November 6-8, 1525

At the request of the bailiff and judges of Grüningen who were holding Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, and Felix Mantz in their local prison, Ulrich Zwingli and other Reformed clergymen agreed to hold another open disputation with the spokesmen of Anabaptism. The three had already gotten a chance to articulate their beliefs about baptism in January in the presence of the assembly of the Zurich Council. The Council ruled against them, as it did again in March after a less public disputation. But at the time of Blaurock’s arrest in October, the Grüningen bailiff had heard local Anabaptists’ call for a free discussion. Many of the locals in Grüningen would have been first been exposed to Anabaptist teachings on adult baptism since the last disputation in March. The magistrates hoped that arranging another disputation would restore order to church affairs once laypeople heard Zurich’s Reformed leaders counter the Anabaptist leaders in an open debate. Moreover, it seems that a common talking point of the Anabaptist leaders was that Zwingli did not give them a sufficient chance to speak at the January and March disputations. The Grüningen magistrates reasoned that if the cantonal government showed openness to a full debate, the people inclined to distrust church and state authority could no longer complain that the government had not given Anabaptist views of baptism and ecclesiology a fair hearing.¹

No transcript or direct notes from the speeches exist. But Zwingli’s assistant and eventual successor, Heinrich Bullinger, recorded a memoir of the three-day event in his Diarium. Johannes Kessler, the Reformed chronicler from St. Gall, also attended and wrote down his impressions, and Zwingli left a short note about it in his Elenchus. Finally, clerks for the Zurich Council provided a short report to the Grüningen judges a week after the debates. No records exist from attenders who were sympathetic to the Anabaptist position, so the historical record must rely on the perspective of those favoring Zwingli’s teachings.

According to Bullinger’s account, there was great public interest in the debate. It began in the City Hall “with open doors” before the canton’s political representatives, the twelve judges of Grüningen, and “very many other clerical and secular people.” But the hall became so crowded that the city councilors decided to move the venue to the Grossmünster, the largest church in the city. “[R]ails were installed in the sanctuary…in the nave, plus chairs and two tables, one for the presidents and preachers, and the other for the Anabaptists.” The Zurich officials were clearly going out of their way to accommodate all people who were interested in hearing the theological debate. Even in the run-up to the event, the canton leaders expended notable effort to invite the public. As Kessler recalled, “[I]n order to settle this disharmony not only among the common people but also among the learned, the Zurich authorities ordered the suggested disputation to be held and announced widely.” Word of the disputation must have traveled through Anabaptist networks around the Swiss-German countryside beforehand, since “many Anabaptists were on hand from St. Gallen and other foreign districts.” The Zurich leaders were also willing to give the Anabaptists ample time to explain their positions. “The latter could speak as long and as much [as they wanted] without any cloture,” Bullinger recorded.²

According to Bullinger, three theses, reflecting Zwingli’s positions, were laid out to be debated:

1. “Children of Christians are no less children of God than their elders, as was true in the Old Testament. If they are already God’s, who will keep them from water baptism[?]
2. Circumcision was to the ancients (who had this sign) what baptism is to us. Inasmuch as it is now given to infants, baptism should likewise be given to infants.
3. Rebaptism has no mandate or example or proof in God’s Word. Therefore, those who are baptized again crucify Christ again, either by their own obstinacy or by inventing something new.”³

These theses reflected the points that Zwingli believed he had defended well against Balthasar Hubmaier in the treatise that he had just published against him.

Zwingli, Leo Jud, and Caspar Grossman—all Reformed clergymen in Zurich—defended these theses during the disputation, while Grebel, Mantz, Blaurock and “their comrades” were given the floor to oppose them. The Anabaptists had hoped that Balthasar Hubmaier would travel from Waldshut to join them, but, as Kessler noted, Habsburg forces mobilizing to occupy Waldshut at the time made it too risky for him to leave the town where he was pastor.⁴

Some eccentric characters among the Anabaptists tried to help their side, but, from Kessler’s telling, helped to build public sentiment against it. One peasant from Zollikon “pushed through the crowd crying with a loud voice: ‘Gangway! Gangway!’ Everyone got out of his way. No one knew what he wanted. Then he snatched up the books on both sides and put them on a pile, leaving none to anyone.” He apparently did not want any of the debaters to rely on books for their arguments. “On the first day they let him have his way,” Kessler noted, but they returned to citing written theological authorities on the second and third days of debate. At the end of the third day, another peasant from Zollikon “arose and thought he would deprive Zwingli of his power” by saying, “Zwingli, I adjure you by the living God to tell the truth.” Zwingli “paid little heed to these words but overlooked them as the outpouring of an angry peasant’s heart. Then the peasant adjured him the second time and the third time to tell him even one truth.” Zwingli replied dismissively: “Well, I will tell you one truth, that you are a rude, unskilled, seditious peasant.” “Anabaptism,” Kessler concluded, “on that occasion was weakened and considered to be obstinacy.”⁵

About This Series

This post is part of a series entitled “The Reformation at 500: Timeline of the Free-Church Movement.” Click here for more information on this series.

Featured image courtesy of the Wick’sche Sammlung, ca. 1575, Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Ms. F 23, fol. 294.

Illustration of the Third Disputation on Baptism in Zurich’s Grossmünster by Heinrich Thomann, in Heinrich Bullinger, Kopienband zur zürcherischen Kirchen- und Reformationsgeschichte (Zurich, 1605-06), Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Ms B 316, f. 223v.     

1. See Bullinger account in The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents, ed. Leland Harder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1985), 433. ↩︎
2. Bullinger account and Kessler, Sabbata, in Harder, 433-434. ↩︎
3. Bullinger account in Harder, 433. ↩︎
4. Bullinger account and Kessler, Sabbata, in Harder, 433, 434. ↩︎
5. Kessler, Sabbata, in Harder, 435. ↩︎