I doubt not that there are in it many things that will greatly offend certain weaklings, but let these reflect that Paul sometimes spoke as a child [ef. I Cor. 13], and let them consider whether they may not themselves still be perhaps over weak. All that I have said, I have said to the glory of Godand for the benefit of the commonwealth of Christ and the good of the conscience.
Thanks be to God!
^ II
ai 1523 Zwingli published a Latin tract entitled, De Canone Misse Huldrychi Zuinglii Epichiresis, “An Essay on the (Canon of the Mass.” He speaks of it as “my confutation of the Canon of the Mass.” He wrote it in four days (August 25-29), though not without careful study and serious thought on the subject “for several years” before he began to write. Emser was sufficiently provoked by it to publish an answer with the title: Canonis Misse contra Huldricum Zuinglium Defensio (1524), “Defense of the Canon of the Mass against Huldreich Zwingli.” The author, contrary to custom, did not send a copy of this tract to Zwingli, who accordingly chides him for attacking him treacherously “from the rear” and without giving him “any warning.” “You did not, as a Christian especially ought, give any warning; you sent no herald with a demand for satisfaction; and you attacked suddenly, not in front but from the rear, one who suspected no such thing.”
Zwingli heard of Emser’s Defense through his friend George Vadian,t a merchant and “a man of marked piety and culture,” who had attended the Leipsie fair. Vadian was not a little amazed to find in Saxony a pamphlet written against a prominent Swiss citizen. He procured a copy! of it and sent it to Zwingli, who informs Emser that for “four months” he
[In the explanation of the twentieth of the Simty-seven Conclusions,]
[Zwingli announces his intention to write before long on the Canon.”—]
[Egli-Finsler, II, 213. tA nephew of Joachim von Watt (Vadian), the Reformer, of St. Gall. TA copy of this tract is preserved in the University of Basel.]
delayed answering the tract after he had read it, “waiting in the meantime to see whether you would say anything.” When he did not hear from Emser, he sent back his “Defense,” with a copy of his own “Reply,” which he professes to have written not with the bitterness of spirit of his opponent but “lovingly and benignly.” After reading Zwingli’s answer one wonders what he meant by these professions of affection. For, as we shall see, Zwingli left little, if anything, unwritten that would detract from the character of Emser.
The salient faets of Emser’s life will throw light on his controversy with Zwingli. Jerome Emser was born in the city Ems of Ulm in Swabia, either in the year 1477 or 1478. His father was of the nobility, and the son proudly exhibited the coat of arms of his family on the title page of his numerous books and pamphlets. Its most prominent feature was the figure of a wild goat with long horns and the inscription Arma Hieronymi Emser.” For this reason his opponents, Luther taking the lead, addressed him as the “Wild Goat Emser” or as the “Goat of Leipsic.” Nothing is known of his boyhood. He matriculated in the University of Tübingen, July 19, 1493. For unknown reasons he left ”übingen and entered the University of Basel, matriculating for the winter semester, 1497. In the same year he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts; in 1498, the degree of Master of Arts.
Zwingli charges Emser with having “once spewed out against the Swiss” certain “base charges” on account of which he was “compelled to change suddenly his place of residence.” He left Basel in 1502. This accusation is based upon an episode that happened while he was a student in the University. A Swiss fellow-student stirred up Emser’s wrath by writing a satirieal poem on the Swabians. Emser in retaliation wrote abusive verses in Latin on the Swiss in a notebook of a student who was dozing while both of them were attending a lecture on law.
[iThis copy, inscribed in Zwingli’s handwriting Emsero Ibici a]
[Zuinglio,” is now in the Prince Stolberg Library, at Wernigerode, in the]
[Harz Mountains. The notebook into which Emser wrote the verses belonged to Gre-]
[gorius Biinzli, one of Zwingli’s teachers at Basel.—Introduction to]
[Adversus Hieronymum, etc., Egli-Finsler, III, 231.]
The part of the poem that was particularly offensive to the Swiss was as follows:
Switzer, thou art a tyrant, an enemy of our faith and God,
Good-for-nothing; nursest thyself with milk, milkest lazily the cow.
Hereafter the gods can no more tolerate the spoils taken by force,
Son of the Woods, which thou lovest after the manner of robbers.
The time is coming, when thou, who hopest for golden booty,