian tradition’ with little or no reference to Bullinger. Perhaps the clearest testimony of this now-disproved perspective may be seen in the volume nominally devoted to both Zwingli and Bullinger in the Library of Christian Classics series. The editor offers the blandest of introductions to a Reformer noted for dutiful persistence but who was ‘pedestrian’ and ‘in no way outstanding.’ See Bromiley (ed.): 1953, esp. 45f. 173 Cf. Article 23 in “Uslegen und gründ der schlussreden oder artikel durch Huldrychen Zwingli, Zürich uf den XIX [sic] tag jenners im MDXXIII jar usgangen,” in ZW 1, esp. 315. 174 This rhetorical strategy is among the most sustained throughout the Sermones Synodales. The first quotation of Malachi 2:1–9 (along with Bullinger’s own marginalia) appears in the entry for 1536 (HBSS, 8f).

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anything other than the full community of the faithful, Bullinger’s listeners in the synod were likely shocked by his application of the word to them. It could be that their first response was to assume that Bullinger was actually rebuking them. To be sure, the Malachi reference does include a strong admonition against those who would violate the priestly office. But no; in this case Bullinger was positively asserting that Zurich’s preachers/prophets must rightfully enact a ministerial vocation as ‘priests’! Bullinger’s synod presidency marks a significant shift in the confessionalizing agenda. Not only would the Old Testament continue to provide the framework of a civil authority alongside a prophetic ministry of proclamation, but it could also serve as a standard for the institutional consolidation of a neo-priestly clerical class. Bullinger accomplished this otherwise shocking new line of thinking by means of organic development rather than by stark rejection of evangelical precedent. Zwingli and other early evangelicals had already effectively consolidated Zurich opinion against the priesthood of old by insisting on the priesthood of all believers, and Bullinger happily set about preserving that legacy. Certainly, Bullinger consistently opposed any return to priesthood defined by indelible character. To the extent that church leadership in Zurich could be carefully reimagined as a special sense of priesthood, it must be established for the sake of overseeing society in ways that preserved the Zwinglian language of episcopacy. Bullinger saw the fresh positive potential of a priesthood, now re-formed as a special corps with a set-apart (sacred) vocation. The Zurich clergy did not require an essential mark of ontological difference in order to function, but it did constitute a coherent bloc within the king-priest pattern of leadership in Christian society. It is also highly interesting to note that much of Bullinger’s positive priestly rhetoric came from the book of Malachi, who was a prophet. Bullinger cited Malachi explicitly twelve times throughout his Sermones. These instances are spread out fairly evenly across the entries: 1536, May 1541, October 1549, October 1553, October 1556, May 1557, October 1557, October 1567, May 1570, May 1572, and May 1575 (which was a repetition of the entry for October 1567). During this span of years, Bullinger also preached two series of Tuesday sermons on Malachi at the Grossmünster: from 29 May 1554 to 14 August 1554 and from 29 September 1573 to 9 February 1574. All synodal references are drawn exclusively from the second chapter, and they often include verbatim quotation of all or part of Malachi 2:1–9.175 This passage begins with God’s direct address to 175 In his own notes, Bullinger cites Malachi 2:1–9 in Latin, but it corresponds much better with the Zurich Bible than with the Vulgate. Cf. Die gantze Bibel (1531), CXCI. The Zurich Bible of 1531 gives the following German version that would have been used among the clergy at the synod: “Und nun O ir pfaffen / euch laßt der HERR also wüssen: So irs nit hoͤ rend / un¯ nit zu˚ hertzen fassend / das ir meinem nam ¯ en die eer gaͤ bind / spricht der HERR der heerscharen / so wird ich

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the ‘priests’ and goes on to outline their duties with reference to the ideal example of Levi juxtaposed with the offenses of a priesthood that has corrupted its covenant responsibility. The suitability to Bullinger’s purposes in the synod is apparent. In Malachi, the divine command holds hypocritical ceremonial rites in opprobrium. Levi himself is not represented as a sacramental guarantor, but as a model of instruction and moral conduct. The text describes priesthood as a covenant exercised in studying the Word of the Lord and in turning people away from iniquity by instruction and lifestyle. This is a near perfect parallel with Bullinger’s frequently repeated outlines of the ‘episcopal’ criteria for doctrina et vita. The notes of moral uprightness, diligent study, reverence, and impartial judgment are all there. Bullinger continued to put Malachi front and center in his exhortations intended to shape a new clerical mentality but, in the mid-1550s, he augmented the strategy by way of the biblical book of Hosea – a prophetic book with conspicuous themes of covenant and divine judgment. Hosea 4 and 6 notably exden flu˚ch auff euch schicken / unnd euwere saͤ gen wird ich verfluͤ chen / ja verfluͤ chen wird ichs / so irs nit zu˚ hertzen fassend. Nemmend war / über die schultern bin ich erzürnt vo¯ euwert waͤ gen / und mit dem mist und kaat wil ich euwere angesicht bewerffen: ja mit dem kaat euwerer hochzeyten / den¯ wirt man mit den kaatbüchen in euch werffen / das ir wüssind das ich disen befelch zu˚ euch geschickt hab / das mein pundt den ich mit Levi aufgerichtet hatt / bestuͤ nde / spricht der HERR der heerscharen Den pund den ich mit im hatt / was ein pundt des laͤ bens und fridens. Soͤ lichs hatt ich im gebe¯ das er in forchten waͤ re: und er hatt mich auch gefoͤ rchtet / und ist ab meynem nam ¯ en erschrocken. Das gsatz der warheit und trüw was in seine¯ mund / unnd in seynen laͤ fftzen was kein faͤ l. Vollkom ¯ enlich / steyff unnd schlaͤ cht hatt er mit mir gewandlet / und die menge hatt er von der boßheyt abgewendt. Dann die laͤ fftzen des priesters soͤ llend mit wüssenheyt unnd kunst bericht sein / das man das gsatz vonn seynem mund frage: dann er ist ein bott des HERREN der heerscharen. Ir aber sind vom waͤ g abgetraͤ tten / unnd habend die menge im gsatz fallen machen. Den pundt Levi habend ir brochen / spricht der HERr der heerscharen. Deßhalb wil auch ich euch verachtlich unnd schnoͤ d machen vor allen voͤ lckeren: dann ir meyne waͤ g nit haltend / sonder ir habend ansaͤ hen der personen im gsatz.” My translation: “And now, O you priests (pfaffen), the LORD says to you: If you do not listen and take it to heart – says the LORD of hosts – I will curse you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I will curse them, if you do not take this to heart. Take heed, I have had it up to here with your ways! I will throw dung and filth in your face – the filth of your festivals – and people will hurl filth at you, such that you will know that I have given this command to you, so that my covenant that I established with Levi will endure. So says the LORD of hosts. The covenant that I had with him was a covenant of life and peace. I gave it to him so that he might live reverently. He feared me and revered my name. The ordinance of truth and faithfulness was in his mouth, and nothing false was in his lips. He walked with me perfectly, uprightly, and in simple integrity, and he turned the many away from wickedness. The lips of a priest (des priesters) should be well versed in wisdom and knowledge, such that one seeks guiding words (gsatz) from his mouth, for he is a messenger of the LORD of hosts. You, however, have all departed from the right way, and you have caused the many to fall away in the ordinance (gsatz). You have broken the covenant of Levi, says the LORD of hosts. For this reason I, too, will make you wretched and abject before all peoples, for you do not keep my way, but you show favoritism for people in the ordinance (gsatz).”

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coriate priestly abuses with rhetoric that was highly amenable to Zwinglian tradition. At the synod session of October 1556, Bullinger quoted Hosea 4:6: “Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from performing priesthood to me” (HBSS, entry for 20 October 1556, 89).176 Priests were guilty of reliance on their supposed sacramental privilege at the expense of duty in the office of ministerial proclamation. Bullinger made the point again, and even more clearly, on 6 May 1572, when he substituted the word ‘verbum’ for ‘scientiam’ (HBSS, entry for 6 May 1572, 155). In other words, the problem was no mere lack of knowledge (scientiam), but rather a failure to study for the purpose of expression and instruction in the light of that knowledge. Such a use of Hosea helped underscore the claim that traditional priestly culpability consisted in having rejected not just any knowledge, but specifically the biblical word of God itself. More surprising, however, were Bullinger’s synodal references to Hosea 6: “Wicked priests are a snare for the ruin of the people” (HBSS, entries for 20 October 1556, 90, and 19 October 1563, 119).177 This slight paraphrase is actually not from Hosea 6, as Bullinger consistently asserts in the Sermones, but rather from Hosea 9.178 Bullinger has also added the phrase ‘wicked priests’ (mali sacerdotes) to clarify the identity of the principal evildoers in a biblical verse that itself seems more open-ended. Bullinger is not contrasting bad priests with the intended synodal product of good prophets. Rather, as is evident in his interpretive pairing of Hosea with Malachi, he expects the synod to nurture a proper ministry against any corrupt perversion of it. The surprise consists in the fact that Bullinger was unwilling to give a simple negative condemnation of priesthood over against an idealized prophethood. The ideal is not elimination of priesthood, but the correction of its perverted state.

176 In the original: “Quia repulisti tu scientiam, ego te repellam ne fungaris sacerdotio mihi.” 177 The same quote appears in both entries: “Osee 6. Laqueus ruinae populi mali sacerdotes.” 178 Hosea 6 in the 1531 Zurich Bible does indeed explicitly condemn priestly sacrificial rites as compared to proper covenant duties in conduct and wisdom, and it includes the prophetic observation that “the heap of priests is like a horde of robbers” (“der hauff der pfaffen ist gleych wie ein rott der roͤ ubern”). However, there is no mention here of a ‘snare for the people.’ Hosea 9 does refer to a snare for the people, though actually in this case the snare is laid by the arrogating authority of a sort of combined anti-office of religious leadership in the divine household, here uniting corrupt priestly-episcopal oversight with prophecy: “Ephraim has made himself into an overseer of my God, into a prophet who sets a snare in all his ways and an abomination in the house of God” (“Ja Ephraim hatt sich selbs zu˚ eynem waͤ chter meines Gottes gemachet / zu˚ eine¯propheten der strick legt auf allen seinen straassen / und einen greüwel in das hauß seines Gottes”).

