ignorant. That he never went to rest at night without having read a little in his master's works, as he said in a letter to the master himself, may not have been strictly true; but the dominant influence of Erasmus upon Zwingli, never overcome although combined with other influences, admits of no doubt. He may also have learnt from Erasmus something in the way of negation, such as a contempt for relics; something, too, he may have learnt from Pico della Mirandola, for whose sake he was once called a heretic at Basel; but from anti-papal tendencies he was quite free. From this young humanist-paradoxically combining a deep sense of responsibility with notable laxity in his moral life-no programme of reform was as yet to be looked for. His was a mind that moved gradually towards its fuller plans, and needed a fitting field wherein to work.
In 1513 he had again taken up the study of Greek, in which a little later Bombasius became his teacher; and he went to the New Testament itself rather than to any commentaries; the Fathers however attracted' him, and it was at Glarus that he read Jerome (to whom Erasmus could not fail to send him), Augustine, Origen, Cyril, and Chrysostom. Of all these Augustine was his favourite-a fact to be noted in discussing his theology; but he considered the Greek Fathers to be more excellent in their Christology than were the Latin. Hebrew, possibly begun before, was studied later at Zurich in 1519 or 1520, but needed a renewed effort in 1522. He ever insisted upon the need of a learned clergy, and studied Holy Writ as he had learned to study the classical writers-a method which lent freshness to his teaching, but laid him open to a charge of irreverence.
Through his devotion to Erasmus and his friendship with Heinrich Loriti of Glarus (Glareanus) Zwingli gained an entry into the world of letters, which inherited the cosmopolitanism of the medieval universities, and which was now beginning to group itself around presses such as Froben's at Basel and Froschauer's at Zurich (1519). This was of importance, not only for his growing reputation, but also as bringing him into touch with wider interests. In his later years of diplomacy the habit of correspondence and the varied associations thus formed proved of use. Equally important too was the skill with which he drew around him younger men-some to find their goal in humanism, some in religious reform; in their after life and in their studies (mainly at Vienna) he followed them from afar and regularly wrote to them. Thus before he founded a school he had the scholars ready, and his name was a power among the younger men.
During these years at Glarus he became entangled in that system of wars and pensions which was the glory and the shame of his fatherland. The Italian wars brought not only much wealth to Switzerland, but also an increase of territory. To keep the Swiss as allies Louis XII had (1503) surrendered Bellinzona to them; when Massimiliano Sforza was made
