Johann Eck - Zwingli and His Followers

Zwingli and His Followers

In addition to his inquisitorial duties, every year witnessed the publication of one or more writings against iconoclasm and in defense of the doctrines of the Mass, purgatory, and auricular confession. His Enchiridion locorum communium adversus Lutherum et alios hostes ecclesiae (Landshut, 1525) went through forty-six editions before 1576. As its title indicates, it was directed primarily against Melanchthon's Loci Communes, although it also concerned itself to some extent with the teachings of Huldrych Zwingli.

At Baden-in-Aargau from 21 May until 18 June 1526 a public disputation on the doctrine of transubstantiation was held, in which Eck and Thomas Murner were pitted against Johann Oecolampadius. The affair ended decidedly in favor of Eck, who induced the authorities to enter on a course of active persecution of Zwingli and his followers (Conference of Baden).

The effect of his victory at Baden was dissipated, however, at the Disputation of Bern (January 1528), where the propositions advanced by the Reformers were debated in the absence of Eck, and Bern, Basel, and other places were definitely won for the Reformation. At the Diet of Augsburg (1530) Eck played the leading part among the Roman Catholic theologians.