On the Zürich Connection

Or, why I'm doing a research stay in Switzerland

Greetings from Zürich! After a really rich and wonderful time in Edinburgh where my wife was a visiting researcher, and then in Cambridge for archival work, we have settled in for a few months in Switzerland. I’m a visiting researcher at the Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte (the Institute for Swiss Reformation History), a center for the study of the Zürich reformer Ulrich Zwingli, his successor Heinrich Bullinger, and the Swiss Reformation broadly.

Now, Zürich might not seem like an obvious place for a student of the English Reformation to spend time, the abundant charms of Switzerland notwithstanding. What, you might be wondering, does Zürich have to do with the Church of England? After all, there are those today who argue that Anglicanism’s proper ecclesial identity isn’t with Protestantism at all, but rather as an ‘apostolic’ church alongside Rome and Orthodoxy (regular readers of this Substack will of course know that I am less than impressed by this theory). For those who are willing to grant Anglicanism a proper Protestant pedigree, Lutheranism, with its liturgical worship, vestments, and high sacramental theology, might seem a closer relation than the low-church Swiss. Indeed, it cannot be denied that today the Protestant churches with which Anglicanism is institutionally closest are not those of Zürich but those of Wittenberg, hence full communion agreements in Europe and North America between Anglican and various episcopally-ordered Lutheran churches.

But in fact, in the period that I study (roughly, the second half of the sixteenth century), the Church of England was more closely aligned with the Swiss Reformed of Zürich than any other church body. As scholars like Carrie Euler and Torrance Kirby have shown, there were deep relationships between the two churches and undoubted Zürich theological influence upon English theology – and this affinity was recognized by religious leaders of the time, both in Switzerland and England. It is not too much to say that Zürich was the theological heart of the Elizabethan Church of England.

View of the Grossmünster, Zwingli’s and Bullinger’s church, from the IRG office

This relationship between England and the Zürich Reformation began already in the reign of Henry VIII. Indeed, one of the first Protestant divines who Thomas Cranmer got to know was the Basel theologian Simon Grynaeus, and Cranmer began an early letter exchange with Zwingli’s successor in Zürich, Heinrich Bullinger, and other Zürich-oriented theologians. But Cranmer’s own eucharistic commitments in the 1530s were not yet aligned with the Swiss, and this led him to somewhat minimize the relationship. As Diarmaid MacCulloch has convincingly argued, it was actually Thomas Cromwell – in one of the most important but least remarked upon aspects of his time as the King’s vicegerent in spirituals – who acted to foster a relationship with those in the Zürich orbit during these years. In particular, he seems to have been behind several exchanges of visitors between Zürich and England; the visit of Rudolf Gwalter, who would later be a leading figure in the Zürich church, would prove particularly important.

These first seeds sown in the reign of Henry began to take root in that of Edward. Here, the international political and religious situation led to an intensification of the connection between the English and continental Protestant churches. The disastrous Protestant defeat in the Schmalkaldic War and the re-imposition of Catholic practices in the Holy Roman Empire via the Interim led to two key Strasbourg theologians accepting university positions in England. Martin Bucer, the key leader of the Strasbourg reformation, sought to establish a mediating position between the Swiss and the Wittenbergers on sacramental questions; the Italian-born Peter Martyr Vermigli was much more unambiguously in the Zürich camp. The two (and especially Vermigli) were heavily involved in the Edwardian Church of England in the revision of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, in articulating the Church of England’s sacramental doctrines, and in working on the (ultimately never implemented) canon law reform.

Then Mary took the throne and restored the English Church to papal obedience. Now it was English Protestants’ turn to flee across the Channel for safety. When they did, Zürich and other Swiss cities in the Zürich orbit welcomed them with particularly open arms, although exiles also ended up in Lutheran areas of Germany, in Calvin’s Geneva (at this point associated with, but not actually part of, the Swiss Confederation), and elsewhere on the Continent. The Swiss stay would prove hugely influential for many of the Marian exiles, and for the rest of their lives many of them would write wistfully of their time there. Thus, for example John Jewel, soon to be most important public exponent of the Church of England’s theological position, wrote wistfully to his mentor Petyr Martyr sometime in 1559, “O Zurich! Zurich! how much oftener do I now think of thee than ever I thought of England when I was at Zurich!”

