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 Duke of Milan (1512) they received from him the Val Màggia, Locarno, and Lugano, while the Rhaetian League (the Grisons) gained the Valtelline. The Swiss Diets were besieged by agents of the Powers. A French party was to be found in every town, and a papalist anti-French party was created by Matthäus Schinner, Cardinal of Sion, in the service of Julius II. Zwingli's interest in politics was great; politics and patriotism* inspired his earliest German poems,—the Labyrinth, and the Fahle of the Ox and the Beasts; his position in Glarus made him a valuable ally for the papal party in a parish where the French were strong; it was therefore natural-although afterwards made a charge against him-that he should accept from the Pope a pension of 50 florins (1512 or 1513); and he was also (August 29, 1518) appointed acolyte chaplain. So far was he from being anti-papal that the Papacy was the one Power with which he held it right, even dutiful, to form alliances. Twice he seems to have gone to Italy as chaplain with the Glarus contingent; according to Bullinger he was present at Novara (June 6, 1513) and at Marignano (September 13-14, 1515); on the latter occasion his persuasion kept the Glarus men faithful to their service when others deserted to the French. Afterwards he indicates this as the period when he formed his well-known views upon the evils of mercenary service. The life of a mercenary-in camp or city- destroyed the simplicity endeared to Zwingli by the earlier Confederate history and classic models.

In 1515 the papal alliance came to an end: the terrible experience of Marignano on the one hand, and the acquisition of territory on the other, had made the Confederates desirous of peace, and (November 29, 1516) a permanent peace was made with France. Zwingli's opposition to this change of policy made his position at Glarus untenable, and he became people's priest (or vicar) at Einsiedeln (April 14, 1516), placing a vicar at Glarus. Einsiedeln, owing to its renown as a place of pilgrimage, combined the quiet of a monastic House with the traffic of a place of passage. Here he carried further his classical studies and increased his reputation as a preacher; he carefully trained himself in oratory by a study of the best classic models.

The personalities of the three great leaders, Erasmus, Luther (to whom Zwingli considered he was prior in his teaching), and Zwingli, were very different. Luther, with his monastic training, cared little for Catholic organisation; but he had a fervid personal experience and a strong love for doctrine. Erasmus combined piety and theological learning with much freedom of speech, tempered by regard for authority and a historic sense. Zwingli had from the first no regard for authority-which indeed presented itself at times in a guise hard to respect; he belonged to a country peculiarly weak in its ecclesiastical organisation and abounding in clerical abuses. But he had a deep regard for learning and a love of freedom, personal and intellectual.