Anna Reinhartm. 1522–1531
Ulrich Zwingli/Spouse

Zwingli believed that the state governed with divine sanction. He believed that both the church and the state are placed under the sovereign rule of God. Christians were obliged to obey the government, but civil disobedience was allowed if the authorities acted against the will of God.

Zwingli’s Doctrine First, he objected to the pope as the leader of the church. He also opposed Catholic practices and doctrines like fasting, purgatory, indulgences, veneration and intercession of the saints, celibacy for the clergy, and monasticism. For Zwingli, salvation came through faith alone.

Ulrich Zwingli was a Swiss Protestant leader in the Reformation. It was at the Great Minster that Zwingli stated what is called the Zurich Reformation with sermons that were based on the Bible. Zwingli soon converted the city’s council to his points of view.

Zwingli saw baptism as an initiatory sign, a sign of covenant. In his debate with Anabaptists, he relied in two major propositions for the baptism of infants; that children belong to God and should therefore be baptized and that baptism replaces circumcision.

He founded the Swiss Reformed Church and was an important figure in the broader Reformed tradition. Like Martin Luther, he accepted the supreme authority of the Scriptures, but he applied it more rigorously and comprehensively to all doctrines and practices.

Huldrych Zwingli. Written By: Huldrych Zwingli, Huldrych also spelled Ulrich, (born January 1, 1484, Wildhaus in the Toggenburg, Sankt Gallen, Switzerland—died October 11, 1531, near Kappel), the most important reformer in the Swiss Protestant Reformation.

Zwingli fostered the movement not only by his preaching and influence on the council but also by his various writings—e.g., On Education, On Baptism, On the Lord’s Supper, and especially the comprehensive Commentary on True and False Religion (1525). He was publicly married to Anna Reinhard on April 2, 1524.

Zwingli believed that many of the medieval doctrines of the Catholic Church had no basis in Scripture. He also saw that in practice there was much abuse and corruption. Switzerland in Zwingli’s day was receptive to reform, and he felt theology and the church should conform to the Bible as closely as possible.

Zwingli took the opportunity to meet him while Erasmus was in Basel between August 1514 and May 1516. Zwingli’s turn to relative pacifism and his focus on preaching can be traced to the influence of Erasmus. In late 1518, the post of the Leutpriestertum (people’s priest) of the Grossmünster at Zürich became vacant.