End of October-December, 1523

Following the Second Doctrinal Disputation, the Zurich Council issued a mandate on images and the Mass, striking a compromise between the conservative and reformist parties in the city.  On the one hand, it showed the majority of the council’s theological leanings toward Zwingli’s objection to devotional imagery by forbidding the placement of any more icons, altarpieces, or sculptures in the churches. Zwingli had been teaching that God does not want to be worshipped through images and that artwork of the saints directed most people’s attention away from worshipping God directly—becoming “idols” rather than icons. But on the other hand, the Council also showed concern for the feelings of conservatives by forbidding anyone to destroy or carry images out of the churches without the permission of the persons who had contributed them to the church.  This was a matter of respect for fellow parishioners: the Council recognized that many people had emotional attachments to images in the churches, especially the family members of the artists who had made them—under the impression that their handiwork was an expression of honor to God—or the family members of the patrons who had commissioned the art—under the impression that their donations were also pleasing to God and would aid their fellow members in the devotions that the Church had once encouraged. Regarding the Mass, the Council said “it shall remain as it is now, and no one shall malign or bait another with any kind of malicious provocative words.”¹ Knowing that some reform-minded citizens had started to publicly scoff at the celebration of the Mass, the councilors hoped to prevent any disturbances during services.

But the compromise did not manage to convince all citizens to hold their peace. By mid-December reports came to the Zurich Council that agitators for reform had taken some liturgy books—which priests relied on to recite the Mass—out of a church and tore pages out of them.  And when one priest broke the bread to celebrate a congregation’s Mass, someone called him “the butcher of God,” mocking the medieval doctrine that Christ’s body and blood was physically present in the bread and wine.  In response, the Council reissued its mandate, threatening to “severely punish” disturbers of the peace.² But it also took a further step in the direction of reform: it ordered that images should no longer be carried in processions on saints’ feast days and that altarpiece panels in the churches should be closed. It also allowed that images could be removed from parish churches if “a majority of the parish agrees to do this, and all of this without any insult, mockery and malice…that could wantonly offend anyone.”³  This provision for local congregations to decide on a matter of worship by majority vote would prove to be consistent for the free-church movement’s concept of church governance: governance would be congregationally-organized and emerge from the laity.  

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.

1. The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents, ed. Leland Harder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1985), 251. ↩︎
2. Ibid., 269. ↩︎
3. Ibid., 273. ↩︎