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(1482–1538) When she married Ulrich Zwingli secretly in 1522, Anna Reinhart was the well-to-do widow of Hans Meyer von Knonau, a soldier of wild habits who had died in 1517. With ten other priests, Zwingli had appealed to the Bishop early in 1522 for permission to marry, but was refused. Thus, he married secretly, and not until April 5, 1524, did he and Anna make their arrangement public. She brought three children to the marriage, and had four others by Ulrich: Regula (July 31, 1524), Wilhelm (January 24, 1526), Ulrich (January 6, 1528), and Anna (May 4, 1530). Only one letter from Ulrich to his wife survives, dated January 11, 1528: “Grace and Peace from God. Beloved wife, I say God be thanked that He has permitted you a happy birth …” When Ulrich was killed at Kappel, Anna grieved deeply. Heinrich Bullinger took her and the children into his home and treated her like family until she died peacefully seven years later. (1524–1565) Regula, Zwingli’s oldest child, is described as the image of her mother, Anna. According to Zwingli’s own entry in his pocket Bible, Regula was born on July 31, 1524, on a Sunday at 2:30 a.m. in the house called “Zur Sul” in the Kirchgasse (Church Lane). Brought up with the children of Bullinger after her father’s death, Regula married Rudolf Gwalther in 1541 and soon was installed at St. Peter’s in Zurich as the parson’s wife. Of her six children, Anna, the oldest, is well known through the portrait by Hans Asper and as the wife of Heinrich Bullinger the Younger. Regula died of the Plague on November 14, 1565.

(1482–1542) Zwingli referred to Leo Jud as “my dear brother and faithful co-worker in the gospel of Jesus Christ.” As college students—Zwingli, in his late teens and Jud, just 20—at the University of Basel, they met and studied under Thomas Wyttenbach, whose expositions on parts of the New Testament, especially Romans, inspired both of them to study the Scriptures. Thereafter they were lifelong friends. Jud succeeded Zwingli in 1518 at Einsiedeln in the important post of scholar and preacher to pilgrims and then followed him to Zurich in 1523 to become pastor at St. Peter’s. At Zwingli’s first disputation in 1523, Jud wasted no time in determining to follow Zwingli’s leadership in preaching the pure Gospel, and likewise that same year he married. His thundering September 1 sermon in St. Peter’s against images—just a few days after Zwingli’s Essay on the Canon of the Mass had left the press—fanned the fires that ended up ridding the church of images and the Latin Mass. Besides his unstinting loyalty to Zwingli, Jud used his excellent skills to translate Zwingli’s exposition of Scripture into German and Latin; he led the translation of he Zurich Bible in 1529 and provided a careful Latin translation of the Old Testament. In the same unselfish way, he assisted Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor.

(d. 1524) Some men leave behind little trace of themselves, but great influence nonetheless. Little is known about Cornelius Hoen, a lawyer at The Hague and resident of Holland, yet his careful study of Christ’s words, “This is my body,” led Zwingli to a position on the Eucharist that made certain the gulf between himself and Luther. In 1509 Hoen came into charge of the library of a former dean at the University of Paris, who had engaged in a controversy with Wesel Gansfort over the authority of the Church and tradition. Among these archives was a treatise on the Eucharist by Gansfort. This set Hoen to thinking. Typical of the practice of humanists, Hoen worked out his conclusions in a letter, stating that the communion should not be a sacrament in the Catholic sense, but merely a commemoration. Hoen’s interpretation took the “is” to mean “represents” or “means.” In 1521 this letter was brought by Hinne Rode to Luther, who rejected Hoen’s interpretation. Two years later Rode visited Oecolampadius in Basel, who read the letter with much interest and urged Rode to present it to Zwingli. At that time, Zwingli’s interpretation of communion was somewhat uncertain, but the seed fell on good soil, causing him to write: “In this letter I found a pearl of great value: is has the sense of means.” In the meantime Hoen was arrested on suspicion of “Lutheran” heresies and died shortly thereafter. In 1525 Zwingli published Hoen’s Epistola Christiana. Hoen’s letter symbolizes that humanist phenomenon of autonomous intellectual positions among laymen on questions of Church doctrine.

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