Thursday, December 02, 2004
"The Swiss Reformation" -- book review
Redneck Editor's Note: For some reason, Blogger wouldn't pick up the footnotes. I know y'all will be disappointed. :-) Um, footnotes available on request.
By The Erudite Redneck
Gordon, Bruce. The Swiss Reformation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. (368 pages).
In The Swiss Reformation, Bruce Gordon gives life to the skeleton of facts most English students of the Reformation know of the Swiss Confederation following Huldrych Zwingli’s appointment as priest in Zurich in 1519 and Heinrich Bullinger’s succession in 1531 after Zwingli’s battlefield death. In this survey, a synthesis of works mostly available only in German, Gordon goes well beyond the personalities of Zwingli and Bullinger to explore general religious impulses and how they dovetailed with social and military goals, or failed to, and outline the socio-cultural effects of Zwingli’s brand of reform on Swiss cities, rural settlements and churches. The book, which deals only with the Protestant territories, concentrates on the period from Zwingli’s early preaching to the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566.
Gordon starts by summarizing 200-plus years of social and political history, starting with the Swiss Confederation’s origins in 1291, when Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden united in the power vacuum left after the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf I, a Habsburg, died. Gordon traces the development of a “Swiss” consciousness through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, explaining it mainly as “not” Habsburg while ambiguous, not necessarily hostile, toward the empire. Zurich’s emergence as a major city, particularly its defiance of the pope and expulsion of Catholic clergy in 1245, made it an automatic leader of the confederation when it joined in 1351, and Gordon gives it considerable attention. Gordon points out the lack of a “Swiss church” per se, as the confederation straddled five bishoprics. The influence of the church councils of Constance and Basle, both of which bordered Swiss lands, brought scholarly and Renaissance influence north of the Alps, which, Gordon asserts, helped sow the seeds of reform. Swiss reform, according to Gordon, was fertilized by no high ideal, but by anticlericalism born of distaste for priests who failed to do their duty. Gordon gives context for understanding why confederation members, especially Zurich, acted and reacted as they did as Zwingli’s influence emerged and the Zwingilian movement, guided by Bullinger, sustained after Zwingli’s death.
The next four chapters are more concise histories of periods more salient to the broad topic of the Swiss Reformation. Gordon details the emergence of Zwingli and the role of Zurich. He explains the spread of the Reformation, mainly outward from Zurich. Gordon narrates the failed reformations, the ordeal of confederates united loosely by politics but divided by strongly held religion, war and Zwingli’s death on the battlefield at Kappel, and the aftermath, from 1529 to 1534. The author then outlines the confusion following Zwingli’s demise, negotiations with Lutherans and the mediation of Martin Bucer, the competition and violence of the Reformation as it spread to French lands and Zwingli’s ideas encountered John Calvin’s, the political-religious storms surrounding Emperor Charles V and the Council Trent and their effect on the different strains of Protestant thought, the defeat of the Schmalkaldic League and what it meant for the broader strategy of Protestant states, and other key military, political and religious events and issues between Zwingli’s death and the Second Helvetic Confession.
Before shifting from chronological narratives to topical chapters, Gordon allocates one chapter to Anabaptists and other radicals, including Spiritualists and Antitrinitarians, but confesses to merely touch the surface of the diverse movements spawned, and attracted, by Zwinglianism. The author then broadens the scope of the book from narration and interpretation of people and events to the explanation of broader ideas by topic. Gordon explores the structure of Swiss churches and parishes, the social role of priests and ministers and the place and importance of worship in the wider culture. Next he considers Swiss society in general, considering the role of women, death and disease, the economy and other issues not directly tied to the religious upheaval. In his penultimate chapter, Gordon places the Swiss churches within the context of the Reformation generally, with special attention to southern Germany, England and Eastern Europe. Finally, Gordon considers the legacy of the Swiss Reformation, concluding that the presence of numerous erudite foreigners during its formative years ensured that the mix of Erasmian humanism and Protestant evangelism would spawn intellectual inquiry and achievements that went well beyond the immediate concerns of the rebel priest Zwingli.
