All right, the handout two, it's a little different. Think of this today as my notes. It's not in handout form like before, but there's so many quotes and primary sources that I wanted to bring out that I just didn't have time to put all those typing in there. So I'll try to correct some of the misspelled words and things as I go along. But this is basically just my notes, and I want you to have these so that you'll have some of these resources.
But don't think of it as a handout so much as we've had in the days previous. With Conrad Grebel, and we'll talk about him in a second, there's no one been more researched than him. As a matter of fact, Harold S. Bender, fortunately, the man who really helped Mennonite Anabaptist history in this last century, he made it his personal goal to dig as much as he could out of Harold S. Bender. I think he did his doctoral dissertation on Harold S. Bender, I'm not sure. But nevertheless, he did a lot of research.
And there was something that makes our detail on Grebel more than everyone else was the fact that he wrote a bunch of letters to a teacher that he had by the name of Vadian. And these letters, fortunately, were well preserved. At the end of his life, Vadian took those things and put them, and they ended up in the archives in Switzerland. And so we have these little personal letters that he wrote. We have the personal letters that he wrote when he was a young, non-born-again student in Paris.
I'm going to share some of those. And we have the ones as he kept struggling all through his time with Zwingli to the beginning of the radical Reformation with the early Anabaptists. And those struggles come out in those letters. And so it's impressive that we have those. We don't really have those that much detail for, I don't think, hardly anybody else. It's a rare accomplishment that we even have that. Bender considers Conrad Grebel to be the founder of the Anabaptist movement. That's hotly debated these days.
Well, there were different places where it was started. There was also a Holland start and an Austria, different areas of Germany start. But to make it easy and to make the down to the point, I think that whether or not he founded it or not, the fact is he had a definite role to play in the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. And as you can kind of see, they didn't just come out of nowhere. The whole point of last week was to try to develop the fact that they were coming along.
And this birthed into this thing that happened here with the Anabaptists, which is a part of our heritage today. So let's start off, though, with Zwingli, because you can't talk about the early Swiss Brethren, the early Anabaptists, without talking about Zwingli. Zwingli was the priest that was there in Zurich, became the pastor there in Zurich, which had all the run-ins with the early Anabaptists. So to understand them, we'll talk about Zwingli. Oh, did you not get one? Sorry. There you go.
Little picture of young Zwingli there on your handout. He was a mountain man from peasant stock, born up in the mountains about 40 miles outside of Zurich. He was born in 1484. Now, that's just a few years before what in our common history of America? Yeah, 1492, Columbus discovered America. So just kind of give you a time frame. Sometimes you don't try to think of what's going on. But that's the kind of time that these people were born in, born in 1484. He had seven brothers and six sisters.
As a child, he learned to play six instruments. Zwingli was born of common stock, but his parents were able to afford to send him to some of the finest universities in Switzerland. They spent their money on trying to make sure their children had that kind of an education. He was a good student. Did well in school at the University of Vienna and entered there in the winter semester of 1498. But he was a sinner. And he lived a wicked life, which he even later confessed. And he was actually expelled from Vienna.
He re-enrolled in the summer semester of 1500. His activities in 1499 are unknown. Zwingli continued his study in Vienna until 1502, after which he transferred to the University of Basel, where he received his Master of Art degree in 1506. After that, he was ordained as a priest and got his first parish assignment. Now, here's something that happened in his first assignment. In those days, the Swiss were famous for their mercenaries, which means people who were paid to be soldiers.
It's one thing to be a soldier when people are attacking your country, but it's another thing to actually—that's your job. So you have whole groups and guilds of people who different princes would hire you to fight their battles over here and hire them to fight their battles over there. And everybody loved the Swiss mercenaries. As a matter of fact, has anybody ever seen pictures of the Vatican? And you see those Swiss guards? That's still in memory of the Swiss mercenaries that they used.
As a matter of fact, it was the Swiss guards that defended Rome in 1527, in which those guards still commemorate. But that whole idea of these Swiss mercenaries was common in Switzerland. And actually, it was very much part of their economy. They did so much of it that it made up a part of the way you made money in Switzerland. But he saw some brutal things in his first assignment. And he wrote about it and preached about it. And it got him a little bit into trouble.
In 1515, he witnessed the slaughter of 6,000 men of his Swiss countrymen and mercenaries. He thought that this was wicked. And he cried out and he said, "We're selling blood for gold." You need to add an L there into your thing. I wrote blood for God. Blood for gold. However, a lot of people actually liked this. And he got in trouble with that. And also probably because of his sinful life. He was still living a very wicked life with different women and things like that.
And all those things combined got him kicked out of his first assignment there as his parish priest. The next place he went to, he went to a priest that was—I mean, excuse me, he went to assignment that was a much bigger church assignment. And there it had a big shrine to the Virgin Mary. And it was a very typically Catholic place. And he was able to see some of those abuses that he was there. He exchanged scholarly letters with a circle of Swiss humanists and began to study the writings of Erasmus.
So he began to be that writing that we talked about Erasmus and all this new talk of humanism and just practical sense. Surely this isn't the way men should live, is the kind of thing he was attracted to. Zwingli took the opportunity to meet Erasmus while Erasmus was there in his town in Basel. He was there between August of 1514 and May of 1516. Zwingli ended up taking a kind of a pacifist idea with war. And I believe that can be traced to his influence on Erasmus. And then in 1516, remember what happened?
I doubt you remember. I wouldn't remember. But in 1516, Erasmus printed that Greek Latin New Testament. Remember that? And like I said, it was revolutionary in their time. Remember, there had not been a different version of the Bible translated for over 1,000 years. Well, Zwingli loved this. And this whole idea of the Bible in Greek was revolutionary to him.
He said, "Nothing but God will prevent me from acquiring Greek, not for the sake of fame, but for the sake of the Scriptures." And it's said that he actually hand-copied many of the epistles of Paul and would carry them around with him. And he would memorize the New Testament in Greek. And he began to be a very good student of the Bible. After that assignment, he started growing a little bit of popularity and such. And he ended up getting a job at the church in Zurich.
