Chapter One
Chapter One Humble Beginnings Sélestat The Town Where the Alsatian plain is at its widest, spreading over eleven miles from the Rhine River to the Vosges Mountains, just north of where the modernday departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin meet, lies the former imperial city of Sélestat. Its almost circular layout on the left bank of the III River survives to the present day, reminding us of medieval ramparts that once surrounded it. In the sixteenth century, the town lay next to a broad area of swamps and marshes to the south, through which the Ill meandered, splitting into various branches that repeatedly threatened the city with floods. On the north side, farmland, mostly vineyards, extended up to the town walls.
Several enthusiastic descriptions of Sélestat survive from the late Middle Ages. Beatus Bild—a butcher's son who, as a disciple and friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam, acquired European fame under the name of Beatus
Rhenanus—drew the most clear-eyed and accurate portrait: Sélestat, he wrote, was a small town crammed with houses and interlaced with streams and waterways. In that respect, wrote Rhenanus, already a well-traveled man, his hometown resembled Holland, but "it could more readily be called a fortified camp than a town."!
'Whether a firm fortification or a crowded town, Sélestat played a central role in Alsace as an imperial free city. Together with nine other towns, including Hagenau, Colmar, and Mulhouse, it formed the Decapolis, a federation of ten imperial towns intent on putting up at least token resistance to the powerful Alsatian territorial lords—the Duke of Lorraine, the Habsburgs, and the Bishop of Strasbourg. Although Hagenau, the residence of I
Martin Bucer the imperial governor (Vogt), formally headed this federation, it was in Sélestat that all meetings of the Decapolis took place and that the federation archives were stored. Yet in difficult questions that went beyond specifically local concerns, the Decapolis tried to follow the course steered by Strasbourg, the powerful imperial city to the north.
Sélestat's population had reached four thousand by this time. Most of its inhabitants earned a living as farmers, particularly as winegrowers; the rest, as artisans. Shipping, which had thrived during the Middle Ages when the III was navigable as far upstream as Colmar, had declined at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and with it the transshipment port that had fueled Sélestat's rise to prosperity. The city now concentrated on its traditional role as a marketplace for the surrounding villages. It profited particularly from the enviable reputation of Alsatian wines throughout the entire Holy Roman Empire and beyond. Even in winegrowing regions elsewhere along the Rhine and Moselle valleys, in Franconia, or in Wirttemberg, the superior quality of Alsatian wine was beyond dispute.
'Traders traveled to Sélestat from far and wide, hoping to buy the prized wine at its source. Sales, however, began to stagnate at the turn of the century. A gradual change in taste was partly to blame. Greater difficulties, however, were posed by tariffs and duties that other cities, especially in the south, imposed in an effort to contain the flood of Alsatian imports.
Towns like Sélestat that lay somewhat at the margins of Alsace's traditional winegrowing areas were hit especially hard. The "Oberpirger" wine of unparalleled quality grew elsewhere, between Thann and Colmar to the south. Increased demand had led to the expansion of viniculture toward the north, closer to Sélestat. But the "Niderpirger" produced here was not nearly as good. Poorer soil quality and adverse weather conditions led more often to failed vintages. Even though the negative effects of this long-term development were felt only gradually, by the end of the fifteenth century Sélestat's economy had clearly begun to stagnate.
Economic deterioration brought on social unrest, disturbances, and revolts, not only in the surrounding areas but in Sélestat itself? In 1493, authorities uncovered and stifled a large-scale conspiracy that extended far beyond the city limits. It was triggered by a local economic crisis. Championing revolutionary demands, Hans Ulman, a member of the local patriciate, had succeeded in rallying impoverished masses under the banner of the Bundschuh, the peasant boot, which had come to symbolize the uprising.
The episode was a signal of increasing social tensions in and around Sélestat. Discontent remained strong during the following decades, exploding finally in the Peasants' War of 1525.
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The established order was beginning to crumble. A small class of merchants and wine dealers in Sélestat had achieved significant prosperity, yet many other townspeople struggled to survive. Social tensions grew into political discontent, for the patriciate held city government tightly in its erip. Eight mayors, or Stadtmeister, ruled the town hall, each of them governing for three months, assisted by seventeen councilmen, or Ratsfreunde.
These twenty-five men constituted the town council and had the final say in Sélestat. 'Io be sure, there were also fourteen guild masters, or Zunftmeister, elected to represent the fourteen artisan guilds of Sélestat. But the town council invited them to participate in its sessions only on selected occasions. [he assembly of one hundred Schoffen appointed by the guilds was even less influential, convoked only in times of crisis.
As in other medieval towns, there was mandatory guild membership in Sélestat: burghers who wished to practice a trade had to seek membership in an artisan guild and pay the corresponding entrance fees and yearly membership dues. Journeymen and particularly apprentices were entirely under the authority of their master craftsman, in whose house they also lived. But the masters themselves fell into two categories, depending on whether they enjoyed full citizenship or were just Soldner, as Sélestat called its half-citizens. 'To be a full citizen who was eligible for a political office, one had to own a house with an adjoining courtyard or deposit an equivalent amount of money in the local bank. All master artisans, together with their employees, were responsible for defending the city and needed to possess weapons for this task. But the artisan guilds were more significant for the social and economic functions they fulfilled. They offered their members a certain degree of financial security in case of illness or invalidity. Most important, they regulated and controlled all aspects of production and trade in a very strict and precise way, and indirectly made it possible for the city council, which imposed innumerable regulations and ordinances of its own, to extend and enhance its control over the town.
