BUCERO (BUTZER), MARTINO. — A celebrated propagator of the Reformation in Germany, born at Schelestadt (Alsace) on 11 November 1491, died at Cambridge on 28 February 1551. While still young, he entered the Order of Preachers, and in 1506 was sent to study at Heidelberg, where he learned Greek and Hebrew. During his studies he read some works by Erasmus and the first writings of Luther, which weakened him in the faith. After several conversations with Luther at Heidelberg and Worms, he embraced his doctrines; consequently, when he accompanied the Elector Palatine to Belgium, he preached doctrines contrary to the Catholic Church. Obliged to flee, he was given shelter by Francesco Sickingen in the castle of Nanstal. From there, after various vicissitudes, he withdrew to Strasbourg, where he was received by the Zwinglian leaders M. Zell and G. Capito, whose doctrines he embraced and taught, preaching against the rites of Baptism and Confirmation, against the veneration of the saints, and against the real presence in the Eucharist, in the Zwinglian sense. He married three times, the first time to a nun, by whom he had thirteen children. He too, together with Luther and Melanchthon, authorized the bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse.
In 1529 he began his career as a “peacemaker” between Lutherans and Zwinglians, taking part in the Marburg Colloquy. 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 compiled in great haste by B., assisted by Capito and Hedio, and presented to the Diet on 11 July, after the Lutheran and Zwinglian confessions. 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 the Vindication and Defence, which was published in Latin and German at Strasbourg in 1531. The Tetrapolitan Confession contains thirty-three chapters, besides the prologue and conclusion, and approaches the Lutheran Confession. In Chapter I it asserts the supreme authority of Scripture, something the Lutherans had omitted out of an irenic spirit; the doctrine of justification is defined in Chapters III and IV; Chapter XXII rejects the veneration of the saints; the Lord’s Supper is treated in Chapter XVIII, but in ambiguous terms lying between the Lutheran and Zwinglian doctrines. B.’s conciliatory tendency hindered the success of this Confession, which never took deep root. The Reformed churches subsequently adopted the Calvinist Confession, and the four imperial cities later accepted the Lutheran one in order to join the Schmalkaldic League. B. remained faithful to the Tetrapolitan Confession until his death, although he displayed some hesitations when it came to making peace between Lutherans and Zwinglians. Indeed, his concern for concord led him to sign with Melanchthon the three Chapters of Concord, in which he made such concessions to the Lutherans that, in response to the Zwinglians’ protests, he had to confess that he “had not understood Luther’s mind properly.” At Schmalkalden too, in 1537, he showed himself so conciliatory toward the Lutherans that his fellow believers said of him “that, because of his excessive desire for concord, what happened to him was what happens to drinkers who also drink the dregs 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 Prayer Book. In this first edition of the Prayer Book, in order not to offend the religious sentiments of the people too greatly, many ceremonies and forms of the ancient Catholic Sarum Missal had been retained, although everything that could suggest the idea of sacrifice in the Mass had been suppressed. B., wholly imbued with his Zwinglian doctrines and his Tetrapolitan Confession, criticized various points of the new Prayer Book in his famous Censure, including the commemoration of the dead, the use of exorcisms and chrism in Baptism, the anointing of the sick, and those prayers that still seemed to indicate the real presence in the Eucharist. As regards the consecration of bishops and priests, in accordance with the Zwinglian doctrine of the perfect equality between the one and the other, he was responsible for the formula virtually common to both Orders, a formula that was used in the Church of England until the time of Charles II, thus rendering all Anglican ordinations invalid (v. ORDINAZIONI). His censures were taken into account in the publication of the second Prayer Book in 1552. During his stay in England he taught at the University of Cambridge and added the doctrine of Calvinist predestination to the doctrines of Zwingli. He wrote a book, De Regno Christi, and a discourse on the Reformation of Many Abuses, which impressed the young King Edward VI; had he lived longer, the king might perhaps have imposed the tyrannical and intolerable regulations suggested in II.