Bucer (Butzer), Martin

BUCER (BUTZER), MARTIN. - Famous propagator of the Reformation in Germany, b. at Schlettstadt (Alsace) on 11 Nov. 1491, d. at Cambridge on 28 Feb. 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 of Erasmus and the early writings of Luther, which weakened him in the faith. After some conversations with Luther, at Heidelberg and at Worms, he embraced his doctrines, so that, when he accompanied the Palatine Elector to Belgium, he preached doctrines contrary to the Catholic Church. Forced to flee, he was hosted by Franz Sickingen in the castle of Nanstal. From there, after several vicissitudes, he withdrew to Strasbourg, where he was received by the Zwinglian ringleaders M. Zell and G. Capito, whose doctrines he embraced and taught, preaching against the rites of Baptism and Confirmation, against the cult of the saints and 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 began his life as a "peacemaker" between Lutherans and Zwinglians, taking part in the conference 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 compiled in great haste by B., helped by Capito and Hedio, and presented to the Diet on 11 July, after that of the Lutherans and the Zwinglians. At the Diet this Confession was not read, but two Catholic theologians wrote its confutation, which was read in Oct. of the same year. The theologians of Strasbourg secretly obtained a copy of it and set against it the Vindication and Defense, which was published in Latin and in German at Strasbourg in 1531. The Tetrapolitan Confession contains 33 chapters besides the proem and the conclusion, and approaches the Lutheran Confession. In the 1st chap. it asserts the supreme authority of Scripture, a thing that the Lutherans had passed over in silence out of an irenic spirit; the doctrine of justification is defined in the III and IV chap.; in the XXII the cult of the saints is rejected; the Lord's Supper is treated in chapter XVIII, but in ambiguous terms between the Lutheran and the Zwinglian doctrine. B.'s conciliatory tendency hindered the outcome of this Confession, which never took deep root. The Reformed churches later adopted the Calvinist Confession, and the four imperial cities later admitted the Lutheran one in order to be able to unite with the Schmalkaldic League. B. remained faithful to the Tetrapolitan until his death, though with some wavering when it came to making peace between Lutherans and Zwinglians. Indeed, his concern for concord induced him to sign with Melanchthon the three Capitoli di concordia, in which he made such concessions to the Lutherans that, faced with the remonstrances of the Zwinglians, he had to confess that "he had not well understood Luther's mind." At Schmalkalden too, in 1537, he showed himself so conciliatory toward the Lutherans that his coreligionists said of him "that because of too great a desire for concord there happened to him what happens to drinkers who drink even the dregs of the wine." Not having subscribed 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 too much the religious sentiment of the people, many ceremonies and forms of the ancient Catholic missal of Sarum had been retained, although everything that could indicate the idea of sacrifice in the Mass had been suppressed. B., thoroughly imbued with his Zwinglian doctrines and his Tetrapolitan Confession, in his famous Censura criticized various points of the new Prayer Book, among them the commemoration of the dead, the use of exorcisms and of chrism in Baptism, the anointing of the sick, and those prayers that still seemed to indicate the real presence in the Eucharist. As for the consecration of bishops and priests, according to the Zwinglian doctrine of the perfect equality between the one and the other, he was the author of the formula almost common to the two Orders, a formula that was used in the Church of England until the times of Charles II, thus rendering all Anglican ordinations invalid (v. ANGLICANE, ORDINAZIONI). His censures were taken into account in the publication of the second Prayer Book of 1552. During his stay in England he taught at the University of Cambridge and to the doctrines of Zwingli added that of Calvinian predestination. He wrote a book De Regno Christi and a discourse on the Reformation 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.

Camillo Crivelli