There are three steeples here in this photo looking from the Zurich See (Lake) toward the river running into it. On the left the Grossmuenster, and on the right the Frauenkirche and St. Peter’s Kirche. These are the primary Reformed churches of Zurich, with two other churches of renown worth looking at.
To be fair, the Frauenkirche has less to do with the Reformation than the stunningly beautiful set of 5 windows by Marc Chagall.
The churches really don’t have much to say about the Reformation - to me, Calvin’s story is more interesting than Zwingli’s, but there is more about it in the Landesmuseum, which I spent three hours contemplating Swiss history and the place of the reformation in it. Some interesting facts.
Zwingli beat Luther to translating the Bible into German. At least according to the Landesmuseum Zurich.
It was a really difficult and violent time, marked by profound intolerance of anyone who believed differently than you. Hence clear annoyance between Zwingli and Luther, with the Scottish reformers complaining that Luther wasn’t answering their letters, and Luther, of course, exhibiting a bit of passive resistance. It really sounds like they didn’t like each other.
And the profound fact that there is today in Switzerland, a great deal of tolerance for other people’s ways of worshipping. Churches where protestant and Catholic congregations sometimes meet, tolerance for other non-Christian religion
Intolerance as caused so much pain. Why can’t we get past it?
And, Zurich also has water busses. For an extra CHF 4.40 and a daily transit pass, you can take a 1.5 hour cruise around this side of the lake. So I did it after I’d seen all the sights.
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