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Reformed Priesthood as a Necessary Pillar of Zurich Civilization

At precisely that synod session where Bullinger first linked Hosea 4 and Malachi 2, he also gave a remarkable excursus with echoes of Acts 20. The apostle Paul, he says, admonished the synod of Ephesian elders assembled at Miletus to remain vigilant against the destructive wolves to come. The point to Bullinger’s hearers would have seemed fairly unsurprising at first: beware the wolves (read: arrogant, destructive priests) who will have crept into the church fold after the apostolic age. Bullinger goes on, however, to explain that such vigilance over the church requires learning and teaching in some ways that even the pagan societies duly embodied (HBSS, entry for 20 October 1556, 89).179 Bullinger thus reiterated for his clerical colleagues an argument that he had already asserted in principle in his 1538 treatise concerning the institution and function of episcopacy. This argument also provides a convenient overlap between Bullinger’s humanistic interest in history alongside his commitment to the institutional template of Scripture. Pagan ‘nations’ (gentes) of the past provide a helpful example; Bullinger emphasized this as being relevant to the immediate business of the Zurich synod. Clergy in the Zwinglian Reformed church might have expected any reference to Egyptian priests, Babylonian Chaldeans, Persian magi, Indian gymnosophists, and Gallic druids to mirror the supposed abuse and superstition of papal priesthood. Such an assumption would have buttressed the typical prophet-vs.priest approach of the early Zurich Reformation. But such was not Bullinger’s point at all. Leaving aside soteriology, Bullinger noted that the pagan priests diligently studied special knowledge in and for their people, while Roman priests have ceased to do so. Furthermore, the argument strongly implies features that may fall under the rubric of confessionalization. Bullinger argues that just as a Gallic druid would make no sense among the Persians, so also the Reformed ‘priests’ of Zurich must exercise their office among their own people as defined by the state of Zurich. The assembled parish ministers of the Zurich synod must function as stewards of the sacred knowledge that should shape the lives of fellow Zurichers. By exercising their episcopal office of the Word in doctrina et vita, the ministry critically defined their society as a society of Reformed Zurich. The agenda to reconceive ‘priesthood’ may also bear relation to Bullinger’s growing frustration with the progress of Reformation. Most Reformers by the 1550s had begun to bemoan residual ignorance and moral and doctrinal failings 179 In the original: “Breviter officij admonuit. Imprimis requiritur scientia eruditio doctrina. Gentes id viderunt. Sacerdotes Aegÿptiorum. Chaldaei Babÿloniorum. Magi Persarum. Gÿmnosophistae Indorum. Druÿdae Gallorum. In lege imprimis requiritur scientia, et repetitur in prophetis.”

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– even within evangelical territories! – in ways that seem to mirror Bullinger’s application of Hosea. Despite its early enthusiasm, Protestantism had not radically emended human life, after all. Bullinger’s obvious disappointment in the aftermath of the Schmalkaldic War and in the face of resurgent Catholicism in and after the Council of Trent is accompanied by great concern over decline within the Reformed camp itself. Such frustration appears in synodal notes where he describes an eschatological moment of decadence.180 In the late 1550s, after Bullinger had begun his sermon series on Jeremiah, his frustration aroused an even more vigorous effort to reconfigure Reformed clerical identity.181 At the synod in May 1559, Bullinger quoted Jeremiah 23:9–15 (HBSS, entry for 9 May 1559, 102).182 The passage serves as a concluding exhortation following yet another explication of the episcopal criteria of doctrina et vita, but this time, Bullinger added an emphatic rebuke of priest and prophet alike. Note the significant inclusion of prophets in the excoriation. In this context of eschatological frustration with Reformed ministry, Bullinger finally transcended the contrast between the terms priest and prophet. His marginal notes even single out verse 11 with an emphatic reminder that both priests and prophets alike are ‘hypocrites’ when they live sinfully. They have failed to live in accord with an office that should provide the light of guidance for the people. In collapsing the priest-prophet dichotomy, Bullinger decisively discontinued the Zwinglian rhetoric that had lionized prophethood as the Reformed alternative to priesthood. By now, prophet and priest alike could indicate a negative or indeed a positive image of the clerical office. For the remainder of the Sermones, Bullinger pointedly linked prophetic and priestly descriptions regarding the ministers’ episcopal duties. His use of Jeremiah 23 indicates heightened attention to the business of re-assessing Zurich ministry. Failure to serve uprightly in the office of prophet-priest illustrates – and indeed contributes to! – eschatological destruction upon the entire community. In his summary of this passage, Bullinger highlighted the divine threat of a ‘day of visitation’ (dies visitationis). Again we see Bullinger’s conscious zeal to form ministers whose role makes or breaks the shared life of Zurichers.

180 A notable example highlights the eschatological moment described in Matthew 24:12, where the ardor of love has cooled (e. g., entry for 4 May 1557 in HBSS, 94). 181 Bullinger preached two series of sermons on Jeremiah: concerning Jeremiah 1–13 on Tuesdays from 5 January 1557 to (probably) July 1560 and concerning Jeremiah 14–30 on weekdays/Fridays from (probably) June/July 1559 to 28 June 1560. 182 N.b. esp. verse 11: “Etenim tam propheta quam sacerdos hÿpocritae fuerunt.” It is further significant that the Jeremiah passage here prominently includes ‘drunkenness’ among the catalog of sinful behavior among the priests-prophets. Drunkenness was probably the most recurrent issue for censure at Zurich synod sessions.

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Priesthood and the Urgency of Salvation History

Bullinger’s efforts to reclaim the dignity of modified ‘priesthood’ have much to do with his End-Times framework of salvation history.183 In giving an overview of that history, Bullinger notes that God himself was the first ‘preacher’ (concionator) – a term that underscored the importance of proclamation while establishing the foundation for every subsequent ministry, from Old Testament patriarchs to ‘priests and prophets’ and, in a New Testament mode, from ‘Christ and the apostles’ to ‘pastors and bishops’ (pastores et episcopi). At those points in the Sermones where Bullinger separates out a narrower sense of episcopi, he often links pastores with doctrina and episcopi with vita (cf. HBSS, entry for October 1555, 85).184 We may also perceive a structural parallel on either side of the mirror of Christ: priest is to bishop as prophet is to pastor. Bullinger’s biblical usages promoted his understanding that priest and prophet served as representatives of one essentially unified ministry across all times. Despite keen awareness of the rhetorical awkwardness of speaking of ‘priesthood’ in Zurich, Bullinger demonstrated cautious appreciation for the office of priesthood in the structure of Reformed society.185 The salvation-historical elaboration came to fuller expression in the synod record for October 1568, where Bullinger anchored his discussion in the context of an apocalyptic conflict.186 He pointed to Old Testament illustrations of the few versus the many, or indeed, of the righteous versus all the wicked. One notes within this dichotomy an institutional subset of leadership (priest and prophet) on either side of the apocalyptic conflict, that is, within the apocalyptic framework of the righteous and the wicked. The two sides feature formally similar 183 The Sermones Synodales entry for 19 October 1563 (HBSS, 120) refers to ‘Moses and Aaron’ as representatives of priesthood, without using that term. The entries for 9 May 1564 (HBSS, 121) and 7 May 1566 (HBSS, 127) explicitly pair the terms prophet and priest. The entry for 19 October 1568 (HBSS, 137f) includes much the same sketch of salvation history, along with two significant additional points: a) the ministry of Christ and the apostles is carried on in hunc diem by Pastores. Doctores. Episcopi. Presbÿteri; and b) the legitimate Christian priesthood is perversely mirrored and persecuted by the Sacerdos Baalitas in Satan’s sway. 184 In the original: “vita sit episcopalis in cultu corporis et sermonibus.” 185 As an aside, one may observe that the magisterial authorities seem to have caught the terminological drift. Already at the synod session of 6 May 1544, Bürgermeister Johannes Hab incidentally refers to the Zurich ministers as a ‘priesthood’ (priesterschafft). Granted, this occurs in the context of reprimand for gatherings of chapter deans that were of dubious legality, and so there is some chance that Johannes Hab is hoping to convey some lingering negative echoes. See “Abstellen der Prosÿnodorum,” in the Acta Synodi, StAZ, E.II.1.303f. 186 Bullinger found the years 1567 and 1568 to be particularly fruitful for thinking about world history. It is in this span, for example, that he completed his gigantic manuscript sourcebooks on both the “reformation of the church from 1519 to 1532” and “Swiss history from the beginning to 1519.” See Egli (ed.): 1985, 87, 91.

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structures of leadership, but that structure is perverted among the wicked. In many respects, this seems to circle back (likely via Augustine) to the exegetical principles of Tyconius’ antichristology. Bullinger goes so far as to claim that the wicked assembly – led by cultic devotees of Baal in the Old Testament or Pharisees in the New – are not simply sporadic agents of error; they are ‘priests of Satan.’187 Zurich must counteract the wicked priesthood by participating in the only true priesthood, that of Christ. The Zurich clergy must indeed act as a sacred office, whose distinctive criterion is service rather than any self-referential character. Given the present End-Times context, that need was never more urgent. Bullinger encouraged his peers to reckon with an awareness that all of human history until the final Judgment consisted in a cosmic conflict. To engage as church against false priesthood required not the dismissal of priesthood per se, but rather a carefully reconstituted sense of that clerical identity, especially because the End was near.

4.10 ‘Drunkenness’: An Illustration of the Eschatological Framework for Reformation188 Bullinger’s perennial exhortations on ‘drunkenness’ disclose important features of his agenda to reclaim a specifically Reformed ‘priesthood.’ Before the synod and in meetings with the magistracy (the Fürträge), Bullinger exhorted his clerical colleagues to bear special moral responsibility for ‘sobriety’ in a very broad sense of the term. Sobriety must provide great benefit (magnum fructum) to the entire community, even as the subject highlighted clerical sacredness in some special ways (cf. HBSS, entry for 19 October 1540, 27). ‘Drunkenness’ had become a taproot of iniquities such as fighting, blaspheming, evil speech, impurity, shameless breaches of the peace, and miserable killing. Ministers fulfilled their ‘episcopal’ office precisely when and where they ‘watch[ed] out’ (bewachten) for drunkenness and its effects in the community.189 Indeed, sobriety was a hallmark of the higher moral standard of Bullinger’s re-imagined concept 187 Reformational polemic frequently used the word ‘Pharisee’ as a reference not only to the religious opponents of Christ in the New Testament, but also as a code for the Roman Catholic clergy, with its supposed emphasis on cultic fastidiousness at the expense of the gospel message of repentance and faith. 188 This section especially, as also this chapter more generally, presents my ongoing thinking on the topic of the eschatological ramifications of institutional priesthood and the ways Bullinger addressed the topic through exhortations against ‘drunkenness.’ See, e. g., Wood: 2014, 81–105. 189 Here we may again draw attention to the language of ‘vigilance.’ This term was eschatologically charged and linked directly to Bullinger’s vision for Reformed episcopacy.

