The present work is published on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in Zürich, to be celebrated on 1st January commemorating the day in 1519 on which Huldrych Zwingli began to preach at the Grossmünster in Zürich. It is important to remember that Zwingliâs theological breakthrough which aligned him with the Reformation, only occurred after several years of personal maturing, very probably not in 1519 but in 1520 when he recognised his own sinfulness and broke all ties with the papal Roman church.1
In addition to diaries and correspondence, a scholarâs private library provides valuable clues about his interests and his spiritual universe as well as revealing the texts which influenced him. Hence, investigating someoneâs private library is just as crucial in tracing his spiritual life and intellectual conflicts, as is the scrutiny of other personal documents. So it is not surprising that the book collections of other great Reformers such as Bucer,2 Bullinger,3 Calvin,4 Luther,5 Melanchthon,6 Müntzer7 or Vadian8 have long been of great interest to historians of the early modern period.
Zwingliâs private library has in fact been a field of research since 1885.9 The first monograph on this topic was written nearly a hundred years ago by Walter Köhler (1870â1946) and remained the definitive work for many years.10 Since then, other researchers have pursued the subject, resulting in a doubling of known titles owned or used by Zwingli: from about 100 in 1921 to 205 today.
While Usteri11 knew of only a few books in Zwingliâs possession, Walter Köhler attempted a complete listing. He read as much of Zwingliâs correspondence and writings as was available through Melchior Schulerâs and Johannes Schulthessâs publication (Zürich, 1828â1861), and also scrutinised the new critical edition of Zwingliâs works which was published from 1905 onwards. Köhler tracked down every title which might have belonged to Zwingli and searched for it in the holdings of the Zentralbibliothek Zürich (ZBZ). He located 94 still extant titles which had indisputably belonged to Zwingli with a further seven possible titles. Furthermore, Köhler identified 224 books and 28 manuscripts which the Swiss Reformer must have known or used, including sundry works which had been printed in Zürich. It may be safely assumed, that as a friend of the printer Christoph Froschauer the Elder, as well as in his capacity as a member of the censorship commission until 1524,12 Zwingli was well aware of what was being published in Zürich. Köhler goes on to list 87 further works which are mentioned in Zwingliâs correspondence or in his writings, but of which we do not know whether he consulted them or not. As soon as Köhlerâs work appeared, the librarian Jakob Werner (1861â1944)13 published another list of works from Zwingliâs library, containing more than a dozen additional titles.14
Wernerâs research had been based on the catalogue of the abbey library of the Grossmünster, which had been presided over by the Hebraist Conrad Pellikan (1478â1556) between 1532 and 1551. Werner had hoped to glean additional information about Zwingliâs book collection from this source, as his private library had been acquired by the Grossmünster after his death. This path of inquiry was continued by Martin Germann, deputy head of the Department of Manuscripts of the ZBZ, who edited Pellikanâs library catalogue and also discovered new Zwingli books as well.15 The church historian, Alfred Schindler (1934â2012), was similarly interested in Zwingliâs library: under the former director of the ZBZ, Hermann Köstler, the librarian Christian Aliverti was assigned the task of cataloguing the 227 presumed titles from Zwingliâs library.16 Schindler himself, aided by his assistant Daniel Bolliger, continued to work on the edition of Zwingliâs marginal glosses,17 which Köhler had begun and which had ground to a halt in 1941 after volume twelve of Huldrych Zwinglis sämtliche Werke (Z XII) had appeared. Schindler managed to secure Irena Backus, professor at the University of Geneva, for collaboration on this work.18 However, as a result of the long illness and death of Schindler, these works on Zwingliâs library remained a torso.
