Daniel Zwicker (1612-1678) was never famous, and today he is largely forgot-ten. At the end of the seventeenth century an Anglican bishop, George Bull, was the last author to subject Zwicker's arguments against the Trinity to a compre-hensive and, of course, hostile scrutiny.1 A little earlier, Leibniz had considered doing likewise but in the end decided that Zwicker was not worth the endeavour.2 After that, only the historians of Antitrinitarianism and other radical movements continued to mention Zwicker. He had ceased to be a challenge; he had become history. In recent years he has received some fresh attention, but interest has shift-ed from his attacks on the Trinity to his pleas for toleration and church unity. My own monograph on him was recently published in a new series entitled Studi e Testi per la Storia della Tolleranza in Europa nei secoli XVI-XVJJL3 The follow-ing presentation, however, will focus on Zwicker's Antitrinitarian views rather than his irenicism, and on his links to Central and South-Eastern Europe rather than to his better-documented presence in Amsterdam, where he spent the last three decades of his life. lt is fair to say that throughout his Amsterdam years Zwicker remained indelibly marked by the impulses he had received amid the Polish Socinians and the Hutterite Brethren in Slovakia.
Zwicker was the son of a Lutheran pastor in Gdansk. He also lived for several years in the household of his brother, Friedrich Zwicker, who had succeeded to their father's pulpit of St. Bartholomew's. Friedrich occupied a middle rank among the Lutheran hierarchy of Gdansk. The formidable Johannes Botsack was a close friend of the family. Zwicker's sisters also married Lutheran ministers. His school-ing in the Gdansk gymnasium and later at the University of Königsberg provid-ed Daniel with a solid grounding in Erasmian and humanism and throughout his life he would thumb Erasmus' New Testament and the scriptural commentaries of Hugo Grotius. At the same time he was introduced to Aristotelianism and the neo-scholastic logic that guided Lutheran orthodoxy from Wittenberg and
Helm-1 George BULL, The Worlcs, ed. E. BURTON, 2nd ed., Oxford 1846, vols. 1 and VI.
2 Gottfried Wilhelm LEIBNIZ, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, series 6, Philosophische Schriften, eds
w.
KABITZ and H. SCHEPERS, new ed., I. Berlin 1971, 53lf.3 Peter G. BIETENHOLZ, Daniel Zwicker, 1612-1678: Peace, Tolerance and God the One and Only, Aorence 1997. The present paper was written before the publication of the book.
While not claiming to be based on fresh evidence, the paper attempts to bring into topical context some aspects treated more fully in the book.
stedt to Strasbourg. At Königsberg Zwicker studied medicine. His printed theses4 suggest an interest in sober pharmaco-chemistry rather than the more nebulous alchemy of the Paracelsians. When he was twenty-seven, he paid an apparently fleeting visit to Leiden where he obtained the medical doctorate. How long he practiced medicine is not clear. He no longer did so after his move to Amsterdam in 1657. He never fully shared the passion of his age for the sciences.
We are better informed about Zwicker's progress as a religious seeker. His family was, as mentioned, staunchly Lutheran. Now, although the Lutheran ma-jority of Gdansk grew increasingly intransigent and domineering, political neces-sity and imperative comrnercial interests frequently enforced a measure of tolera-tion. Catholicism was protected by the nominal rule of the Polish crown.
Calvinism was assisted by the continued presence of Dutch merchants. Even Socinianism had tobe tolerated for a while. So long as the Socinian Polish mag-nates shipped their grain from the port of Gdansk, their leanings could not be ignored with impunity. Moreover, the plain behind Gdansk was home to many Dutch and Frisian Mennonites, who had been encouraged to settle there in view of their skills in drainage and sea-level farming. The young Zwicker watched and listened. Like many of his fellow-citizens, he was fluent in German and Latin, but also understood Polish and Dutch. In 1636 he may have watched the spectacular performance of the visiting Capuchin Valerianus Magni, whom he later liked to quote in his writings.5 Another frequent visitor to Gdansk was Johannes Arnos Comenius, the intemationally famous head of the Bohemian Brethren.6 Zwicker undoubtedly became aware of the great irenicist long before close relations, fol-lowed by a boisterous clash between them, were to develop in Amsterdam.