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of clerical ‘sacredness.’ If unchecked, the problem of drunkenness would incite dreadful divine punishment – especially now in an End-Times context where Zurichers had begun to hear the gospel rightly proclaimed yet without commensurate improvement.190 Since the mission of the synod included duties of overseeing moral conduct, one may properly read references to ‘drunkenness’ in a literal mode. This reading yields interesting and important historical insight. Sixteenth-century sources of many sorts do indicate a concerted effort to mitigate the evils of alcohol. Magisterial efforts to regulate and police properly licensed taverns was just one aspect of this. Anyone perusing the Acta Synodi will also encounter plenty of testimony indicating the need to change lifestyles of drunkenness among the ministers. A common enough scene features a minister who stands accused of drunkenness and who is told henceforth to avoid such evils by filling his time with books instead.191 Bullinger frequently took up the issue of literal abuse of alcohol. Reforming society meant reshaping practices involving alcohol in the context of clerical lifestyle and in the community-wide religious events of baptisms, weddings, and church consecrations. Modern scholars have generally read such data in the trajectory of Gerhard Oestreich’s ‘social disciplining.’ A merely literal reading of ‘drunkenness’ nevertheless misses some of its crucial rhetorical importance in Bullinger’s agenda. His theme of drunkenness must be understood to include a broader spectrum of meanings. Only when drunkenness/sobriety is understood in a theological sense does the priest-oriented eschatological framework become more apparent.192 The Sermones Synodales are more useful in this regard than are the censorial protocols of the Acta Synodi. In the light of the impending Judgment, Bullinger pointed always to the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ alternatives of ministry described in Matthew 24:45–51. The fidelis servus et prudens represented the positive ideal for clerical stewardship, while the servus malus notably ‘drank with the drunkards.’

190 Acta Synodi for 19 October 1540, in a section entitled “Gemeine klag der lasteren halb” (StAZ, E.II.1.261ff). “Den wÿn missbrucht man groblich und volgt daruff ougenschinlich aller unradt wie wir dann sähend, touben, schlahen, Gottslastere, wust redden, unreÿnigkeit unverschampte frÿdbruch und ellende todschlag. … [I]st nüt gwüssers dan das uns Got straffen wirt unnd muss mit allerleÿ plagen, kranckheÿt, hunger, tuwere, krieg, uffrur, unnd pranndt. Dann wir habend lang sin wort gehoͤ rt unnd besserend uns nüt.” 191 Some examples of ministerial recipients of the admonition more studying, less drinking include Michael Beninger, Gebhart Vottel, and the entire assembled clergy at the synod of 8 May 1543. See Acta Synodi, StaZ, E.II.1, 243, 266, 292. 192 In addition to the many references to drunkenness via Matthew 24 throughout the Sermones Synodales, other uses of forms of ebrietas occur in the following entries: May 1537 (HBSS, 12), 20 October 1556 (HBSS, 89f), 18 October 1558 (HBSS, 99), 9 May 1559 (HBSS, 102), 22 October 1560 (HBSS, 107), 8 May 1565 (HBSS, 125), and 9 May 1570 (HBSS, 149).

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In the Sermones Synodales, Bullinger consistently remarked that the minister must be held to higher standards, must be set apart (indeed, be holy), which he defined precisely as ‘not drunk’ (sana non ebria) (HBSS, entry for May 1537, 12; underlining in the original).193 Holiness thus stands in contrast to everything spiritually transgressive as summed up in the term drunkenness. Bullinger reiterates many biblical condemnations of abuse of alcohol. Daniel – who, for Bullinger perhaps even more than for other Reformed theologians, constituted the eschatological prophet par excellence – is characterized as one who abstained from alcohol (HBSS, entry for 20 October 1556, 90). In a similar if more priestoriented vein, Bullinger also repeatedly discussed Paul’s ‘episcopal’ hallmarks of sobriety (especially as in 1 Timothy 3). Throughout these discussions, the priestly motif comes to the fore. Bullinger reinforced the message with recourse to the Aaronic priesthood described in Leviticus 10; drunkenness stands out as a central failing of wicked priests in contrast to the expectation of sobriety befitting their office (HBSS, entries for 18 October 1547, 54, and 6 May 1572, 155). In all this the holiness of being set apart specially applies to the clerical class. Bullinger’s End-Times idiom makes this quite plain. Ministry must be vigilant. Not the people in a generalized democratic sense – not even the people of a Christian republic whose members constitute the priesthood of all believers – but members of the clergy specifically are uniquely responsible ‘watchman’ at a precarious time for the household. Bullinger highlighted the clerical distinction whenever he used the motif of drunkenness as illustrative of the End Times. Drunkenness abounds precisely when love has grown cold, just as Christ said it would in the Last Days (HBSS, entry for 4 May 1557, 94). Or again, “the ground itself is corrupt and drunk just as in the times of Noah and Lot” (HBSS, entry for 7 May 1560, 106).194 Or yet again, with reference to Jeremiah 23, Bullinger argues that it is drunkenness that marks the time when the prophet and priest alike are corrupt, and when society has become like Sodom and Gomorrah facing Judgment (Dies visitationis) (HBSS, entry for 9 May 1559, 102). The montage of eschatological images of drunkenness coheres around the synodal center of gravity that Bullinger locates in the parable of the servants from Matthew 24, itself paired almost invariably with the priestly covenant of Malachi 2. When the Lord returns and finds the bad servant drunk, he cuts him to pieces. Bullinger exhorts the Zurich clergy to follow instead the model of the sober steward of heavenly bread for the sake of Zurich society as an instantiation of the divine economy. In this exhortation, Bullinger is not advocating a return to traditional sacramentalism. The fidelis servus et prudens exemplifies the kind of 193 Bullinger’s underlining. 194 Cf. entry for 23 October 1571 (HBSS, 153). Note also the explicit references here to Daniel 11 and Matthew 24, along with the eschatological use of the term times (temporibus).

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dynamic ‘watchfulness’ that Bullinger everywhere associates with eschatological episcopacy. Bullinger does not sketch elaborate visions of apocalyptic cataclysm in his Sermones Synodales, but the End-Times coloring is unmistakable. ‘Drunkenness’ is, to be sure, a moral fault of physical existence and even a concomitant of corrupt papal religion (as pinned to ‘superstitious’ festivals). Much more gravely, however, it is a reflection of spiritual forces that hasten toward Judgment, along with Satan, the Antichrist, the papal priesthood, and all iterations of the bad servant (cf. Bullinger: 1557a, 60f). Bullinger’s eschatological framework supplied the idiom through which he addressed the agenda of transforming Reformation Zurich through a new kind of priesthood.

5

Justification Revisited

5.1

(Re-)Sacralizing Zurich’s Clergy in Accord with Sacredness as Non-Possession195

In 2 Corinthians 6:1–10, the Apostle Paul describes church ministry in light of a ‘day of salvation.’ The text thrums with eschatological dynamism. It is full of surprising reversals and paradoxes – honor, dishonor; dying, living; poor, rich; and having nothing yet possessing everything. The 1531 Zurich Bible rendered it this way: Als die nüts habend, unnd doch alles innhabend. This passage does not itself constitute an interpretive key to the exegetical breadth of Bullinger’s theology, but Bullinger included it prominently when discussing the paradox of freedom and service in Christ, including ramifications for the institutional ministry of the church.196 The passage also serves to relate Bullinger’s thinking on the clerical office to a broadly Protestant concept of justification. Together with other eschatological texts such as Matthew 24 and Malachi 2, Bullinger elaborated having/not-having into a post-Zwinglian, yet specifically Protestant, concept of resacralized priesthood. I am arguing for more than the claim that Bullinger intended to strengthen institutional leadership of the church. Every magisterial Reformer elaborated some view of an ordained ministry, often in sharp opposition to perceived threats of anarchy. The viability of Protestantism depended on safeguarding its institutional authorities in the face of contrary tendencies implicit in the principle of ‘priesthood of the all the faithful.’ Zwingli famously worked to disestablish 195 This section expands upon ideas first delivered in my presentation at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Bruges, Belgium, 18 August 2016. 196 Bullinger quoted 2 Corinthians 6:2–10 verbatim at the synod session of 20 October 1545 (HBSS, 48). The year 1545 was an especially significant one, coinciding as it did with the beginning of the Catholic Council of Trent and with turmoils building toward the Schmalkaldic War in the Empire. N.b. also Bullinger’s Friday sermons between May 1555 and July 1556 (as listed in Büsser: 1985, 149), his 1535 Commentary on 2 Corinthians (HBW 3.6), and his 1550 Decade 3.9 (HBS 4, 134ff).

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traditional priesthood even as he also redefined church ministry as the work of exegetical-linguistic experts known as ‘prophets.’ For all their disagreements on other points, scholars as diverse as Pamela Biel, Bruce Gordon, Daniel Bolliger, Daniël Timmerman, and Peter Opitz have all emphasized the fact that Bullinger continued to devote considerable attention to defining and applying principles of institutional leadership. Research into this dimension of Bullinger’s career overlaps with and contributes to scholarly interest in phenomena of confessionalization. The question arises: What was distinctive about Bullinger’s agenda to shape clerical identity, when such efforts operated in a continuum with Zwinglian precedents and in simultaneity with other confessionalizing contexts of early modern Europe? The answer lies in his largely overlooked contribution to a new concept of priestly sacrality. Any discussion of resacralization of a ministerial corps can quickly arouse confusion and contention among scholars of the Swiss Reformation. Some of this is already evident in the great caution Bullinger himself exercised whenever he used the term ‘priest.’ The difficulty is also evident in the overwhelmingly negative assumptions about this term that dominated much of Reformed Protestantism from the sixteenth century onwards. When addressing the thesis of priestly resacralization, it is imperative to recall that Bullinger never in the least rescinded his typically Protestant critique of priestly ‘indelible character.’ He consistently rejected any idea of a mark upon the soul that would differentiate clerical and lay classes of Christians. The essentialist distinction of indelible character had supplied the sine qua non of traditional clerical sacrality. And Bullinger preferred indeed the non to any such priesthood! In his view, the use of ‘priest’ to mean a Christian leader set apart from other believers by an essential mark was both inapt and dangerous. This is, again, the gist of his remarkable assertions about institutional ministry in Article 18 of the Second Helvetic Confession. Nevertheless, Bullinger’s Protestant convictions did not prevent him from reclaiming priesthood as a model for the clerical corps of the Zurich Church. To explore how Bullinger developed a view of priestly sacrality without in the least leaning toward something consistent with indelible character, one necessarily also engages with the theme of justification by faith – all from a distinctly Bullingerian angle. My intent in this chapter is to use some aspects of the doctrine of justification to shed some particular light on many of the conclusions of this entire project. I recognize that the argument of resacralized priesthood will be contentious in its own right, and linking this to a discussion of the doctrine of justification could be seen to exacerbate the contention. The theological term ‘justification’ can be a flashpoint of tension between the Swiss Reformed and German Lutheran wings of the Reformation. Bullinger and other Swiss evangelicals explicitly acknowledged Luther as a genuine prophet in some key respects, but there was never

