From 1523 to 1536, it was largely through religious disputes that the Reformation
spread throughout the Holy Empire and the Swiss Confederation,
particularly in cities and communes. Moving rapidly away from the
model of the medieval academic disputatio, from which the first reformers
had drawn their inspiration, these meetings became places of experimentation
and validation of new forms of production of religious truth. One
new aspect brought about by these meetings was the coming into play of
political authorities as supreme arbiter of the religious conflict. The study
of four representative disputes – Memmingen, Kaufbeuren (1525), Ilanz
(1526) and Bern (1528) – sheds a new light on the key role of magistrates
in the organization of disputes and on the importance of a close cooperation
between city councils and reformers who knew that a victory in a
dispute organized under the authority of the magistrate would allow them
to turn their ideals into political realities. The four selected examples also
show how magistrates used the disputes to assert their authority on religious
matters at the expense of the Church, to legitimate their policy of
restricting ecclesiastical privileges and to appear as those who guaranteed
peace and the salvation of souls in the city.