After alluding to it throughout the work, Gordon declares his simple yet stark thesis in the opening sentence of his conclusion: “The Swiss Reformation occurred because of Huldrych Zwingli.” Gordon expands his thesis to incorporate Zwingli’s own ideas by asserting that “the Swiss Reformation, under the guidance of Zwingli, developed a unique theological profile.” According to Gordon, Zwingli’s main concepts -- a person can either serve God or serve the world, God is omniscient and omnipotent, personal redemption comes via grace based on election, the law is a guide to holy living, and only the perfection of Christ can unite the material and spiritual polarities of reality so the church should be united with the state for the renewal of society as a whole -– were at once inspiring and revolutionary to a people already suspicious of religious as well as social leaders. It is on this basis that Gordon argues further that “Zwingli’s attack on what he saw to be the materialistic nature of late medieval religion,” coupled with his emphasis on the Apostle Paul’s reliance on spirit to conquer the weakness of the flesh, “attracted a wide range of figures who, drawing on late medieval mysticism and ... spirituality ... looked to an immediate relationship with God.”
Gordon sees complexities in Zwingli that are lost in others’ accounts of the Zurich priest’s seminal role in the Swiss Reformation. It is superficial to label Zwingli “as a humanist, a rationalist , or anything else,” according to Gordon. Zwingli, Gordon wrote, came to advocate the principle that Scripture was the sole guide to faith and religious life, “but the lens through which he read the Bible was ground from a mixture of humanism and scholasticism, of politics and personal experience.” With his complex Zwingli, Gordon contrasts with historian Donald J. Wilcox, whose Zwingli simply comes out of the “Erasmian tradition,” as Wilcox writes in In Search of God & Self: Renaissance and Reformation Thought. Historian Richard Bonney gives Zwingli a little more credit for intellectual curiosity, but not much, in The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660. Bonney points to Erasmus and the Hollander reformer Cornelisz Hoen as influences. It was Hoen, whose assertion that it does matter what the Bible’s definition of “is” is, influenced Zwingli’s concept of the Eucharist; Hoen argued that when Jesus said “this is my body,” he meant “signifies” rather than literally “is,” an idea that put Zwingli at odds with both Luther and the Catholic Church.
Zwingli’s death in battle, according to Gordon, makes it easy to mistake the Swiss Confederation’s conflict as between the Swiss and the Holy Roman Empire. Wilcox, for example, states, “Surrounded by his supporters from Zurich, Zwingli died in battle against the troops of the emperor in 1531 ...” Bonney gets closer to what Gordon considers the crux of the fighting, pointing out that events leading to the Kappel Wars had much to do with Zwingli’s desire to secure an anti-Habsburg alliance to counter Habsburg power in the person of Charles V on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. Gordon, pointing to the origins of the confederation as the military alliance of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, separate from the Habsburg lands -- and formalized by treaty, reluctantly, by a defeated and demoralized Habsburg dynasty, in 1315 -- states it plainly: “It was the Habsburg dynasty, and not the Holy Roman Empire, which the Swiss saw as their great enemy. ... The Habsburgs stood by their claims to territories within the Confederation, whilst the Swiss countered that they were free communes directly subject to the Holy Roman Emperor.” However, Gordon himself wonders how serious the Habsburg threat really was, pointing out that Charles V, by the mid 1530s, had more important issues to deal with elsewhere, particularly in southern France, where he had been defeated, and northern Italy, where he was consolidating his territorial rule.
In his treatment of earlier violence, the Peasant Revolts of 1525, Gordon sees no direct tie between those holding Anabaptist and other radical views and those leading the uprisings. He acknowledges that in the earliest rebellions, in Hallau and Gruningen, it was nearly impossible to tell the two movements apart, but argues that the apparent convergence was one of many alliances that formed then expired as expediency warranted in the tumultuous period. Here, Gordon seems to be at odds with Bonney, who points out the direct involvement of Lutheran and Zwinglian lay preachers in the peasant movement; Bonney examines the partial authorship of the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants, which demanded ecclesiastical and economic reform in February 1525, by the Zwinglian preacher Christoph Schappeler. Gordon also seems to be at odds with Wilcox, who points out the millenarian radical preacher Thomas Muntzer’s support of the peasants. Wilcox does see a disconnect: Muntzer backed the peasants, but they, concerned with daily bread, not eternal life, did not offer collaboration.