On January 1, 1519, which was his birthday, he was born on January 1, he gave his first sermon in Zurich. Deviating from the practice in that day, what they would usually do—and it still happens in Anglican churches today, Episcopalian churches today, Catholic churches—is that they would have a certain lectern that you would read the Bible readings. This is what we're going to read. But he decided, "I'm going to do something different." And again, this was something new. It was something exciting at the time.
He said, so he went to make his announcement. And everybody there gathered around to see this new priest, what's he going to be like. And he opened his huge Bible. And he said, "Starting tomorrow, I'm beginning to preach. I'm going to begin to preach through the entire Bible, through the entire New Testament, beginning at the book of Matthew, section by section at a time." This was something completely new. It was the beginning of expository preaching.
And so he just opened the Bible and began to preach the word of God to the people. And they loved it. Now, remember, this was a time when the church hardly—no one even hardly ever heard the Bible. The priest didn't even have a Bible. And now a man was going to stand in our pulpit and begin to preach the Bible word for word. This is 1519. Who can say what happened just a few years earlier in 1517? To kind of give you the idea of the atmosphere of the day. 1517, October 31st, what happened? Yeah, yeah.
Luther's thesis was nailed to the Wittenberg Castle Church door on Halloween night, October 31st, 1517. To give you the tone, this is now 1519. All that's starting to happen that we read about—I mean, read about Luther yesterday. And now we're getting to the point with this Reformation spreading. And Zwingli's part of wants to get in on this act and begin to talk about this new exciting thing that's coming out by reading the Bible.
He continues to read and interpret the books on subsequent Sundays until he reached the end of the Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament epistles. Later, especially when he started to have differences with the Anabaptists who were challenging him, he went to the Old Testament and ended up spending the rest of his whole life reading the Old Testament. Had sort of a bad effect on him.
The early Anabaptists was one of the ones, kind of like the Waldensian did, that they emphasized the New Testament, particularly Jesus Christ, was the interpretation of the Old Testament and such. So he's there. Things are going on. He's got great success. People are finally flocking into the church. And the story says that as he's out in the—well, they have some bath resort areas that Zwingli would go out to.
They came and told him the announcement, "The plague has hit Zurich." He came back to Zurich and started there with his people and spent the time there. There's different stories about how much time he spent with the actual sick people. I think he was certainly involved in that way. And through all this, unfortunately, Zwingli ended up contracting the plague himself and almost died. And this made a profound effect on Zwingli. It came to the point where he was actually thinking he was going to die.
And he started writing a few songs or poems. Excuse me. Here is one of those poems, the end of the one where you can see that he was thinking he was going to die. He wrote this, "Thy purpose fulfill. Nothing can be too severe for me. I am thy vessel. For you to make whole or break to pieces. Since if you take hence my spirit from this earth, you do it so that it will not grow evil and will not mar the pious lives of others." So again, it was a very pious way.
He looked to the will of God as being able to take him or leave him. And fortunately for Zwingli, I guess, is that he pulled through. And he seemed to have a healing. And so he attributed that to God, of course. Everyone did in those days. Again, the plague was not just something that you caught from a little bacteria from a rat, a flea off the back of a rat. It was something that was a curse from God. And so when you were healed of that, of course, you would see it as God's favor on you.
So about 1521, he started to make good progress in the Reformation in Zurich. And he was making his plans to start a Bible college. He had started gathering young men around him who wanted to start to study with him. Again, to give you the—to remind you, the Reformation now was also building in Europe. Luther now was starting to inflame Rome. The excommunication is going around. And now they're starting all that talk about heading to Worms with all his inflammatory writings.
Well, these writings are also getting to Zurich. And he wants to get in on that and starts to talk about this wonderful thing that's happening by us discovering the Bible. By November of 1521, he meets a young vagabond by the name of Conrad Grebel. And he joins his group. And this group, Zwingli praised pacifism in this early day. It was a very early day. Still very much under the Erasmian influence. Harold S. Bender said that he praised pacifism and the early Christian community of goods.
He stated that even that unbaptized children were not damned and that infant baptism had no scriptural support. Those are some of the things he was saying in those early meetings there with those early Anabaptists. So things are growing. There's a publisher in Zurich by the name of Froschhauer. And the word Frosch in Swiss was the word frog. And he made this kind of a—he'd always make a big to-do about his name. And when you go to Zurich today, they have a statue with his name on there as a frog and all that.
As a matter of fact, when we were there—I was with your dad and all that—and we were looking for this printing press that used to be there. And we heard that Zurich still has this place where Froschhauer had his printing press. And what I'm about to share here is that this Froschhauer, he started taking these writings of Luther and these tracts and things and started to spread them around Zurich. Well, when I was there over there this last summer, it's funny. We started looking for it.
We go down the street, Froschhauer Street and all that. We were looking for it. And finally, I couldn't find this place. But everybody kept saying, "Oh, it's around here somewhere. It's around there somewhere." And finally, somebody gave me the directions that it was in this movie theater place. It plays these, I guess, movies. So we walked in there. I believe it was your dad and Dave Bercot and myself. And the guy was there on the counter. And we were asking him about this place.
"Did you know there's somewhere around here there was a printing press in the 1500s that was famous for the reform of the city and everything?" And it's funny, this guy that was at the counter, he said, "Well, I don't know. I don't know of anything like that." And then all of a sudden, he goes, "Wait a minute. I'll show you a picture of this tomorrow, hopefully." So he takes us out. And he said, "Wait a minute." And he takes us out on the street. And we look up.
And he said, "Is that him?" And there was this big painting of Froschhauer on the wall in front of this movie theater. And that, sure enough, was it. And this printing press was there. And it was a hotbed of pouring out these radical teachings that were from the early Lutherans and even from the early Anabaptists. And he printed the Froschhauer Bible from that place, which began to be controversial. It was a Bible written in the Swiss dialect. All right.
But while they were there one night, and starting to make all these radical changes, Zwingli's starting to preach the pulpit, one more challenge after another, one more challenge. The monasteries are starting to get abuse to them in certain areas. People are complaining and all that. And while they're in this place there, this Froschhauer's printing shop, it's getting late at night. They're working on their papers and everything. But it's lent now. Does anybody know what lent is? What is the lenten season?
