Marburg, the Anabaptists, and Death in the Field

In 1529 Philip of Hesse brought Luther and Zwingli together at Marburg to settle their differences and make a single Protestant political front possible. They agreed on fourteen of fifteen articles. The fifteenth was the eucharist, and they did not move. Luther is reported to have chalked the words this is my body on the table and refused to argue past them; Zwingli held that is means signifies, that Christ's body is in heaven and cannot be in the bread, and that the supper is a memorial and a pledge. The colloquy ended without agreement and Luther declined the offered hand of fellowship. The Protestant world has been divided along that line ever since.

Two other things belong in the record. The radical wing of his own movement in Zurich concluded that if only scripture governs, infant baptism must go, and began baptising adults in 1525; the council, with Zwingli's agreement, suppressed them, and Felix Manz was drowned in the Limmat in 1527, the first Anabaptist executed by Protestants. And Zwingli held that a Christian city might defend the gospel by arms.

He acted on it. When war broke out between the reformed and Catholic cantons he went out with the Zurich forces as chaplain, and was killed at Kappel in October 1531. His body was quartered and burned by the victors. Heinrich Bullinger succeeded him and consolidated what he had built.