Reply of Huldreich Zwingli to Jerome Emser Defender of the Canon of the Mass
(August 20, 1524)
[The first edition, printed by Froschauer, has the title: ADVERSVS HIE RONYMVM EMSERVM CANONIS missae adsertorem Huldrychi Zuinglij Antibo- lon. Then a woodcut: Christ, standing, with a crown of thorns and halo. Venite ad me omnes qui laboratis & onerati estis, & ego requiem uobis praestabo. Matth. 11. TIGVRO AEDIBVS CHRIS-TOPHORI Froschouer Anno M.D.XXIIII. Mense Augusto. —44 unnumbered quarto pages. Signed at the end of the address to Emser: Vale ez Tiguro, etc. MDXXIIII. XIII. Kalendas Septembris. A copy is in the library of Union Theological Seminary, New York.
Printed in Opera Zwinglii, tom. I, fol. 192a-201b; Schuler and Schultess ed., vol. III, pp. 121-144; Egli-Finsler ed., vol. III, pp. 241-287.
A German edition, translated by Leo Jud and printed by Froschauer in 1525, has the title: Ein gegenwurff und widerweer Hulderych Zuinglins, wider Hieronymum Emser des Canons in der Mass beschirmer. At the end, on p. 66; Getrucht zu Zürich durch Christophorum Froschouer, im jar M.D.XXV. 68 unnumbered pages. Another German edition, of which the translator, printer, and place of publication are unknown, has the title: Huldrichen Zwinglens antwort wider Hieronimum Emser den schutzherren des Canons oder Stillmess… M.D.XXV.
The following English translation was made by George W. Gilmore. It has been revised by the editor.] NOT far were you, most nimble Emser (for wild goats should be more nimble than stags), from tearing me away from the very clear light of the celestial word and bringing me over to the side of the Roman Pontiff by that threatening pamphlet of yours against my confutation of the Canon of the Mass which I thrust forth rather than published. It is so grandiloquent that no one can understand its difficult periods unless he descends into a well; so fortified with things more
[Cf. p. 345. TEmser’s Canonis missae contra Huldricum Zuinglium defensio. iZwingli’s De canone missae Huldrychi Zuinglii Epichiresis.]
solid than the Scriptures, namely, legends of the saints and trifles more foolish than old wives’ tales, that no one can take it by storm unless he is well equipped with gourds, pumpkins, and rotten cabbage. Besides, the snares which you cleverly spread, because of their unexpectedness, terrify me more than their real importance warrants; for 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; nor did you engage at close quarters, so that at least the clash of arms might give notice of an enemy’s presence, but you skirmished in quite remote parts. Consequently, not even a rumor of the wrathful ibex who was rashly laying everything waste could have reached me, if it had not by mere chance happened that George Vadian, a man of marked piety and culture, was journeying on certain business in the parts where you were tearing around. While he was at first not a little disturbed by the strangeness of your conduct, yet, having obtained one of your pamphlets—a prisoner, as it were, from your army—he promptly transmitted it to me, and I have treated it a little more kindly than you treated mine. For I did not make a sudden attack upon it, but, though it spoke not courteously, I listened to it courteously, waiting meantime to see whether you would yourself say anything. But now four months have passed without my hearing from you; and so, out of pity for the prisoner I have decided to free it from its long period of distress by sending it back to you, though in a manner far different from that in which I received it; for I send along a companion that will show how well that booklet of yours has been treated by me, and that will do it lovingly and benignly. It will not threaten with scourges or tyrants or crosses, as yours boastfully did; for it is well aware that a disciple of Christ ought to be so equipped as to prefer to experience those things rather than to threaten them, and that this is a battle not of armed men or of lictors, but of truth and piety, which have ever been so hated by the children of this world that they have never put forth their heads without peril to themselves. However, I am using “peril” from your point of view, according to which you think it hurtful if punishment befalls the pious; for unless you
thought so you would not threaten it in such a haughty manner. And yet those who not only have not listened to the truth but have busily endeavored to exterminate it with the greatest ignominy may find that they have at length caused themselves damage. Nor, again, will this booklet of mine for any light cause cry out, speak evil, and revile; indeed it will not be able to, since yours has used up all the shades of evilspeaking and refinements of reviling, so that, now that you have left none of these unused, it is forced willy nilly to abstain from them, lest it resemble yours. The one and only benefit I have derived from your booklet is this: that, since you have raved so unseasonably and so tastelessly, I, seeing how little this becomes you, pursue another course. For what, pray, would be the result if to all your revilings I should retort with revilings? Would not the book deserve to be called a rhapsody of revilings? though I could truthfully do it, whereas you do it not truthfully. But why should I rake up the base charges, rather than odes, that you once spewed out against the Swiss? At the time, you narrowly escaped (for I myself was present then, though hardly more than a boy) being compelled to eat your very shameless words—words that besides were rude, impure, and wicked. Why should I mention the whoredoms and adulteries that not seldom compelled you to change your place of residence? Why should I upbraid you for the vain, frivolous, gross things said so impudently, imprudently, and mendaciously in your pamphlet? Why speak of the obstinacy, stupidity, ignorance, malicious dissimulation, carelessness, fury, impiousness, and quarrelsomeness, to say nothing of the deceit, distortions, and such like artifices? Here are instances of such things: You assume the role of a David and go forth against the uncircumcised one, even though you suffer from gout. Wild goat that you are, you brandish your horns against one who has seen so many of those animals that he does not fear their look at all. You attempt to prove something by the rules of the Chanceryt, and you tell a pretty tale about the missals See Introduction, p. 345-346.