The Church Daily life in Sélestat, as in all other medieval towns, villages, and regions, was inconceivable without the church, which was intimately interwoven not only with the spiritual but also with the legal, political, and economic life of the town. Sélestat's very beginnings in the eighth century are inextricably connected with the Benedictine abbey of Sainte Foy (Saint Fides), around which the town grew and developed. For centuries the townspeople of Sélestat struggled for ecclesiastical independence and for the rights
Martin Bucer over the monastery, but they had to submit ultimately to the superior might of the Strasbourg bishop, who, along with the monastery and its extensive landed property, assumed the support of the abbot and his six monks. Only a couple streets away, north of the abbey, arose the impressive parish church of St. George, consecrated to the Virgin Mary since the Middle Ages. Its preachership was incorporated into the cathedral chapter of Strasbourg, giving this latter body the exclusive right to name the town pastor (Rektor) of Sélestat. In the immediate vicinity of St.
George, toward the west and the north, not far from the city wall, were a number of church institutions charged with exacting the hated tithe from the laity: the tax offices of the local parish, the provost of Strasbourg cathedral, as well as the abbot of Hugshofen, all of which divided the fruit and wine tithe among themselves. But the abbey of Ebersmiinster, the canonesses of Andlau, and the Hospitaller Order of St. John also had their own offices for the exaction of clerical taxes. It is not hard to believe one contemporary chronicler's report that there was "hardly a citizen" of Sélestat who was not financially liable to the church "in one way or another."
Besides the Benedictines and the Hospitallers of St. John, mendicant orders such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans had their respective monasteries (the Dominicans a nunnery as well) in Sélestat, scattered along the southern half of the town in this order. Of these, only the Dominican convent has disappeared, its former plot now being partially taken up by the post office.
The list above gives us only an incomplete impression of the enormous swell of religious devotion that had late medieval Sélestat in its hold.
Within its walls were also four Beguine convents, in each of which two to three unmarried or widowed women led a common life of prayer and meditation, according to the lay rule of St. Francis, but also took care of the sick and dying. Furthermore, beginning in the fifteenth century, lay confraternities proliferated. Their members rallied around a common patron saint, which they made the object of special devotion. The confraternity of St. Mary, or Reidbruderschaft, for example, committed itself to the veneration of Mary's immaculate conception, while the rosary confraternity, which developed in association with the Dominicans, made the recitation of the rosary prayer its special concern. Whereas these confraternities emphasized private spiritual edification, religious lay associations with a more communal dimension existed as well, such as guild confraternities, in which members of an artisan guild got together for religious and mutual aid purposes, worshiping a specific saint and maintaining his altar in the town church or in a monastery church but also
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attending to one another's temporal welfare. The winegrowers' patron was initially John the Evangelist, later John the Baptist. The guardian saints of the coopers were Simon and Jude. The larger guild confraternities did not provide an adequate framework for private piety, which increasingly found expression in smaller confraternities of journeymen of the same craft. The town council was understandably mistrustful of this process, given the prevailing social and political tensions.
Religion and the church were present everywhere and at every level.
They imbued civic existence in its entirety and were, figuratively speaking, as indispensable and necessary as life-giving air. When the city gates were closed in the evening, one sang a "Salve Regina." If a storm was imminent, church bells were "rung against the tempest." Daily work, the year's seasons, special occasions in one's life, indeed all significant events in the town were intimately interwoven with the church and with the meaning it gave to life. Every church holiday celebration inevitably encompassed a communal celebration. Every communal feast was a church feast. The rhythms of the church were inseparable from the rhythms of life.
But precisely because popular piety was so vibrant and flourished in such diverse forms in Sélestat and elsewhere at the end of the Middle Ages, laypeople placed ever higher expectations on the church and its representatives. [hey wanted church leaders that actually lived in town, led morally exemplary lives, and were well trained in preaching and in pastoral care. While excoriating the clergy, the laity did not call into question the heart of church life, which was the Mass in all its forms, from the countless varieties of weekday votive masses to the elaborate ritual of the High Mass. The laity demanded of the clergy an intense and deep church life. This craving for a church that addressed laypeople's spiritual needs also manifested itself in reform movements of many kinds during the late
Middle Ages, movements spearheaded by clergy and laypersons alike. In Sélestat these efforts aimed particularly at reforming the town parish.
Disenchantment with existing church structures, as diverse and widespread as it was, could be traced back to one root problem: the system of ecclesiastical benefices. Benefices, or prebends, were church positions financed by the revenue issuing from church property, including the numerous endowments laypeople had given to the church. Thus, church property in towns and villages produced income over which the respective town or village had no control, income that went directly to the holder of the benefice—usually a distant bishop, abbot, or cathedral chapter. 'The latter lived off of these benefices, in fact off of several of them at the same time, so that it was impossible for the absentee holders actually to fulfill
Martin Bucer their ecclesiastical duties at all these locations. They therefore would use part of their income to hire subordinate representatives such as "people's priests" (Leutpriester) or chaplains of even lower standing, most of whom were ill suited for performing church duties and could do little more than mumble their way through the Mass. And this was simply not enough for the increasingly articulate and pious laypeople in the towns and even in the villages.