Looking to England, Gordon writes of an early vestment controversy that he interprets as a sign of Zwinglian influence. John Hooper, a close friend of Bullinger in Zurich, helped bring Zwinglianism to England. In 1550, Hooper’s consecration as bishop of Gloucester was caught in a debate over vestments. Hooper, finding no direction in Scripture, declined to wear the garb of the church office. Bullinger did not support Hooper, and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, insisted he don the special clothing. Hooper was forced to submit. Historians Robert Buchol and Newton Key do not mention the incident in their account of vestment controversies in England. In Early Modern England, 1485-1714: A Narrative History, they explain the vestment controversy only within the context of Puritans’ disagreements with the Church of England later, in the 1560s.
Details get lost in works comprised largely of summaries. Gordon attempts to rehabilitate Martin Bucer’s reputation as a failed mediator between Zwingli and Luther by pointing out that Bucer’s tireless work to forge reconciliation forced the Swiss to start to develop a coherent theology. To Bonney, Bucer practically capitulated to the Lutherans by subscribing to the Confession of Augsburg in 1532. To Wilcox, Bucer’s attempts to keep Protestants unified simply “foundered” when Zwinglians balked at the compromise over the Lord’s Supper in the Wittenberg Concord of 1536. Wilcox does point out Bucer’s lasting influence on Calvin.
Another example of omitted details leaving an incorrect impression occurs in the authors’ accounts of the burning of Michel Servetus for heresy in Geneva in 1553. Wilcox, in a discussion of radical movements within the Catholic Church, mentions in passing that “Calvin had just burned Servetus, a famous anti-Trinitarian,” giving Calvin sole credit for the execution. Bonney, likewise, attributes the execution of Servetus solely to Calvin, although Geneva’s civil-church authorities handed down the sentence and fired the stake, and Calvin wanted the sentence reduced to beheading. Only Gordon points out that the radical theology of Servetus enraged both Catholics and Protestants and that his execution alarmed some in Geneva, especially Italians who had fled the Roman Inquisition.
The chief value of The Swiss Reformation is as a bridge between German and English scholarship. Gordon uses secondary sources unavailable in English. Reviewer Randolph C. Head of the University of California, Riverside, points out that the book is the first survey of the Swiss Reformation in English, “and one of few in any language.” Another reviewer, Amy Nelson Burnett of the University of Nebraska, points out Gordon’s use of German scholarship ranging from studies of the Zwinglian Reformation and Swiss history in general to local and territorial histories and numerous shorter, specialized works on specific topics. Burnett serves as a series editor for the St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, a project of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where Gordon is a professor. Her familiarity with Gordon’s work is clear in her observation that he relies much on his own research and his familiarity with Zurich.
In his introduction, Gordon says will outline the Protestant states’ experience in the Swiss Confederation and that he will not consider the Catholic Reformation in Swiss lands. He says he will stop at the Second Helvetic Confession. He says he will address but not dwell on Anabaptists and other radicals. He accomplishes what he sets out to do. Head and Burnett slightly chide Gordon for his self-imposed strictures. Given Gordon’s background in the Zurich Reformation, including Catholic reform, Head finds his avoidance of the Catholic experience somewhat off-putting, and he wonders why Gordon wrote so little about the rural reception of Zwinglian idea’s in Zurich. Burnett, likewise, chafes under Gordon’s cutoff at 1566, insisting that he owes readers some discussion of Zurich’s later ties to reformed states within the Holy Roman Empire. Burnett also criticizes Gordon slightly for delaying his discussion of Zwingli’s theology to the end of the second chapter, which, she opines, creates “a curious sense of emotional distance from the controversies of the early Reformation in Zurich.”
