All figures in the past suffer from their interpreters, who too often see them as the embodiment or antithesis of their own position. Zwingli is no exception in this. He has in turn been welcomed as the liberal among the reformers or repudiated as the rationalist among them. He has been portrayed as the heroic Swiss patriot dying on the field of battle or dismissed as the preacher turned politician who took the sword and deservedly perished by it.