Reviewed by: Following Zwingli: Applying the Past in Reformation Zurich ed. by Luca Baschera, Bruce Gordon, and Christian Moser Kenneth Austin Following Zwingli: Applying the Past in Reformation Zurich. Edited by Luca Baschera, Bruce Gordon, and Christian Moser. [St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2014. Pp. x, 300. $134.95. ISBN 978-0-7546-6796-4.) In grand narratives of the Reformation, the Swiss contribution has often been sidelined, and those dealing with conditions after the integration of Zurich tend to focus on the movement’s early leader, Huldrych Zwingli, who died on the battlefield in 1531. This collection of essays exemplifies more recent efforts to challenge these representations, to which many of the authors have already made notable contributions. It explicitly focuses on the period after Zwingli’s death and particularly that overseen by his successor, Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75). At the same time, as the title implies, the volume is concerned with the consequences of Zwingli’s original break with the Catholic Church and the ways in which models and exempla from the past were used in the development of a new church and society. The opening chapter, written by the editors, is a veritable tour de force: it provides a wide-ranging and highly insightful discussion of the various means by which the past, both distant and more immediate, could provide templates that contributed to the leading Reformers’ understanding and helped to shape the direction they took. Despite the radical nature of the break, the connections with the past were also manifest. As the editors wryly note, “The Reformation had to live in its parents’ house” (p. 8). The following ten chapters offer a range of case studies that collectively illustrate this complex dynamic. Mark Taplin examines Josias Simler’s engagement with a range of patristic writings that had an importance for Christological debates in his Scripta veterum (1571); Jon Delmas Wood’s article is concerned with the idea of “collective episcopacy” [End Page 411] (p. 81), derived from the Old Testament and expounded by Bullinger in his Sermones synodales. Torrance Kirby’s chapter offers a close reading of the letter of praise written by Peter Martyr Vermigli on the accession of Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1558 and demonstrates the varied messages that comparisons with Old Testament figures David and Josiah were meant to convey. Christian Moser highlights the vogue for Commentaries on the Book of Ruth in Zurich between 1530 and 1600, compared with only limited interest elsewhere: the principal characters in Ruth evidently provided useful models of behavior for the readers of the text. In similar fashion, Rebecca Giselbrecht examines the transformation of the image of Mary in the Reformation through an examination of her portrayal in the works of Zwingli and Bullinger. Kurt Jakob Rüetschi focuses on two sermons delivered by Rudolf Gwalther in 1533, in which he drew lessons for child-rearing from the childhood of Jesus: only if children were raised appropriately, Gwalther contended, would the Reformation be successful. Urs Leu considers the delicate relationship with classical literature through an analysis of the edition of Martial’s Epigrams published by Conrad Gessner, a teacher in Zurich, in 1544. Gessner censored this work for use in the classroom and, in an accompanying dialogue, offered a more general discussion of the issues raised by this practice. Luca Baschera evaluates Otto Werdmüller’s approach to Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics in a work of 1545. Werdmüller believed that Aristotelian ethics ought to be integrated with the study of a range of academic disciplines. Matthew McLean looks at the interactions between the Hebrew and Old Testament scholars Konrad Pellikan and his student, Sebastian Münster, as a means of examining models of scholarly friendship. Finally, Bruce Gordon analyzes two biographical writings—Pellikan’s autobiographical Chronicon written for his son and nephew, and Johannes Jud’s Historische Beschreibung, a portrait of his father, Leo Jud—to show how the subjects of both works were presented as exemplary and how these portrayals were shaped by familial concerns. Taken together, this collection of essays greatly enhances our understanding of the Reformation in Zurich in these less familiar decades. In addition...
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Jan 1, 2016
Mary C Boys 
Open Access