Reformers and their opponents Reformers The ideological debate stimulated the intellectual life. Several of the Reformers were also writers; Calvin (1509-1564) controlled Latin as well as French, it was the author of the two versions of the work of his life, the Christian Institution. He was not the kill-joy whom one often depicts; thus he was not opposed to the theater - an edifying theater, that goes without saying. It expressed its certainty with conviction, strength, aggressiveness with regard to its adversaries; the intelligence and the clearness of work compensate for this animosity.
French him also, Theodore de Bèze (1519-1605) continued his work with less genius, but more flexibility; he passed for more eloquent. The course of Of Vaud Pierre Viret (1511-1571) was the reverse of those of Calvin and Bèze: born in Orbe, it finished its career in Navarre; it was the “smile of incipient Protestantism”; in its abundant work, the Christian Instruction (1564) is a collection of recommendations morals.
Their opponents
Calvin did not have only friends. In addition to Castellion, for which “to kill a man, it is not to defend doctrines, it is to kill a man”, it ran up against Geneva with the party of the libertines, which refused the discipline that the Master intended to make reign. François Bonivard (1493-1570) had a tumultuous life; prior of Saint-Victor of Geneva (what means owner of ecclesiastical seigniory), it fell by twice to the power from the Savoyard party; the second in 1530 when, provided with a safe conduct, it crossed the Country of Vaud; stopped by treachery, it was held six years with the castle of Chillon, until its delivery by the Berneses - it is the Prisoner of Chillon, to which Byron gave the literary celebrity in 1816; turned over to Geneva, it Maria four times and was shown as tepid in the reformed religion as it had been it in Catholicism; its Chronicles of Geneva were too caustic and truculent so that they at the time were published.
In Orbe, the Memories of Guillaume de Pierrefleur are those of a man remained catholic of heart which reports with regret progress and the victory of the confession that one forced to him to follow.
Bullinger and C.Gessner
After the death of Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) took again the torch in the capacity as preacher and organizer of the Church; he was the author of the second Swiss Confession in 1562. Conrad Gessner (1516-1565) was a universal spirit - one is amazed in front of the capacity for work of all these characters: doctor, naturalist, botanist, philologist; equipped with the genius of classification, it composes at the 29 years age Bibliotheca universalis, of 1264 folio pages, which counts all the writings published in Latin, Greek and Hebrew; he wants to also make an inventory of the whole of knowledge on the animals; illustrations of its works, whose famous rhinoceroses To last, contributed to its fame. He was caught some - in connection with the legend of Pilate - with the superstitions: “One cannot say that it is with the power of the bad spirits to make the evil; but rather God allows that people, superstitious and impious, misled by them, are punished in this way.” He died in his work of doctor, of the plague.
Manual Nicolas and Gilg Tschudi
In Bern, Nicolas Manuel Deutsch (1484-1530) was not only one painter, but also a satirical poet and a politician; he took share in 1522, as military chronicler, in the countryside of Swiss with the service of François I in the Milanese; appointed baillif de Cerlier, it showed an impetuous partisan of the Reform. Contrary, the chronicler glaronais Aegidius Tschudi (1505-1572), the author of Schweizerchronik, defended Catholicism savagely; there too, scientific work and political activity share its life.
Paracelse
That which is perhaps largest of all, Paracelse, did not intervene in the religious quarrel. Théophraste Bombast de Hohenheim (Einsiedeln 1493-Salzbourg1542) is to tell the truth Suisse only by its birthplace, its passage to Basle and its study on the baths of Pfäffers; it is an European, eternal traveller - as far as Egypt, in Turkey, in Russia -, curious about all, doctor, alchemist, philosophical. Enemy of the routine and the book knowledge, giving the primacy to nature and his demonstrations, it seeks knowledge, the correspondences, the interpretation of the signs. If it is not the torn recluse that made the romanticism of it, it is violent, coarse (“nature did not weave me with much subtlety”); he believes in a God, God of the Spirit which made gift with the man of the Light.
Basle in XVIe century The spirit of Basle Erasme wrote in 1515.
“I believe food here in a true museum. How much scientists, and of a common species not very! Nobody ignores Latin, nobody the Greek; the majority know also Hebrew. One is characterized by its historical knowledge, the other knows thoroughly theology, this one excels in mathematics, this other is set on antiquity, that one of right. Never up to now I had the love of life in so happy company. Nothing to say moreover, what a honesty, what a good mood, what a agreement! It would be said that all have only one heart”.
Why Basle does it then occupy a so enviable place among the European cities? Its geographical position makes a center of exchanges of it, contacts; its young university, its printers support the intellectual life; before and after the Reform, it is more accessible, relatively more tolerant than of others; the presence of the scholars, theologists, philosophers, artists who remain there, attracts others of them. Most eminent name Paracelse, Holbein, Erasme.
