| 47. The Death of Zwingli. | ||||
Moerikofer, II. 414-420. Egli, quoted on p. 179. A. Erichson: Zwingli's Tod und dessen Beurtheilung durch Zeitgenosen. Strassburg, 1883. | ||||
Zwingli himself died on the battlefield, in the prime of manhood, aged forty-seven years, nine months, and eleven days, and with him his brother-in-law, his stepson, his son-in-law, and his best friends. He made no use of his weapons, but contented himself with cheering the soldiers. Brave men, he said (according to Bullinger), fear not! Though we must suffer, our cause is good. Commend your souls to God: he can take care of us and ours. His will be done. | ||||
Soon after the battle had begun, he stooped down to console a dying soldier, when a stone was hurled against his head by one of the Waldstaetters and prostrated him to the ground. Rising again, he received several other blows, and a thrust from a lance. Once more he uplifted his head, and, looking at the blood trickling from his wounds, he exclaimed: What matters this misfortune? They may kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul. These were his last words. | ||||
He lay for some time on his back under a pear-tree (called the Zwingli-Baum) in a meadow, his hands folded as in prayer, and his eyes steadfastly turned to heaven. | ||||
The stragglers of the victorious army pounced like hungry vultures upon the wounded and dying. Two of them asked Zwingli to confess to a priest, or to call upon the dear saints for their intercession. He shook his head twice, and kept his eyes still fixed on the heavens above. Then Captain Vokinger of Unterwalden, one of the foreign mercenaries, against whom the Reformer had so often lifted his voice, recognized him by the torch-light, and killed him with the, sword, exclaiming, Die, obstinate heretic. | ||||
There he lay during the night. On the next morning the people gathered around the dead, and began to realize the extent of the victory. Every body wanted to see Zwingli. Chaplain Stocker of Zug, who knew him well, made the remark that his face had the same fresh and vigorous expression as when he kindled his hearers with the fire of eloquence from the pulpit. Hans Schoenbrunner, an ex-canon of Fraumuenster in Z rich, as he passed the corpse of the Reformer, with Chaplain Stocker, burst into tears, and said, Whatever may have been your faith, you have been an honest patriot. May God forgive your sins. He voiced the sentiment of the better class of Catholics. | ||||
But the fanatics and foreign mercenaries would not even spare the dead. They decreed that his body should be quartered for treason and then burnt for heresy, according to the Roman and imperial law. The sheriff of Luzern executed the barbarous sentence. Zwingli's ashes were mingled with the ashes of swine, and scattered to the four winds of heaven. | ||||
The news of the disaster at Cappel spread terror among the citizens of Z rich. Then, says Bullinger, arose a loud and horrible cry of lamentation and tears, bewailing and groaning. | ||||
On no one fell the sudden stroke with heavier weight than on the innocent widow of Zwingli: she had lost, on the same day, her husband, a son, a brother, a son-in-law, a brother-in-law, and her most intimate friends. She remained alone with her weeping little children, and submitted in pious resignation to the mysterious will of God. History is silent about her grief; but it has been vividly and touchingly described in the Z rich dialect by Martin Usteri in a poem for the tercentenary Reformation festival in Z rich (1819). | ||||
Bullinger, Zwingli's successor, took the afflicted widow into his house, and treated her as a member of his family. She survived her husband seven years, and died in peace. | ||||
A few steps from the pear-tree where Zwingli breathed his last, on a slight elevation, in view of the old church and abbey of Cappel, of the Rigi, Pilatus, and the more distant snow-capped Alps, there arises a plain granite monument, erected in 1838, mainly by the exertions of Pastor Esslinger, with suitable Latin and German inscriptions. | ||||
A few weeks after Zwingli, his friend Oecolampadius died peacefully in his home at Basel (Nov. 24, 1531). The enemies spread the rumor that he had committed suicide. They deemed it impossible that an arch-heretic could die a natural death. | ||||