The Swiss Protestant reformer Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531) paved the way for the Swiss Reformation. His influence on the church-state relations of the cantons that became Protestant was profound and durable.

An exact contemporary of Martin Luther, Huldreich Zwingli experienced and contributed to the profound changes in religious and intellectual life that, arising in the early 1500s, permanently affected Western civilization. He was born on Jan. 1, 1484, in the village of Wildhaus, one of ten children. His experience with ecclesiastical traditions came early, through an uncle who was a priest. Huldreich was destined by his parents for the priesthood.

Early Years and Education

Zwingli's education was markedly humanistic. In 1494 he was sent to school at Basel and in 1498 to Bern, where a famous classicist, Heinrich Wölflin, fired a love in him for ancient writers, including the pagans, that he never lost. In 1500 Zwingli entered the University of Vienna...