In Switzerland from 1516 to 1525 - James Aitken Wylie

which the council passed into a law, the canons
themselves concurring. The more irritating of the
taxes for the ecclesiastical estate were abolished.
No one was any longer to be compelled to pay for
baptism, for extreme unction, for burial, for burialcandles,
for grave-stones, or for the tolling of the
great bell of the minster. The canons and chaplains
who died off were not to be replaced; only a
competent number were to be retained, and these
were to serve as ministers of parishes. The amount
of benefices set free by the decease of canons was
to be devoted to the better payment of the teachers
in the Gymnasium of Zurich, and the founding of
an institution of a higher order for the training of
pastors, and the instruction of youth generally in
classical learning.
In place of the choir-service, mumbled
drowsily over by the canons, came the
"prophesying" or exposition of Scripture (1525),
which began at eight every morning, and was
attended by all the city clergy, the canons, the
chaplains, and scholars. Of the new school
mentioned above, Oswald Myconius remarks that
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