hurch overnight turned into a project of building a new church independent of the Catholic Church.While Germany struggled under the political and religious consequences of Luther's reform movement, the movement itself quickly spilled out of the German borders into neighboring Switzerland. At the time, Switzerland was not a single country but a confederacy of thirteen city-states called cantons. When Luther's ideas began to pour over the border, several of the cantons broke from the Catholic church and became Protestant while other cantons remained firmly Catholic. Of the cantons that adopted Luther's new movement, the most important and powerful was the city-state of Zurich under the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli. He was popular in Zurich for his opposition to Swiss mercenary service in foreign wars and his attacks on indulgences; he was, as significant a player in the critique of indulgences as Luther himself.Zwingli rose through the ranks of the Catholic Church until he was appointed "People's Priest" in 1519, the most powerful ecclesiastical position in the city. In 1523, the city officially adopted Zwingli's central ecclesiastical reforms and became the first Protestant state outside of Germany. From there the Protestant revolution would sweep across the map of Switzerland. Zwingli's theology and morality were based on a single principle that if the Old or New Testament did not say something explicitly and literally, then no Christian should believe or practice it. Zwingli soon joined Luther to try to expand the ideas of the Protestant’s but they both didn’t have the same believes. The disagreement between Luther and Zwingli, was viewed as a political crisis of the highest order. As leaders of the Protestant movement in two separate countries, Luther and Zwingli threatened any kind of political alliance between the two countries. In October of 1529, Philip of Hesse invited both Luther and Zwingli to his castle in Marb...
