Art. 6.-MARTIN BUCER AND THE REFORMATION. 2. Die calvinistische und die alt. strassburgische Gottesdienst-ordnung. Von Alfred Erichson. Strassburg: Heitz, 1894. 3. Politische Correspondenz der Stadt Strassburg im Zeitalter der Reformation. Edited by Hans Virck. Two Vols. Strassburg, 1882-87. 4. Briefwechsel der Brüder Ambrosius und Thomas Blauer. Vol. II. Freiburg i. B. Fehserfeld, 1910.* 5. Reformationspläne für die geistlichen Fürstentümer bei den Schmalkaldenern. Ein Beitrag zur Ideengeschichte der Reformation. Von Dietrich Köhler. Berlin: Ebering, 1912. 6. Bibliographische Zusammenstellung der gedruckten Schriften Butzer's. Von F. Mentz und Alf. Erichson. Strassburg: Heitz, 1891. PEACE-MAKERS are often forgotten, while the strenuous fighting men of their time live in the memory of the generations that follow; and, yet, how often the hardest work of the warrior would be without permanent result if it were not for the compromises of the diplomatist, grudgingly accepted and soon forgotten? Every year books and pamphlets, issued in almost endless succession by German publishers, show what a hold Luther has on the imagination of his countrymen. No such perennial fame belongs to Bucer. In a land noted for celebrating centenaries by publications, his produced only a slight popular biography, a few essays, and the invaluable bibliography of Mentz and Erichson. His writings have never been collected in one uniform edition. Even in the learned and full biography by J. W. Baum he is associated with his friend Capito. His relations with the leaders of the Reformation and the Renaissance are told at length under other names than his. He never stands forth in literature or history as a compelling personality. Yet he was one of the great men of the * The second volume contains ninety-two letters from Bucer to Margaretha, the learned sister of the brothers Blauer. reformation movement, a man in the foremost rank, without whom it would never have attained the permanence and coherence it did. His wise tolerance, his capacity for seeing both sides in the disputes which arose and could not fail to arise, his skilful and successful efforts after compromise and peace, were as necessary as the trumpet calls of Luther himself. For Bucer was the diplomatist of the Reformation; and his efforts after peace constantly succeeded when those of others had failed. His friend Margaret Blauer summed him up in one phrase, the dear politicus and fanaticus of union.' Now, after four centuries, all over Germany, in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, the United States, and in England herself, men are combining to honour the theologian who represented in his own person, as none of his contemporaries did, the Reformation of the 16th century in its many sides. They propose to place his statue in his own town of Strassburg, with such surroundings as will make it plain to all that the man portrayed in bronze was no merely local hero. Cambridge has naturally been the English centre of the movement. The committee formed there includes Heads of Colleges and well-known teachers; but it has drawn to itself Anglican Bishops, Nonconformist leaders and Scottish Presbyterians. Bucer belongs to them all. Martin Bucer (Butzer) was born on November 11, 1491, at Schlettstadt, a town in Lower Elsass about thirty miles south of Strassburg. His father, probably a native of Strassburg (for we find him later a burgher of the city), was a shoemaker. The town, of little importance otherwise, has its place in the history of the German Renaissance, and was an appropriate birthplace for one of the most learned divines of the century. It contained a renowned school, planted there by the Brethren of the Common Lot; and many of the Strassburg circle of Humanists, to which belonged Jacob Wimpheling, Sebastian Brand and John Geiler of Keysersberg, had been its pupils. The young Bucer was a precocious child, and early longed to be a great scholar like Erasmus. His poverty prevented any other means of becoming learned save the Church; and he reluctantly joined the Dominican Order, becoming a novice in the convent at Schlettstadt when he was fifteen years old. Some years later he was transferred to the Dominican house in Heidelberg, and was permitted to attend lectures in the well-known High School there. Little information has come down to us of this earliest part of his life; but it is plain that he was well grounded in the new Thomist theology, with its return to the teaching of St Augustine, and that he had imbibed the Humanist love of classical literature. The attack on Reuchlin made him declare himself. He joined, not without danger to himself, the minority of younger Dominicans who heartily disliked the policy of their superiors and who welcomed the bitter sarcasm of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum.' Luther's 'Ninetyfive Theses' he read with delight, and sent copies of them to his intimate friends. It was a supreme joy to listen to Luther at Heidelberg, to be introduced to him, to know him and to correspond with him. Bucer soon began to find himself very uncomfortable within the Dominican Order, and longed to free himself. It is probable that he was swayed by many half-conscious impulses; but the persecution of Reuchlin and, as a consequence, the increasing opposition of the Dominicans to the Humanist movement was the declared reason for desiring freedom. Letters to Luther, Spalatin, Capito, Ulrich von Hutten and others, reveal