Many of these exiles in the Zürich orbit then became leaders of the Church of England upon Elizabeth’s accession to the throne and restoration of Protestantism. When Elizabeth had to fill the ranks of the bishops after all save one of Mary’s bishops refused to renounce Roman Catholicism, she looked overwhelmingly to the Zürich exiles. To be sure, there was also a significant exile community in the Genevan orbit, but they largely disqualified themselves in Elizabeth’s view because of John Knox’s fantastically ill-timed First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. Knox’s vituperative attack on women monarchs was aimed at Mary Queen of Scots and Mary I of England, but (unsurprisingly, and reasonably enough) Elizabeth took a rather dim view of it and never forgave Calvin or the Genevan reformation for its publication. And so, alongside those like Matthew Parker who had quietly conformed under Mary’s reign, it was Zürich-oriented exiles like John Jewel, John Parkhurst, Edmund Grindal, James Pilkington, Edwin Sandys, and Richard Cox who would fill the ranks of the Elizabethan episcopate. These men, moreover, maintained their connections with Zürich upon their return to England. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, the Parker Society put out two volumes entitled The Zurich Letters comprising letters sent from English church leaders to Zürich through the reign of Elizabeth. Peter Martyr, Heinrich Bullinger, and Rudolf Gwalter stand out as particularly important correspondents.

Unsurprisingly, these personal relationships translated into theological influence. Indeed, as Torrance Kirby has argued, one way to read the conflicts over clerical apparel, ceremonies, and church order in the Elizabethan Church of England is as a conflict between Genevan and Zürich approaches to Reformed Protestantism. The Genevan emphasis on ecclesiastical independence from the magistrate in matters of church discipline and (especially under Calvin’s successor Beza) on the supposedly Scripturally required church order of pastors, elders, doctors, and deacons was taken up by the Puritans, and was answered by conformist writings which followed the Zürich line about the authority of the magistrate over the church in matters indifferent. Small surprise, then, that in his response to the 1572 Puritan provocation An Admonition to the Parliament, future archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift appends letters urging obedience to the English church order from Bullinger and Rudolf Gwalter. Sometimes, as a part of anti-Puritan writing, conformist divines would assert the connection between the English and Zürich churches in very strong terms. Thus, defending English divergence from Genevan church order and ceremonies in his 1589 response to the Marprelate tracts, Thomas Cooper points out a similar diversity of usages in “those places of high Almaine [ie, Switzerland], wherein most zealous preachers and learned men haue remained, and with whom in doctrine we most nighly agree.” Indeed, contemporaries explicitly saw the conflict as one between Geneva and Zürich approaches to discipline and church order. Richard Hooker, for example, writes in the preface to On the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie that the conflict in England is essentially another version of the conflict over church discipline in Heidelberg, in which an existing Zürich model was attacked by those sympathetic to Geneva (for more on the Zürich and Genevan approaches, see my piece here).

But this sense of identity with Zürich was not only deployed in polemical exchanges with Puritans, nor was it only the preserve of the Marian exiles (indeed, Whitgift, Cooper, and Hooker were not exiles). To pile up examples would be a bit dull, so let me give one particularly clear example of this identity: the role of Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades in the Elizabethan church. The Decades is essentially a systematic theology in the form of sermons: in the fifty sermons of the Decades, Bullinger goes through all the main theological loci. At the 1586 Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, it was ordered that all ministers without preaching licenses who also didn’t have an MA or a Bachelor of Law would read and study one sermon of the Decades every Sunday, and regularly go over their notes on it with other ministers.¹ It seems that this order was widely carried out. Certainly, multiple editions of Bullinger’s Decades were published in English and Latin in this period. Indeed, some scholars suggest that some non-preaching ministers may have gone beyond the letter of the law and actually read sermons from the Decades from the pulpit if they grew tired of repeating the authorized homilies. Let’s think for a moment about what this means: a summary of Zürich theology was the teaching tool to instruct non-preaching ministers without a high degree of educational attainment in the faith, to enable them to rightly set forth the Gospel. As far as Archbishop Whitgift and Convocation were concerned, Zürich theology simply was the theology of the Church of England.

Now, the story of how we got from Bishop Thomas Cooper stating matter-of-factly in 1589 that the Swiss Reformed churches were those “with whom in doctrine we most nighly agree” to today’s forgetfulness of the strength and importance of the Zürich connection is a long and complicated one. The rise of ‘Laudianism’ or ‘Arminianism’ in the seventeenth century has something to do with it, as does the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century, but I don’t have the space to get into it here. Still, these later developments cannot undermine the central role of this distant city on the banks of the Limmat for sixteenth century English church history and theology, a role that my time of research will help me further explore. And I don’t think this is only a bit of historical trivia. If Anglicans today want to look to the formularies of the sixteenth century to help to ground Anglican identity, theology, and religious life (as I think we should!), they will find themselves looking to Zürich.

1. Incidentally, starting in Advent 2025, I intend to revive this practice for my weekly post for paid subscribers once I am finished with my current project of commentary on the old lectionary. I’ll be commenting each week on a different sermon from the Decades. More information on this will follow closer to the actual starting date, but I’m hoping to get a group of people together to read them with me.