The town minister position in Sélestat was, as already mentioned, financed by a benefice owned by the Strasbourg cathedral chapter. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, local townsmen were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the way Strasbourg was filling the position. 'They found the turnover exceedingly high and the pastors incompetent. 'There was a brief respite in lay complaints from 1492 to 1497, when Martin Ergersheim, the son of a prominent local family noted for his education and deep piety, held the Leutpriester position. But this only made tempers run all the higher when the cathedral chapter replaced him with an unsuitable candidate. The previous years had taught the laity that they did not have to take second-rate pastors for granted. The upper class of Sélestat burghers was, in fact, willing to invest a significant amount of money in obtaining the right to choose their own minister. They achieved a first breakthrough in 1503: the Strasbourg cathedral bowed to their demands, agreeing to receive the revenue of its benefice only if the newly elected pastor—unsurprisingly, it was Ergersheim—actually lived in Sélestat and carried out his pastoral obligations to everyone's full satisfaction.
Martin Ergersheim certainly met the expectations of his supporters. He came from a respected Sélestat family, had studied at the famous local
Latin school, and had a master's degree from the University of Heidelberg; he also could count on an important circle of humanist friends from which he picked his chaplains. 'Together with them, Ergersheim devoted an enormous amount of energy to his parish. He was known as an excellent and forceful preacher and as a devoted pastor. When he retired in 1518 on account of his age, the town council had by now almost exclusive say in the choice of his successor, who turned out to be another Sélestat native renowned for his scholarship and strong personal commitment: the Eichstatt preacher Dr. Paul Seidensticker (also known as Phrygio).
It turned out to be a much more difficult task to reform second-rank clerics—the so-called helpers, or chaplains. But also in this case, the deep religious longing of the laity and the determination of the council to obtain legal control over the local church complemented each other. The parish church presented no challenge in this respect: its three helpers were
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already appointed by the town minister. But at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Sélestat also had between thirteen and twenty other chaplains who lived off of the rapidly growing number of endowed Masses, yet, with one exception, none of them lived in town. Ergersheim, his colleagues, and the town council tried for years to reduce the endowments to six chaplainships, ensuring the respective chaplains a regular income, on the one hand, and giving the council important rights in the appointment of these positions, on the other. But it was not until more than ten years later, on May 16, 1521, that the town was able to achieve its aims, finally overcoming the resistance put up by the former benefice holders as well as by the Bishop of Strasbourg—and particularly the papal court in Rome.
The Latin School The political self-confidence of its citizens, their deep religiosity, their determination to reform their church, and their openness to educational innovations all contributed toward creating a unique intellectual environment in Sélestat long before the end of the fifteenth century. At the heart of this environment lay Sélestat's prestigious Latin school.* The school's rise to fame began in 1441, when the council appointed Ludwig
Dringenberg as a teacher—a Westphalian scholar deeply shaped by the piety and mysticism of the devotio moderna. One of the most significant and certainly the most famous of Dringenberg's pupils was Jacob Wimpfeling, who soon became a spokesman for a new kind of humanism. After Dringenberg died in 1477, Crato (Krafft) Hofmann carried on with his teaching. Among his former pupils could be counted the diplomats Jacob
Villinger and Jacob Spiegel, the printer Matthias Schiirer, the scholar Beatus Rhenanus, as well as Jerome Gebwiler, who led the Latin school from 1501 to 1509. After a one-year intermezzo with Oswald Baer from Brixen serving as head, Johannes Sapidus (Hans Witz) took over the school in 1510. This native Sélestatian, who had studied under Hofmann and Gebwiler, led the Latin school into a second golden age, with enrollment shooting up from 250 to over 900. Whereas the express goal of instruction had previously been to acquaint students thoroughly with the language and spirit of ancient Rome, Sapidus introduced modern trends, adding Greek language and literature to the curriculum. However, his support of the Reformation eventually cost him his position. 'The council fired him around the time the Peasants' Revolt was defeated, thus bringing one of the most splendid periods in the history of the school—indeed, of Sélestat itself—to an end.
