The pope once paid Zwingli a pension; then he broke with Rome
Huldrych Zwingli once drew an annual pension from Pope Julius II and marched with Swiss troops in Italy as their chaplain. Defeat and disgust at the mercenary trade changed him. In Zurich he read the Bible straight through from the pulpit, replaced the Mass, and helped split Switzerland along religious lines.
Born on New Year's Day 1484 in Wildhaus in the Toggenburg valley, the third of eleven children of a local magistrate, Zwingli studied Latin in Basel, flirted with joining the Dominicans in Bern, and attended universities in Vienna and Basel. He was ordained in 1506 with little theology, which was normal then, and spent ten years as pastor of Glarus, a town whose young men were hired out as soldiers across Europe.
He sided with Rome in the wars between France, the Habsburgs and the papacy, serving as chaplain at Novara in 1513. After the crushing Swiss defeat at Marignano, opinion in Glarus swung towards France, and Zwingli withdrew to Einsiedeln. By then he considered mercenary service immoral and had satirised it in allegories such as The Ox. He perfected his Greek, began Hebrew, built a library of over three hundred books and met Erasmus, whose influence pushed him towards relative pacifism and preaching.
Zurich's Grossmunster chose him as people's priest in December 1518. From his first sermon on 1 January 1519 he abandoned the set Sunday readings and worked through Matthew book by book, then Acts, the epistles and the Old Testament. In 1522 he publicly challenged Lenten fasting, and he went on to attack clerical corruption and images in churches and to defend priests' right to marry. A new communion service replaced the Mass in 1525. He also clashed with the Anabaptists, who were then persecuted, and historians still argue over whether Zurich became a theocracy.
Meeting Luther at Marburg, he agreed on much but not on whether Christ is really present in the Eucharist. At home the cantons, each nearly independent, split between Reformed and Catholic camps; war was narrowly avoided in 1529. In 1531 his alliance's food blockade of the Catholic cantons provoked an attack on an unready Zurich, and Zwingli was killed on the battlefield that October. The Reformed churches still carry his confessions and liturgy.
Source: Huldrych Zwingli