Decisive for Zwicker's future was the presence of Socinianism both among the German- and the Polish-speaking inhabitants of Gdansk7 and, more specifically, the arrival of Martin Ruar in 1631. A man of deep conviction and past rector of the Rak6w Socinian college, Ruar was also an intellectual of European outreach, who corresponded with Hugo Grotius, Marin Mersenne and other distinguished men. He served as a comrnercial agent for Polish latifundians, some of whom were also Socinians. In Gdansk he married into a well-connected family that had its own lies to Socinianism. His wife's grandmother had attended Paolo Alciati on his deathbed. Ruar was eminently suited to present Socinianism spiritually and intellectually in a most favourable light and to make it look socially and
intellec-4 Copies of three theses, two from Königsberg 1634, and one from Leiden 1639, are preserved in Gdafisk; see BIETENHOLZ, Daniel Zwicker, op. cit., 279f.
s For Magni and his Iudicium de acatholicorum et catholicorum regula credendi, 1641, see Klaus ScHOLDER, Ursprünge und Probleme der Bibelkritik im 17. Jahrhundert, Munich 1966, 17-20 and passim.
6 W. BICKERICH, Des Comenius Aufträge in Danzig 1641 und die Verbindung der Unität mit den Reformierten in Danzig, Zeitschrift des Westpreussischen Geschichtsvereins, 55( 1913 ), 127-147.
7 Janusz TAZBIR, Sozinianismus in Gdafzsk und Umgebung, Studia maritima, 1, Wroclaw 1978, 7~8.
34
tually attractive. At the University of Strasbourg Ruar had met a young Lithua-nian, Florianus Crusius. Crusius was a convinced Socinian when he moved to Gdansk the year after Ruar's own arrival and established himselfthere as a physi-cian. Contacts with this older and accordingly experienced colleague may weil have left their mark on Zwicker.
By 1642 Zwicker was, like Crusius, a member of Ruar's circle. Moreover, he likely became acquainted with some of the leading authorities of l 71h-century Socinianism. Ludwig von Wolzogen was Crusius' brother-in-law and a frequent visitor to Gdansk, while Joachim Stegmann junior was Ruar's student and sub-sequently his son-in-law. In 1654 Zwicker corresponded with Wolzogen who then apparently shared his father-in-law's concern about the direction of Zwicker's religious views. A few years later Zwicker engaged Stegmann in a protracted controversy over the place of the true Christian in the political state. Although both Wolzogen and Stegmann had professed views on this topic that were more uncompromising than those of Przypkowski and other leading Polish Socinians, Zwicker came to criticize Stegmann along with Przypkowski for maintaining that one could be a Christian and a magistrate at the same time.8 To Zwicker the two commitments were mutually exclusive. lt may be noted that such an uncompro-mising stance was not unprecedented among the Gdansk Socinians. Long before Zwicker's conversion it had been adopted there by Matthäus Radecke and Krystof Ostorodt.9
For some time Ruar's circle was tolerated in Gdansk in deference to the pleas of Polish Socinian magnates, but in 1643 the patience of the city fathers ran out and the prominent Socinians were expelled. Along with the others Zwicker moved to close-by Straszyn, an estate belonging to the Socinian noble Pawl lwanicki.
Some years later Zwicker paid a visit to the Polesian estates of Iwanicki's more famous cousin, Jerzy Niemirycz. On that occasion he drew a map of Polesia, marking the locations where a superior crimson dye was harvested for export to westem Europe.10 When even a scientific undertaking like Zwicker's map was obviously relevant to commercial operations, one can appreciate the close fit between faith and business in the connection betwen the Gdansk Socinians and their Polish patrons. lt may be added that Zwicker was not the only black sheep in his orthodox Lutheran family. His sister Susanna, widow of a Lutheran pastor, married one Andreas Ladenbach, merchant and later town secretary, who also fig-ures among those exiled along with Ruar. A son of this couple Iived later in Ams-terdam but maintained no discernable connections with heterodox circles.
8 Daniel ZWICKER, Ecclesia antiqua inermis, post tot sequiora secula jure tandem iterum asserta, Amsterdam?, c. 1666, Dutch transl.: Amsterdam 1668. Samuel PRZYPKOWSKI, Vin-diciae tractatus de magistratu contra objectiones Danielis Zwickeri, in: Przypkowski's Co-gitationes sacrae, Eleutheropoli [Amsterdam] 1692, 853-880.
9 Stanislas KoT, Socinianism in Poland, Boston (Mass.) 1957, 147-152.
10 Zbigniew KAWECKI and Halina WERNERÖWNA, Opis mapy gdafzszczanina Daniela Zwickera (1650) z rozmieszczeniem czerwca polskiego Porphyophora polonica, Warszawa 1975.