The papal chancery was the office which prepared and issued bulls and briefs. It adhered to certain formulas, definitions, and rules.
of Ambrose and Gregory. You call the Roman Pontiffs a Lesbian rule, although you do this with as much truth as thoughtlessness. You assert that I dignify the forms of bread and wine with the name of the flesh and blood of Christ. You cunningly present in a false light this easy, but to you insoluble, problem, which I resolve thus: since Christ evidently instituted this sacrament only once and with only one rite, it necessarily follows that, since you contend it is a sacrifice, all who ever use it make sacrifice. You bring forward as instances of asyndeton things which have no such form at all as has “These holy, unblemished sacrifices.”t You assert that I reject Ambrose’s book “On the Sacraments,” though I speak of it only in the following manner: “Not to call in question whether this book is or is not Ambrose’s,” ete. You represent me as boasting that I was the first to confute the Canon, when I was speaking only about order of procedure, as follows: “first,“l i. e., before anything else, “1 am going to bring the Canon out of the darkness of a cave into the light.” You affirm that only to the Apostles was it said, “Drink ye all of this.” You call those heretics who cling to the words of Christ alone. You somebut a little later, when defending the Canon, you say: “The where assert that the true body of Christ is torn with the teeth, Canon calls it spiritual food; and if it is spiritual food, as it certainly is, how is it torn with the teeth?” Why, I say, should
[$Emser had told how, in the pontificate of Hadrian I, a liturgical]
[controversy over these two missals had been decided by an appeal to]
[“divine judgment.” A sealed copy of each missal was placed on the altar]
[of St. Peter’s and left there over night. The next morning the leaves of]
[the missal of St. Gregory were found scattered over the church, while the]
[missal of St. Ambrose was till intact. This was taken as a sign that the]
[former was to be used throughout the whole world, the latter only in the]
[Church of St. Ambrose in Milan. The “Lesbian rule” was a leaden scale which conformed to the shape]
[of the object measured (cf. Aristotle Ethics V, x, 7). Here it means per-]
[sons who practice the “accommodation” of law or teaching to the condition]
[or circumstances of those with whom they are dealing. The Latin of the Canon is: HAEC SANCTA SACRIFICIA ILLI-]
[BATA. From the absence of a connective between the two adjectives]
[Zwingli had argued against the early composition of the Canon, since “no]
[one before the time of Gregory would ever have so spoken.” iZwingli had written simply “ante omnia.”]
I upbraid you for these things when your whole book so abounds in them that if you should take them away it would appear as naked and plumeless as fable says the jackdaw was after every bird had taken back his own feather. And now consider how it becomes you to assail with so many insulting terms a man quite unknown to you, yet to whom you are very well known. If I were to reply to you in like manner, I certainly should expect nothing but that the pious would stop their ears, and that we both, like mad dogs, would be driven off the stage with stones and hoots and hisses. Or do you hope by this means to draw me over to your side? If I were so stupid as to suppose that you were saying something worthwhile, yet the extraordinary maledictions and furious shouting with which you burst forth even upon no occasion would, by the fear they inspire, deter me from acceding to your way of thinking.