Gordon’s style is authoritative, at times insistent, especially for a survey, but never argumentative or strident. Head points out that Gordon balances his own views with enough context for readers to determine the source of his reasoning. His narrative sections drift into recitation at times, which makes some interpretations seem more provocative than they might otherwise. The late-medieval background of the first chapter seems crucial for understanding the political and social stage upon which Zwingli and his followers acted. The narrative chapters are pedantic in places. The topical chapters are easier to digest in comparison. Some sections treat great swaths of information with necessary brevity, including a useful list of 80 principal figures at the front of the book with extended “snapshots” of ten of them at the back. The book includes a chronology fitting for any survey.
Gordon obtained his Ph.D from the University of St. Andrews. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut fur Europaische Geschichte in Mainz, Germany. He is principal editor of the St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History series. His main publications include Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zurich, 1532-1580 (1992), which he wrote, and three major works that he edited: Protestant History and Identity in Reformation Europe (2 vols., 1996), The Place of the Dead in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2000), and Heinrich Bullinger and the Formation of the Reformed Tradition (2004). He also has written numerous articles on the Swiss Reformation and late medieval religion. His present research is on Bullinger and the development of Zwinglian spirituality. The Swiss Reformation is squarely within his expertise. Gordon’s religious and other personal background could not be determined. However, his education -- a bachelor’s degree from small University of Kings College at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; a master’s degree from Dalhousie University, a leading Canadian institution, also in Halifax; his doctorate from St. Andrews and study in Mainz and Zurich -- give him a broad and varied background of intimate and grand educational experiences from North America to Europe, which serves him when putting local religious, philosophical and political affairs within the context of a movement as sweeping as the Reformation.
Gordon stuck to his thesis in The Swiss Reformation, and is convincing in his argument that it occurred because of Zwingli and his legacy carried by Bullinger. By starting with the late-medieval developments that made the Swiss states a loose defensive alliance of independent-minded kingdoms, by going beyond the personality and struggles of Zwingli the individual, and by providing ample socio-cultural and political context for Zwingli’s developing theology and flexible, realistic-minded political influence, Gordon has proven his thesis. He also has given German researchers cause to update some standard works and English researchers insight into generations of German scholarship. He has laid the groundwork for others to take his many sub-theses and pursue their own studies. Gordon’s synthesis likely is the bedrock for the first generation of broad English study of the Swiss Reformation.
END
By The Erudite Redneck
Gordon, Bruce. The Swiss Reformation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. (368 pages).
In The Swiss Reformation, Bruce Gordon gives life to the skeleton of facts most English students of the Reformation know of the Swiss Confederation following Huldrych Zwingli’s appointment as priest in Zurich in 1519 and Heinrich Bullinger’s succession in 1531 after Zwingli’s battlefield death. In this survey, a synthesis of works mostly available only in German, Gordon goes well beyond the personalities of Zwingli and Bullinger to explore general religious impulses and how they dovetailed with social and military goals, or failed to, and outline the socio-cultural effects of Zwingli’s brand of reform on Swiss cities, rural settlements and churches. The book, which deals only with the Protestant territories, concentrates on the period from Zwingli’s early preaching to the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566.
Gordon starts by summarizing 200-plus years of social and political history, starting with the Swiss Confederation’s origins in 1291, when Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden united in the power vacuum left after the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf I, a Habsburg, died. Gordon traces the development of a “Swiss” consciousness through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, explaining it mainly as “not” Habsburg while ambiguous, not necessarily hostile, toward the empire. Zurich’s emergence as a major city, particularly its defiance of the pope and expulsion of Catholic clergy in 1245, made it an automatic leader of the confederation when it joined in 1351, and Gordon gives it considerable attention. Gordon points out the lack of a “Swiss church” per se, as the confederation straddled five bishoprics. The influence of the church councils of Constance and Basle, both of which bordered Swiss lands, brought scholarly and Renaissance influence north of the Alps, which, Gordon asserts, helped sow the seeds of reform. Swiss reform, according to Gordon, was fertilized by no high ideal, but by anticlericalism born of distaste for priests who failed to do their duty. Gordon gives context for understanding why confederation members, especially Zurich, acted and reacted as they did as Zwingli’s influence emerged and the Zwingilian movement, guided by Bullinger, sustained after Zwingli’s death.
