Martin Bucer

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Martin Bucer : biography

11 November 1491 – 28 February 1551

[[Matthew Zell was the first major reformer in Strasbourg and supported Bucer on his arrival in the city.]] In Strasbourg, Bucer joined a team of notable reformers: Zell, who took the role of the preacher to the masses; Wolfgang Capito, the most influential theologian in the city; and Caspar Hedio, the cathedral preacher. One of Bucer’s first actions in the cause of reform was to debate with Thomas Murner, a monk who had attacked Luther in satires. While the city council vacillated on religious issues, the number of people supporting the Reformation and hostile towards the traditional clergy had grown.

The hostility reached a boiling point when Conrad Treger, the prior provincial of the Augustinians, denounced the reformist preachers and the burghers of Strasbourg as heretics. On 5 September 1524, angry mobs broke into the monasteries, looting and destroying religious images. Many opponents of the Reformation were arrested, including Treger. After the council requested an official statement from the reformers, Bucer drafted twelve articles summarising the teachings of the Reformation, including justification by faith (sola fide). He rejected the mass and Catholic concepts such as monastic vows, veneration of saints, and purgatory. He refused to recognise the authority of the pope and instead emphasised obedience to the government. Treger was released on 12 October and left Strasbourg. With his departure, overt opposition to the Reformation ended in the city.

The reformers’ first goal was the creation of a new order of service—at this time the Strasbourg reformers followed Zwingli’s liturgy. They presented proposals for a common order of service for the entire Reformation movement to the theologians of Wittenberg and Zürich. In Bucer’s booklet Grund und Ursach (Basis and Cause), published in December 1524, he attacked the idea of the mass as a sacrifice, and rejected liturgical garments, the altar, and any form of ritual. By May 1525, reforms had been implemented in Strasbourg’s parish churches, but the city council decided to allow masses to continue in the cathedral and in the collegiate churches St. Thomas, Young St Peter, and Old St Peter.

Historical context

Map showing the two partitions that made up the [[Electorate of Saxony in green and pink. Saxony had long been divided into two principalities, one of which, with its capital at Wittenberg, was an electorate. Charles V transferred the electorate and much of its territory to Albertine Saxony in 1547 after the defeat of the Schmalkaldic League and John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony. Hesse was to the west of Saxony. Important cities that Bucer visited are shown in red.]] In the 16th century, the Holy Roman Empire was a centralised state in name only. The Empire was divided into many princely and city states that provided a powerful check on the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor. The division of power between the emperor and the various states made the Reformation in Germany possible, as individual states defended reformers within their territories. In the Electorate of Saxony, Martin Luther was supported by the elector Frederick III and his successors John and John Frederick. Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse—whose lands lay midway between Saxony and the Rhine—also supported the Reformation, and he figured prominently in the lives of both Luther and Bucer. The Emperor Charles V had to balance the demands of his imperial subjects. At the same time, he was often distracted by war with France and the Ottoman Empire and in Italy. The political rivalry among all the players greatly influenced the ecclesiastical developments within the Empire.

In addition to the princely states, free imperial cities, nominally under the control of the Emperor but really ruled by councils that acted like sovereign governments, were scattered throughout the Empire. As the Reformation took root, clashes broke out in many cities between local reformers and conservative city magistrates. It was in a free imperial city, Strasbourg, that Martin Bucer began his work. Located on the western frontier of the Empire, Strasbourg was closely allied with the Swiss cities that had thrown off the imperial yoke. Some had adopted a reformed religion distinct from Lutheranism, in which humanist social concepts and the communal ethic played a greater role. Along with a group of free imperial cities in the south and west of the German lands, Strasbourg followed this pattern of Reformation. It was ruled by a complex local government largely under the control of a few powerful families and wealthy guildsmen. In Bucer’s time, social unrest was growing as lower-level artisans resented their social immobility and the widening income gap. The citizens may not have planned revolution, but they were receptive to new ideas that might transform their lives.