Generational Conflict in the Late Reformation: The Basel Paroxysm

In 1571,the Basel Council ended a controversy over the Lord's Supper by requiring all of its pastors to accept the Wittenberg Concord along with a Zwinglian "Explication" written thirty-five years earlier. The church's leaders, who favored using ambiguous language acceptable to both Lutherans and Reformed to describe the Eucharist, were largely sympathetic to ties linking South Germany and Switzerland that dated back to the early sixteenth century. The younger pastors, however, were more inclined to identify themselves exclusively as Swiss, and therefore Zwinglian.The generation gap between the small number of older pastors and the much larger number of younger ones points to a new mindset among those clergy who would assume leadership of the Protestant church in the 1570s.