The PuritanBoard - View Single Post - Did Zwinglie have a mistress/affair/common-law wife?

DMcFadden · #9 (**permalink**) 03-14-2008, 12:49 PM

Quote:

No woman had been more respected in Zurich than Anna Reinhardt, the
widow of Meyer von Knonau, Gerold’s mother. From Zwingle’s arrival,
she had been one of his most attentive hearers; she lived near him, and he
had noticed her piety, her modesty, and affection for her children. They
young Gerold, who had become, as it were, his adopted son, drew him still
closer to the mother. The sufferings undergone by this christian woman,
who was one day to be more cruelly tried than any of her sex recorded in
history, had communicated a seriousness that contributed to show forth
her evangelical virtues more brightly. At this time she was about
thirty-five years old, and her fortune only amounted to four hundred
florins. It was on her that Zwingle fixed his eyes as a companion for life.
He comprehended all the sacredness and sympathy of the conjugal state.
He entitled it “a most holy alliance.” — “In like manner,” said he, “as
Christ died for his followers, and gave himself entirely for them, so should
married persons do all and suffer all for one another.” But Zwingle, when
he took Anna Reinhardt to wife, did not make his marriage known. This is
undoubtedly a blamable weakness in a man at other times so resolute. The
light that he and his friends had acquired on the question of celibacy was
not general. Weak minds might have been scandalized. He feared that his
usefulness in the Church would be paralyzed, if his marriage were made
public. He sacrificed a portion of his happiness to these fears,
excusable perhaps, but which he ought to have shaken off.

D'Aubigne (History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century 8.13) tends to whitewash the faults of the Reformers with a bit of hagiography. So, who knows what Zwingli really did. He had his first child three months after his public wedding. Reading the histories, I am not sure that his wife was entirely analogous to the mistresses taken by priests of the time (and for which they paid a special tax to the bishop). It sounds more like a secret marriage due to cowardice.