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lacking some hostility and suspicion between these two poles of Protestantism.197 From his own base at the crossroads between the two, Martin Bucer’s zeal to prod the Swiss into closer accord with Luther illustrates a good deal of the difficulty; the Strasbourg reformer acquired a reputation in Zurich as a temporizer and an irritant. The subsequent era of confessionalized antagonism between the Lutheran and Reformed camps did nothing to mitigate this acrimonious division of Protestantism. Even quite recently, amidst lionizing commemorations of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses, representatives of the Swiss Reformation may have some cause for distress at the degree to which Luther stands more or less alone for everything popularly imagined as in the least bit Protestant. While all historians would challenge an oversimplified identification of the Reformation with Luther, scholars of the Swiss Reformation are especially keen to highlight Reformational complexities and contributions beyond Wittenberg theology. To highlight the doctrine of justification may, to some, seem like ceding too much to a formulation that is in fact prominent in Lutheran theological discourse. The Swiss Reformed and Lutheran camps articulated concepts of justification with occasionally divergent emphases and this contributed to some of the infamous misunderstanding and even hostility between them. While Zurichers and Wittenbergers reached a working consensus on justification at the October 1529 Marburg Colloquy, the discord arising out of competing sacramentologies immediately ruined that rapprochement. It is also germane to note that Zwingli himself never treated justification as the main locus of his theology in the way Luther did (Opitz: 2004b, 281). Peter Opitz’s study of Bullinger’s theology (through the lens of the Reformer’s Decades) quite helpfully discusses this theological contrast. Where Zwingli and his Zuricher colleagues spoke of justification, they did so in a nexus that also encompassed (and emphasized) the renewed life of sanctification.198 Wittenberg theologians – who were committed to a basically Augustinian concept of transcending the sinful self in a soteriology

197 Swiss Protestants found Luther deeply offensive at several points, such as when Luther disparaged their own translation of the Bible as ‘Swiss poison,’ or when he publicly defamed and dismissed Zwingli, or when he derided Reformed Eucharistic theology as a kind of fanatic raving in line with Anabaptism. Theological disagreements were one venue for the various cultural and political conflicts between the Swiss Confederation and German principalities in the Reformation era. Some of that legacy persists even to the present. 198 Zwingli took considerable pains to dispute any theological opinion that would link sacraments themselves or their priestly administrators to a direct transmission of the sanctifying Spirit of God. Rather, the free act of Spirit always precedes any sacramental action, even though Zwingli hastens to add that this does not moot the after-the-fact of sacraments and ministers. In such an argument, Zwingli links the free, inner ‘infusion’ of sanctifying Spirit with justification. See, for example, De convitiis Eckii, in Z 6.3, 269.

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of forensic righteousness – found this to be a disconcerting muddle of imputation and infusion (Opitz: 2004b, esp. 256–68). It would be inaccurate to dismiss these differences in the treatment of justification, as if they were somehow distinctions without a difference or (worse) mere theological verbiage overlaying supposedly more authentic cultural and political divisions. There are historic differences in emphasis between the Lutheran and Swiss Reformed traditions that have bearing on the doctrine of justification. Still, it is possible to overplay the difference. W.P. Stephens seems especially complicit in this. Stephens rightly asserts that Zwinglian theology eschewed Lutheran-style formulas of alien, imputed righteousness, but he sows misunderstanding when asserting that all of this emerges from Zwingli’s theocentricism, in contrast to Luther’s Christocentrism. Stephens concedes that Zwingli never proposed a generalized faith in God completely apart from Christ; nevertheless, he insists that Zwinglian faith in Christ is fundamentally faith in the God of Christ rather than in Christ per se (Stephens: 1986, 161f). It may be that Stephens is privileging some particular formulations of the Eucharistic debate in ways that distort the bigger picture of Zwingli’s soteriology. The interpretive tradition laid out by Gottfried Locher and Ulrich Gäbler and continued into the present by scholars such as Opitz seems more accurately nuanced when discussing the Zurich theology of justification. In fact, unless one corrects for the centrality of Christocentric soteriology, the historian will be considerably handicapped in any effort to understand Bullinger’s reclamation of institutional priesthood. Opitz describes Zurich theology as concerned with the life of faith as a Spiritual (pneumatological) communion with – and/or a participation in–Christ (2004b, esp. 344). This is not a participation in the God of Christ; it is quite important theologically to Zwinglian Reformed theology to note the precise formulation of participation in Christ. This argument demonstrates the crucial Christological focus of the community of faith. In other words, for Zwingli and then emphatically also for Bullinger, the king-priesthood of Christ constituted the redemptive matrix of human community. Even beyond the matters of Reformed/Lutheran divergence and debates about theocentrism versus Christocentrism, there remains at least one further area to clear before the topic of justification can achieve full usefulness in the present context. Here I mean the pitfall of potentially overstating the systematic quality of Bullinger’s theology.199 Bullinger operated within an exegetical breadth of which constituent details need not tidily connect in a coherent, philosophical manner. He composed theological statements fitted to various contexts across his career – 199 This is emphatically not to say that Bullinger lacked the intellectual, creative vigor of other Reformers, contra the picture presented by G.W. Bromiley in the Library of Christian Classics. See Bromiley (ed.): 1953, esp. 45f.

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which fact also relates to his situational, End-Times orientation. Even his most celebrated work, the Decades, does not match the systematic concision one encounters in Calvin’s Institutes. Nor, certainly, did the term ‘justification’ come to occupy the systematic centrality in Bullinger’s œuvre as it did among his contemporary Gnesio-Lutherans. Nevertheless, for all his exegetical and contextual complexity, Bullinger maintained an End-Times idiom notable for consistent Christocentrism. When discussing any aspect of the church’s life, Bullinger always derived his meaning from Jesus Christ. Everything soteriological at all was so only as a participation in that one definitive reality. Anyone unsure of the consistent Christocentrism of Bullinger’s theological output should note the motto at the front of virtually all of his publications: IESUS. Hic est filius meus dilectus, in quo placata est anima mea. Ipsum audite. Matth. 17.200 This brings back to the fore the notion of participation in Christ as a ‘central axis’ of Bullinger’s theology (cf. Burrows: 1987, 48–69; also cf. Büsser: 2004, esp. 277f). Bullinger was not a systematician, but scholars such as Garcia Archilla are quite right to argue for the Christological connectedness of justification and sanctification within Bullinger’s concept of covenant (Garcia Archilla: 1992, 51ff, 67ff). All of this comes to bear when discussing Bullinger’s views on Christendom, as well as on any particular subset of the universal church (such as that of Zurich) and on that particular subset of leadership within a particular church. Christocentrism characterizes Bullinger’s vision of church and it clarifies by way of contrast the background against which the church is saved at all. The decisive problem of human sinfulness was self-aggrandizing or self-authentication of persons or groups operating out of right relationship with God. The problem of a traditional priestly indelible character is just one more iteration of a pervasive problem of sin as selfishness (cf. Gäbler: 1986, 67). For Bullinger, the covenant (relational) community participated in Christ by virtue of the Spirit, and it was Christ who was the self-transcendent union of humanity with God (Opitz: 2004b, 200). Perhaps here especially one may observe some conceptual overlap with Lutheran doctrines of justification. Whether in the more overtly Lutheran-style emphasis on forensic imputation, or in the Zwinglian language of participation in Christ, Bullinger asserted that the redemptive experience delivers the believer from self-referential possessiveness. Although Bullinger did not rhetorically prioritize the technical term ‘justification’ in the same manner as did Lutheran theologians, he does appear to share considerable conceptual consistency with them.201 Perhaps there is some deliberate ecumenism visible in 200 “JESUS. This is my beloved son, in whom my spirit is pleased. Listen to him, Matthew 17.” For a brief highlight of the theological significance of this fact of Bullinger’s publications, see Opitz: 2006, 13. 201 It perplexes me when authors claim that the humanist emphasis on moral transformation so

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Bullinger’s theology here. It seems likely that the years leading up to the Schmalkaldic War heightened Bullinger’s desire to maximize potential concord with Lutherans. In any case, theological assertions with connections to justification seem very much to correspond with Bullinger’s developing concept of institutional leadership. This latter point in particular has received far less modern scholarly attention heretofore than it warrants. Properly conceived, it is an intimate and necessary aspect of the history of Reformation Zurich. The Reformed locus of soteriology was Jesus Christ, not the pious person or group. Participation in Jesus’ royal priesthood ‘had’ nothing objectively in itself by which to assert spiritual prerogatives. The theological terms of justification and sanctification correspond in some ways with Bullinger’s synodal terms for the special duties of episcopacy. No aspect of Bullinger’s Christological axis amounted to an essentialist or proprietary claim. The gift of Spirit enabled participation in Christ through a lifestyle of faith that could not be quantized, commodified, or personally possessed. To participate in Christ was to be delivered from the arrogance of self and to experience Christ in the manner of a paradoxical ‘I/not-I’ that ‘has’ everything and nothing (cf. Gal 2:20 and 2 Cor 6:1–10). Swiss Reformed theologians under Bullinger’s leadership emphasized the ‘gift’ of life within the covenant in just this manner. The faithful clergy and laity alike lack any grounds to boast. As for institutional ministry, the Lord gives his own gifts, which remain his own prerogative, even as the institutional ministry is established for the purpose of service and must live diligently in the process.202 Bullinger’s distinctive emphasis lay in the way he articulated this soteriological participation in Christ entirely within the End-Times idiom, especially repeated in the model of the good and faithful servant of Matthew 24. Bullinger’s thinking about the church as a soteriological participation in Christ also incorporates language of covenant through time. Bullinger devoted extraordinary energy to observing covenant history as a record of those who faithfully participate in Christ. This is the ‘dignity of the event’ so carefully explored by Christian Moser. The covenant always precludes individuals, classes, and even historical contexts themselves from possessing anything sacred on their stamped the specifically Reformed camp as to lead to a doctrinal difference from the Lutheran idea of justification. A recent example of such a supposed divergence appears in Alister McGrath’s popular historical survey (2007, 68–69). Is this not another iteration of the discredited thesis of J. Wayne Baker, whereby Bullinger’s notion of covenant was seen to entail a quid pro quo? 202 “In ministerio autem primum est ut agnoscamus hoc esse à Domino institutum, et ideo nos esse Domini ministros. Dominum operari per nos suos operarios et concedere dona necessaria. Pro quibus tamen orandum sedulo. Finis instituti ministerij, ut Vera doceatur religio contra falsam, aedificetur ecclesia et conservetur in pace et veritate, et provebatur ac crescat” (entry for 18 October 1569, in HBSS, 143).