In the meantime Judith Steinmann from the Department of Manuscripts of the ZBZ had published various articles identifying book bindings from Zürich, resolving the uncertainty of whether a particular book had been published during Zwingliâs lifetime or not. In the case of omnibus volumes, this information could be an important indicator that the whole volume had been in Zwingliâs library, rather than just individual titles which evinced his handwritten notes.19 The Benedictine monks, Gebhard Müller (1926â2010)20 and Odo Lang,21 completed the catalogue of incunabla, early prints and manuscripts held in the monastery library in Einsiedeln. Their research made it possible to speculate whether Zwingli himself had owned a particular text or had just consulted it in Einsiedeln. Similarly, the above-mentioned work by Germann performs the same task for the abbey library of the Grossmünster in Zürich. And since Köhlerâs death, volumes 6, 9â11 and 13â21 of the new critical edition of Zwingliâs works have appeared, containing additional further information about his library.
The above scholars have all made invaluable contributions to the subject, despite occasional wrong identifications, which can be partly explained by the challenging and changing style of Zwingliâs handwriting.22 This current catalogue includes only those titles, known to have been irrefutably owned or used by Zwingli and contains recently discovered works. We justify each inclusion in order to foster a clearer understanding of our reflections and conclusions and we have refrained from compiling an inventory of books which Zwingli might have heard of during his lifetime, as attempted by Köhler.23 An inspection of the Bibliotheca universalis by Conrad Gessner reveals literally thousands of eligible titles.
All the books and manuscripts listed here are currently in the holdings of either the Kantonsbibliothek Aarau, the Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln, the Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, the Staatsarchiv Zürich or the ZBZ. For the cataloguing rules, we followed the standards of the ISBD-A. Authorsâ names are spelt according to the GND (Gemeinsame Normdatei). We would like to thank Arjan van Dijk of the publishing house Brill for his interest in including this volume in their programme as well as Prof. Dr. Andrew Colin Gow for granting us a place in his prestigious series. Thanks are also due to Peter Moerkerk from the Centre for Digitalization of the ZBZ for the high quality reproductions. Last but not least, we are grateful to our always friendly and helpful Northern Irish colleague Alice Robinson for correcting our often awkward âSwiss Federal Englishâ and to Pater Justinus Pagnamenta for his assistance during the period when we studied in the Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers whose insightful suggestions helped us to clarify issues.
Urs B. Leu and Sandra Weidmann
Zentralbibliothek Zürich, June 2018
Farner, vol. 1 (1946), p. 411, and vol. 4 (1960), pp. 24â27; his conversion took place at latest until spring 1521, cf. Neuser (1977).
Stupperich (1975).
Leu and Weidmann (2004).
Ganoczy (1969); Ganoczy (1981).
WA 58, pp. 86â102; Brecht and Peters (2000).
Görber (1928); Rhein (2014).
Müntzer (1968), pp. 556â560; Ullmann (1976); Steinmetz (1984); Bräuer (2016), pp. 137â142.
Schenker-Frei (1973); Gamper (2017), pp. 340â344.
Usteri (1885/86).
Köhler (1921).
See footnote 9.
Bächtold (1982), p. 88.
Ferrari and Stotz (1994).
Werner (1921).
Germann (1994).
Alivertiâs catalogue had only provisional validity and was never published.
Schindler (1988/89); Schindler (1993); Bolliger (2003).
Backus (1991).
Steinmann (2000/2001).
Müller (2010).
Lang (2009); Odo Lang: Katalog der Handschriften in der Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln, Erster Teil: Codices 1â500 (in preparation).
See for example the list, based on so called new findings, in: Schindler (1988), p. 480. The copy of Zwingliâs De peccato originali with the ownerâs remark âSum Hulderychi Zuinglii Tiguriniâ did not belong to Zwingli, as Christoph Jörg thought, but to his son Huldrych (1528â1571). Cf. Jörg (2006). Also the copy of the Historia mundi written by Pliny (Basle, Officina Frobeniana, 1530) and held by McGill University Library (shelf mark: folio P728h 1530), did not belong to Zwingli as is sometimes claimed. The marginal notes were not written by his hand.
Köhler (1921), p. *â¯36â*â¯44.