Martin Bucer All teachers of the Latin school, from Dringenberg to Gebwiler, imbued their students with a peculiar brand of humanism marked by unquestioned devotion to the church and a resolute commitment to ethics. School and church life were closely and conspicuously tied. In the first years of the sixteenth century, the town provided the Latin school with a new building located literally in the shadow of the church, with only a narrow alley separating the academy from the impressive west facade of St. George. 'This was no meaningless detail. The church relied on at least a small group of students to sing during High Mass every morning and to chant the "Salve
Regina," as mentioned, every evening. Additionally, the students played an important role in Sunday-morning worship services. The teacher of the Latin school and his students came to church on Saturday evening to sing the vespers and to practice the liturgical songs for the following day. On Sunday morning the entire student body filed into the church and down the nave in a solemn procession and assembled in the choir. Many years later, Gebwiler still vividly remembered this as a stirring sight, declaring that "the town took special delight and pride in the students' singing in the choir on Sundays and holidays."? On Sunday evening they sang vespers at the same place. The students were also expected to sing during countless other church festivities, funerals, and commemorative Masses held for the dead on their respective anniversaries. Besides the salary he got from the town council, the school director received two and a half Rhenish guldens from the church for services performed—further evidence of the Latin school's strong links to the church.°® These external structures corresponded to inner attitudes. Wimpfeling, who influenced not only Gebwiler but also Martin Ergersheim, set forth his ideas on education in his book Adolescentia in 1510.' He aimed at nothing less than the renewal of the entire corpus Christianum, of Christian society. Ideas like those of Wimpfeling could also be found in the writings of other great Alsatians, for example, in the famous Fools' Ship
(1494) by the Strasbourg civic secretary and municipal magistrate Sebastian Brant, or in the popular sermons of the fiery Strasbourg cathedral preacher Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg. They were all convinced of one thing: the renewal of society could be achieved only by training and bringing up new, better human beings. Pedagogy thus played a central role in their thought, and particularly in that of Wimpfeling. He was convinced that there could be no authentic ethical action without a purified and intensified personal piety. The priest had to teach exemplary moral conduct. Agreeing with the humanist consensus that the new "humanity" toward which they were aiming would express itself in a new and eloquent
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style, Wimpfeling attacked scholasticism and called for the study of Latin grammar and ancient rhetoric. He wanted young people to develop a taste for simplicity, authenticity, and practicality. He valued the classics only inasmuch as their study would supposedly usher in the anticipated Christian renewal. These ideas were not necessarily new. Indeed, Wimpfeling appealed over and over again to Petrarca and Gerson—although he read
Petrarca selectively along moral lines and imbued Gerson with a generous dose of Alsatian conservatism. Nonetheless, Wimpfeling's unique ability to provide old texts with new relevance made him extraordinarily influential in the entire Upper Rhine Valley during the first two decades of the sixteenth century.
A further intellectual current complemented and enhanced the educational philosophy of the Sélestat school, shaping the thought of Jerome
Gebwiler in a propitious way: the influence of the French humanist Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples (Faber Stapulensis). Gebwiler became acquainted with Lefevre during his study years in Paris, and the two soon became close friends. Gebwiler helped Lefevre with his text editions and remained one of his most avid followers upon returning to Alsace. He also sent his most gifted students—among them Beatus Rhenanus, Sapidus, Michael Hummelberg of Ravensburg, and the sons of the Basel aristocrat Amerbach— on to Paris to study under Lefevre. What did Gebwiler find so fascinating about this inquisitive seeker and incredibly well read scholar, who saw himself more as a philosopher than as a theologian? Both were deeply pious persons, and both believed that this piety had to express itself in practical deeds. Neoplatonist speculation played a key role in Lefévre's thought, however, and not in Wimpfeling's. Lefévre's conservative brand of humanism was far more sophisticated and multidimensional than Wimpfeling's simplistic moralism. As much as Lefevre valued the study of language and the knowledge of grammar and rhetoric, what ultimately interested him was getting closer to finding the ove truth underlying all those texts, but reflected only imperfectly and incompletely in them. For Lefevre, the task of the humanist scholar thus took on an almost religious significance independent of its pedagogical usefulness. He never doubted that his brand of humanism was closely connected to the church. In fact, he was convinced that the humanist served the church, and indeed the entire world, by unveiling the plenitude and richness of Christian truth through his speculative work.
Jerome Gebwiler tried to introduce elements of Lefevre's thought into his curriculum. In a pedagogical concept published later,® he distinguished three groups of students. First, there were those who were learning how to
Martin Bucer read and write—Latin, of course—as well as basic arithmetic. The next group studied the elements of Latin grammar and practiced reading simple authors such as Cato or Aesop. Gebwiler wished to go beyond that and also to acquaint students with etymology, syntax, as well as Latin verse and metric. The fundamental pedagogical innovation was reserved, however, for the third group: here Gebwiler wanted to introduce into the curriculum the trivium, usually taught at the beginning of university studies, and have the students learn rhetoric and dialectic, besides studying grammar and reading Latin texts as usual. Thus students practiced Latin style and composition, wrote Latin poetry, and were even encouraged to formulate elaborate letters modeled after those of Cicero, Pliny, or the Italian humanist Angelo Poliziano. Dialectic ultimately culminated in ethics.
Students were to become more than experts in formal definition and abstract differentiation. They had to learn moral conduct—tangible, concrete behavior in accordance with ethical principles—in school. Therefore, after studying the fundamentals of Aristotle's philosophia naturalis, stadents examined his philosophia morals.
What lasting effects did this educational philosophy have? Gebwiler wrote later in his Sélestat chronicle that many of his and his predecessors' students had learned the "basics of grammatica" in the Latin school.'
While many of them probably did not learn much more than that, it is certainly possible that a few grasped quite a bit more and definitely grew in their learning.
