Heilige und Bilder in der Zürcher und der Berner Reformation

The veneration and the rejection of saints was a complex affair. Different levels were involved: a normative, theological level with equivalents in church and secular legislation; the area of lived piety with its social links; or also the level of media-related, journalistic staging. The article begins with a historical event in Bern that shows quite plainly the area of conflict between the veneration and the rejection of saints. Following this, several correlations are discussed which show the complexity of the phenomena such as Christ and the saints in the context of the mediation of salvation, the association of saints and pictorial works in the veneration of the saints, the mediation of the prestige and the costs of the pictorial works, or the persistence of saints and their images as well as their veneration. Besides the theological rejection of the veneration of saints, di�erent lines of the Argumentation of the Reformation in Zurich and the Reformation in Bern with respect to motives thus become visible.