Affair of the Sausages

Welcome to the Affair of the Sausages! We are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in Switzerland.

The event, which came to be referred to as the Affair of the Sausages, is considered to be the start of the Reformation in Switzerland. On the first fasting Sunday, 9 March, Huldrych Zwingli (a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland) and about a dozen other participants consciously transgressed the fasting rule by cutting and distributing two smoked sausages. Zwingli defended this act in a sermon which was published on 16 April, under the title Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen (Regarding the Choice and Freedom of Foods). He noted that no general valid rule on food can be derived from the Bible and that to transgress such a rule is not a sin.

[... To sum up briefly: if you want to fast, do so; if you do not want to eat meat, don’t eat it; but allow Christians a free choice. If you are a person of leisure, you should fast often and abstain from food that excites you; the worker moderates his desires by hoeing and plowing in the field. You say, ‘but the idlers will eat meat without needing to.’ The answer is that these very same people fill themselves with even richer foods, which enflame them even more than the highly-seasoned highly-spiced meats...]

Of Freedom of Choice in the Selection of Food