Bullinger, Heinrich

BULLINGER, HEINRICH. - Swiss reformer, b. at Bremgarten in the canton of Aargau (Switzerland) on 18 July 1504 and d. at Zurich on 17 Sept. 1575. After his first elementary studies in his own country, he was sent by his father in 1516 to Emmerich, where he studied Latin grammar and felt a vocation to become a Carthusian. In 1519 he moved on to Cologne, where he studied the Latin classics, philosophy, etc., and where some works of Luther came into his hands (De captivitate Babiloniae, De Libertate christiana, De bonis operibus). Seeing that Luther appeared to rely on the Holy Fathers, he devoted himself to the study of their works; and as he saw that they relied on Sacred Scripture, he studied this with ardor; at the same time he became interested in Melanchthon's Loci communes, and the latter, together with Luther's works, finally detached him from the Catholic Church. Having returned to his homeland in 1523, he was invited to teach in the Cistercian monastery of Kappel, where Wolfgang Joner was abbot, and by his doctrines he brought it about that those religious abandoned their vows, the monastery and the Catholic Church itself. In 1528 he moved to Zurich, embraced Zwinglian doctrines, and formed a friendship with Zwingli, whom he accompanied to the disputations of Bern. Called by his native town, he went there as minister and disputed with the Anabaptists. There he married Anna Adlischweiler, a former nun, who bore him 6 sons and 5 daughters. Driven out of Bremgarten, he took refuge in Zurich, where in 1532 he succeeded his master Zwingli, who had died the previous year in the battle of Kappel, in the office of "antistes."

From 1532 until his death in 1575, almost never leaving Zurich, B. carried on an incredible activity. He raised the spirits of the Zurichers, still cast down by the bloody death of their leader Zwingli; he worked successfully for the union of the Calvinists and the Zwinglians, after having lost all hope of doing the same with the Lutherans; he protected and encouraged the Italian heretics who took refuge at Chiavenna in the Grisons; he welcomed in Zurich the persecuted and refugees from England (at the time of Queen Mary Tudor), from France (after the night of St. Bartholomew), from Italy (those who feared the Inquisition), all attracted by the benevolent welcome of the "antistes"; he maintained an epistolary correspondence (the letters known from him number about 12,000) with the principal heretical ringleaders of his time, Calvin, Bucer, Melanchthon, Laski, Cranmer, Hooper, etc.; he published commentaries on the 4 Gospels, on the Acts of the Apostles, on some letters of St. Paul, on the Apocalypse, on the prophet Jeremiah, and five "Decades" of sermons, of which the third and fourth are dedicated to the King of England Edward VI; he was the counselor of many heretics, intervened as a peacemaker in the dissensions between Geneva and Bern, and strove to prevent the Swiss of Zurich, and the Swiss in general, from enlisting as mercenary soldiers in foreign armies. All this made him esteemed among Protestants as a judicious, fair-minded and moderate man. This moderation, however, failed him when it was a question of Catholics, anti-Trinitarians and Lutherans, especially in the matter of the Lutheran Supper. He is also blamed because he approved the condemnation of Servetus to the stake and rejoiced at the death of Castellion. B. is chiefly famous for the Consensus tigurinus, or of Zurich, and for being the author of the Second Helvetic Confession, sometimes called posterior (Confessio helvetica posterior), although the last Helvetic Confession was not compiled until a century later, in 1675.

As for the Consensus tigurinus (1549): Calvin and Zwingli agreed in rejecting the Lutheran Consubstantiation and the Catholic Transubstantiation; but Zwingli, and like him also B., reduced the celebration of the Supper to a simple remembrance of that of Our Lord; Calvin then added something more to it, namely a kind of virtue or power (dynamis) that was transmitted to the communicant through the Holy Spirit. In the 26 articles of the Consensus tigurinus, an agreement was reached, both sides yielding in some doctrine, a thing that did not please some rigid Calvinists and Zwinglians. In words they seemed to agree, and in fact this Consensus was accepted by all the Protestant Churches of Switzerland and found favor also among the French Calvinists, those of England and of some parts of Germany; but each interpreted it in the sense that suited him, as was noted at the colloquy of Poissy. But it may be said that from then on, and especially after the Second Helvetic Confession, both the Calvinists and the Zwinglians were called by the single name of "Reformed."

The Second Helvetic Confession was composed in 1562 by B. alone for his own private use. During the plague of 1564, in which he lost his wife and three daughters, and he himself was in grave danger, he revised it and appended it to his will. The Elector Palatine Frederick III, accused by the Lutheran princes for his adherence to Calvinist doctrines, asked B. in 1565 for a complete exposition of the Reformed Church in order to answer the accusations made against him. B. sent him his Confession, which pleased the Elector so much that he had it published before the imperial Diet of Augsburg met in 1566. Once known in Switzerland, all the Swiss Protestants wanted to adopt it. B. consented, made some corrections to it, and the Confession was published at Zurich on 15 March 1566. From Switzerland and the Palatinate it spread to France (Synod of La Rochelle 1671), to Hungary (Synod of Debrecen 1567), to Poland, to Scotland and to Holland. Theologically considered, it is the most important of the Reformed confessions, although for practical usefulness the Heidelberg Catechism and the shorter Westminster Catechism surpass it, and for logical clarity and precision, that of Westminster. It consists of 30 long articles. In the II, Tradition is condemned; in the IV and V, images and their cult; in the VI, free will is spoken of with some ambiguity and the Pelagians are condemned; in the X, predestination is likewise treated ambiguously; in the XIV, indulgences are branded; and in the XV it is said that man is justified by faith alone; in the XVI article, good works are admitted only after justification, but as not meritorious; the XVII does not recognize the Pope as head of the Church; the XVIII recognizes the ordination of ministers, but made by "elders"; the XIX admits only two Sacraments: Baptism and the Supper, and rejects Confirmation and Extreme Unction; of the other Sacraments it says that they are useful practices but not sacraments; in the XXI, Transubstantiation and Luther's doctrine are denied, without naming him; the Mass is condemned; in the XXVI, the doctrine of Purgatory is rejected. In general it may be said that Catholic doctrines are clearly rejected and that this confession is profoundly anti-Catholic; it proceeds with caution in Protestant doctrines that are not common; the Lutherans are not named; the heretics of that time are clearly condemned, e.g. the Anabaptists, and the ancient ones, but sometimes ancient names are used to indicate those dissenting from the doctrines of the Confession, e.g. Arians for Socinians, Pelagians for Catholics, etc.

Camillo Crivelli