Zwingli Preaches in Zurich

1519

Appointed people's priest at the Grossmuenster in Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli began preaching sequentially through the Gospel of Matthew in the vernacular, discarding the traditional lectionary. His fresh biblical preaching drew large crowds and sowed the seeds of a Reformation distinct from Luther's German movement. His insistence on preaching directly from Scripture was itself revolutionary, asserting biblical primacy over centuries of ecclesiastical tradition.