The next four chapters are more concise histories of periods more salient to the broad topic of the Swiss Reformation. Gordon details the emergence of Zwingli and the role of Zurich. He explains the spread of the Reformation, mainly outward from Zurich. Gordon narrates the failed reformations, the ordeal of confederates united loosely by politics but divided by strongly held religion, war and Zwingli’s death on the battlefield at Kappel, and the aftermath, from 1529 to 1534. The author then outlines the confusion following Zwingli’s demise, negotiations with Lutherans and the mediation of Martin Bucer, the competition and violence of the Reformation as it spread to French lands and Zwingli’s ideas encountered John Calvin’s, the political-religious storms surrounding Emperor Charles V and the Council Trent and their effect on the different strains of Protestant thought, the defeat of the Schmalkaldic League and what it meant for the broader strategy of Protestant states, and other key military, political and religious events and issues between Zwingli’s death and the Second Helvetic Confession.
Before shifting from chronological narratives to topical chapters, Gordon allocates one chapter to Anabaptists and other radicals, including Spiritualists and Antitrinitarians, but confesses to merely touch the surface of the diverse movements spawned, and attracted, by Zwinglianism. The author then broadens the scope of the book from narration and interpretation of people and events to the explanation of broader ideas by topic. Gordon explores the structure of Swiss churches and parishes, the social role of priests and ministers and the place and importance of worship in the wider culture. Next he considers Swiss society in general, considering the role of women, death and disease, the economy and other issues not directly tied to the religious upheaval. In his penultimate chapter, Gordon places the Swiss churches within the context of the Reformation generally, with special attention to southern Germany, England and Eastern Europe. Finally, Gordon considers the legacy of the Swiss Reformation, concluding that the presence of numerous erudite foreigners during its formative years ensured that the mix of Erasmian humanism and Protestant evangelism would spawn intellectual inquiry and achievements that went well beyond the immediate concerns of the rebel priest Zwingli.
After alluding to it throughout the work, Gordon declares his simple yet stark thesis in the opening sentence of his conclusion: “The Swiss Reformation occurred because of Huldrych Zwingli.” Gordon expands his thesis to incorporate Zwingli’s own ideas by asserting that “the Swiss Reformation, under the guidance of Zwingli, developed a unique theological profile.” According to Gordon, Zwingli’s main concepts -- a person can either serve God or serve the world, God is omniscient and omnipotent, personal redemption comes via grace based on election, the law is a guide to holy living, and only the perfection of Christ can unite the material and spiritual polarities of reality so the church should be united with the state for the renewal of society as a whole -– were at once inspiring and revolutionary to a people already suspicious of religious as well as social leaders. It is on this basis that Gordon argues further that “Zwingli’s attack on what he saw to be the materialistic nature of late medieval religion,” coupled with his emphasis on the Apostle Paul’s reliance on spirit to conquer the weakness of the flesh, “attracted a wide range of figures who, drawing on late medieval mysticism and ... spirituality ... looked to an immediate relationship with God.”
Gordon sees complexities in Zwingli that are lost in others’ accounts of the Zurich priest’s seminal role in the Swiss Reformation. It is superficial to label Zwingli “as a humanist, a rationalist , or anything else,” according to Gordon. Zwingli, Gordon wrote, came to advocate the principle that Scripture was the sole guide to faith and religious life, “but the lens through which he read the Bible was ground from a mixture of humanism and scholasticism, of politics and personal experience.” With his complex Zwingli, Gordon contrasts with historian Donald J. Wilcox, whose Zwingli simply comes out of the “Erasmian tradition,” as Wilcox writes in In Search of God & Self: Renaissance and Reformation Thought. Historian Richard Bonney gives Zwingli a little more credit for intellectual curiosity, but not much, in The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660. Bonney points to Erasmus and the Hollander reformer Cornelisz Hoen as influences. It was Hoen, whose assertion that it does matter what the Bible’s definition of “is” is, influenced Zwingli’s concept of the Eucharist; Hoen argued that when Jesus said “this is my body,” he meant “signifies” rather than literally “is,” an idea that put Zwingli at odds with both Luther and the Catholic Church.
