Protestantism in Switzerland - James Aitken Wylie

Thus we behold, at nearly the same moment, on
two stages widely apart, measures taken to
suppress Protestantism, which, in their results, help
above all things to establish it. In the little town of
Baden we see the deputies of the cantons and the
representatives of the bishops assembling to
confute the Zwinglians, and vote the extinction of
the Reform movement in Switzerland. Far away
beyond the Pyrenees we see (March, 1526) the
Emperor Charles sitting down in the Moorish
Alcazar at Seville, and indicting a letter to his
brother Archduke Ferdinand, commanding him to
summon a Diet at Siftres, to execute the Edict of
Worms. The disputation at Baden led very directly,
as we shall immediately see, to the establishment
of Protestantism in the two important cantons of
Bern and Basic. And the Diet of Spires (1526),
instead of an edict of proscription, produced, as we
have already seen an edict of toleration in favor of
the Reformation. The Chancellor of the University
of Ingolstadt and the head of the Holy Roman
Empire, acting without concert, and certainly not
designing what they accomplish, unite their
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