Does anybody know that? In the Roman Catholic Church and all the Catholic churches, they would have a fast period before Easter. And during that time, you would have a 40-day fast. And it's not usually a complete fast. But in those days, it was actually a legal thing. You could only eat certain foods. And one thing you could not do, particularly on Friday, but during that particular parts of the lenten fast is you couldn't eat meat. Well, here they're starting to talk about all these rituals and all that thing.
And here they're printing all this stuff right there. And the owners of the shop there start bringing out a plate of sausage. And it may seem like a small thing to us, but it was actually a huge deal. So he starts carving out this sausage and handing it to everybody. And they start eating this sausage here during this lenten time. Now, it got around that they did this. And it caused a big to-do. It says here, "The first public controversy regarding Zwingli's preaching broke out during the lenten season in 1522.
On the first fasting Sunday, March 9, Zwingli and about a dozen other participants consciously transgressed the fasting rule by cutting and distributing two smoked sausages. This happened at Christoph Froschhauer's workshop. Zwingli defended the act in a sermon which was published in April 16th under the title Regarding the Choice and Freedom of Foods." Just to give you an idea. Do you have a question? Did Zwingli actually partake? It seems. I was trying to read that also.
He was at least there and letting it go on. The couple who crossed this, he did not partake. Oh, it just says he did not partake. Okay. He just did. And some actually got imprisoned. And then he. Thank you very much. Yeah. He actually kind of got scot-free just because he didn't partake. But then he actually kind of he preached about it. And so it's okay. Yeah. Right. He supported it. He supported it. Like Jacob said, they actually got thrown in jail over this. They think, "Hey, it's a big deal.
They're eating sausage." And he got thrown in jail. Jacob's reminding us that in the writings, it doesn't say that Zwingli actually ate it. But he was there present and supported the eating of this sausage. Seems a bit ridiculous. Yes. But that's the kind of practices that he had. Now, this was common. Some of these Catholic things go way back in history. I mean, a 40-day fast before Easter actually dates way back into the early church.
Now, some of this rigorous stuff with this food and not that food or this food or that food, you didn't have. But it actually does have some early history to it. So breaking with that was a serious thing. But this just gives you an idea of the tone of things that were in the time of these people. All right. I'm going to come back. And we'll get Zwingli later. But let's start talking about the young Conrad Grebel. All right. I wrote there in my notes that, again, we have fortunately 69 letters written by this man.
They've been preserved. They were written between September of 1517 and July of 1525. Two were written to Zwingli, one to Thomas Müntzer, that radical guy who was doing the peasant revolt, and one to a coworker named Andreas Castelberger of Zurich. 56 letters were written to Vadian. And that's where we get most of these very interesting details.
Bender said, "Most of these letters, however, were written during Grebel's student years at Vienna and Paris and throw practically no light on the important phase of his life as an Anabaptist leader." I disagree. I think some of these quotes from his early life, I think, are interesting to me. Because what they show me is that a young man who may be struggling through something in his life can still find God and do something very impressive. And I'm going to bring out just a few of those quotes so that you can see.
A little bit about his education. First, let me skip over to his prominent family. Conrad Grebel, this is the next page. Conrad Grebel was born in 1498 as the second of six children of Jacob Grebel and his wife Dorothy Fries. For a century and a half, the Grebel family had been one of the leading families of the city of Zurich, one of the small number of wealthy patrician families of a lesser-landed nobility who had for years directed the political, economic, and military affairs of the city.
The family had always had one or more members in the city council and usually furnished the guild masters for one of the aristocratic merchant guilds. Grebel had frequently served as magistrate, his father. And for two generations before the Reformation, no important political event took place in Zurich in which a Grebel did not have a part.
The most influential of all the Grebels was Jacob, his father, a wealthy iron merchant who reached the peak of his successful career in politics in the first year of the Reformation. He was just coming to his peak. He came from a very wealthy—I mean, a moderately wealthy. I mean, not like the kings and things. A moderately wealthy, but certainly a very influential family. He had relatives in the monastery. He had people that were in all parts of this place. And in Zurich, it only had about 6,000 inhabitants.
So you can imagine that Conrad Grebel knew just about everybody in the town. I don't know. Maybe it's kind of like living in Lancaster County. I've noticed that you can't go to Walmart. You can't go somewhere without knowing somebody there. And it's probably even more so in their day that everywhere he went, people would have known him. So when you start to think of the things that he did and things that he accomplished, it kind of makes you ponder in a different way, understanding that everybody knew him.
Everybody knew his father. Everybody knew his mother. And everybody knew his dog. And that in what he was doing, they either said, "Well, that's because he's always been that way," or something like that. So, of course, you could imagine his prestigious father, one of the very best for his young son, Conrad. Okay. Conrad's education—back to page three there. Conrad grew up in the castle of Gruningen, a few miles east of Zurich, where his father was a magistrate during Conrad's boyhood days.
He actually grew up in the castle there. His education must have begun in Latin schools of the Grossmunster Church in Zurich, known as the Carolina, because it was supposed to have been founded by Charlemagne. The whole story of the Grossmunster is that Charlemagne decided that he wanted a church there because years earlier, centuries earlier, before Charlemagne, Charlemagne was crowned king of the Holy Roman Empire in the year 800. And it first started this whole concept of these Germanic people.
But centuries earlier, the legend was that there was two people, nobility, out there living in this area by the name of Felix and Regula. And as they were there and also their slave. And as they were there, persecution came in. And these new leaders of this area had decided to accept Christianity. But persecution came in. And they ended up getting in trouble. And they ended up getting their heads chopped off. So when they chopped their heads off, the story goes that the heads chopped off.
But then Felix and Regula and the slave went and picked up the heads and walked over a little bit, kneeled down, and prayed for their persecutors. So if you ever see pictures of Zurich, the seal of Zurich, it has a bunch of guys without heads cut their heads off holding a head. If you ever see the picture, that's why. And that's why you see people named names like Felix and Regula are some of the most common names for people who were born in Zurich.
Constantine—excuse me—Charlemagne, years later, says he's out on a hunting trip. And as he's there, he goes and he sees in something like the story that he goes to shoot a deer. And the deer is kneeling down at this spot. And he realizes that this is the spot that this happened, where these people got their heads chopped off. And so he consecrates this place. "We're going to build a church there." And that's the spot of the Grossmunster that all this stuff happened. That's the spot where this thing happened.