We must now turn to the other major source of inspiration in Zwicker's spir-itual formation. In the last years before his removal to Amsterdam he was in con-tact with the Hutterite Moravian Brethren. In a tantalizing aside in one of his earliest pamphlets (published in 1650) he mentions a visit to the Hutterites of Transylvania.11 Unfortunately nothing more is known about such an episode. By contrast, there is full documentation for his visit to the Hutterite brüderhof of Sobotiste in Slovakia, near the border with Hungary.12 This visit followed in the wake of repeated efforts on the part of the Brethren to effect a rapprochement with the Socinians. Although Zwicker remained only a fortnight in Sobotiste, the contact with the Moravian Brethren left a lasting impression on his mind. His visit to Sobotiste led to an exchange of several long letters with Ruar and also with Wolzogen.13 The Hutterites held the orthodox view of Christ's two natures;
while in Sobotiste, Zwicker had taken exception to this doctrine as well as stat-ing his reservations with regard to the Brethren's communitarian life-style. After his retum to Gdansk, however, he warmly defended the Hutterite community of goods to a sceptical Ruar. There ensued a debate about the precedent set in this regard by the earliest Christian congregation in Jerusalem, in which Wolzogen also participated. Zwicker further defended the Hutterites against Ruar's charge that their leaders indulged in authoritarian, undemocratic practices. The exchange ended amid mutual recriminations bewteen Ruar and Andreas Ehrenpreis, the head of the Hutterite community. lt also points to a widening rift between Zwicker and Ruar's circle. When Zwicker shortly afterwards surfaced in Amsterdam, he was eager to tell anyone who wanted to know that he no longer considered him-self a Socinian. At the same time he tried to convince Comenius that his personal religion was germane to that of the Moravian Brethren. In part that was true. He continued to express his admiration for them. In his last major work, the Novi Foederis Josias, published in 1670, he drew inspiration from Sobotiste. He argued that the large churches, "where Antichrist dwells," should be replaced by little churches, "ecc/esiolae, "of no more than thirty or forty families. These should be led by one or two ministers, "truly leamed and pious men, free from partisan zeal." In addition to holding services, they would visit the members in their homes and counsel them on economic and marital problems and the education of the young. When necessary, they would wield ecclesiastical discipline and mete out punishment.14 If one were able to follow Zwicker in this vision, a Christian commonwealth without magisterial churches, civil govemments and armies might begin to appear realisable.
11 (Daniel ZWICKER), Historische Erzehlung des Abtritts D.D.Z. von der meinung das drey Personen in der Einigen Gottheit seyn, n. p. 1650, 4: "„. unter welche ich in sonderheit zehlen und rechnen muss die Märischen Bruder, bey welchen ich auch eh.rmahls in Siebenbürgen, ihr thun anzusehen, gewesen war ... "
12 Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Oesterreich-Ungarn, ed. Josef BECK, Wien 1883, 487-492.
13 Martini Ruari nec non H. Grotii, M Mersenm {„.} a/iorumque [„.} epistolarum selectarum centuriae, Amsterdam 1677-1681, II, Ist cent„ Ep. 70-74.
14 Daniel ZWICKER, Novi Foederis Josias, n. p. 1670, 43f.
36
When Zwicker arrived in Amsterdam, he must have brought with him a sub-stantial draft manuscript of his lrenicum lrenicorum. The book was published anonymously in 1658, of course in Amsterdam. To judge from the number of sur-viving copies in various libraries15 and from the number of reactions it elicited, it was always taken tobe Zwicker's most important work. The title, lrenicum Jreni-corum, suggests that it was meant to outdo all other irenica, of which there was then a great number in circulation, with new ones being published almost every year. lt was typical of Zwicker that he saw himself as a challenger not tobe best-ed, even when the goal was restoring Christian unity. The lrenicum lrenicorum is germane to this presentation as more than two thirds of its pages are devoted to a salvo of attacks upon the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity rather than dealing with reconciliation. However, to link the two issues, Antitrinitarianism and irenicism, was in Zwicker's view indispensable and justified both by logic and ecclesiastical history. The Council of Nicaea and its political patron, the Emperor Constantine, were responsible for the single most decisive turn in the history of the Christian oecumene. And what a turn for the worse it was.
The apostolic view of God the One and Only, as still expressed in the Apostles' Creed, was abandoned along with the toleration practised by the earliest church.
This disastrous change was never afterwards reversed. All major churches of Zwicker's own time, despite their many doctrinal disagreements, were united in their support for the false dogma of the Trinity. This meant that their only real point of dogmatic consensus was a falshood. They would never be able to come together in the truth, unless each of them was prepared to foreswear Trinitari-anism. Zwicker offered to show them the way by pursuing a threefold argument.
His first two categories of proof against the Trinity were the traditional Socini-nian ones: Scripture and sound reason. Actually, he wasted little space on either.
Scripture especially, which could offer little more than proofs ex silentio, was handled succinctly. The ]arger part of his treatise was reserved for the third point of his argument: proof derived from the history of the church. Zwicker attempt-ed to show at great length that the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers offerattempt-ed concrete and irrefutable evidence for the Unitarian view of God.
