2C - The Reformation in the Swiss Confederacy | AQA A-Level History

Swiss reform depended on the decisions of individual cantons, whose religious positions also affected political alliances. This lesson explains Zwingli's support and opposition, negotiations with Lutherans, the two Kappel wars and the divided condition of the Church by 1531.

Cantonal government and reform

The Swiss Confederacy was an association of cantons rather than a state ruled by one king. Urban cantons such as Zurich and Bern differed from the inner cantons, while some territories were governed jointly. This structure mattered because there was no central ruler able to impose one religious settlement: reform could advance in a city while encountering resistance from other members of the same confederacy.

Zwingli preached biblical reform in Zurich from 1519 and made the city council a key audience for public disputations. The council's acceptance of his programme enabled changes in worship, poor relief and church property. Reform in Bern in 1528 and Basel in 1529 strengthened the movement beyond Zurich. Preachers and lay supporters mattered, but local governments decided whether their arguments would become public policy.

Canton

A member polity of the Swiss Confederacy with its own governing institutions. A canton's religious policy did not automatically bind every other canton.

Shared territories made disagreement especially difficult. If their rulers differed in religion, who should decide whether a community could hear evangelical preaching or abolish the Mass? A theological dispute over true worship therefore became a constitutional dispute over which authority could determine local religious life.

Support and opposition to Zwingli

Urban supporters could see reform as a way to improve preaching, restrain clerical abuses and strengthen civic supervision of religious resources. Zwingli's criticism of mercenary service also associated reform with moral renewal. Selling military service abroad supplied income and patronage, however, so this criticism challenged material interests as well as religious habits.

The Catholic inner cantons—Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Zug—defended inherited worship and their autonomy against Zurich's ambitions. Their resistance was not simply evidence of ignorance or weaker piety: Catholic sacraments and traditions remained meaningful, and expanding Zurich's influence threatened the balance of the Confederacy. Catholic and evangelical arguments could both be attached to political interests without being reducible to them.

Reformers themselves disagreed. Swiss Brethren who rejected infant baptism also objected to a church whose membership and discipline were determined through the city council. Zwingli retained infant baptism and civic reform, so those radicals were opponents within the reforming world. Opposition therefore came from defenders of Catholic religion, political rivals and reformers who considered Zurich's changes insufficient.

The Baden disputation of 1526 did not resolve the divide. The later advance in Bern and Basel made a unified Catholic restoration harder, but it also heightened the Catholic cantons' fear of being surrounded or politically subordinated.

Marburg and the search for Protestant allies

Zwingli sought allies beyond the Confederacy because religious and Habsburg pressure could threaten Zurich from several directions. Philip of Hesse similarly wanted Protestant cooperation in Germany. Their political interests helped bring Lutheran and Swiss reformers to Marburg in 1529.

The meeting produced agreement on many Christian beliefs, but failed to settle the Lord's Supper. Luther insisted that Christ's body and blood were truly present; Zwingli rejected bodily presence in the bread and wine. The fifteenth Marburg Article explicitly records this remaining disagreement while calling for Christian love.

The outcome illustrates a limit on purely political explanations. An alliance could benefit both movements, yet neither leader regarded communion as an unimportant difference that convenience could erase. Failure to settle doctrine restricted the prospects of a comprehensive Protestant alliance and left Zwingli without the united support he desired. This did not mean that every subsequent form of practical cooperation was impossible.

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Component 3 — Historical investigation

2C - The Reformation in the Swiss Confederacy

Cantonal government and reform

Support and opposition to Zwingli

Marburg and the search for Protestant allies

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