All right. So that's the area that he grew up with. It's a very attractive church. I'll show you pictures of that as the week goes on. All right. His university career began in October 1514 when he went for the winter semester at the University of Basel. The newer humanism was just beginning to come in. Glarean, the outstanding Swiss humanist of the younger school, had just come to Basel and established a bursar or a boarding school academy.
This was the idea people would go there and just study all the time, kind of like coming to Faith Builders and study under these certain teachers, especially these humanist teachers. Since all the students of the philosophical faculty were required to live in one of the numerous areas, numerous little community houses, Grebel joined this little group. And fortunately, Glarean was an excellent teacher.
And under this tutelage, the young Grebel was introduced for the first time to the world of humanist learning and teaching. Basel was barely beginning to come into its glory as a humanist center. Erasmus had come two months before in August 1514 to remain there through winter. So this was really a hub of learning there. But through this time, his father, though, wanted him to have some influence with something other than just the Swiss. And so he got him a chance to go to study in France, in Paris.
But here's an interesting little thing that ended up happening that caused some trouble later on. That in those days, France and Switzerland, they had some problems—maybe still to this day—had some difficulty getting along. But the king of France always wanted these mercenaries. And so he had to keep good relationships with the Swiss. And so they would pay some of these merchants.
They would pay some of these leaders to kind of influence them to, "Hey, be friendly with France so you don't forget about us." Well, one of those people that kind of took a little payoff was his dad. Now, it wasn't a payoff totally against the country. All it was was a stipend, a scholarship for his son to go to college in Paris. And it bothered Conrad a little bit. And as he discusses that with his father, he discusses that, "I don't know if this is right." And his father said, "Well, here's the thing.
Citizens of Zurich are not allowed to take money for scholarships to go to Paris. But when you're a student, you're not really a citizen. And so we can take the money. And you can go to Paris." Besides, everybody's doing it. Some of the leading priests of Grossmunster are doing it. Everybody's doing it. So just go to Paris and stop worrying about it. So he did. He took the money from Emperor Maximilian. And Conrad Grebel made it to Paris.
Before that, in the same time period, would drink more to excess than even some of his friends. And one day, he got into a brawl so bad that some of these French students were killed. And it was terrible. It didn't seem like he himself did the killing. But it was something that put a mark on him and infuriated his father again. It was a low moment for him, a very low moment. He also suffered from illness due to his loose living.
And finally, his father, becoming incensed at reports that he had received from him, cut out all the money that he was sending him. It was a low moment. And as a moment of introspection, in one of the letters, he wrote to Vadian, his old friend, and confessed to him that he believed that some of the pains and sicknesses that he was having were due to some of the diseases that he had incurred from his loose living with the parties and things of Paris. He had muscle cramps. He had boils and sores on his back.
His feet would ache. And his joints would swell, sometimes to the point where he couldn't write. And of course, we don't know for sure what he had. But he attributed himself to his terrible living that he had there in his life in Paris. He asked Vadian to keep that confession to himself. And even Vadian began to threaten his friendship and practically ceased writing to him.
Under the blows of fate and circumstances, Grebel lost heart and returned home to Zurich, his high hopes disappointed without completing his studies or securing any kind of degree. It was the end of his student days that he determined to seek a reconciliation with his parents and Vadian in hopes for some career in his home city.
Although his self-confidence had been badly shaken and his inner life was full of conflict, he signed one of his letters in that day, "Conrad Grebel of Zurich, a poor, little, miserable friend of yours." That's what he wrote to Vadian. And that's the way he felt of himself. A loser. And why do I bring out these facts? Because God's about to redeem this loser. And every one of us in this room can be thanked of what God had did in this young man's life. And so don't ever give up on people.
God didn't give up on Conrad Grebel. And let's not give up on people. At the university, he did learn Latin, Greek, and probably Hebrew. Learned to write Latin well and to appreciate the great classic writers and scholars. But he failed to acquire any new religious concerns or attitude. "He did not become a pagan," Harold S. Bender says. "For he retained his traditional faith in his church and her dogma. But neither did he become an Erasmian reformer. Waiting to go home, he needed the money.
And he was upset when Vadian married his sister. And he didn't even have the money to go to the wedding." So then he finally, though, makes his way back to get back to town. He gets back to Zurich. And it's a hotbed of things that are starting to go on. Three weeks after his return to Zurich, the town is buzzing with the fact that the pope wants all of Luther's writings to be found and burned. So he's just getting into town, all this excitement.
And that they want now to actually hire some more people for mercenaries to go fight the northern Italy. And Zwingli, as he was in his other Paris assignment, is not liking this at all and says, "We're not going to do that." And he convinces the city council. And the city council says no to all the pope's desires there. His father had made plans for Conrad to go to Pisa then to study there.
And so he actually got—first, he was complaining one of his reasons to come back home was, "Besides, I feel terrible about receiving this money from Maximilian." Well, his father got a scholarship to go to Pisa. And he goes, "Oh, okay. I'll go to Pisa." So then he decided to go to Pisa. But then something changed in his life. Not a conversion yet. But something changed. He decided not to go to Pisa because he met a young lady. He met a beautiful young lady by the name of Barbara.
And it would seem that his plans to go to study in Pisa were changed by his falling in love with this girl named Barbara. Apparently, she was beautiful. But there was one big problem with Barbara. As so classic in this time period, she wasn't of noble birth. It was beneath her to marry a woman like this. It would be to marry someone beneath you. And besides that, in those days, it wasn't just about the noble birth. When you married someone, you got their dowry. You got money.
So your one chance to marry good is to marry someone who has this big dowry. And it can kind of get you started in life. You go marry a poor woman, you're starting off on a pretty bad foot. But Conrad Grebel was in love. It's 1521. And he is now 23 years old. He needs to start doing something if he starts to think about marriage. At odds with his father, he finally decides to leave home and to seek a career as a proofreader in Basel. But this project, likewise, did not succeed.
And after only two months in the printing establishment, from August and September to 1521, he returned to Zurich. And when he returned, he hoped to break down the bitter opposition of his parents to his proposed marriage. His father did actually say, "When you're in Basel, when you're there, feel free. If you need a mistress or something, we'll help pay for that. If you need a mistress, that's okay.