Zwingli’s death in battle, according to Gordon, makes it easy to mistake the Swiss Confederation’s conflict as between the Swiss and the Holy Roman Empire. Wilcox, for example, states, “Surrounded by his supporters from Zurich, Zwingli died in battle against the troops of the emperor in 1531 ...” Bonney gets closer to what Gordon considers the crux of the fighting, pointing out that events leading to the Kappel Wars had much to do with Zwingli’s desire to secure an anti-Habsburg alliance to counter Habsburg power in the person of Charles V on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. Gordon, pointing to the origins of the confederation as the military alliance of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, separate from the Habsburg lands -- and formalized by treaty, reluctantly, by a defeated and demoralized Habsburg dynasty, in 1315 -- states it plainly: “It was the Habsburg dynasty, and not the Holy Roman Empire, which the Swiss saw as their great enemy. ... The Habsburgs stood by their claims to territories within the Confederation, whilst the Swiss countered that they were free communes directly subject to the Holy Roman Emperor.” However, Gordon himself wonders how serious the Habsburg threat really was, pointing out that Charles V, by the mid 1530s, had more important issues to deal with elsewhere, particularly in southern France, where he had been defeated, and northern Italy, where he was consolidating his territorial rule.
In his treatment of earlier violence, the Peasant Revolts of 1525, Gordon sees no direct tie between those holding Anabaptist and other radical views and those leading the uprisings. He acknowledges that in the earliest rebellions, in Hallau and Gruningen, it was nearly impossible to tell the two movements apart, but argues that the apparent convergence was one of many alliances that formed then expired as expediency warranted in the tumultuous period. Here, Gordon seems to be at odds with Bonney, who points out the direct involvement of Lutheran and Zwinglian lay preachers in the peasant movement; Bonney examines the partial authorship of the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants, which demanded ecclesiastical and economic reform in February 1525, by the Zwinglian preacher Christoph Schappeler. Gordon also seems to be at odds with Wilcox, who points out the millenarian radical preacher Thomas Muntzer’s support of the peasants. Wilcox does see a disconnect: Muntzer backed the peasants, but they, concerned with daily bread, not eternal life, did not offer collaboration.
Looking to England, Gordon writes of an early vestment controversy that he interprets as a sign of Zwinglian influence. John Hooper, a close friend of Bullinger in Zurich, helped bring Zwinglianism to England. In 1550, Hooper’s consecration as bishop of Gloucester was caught in a debate over vestments. Hooper, finding no direction in Scripture, declined to wear the garb of the church office. Bullinger did not support Hooper, and Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, insisted he don the special clothing. Hooper was forced to submit. Historians Robert Buchol and Newton Key do not mention the incident in their account of vestment controversies in England. In Early Modern England, 1485-1714: A Narrative History, they explain the vestment controversy only within the context of Puritans’ disagreements with the Church of England later, in the 1560s.
Details get lost in works comprised largely of summaries. Gordon attempts to rehabilitate Martin Bucer’s reputation as a failed mediator between Zwingli and Luther by pointing out that Bucer’s tireless work to forge reconciliation forced the Swiss to start to develop a coherent theology. To Bonney, Bucer practically capitulated to the Lutherans by subscribing to the Confession of Augsburg in 1532. To Wilcox, Bucer’s attempts to keep Protestants unified simply “foundered” when Zwinglians balked at the compromise over the Lord’s Supper in the Wittenberg Concord of 1536. Wilcox does point out Bucer’s lasting influence on Calvin.
Another example of omitted details leaving an incorrect impression occurs in the authors’ accounts of the burning of Michel Servetus for heresy in Geneva in 1553. Wilcox, in a discussion of radical movements within the Catholic Church, mentions in passing that “Calvin had just burned Servetus, a famous anti-Trinitarian,” giving Calvin sole credit for the execution. Bonney, likewise, attributes the execution of Servetus solely to Calvin, although Geneva’s civil-church authorities handed down the sentence and fired the stake, and Calvin wanted the sentence reduced to beheading. Only Gordon points out that the radical theology of Servetus enraged both Catholics and Protestants and that his execution alarmed some in Geneva, especially Italians who had fled the Roman Inquisition.