This is the environment into which Martin Bucer was born and in which he was raised. This environment influenced him decisively, if not exclusively, for the first twenty-five years of his life.
Family Background and Early Childhood There is not much we know about the Butzer!" family. Is the "Claus
Butzel" mentioned in a 1465 list of those paying the lowest taxes!! an ancestor of Martin, perhaps even identical with his grandfather Claus
Butzer? A certain Jorge Butzer is mentioned as a tenant in a 1474 contract reappraising the rent to be paid to the city hospital and poor asylum for a house located in the Schlangengasse.!* Might this Jorge have been
Claus's brother? In any case, Claus Butzer, who was registered in the citizenship list as a Soldner in 1480,'> did live in this house, a rather elongated and narrow abode located at the western edge of town, not far from the city wall (on the street currently carrying the name of Impasse Plobmann but formerly called Butzengasse). Claus Butzer Jr., who himself
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was entered as a So/dner in the citizenship registry on January 16, 1487,!* lived in his father's house together with his family. Later, his son Martin was born and grew up in this house.» This information sheds light on the economic and legal status of the family. Claus Butzer Sr. and Jr. certainly did not enjoy full citizenship, being mere Soldner. They were coopers by trade, making the wooden casks and barrels in which the wine so essential to the region's livelihood was stored. Seen from a broader economic perspective, their profession was definitely a subsidiary one,'° extremely sensitive to business cycles. Their income basically depended on the given level of wine production and sales, which was hard to foresee. Coopers belonged to the winegrowers' guild but did not carry much political weight within it, since wealthier winegrowers and dealers were also members. In other words, the Butzer family lived, and young Martin grew up, in rather pitiful economic conditions.
What would have been more understandable than to flee the town and seek one's fortune elsewhere? Martin's grandfather might well have attempted something like that.'' We do know that his father left Sélestat in the 1490s, thus becoming "disloyal" (as his fellow citizens put it), since he moved away without renouncing his citizenship.'> Where he went is not known. Whatever Martin's father attempted, he definitely did not succeed, for by the spring of 1501 he was back in town. His unlawful departure from Sélestat was forgiven and on June 22 he was readmitted into the winegrowers' guild. But by November 1501 he was gone once again, this time for good, heading off probably for Strasbourg and taking his wife, Martin's mother, with him. Strasbourg offered reasonable hope for further and more rapid advancement, being the center of Alsatian wine trade and allowing the coopers a guild of their own. 'Io be sure, Claus's stay in Strasbourg is not documented until December 7, 1508, the day he was granted citizenship.!" Claus died in Strasbourg in 1540, having spent the last years of his life in the city hospital, thanks to the mediation of his son, by then a prominent figure.*? This information is not enough to prove that Claus Butzer was someone intent on climbing the social and economic ladder; the documented facts remain somewhat ambiguous. But if we also take into consideration the importance Claus placed on sending his son to the famous Sélestat Latin school, as well as the pains he must have taken to meet his son's insatiable demand for books,"! we are justified in our impression that Claus worked hard to enable his son to fulfill ambitions and dreams that had never come true in his own life.
We unfortunately know nothing about Martin's mother. Bucer omits any mention of her. Her name was supposedly Eva, and tradition has it
ly?
Martin Bucer she worked as a midwife. But is it plausible that a job of such responsibility was entrusted to a woman who was apparently quite young and, besides, whose husband had abandoned the town illegally? Has she possibly been mistaken for Martin's grandmother? All we can say with certainty is that she died before her husband, for by 1538, Claus Butzer had remarried, taking Margaretha Windecker as his wife."
Martin Bucer was born on the festivity of Saint Martin, November 11, and was probably baptized on the very same day, and christened according to medieval custom with the name of that day's saint.' It is generally assumed that 1491 was the year of his birth. There are no official records certifying this date, and Bucer himself does not confirm it anywhere.
However, we do know with certainty that he entered his hometown's Dominican monastery when he was fifteen years of age, and the date of his entry can be deduced from other sources, so that the supposed year of birth is undoubtedly correct. What remains uncertain is whether Martin was his parents' first, their only, or their only surviving child.
While we have no irrefutable proof, it is more than probable that Martin Bucer attended the Sélestat Latin school.** School ordinances and later memoirs are not enough to reconstruct everyday life, but they do permit us to draw the following sketchy picture. It was the custom to enter school around the age of six or seven and to leave it by the time one was fifteen or sixteen." In Alsace, classes usually began on Saint Gregory's day,
March 13. Bucer was several months older than six by the springtime of 1498, so we can assume that he began to learn to read and write Latin at this time. It was not unusual for children of artisans to attend the Latin school."° Tuition was not exorbitant, and the school director occasionally reduced it for poor students.
We can only guess how quickly Bucer worked his way up from the lowest grade to the third, or highest, one. By the time he was admitted into this last group, it is certain that he had Jerome Gebwiler as his teacher, if not earlier. We also do not know whether Bucer already became acquainted at this time with people like Sapidus or Beatus Rhenanus, who later would be his close friends. We only know with certainty that Bucer's time at school was coming to an end in the summer of 1507. What had he gained from it? One thing is sure: not only was he able to read and even speak Latin fluently, but he was also capable of expressing himself with precision in this language. He had become familiar with the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian logic and the essential principles of this philosophical system. But most important, he had been influenced by a piety that expressed itself in practical terms and for which exemplary moral con-
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duct was paramount. And all these elements were subsumed under a selfevident and emphatic commitment to the church. But what would the young Martin be able to do now? Which trade should he take on? At this time an event took place in the local Dominican monastery that soon had all Sélestat talking. And Martin's grandfather, Claus Butzer, who was watching over the youth's upbringing and education, reacted immediately.