But marrying someone beneath you would be absolutely unacceptable." Failing in this of convincing his parents that this would be okay, he suddenly went through his marriage in February of 1522. He did it one day when his father was gone. His father had left down on a big business trip. And when his father was gone on the big business trip, he went and married Barbara. And the family was not happy. His mother, it says, was just furious. And she was crying and bawling.
When the father came home, he, of course, was upset as well. The break with his family was complete and was only partially restored that he can have relationships by the mediation of one of the city pastors and an associate of Zwingli. This was the same year. This was 1522. And just to give you a reminder, this is when Luther had finished his discourse there in Worms. And Karlstadt now in Wittenberg was starting to offer up the sacrifice of the mass in two different forms.
And the Reformation was beginning to kick in. Zwingli now is doing this in Zurich. Conrad Grebel is newly married. And that's the atmosphere that we have. But then in 1522, the change. But first, a three-minute break. And we'll come back. And we'll hear the rest of the story. If somebody can bring— All right. What we're going to get into now is the seeds of what birthed the Anabaptists, the change in Conrad Grebel's life and these early radicals. And so it's an impressive scene.
And I'm going to, again, try to bring out some of these sources. Again, remember the purpose here. We're not skimming over the top. All of this usually makes, if we're lucky, one footnote in a Reformation history book. You know what I mean? For us, it matters. And so we're going deeper into some of these different writings and letters to understand their soul, to understand their struggles in a better way.
And so that's why I'm going to bring you—I'm going to bring out several letters, a book that your pastor gave me. Conrad Grebel, son of Zurich, has lots of those early letters that are found nowhere else in print. And then The Cup and the Cross, I very much appreciate many of the quotes that they bring out. And I'm going to be repeating some of those here in this section. The 1522 change. Newlywed Conrad Grebel, unfortunately, didn't keep a journal. But what we have of him, the letters, are wonderful.
But he's newlywed. And they ended up with a child pretty soon. We don't have the details of his conversion. But the conversion is obvious. Bender says, "In 1522 marked an epoch for Conrad Grebel, which led to the transformation of his entire life." He said, and I have underlined, "Unfortunately, there is a hiatus—" I mean, a pause—"in his correspondence for nine months during this vital period. But from the middle of the year of 1522, it is evident that Grebel was a changed man.
Now, he was deeply interested in the progress of the evangelical cause in Zurich. He became an ardent partisan of Zwingli and his reform program. He started to just go to Zwingli. And he wanted to hear what Zwingli had to say. He wanted to be a part of this circle. He wanted to hear those things that Zwingli was talking about.
The spirit and atmosphere, as well as the content of Zwingli's further correspondence, are so radically different from what they were before that we must believe that a genuine conversion and renewal of his life took place somewhere during the spring of 1522. Bender suggests the explanation is not far to seek. Grebel was won by the powerful gospel preaching of Ulrich Zwingli, is his hypothesis. And I think it's a decent hypothesis. Zwingli was bringing in lots of people who were changing their life.
And so I think it's a decent theory. Nevertheless, you do see an absolutely different man in his letters now. And during this conversion—it's now 1522—Conrad Grebel didn't know he had four years to live. And in the next four years, he would do something that people are still talking about today. It just makes you ponder your life sometimes. You think everything's going to go on this way or that way. And what purpose does God have in my life?
All that wrestling of his years, all those things, God seemed to have his hand on him. But now, four years left, God is working in Conrad Grebel's life to do something extraordinary. Henceforth, until his untimely death in the summer of 1526, he was suddenly a new man.
At this time, he showed a laser-sharp purpose, direction, and leadership in the forefront of those who were bringing in the new era, first for a year and a half as an enthusiastic supporter of Zwingli, and then for over two years as the founder of the new Anabaptist movement. During those years, these early months of 1522, a very close friendship developed between Zwingli and Grebel.
Zwingli, apparently, during that time, he was hoping to start a school, kind of like Calvin did there in Zurich, where people would come and study the Bible. He actually was going to have Conrad Grebel be one of these teachers at the school. He even had Conrad Grebel writing a poem at the end of one of Zwingli's new books. And so they had this very good relationship. And it was something that was growing more and more between the two. He and Barbara soon had their first child. And they named the boy Theophile.
It's a Latin name. But you can start to see his conversion. It means lover of God. He continued to study the Bible. And he began to feel the aches of a genuine calling. But he strived to know the Bible even more. He did not feel that he knew the Bible enough. So now, he starts to get in on this Reformation. At this time now, and I'm about to read you some quotes, you're starting to get the trouble in Zurich. The priests are starting—some of the priests are getting upset. The monks are particularly getting upset.
And they're starting to protest about Zwingli's change. Conrad Grebel's there with Zwingli. And he says, "I want to be a part of that preaching. I want to be the one that can make a difference with bringing in the truth of the gospel." And here's one of the letters that he wrote to Vadian, to kind of get you an idea of this still young, zealous, but now believer.
He says this: "He said, 'I'd like to take those blasphemers myself, if only I knew the scripture better.' Oh, my dear Vadian, if only you knew what a burning passion I feel to attack this kind of wolves, to the point that I don't even hold my life dear, if I could get a chance to condemn these men publicly. I wish everybody would pray for me, that I would be able to get into this work. And I mean in earnest.
I won't say much more about it because a wagonload of words would not be adequate to express how strongly I feel. Sometime, I'll prove that I'm serious about this by doing something about it. The entire church in St. Gallen, which belongs to Christ, goodbye, Vadian, evangelically." And that was his letter. A different Conrad Grebel, huh? And you can just see this young man who wants to preach. He's got a call on his life. But he feels the frustration, "I've got to know the Bible more.
I've got to have more." And remember, he only had four years to live. And this is an interesting little letter that comes out. Just to read you a quote now from The Cup and the Cross on page 34, again, giving you some of the details of this time period. 34 on The Cup and the Cross, the writer says, "Several of Zwingli's young adherents, including Conrad Grebel, interrupted the monks' sermons when they taught unscriptural doctrine.
Zwingli followed their example, at least once, the resulting in a monk leaving the monastery and supporting Reformation teaching." We're going to hear tomorrow about the famous incident of George Blaurock, how he interrupted the church. It was kind of the thing to do. People quoting Zwingli, Conrad Grebel, would say, "Excuse me. You're not preaching the Bible properly." And that was something they did in that time period. And here's the quote. And I'm so glad they put it here in this book.