Since, then, you would have it appear that you wrote your booklet to heal my wound, and yet you inflict a thousand others, you make manifest that your determination to write was due either to petulance of tongue instead of a desire to heal, or to hope of filching some reward from pontiffs instead of a purpose to defend the truth (to which you are so blind that, according to the word of God [Deut. 28: 29], you grope at noonday). And when you affirm that for a piece of bread I can be hired to heap insults upon any one at all, though no rewards or honors bestowed either by pontiffs or by the greatest princes have ever been able to lure me from the path of truth, you are doing nothing but seizing upon that charge ahead of me, in order that it may not be uttered against you. For who will be so dull of comprehension that, when he reads your production, he will not at the very beginning see instantly that you are aiming at securing those mitred pontiffs as spec-
[Phaedrus Fabulae Aesopiae, I, 3. Cf. Horace, Epp., i, 3, 19. iFrom 1512 or 1513 until 1520 Zwingli had received an annual pension]
[from the Pope, though in 1517 he came out as a severe critic of the papacy.]
[In a letter (dated August 20, 1521) to the Senate of Zurich, Francis Zink,]
[papal chaplain at Einsiedeln, testified that Zwingli had “never been moved]
[a finger’s breadth from the Gospel by the favour of the Pope, emperor, or]
[noble.” See S. M. Jackson, Huldreich Zwingli, pp. 114-116. TEmser’s Defensio began with a dedication to high ecclesiasties.]
364 The Works of Huldreich Zwingli tators of the fight? And when you leap forward to the battle, you shout more loudly than Stentor, that the eyes of all may be fixed upon you alone; but, because the gout restrains you, you move forward not even a hand’s breadth; and when an onset should be made, then you quit, though you never quit shouting. And this is your manner of fighting!
Finally, just as if you had laid at their feet the spolia opima taken from me, you make them hopeful of recovering dominion, and you do it so boastfully and vaingloriously that nothing seems to fit your case better than the unctuous remark, “So Pyrrhus, too, was wont to do.” From this it is clear that you strive for the favor of those men in order that you may obtain something from them—a feature assuredly absent from my booklet, as I shall prove to your own satisfaction. As, then, certain friends advise against my undertaking any reply to such great vanity, while others urge me to it, I have decided to do something for both (for who can satisfy all?) in the following manner. Whatever has little pertinence I will pass over with deaf ear; for why should I dispute with you again as to just where or when the Canon arose? For I see that you do not know that in some passages writers use “canon” for the order and rule of any rite whatsoever; but when you read them you thought they were speaking of the Canon of your party. Or why should I apologize for saying certain things too humorously and facetiously, as you think? Everyone knows that he who is refuting an argument employs both jest and earnest in such manner that they avail in effecting conquest. And though you labor greatly over these more trifling matters (for what could you do, seeing that where there was need you could do.nothing?), I shall be influenced not at all by them, but shall treat those points which you have passed by, that it may be manifest to all who have the slightest acquaintance with Holy Writ that you skipped them on purpose, either because you could not comprehend them or because you despaired of rebutting them. Such are: The Church, Intercession of the Saints, Merit, Whether the Eucharist is an oblation, Whether or not there is a purgatory. If in these matters I made any
[In Terence Eunuchus, 783, Captain Thraso thus justifies posting]
[himself in the rear of his forces.]
error, you should have reported and proved it, not by your outeries, but from the celestial fountains of the word. However, I shall treat these subjects rather briefly, in aphoristic style as it were, so that you may the more clearly see through everything. When you see them, do not at once ery out: “O Heaven, O Earth, O Horrors!” (thereby you will show us nothing but an old woman’s helplessness); but wherever you find me in error, have recourse to the armory of Holy Writ, and with the sword brought thence expunge whatever mars the most fair order of divine truth, and in its place put that of which there is need. Once you have done that, you will have gained a brother [Mt. 18:15], and I shall be everlastingly indebted to you; otherwise it is no use for you to write a thousand books, for no matter what amount of human teaching you adduce, you will only be spitting into the sky; for it will all fall back upon you. For “in vain do they worship me” (says He who is above the heavens and beyond the range of these weapons) “teaching the doctrines and precepts of men” [Mt. 15:9]. I shall not be influenced at all by such things, just as not even now should I have uttered a syllable in reply, had not some, as has been said, thought it worth while not to pass by in silence so unprofitable a booklet.
Therefore surrender your mind as a captive to the obedience of God, not of men or of the Fathers or of the flesh. For the mere antiquity of any saying of the Fathers that you present will find for it some credit among the ignorant. Furthermore, the same reasoning applies to an opinion of theirs as to one of our own times. For what matters it whether today or fifteen hundred years ago you spoke earnestly, but without the authority of the word of God? So approach the Sacred Word that you may there find what you ought to think, not with the purpose of compelling the Sacred Word, even in spite of its protest, to agree with that which you first think in your own heart. If you attain to this, all that pride in disputing will perish, and you will see what ill-furnished minds both the pontiffs and their champions have.
← 64. Reply to Emser Introduction, by George · Contents · 66. Reply to Emser The Church →