Hence  it  happened  that  Luther's  earliest  writings  excited  so  much
interest  in  Switzerland.  They  were  first  printed  in  a  collected  form  in
Basle.  As  early  as  1 520,  we  find  "  A  short  Poem  in  Praise  of  Luther  and
in  Derision  of  his  Gainsayers,"  by  a  peasant  of  Thurgau.  This  spirit  was
fostered  by  the  students  who  returned  from  Wittenberg.  The  names  of
those  who  were  present  when  Luther  burned  the  pope's  bull  are  still
preserved.  The  doctrine  spread  from  the  plain  country  and  the  cities
into  the  mountains  ;  to  the  Grisons,  Appenzell  and  Schwytz.  The  Admin-
istrator of  Einsiedeln,  one  Geroldseck,  was  described  by  Zwingli  as  the


than  herself,  delighted  that  she  had  brought  him  a  son,  promised  to  grant  her
a  request.  She  begged  for  the  liberation  of  a  parish  priest  who  had  been  im-
prisoned for  administering  the  Lord's  Supper  in  both  kinds.  (See  Havemann
Duchess  Elizabeth,' 'p.  13.)  And  this  was  the  princess  who  a  few  months  later
accused  her  own  mother  !     The  whole  story  is  equally  improbable.
5io  ZWINGLI  [Book  V.
father  of  all  them  that  love  God.1  That,  notwithstanding  these  sym-
pathies, the  movement  which  arose  in  Switzerland  assumed  a  different
character— even  as  to  religious  questions — from  that  of  Germany,  was
mainly  the  result  of  the  intellectual  character  and  training  of  the  man
who  commenced  and  carried  through  the  conflict — Ulrich  Zwingli.
EARLY    LIFE    OF    ZWINGLI.
Zwingli  was  born  in  the  parish  of  Wildenhaus  in  Toggenburg,  within
whose  boundary  the  Thur  rises,  at  a  height  where  neither  cornfields  nor
fruit  trees  are  to  be  seen,  amidst  green  alpine  meadows,  crowned  by  bare
and  sturdy  pines.