"On Saturday, July 12th, a tall, erect, barefoot friar, Franz Lambert by name, came from Avignon and was given permission to preach four sermons. And in the fourth sermon, he referred also to the intercession of Mary and the saints. He requested a debate with Master Ulrich Zwingli. For before and during the last sermon, Zwingli had interrupted him publicly, saying, 'Brother, you are in error there.'" You can imagine the scene.
So he said, "Well, let's have a debate." Thus, on Wednesday, July 17th, toward 10 o'clock in the barroom of the canons, they began to debate until after lunch around 2 o'clock. Master Ulrich brought along the Old Testament in the Greek and Latin and got the monks to the point of raising both hands. I wonder what that meant. I don't know. Thankfully, God—thanking God, raising both hands, thanking God, and saying that he would, in all his needs, call only to God and abandon all coronas and rosaries and follow God.
The next morning, he rode to Basel to see Erasmus of Rotterdam also, and from Basel to Wittenberg to Dr. Martin Luther, who was an Augustinian monk. There, he discarded his robes and married a wife." And so just to give you an example there of what he was going through. And so it's an incredible time that they were having. During this time—and this is one you're only going to get here. How did it feel now? Now, Grebel was still pretty poor, even though he's part of this big, rich family.
But they didn't have a lot of money. They were a noble family. But it was a nice house. It's still there. But now, he's living there in the home with his mom, whose dad's away all the time. And sometimes, the whole leave and cleave thing needs to be taught, you know what I'm saying? And he seems to be having some struggles with his mother. And he begins to get burdened about the soul of his mother. So still living at home, Conrad grows very concerned about her.
And he writes this to Vadian, "She's ungodly towards me. And to my wife, she's downright rabid. I actually fear for her salvation unless she puts on Christ and becomes a new creature, born again by the divine Spirit. And now, the time is drawing close when most people eat the body of Christ unworthily, if they haven't forgiven the trespasses of others in a brotherly spirit.
O Christ, send Vadian, or someone like him, the teacher from your truth, to give up such ungodliness and to teach me patience." It's an interesting insight into the home life of Conrad Grebel. Why do I bring that up? In life, we get little irritants in our life. Bad things will happen. Things will go wrong. And sometimes, you wonder, "God, why is this happening? Why am I going through this?" It would seem that even things like this were working.
God was using it, not causing it, but using it to shape young Conrad into a way. And I appreciate his burden. Although I'm sure there were dynamics in the home there that went both ways. But nevertheless, I still see a burden for her soul and wants her to be born again by the Spirit of God. The Roman prelates around there are still complaining about the Reformation about the Reformation in Zurich. So the council decides to have a hearing. And here's an important thing that happens.
Zwingli decides, "Well, let's have a city council to decide what these Roman monks and all things are going to say." Well, he asked the council to do that. They're flattered that they're asked to do that. But it set a precedent that gave us the Anabaptist. Because what is he doing? "So we're going to have a city council. And we'll decide what to do about these complaints of the Roman Catholic Church against our church." A very serious thing happened. The city was asked.
Now, the first debate, the authority of the state. On January 29th, 1523, the debate begins. Zwingli had penned 67 theses against Rome and challenged anyone to prove him wrong. And getting into points of theology, the bishop makes an interesting reply. The bishop's person there makes an interesting reply. He said that the types of issues that were being decided cannot be decided in a city council. The Roman guy sent from the Roman side was arguing that this type of thing cannot be handled by a city council.
He said, "These are topics to be discussed by the church." Zwingli scorns this position. And he says to the audience that everyone should read the Bible, either in Latin or German. It's interesting that a village minister cries out, a village preacher cries out, "I don't have enough money to have a Bible." They didn't even have Bibles. And just to give you an idea of the attitude was there. Conrad leaves with Zwingli, of course, proclaiming himself as winner.
But a year later, did Conrad know that just a year later, this same point that the man from Rome, who was there to argue his points, that that same idea, "Well, can the city decide points of Christian doctrine?" Conrad and Barbara have their next son, Joshua. And they name him that because it means Yahweh is deliverance. And the Greek form is Jesus. And at the same time, Leo Jud, pastor of St. Peter, preaches a powerful sermon and starts to tear down images in the church at St. Peter's.
So things are getting hotter and hotter in Zurich. The close relationship between Grebel and Zwingli was maintained until the second Zurich disputation in October 1523. In this period, the views of the two men must have agreed in all essential respects. For instance, they debated on the idea of how the church can take tithes from the villages on one of the burning issues of the hour. Grebel indicated agreement with Zwingli.
During this time, he also formed a friendship with the young man student Felix Manz, a young Zurich student just returned from Paris, who had also joined the ranks of the Zwinglians and had become in January 1527 the first Anabaptist martyr. We'll read about that tomorrow. But then the second debate. Beginning, however, in the October 1523 disputation, a cleavage arose between Zwingli and Grebel, which gradually grew wider during the ensuing months until, in the fall of 1524, it led to a complete break.
So now, it kept going on. Well, are we going to make the changes or not? Are we going to make the reforms? Or are we not going to make the reforms? People like Leo Jud would say, "Well, I'm going to start preaching this." And people started ripping down images and stuff from the churches. And finally, the city council was saying, "Well, I don't know. I think we may be moving too fast." So they said, "Okay. Well, we're going to have another council. And we'll discuss it.
We'll have another city council to discuss it." 18 people showed—excuse me—800 people showed up for this. After that, iconoclasts were tearing down things off the wall, making it their own reform. The city council wanted to call a council to decide what changes they were going to make. And after proving the mass was wicked—Zwingli then goes on and proves very well that the mass was wicked—he then said that he was going to leave it to the city council to decide what they were going to do about it.
And he said, "I have it highlighted there in the notes. The city will discern how the mass should be properly observed." Now, what do you do about this? Now, what's so wrong about the mass? What's so wrong about it? The problem is, is their view, the Roman Catholic view, believed that when they were offering the mass, they were offering a sacrifice. And that not only the sacrifice, but they believed in something—we'll talk more about it tomorrow or the next day—transubstantiation.
