Martin Bucer was born in Sélestat, Alsace, on the 11th of November 1491, the son of Claus Butzer, a cooper by trade. His grandfather shared the same name and profession, creating a lineage of barrelmakers who likely viewed the world through the lens of craftsmanship and containment. Almost nothing is known about Bucer's mother, leaving a gap in the historical record that mirrors the obscurity of his early domestic life. He attended the prestigious Latin school in his hometown, where artisans sent their children, and completed his studies in the summer of 1507. It was then that he joined the Dominican Order as a novice, a decision he later claimed was forced upon him by his grandfather. After a year of training, he was consecrated as an acolyte in the Strasbourg church of the Williamites and took his vows as a full Dominican friar. By 1510, he was ordained as a deacon, setting him on a path that would eventually lead him to become one of the most influential figures of the Protestant Reformation.
The Flight from Strasbourg
The events that caused Bucer to leave the Dominican Order arose from his embrace of new ideas and his growing contact with other humanists and reformers. A fellow Dominican, Jacob van Hoogstraaten, the Grand Inquisitor of Cologne, tried to prosecute Johann Reuchlin, a humanist scholar. Other humanists, including the nobles Ulrich von Hutten and Imperial Knight Franz von Sickingen, took Reuchlin's side. Hoogstraten was thwarted, but he now planned to target Bucer. On the 11th of November 1520, Bucer told the reformer Wolfgang Capito in a letter that Hoogstraaten was threatening to make an example of him as a follower of Luther. To escape Dominican jurisdiction, Bucer needed to be freed of his monastic vows. Capito and others were able to expedite the annulment of his vows, and on the 29th of April 1521 he was formally released from the Dominican Order. For the next two years, Bucer was protected by Sickingen and Hutten. He also worked for a time at the court of Ludwig V, Elector Palatine, as chaplain to Ludwig's younger brother Frederick. Sickingen was a senior figure at Ludwig's court. This appointment enabled Bucer to live in Nuremberg, the most powerful city of the Empire, whose governing officials were strongly reformist. There he met many people who shared his viewpoint, including the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer and the future Nuremberg reformer Andreas Osiander. In September 1521, Bucer accepted Sickingen's offer of the position of pastor at Landstuhl, where Sickingen had a castle, and Bucer moved to the town in May 1522. In summer 1522, he met and married Elisabeth Silbereisen, a former nun.
The Mediator's Burden
Beginning in 1524, Bucer concentrated on the main issue dividing leading reformers, the eucharist. In this dispute, he attempted to mediate between Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli. The two theologians disagreed on whether the body and blood of Christ were physically present within the elements of bread and wine during the celebration of the Lord's Supper. Luther believed in a corporeal or physical real presence of Christ; and Zwingli believed Christ's body and blood were made present by the Holy Spirit. By late 1524, Bucer had abandoned the idea of corporeal real presence and, after some exegetical studies, accepted Zwingli's interpretation. However, he did not believe the Reformation depended on either position but on faith in Christ, other matters being secondary. In this respect he differed from Zwingli. In March 1526, Bucer published Apologia, defending his views. He proposed a formula that he hoped would satisfy both sides: different understandings of scripture were acceptable, and church unity was assured so long as both sides had a child-like faith in God. Bucer stated that his and Zwingli's interpretation on the eucharist was the correct one, but while he considered the Wittenberg theologians to be in error, he accepted them as brethren as they agreed on the fundamentals of faith. He also published two translations of works by Luther and Johannes Bugenhagen, interpolating his own interpretation of the Lord's Supper into the text. This outraged the Wittenberg theologians and damaged their relations with Bucer. In 1528, when Luther published, detailing Luther's concept of the sacramental union, Bucer responded with a treatise of his own. It took the form of a dialogue between two merchants, one from Nuremberg who supported Luther and the other from Strasbourg who supported Bucer, with the latter winning over his opponent. Bucer noted that as Luther had rejected impanation, the idea that Christ was made into bread, there was no disagreement between Luther and Zwingli; both believed in a spiritual presence of Christ in the eucharist. Luther harshly rejected Bucer's interpretation.