The Dominicans The Sélestat Monastery The Order of Preachers (Ordo Praedicatorum), better known as Dominicans or Friars Preachers, came to Sélestat in 1282.'' Before long, it gained a good reputation and even prospered financially. Of all the religious orders present in the city, it had the most impressive compound, in which one could find a stately 145-foot-long and 56-foot-wide church, several monastery buildings, and a vast garden extending along the Untermuhlbach, a branch of the Ill River. The Sélestat Dominicans owed their wealth to the many houses and the extensive landed property endowed to them particularly in the fourteenth century. In their church one could see the gravestones and epitaphs of the leading patrician families—the Wickersheims, the Mtintzers, and the Botzheims—indicating which social class claimed a close allegiance to this order. As in many other medieval towns, the upper classes in Sélestat associated with the Dominicans, whereas the common people felt closer ties to the Franciscans.
The Sélestat Dominicans were not immune to the general decline all the mendicant orders experienced at the end of the fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century. Io be sure, the Observant movement, which sought to reform the order, had managed to get a foothold in Colmar, just south of Sélestat, already in 1389, and in 1464 the Dominican nuns of Sélestat joined the Observant reform. But the main Dominican monastery refused to submit, continuing with the "conventual" form of life that permitted a more liberal interpretation of the statutes requiring monastic seclusion as well as personal poverty. After the Dominican province of 'leutonia split into two opposing groups, the Obervants and the Conventuals, during its chapter meeting in Colmar in 1464, it is no coincidence that the departing
Conventuals continued their meeting in Sélestat.
It was the resolute Observant Vincent Bandelli who, as master general of the order, brought about the decisive turnaround. On May 18, 1505, he commissioned Petrus Siber, prior of the province, to reform the Sélestat monastery. He reiterated his command on June 10, 1507, thus finally
Martin Bucer breaking the resistance of the Conventuals.** Monastic life was restructured according to Observant principles in the late summer or fall of 1507.
It is reasonable to assume that the same procedure as elsewhere was followed, that is, a new prior and two monks from an Observant monastery were appointed to join the approximately nine monks already in Sélestat.
It is possible that this new prior was Johannes Studach (or Studath) from the town of Guebwiller.'"
Entering the Monastery It was this event that drove the elder Butzer almost immediately, before the year 1507 was over,*? to practically force his grandson into the Dominican order. At least, this is what Bucer reports sixteen years later.*!
Of course, we must consider the precise context in which he wrote his 1523 Justification (Verantwortung). Bucer had just abandoned the Dominican order and sought asylum in Strasbourg, asking the city council for protection. The city was in the midst of tremendous social and religious upheaval, and the council was trying to keep popular discontent toward the monasteries from getting out of control. It is unrealistic to expect that Bucer would—indeed, even could—give a fair presentation of his monastic past in such a situation. Hurting from personal accusations that supporters of the traditional church had launched against him, he bitingly attacked the institutions of the established church and did not even shrink from making the dubious denunciation that learning and scholarship were nowhere held in such low esteem as among the Dominicans!
We can safely assume that Bucer might have perceived things quite differently back in 1507. Unlike Luther, it was not grappling with religious questions that drove him into the monastery. We can also assume that his grandfather nudged him along this path. But then again, what choice did young Martin have? His family had not planned for him to learn a craft, which did not interest him to begin with. They lacked money for a university education. A further option was to become a priest, and Bucer's family might indeed have been intending this for some time. After all, sending a child to Latin school without further plans to continue on to university implied a future as a clergyman in store. Of course, this choice implied a very uncertain future, with the possibility of financial misery and social decline. Obtaining a well-paying pastorate position required a university degree or good social connections—it was even better to have both, as we saw in the case of Sélestat. If not, a clergyman was left to earn his livelihood as a "helper," in a poorly paid and not highly regarded chaplainship.
Humble Beginnings
It is understandable that the elder Butzer, as he saw tremendous opportunities suddenly opening up in the Dominican monastery, could now allow himself to express open abschetihen, or loathing, toward secular priests. No longer forced to join the latter in their sad lot, young Martin was seemingly given the chance of a lifetime and admitted into the monastery. Furthermore, he was not required to give the monastery a significant endowment upon entry, as novices had had to do earlier.** Additionally, the earlier family dream that the boy would become a priest could still be fulfilled within the order. Finally, the Dominicans represented a possibility of social advancement that would have never been available to Martin elsewhere. 'Io sum it up, their monastery symbolized what Claus
Butzer described as erbarkeit—"respectability."
