The Setting: Glarus, 1506–1516
In 1506, Ulrich Zwingli, fresh from university studies in Vienna and Basel, began his pastoral ministry in the Alpine canton of Glarus, a politically independent region in eastern Switzerland. Just 22 years old, he stepped into a world marked by deep fractures: theological, political, and economic.
Glarus was no sleepy backwater. Though mountainous and relatively remote, it was heavily involved in the most controversial and lucrative industry of the time: Swiss mercenary service.
The Mercenary System: Blood for Hire
For generations, the Swiss Confederacy had exported its sons as mercenary soldiers to fight in the armies of France, the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire. This was not just tolerated — it was economically encouraged. Entire villages depended on payments from foreign princes in exchange for Swiss troops. The men returned with money, war stories, and too often, wounds or not at all.
Zwingli initially supported this system. In 1512, he even served as a military chaplain for Swiss forces fighting in Italy under papal banners during the War of the League of Cambrai.
But what he saw there, bloodshed, greed, political cynicism, began to shake him.
“I saw with my own eyes the true character of the mercenary business. It was not honor, but gold, that motivated it.”
— Zwingli, later reflection on his chaplaincy in Italy
Glarus Divided, and a Young Pastor Speaks Out
Back in Glarus, Zwingli increasingly used his pulpit to condemn the mercenary trade. He saw how foreign alliances, especially with France and the Pope, created rival factions within the Confederacy and his own canton. Families were split, patriotism was sold to the highest bidder, and the Gospel was eclipsed by coin and conquest.
“O Glarus, your sons die for French gold while your soul grows cold to Christ.”
— Zwingli, sermon fragment c. 1515
These sermons were not without cost. The ruling elite in Glarus — many of whom profited from the mercenary system — began to view him with suspicion. By 1516, Zwingli’s opposition to foreign military service and his rising profile as a preacher of reformist, humanist ideas made his position increasingly untenable.
He left Glarus in that year and took a post at the pilgrimage center of Einsiedeln, where his reforming voice would only grow louder.
Humanism Meets Patriotism
Zwingli’s critique wasn’t just moral — it was theological and philosophical. Steeped in the writings of Erasmus, he believed Christian ethics should guide public policy. He rejected the notion that faith could be private while the public square remained corrupted by foreign gold and militarism.
“To take up the sword for Mammon is to deny the cross of Christ.”
— Zwingli, letter to fellow priest, 1513
His time in Glarus planted the seeds of a Reformation that would soon shake Zurich, Switzerland, and the wider world.
Legacy: A Reformer Forged in War and Conscience
Zwingli’s experience in Glarus gave him his first confrontation with corrupt power, not in Rome, but in his own backyard.
His critique of the mercenary system became one of the earliest political expressions of Reformation theology in Switzerland.
It established a theme that would mark his entire career: The Word of God must govern not only the soul, but society.