The extent of the theological division among the reformers became evident when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V asked them to present their views to him in 1530 at the Diet of Augsburg. Philipp Melanchthon, the main delegate from Wittenberg, quickly prepared the draft that eventually became the Augsburg Confession. The Wittenberg theologians rejected attempts by Strasbourg to adopt it without the article on the Lord's Supper. In response, Bucer wrote a new confession, the Confessio Tetrapolitana, so named because only four cities adopted it, Strasbourg and three other southern German cities, Konstanz, Memmingen, and Lindau. A copy of Melanchthon's draft was used as the starting point and the only major change was the wording on the article on the eucharist. According to Eells, the article on the eucharist in the Tetrapolitan Confession stated, In this sacrament his true body and true blood are truly given to eat and drink, as food for their souls, and to eternal life, that they may remain in him and he in them. The ambiguous word truly was not defined. Charles, however, decreed on the 22nd of September that all reformers must reconcile with the Catholic faith, or he would use military force to suppress them. This prompted Melanchthon to call a meeting with Bucer and after lengthy discussions they agreed on nine theses, which they sent to Luther and to Strasbourg. The Strasbourg magistrates forwarded them to Basel and Zürich. Bucer met Luther in Coburg on the 26th to the 28th of September. Luther still rejected Bucer's theses, but he encouraged him to continue the search for unity. Bucer then traveled to several southern German cities, including Ulm, Isny, Konstanz, Memmingen, and Lindau, and to the Swiss cities of Basel and Zürich. In Zurich on the 12th of October, he presented the articles to Zwingli, who neither opposed him nor agreed with him.
The Shadow of Bigamy
In November 1539, Philip asked Bucer to produce a theological defence of bigamy, since he had decided to contract a bigamous marriage. Bucer reluctantly agreed, on condition the marriage be kept secret. Bucer consulted Luther and Melanchthon, and the three reformers presented Philip with a statement of advice, later known as the Wittenberger Ratschlag. Although the document specified that bigamy could be sanctioned only under rare conditions, Philip took it as approval for his marriage to a lady-in-waiting of his sister. When rumours of the marriage spread, Luther told Philip to deny it, while Bucer advised him to hide his second wife and conceal the truth. Some scholars have noted a possible motivation for this notorious advice: the theologians believed they had advised Philip as a pastor would his parishioner, and that a lie was justified to guard the privacy of their confessional counsel. The scandal that followed the marriage caused Philip to lose political influence, and the Reformation within the Empire was severely compromised. This event cast a long shadow over Bucer's reputation, as he was seen by many as complicit in a moral failure that undermined the credibility of the Protestant cause. The political fallout was immediate and severe, with Philip's allies turning against him and the Catholic forces using the scandal to rally support against the reformers.
The Exile's Return
With the onset of the Schmalkaldic War in 1546, Protestants began a gradual retreat within the Empire. On the 21st of March 1547, Strasbourg surrendered to the imperial army, and the following month the decisive imperial victory at the Battle of Mühlberg ended most Protestant resistance. In Strasbourg, Bucer and his colleagues, including Matthew Zell, Paul Fagius and Johannes Marbach, continued to press the council to bring more discipline and independence to the church. Charles V overruled their efforts at the Diet of Augsburg, which sat from September 1547 to May 1548. The Diet produced an imperial decree, the provisional Augsburg Interim, which imposed Catholic rites and ceremonies throughout the Empire, with a few concessions to the Reformation. To make the document acceptable to the Protestants, Charles needed a leading figure among the reformers to endorse it, and he selected Bucer. Bucer arrived in Augsburg on the 30th of March 1548 of his own volition. On the 2nd of April, after he was shown the document, he announced his willingness to ratify it if certain changes were made; but the time for negotiations had passed, and Charles insisted on his signature. When he refused, he was placed under house arrest on the 13th of April, and shortly afterwards in close confinement. On the 20th of April, he signed the Interim and was immediately freed. Despite this capitulation, Bucer continued to fight. On his return to Strasbourg, he stepped up his attacks on Catholic rites and ceremonies, and on the 2nd of July published a confessional statement calling on Strasbourg to repent and to defend reformed principles outlined in twenty-nine articles. Charles ordered all copies destroyed. Tension grew in Strasbourg, as Bucer's opponents feared he was leading the city to disaster. Many Strasbourg merchants left to avoid a potential clash with imperial forces. On the 30th of August, the guild officials voted overwhelmingly to begin negotiations to introduce the Interim. Bucer stood firm; even after the city of Konstanz surrendered and accepted the Interim, he called for Strasbourg to reject it unconditionally. In January 1549, with plans underway for the implementation of the Interim in Strasbourg, Bucer and his colleagues continued to attack it, producing a memorandum on how to preserve the Protestant faith under its directives. With no significant support left, Bucer and Fagius were finally relieved of their positions and dismissed on the 1st of March 1549. Bucer left Strasbourg on the 5th of April a refugee, as he had arrived twenty-five years earlier.
