Una din reveistele mele preferate din America este o fereastră deschisă spre trecutul protestanților. Leben este publicată de City Seminary of Sacramento și este numele german pentru ,,Viață“. Dacă nu puteți face abonamente la ea, mergeți măcar să o citiți Online la adresa din titlu. Iată o mostră din conținut:

What would Luther have been without his Katie? The women of the Reformed Church have been an important element in her history. Just as Deborah and Esther, with the Marys of the New Testament, aided in making up Bible history, so the women of the Reformed Church have helped to make her history great.

The first, and in some respects the most interesting of them, was the wife of the founder of our Church, Ulrich Zwingli. Her name was Anna Reinhard. She had not been a nun like Catharine von Bora, Luther’s wife. She was a pious widow when he married her. And there is an element of romance about their courtship which Luther’s life does not have.

Not far from Zwingli’s parsonage in Zurich was a house called the Hoefli. In it lived the widow of John Meyer, of Knonau. She was born about 1487, although the date of her birth is uncertain. Of her youth we know nothing, except that she was beautiful. A young companion, John Meyer von Knonau, sought her hand. But it happened that his father had chosen another bride for his son. The Knonau were among the oldest and most prominent noble families in Zurich, and John’s father was proud of his family and position. He desired his son to occupy the same position in the aristocracy as he. So he sent him to the court of the bishop of Constance, his cousin, to be properly educated. And he chose as a bride for his son a lady of Thurgau, who belonged to a noble Austrian family. But his son was of a different mind. With true Swiss independence he preferred a Swiss girl to a foreign noblewoman. He had not forgotten the beautiful Anna Reinhard, the daughter of the landlord of the Roessli, and they were secretly married in 1504 at a village chapel in the canton of Zurich. When the father heard of this, he became terribly angry. He forbade his son the house and disinherited him, leaving his fortune to his second wife, rather than to his son’s family. Anna’s husband was now cast on his own resources. He was elected to the city council in 1511 against his father’s efforts, and then became ensign in the Swiss army, going with them to Italy in the wars against France. But after several campaigns he returned in broken health and died in 1517, leaving Anna a widow with three children, a son and two daughters.

Now it is her little boy Gerold around whom the romance of Zwingli’s marriage seems to gather. He must have been a very beautiful and attractive boy, for his grandfather happened to be with some of the city councilors in a room that overlooked the fish market one day, watching the people going to and fro. A maid came along with a little three-year-old boy and left him sitting at the stall while she paid for her fish. The old man noticed that the boy was attracting the attention of the passers-by by his beauty and pretty manners. He asked his companions whose child the boy was, and was surprised to be told that it was the son of his son. He ordered the child to be brought to him and took him in his arms. The child, unabashed, played with his beard and looked him in the face so prettily, that the old man gave way to tears. He said to the boy, “Your father made me angry, but I will not let it injure you, but will take you as my child, instead of your father.” And he ordered the boy to be taken to his own home, where the grandfather and grandmother cared for him with great tenderness. When he was nine years old his grandfather died, and his grandmother cared for him.

Zwingli reading his Bible translation to his wife.

Now this beautiful boy, who so aptly healed over the breach in his father’s family, was destined to do a similar act for Zwingli. It was this boy who unconsciously brought his mother and Zwingli together, until they were finally married. Zwingli came to Zurich after the death of his grandfather, when Anna was struggling to support and train her family, although she was cramped by her small means. She was from the beginning one of Zwingli’s most attentive listeners whenever he preached. As her home was in his parish, he came in contact with her as her pastor. He soon saw her needs and also her Christian graces. But it was Gerold who especially attracted his attention. Zwingli’s quick eye soon saw the talents of this precocious boy. He gave him private lessons in Greek and Latin and when Gerold needed higher education, he sent him at the early age of eleven to Basle, then the literary center of Switzerland. Thus Zwingli became a foster-father to the orphan. The boy was so bright that his teacher as Basle wrote back to Zwingli, “If you have any more such boys, send them to me. I will be a father to them, and they shall be my sons.”

When the boy went (1523) to the baths at Baden, instead of giving him the customary present, Zwingli gave him what (the rest of the story)

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