BUCCERO (BUTZER), MARTIN. – A celebrated propagator of the Reformation in Germany, born at Sélestat (Alsace) on 11 November 1491, died at Cambridge on 28 February 1551. While still young, he entered the Dominican Order and in 1506 was sent to study at Heidelberg, where he learned Greek and Hebrew. During his studies, he read some works of Erasmus and the early writings of Luther, which weakened his faith. After several conversations with Luther at Heidelberg and Worms, he embraced Luther’s doctrines, so that when he accompanied the Palatine Elector to the Low Countries, he preached doctrines contrary to the Catholic Church. Forced to flee, he was hosted by Franz von Sickingen at the castle of Nanstein. From there, after various adventures, he withdrew to Strasbourg, where he was welcomed by the leading Zwinglians M. Zell and G. Capitone, whose doctrines he embraced and taught, preaching against the rites of Baptism and Confirmation, the cult of the saints, and the real presence in the Eucharist in the Zwinglian sense. He married three times, the first to a nun, by whom he had thirteen children. He also, together with Luther and Melanchthon, authorized the bigamous marriage of Landgrave Philip of Hesse.
In 1529, he began his life as a “peacemaker” between Lutherans and Zwinglians, intervening at the Colloquy of Marburg. In 1530, he presented to the Diet of Augsburg the Tetrapolitan Confession, so called because it represented the beliefs of the four imperial cities of Strasbourg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau. It was hastily compiled by Bucer, assisted by Capitone and Hedio, and presented to the Diet on 11 July, after those of the Lutherans and the Zwinglians. At the Diet, this Confession was not read, but two Catholic theologians wrote a refutation of it, which was read in October of the same year. The theologians of Strasbourg secretly obtained a copy and opposed it with their *Vindicatione e difesa*, published in Latin and German at Strasbourg in 1531. The Tetrapolitan Confession contains 33 chapters besides the preface and conclusion, and it approaches the Lutheran Confession. In the first chapter, it asserts the supreme authority of Scripture, a point which the Lutherans had omitted out of spite; the doctrine of justification is defined in chapters III and IV; in chapter XXII, the cult of the saints is rejected; the Lord’s Supper is treated in chapter XVIII, but in ambiguous terms between Lutheran and Zwinglian doctrine. Bucer’s conciliatory tendency hindered the success of this Confession, which never took deep root. The Reformed churches later adopted the Calvinist Confession, and the four imperial cities later adhered to the Lutheran one in order to unite with the League of Schmalkalden. Bucer remained faithful to the Tetrapolitan Confession until his death, though with some wavering when it came to making peace between Lutherans and Zwinglians. Indeed, his efforts for concord led him to sign with Melanchthon the three *Articles of Concord*, in which he made such concessions to the Lutherans that, in response to the remonstrances of the Zwinglians, he had to confess that “he had not understood Luther’s mind well.” Even at Schmalkalden in 1537, he showed such conciliation toward the Lutherans that his coreligionists said of him “that through his excessive desire for concord he came to drink even the lees of the wine.”
Having refused to subscribe to the *Interim* of Charles V and invited by the apostate Archbishop Cranmer, he moved to England in 1549. He arrived there shortly after the publication of the first *Book of Common Prayer*. In this first edition of the *Book of Common Prayer*, in order not to offend too deeply the religious sentiment of the people, many ceremonies and forms of the ancient Catholic Sarum Missal were retained, although everything that might suggest the idea of sacrifice in the Mass had been suppressed. Bucer, steeped in his Zwinglian doctrines and his Tetrapolitan Confession, in his famous *Censura*, criticized various points of the new *Book of Common Prayer*, including the commemoration of the dead, the use of exorcisms and chrism in Baptism, the unction of the sick, and those prayers which still seemed to indicate the real presence in the Eucharist. As for the consecration of bishops and priests, in accordance with the Zwinglian doctrine of the perfect equality between the two orders, he was the author of a formula almost common to both, a formula which was used in the Church of England until the time of Charles II, thereby rendering all Anglican ordinations invalid (v. ANGLICAN, ORDINATIONS). Account was taken of his censures in the publication of the second *Book of Common Prayer* of 1552. During his stay in England, he taught at the University of Cambridge, and to Zwingli’s doctrines he added that of Calvinist predestination. He wrote a book *De Regno Christi* and a discourse on the reform of many abuses which made an impression on the young King Edward VI, who perhaps would have imposed the tyrannical and intolerable norms suggested in it, had he lived longer.