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own terms. One of the reasons this historical approach proved to be so amenable to Bullinger is that it was entirely rooted – paradoxically – in an eschatology of self-transcendence, or of hope. The church’s historical past could no more be touted as a proprietary claim of any present institution than could any supposed personal merit or office of leadership. In other words, history was not objective in itself and yet was not meaningless. The historical past served not itself but the present in the same way that a lifestyle of faith had no personal merit and yet did not preclude holiness and that leadership that remained critically important to the covenant community. Bullinger invoked ‘covenant’ to refer to all believers across time and space (including particular cases such as the Zurich Church) while also using the term to describe the distinct office of Reformed priesthood à la Malachi 2. Self-transcendent, relational service is a participation in Christ, and this nexus heightens Bullinger’s sense of urgency as time approaches the consummation of eschatological hope. The special responsibility of the priesthood – in the general sense of the priesthood of all the faithful and in the official, institutional sense alike – had become more acute than ever in light of the imminent Parousia. This interim of already and not yet seems to be closing in and becoming denser, even super-heated. Participation in an eschatological Christ occupies the temporal plane by way of an increasingly urgent duty to serve. Bullinger avoided the problematic of a sacramental character of priesthood, but he characterized the ‘watchful’ office of ministry using very sacramental imagery. It was completely consistent with Reformed sacramentology to assert that the locus of significance resided beyond space (including the specific space of Eucharistic elements and/ or table), and yet in just such a way that the materiality of sacramental Supper was not rendered moot. The office of episcopacy was to administer the household’s Christological cibum or alimentum in an eschatologically ‘timely’ manner.203 One notices a definite parallel with the language of traditional priesthood, but in this case, the Protestant minister conveyed ‘Christ’ in the full spectrum of doctrina and vita construed as a non-proprietary, eschatological vocation. Bullinger’s use of the idea of the ‘priesthood of all the faithful’ did not presuppose a strictly Zwinglian model of minister-as-prophet. The locus classicus for observing this trend is his 1538 double-treatise On the Authority of Scripture and the Institution of Episcopacy. By the time his Decades began to be published eleven years later, Bullinger had come to emphasize more than ever the reign of Christ as King-Priest. This crucial point ramified into many discussions that clarify Bullinger’s mature understanding of the status of institutional, ordained leadership. Here we must look even more closely at how and/or if this ecclesio203 N.b. HBSS, entries for 6 May 1539, 22; 4 May 1546, 50; 22 October 1555, 86; 9 May 1564, 121; 3 May 1569 = 5 May 1573, 141; and 20 October 1573, 160.

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logical development entailed something we may rightly call resacralization. Scholars often address such a question in the context of engaging with the confessionalization thesis. Daniel Bolliger, for instance, argues that Bullinger’s approach amounted to a de-sacralization of ecclesial hierarchy (2004, 176). Pamela Biel argues conversely that he advocated a type of re-sacralization (1991, 43). My own opinion tends more toward the re-sacralization thesis, yet with a grounding in the sort of self-transcendence implied in justification which differentiates my view from Biel’s argument. Bullinger’s Christocentrism asserted the paradox of an identity (of the church, of its leadership, and of persons generally) that existed by faith in Christ outside itself and empty of all selfassertion. This is apparent throughout the Sermones Synodales wherever Bullinger characterized the Zurich clergy as a special cohort by dint of their participation in the Christological life of the ‘good and faithful servant’ who dispenses ‘bread of life’ to the household. This is the priestly covenant with Levi. The ecclesiological connection was urgent for Bullinger because of his assessment of the specific time in which he lived. The note of ‘vigilance’ implicit in episcopacy comes to the fore just here, and it is noteworthy that Bullinger equates episcopal and priestly categories, even as he asserts that the discussion is “altogether necessary to our time” (1532b Hebrews Commentary, 50v and 52r). To Bullinger, the momentous gathering of Catholic clergy at the Council of Trent represented the latest indication of his longstanding conviction of inhabiting End Times. Trent was another stage in the corruption of priesthood, together with self-serving political powers who for their part also perverted the Christological principle of kingship. The pervasive problem, in Bullinger’s estimation, was an institution that worked to secure its own power, thereby implementing superstition, greed, and false doctrine.204 It is germane that many Reformers mocked the cardinalate as a cabal of self-important princes upon which the institutional church turned itself (a pun on the Latin word for hinge – cardo), while juxtaposing justification as the concept of transcending self-interest. This sense of justification must be the true hinge upon which religion turns (Decade 5.3, in HBS 5, 147; cf. Calvin: 1960, III.xi.1). The ecclesiological ramification of self-transcendent service (or soteriology of justification) directed Bullinger’s agenda for the church and its clergy in these End Times. Bullinger ruled out the notion that anyone could obtain salvation as a reward for fulfilling the Ten Commandments. Here the Reformer was in line with much of the early Protestant interpretation of the Pauline corpus. It was nevertheless still correct, Bullinger asserted, that the Law had promised an extravagant reward to those who may fulfill its demands ( just as, conversely, it threatened punish204 Cf. Preface to Decade 4.3–10, dedicated to King Edward VI, in HBS 4, 382–83; also Preface to Decade 5, dedicated to Henry Grey, in HBS 5, 23.

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ment to offenders); the crucial qualification was that the very attempt to acquire this reward by and for oneself would vitiate the enterprise (Decade 3.8, in HBS 4, 77 and 86–87). It is a telling parallel that Bullinger spoke of special rewards and punishments to those dedicated to priestly covenant with Levi (of Malachi 2) and the ministerial example of the good and faithful servant (of Matthew 24).205 If one is to speak of a quasi- or neo-priestly sacrality, this concept of self-transcendent ‘reward’ may be the key. Bullinger did not strongly differentiate between ‘testament’ (involving death) and ‘covenant’ (a mutual agreement with associated rewards and/or penalties). In some cases, scholars have played up this supposed distinction in ways that artificially differentiate Lutheran and Reformed views of justification – as if Bullinger were complicit in reintroducing something meritorious in the holy lifestyle.206 Bullinger’s notion of covenant never implied any transaction or quid pro quo. The Law was fulfilled when persons were led ‘beyond themselves’ through faith in Christ, not by works. And yet to participate in Christ – both for the priesthood of all the faithful and for the clerical ministry – meant to receive a ‘reward.’ For Bullinger, salvation consisted of the divine-human who perfectly fulfilled the Law by becoming emptied of anything that could posit self-will over God.207 The merit-reward of sacrality remains fundamentally Christocentric and paradoxical, in that the ‘earning’ of this reward itself consisted of a complete transcendence of the desire for a reward. Justification was only ever mediated by Christ in Christ, because Christ’s passion supplied the crucial negation of selfinterest. In this, Christ the God-Man acted as the unique Priest for humanity.208 W.P. Stephens and others who have asserted a misleading thesis of Zurich theocentrism may have reached such conclusions by dint of a fundamental misperception of this paradoxical negation of self. The concept of the emptying of a proprietary self may create an illusion of the human as a mere conduit for the absolute, pure God. But Zurich theology – admittedly more clearly articulated here by Bullinger than by Zwingli – was far more paradoxical in a Christocentric way. Jesus fulfilled the Law in the elimination of any self-assertion, which was paradoxically the complete realization of created being. Bullinger’s concept of eschatological participation in Christ made much of having by renouncing in a 205 Bullinger’s synodal elaborations of episcopacy very frequently refer to particular rewards and punishments of the clerical office. One of many examples would be the Sermones Synodales entry for 22 October 1555 (HBSS, 86): “Fides imprimis requiritur à nobis in Doctrina et vita. Magna nobis proposita sunt praemia et minae graves intentatae. Math. 24 [verses 45–51]. Quisnam est fidelis servus et prudens, quem praefecit dominus familiae suae ut det illis cibum in tempore?” 206 J. Wayne Baker is one such scholar who does not avoid the pitfall. See Baker: 1980, 16f, 25. 207 N.b esp. Decade 5.4, in HBS 5, 177–81. 208 N.b. Der alte Glaube (1537), in HBS 1, 211 and 247. Similar statements appear throughout the Decades, e. g., Decade 3.6, in HBS 4, 11.

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fully Christological way that empowered physical human life and that buttressed social institutions of leadership. To the extent that all of this entails the relation of an inner reality to an outer sign, it also highlights an ecclesiological and specifically clerical and ministerial discussion. Faith, for Bullinger, neutralizes proprietary claims associated with outer works and signs, and yet faith does not obviate externalities (Der Ursprung des Irrglaubens [1539], in HBS 1, 282f). Or, said in another way, God’s covenant of grace was in effect in Christ alone, and yet the church’s sacraments were valid (Das Testament oder der Bund [1534], in HBS 1, 93). The material act or sign was not an expendable given the possibility of ‘pure’ spirituality such as strict theocentrism may imply if taken to its logical end. In Bullinger’s view, the paradox of Jesus’ negation of self-assertion did not overcome the created state of human embodiment or of materiality. Jesus negated the self-destroying state of sin. Sin was not materiality, but rather the assertion of self that disrupted the proper relationships of spirit and matter and of all creation with the Creator. It was perfectly sensible for Bullinger to insist on the institutional ramifications of this view. The spirituality of faith did not obviate the visible, material dimension of church – notably including the sacraments and ordained ministry – any more than Jesus’ humanity was rendered moot by his divinity. Justification as participation in Christ empowered a set of proper relationships that assumed a robust institutional episcopacy. Bullinger insisted on the unique, eternal, universal, present King-Priesthood of Christ alone.209 The fact that Christ was eternally present by virtue of the Holy Spirit meant that he needed no stand-in, no vicar. Popes were therefore the worst offenders. In this line of thinking, Bullinger worked within the wide consensus of magisterial Protestantism. In principle, Bullinger considered emperors also to be prone to the problem of an arrogant assertion of being Christ’s stand-in on earth. The union of human and divine of Christ’s King-Priesthood entirely ruled out any need for a would-be human vicar, whether papal or Habsburg (Decade 4.7, in HBS 4, 557–60). Bullinger had no sympathy with the totalists who supported the prepossessing claims of one ecclesiastical and/or state institution. The entire corpus Christianum participated collectively in the ‘royal priesthood of all believers,’ but Christ’s regime also authorized proper institutional leadership by political governments and clergy. Bullinger opposed not only the threat of hegemonic usurpation, but also the equal and opposite threat of anti-institutional leveling. The kingship of Christ did not obviate particular political institutions of government any more than Christ’s priesthood could be said to obviate ordained ministry. The whole array of institutional topics related once again to ideas that may be seen to cohere within the matrix of justification. The participatory 209 N.b., for example, Decade 4.7 passim.

