ZWINGLIANISM AND LUTHERANISM IN BERN

Abstract

Bern is the most significant forgotten city of the Reformation. Its relative obscurity is seemingly due to the fact that it did not produce a single reformer of the first rank. The major Protestant reformers are inextricably linked to their urban environments: Luther and Wittenberg, Calvin and Geneva, Zwingli and Zurich, Bucer and Strasbourg, and perhaps even Oecolampadius and Basel. But of whom does one think when one thinks of Bern? Nevertheless, Bern was one of the most important Protestant powers of central Europe during the Reformation. At the same time, the lack of a “great man” is indicative of one of the city’s most significant problems at the time, namely the lack of theological unity. Just as no one theologian dominated the Bernese church, so also no single theology could be agreed upon, even by the ministers within the city itself, much less throughout Bern’s vast territories, especially after the conquest of Vaud.