Zwicker examines and quotes ten witnesses, beginning with the Pastor of Hermas and ending with Tertullian, so as to show that the early church was firrnly committed to the Unitarian view. But in doing so, he cannot avoid, and indeed is honest enough to admit, the fact that even before Nicaea many Trinitarian argu-ments became better defined and more firmly anchored in Christian theology.
Therefore he develops a second thesis, according to which the Trinitarian view, first conceived by wicked heretics at the bidding of Satan, came gradually to infilt-rate the teachings of respected Fathers, until it was canonized in Nicaea. Thus he is left with two conflicting theses, and these he fails to harmonize. To better understand his quandary, we should briefly assess his sources. While the
promin-15 There are copies in Budapest, Warszawa, Krak6w, Gdailsk, Poznail, Wrodaw, etc. A copy of the Novi Foederis Josias is in Cluj/Kolozsvär.
ent Polish Socinians failed to pay attention to the historical development of the dogma of Trinity, Zwicker's argument was to some degree anticipated in Tran-sylvania, especially in De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti cognitione.16 There is no proof that Zwicker was acquainted with the Tran-sylvanian treatises, but there is a fair chance that his mentor, Martin Ruar, was.
In a letter of 1638 from Gdansk, Ruar argued that not a single ante-Nicene source of authoritative weight had maintained the Son's equality with the Father.17 He supported his point with references to the works of Ignatius, Justin Martyr and Tertullian that would later also figure in Zwicker's lrenicum Jrenicorum. The addressee of Ruar's letter is not indicated. lt could have been Zwicker, but if it was another, there still is no difficulty in assuming that Zwicker was acquainted with Ruar's train of thought.
If Ruar may thus have provided an initial impetus, Zwicker's principal inspira-tion came from another source, namely the Jesuit Dionysius Petavius (Petau).
With some exaggeration Petavius has been called "the father of the history of dogma."18 In the seventeenth century he was sometimes accused of inadvertently supplying potent ammunition to the Antritrinitarians, or even of being a Socinian in disguise. The latter charge is ridiculous, but the former cannot, in view of Zwicker, be so easily dismissed. In the lrenicum lrenicorum Zwicker's depend-ence on Petavius is so predominant that it leaves little room for other possible sources. Petavius had studied the ante-Nicene Fathers in order to prove the bib-lical origins and the essentially unchanged continuity of the dogma of the Trinity, while Zwicker's aim was to prove the opposite of that. Both, however, were pro-foundly serious in their endeavour and thus had to deal with the ambiguity of their sources as best they could. In terms of historical scholarship, their respect-ive analyses were much closer than their ideological viewpoints would lead one to expect. Zwicker had to acknowledge that at one point or another his sources had granted the Son all the attributes of Trinitarian divinity, excepting only that he was not etemal and not equal to the Father. Petavius and, later, George Bull were accomplished Patristics scholars; Zwicker was nothing of the kind, although his later writings show that he had progressed to reading the Fathers independ-ently. lt is therefore ironical that the Trinitarian interpretations of his opponents have largely fallen by the wayside, while Zwicker's case for the tardy formation of the Trinitarian doctrine has proven to be correct.
The lrenicum lrenicorum met with many polemical reactions; the most extens-ive among them was the controversy with Comenius. By the time it ended, both
16 De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti cognitione libri duo, ed. Antal
P1RNAT, Utrecht 1988, 186-193. Jacobus PALAEOLOGUS, Disputatio scholastica, eds Juliusz
DOMANSKI and Lech SZCZUCKI, Utrecht 1994, 77ff.
17 RUAR, Epistolae, op. eil., II, Ist cent., Ep. 48.
18 Dionysius PETAVIUS, Theologicorum dogmatum tomus secundus, in quo de Sanctissima Trinitate agitur, Paris 1644. Leo KARRER, Die historisch-positive Methode des Theologen Dionysius Petavius, Munich 1970, l 77f. Michael HOFMANN, Theologie, Dogma und Dogmen-entwicklung im theologischen Werk Denis Petaus, Berne 1976, 234-236.
38
protagonists had published over a thousand pages amid rebuttals and rejoinders.
Comenius had also alerted the Amsterdam consistory to the book and the identity of its anonymous author. At the time of his familiarity with Zwicker he had read part of the Irenicum in manuscript but apparently declined to express an opinion.
Comenius had also alerted the Amsterdam consistory to the book and the identity of its anonymous author. At the time of his familiarity with Zwicker he had read part of the Irenicum in manuscript but apparently declined to express an opinion.