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subsets of institutional leadership existed on the principle of serving beyond self in the context of a present King-Priesthood of the God-human. Bullinger wholly affirmed the notion that all believers together offer the priestly ‘sacrifice of praise’ (cf. Heb 13, Rom 12, and Psalm 33, and Decade 4.7, in HBS 4, 562). Evidently, however, some persons had become unduly enthused by the notion that all the faithful may be rightly considered priests. In dismantling traditional priesthood, they wrongly concluded that the idea of shared priesthood was just another way of saying that no one was a priest. Bullinger hastened to affirm that ordained ministry itself remained necessary and holily set apart, if only so it might serve the priestly mission of the entire covenant community (e. g., Decade 4.7, in HBS 4, 564ff).210 Bullinger considered unbalanced dismantlers of priesthood to be themselves kindred spirits to the antisocial Epicureans and/or Cynics. These people, he said, were guilty of living for self rather than beyond self for God’s glory and the good of one’s neighbor.211 Any view of ministry that lost sight of its essential purpose of serving the entire community thereby lost sight of the purpose of any one person or group within that same community. However much (in Bullinger’s view) the Roman priesthood erred in its presumption to possess sacramental plenipotence by means of an indelible character, others erred when denying altogether the special status of institutional ministry. The New Testament upheld the idea of a body of ordained ministers – servants of sacred (sacer) things – who stood in formal continuity with the Old Testament priesthood (see, e. g., Decade 5.3, in HBS 5, 124). The Sermones Synodales reveal how often and urgently Bullinger characterized his ministerial colleagues with terms indicating special status – from chief steward to paterfamilias – and as a priestly episcopacy with eschatological connotations of vigilant oversight for the sake of others. Indeed, he pointed out that it was a peculiar sign of the End Times when people came to scorn the status of ministry. A corrupt concept of self-referential priesthood must be demolished, but without elimination of institutional ministry with its set apart, holy sacredness. Proper institutional leadership must empower the community’s mutual duty through a special duty of preaching and administration of the sacraments. Ordained ministry positively buttressed the soteriological relationality of community.

210 Cf. Sermones Synodales entry for 6 May 1572 (HBSS, 155), where Bullinger describes the structure of ministry through the ages as in fact ‘the holy ones of God’ (sancti Dei). 211 Cf. HBW 3.3.2, 660: “Non habeo sacerdotium, non sum Pfaff / cur ergo docerem, cur monerem?” Note the presence of the commonly anti-Roman German term ‘Pfaff” even amidst Bullinger’s Latin. Far from denouncing priesthood, Bullinger seems rather to suggest that those who smugly polemicize against institutional priesthood are guilty of the same essential fault of seeking their own interest (in this case, moral complacency).

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Justification and eschatology meshed perfectly in Bullinger’s view of institutional ministry. This compatibility corresponds with the paradox of having/nothaving. Unlike eschatological anti-Christianity with its self-appointed honors, authentic ministry was appointed from beyond the self by God through the covenant community.212 The sacredness of the office consisted in self-denying service. This view hearkened back again to the essentially eschatological KingPriest Jesus, whose ministry, Bullinger emphasized, featured a complete renunciation of self-chosenness and a complete commitment to God. This context also serves to highlight the paradoxical fact that Christ’s presence in the church was predicated upon the post-resurrection absence of his ascension (Decade 5.9, in HBS 5, 491). Bullinger elaborated upon ministry in relation to justification and eschatology especially clearly whenever he discussed the tandem illustration of Matthew 24 and Malachi 2 (Decade 5.4, in HBS 5, 181).213 Judgment loomed in light of the people’s increasing tendency to fill Christ’s paradoxical presence/ absence with themselves on their own, self-serving terms. A dimension of paradox served Bullinger’s classically Reformed opposition to the problem of idolatry (e. g., Decade 5.4, in HBS 5, 184–87). Even granting the crucial importance of the Bible in exposing false religion, Bullinger did not allow it to simplify the paradox of Christocentrism, including the ramifcations of that concept for ordained ministry. For Bullinger, Christ was the head steward or paterfamilias who supplied his people with the nourishment that was himself. And yet, famously, Bullinger asserted at the very outset of his Second Helvetic Confession that the dynamic, clerical act of preaching – not the literalist, static text – was itself the Word of God (praedicatio verbi Dei est verbum Dei). To envision a ministry independent of Christ – or even on behalf of, alongside, or in the place of Christ – would lose this paradox of Christological ministry.214 In a special participation in Christ, ministers live a dynamic identity as stewards, family-heads, and even priests, while always maintaining that such titles were only true of Christ. The minister actually conveyed Christ’s presence by means of preaching and sacraments as a self-transcendent participation in Christ. The minister acted in Christ, and only therein could the holiness of church remain 212 Bullinger, along with other Reformers, zealously reiterates the strong words of Pope Gregory I on the subject of eschatological anti-Christianity inherent in any claim of universal patriarchate. See Decade 5.2, in HBS 5, 117. The unilateral power-grab of political rulers over ordained ministry evokes in Bullinger a similarly strong rebuke. Cf. the 1538 Fürtrag on the occasion of the Council’s improper appointment of someone to parish office who had not been on the list of candidates prepared by the committee of councilors, pastors, and professors (HBS 6, 211–20). 213 Cf. statements about the ‘covenant with Levi’ throughout the Sermones Synodales. 214 N.b. Decade 5.3, in HBS 5, 125; cf. also Decade 5.4, in HBS 5, 193f, regarding the sole validity of the gospel, in which ministry ‘has’ its dignity outside of itself (that is, in service rather than as an essentialist mark).

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inviolate from the false word of any idolatry. Whether in preaching or in administration of sacraments, ordained ministry conveyed the authentic presence of the eschatological banquet that was Christ himself.215 Bullinger equated the Pauline ‘sacrifice of praise’ with the Johannine notion of ‘spiritually eating’ Christ’s body and blood. This connection is not unique to Bullinger, but it is again important to observe that in his theology as a whole, both terms illustrate the self-transcending life of the church (Decade 5.9, 503–509).216 Bullinger associated both terms with the gathered worship of the priesthood in the local parish, the sovereign territory, and the worldwide church militant. Gathered worship was itself a categorical subset of the entire daily life of faithfulness. The concept that a particular case need not militate against a more general case once again helps to clarify how Bullinger could consistently promote institutional priesthood as a particular subset of the priesthood of all believers. He differentiated the broader notion of ‘spiritual eating’ (which could range from gathered worship to all of life in the broadest sense) from the very particular case of ‘sacramental eating’ of the Supper.217 The layers are these: all of life; the particular case of gathered worship; and the even more particular act of sacraments within worship. Considering the effort Bullinger expended to underscore the essential role of ordained ministry in the administration of the sacraments within the community of all the faithful, it seems quite legitimate to consider these distinctions to entail a corollary distinction of institutional ‘priesthood’ as another participatory subset (cf. Decade 5.9, in HBS 5, 459). Parallel to the above distinctions are the following ones: Christ’s unique, eschatological priesthood; the participatory priesthood of all through covenant; and the particular participatory priesthood of ordained ministry as a covenantal subset. For Bullinger, the entire universe was ‘God’s house,’ and yet the individual church building could also be called by that name (Decade 5.10, in HBS 5, 547). The particular building was not obviated by God’s universal presence, just as faith did not obviate the sacraments, and the priesthood of all believers did not obviate a particular type of institutional priesthood. For that matter, the definitive eschaton of God from beyond history in no wise obviated covenantal community across time. In all such cases, the church did not possess its own holiness; rather, its holiness was reckoned as participation through faith. Indeed, one may rightly conclude that in Bullinger’s revised view of priesthood, the ordained minister had nothing and yet possessed everything. 215 It is not coincidental that this Eucharistic theology has such a Calvinist aspect in light of the contemporaneity of the Decades with the Zurich Consensus. Cf. Decade 5.9, 447. 216 This is a typically Reformed, emphatically Johannine way to describe receiving the body and blood. Cf. Euler: 2014, 57–74. 217 Here Bullinger is very much continuing the line of thinking Zwingli had put forth in his 1531 Exposition of the Faith. Cf. Zwingli: 1991 [1531].

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Epilogue

My research has attempted to demonstrate a matrix of features of Bullinger’s End-Times agenda for ministry. This has involved considerable attention to his synodal eschatology and a careful reclamation of ‘priesthood’ in a time of confessionalization. Finally, the lens of ideas commonly associated with the Protestant doctrine of justification has served to focus some new light on a Protestant sense of priestly sacrality. Perhaps someone may oppose the argument with a simple question: if all this amounts to such an important contribution by Bullinger, why did it evidently not take root? In other words, why did it not become a recognizable, attested set of beliefs in the Zurich community or even in Reformed Protestant Christianity more broadly? There are several ways to answer this question. I could point first to the rhetorical preponderance of the formula ‘priesthood of all believers.’ Bullinger himself strenuously supported this concept, and he was judicious and aware of his context as he developed his specific reclamation of a clerical priesthood. It is not coincidental that the best source for discovering his thinking about this particular priestly identity is the Sermones Synodales – his private manuscripts for closed-door sessions of the synod. There is also, I think, some relevance to the historical fact that paradoxical positions are difficult to retain in the popular expression of any movement. Complexities tend to yield to more convenient slogans or shibboleths. The conspicuous arc of confessionalization itself attests to this. Different confessional polities needed to inculcate their populaces easily in the details of their own distinctive identity vis-à-vis others. The paradox that priestly sacrality was a non-possession would have been a cumbersome plank of any popular platform. Even beyond that, the infamous development of ‘Puritan psychology’ (that excruciatingly introspective analysis of signs of the spiritual conversion-experience) could be considered a departure from earlier Protestant views of justification wherein the locus is interior to self only because it is definitively beyond the self. This feature of Puritanism may relate in turn to the phenomenon of diminishing paradox in confessionalization. Whatever opinion scholars may hold as to the relation of Puritanism to Reformational ideas of justification, Puritan psychology does seem notably less paradoxical than the sort of self-beyond-self described in Bullinger’s (or for that matter Calvin’s) theology of justifying faith. Of course, I do not suggest that Puritanism represents an overall simplification of theology; if anything, Puritan systematics dramatically increased theological complexity. I only note that paradox itself seems to have given way to more discursive thinking, however baroque such theology may have turned. While Bullinger himself contributed to some aspects of confessionalization – particularly in his extrapolations of the significance of the King-Priesthood of