Upon admittance into the order, Bucer began a year as a novice. He received the tonsure and donned the white habit of the Dominicans, although without the scapular, the additional vestment worn over the chest and the back. The goal of this one-year probationary period was to acquaint the beginner with the monastic life in common, as well as with singing in a choir. The emphasis was on turning one's back to the world and devoting oneself to God completely. Before the year 1507 was over,
Bucer was consecrated as an acolyte in the Strasbourg church of the Williamites (Hermits of Saint William of Maleval), thus receiving the lowest ecclesiastical orders, a prerequisite for theological studies.
In 1508 he professed the perpetually binding monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and became a Dominican monk in the full sense.
Later, looking back, Bucer observed that he had had no other choice. But even his later negative perception of this event could not overshadow the deep impression that the monastic experience and its concentration on Mary, "the mother of God," made on him at that time. A huge painting of her could be seen at the Sélestat monastery. The representatives of the town's proud patrician class were portrayed humbly kneeling at her feet.
The Dominican rule spoke of her as the special patron of the Order of Preachers, the only order that expressly bound itself to her through its vows. And the Golden Legend, a collection of saints' lives widespread throughout Europe, was full of miraculous stories reporting on how Mary had interceded before her stern Son on behalf of the Dominicans.'*? All this must have had a deep impact on a young man open to new ideas and impressions.
The Dominicans were a scholarly order. 'Their constitutions proclaimed study as one the principal aims of the order. This ideal was urged upon the monasteries again and again. But during a monk's first two years
Martin Bucer in a monastery, including the year as a novice, he was to practice only
"piety, church services, and the reading of the Bible." If we apply this timetable to Bucer, this would mean that his superiors allowed him to begin the elementary study of philosophy in 1510. In this same year he was consecrated as a deacon—once again in Strasbourg, in the church of the Williamites.
Studies within the Order It must be emphasized that we know very little about Bucer's time in the Sélestat monastery. By carefully studying the curricula of the Dominican order, the remnants of the library of the Sélestat Dominicans, and the list that Bucer made of his own books,** we can reconstruct his training very roughly. But even these little fragments of surviving evidence give a surprisingly clear reflection of the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere in which he lived and worked.
The elementary study of philosophy aimed at acquainting students thoroughly with Aristotle's thought, which constituted the very foundation of scholasticism. The great philosopher's writings were read in two consecutive programs of study, each of which concluded with an exam.
First of all, his writings on logic, primarily the Organon, were studied. 'This studium logicale, according to the rules of the Dominican order, lasted three years. It was followed by the study of Aristotle's writings on natural science, in the course of which his ethics and metaphysics were also read.
The normal length of this studium naturahum was two years. We can assume that Bucer took part in these programs of study from 1510 to 1514.
Two books from the Sélestat monastery library that Bucer took with him to Heidelberg convey more precisely the intellectual character of his introduction to the Greek philosopher: they were the best and most modern editions of Aristotle's works available at that time, compiled and commented on by Lefevre d'Etaples and his student Jodocus Clichthoveus.
Bucer also owned personal copies of Lefévre's commentary edition of the Nicomachean Ethics as well as Aristotle's On the Soul (De anima) and his
Metaphysics, both with the annotations of Thomas Aquinas. It is obvious that Bucer, even as a Dominican, still had strong intellectual bonds to the Sélestat Latin school.
The Order of Preachers commonly sent monks who had just completed their introductory studies to another cloister for a year. This was to ensure the best possible training, for not all monasteries counted adequate teachers in all areas. We do not know if the Sélestat monastery also took part
Humble Beginnings
in this custom; but we do know that Bucer visited Heidelberg and Mainz in the next period of his theological studies, as he recounts later.*>
The detailed curricula of the Dominican order saw the study of Aristotle not as an end in itself but rather as an ancillary means leading up to and culminating in the actual study of theology.*® The latter began with two years of elementary courses. During this time, budding Dominican scholars took a one-year lecture course on selected texts of the Old and New 'Testaments, followed by a survey course of the same duration on the Sentences of Peter Lombard—the fundamental medieval handbook of dogmatics. We do not know which commentaries students were encouraged to read along with these lectures. In any case, Bucer is probably referring to these two years of elementary theological work when he reports having studied in Heidelberg and Mainz. 'This would imply that he did biblical studies in Heidelberg in 1515 and took the survey course in dogmatics in Mainz in 1516. This assumption fits in well with the indisputable fact that Bucer was ordained a priest in Mainz. We do not know the exact day or year of this event, but he would have attained the minimum age prescribed by canon law for ordination to the priesthood by the fall of 1516, when he turned twenty-five. Even though exemptions from this requirement could be granted, particularly to the Dominican order,
Bucer's ordination to the priesthood in Mainz can be most reasonably explained if we assume it took place while studying theology there.