The Cambridge Legacy
Bucer received several offers of sanctuary, including Melanchthon's from Wittenberg and Calvin's from Geneva. He accepted Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's invitation to come to England; from his correspondence with several notable Englishmen, he believed that the English Reformation had advanced with some success. On the 25th of April 1549 Bucer, Fagius, and others arrived in London, where Cranmer received them with full honours. A few days later, Bucer and Fagius were introduced to Edward VI and his court. Bucer's wife Wibrandis and his stepdaughter Agnes Capito joined him in September. The following year, Wibrandis arranged for the rest of her children and her elderly mother to come to England. Bucer took the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. In June he entered a controversy when Peter Martyr Vermigli, another refugee who had taken the equivalent Regius Professor position at Oxford University, debated with Catholic colleagues over the issue of the Lord's Supper. Martyr asked Bucer for his support, but Bucer did not totally agree with Martyr's position and thought that exposure of differences would not assist the cause of reform. Unwilling to see the eucharist conflict repeat itself in England, he told Martyr he did not take sides, Catholic, Lutheran, or Zwinglian. He said, We must aspire with the utmost zeal to edify as many people as we possibly can in faith and in the love of Christ, and to offend no one. In 1550, another conflict arose when John Hooper, the new bishop of Gloucester, refused to don the traditional vestments for his consecration. The vestments controversy pitted Cranmer, who supported the wearing of clerical garments, against Hooper, Martyr and Jan Laski, the pastor of the Stranger church in London. As it was known that Bucer had reformed the church services in Strasbourg to emulate the simplicity of the early church, Hooper expected Bucer's support. However, Bucer tried to stay out of the fray, arguing that there were more important issues to deal with, lack of pastors and pastoral care, the need for catechismal instruction, and the implementation of church discipline. Hooper refused to be swayed, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London until he accepted Cranmer's demand.
The Final Testament
Bucer's time in England was dogged by illnesses, including rheumatism, coughs, and intestinal ailments. Symptoms such as vomiting, shivering, and sweating suggest severe tuberculosis. In February 1551, his health finally broke down, and on the 22nd he dictated an addition to his will. He named Walter Haddon and Matthew Parker as executors, commended his loved ones to Thomas Cranmer, and thanked his stepdaughter Agnes Capito for taking care of him. On the 28th of February, after encouraging those near him to do all they could to realise his vision as expressed in De Regno Christi, he died at the age of 59. He was buried in the church of Great St Mary's in Cambridge before a large crowd of university professors and students. In a letter to Peter Martyr, John Cheke wrote a fitting eulogy. Bucer left his wife Wibrandis a significant inheritance consisting mainly of the household and his large collection of books. She eventually returned to Basel, where she died on the 1st of November 1564 at the age of 60. When Mary I came to the throne, she had Bucer and Fagius tried posthumously for heresy as part of her efforts to restore Catholicism in England. Their caskets were disinterred and their remains burned, along with copies of their books. On the 22nd of July 1560, Elizabeth I formally rehabilitated both reformers. A brass plaque on the floor of Great St Mary's marks the original location of Bucer's grave. After Bucer's death, his writings continued to be translated, reprinted, and disseminated throughout Europe. No Buceran denomination, however, emerged from his ministry, probably because he never developed a systematic theology as Melanchthon had for the Lutheran church and Calvin for the Reformed churches. Several groups, including Anglicans, Puritans, Lutherans, and Calvinists, claimed him as one of their own. The adaptability of his theology to each confessional point-of-view also led polemicists to criticise it as too accommodating. His theology could be best summarised as being practical and pastoral rather than theoretical. Bucer was not so concerned about staking a doctrinal claim per se, but rather he took a standpoint in order to discuss and to win over his opponents. At the same time his theological stand was grounded in the conditions of his time where he envisioned the ideal society to be one that was led by an enlightened, God-centred government with all the people united under Christian fellowship. Martin Bucer is chiefly remembered for his promotion of doctrinal unity, or ecumenism, and his lifelong struggle to create an inclusive church.