He grew into a popular respected teacher and preacher and spoke out against the injustices he saw all around him. When the pope strong-armed his canton into sending its mercenaries against Spain against his will and preaching, he began to focus his efforts against the abuses he saw in the papacy. This was swiftly rewarded his branding by the Catholic Church as a heretic and his association with Martin Luther. This also caused a complete formal break with the church and while Luther would have been initially somewhat concerned with this, Zwingli welcomed it. This allowed him to restructure the church as he saw the Bible modeling, forming Zurich into a functioning Bibliocracy. He died in battle with the Catholic Swiss Cantons in …show more content…
Although that opposition was usually couched in theological considerations, in fact they were persecuted because they were considered subversive. In spite of their radical views on other matters, both Luther and Zwingli accepted the notion that church and state must live side by side, supporting each other, and both refrained from any interpretation of the gospel that would make it a threat to the established social order. The Anabaptists, without seeking to do so, did threaten the social order. Their extreme pacifism was unacceptable to those in charge of maintaining social and political order, particularly amid the upheavals of the sixteenth