A meeting of Protestants, initated by two of the most influential evangelical princes of Europe—Prince Philip, Landgrave of Hesse and Elector Johann of Saxony (Luther's prince)—in the hope, not only of forging a united front against Roman Catholic threats, but also for an ambitious union of the reformation across Germany and Switzerland. It ended in failure as Luther and Zwingli could not agree on the last of fifteen propositions—on the nature of the Lord's Supper—that were put forward for discussion.
The differences in their understanding of the Lord's Supper had been getting ugly between Luther and Zwingli for some time, as they took swipes at one another from time to time, and often in public. Both Luther and Zwingli rejected the Roman Catholic teaching of transubstantiation which held that, during the mass, the elements of bread and wine were miraculously changed in their "substance" into the body and blood of Christ, even though their "accidents" (taste, texture, smell, etc) remained the same. Luther denied this and argued for a position since then known as "consubstantiation" (though Luther himself never used this term), i.e., the concept that though the bread and the wine always remained bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ were, nonetheless, 'really' present, just as every part of a red-hot poker was both iron and fire. Zwingli, on the other hand, held onto the view that the Communion was a sign or seal of divine grace bestowed on the believer; the elements were, therefore, to be understood figuratively, i.e., that the body and the blood of Christ were only symbolically or 'spiritually' present in the eucharist ("After all, at the Last Supper, Jesus was at the table not on the table" (A. Atherstone).
Keen to bring the two sides together for the good of the evangelical faith, Philip of Hesse convened the colloquy for early October 1529, hoping that a common stand would strengthen them all mutually. In addition to Luther and Zwingli, present also at the colloquy were other evangelical leaders, including Oecolampadius, Bucer, Capito, John Sturm, Melanchthon, Jonas, Brenz, Cruciger, and Osiander. Though they had much to agree on the other propositions, they disagreed vehemently on the subject of the Lord's Supper. The failure of the conference showed poorly on the leaders of the reformation, even as the two leaders continued to swipe at one another afterwards. Luther was particularly unkind, asserting that the Swiss reformers were blinded by God and were not even Christians (Luther's Works, 49.237).
Resources:
Lutheran Reformation.org, "The Marburg Colloquy", 21 Oct, 2017. Blog N
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