Thinkers Timeline

Huldrych Zwingli was a Swiss priest and reformer. He is one of the three central figures of the Protestant Reformation, along with Martin Luther and John Calvin. He was born in 1484 in a small Alpine village in eastern Switzerland. He died in 1531, fighting in battle at the age of 47. Zwingli came from a prosperous farming family. He was a clever child and was sent away to study. He attended universities in Vienna and Basel, where he learned the new humanist scholarship of the early sixteenth century. He became a Catholic priest in 1506. In 1519 he became the main preacher at the great church in Zürich, then a small but proud city-state. Working independently of Luther in Germany, Zwingli began calling for major reforms in the Church. He led Zürich into a sweeping break with Rome. Under his guidance, Zürich removed statues and images from its churches. It banned the old Catholic Mass. It reorganised church and city government together. Zwingli died on the battlefield at Kappel in 1531, during a war between Protestant and Catholic Swiss cantons. He was killed as a chaplain carrying weapons. His death is one of the most striking facts about him.

Paracelsus was a Swiss physician, alchemist, and reformer of medicine who lived during the early Renaissance. His real name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. He chose the name 'Paracelsus' himself, which probably meant 'beyond Celsus', the famous Roman medical writer. The choice gives a clear sense of his character: bold, self-promoting, and not modest about his abilities. He was born in 1493 in Einsiedeln, a pilgrimage town in what is now Switzerland. His father was a doctor and a mining-region physician. From childhood Paracelsus saw real medicine: how miners got sick, what minerals did to the human body, what worked and what did not. His mother died young. When he was about nine, his father moved the family to Villach in Austria, near more mines. He studied at several universities, took a medical doctorate in Italy, and then travelled across Europe, North Africa, and possibly the Middle East, learning from common healers, midwives, and surgeons as well as from books. In 1527 he was appointed city physician of Basel and lecturer at the university. He shocked everyone. He lectured in German rather than Latin. He publicly burned books by the ancient authorities, including Galen and Avicenna. He made enemies fast. Within a year he had been driven out. He spent the rest of his life wandering, treating patients, writing constantly, and quarrelling with the medical establishment. He died in Salzburg in 1541, aged 47, in still-unclear circumstances. His writings were mostly published after his death.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher and writer. He is one of the most important thinkers of the European Enlightenment. He was born on 28 June 1712 in Geneva, which was then an independent city-state, not part of France or Switzerland. His mother died nine days after his birth. His father was a watchmaker who taught him to read and love books. When Rousseau was ten, his father got into a fight and had to flee Geneva. Young Jean-Jacques was left with relatives. At fifteen, he left Geneva and wandered across Europe. He worked as a servant, a private tutor, and a music copyist. He taught himself by reading. He met a wealthy older woman named Madame de Warens, who took him in for several years. His early life was unstable. He had little formal education. He would later turn this outsider experience into a source of philosophical insight. He moved to Paris in 1742. He made his name in 1750 when he won an essay competition on whether progress in arts and sciences had improved human morals. His answer, surprisingly, was no. The essay made him famous. For the next twenty years, he wrote a series of books that changed European thought. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) argued that civilisation had corrupted humanity. Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) was one of the bestselling novels of the 18th century. The Social Contract (1762) proposed a new theory of political legitimacy. Emile, or On Education (1762) proposed a revolutionary theory of how to raise children. Rousseau had six children with his partner, Thérèse Levasseur, and placed all of them in a foundling hospital. He did this against her wishes. The facts are hard to reconcile with his writing on education and family. He spent his final years moving from country to country, often in conflict with authorities who banned his books. He died on 2 July 1778 in Ermenonville, France, aged 66.