Images of the Poor in Reformation Zuerich (Poor Relief, Zwingli, Urban, Switzerland, Art).

In the 1520s and 1530s poor relief was reformed throughout Europe. For the most part, that reform has been viewed in relation to the Protestant Reformation. This dissertation explores changes in the care of the poor in Reformation Zurich and analyzes the general place of the poor in the reformed Christian community. In Zurich, the care of the poor was addressed visually, orally, and in the printed word in a campaign to engage the community as a whole. Three different kinds of evidence form the basis of the dissertation: the Zurich Poor Law of 1525, Zwingli's sermons and treatises, and three title page prints published in Zurich. The first chapter examines the Poor Law, its evolution, its content, and its implications for the civic community of Zurich. The second chapter turns to those sermons and treatises by Zwingli that placed the poor prominently in the Christian community and a concept of charity at the center of Christian ethics. The third chapter explores the three title page prints through an analysis of their connections to various traditions of visual representations: each print presented Christ among the poor, presented a new image of Christian brotherly love and charity. A general theme emerges in the three chapters, in the three kinds of evidence: a new vision of the Christian community that Zurich was seeking to formulate in the early years of the Reformation. On the one hand , the town council sought to monitor and control the poor through the Poor Law. Yet at the same time, Zwingli was preaching to the people of Zurich that the Christian ideal of brotherly love should be the basis for all human relations, including those between a community and its poor, and the three title page prints were spreading an image of the Christ who loved the poor. This new Christian community not only regulated the lives of its members, their piety and morality, it also reinforced the social values that bound them together, and that bound the community to its poor.Ph.D.European historyFine artsUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160743/1/8521005.pd