And so when they hold that host up, they believed that not just a symbolic way, not just in a spiritual way like Zwingli did, but they believed that the host actually became Jesus when you read these certain words that the mass was reading.
And so because of that, it has—and I'll read it more tomorrow—still into the catechism of the Catholic Church today, it is actually okay when you see people holding these monstrances that you've seen them in pictures of Rome and stuff, that you can actually worship this host, this piece of bread, because Jesus is completely present in that bread. Still to this day, you are allowed to actually worship the communion wafer. So Zwingli made this how terrible this was.
And so, of course, these young, zealous Bible students were thinking, "Yeah, it is terrible. But we'll let the city decide whether we're going to keep doing it or not." Well, what do you mean? I mean, what do you do now? You've just proved this thing was totally wicked. And now, you're going to say that? Look to page 40 of The Cup and the Cross now. They have some good quotes here on the second disputation. They give a quote from the Chronicles of the Reform Chronicles there.
"Then arose Conrad Grebel and expressed the opinion that the priests should be given instructions while they were still together how henceforth to proceed with the mass, for it would be futile if they did not begin to change the mass. Much has been said about the mass. But there would be no one who would be willing to stop this great abomination to God." And that's when Zwingli said, "The council will discern how the mass should henceforth be properly observed." And then it happened.
"Thereupon, spoke Simon Stumpf, 'Master Ulrich, you have no authority to place the decision in the council's hand. For the decision is already made. The Spirit of God decides. If therefore the council were to discern and decide anything that is contrary to God's decision, I will ask Christ for the Spirit and will teach and act—I will ask Christ for His Spirit and will teach and act against it.'" Let me read that again.
"If therefore the council were to discern and decide anything that is contrary to God's decision, I will ask Christ for His Spirit and will teach and act against it," replied Zwingli. "That's right. I shall also preach and act against it if they decide otherwise. I do not give the decision into their hand." Interestingly enough, Zwingli agreed to them. Okay. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. Yeah. But he was so confident that the city council would agree with him.
Now, what do you think of this? Was it wisdom? Was it okay for the city to make these kinds of proclamations? Put yourselves in Zwingli's seat for a moment. What's he going to do? The Reformation's going a little bit crazy. He starts to hear about these things happening in Wittenberg. And he starts, no doubt, to be hearing about some of the different revolts that were happening in Wittenberg and all those types of things. Things are happening in excitement. And now, he's faced with this thing.
Well, how do you reform an entire city? And in his day—and it's a very important point—in his day, the church was the city, a geographic area. And that's the whole point of infant baptism. That's one of the points that they got to. The whole point of infant baptism is that the people of a Christian nation were the kingdom of God.
And the people of the Christian nation as a kingdom of God, who then would, if you were baptized, you would be—excuse me—when you were born, then you would be baptized and put into that kingdom. So they saw all these Christian nations, so to speak, as little as what they are as the Christian kingdom of God. So now, though, how do you make reforms in that area? So what do you think? What do you do? What would have been the right thing to do for Zwingli to do? Was he trapped? Could it have been done?
Could the only thing that had been done was the Anabaptist way? Or would there have been any other way to do it? How could you have reformed the entire town? Let's put ourselves in the shoes of Zwingli. What would you have done? All right. You're graded for class participation. What would you have done? Is it possible? Can you reform a town? They were obviously still thinking that they could. Right. I wonder how it would have turned out if the council would have decided in favor of them. Good question.
How would it have turned out if the council would have decided in favor of them? Well, then suddenly, "Hey, we're doing this." And that's what happened. And that's what happened with Luther. He ended up with the German government on his side. And so it began to go out that way, as we saw some of the effects of it. Anybody else? But I don't think that would have substantially reformed the town.
Because obviously, the council was still making political decisions based on their financial interests, economic things, and war and peace and all that. So they hadn't made the break. Obviously, Zwingli just couldn't see that. I don't know if I would have seen it. Yeah. I don't know if I would have seen it either. Here, Jacob's point was the whole idea that the city couldn't—they had so many different interests. They weren't just spiritual interests.
They were interested in economics, interested in different things. And they weren't looking at this from a spiritual perspective. But what do you do now with a doctrine like the mass? You see, you had a liturgy in Zurich. Everywhere, everybody, all your priests had to read the mass when they offer communion. And it meant something. The whole expression that we get in Latin—have you ever heard the term hocus pocus, people use for magic, as a term for magic? Hocus pocus, and they turn, take a rabbit out of the hat.
Okay. That actually, they believe, comes from what people would hear of Latin words said over the host. Because when they speak the words of institution over the wafer, they believed it truly becomes the body and the blood of Christ. And this is significant. I mean, it's still—I mean, in our culture, coming particularly from your place in life, it's still something—I mean, from here in grays and Mennonite areas and Anabaptist areas, you don't hardly see people that take this that seriously.
Maybe when we're here, Stephen Russell sometimes took people on one of the Sundays to a Latin mass service around here somewhere. He got us in there. And so maybe if you're interested, we could check that out on some Sunday. He did it as a class project. Had to write a paper and everything to it. But if you were interested, it's a surprising thing to see. I myself, when I was in the army, my first anniversary, my wife and I had a chance to go to Rome. And we visited the Vatican. And it was kind of interesting.
Because when we were there for $199, you got to take this bus tour. And it took you all around. It gave you your meals and everything. But it was Christmas. And since we were in Rome and it was Christmas, we wanted to see the Coliseum as one of the biggest things I really wanted to see. But it was closed for Christmas Day. So because of that, they were going to dump us off early at the Vatican. So I had a little more time to check out the Vatican when I was there.
And I was this young Baptist, young man in there checking out the Vatican. And it was interesting. And in my mind, when I'm reading some of these things, I'm seeing some of these images of how seriously they took that. For instance, I remember seeing a statue of Peter next to the high altar. And on the statue of Peter, it was brass or bronze. And his foot was wore down from everybody kissing it and venerating it, the image itself.
Later, I thought it would be a good place to put a little plaque that says, "Get up for I too am just a man." That's what Peter said. I looked under the high altar. And there is under the high altar a tomb under there, which they believe is Peter himself. David believes it's quite possible. It could be actually the bones of Peter. And there's an upside-down cross under there, sure enough. But Peter was buried up, crucified upside down.