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Jesus for the institutional leadership of church and state – it is nevertheless true that the temporal government eventually gained a decisive hold over the church. This, of course, was a trajectory that Bullinger perceived and against which he attempted to provide some correctives. He demonstrably resisted some of what the hardcore proponents of confessionalization have come to expect. Nevertheless, his legacy of balancing church and state did not persist much beyond his lifetime. In his later years, he surely regretted the state’s encroachment. Here one glimpses yet another likely reason for the failure of Bullinger’s reclamation of Protestant priesthood to take root. The Zurich church’s system of clerical Fürträge had a diminishing influence already in Bullinger’s lifetime. Some of the truth of that observation is evident in the magisterial decree that the teachers who trained ministers must be hired from the small pool of Zurich citizenry alone rather than from the pool of the best international candidates. No talented foreigners were accepted beyond 1562, which resulted in the provincialization and even in some respects domestication of the clerical corps (Rüetschi: 2004, 226f). The robust clerical profile imagined by Bullinger became much less likely thereafter. Finally, the relative demise of Bullinger’s ministerial re-imagining likely involves some aspects of the broader historical turn to Enlightenment. Post-Reformation movements came to emphasize the personal and/or the individual in some ways that differed from magisterial Reformation. It would certainly overstate the case to say this is the revenge of Anabaptism, although certain strains of Anabaptism have been prominently connected to individualism and freedom of conscience since the work of George Huntston Williams. In any case, seventeenth-century concerns for personal experience along with paeans to the heroic individual do not reflect the same idea of civic sacral community that Bullinger had sought to foster in Zurich. Bullinger did not successfully chart the course of subsequent eras in terms of clerical identity or church-state relations. This fact does not minimize the significance of his work. Exploring Bullinger’s agenda of re-imagining priesthood through an explicitly and consistently eschatological Christocentrism certainly serves the important historical purpose of better understanding the meaning(s) of the Reformation – perhaps even in greater contradistinction to the issues, questions, and platforms of subsequent eras. For my part, I confess that this particular course of research has brought with it a good deal of the sort of satisfaction that comes with pondering something familiar in fresh, surprising ways. End-Times idiom is nothing if not surprising.

6

Appendix

Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales 1536 (p.7) -Doctrina

-Poenitentia -Remissio peccatorum

-Scelera correcta -DOCTRINA -Catechismus -Visitatio infirmorum.Cura pauperum

EPISCOPI

-Sacramentorum administratio

Oratio

-Studium litterarum -CONVERSA

-Vita sancta. tio

-familia integra -Decani

1536 (p.9)

N.

-Studium Doctrina Sana -Vita sancta. Vestitus vivere pure Sacramenta sÿmbola Oratio

-Publica -Privata

-Baptismus -Eucharistia

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-Perseverantia -Catechismus -Futura caveantur.

Vigilia.

May 1537 (p.11)

Poenitentia -Pura sÿncera euangelica -Scelera correcta. -Catechismus puerorum -Visitatio infirmorum. Pauperum cura -Sacramentorum administratio

-DOCTRINA EPISCOPI

-Studium sacrarum litterarum -Conversatio non prophana, sed sancta -Familia non corrupta -Decani quomodo visitent

-VITA

May 1537 (p.12) 1

DOCTRINA Poenitentia. Vita melior continens. Iustitia. EUANgelium in Christo omnia.

2

Scelera correcta. Luxus.

Ut

non convitijs, sed re ipsa videant quod sit. 3

Catechismus puerorum.

4

Cura pauperum. Eleemosÿna ex partis. Ecclesiae bona.

Visi-

tatio infirmorum 5 VITA.

Sacramentorum administratio Studium Litterarum Conversatio sana non ebria. Familia frugalis sancta. Non

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Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales

iniuriosa.

Oct 1537 (p.13)

| DOCTRINA | | | | CONVERSATIO

EPISCOPI

-Poenitentia | Doctrina - Remissio peccatorum | Scelera correcta. | Catechismus. Sacramenta | Pauperum cura. Oratio | Visitatio infirmorum. | Studium litterarum | Vita inculpata | Familia integra. | Decanus sedulus.

6 May 1539 (p.23) 1

2 Satzungen. Kÿlchwÿch.

Fides

| In puritate et sÿnceritate | 1 In eo quod omnia domini agnoscamus | 2. Incorrupta proferamus. 1. Cor. | 4 2 Cor. 2. | Constanter pergamus et sedule. | deponentes vitam.

| 1. Paremus studio usum Lectione. | 2. Suo loco et tempore. Non Prudent | extra oleam. | 3. Innocentia. Vitemus con| traria. In tempore monere. Concordia. Decanj. Famulitium. Acto. 20. Domini sunt Ioan. 20. Praemium. Poena.

3 May 1541 (p.30) HAEC SPECTANDA 1

Studium utile, ardens,

2

Doctrina simplex

i. Timoth. 4. n

1 | Ipsa doctrina Luce 24 | | qui audiunt Ezech. 34.

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Appendix

3.

Oratio pro ecclesia et necessitatibus

4

Vita integra Matth. 5 conculcatur et Malachiae 2.

5

Catechismus

Sacramenta.

9 May 1542 (p.33) | Poenitentia. Sal. | | Remissio. Christus. Fructus. Cathechismus. Infirmi. Pauperes.

1

Doctrina

2

Orare

Publicae preces, privata.

3

Signa

Digne tractare.

4

Vita

| Studia privata. | Facta Dicta. | Familia.

6 May 1544 (p.41) In duobus conIn VITA et DOCTRINA. | An petita ex sacris | An de poenitentia et remissione DOCTRINA | An recte applicata. | Catechesis. Prophetia stat.

ORATIO. Privata Publica

VITA.

SACRAMENTA. Doctrina. Actio. | Studia sacra assidua. | Dicta sermo bonus. | Facta et Habitus. | Familiae.

21 October 1544 (p.43) CUM iam habenda sit sensura,

125

Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales

dispiciendum in quibus ea versetur, in Doctrina et Vita nostra. | Petita ex sacris litteris. | An de capitibus veris -Poenitentia | -Remissio peccatorum | -Docere | An recte applicata -Hortari | -Consolari. N | Catechismus. Pauperes. | Ad doctrinam pertinent Oratio Sacramenta. | Oratio -Privata Sacramenta -Doctrina | -Publica -Actio

DOCTR

| Studia sacra. 1 Timoth. 4. | Dicta et sermo commodus Math. 5 | Facta et habitus inculpatus Titum 1 | Familia sancta 1. Tim. 4.

VITA

5 May 1545 (p.45)

DOCTRINA

| An petita ex sacris -Luc. 24 | -2 Ti. 3 | An de capitibus veris Luc.24 | | An recte applicata. 1 Co. 14 | An Catechismus. Pauperes.

ORATIO

VITA

SACRAMENTA | Studia sacra assidua | 1. Tim. 4. | Sermo sale Col. 4. conditus. | Facta 1 Timoth. 3. Tit. 1.

18 October 1547 (p.53) DOCTrina in pastoribus prima. An petita ex scripturis. An iusto tempore. An applicata rite. ¶ An studia et libri ita instructi ut decet. N. VITA sit sancta Foris. Domi. In Sermone in Conversatione. MINISTerium sit diligens. Erga

126

Appendix

pueros. Aegrotos Pauperes. In administratione sacramentorum.

8 May 1548 (p.57) 1

Doctrina An petita ex scripturis An de iustis capitibus. An applicata ecclesiae?

2

Studium an diligentia, an suppellex librorum. An temporis precionum?

3

Ministerium: in Orationibus publicis et Coetibus cogendis. An in administratione sacramentorum. An in Catechismo. An in Aegrotis et Pauperibus.

4

Vita sit sancta in Verbis Factis Habitu. Domi foris familia.

23 October 1548 (p.59) 1

DOCTRINA in qua tria 1. An petita ex scripturis, limpidis fontibus. 2. An capita duo Lucae 24 tradantur. 3. An per alia applicetur ecclesiae.

2

MINISTERIUM, in quo 6. 1 Coetus sancti. 2 Oratio et interpellatio. 3. Sacramenta. 4 Catechismus. 5 Aegrotates. 6. Pauperum cura.

3

VITA Domi. foris. Domi quidem qualia studia. Res domestica Familia Foris conversatione sermone vestitu. sodalitate. N.

7 May 1549 (p.61) DOCTRINA in qua 3

| An petita ex scripturis. | An capita duo Lucae 24. | An applicata per circumstantias.

127

Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales

| Coetus sacri | Oratio et Interpellatio. | Sacramenta legitime etc. | Catechismus puerorum. | Aegrotates. | Cura pauperum.

MINISTERIUM in quo 6

| Domi quidem | | | | Foris autem

VITA sit inculpata

6 May 1550 (p.65) Tria in nobis spectanda, Doctrina, Ministerium, Vita vel conversatio. I

DOCTRIna an talis qualis tradita 28

à Christo: nempe Matth. Docentes. Tra16

didit euangelium. Marci. Euangelium quid Roman. 1. Lucae 24. ¶ Oportet recte applicare dispensare. Lucae 12. 2. Tim. 2. II

MINISTErium in his. I Coetus sacri in quibus interpellatio et doctrina 1 Timoth. 2. II Sacramenta legitima Baptismus Coena. 1 Cor. 11. III. Catechesis. Commendantur pueri Deut. 6. Exodi 12. Matth. 18. Paulus iuvenes instituit. IIII. Visitatio infirmorum Ezech. 34. Iacobi 5. V. Cura pauperum. Pauli exemplum.

| Studia. | Familia | Oeconomia. | Sermo | Conversatio. Socij. | Vestitus.

128 III

Appendix

CONVErsatio vitae in studijs 1 Timoth. 4. In familia Sermone Habitu. Titum 1 1 Timoth. 3. ¶ Veraces este.

5 May 1551 (p.69) DUO in nobis sunt spectanda. I

MINISTERIUM quod à deo nobis impositum est, et 6 habet pretes. 1. Doctrinam. Principio an talis qualis tradita à domino. Euangelium. Deinde an recte applicata pro loco tempore re etc. 2 Timoth. 2. Redargutio

2. Coetus et convocatio, in quibus interpellatio, doctrina. ORATIO

| Invocatio | Gratiae

3. Sacramenta. An doctrina recta an ritus Legitimi. Baptismus. Eucharistia. 4. Catechesis. Nam commendantur pueri imprimis. Fundamenta. Hortationes ut adducantur. 5. Visitatio infirmorum. Iacobi 5. 6. Cura pauperum. 2 Thess. 3. II

CONVERSAtio vitae. 1 qualia studia nostra. 2 Vitae puritas in dictis factis habitu. Ioan. 5.

Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales

3. Familia. Vide canonem apostolicum 1 Timoth. 3. Titum 1.

3 May 1552 (p.75) 1

MINISTErium primo habet doctrinam. An ex Verbo. An distributa in poenitentiam et euangelium. Lucae 24 An recte applicata. 2 Oratio privata et publica Vide 1 Timoth. 2. 3 Sacramenta An doctrina sÿncera: an ritus sancti. N. 4 Catechesis. 5 Visitatio infirmorum. 6 Cura pauperum.

2

VITA et vitae conversatio. In eo tria spectanda. 1 Qualia studia. 2 Vitae puritas in dictis factis 3 Familia sancta. Sint fideles hic singuli. Si non nos, dominus cohercebit.

22 October 1555 (p.85) Si inspexerimus canonem Doctrinam et Vitam inculpatam requirit. Correptio gravis

Aegri

1 Doctrinam sanam contra vanam et fabulas. Ut vita respondeat. Titum 1. Ut singulis sua offitia praescribantur. Titum 2. Ubi et catechesis. ORATIO et Sacramenta 1 Timoth. 2. 1 Cor. 11. ¶ Vita sit episcopalis in cultu corporis et sermonibus. In studio. In familia.

5 May 1556 (p.87)

129

130

Appendix

Convenit autem habere ob oculos Canonem apostolicum, ut in omnibus alijs: Doctrina et conversatio vitae. Doctrina sua communia habet. 1 Fundamentum scriptura et eius authoritas. 2 Peccatum et remissio peccatorum Iustificatio 3. Instrumenta. Catechesis, Coetus, Oratio, Sacramenta. Visitatio aegrotorum. 4 Bona opera, et ipsa urgere Iustitia, Misericordia, Castigatio. Vita sit ne diruamus impudentia [sic – imprudentia] quod bona doctrina extruimus. In contemptum abducitur doctrina si vita sit impura. N.

4 May 1557 (p.93) A ministris requiruntur duo, Sapientia et Virtus, vel Doctrina et Vita pura.

1 Cor. 1. 2. philosophia

I

¶ Vera sapientia quae sit, Deut. 4 Ierem. 8 [verse 9]. Verbum domini reiecerunt et quae etc. Lucae 24. 2 Timoth. 3. Malachiae 2 [verse 7]. Labia sacerdotis custodient scientiam, legemque ex ore eius requirent: quia angelus domini exercituum est. Observandum, ut percipiatur. Huc faciunt

Oratio Petenda à deo. ˄

Studia et libri N.

2 Ut recte tradatur. Coetus sacri Concio-

+ Pruden-

nes de rebus necessarijs. + Quid praeterea

tia in agendo,

in coetibus. Oratio. Sacramentum. Catechesis.

applicando

Pauperes. Extra Visitatio. N. II

¶ Virtus et Vita 1 Timoth. 3. Absit Avaritia Libido Ebrietas Pertinatia. Sermo-

Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales

nes et conversatio inter homines sancta. Familia integra.

¶ Si delicta

curantur, ideo convenimus.

19 October 1557 (p.95) De duobus ergo hic agendum. Nam duo requiruntur à nobis Sapientia et Virtus. Doctrina Sana et Vita proba. Malach. 2 [verses 5–7].

3 May 1558 (p.97) 1 Doctrina

| Ex fontibus | Applicata ad | utilitatem. N.

Catechesis.

2 Preces 1. Timoth. 2. frequentes. | Doctrina 3 Sacramenta | Ritus Visitatio infirmorum VITA quoque respondeat. Mores. Sermones Vestes. Absit Avaritia, Profusio, Mendatium Levitas Ebrietas. 1 Timoth. 3. Familia sit sancta. N.

9 May 1559 (p.101)

Studium.

In hoc positi ordinati sumus non ut obscuri simus, sed luceamus palam: ut omnes videant, omnes glorificent Deum. Duplici nomine Lux. 1 propter fulgidam doctrinam. 2 propter sanctam vitam. Utrumque requiritur à nobis. DOCTRINA. Attende tibi ipsi et doctrinae: persiste in his: id si feceris servabis te et eos qui te audierint. [1 Tim 4:16] Necessitas doctrinae. 1. Ut petita ex verbo. 2. Ut recte accomodata. 3 Ut necessaria. Fides, poenitentia. ¶ Cohaeret Oratio.

131

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Appendix

Sacramenta. Catechesis. Visitatio infirmorum. Ratio certa pauperum. N. Vita sit exemplum sanctum. Ut videant vestra bona opera et glorificent patrem etc. Exempla gravia, Heli filij. Sicut samaria prophetas habet ita Hierusalem. Sequitur excidium Ezech. 34.

24 October 1559 (pp.103–4)

¶

Ad doctrinam pertinet Oratio publica. Sacramenta. Catechesis. Visitatio. Idem apostolus Titum 1. Per omnia praebe te formam bonorum operum in doctrina, integritatem gravitatem, sermonem sanum, irreprehensibilem, ut is qui repugnat rubore suffundatur, nihil habens quod de nobis dicat mali. 1 Ornanda est doctrina bonis operibus secundum doctrinam. 2. Integer sit non corruptus affectibus hÿpocrisi, superbia, ambitione, contentione. 3. Gravis sit. Fugiat levitatem in habitu. Dappffer in munere ernsthafft ∫ nitt prachtlich verachtlich. 4. Sanum loquatur sermonem non obscoenum falsum calumniosum. 5. Irreprehensibilis. Causa. Ne adversarius habeat ettwz fundt quod obijciat.

22 October 1560 (p.107) Duo requiruntur à nobis ut ministerium nostrum perficiamus fideliter. Ut praeluceamus sancto exemplo. 1 Doctrina Hortatio Consultum Refutatio.

Ministerium in doctrina. 1 Ut ipsi docti simus, discamus instructi Libris. 2 Ut suo tempore doceamus. Statae horae. 3. Ut utilia. Ex Scripturis. Ad certum scopum. Fides poenitentia. N. 4. Privatim doceamus. Catechesis. Infirmos aegrotates et afflictos alios. ¶ In oratione et administra-

Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales

tione Sacramentorum. 2

Exemplum in sermone, in vita moribus. Ne simus invidi Superbi avari. ebrij. Familia sit sancta. Iam uti delictum ne concidat ecclesia. curemus.

21 October 1561 (p.111) Spectandum ad archetÿpum Christum. Tueamus praecipua capita. I Ministerium. Praecipuum doctrina ut docti simus, per omnes species applicemus. Et id quod dominus tradidit. 2 Coetus colligamus in qua et interpellationes. 3. Sacramenta et usus et praeparatio. 4 Catechesis. 5 Visitatio et consolatio afflictorum. II Conversatio vitae sancta In sermone habitu. Ne simus superbi avari gulosi. Familia sit sancta.

9 May 1564 (p.121) Videmus hic quorsum spectandum nobis. ut Doctrina et Vita pura. Doctrina pura si petita ex puris fontibus. Bene accomodata ad intellectum. Iusto tempore et modo. Horas servemus. Catechesis. Visitatio infirmorum. De precibus et Sacramentis. N. Vita consecrata studijs. Aliena à sceleribus vulgo regnantibus. Familiae. Conversatio non vilis.

8 May 1565 (p.125) propter fulgidam doctrinam, deinde propter vitam.

133

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Appendix

Fulgida erit doctrina si petita ex luce Psal. 119. ex ore qui lux est Ioan. 8. Si argumentum lux Christus. Si vita aeterna et ducens ad vitam aeternam. Doctrina sit de fide. De Charitate. De Innocentia. Coetus commendentur populo. Instituatur iuventus. Oratio. Sacramenta. Fulgida sit vita. Sic luceat lux nostra coram hominibus ut videant Sanctus Mattheus 5 [verse 16]. Superbia. Contentio. Avaritia. Luxus et Ebrietas.

7 May 1566 (p.127) Doctrina requirit Studium et Timorem Dei. Requirit Coetum. In coetu quod didicimus doceamus Utilia. 1 Cor. 14. Oratio publica. Sacramenta. Vita in dictis et factis. Alieni ab Avaritia. Mendacijs. Libidine. Luxu. Superbia fastu.

23 October 1571 (p.154) In nobis permultum est situm, si in Doctrina et Vita integre fuerimus. Ad Doctrinam pertinent Coetus: in quibus et preces. Supplicatio nunc instituta. NN. Vita sit integra exemplum Bonum Semper obversetur ob oculos Servus Math. 24.

20 October 1573 (p.161) Haec haec hortantur nos ut non concurramus cum Ebrijs, sed fideles pastores simus. Diligentissimi. In sana doctrina perspicua Utilj, et temporibus his congrua.

Episcopi-Diagrams from the Sermones Synodales

Colligamus coetus sedulo. Non tam ad doctrinam, quam preces ardentes. Ad catechesim Reverenter tractemus Sacramenta Vita sancta Nos et familia nostra praeluceamus

4 May 1574 (pp.163–64) Domus illa Ecclesia est. Vocati sumus ut in ea luceamus. Luceamus autem 1 doctrina fulgida 2 et vita sancta. I

De Doctrina loquens apostolus [1 Tim 4:16], Attende tibi ipsi et doctrinae, ait, persistito in his quae didicisti etc. Id si feceris servabis te et eos qui te audierunt. Maxima utilitas, Salus Ecclesiae, in qua est etiam gloria Christi. 1 Requirit studium et diligentiam in discendo Verbo Dei, et ut rite obeat officium. Lu˚g zu˚ dir selbs. 2. Qualis doctrina nostra esse debeat, quam didicisti. Didicit autem Verbum Dei, Euangelium Poenitentiam, fidem. Accusatio peccatorum, Remissio peccatorum. etc. 3. Hanc ut 2 Timoth. 2 [verse 15] docet oportet recte secari. Accomodare pro Locis Temporibus Personis Dicere necessaria et utilia. Vitandae disputationes semper vacaneae. ¶ In doctrina commendandi sunt Pauperes. Sed inculcandum 2 Thess. 3 [verses 10–12]. et 1. Timoth. 5. unverschampt. 4. Ad doctrinam pertinet Collectio coetus et adhortatio. Horas servare. 5. Catechesis. 6. Oratio Privatae et Publicae. Tempora nostra, requirunt assiduas et diligentissimas. Urgendi. 7. Sacramenta verbo addita sigilla. Doctrina de his spectanda sÿncera. Ritus. Praeparatio et Prophanatio. 8. Officia statuum sunt ex apostolis informanda Praesid. Subditorum, Dom. Servorum. Marit. Uxoris. Parentes filiorum, Lex Dei.

135

136 II

Appendix

9. Infirmorum visitatio. ¶ Vita sit sancta ne prava Vita subruamus quod recte aedificiemus Verbo Sancto. Videant homines

7

ASD

Abbrevations

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