The three large ones
The passage of Paracelse was short: called as doctor of the city and professor in 1527, this wandering eternal disconcerts and anxious from the start: the catholics treat it of “Luther of medicine”, the partisans of the Reform are disappointed lack of interest that it carries to them. Moreover doesn't it attack the experts creatures of habit and uncultivated, who look after with blows of nomenclatures and quotations? And doesn't he profess in German and not in Latin like everyone? Fearing an arrest, Paracelse flees at the end of 11 months.
Hans Holbein the Young person (around 1497-1543), made of Augsburg in 1515, “naturalized” in 1520, sees himself entrusting to 24 years the execution of the frescos of the Town hall. It leaves Basle in 1532, because, like writes it Erasme, the rise of the Reform makes jingle, decay arts; but the self-portrait which it paints in its last year is signed “Ioannes Holbenius Basileensis”.
Erasme of Rotterdam (around 1469-1536) lived in Basle with three recoveries. From 1514 to 1516, it establishes the princeps editio of Greek New Testament and a new Latin translation. Its second stay, of 1521 to 1529 must to the Froben editor much; but the religious disorders upset the scholar who fears the undisciplined plebs; it returns nevertheless in 1535 and lives Basle until its death. There had remained catholic, he was buried in the reformed cathedral.
Other scholars
Around these three great names, there are Capiton, Pellican, Glarean. Alsatian Wolfgang Fabritius Köpfel - it Latinized its name in Padding - (1478-1541), hébraïsant, friend then adversary of Erasme, corresponded with Luther of which it published Latin works in Basle, where it lived of 1515 to 1520, became the reformer of Strasbourg and took part in 1532 in the synod of Bern. Conrad Pelican (1478-1556), him so Alsatian, him also hébraïsant, soft Franciscan which passed without clashes to Protestantism, made long stays in Basle before leaving in 1526 for Zurich, because it was already converted whereas Basle was still catholic. With Heinrich Loriti, known as Glarean (1488-1563), it is “the humanism which sings”; this Glaronais was a poet and a patriot, author of a Description and panegyric of the Confederation, printed, as it should be, in Basle in 1514; catholic, it left the city in 1529.
Platter and Froben
Platter, father and sons, are also inseparable from Basle. They and the other put one in scene in an autobiography. The father, Thomas (1499? - 1582), small goatherd high-Valaisan, traverses with foot Switzerland and Germany, converts in Zurich, where it is informed assiduously the night while working with its hands the day, becomes printer, then schoolmaster, during 40 years, in Basle. It will have the pride to see his son Felix (1536-1614) becoming what it had dreamed to be: doctor.
The printers played a great part; most known is Johannes Froben (around 1460-1527); from Germany, it is more than one printer: a humanistic editor.
Heretics
Heretics, or considered as such, live in Basle or pass by the city. Sebastien Franck (1499-1542), driven out of a city of the Empire to the other, finds a harbor in 1539 there and the middle-class acquires some one year before its death. Translator of the Praise of the madness, it was sensitive to the relativity from the points of view: the man is at the same time insane and wise, all can be true or false; Does Rome honor the pope and condemned Jean Hus, but the Czechs wouldn't have pronounced the opposite judgment? Such is the direction of its Paradoxa. Michel Servet itself met the Oecolampade reformer at the time of his passage in 1530-1531. As for Johann van Bruck, his history is rather strange; this easy Fleming had been established in Basle in 1544; abstaining from any controversy, it was announced on the contrary by its irenicism, its serenity; with his death in 1556, one realized that it was not other than the anabaptist David Joris, who had escaped little with death in Delft in 1539; it was unearthed, its skin, its books and its portrait flarings.
Castellion or the tolerance
The voice of the tolerance, it is Sebastien Castellion (1515-1563) who tried to make it hear. This subject of the duke of Savoy had followed Calvin to Strasbourg and had preceded it at the time of its return to Geneva - with the outward journey as with the return, the Genevese reformer also stopped him in Basle. Not managing to obtain a pulpit of Pasteur, it returned to Basle, vegetated as corrector of printing works before being invited to teach the Greek at the university. He is the author of a translation of the Bible, in popular and tasty French. He is the only voice which dares to protest in 1553 at the time of the Servet business; the Declaration of Calvin the Treaty of the heretics answers: the better a man knows the truth, the less it is inclined to condemn the others; and if Christ had been present, would it have burned Servet?
Modern Basle will honor this position with tolerance and refuge: after won't Alexandre Vinet the liberal and Leonhard Ragaz the Socialist, Karl Barth, fleeing the Nazi Germany, maintain there the message of evangelic Protestantism?
Bibliography
Alfred Berchtold, Basle and Europe, Lausanne 1990