This article explores the group of the so-called reformation practitioners, by which the author proposes to understand clergy (1) of local or regional significance who participated in the Reformation (2) not just for reasons of opportunity, but of actual agreement, but whose participation in the Reformation (3) is less visible by their own theological writings but by their involvement in processes of preparing and implementing actual church reforms. This topic is developed by a reassessment of Wolfgang Joner, Abbot of the Cistercian House of Kappel. An important representative of the rural clergy, he became an active supporter of Zwingli from a relatively early point of time. Exercising his influence on female convince, parishes, and participating in most of the important reform committees appointed by the Zurich magistrate, Abbott Wolfgang became a key factor in the preparation and implementation of Zurich’s reformation.

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Although the doctrines of both the Anabaptists and the «Altgläubige» are rejected in the Swiss Reformed confessional writings of the 1530s, researchers emphasise their «ecumenical character», such as the First Helvetic Confession of 1536. Which positions were labelled heretical and how they could be dealt with was repeatedly discussed in different ways – not only in the confessional writings such as the Berner Synodus of 1532 and the Basler Bekenntnis of 1534, but also in the correspondance. The aim of this article is to show how Reformed Swiss theologians discussed heretical positions and how they proposed to deal with them.

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Bullinger uses the term philosophia Christi in the prefaces to his Commentary on 1 John and the collected edition of his commentaries on the New Testament epistles to describe what his readers should expect to learn from the Bible. This article first explores Bullinger’s use of the term ‘philosophy of Christ’ in the corpus of his commentaries. Next, it sketches the development of the term from its origin in the patristic period up to the time of Dutch humanist Erasmus in the early modern period. A consideration of the multifaceted influence Erasmus and his understanding of philosophia Christi exerted on Bullinger and, more broadly, on the Zurich Reformed milieu concludes the discussion.

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In 1537, the first theology courses in Lausanne were dispensed in order to form what would become the Lausanne Academy in the 1540s. That same year, books started to be acquired in order to form an academic library, constituting a tool for the professorial and ministerial personnel in Lausanne. At the end of the sixteenth century, all the books in the library of the Academy received ex-libris. Preserved at the Bibliothèque Cantonale Universitaire de Lausanne, these books were classified in a catalogue of 578 titles. Thus, this reconstituted the sixteenth century academic library. Its study—here focusing on the theological titles in particular—sheds light on the diachronic intellectual climate surrounding the Lausanne Academy, such as confessionalization, the shift of the emphasis from humanism to scholasticism, and the consequences of intra and extra-Protestant polemics.