The Half-Forgotten Reformer

For most people, Martin Bucer (1491-1551) is little more than a name, if they are even aware of him in the first place, but in the context of the emerging Reformation, he is a figure of considerable significance. I sometimes joke that the reason Bucer gets forgotten is that his enemies never named an "ism" after him. Born in Alsace, then part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, his family had traditionally been coopers, hence the German form of his name - Bützer, and it seems to have been the intention of the family that their academically gifted son should enter the Dominican order. However, it was during his studies, when he had already been influenced by Erasmus, that he first encountered the ideas of Luther, and soon afterwards Zwingli. By 1522, Bucer had secured his release from the Order of Preachers, and had become a convinced Reformer.

From 1525 to 1548 Bucer was a dominant figure in the Strassburg Reformation. Then a Free Imperial City, the first tentative steps towards Reform had been taken as 1521/2 by Wolfgang Zell, Casper Hedio, and Matthew Capito - three ministers resident in the city. The strife that their preaching engendered led to Zell being banned from the cathedral pulpit in 1522. When Bucer arrived as a refugee in 1524, he fell in with this reforming group, and soon became a member of the Guild of Gardeners - a group particularly sympathetic to Reform - and a citizen. For the next twenty-four years Bucer was to be the mastermind of the Strassburg Reformation as it navigated its way between the demands of the city, the emperor, the theologians, and the populace. He also became a reconciling figure in the wider Reformation to the extent that he was often perceived as being a Lutheran by the Reformed, and as Reformed by the Lutherans because of his facility for spotting the commonalities between the German and Swiss Reformations. He was present at nearly every major conference aimed at reconciling the two major Reform movements from Marburg in 1529 onwards. He was also one of the authors of the Tetrapolitan Confession of 1530, the Wittenberg Concord of 1536, and he also had a hand in the First Helvetic Confession, also 1536. He also worked with Melanchthon to bring about the Reformation of Cologne, whose Archbishop, Hermann von Weid, had become interested in Evangelical ideas in the late 1530s.

[Martin Bucer in 1544, about the time he was engaged in the ultimately unsuccessful Cologne reformation]

In addition to Melanchthon, Bucer's circle of colleagues, friends and acquaintances included not only the Strassburg trio of Capito, Hedio and Zell, but Heinrich Bullinger, Simon Grynaeus, Simon Sulzer, John Calvin - who was something of a disciple, Thomas Cranmer, and many other first- and second-generation Reformers. The military defeat of the Protestant princes in 1546 led to the imposition of the Augsburg Interim, which reintroduced many Roman Catholic practices back into Protestant states, and also prevented states from joining the Reformation. Defeated militarily, there was little that could be done to resist this measure, but Bucer wrote vehemently against it, so much so that he was asked to leave Strassburg by the city council. Cranmer, who had been Archbishop of Canterbury since 1533, had invited Bucer to England to take up the post of Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge as part of a team of continental Reformers which also included Jan Laski, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Paul Fagius intended to strengthen the intellectual backbone of the English Reformation. Bucer finally arrived in time to take up his post for the 1549-50 academic year, but he had been involved with University business since the spring of 1549.

The extent of Bucer's influence in England is a bit of a mystery, but he certainly developed close friendships with Walter Haddon, and Matthew Parker, who were to be his executors, and his opinion was frequently sought by the Reform-minded. His De Regno Christi was dedicated to Edward VI, whilst both the Church Order he had co-authored with Melanchthon for Cologne, and his subsequent constructive criticism of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer influenced the revision of 1552, which is base text for the definitive 1662 Book of Common Prayer. His moderation was appreciated by the authorities when he helped to diffuse the First Vestarian Controversy in 1550, when John Hooper refused to wear the traditional pastoral vestments required by the Prayer Book, and in his ability to see the breadth and complexity of the English situation. Already showing signs of tuberculosis when he arrived in Cambridge in 1549, his health rapidly deteriorated in the cold and damp of the Fens. He died on February 28th 1551, and was buried in the University Church, Great St Mary's, a few days later. This was one of the 'state occasions' for the newly Reformed Church of England, and it had an ironic counterpart in Mary I's exhumation and burning as a heretic of Bucer's remains in 1556. His memory was reabilitated by Elizabeth I, several of whose tutors and advisors had been in the late Reformer's circle of acquaintance in England. It is hard to put one's finger on his influence within Anglicanism simply because his ideas spread so far and wide among the Reformers, but the Prayer Book, the Ordinal, the Anglican emphasis on confirmation, and the stance of the Articles of Religion as a moderate Reformed Confession all show the Bucer touch.