his tumult of soul. At length, in November, 1520, he quietly left his cell and betook himself to an old friend in Speyer, Maternus Hatten, in the hope that he might be ecclesiastically freed from his monastic vows. Hatten, who had considerable influence (he was the Official or President of the Bishop of Speyer's ecclesiastical court), aided him gladly and skilfully. A papal brief was procured which dispensed Bucer from keeping his monastic vows 'because of the tender age' when he had assumed them, and relegated him to the rank of a 'secular priest.' It reached him while he was Franz von Sickingen's guest in the Ebernberg on April 29, 1521, the day on which Luther's safe-conduct to Worms expired and he himself was in hiding in the Wartburg. After some months' service as court-chaplain at Worms and Nürnberg, then as parish priest at Landstuhl and as curate at Weissenburg, Bucer and his wife (for he had married at Landstuhl) took refuge in Strassburg about the end of April, 1523. Then began his life-work. Strassburg was a city-republic of about 20,000 inhabitants. Its people looked on the city as the 'fatherland,' and felt that they owed a stricter obedience to their elected towncouncillors than to distant Emperor or Pope. The rulers and people of such medieval city-republics were not accustomed to pay too much deference to ecclesiastical authority. Their cathedrals usually contained a pulpit from which preached the people's priest, with whose appointment the bishop had little or nothing to do, and who was singularly free from ecclesiastical supervision. Geiler of Keysersberg thundered against clerical iniquities from his pulpit in Strassburg cathedral, and the bishop was powerless to stop him; the ecclesiastical authorities were unable to interfere with his nephew and successor, although he had declared himself to be a Lutheran. The city had been the seat of a Humanist circle. Its most famous member, Sebastian Brand, had been town-clerk; another, Geiler of Keysersberg, a great preacher; a third, Jacob Wimpheling, a widely known scholar. Their minds all moved within the sphere of medieval ideas, but they all recognised the urgent need of reforms of some sort; and Geiler had presented to the town council a draft scheme which urged changes in twenty-one articles. They were all intensely conservative. What seems to have urged them to action was the knowledge that an underground revolutionary Hussite propaganda was making itself felt among the burghers in most German towns. Wimpheling lived long enough to see the Lutheran movement take shape and to write against it. But their denunciations had an unexpected effect in Strassburg. Jacob Sturm, the all-powerful member of the town council and a strenuous supporter of Bucer, when expostulated with by Wimpheling, his old tutor, retorted, 'If I am a heretic, it was your teaching that made me one.' It must not be forgotten that Elsass, and indeed all the Rhineland, had been for centuries the special home of German Mysticism; and that many sects which had secretly, and sometimes openly, separated themselves from the medieval Church had been protected from ecclesiastical persecution by the town councils of the cities. This accounts for the presence and power of the numerous Anabaptists in Strassburg, and for many difficulties encountered by Bucer in his attempts to create a reformed church within which all could agree to worship. Moreover, from the last quarter of the 15th century, the thought that there was a German nationality had been growing. The creation of this innumerable causes, wider patriotism was due to to economic and other, but it was undoubtedly fostered by many of the Humanists. It was this new impulse that fanned the flame against the Papal Curia, that hailed the beginnings of the Lutheran movement as a patriotic revolt of Germany against Italy, and that incited the burghers of Strassburg to nail Luther's Ninety-five Theses on the door of every church and parsonage in the city. The town was in the throes of the beginnings of a movement for reformation. Matthew Zell, a 'people's priest,' had begun preaching the 'gospel' to crowded audiences in the Minster. Wolfgang Capito (Köpfel), recently appointed to the provostship of the collegiate church of St Thomas, was known to be sympathetic, although he had not plainly declared himself. He had difficulties with his canons. Caspar Hedio (Heid) had just been called to be a 'people's priest,' and his eloquent addresses were moving his audiences deeply. The higher clergy and perhaps the majority of the town council were still opposed to sweeping ecclesiastical changes, but the mass of the people were being roused to favour the Reformation. Bucer's arrival, and his open declaration of his marriage, created both interest and alarm. Had he not been the son of a burgher, his position might have been dangerous. At first he lectured privately in Matthew Zell's house; but he was soon permitted to deliver lectures on the New Testament in the Minster which drew great audiences. In December the town council made him a salaried lecturer; in March, 1524, the gild' of the gardeners selected him as priest of their chapel of St Aurelia; he was recognised as one of the seven priests in Strassburg who represented the Reformation. Wolfgang Capito at last declared himself; Jacob Sturm had grown powerful in the town council; the two, with Bucer, were recognised as the leaders of the reforming party, which from this time gained more |