But when you're there, the seriousness that they take over this thing—that's why it seems like you're arguing over the mass. Couldn't you wait? But it means a lot. It has a lot of meaning. As a matter of fact, an interesting thing—so we were there. Tania and I were there. And I'm up front. And I'm looking around. And it gets later and later towards midnight. And more people start showing up to church at the Vatican, to the point of the thousands and to the tens of thousands.
And there, Tania and I are sitting right up front. I think these are pretty good seats. And Pope John Paul comes out, and two archdeacons on either side of him. And he's doing this whole mass there in the Vatican on this midnight mass. And here I am, this little Baptist guy. I had this red polo shirt on. And I had my camera. And I was like, "This is great." And I'll never forget the Pope with his two archdeacons. They walked in the—and he offered the mass.
And then all of a sudden, this archdeacon took the wafer that the Pope blessed with all there. And he came over to me and handed me the host, just like that. And I said, "Oh, no. No. I don't want it." I'll never forget that dirty look. It was a look like, "Do you realize there are 10,000 people waiting in line here that would die to what you could have received?" I said, "No, no." Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if I had ever taken that. But I had enough Baptist in me to say, "No.
I don't want that." But it was interesting. And just to see the pomp and the ceremony and the seriousness that they took this issue. Now, I think sometimes we can make our communion much not meaningful enough. But nevertheless, the degree of veneration that they offer to these things is wrong. And so that's the kind of thing that they were dealing with. Okay.
Either we are doing something incredibly mysterious, and we're actually bringing in the very presence of Jesus Christ, not just spiritual presence, but the physical presence of Christ into our midst, or we're not. And if we're pretending like we're doing that in every church all around Zurich, then this is a problem. Even over the infant baptism, they had all these little ceremonies they complained about of putting on salt and all the different things that they did and all the little rituals they did.
All those things were still going on while this zealous group of Anabaptists were beginning to say, "How can you just keep doing this?" But Zwingli kept saying, "You're going too fast. You guys are radical. You need to slow down." Maybe they were. They were young guys. I don't know. What would you have done? Could you have gone to church the next Sunday after Zwingli just proved to the whole town, "This is not what we've said it is. As a matter of fact, it's wicked. It's wrong. Let's let the city decide.
Go to church tomorrow and take your time." What do you do? That's the kind of crisis they were dealing with. That's the kind of thing they were dealing with. And Zwingli just said, "Hey, let's take it easy." He said this later on. He said, "People are weak. You can't just take a person and expect them to change overnight. You got to bring people along in the Christian faith. You got to show them this, teach them that." The young radicals were like, "No. You get born again. You live for Christ.
And it should be something that changes in you." And Zwingli differed with them on those points. Okay. What do you have to say about that? You say it sounds— I mean, before we have to bring them along. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. But still. We use that as an excuse. He said, "It sounds familiar." So in other words, sometimes, as Paul says, "You still need teachers when many of you should be teachers yourself." We can use this as an excuse. And Zwingli was using this for an excuse. Well, people can't handle it.
And we use that as an excuse. Well, I don't understand the scriptures, like that first quote that I gave day one. I don't know what to do about it. And you're right. It is familiar. And it's a debate. And it's an issue that we still come into today. So raising this crisis up was this fundamental point that they were given.
And that whole famous quote from Simon Stumpf, "The council, the city council, has no authority to decide on church matters." And it was a significant time in their history there, in their history. They were still trying to reform the state church. Absolutely. Yeah. Zwingli had an idea. He was watching Luther. He was getting excited with what Luther was doing. And this is a whole year after that thing happened in Wittenberg. And so Zwingli wanted to get in on this.
I mean, they kind of had the idea, "I mean, this is changing the world. And the Bible is out. We're going to start this seminary here." And Luther was a hero of his. And they really thought that they were going to make changes. And if these young radicals mess this up, we're going to be in trouble. And they're going to end up ruining this for me. Here's a letter to give you some of the frustrations of these people in this letter here.
So Conrad Grebel, also when he gets back and thinks about what's happening in here, grows very frustrated with it as well. When the council's mandate had been drawn up, even before it can be issued, Conrad is already writing a biting letter to Vadian. So they go back. And all the young radicals are just kind of thinking. They said, and he said, quote, in this letter, "The cause of the gospel is in a very bad way here.
It all started to go this way at the assembly where you were a presiding officer when the word of God was thrown down and trampled on by the ones who should have been its proclaimers, learned as they are. Now they have a commission of eight, including Zwingli. And I don't know what other priestly monsters, instead of obeying the divine teaching against saying mass, they have shrewdly come up with a compromise. But it's a devilish one. It means that the mass is going to have to be said.
Here is the saying you can quote. Whoever thinks or believes or says that Zwingli acts like a true Christian pastor thinks and believes and speaks wickedly. I stand by that." And obviously, these young radicals felt a break in what was happening here, a break in what was happening. And something happened between these two radicals. All right. Just a few more minutes. And then we'll build the suspense more in coming into tomorrow of what happens between these two. The young Bible students didn't like the answer.
They protested. And then surprisingly, as we saw, Zwingli even agrees with them at first. But the council, to the next day, it was expected the council would come back with their word. So imagine the scene. Yes, yes, Simon, you're right. The council, of course, would have to say what the word of God says. But they've all heard it now, haven't you? And you can imagine what Zwingli was thinking. "Well, they're going to agree with me." It was a gamble.
"You're right, Simon." "Yes." But the next day, the council decided. And what did they decide? Wait. The council did not go with Zwingli's reform and Zwingli's compromise. He didn't take what he told Simon. Zwingli's feeling the tension with the young radicals, he began to publish papers against them. You can see Conrad Grebel now with his letter to Vadian. And now Zwingli now is starting to draw a line with these radicals and say, "You're scaring me.
I'm going to start writing things against you." And however, on the other side—I'm sorry. Sorry. Oh, we're almost done. Zwingli started to feel that the reform was being stopped. The city council, so he proclaimed that the change would be made by Christmas of 1523. Or he said this, "All right. A change would be made in this town by 1523. Or I stand condemned as lying by the word of God." I'll say it. There it is. I'll guarantee you this. There will be change in Zurich by 1523.
Or I stand condemned as lying by the word of God.