The chief value of The Swiss Reformation is as a bridge between German and English scholarship. Gordon uses secondary sources unavailable in English. Reviewer Randolph C. Head of the University of California, Riverside, points out that the book is the first survey of the Swiss Reformation in English, “and one of few in any language.” Another reviewer, Amy Nelson Burnett of the University of Nebraska, points out Gordon’s use of German scholarship ranging from studies of the Zwinglian Reformation and Swiss history in general to local and territorial histories and numerous shorter, specialized works on specific topics. Burnett serves as a series editor for the St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History, a project of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where Gordon is a professor. Her familiarity with Gordon’s work is clear in her observation that he relies much on his own research and his familiarity with Zurich.
In his introduction, Gordon says will outline the Protestant states’ experience in the Swiss Confederation and that he will not consider the Catholic Reformation in Swiss lands. He says he will stop at the Second Helvetic Confession. He says he will address but not dwell on Anabaptists and other radicals. He accomplishes what he sets out to do. Head and Burnett slightly chide Gordon for his self-imposed strictures. Given Gordon’s background in the Zurich Reformation, including Catholic reform, Head finds his avoidance of the Catholic experience somewhat off-putting, and he wonders why Gordon wrote so little about the rural reception of Zwinglian idea’s in Zurich. Burnett, likewise, chafes under Gordon’s cutoff at 1566, insisting that he owes readers some discussion of Zurich’s later ties to reformed states within the Holy Roman Empire. Burnett also criticizes Gordon slightly for delaying his discussion of Zwingli’s theology to the end of the second chapter, which, she opines, creates “a curious sense of emotional distance from the controversies of the early Reformation in Zurich.”
Gordon’s style is authoritative, at times insistent, especially for a survey, but never argumentative or strident. Head points out that Gordon balances his own views with enough context for readers to determine the source of his reasoning. His narrative sections drift into recitation at times, which makes some interpretations seem more provocative than they might otherwise. The late-medieval background of the first chapter seems crucial for understanding the political and social stage upon which Zwingli and his followers acted. The narrative chapters are pedantic in places. The topical chapters are easier to digest in comparison. Some sections treat great swaths of information with necessary brevity, including a useful list of 80 principal figures at the front of the book with extended “snapshots” of ten of them at the back. The book includes a chronology fitting for any survey.
Gordon obtained his Ph.D from the University of St. Andrews. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut fur Europaische Geschichte in Mainz, Germany. He is principal editor of the St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History series. His main publications include Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zurich, 1532-1580 (1992), which he wrote, and three major works that he edited: Protestant History and Identity in Reformation Europe (2 vols., 1996), The Place of the Dead in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2000), and Heinrich Bullinger and the Formation of the Reformed Tradition (2004). He also has written numerous articles on the Swiss Reformation and late medieval religion. His present research is on Bullinger and the development of Zwinglian spirituality. The Swiss Reformation is squarely within his expertise. Gordon’s religious and other personal background could not be determined. However, his education -- a bachelor’s degree from small University of Kings College at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; a master’s degree from Dalhousie University, a leading Canadian institution, also in Halifax; his doctorate from St. Andrews and study in Mainz and Zurich -- give him a broad and varied background of intimate and grand educational experiences from North America to Europe, which serves him when putting local religious, philosophical and political affairs within the context of a movement as sweeping as the Reformation.
Gordon stuck to his thesis in The Swiss Reformation, and is convincing in his argument that it occurred because of Zwingli and his legacy carried by Bullinger. By starting with the late-medieval developments that made the Swiss states a loose defensive alliance of independent-minded kingdoms, by going beyond the personality and struggles of Zwingli the individual, and by providing ample socio-cultural and political context for Zwingli’s developing theology and flexible, realistic-minded political influence, Gordon has proven his thesis. He also has given German researchers cause to update some standard works and English researchers insight into generations of German scholarship. He has laid the groundwork for others to take his many sub-theses and pursue their own studies. Gordon’s synthesis likely is the bedrock for the first generation of broad English study of the Swiss Reformation.
END
