Zurich in 1555: the city that received the exiles

A Reformed city-state governed by its guilds

The Zurich that the Locarnese reached in May 1555 was a small city-state with a large territory. Since the constitutional upheaval led by Rudolf Brun in 1336, political power had rested with the Constaffel, the association of the old patrician families, and with the craft guilds (Zünfte), whose masters sat in the Small Council beside the councillors of the Constaffel and, once the guilds' share in power had become real after 1373, formed the large majority of the Grand Council.¹ A man could take part in this order only as a citizen (Bürger) and as a member of a guild or of the Constaffel. Residents without citizenship lived in the city as Hintersassen or Ansassen, tolerated inhabitants who paid an admission fee and an annual residence fee, could be expelled at any time, were excluded from the councils and from public offices and suffered discrimination in the trades.² The guild system regulated who could produce and sell what, at which prices and with how many journeymen. Designed to protect the livelihood of the citizencraftsman, it treated newcomers with suspicion whenever they threatened to undercut established masters.

Zurich had introduced the Reformation under Huldrych Zwingli between 1523 and 1525. After Zwingli's death at the battle of Kappel in 1531, his successor Heinrich Bullinger led the Zurich church until 1575 and made the city the centre of a Reformed correspondence network of some 12,000 letters, the largest such exchange of the sixteenth century, which extended from the Swiss towns, Alsace and Germany as far as England and Poland.³ Bullinger was the natural patron of the Locarnese, who had corresponded with him during the conflict described in Chapter B.I. The Reformed city also had a strategic interest in demonstrating solidarity with persecuted coreligionists, because the outcome in Locarno was a defeat for Zurich in the federal politics of the common bailiwicks. Receiving the exiles honoured a confessional obligation and offered a moral answer to the Catholic majority of the ruling cantons, at a moment when Zurich could not change the result by political means.

The arrival and the first decisions of the council

The exiles had left Locarno on 3 March 1555 and crossed the Alps by the San Bernardino in winter conditions. The journey through the Mesolcina and over the pass took about two months, and the exiles reached Zurich only in May.⁴ The group that arrived numbered about one hundred persons, among them several families of the old Locarnese nobility, physicians, notaries, merchants and artisans. Their number is discussed in Chapter B.I and is not repeated here. The newcomers were at first housed in private homes. Barbara Muralto, the wife of the physician Giovanni Muralto, was lodged with her family at the house of the Engelhard family, close associates of Bullinger.⁵

The council did not grant the exiles collective citizenship. It admitted them as residents under the city's protection and allowed them to hold their own church services in Italian. Individual heads of families could then apply for citizenship, which the council granted case by case and often only after many years. This approach reflected the general practice of Swiss Reformed cities towards religious refugees in the sixteenth century. Basel, Bern and Geneva also distinguished between the right of asylum, which they extended generously to co-religionists, and the right of citizenship, which they guarded closely because it carried political rights and full access to the guilds, whose members feared the competition of refugee entrepreneurs.⁶ A refugee could thus live safely in Zurich for decades while remaining legally a guest.

Notes

1. Martin Lassner, "Brun, Rodolphe", in Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse (DHS), version of 26 August 2004, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/018053/ (consulted 5 October 2026): the guild rising of 1336, the first sworn charter on the Strasbourg model and the entry of the artisans, organized in guilds, into municipal politics, "formelle d'abord, réelle dès 1373"; Brun burgomaster from 1336 to 1360. Martin Illi, "Konstaffel", in DHS, version of 2 December 2008, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/010249/ (consulted 5 October 2026): in 1336 Brun grouped the urban upper class in the Konstaffel, whose thirteen councillors sat in the Council opposite an equal number of guild representatives. Wikipedia (German), "Constaffel", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constaffel (consulted 5 October 2026; used as a last resort): in the Grand Council (including the Small Council) the Constaffel sent 28 and the guilds 168 members. See also Hans Conrad Peyer, Verfassungsgeschichte der alten Schweiz (Zürich 1978). ↩
2. André Holenstein, "Habitants", in DHS, version of 5 December 2014, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/015998/ (consulted 5 October 2026): the German terms Hintersassen (Hintersässen), Ansassen, Beisassen or Insassen; a single admission fee and an annual residence fee; no political rights and no admission "ni aux assemblées, ni aux conseils, ni aux charges publiques", together with "une discrimination sociale et professionnelle"; the commune could expel them at any time. See also Peyer, Verfassungsgeschichte (above). ↩
3. Hans Ulrich Bächtold, "Bullinger, Heinrich", in DHS, version of 7 April 2011, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/010443/ (consulted 5 October 2026): successor of Zwingli on 9 December 1531; head of the Zurich church until his death on 17 September 1575; a correspondence of some 12,000 items, "le plus vaste échange épistolaire entre savants et réformateurs du XVIe s.", which reached beyond Switzerland, Alsace and Germany as far as England and Poland. See also Fritz Büsser, Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575). Leben, Werk und Wirkung, 2 vols (Zürich 2004– 2005), and the edition Heinrich Bullinger, Briefwechsel (Zürich 1973 ff.). ↩
4. Pablo Crivelli, "Duno, Taddeo", in DHS, version of 4 August 2004, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/010112/ (consulted 4 October 2026): on 3 March 1555 Duno and about a hundred other Locarnese left the town by the Mesolcina and the San Bernardino and reached Zurich in May 1555. The Italian version, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/010112/ (consulted 5 October 2026), gives the same route and dates ("Il 3.3.1555, D. e un centinaio di altri Locarnesi lasciarono la città"; arrival "nel mese di maggio del 1555"). See also Ferdinand Meyer, Die evangelische Gemeinde in Locarno, ihre Auswanderung nach Zürich und ihre weitern Schicksale (Zürich 1836), and Chapter B.I. ↩
5. Wikipedia, "Barbara Muralto", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Muralto (consulted 4 October 2026), citing Meyer, Die evangelische Gemeinde in Locarno (above), reprinted 2005. The article states that the family was lodged with the Engelhard family, associates of Bullinger. ↩
6. Danièle Tosato-Rigo, "Réfugiés protestants", in DHS, version of 12 December 2014, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/026884/ (consulted 5 October 2026): Geneva granted habitation to almost 8,000 refugees between 1549 and 1587; in the Bernese Pays de Vaud between 1680 and 1720 about 60 refugee heads of family received bourgeoisie, "octroyée avec parcimonie par les communes", against about 400 perpetual and 230 tolerated residents; in Zurich and Basel "les corporations, politiquement puissantes, [...] redoutaient la concurrence des entrepreneurs réfugiés dans le secteur textile". Holenstein, "Habitants" (above), on the exclusion of mere residents from political rights. See also Ulrich Im Hof, Geschichte der Schweiz (Stuttgart 1974), and, for Geneva, the Geneva volume, Part B. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.