If Bucer studied in the university towns of Heidelberg and Mainz, this does not mean he actually took university courses there. The Order of Preachers had self-contained study programs in the Heidelberg and Mainz monasteries, which gave its monks theological training provided by Dominican teaching staff within cloister walls. The degree to which Bucer might have had extramural academic contacts is unknown; it is certainly not implausible. For Bucer to have taken up theological studies immediately after completing his introduction to philosophy was at odds with a stipulation in the Dominican rule requiring monks to take a twoto three-year break between both study programs, during which they were to teach philosophy in a monastery. We can only guess the reasons for Bucer's brisk academic career. The mentioned ordinance might have been often circumvented, but it is just as possible that Bucer's superiors deliberately promoted his advancement. A further event bolsters the latter assumption: the chapter of the Dominican province of 'Teutonia elected
Eberhard of Cleves as its new prior provincial during a meeting in Sélestat on August 15, 1515. Eberhard was more than an avid supporter of the
Martin Bucer Observant movement; he was also the prior of the Heidelberg monastery and had been directly responsible several times for its study program, which aimed at grooming the intellectual leaders of the Dominican order.
Asan Observant, Eberhard of Cleves was interesting 1n recruiting as many gifted monks as possible and making of them priors, teachers, and professors intellectually qualified to take on the opponents of the Observant movement. The Conventuals had plans of their own to establish a studium generale, or house of higher studies, with a markedly modern, humanistic curriculum. What would have been more obvious than for the Observants to intensify their efforts to create their own intellectual elite, in order to spread the Observant cause throughout the province's monasteries and institutions of learning?
Whether this development influenced Bucer's academic path or not, in January 1517 we find him in the studium generale of the Dominicans in Heidelberg, well on his way toward obtaining a doctorate in theology— the highest academic degree of this period, granting him the right to teach in the theological faculty of a university.
The World of Humanism Bucer did not spend time only on theology during these years in the monastery. About half his library, to be sure, as shown by 1518 inventory of his books, did consist of theological and philosophical works representing the thought of the great Dominican teacher Thomas Aquinas. But the other half of his collection covered rhetoric, history, grammar, as well as poetry, and thus was humanistic in the broadest sense.
This tension between scholasticism and humanism—or, more exactly, between Thomistic scholastic theology and an Alsatian humanism heavily influenced by Erasmus, and in which not only Bucer took part—cannot be resolved at the expense of one or the other. The tendency of scholarship to present them as mutually exclusive alternatives has no basis in the facts. Bucer's library is proof of this. A somewhat thin but very illuminating volume by Heinrich Bebel with the title A Little Book on the Education of Youth*' is helpful in identifying the principle under which Bucer put his library together in the years 1515 and 1516. Bucer did not own the book, but the Sélestat monastery library had a copy. Bebel had been a professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Tubingen since 1497 and had been crowned poet laureate by the emperor Maximilian in 1501. He wrote his little book as a guide to those convinced of the importance of rhetoric but unsure which ancient authors they should read to achieve authentic
Humble Beginnings
eloquence. Of course, it was not the minister's job to preach grammar instead of the gospel from the pulpit, acknowledged Bebel. But the opposite was equally true: without a thorough training in rhetoric, which for Bebel included not just Wimpfeling's limited canon but ancient Latin literature in its entirety, there could be no meaningful scholarship of any kind.
Without having to go into details,*> we can safely assert that Bucer acquired an astonishingly high proportion of the works recommended by Bebel. If we also include Lefévre's modern Aristotle editions, mentioned previously, from the Sélestat monastery library—in which one could also find Poliziano's Centuries and a Greek dictionary—we have evidence enough, even on the basis of these pitiful remnants of a once huge library, that the Dominicans kept abreast of the high scholarship of the prestigious Latin school of the town.
Furthermore, Bucer's own development within this humanistic environment is worth examining more closely. Unquestionably, Bucer's older and much admired friends Beatus Rhenanus and especially Sapidus contributed significantly to his humanistic evolution. A similar process can be observed in Matthias Schiirer's publishing program, from which Bucer bought many of his books. It is an uncontested conclusion that no one contributed more to the dissemination of humanism in Alsace than this
Strasbourg printer.*" The list of his publications allows us to trace the development of humanism from the initial predominance of Wimpfeling to the eventual supremacy of Erasmus. Bucer's own intellectual trajectory was paradoxically in some ways more progressive, but in others more conservative, than the route staked out by Bebel and Schiirer. He was going beyond Bebel's list of recommended readings when he obtained Erasmus's
Praise of Folly (Encomium moriae), and particularly when he bought the widely circulated Neoplatonist treatise On the Divine Names (De divinis nominibus) by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, edited and interpreted by Marsilio Ficino. Even more significant are the Schtirer imprints that Bucer did mot buy: neither Gerson nor Geiler von Kaysersberg, and not even the works of the patriarch of Alsatian humanism, Jacob Wimpfeling.
Bucer was thus in accord with modern tendencies in German humanism that were pushing for a comprehensively new approach to tradition, though remaining within the boundaries placed by university and church institutions. In one respect, however, Bucer lagged behind. We do not find in him any trace of the widespread call to return to the church fathers, a call even echoed by Bebel. With the exception of Lactantius, who was admired more as a stylist than as a theologian, Bucer did not own a single
Martin Bucer copy of their works. 'This is clear proof of the unquestioned sway that the medieval tradition, particularly in the shape of Thomistic theology, still held over him.
The books that Bucer bought after 1516 show that he was becoming increasingly fascinated with the thought of Erasmus of Rotterdam. A new dimension of humanism was dawning upon him. But this development belongs more properly in his Heidelberg period.