Chapter Three
Chapter Three A Preacher in Strasbourg Strasbourg Economuc, Political, and Social Background
Bucer—by now a penniless priest, excommunicated and persecuted because of his marriage and his agitational preaching—arrived in a city that was neither the largest nor the wealthiest nor politically the most important among German imperial free cities.! Cologne, Augsburg, and Nuremberg surpassed Strasbourg in all these counts. But the Alsatian metropolis boasted a propitious combination of all the factors that had given the aforesaid cities fame and prominence. Its population of almost twenty-five thousand made it, if not the biggest, certainly one of the largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire. It was among the empire's most important economic and cultural centers. And with the inception of the Reformation,
Strasbourg began taking over, step by step, the political leadership that Nuremberg had exercised up to this point.
The Upper Rhine city lay at the vital junction of two significant trade routes: one issued from Lyon in the southwest and headed north and east via Frankfurt am Main; the other (and, with the shift of commerce from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, increasingly important) route proceeded from northern Italy and headed toward the Netherlands and the up-andcoming metropolis of Antwerp. Strasbourg, and particularly its annual St.
John's Day fair (Johannismesse), had become an important hub of commerce.
Exquisite glass products and spices were imported from the Orient via Venice by land or by sea, hides from Switzerland, salt from Bavaria and Lorraine, furs from Poland and Russia—not to mention fish, essential during fasting periods, from many different regions. But Strasbourg's merchants au.
Martin Bucer earned a living not only as intermediate traders but also as exporters of Alsatian goods such as grain, medium-quality cloths, weapons, jewelry, and, of course, the Alsatian wine so highly praised and esteemed in and beyond the Holy Roman Empire.
Power in Strasbourg was concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy families related to one another by consanguinity or marriage. The 1482 civic constitution granted the guilds a significant degree of political influence but did nothing to change the predominance of the richer guilds.
Their overwhelming power remained unchallenged, since younger family members were required to join poorer guilds and ascend within them.
Strasbourg's very elaborate political and social hierarchy allowed the ruling elite enough latitude to pursue its own goals.
Strasbourg's citizenry was organized into twenty merchant and artisan guilds and two guildlike societies of the noble Constofler, representing the patrician upper class.* The Constofler consisted mostly of urban and rural noblemen as well as of wealthy merchant families. But individual members of these classes also joined the more affluent guilds, so that the boundary between nobles and merchants was not clear-cut. Four Stettmeister were chosen from the patriciate for one year, each taking turns at leading affairs for three-month intervals. Their functions were limited, however, for the official head of the city was a guild member—the Ammeister, or master of the guilds. He was accompanied in this function by five Altammeister, or former Ammeisters. The city also had a Senate
(Grosser Rat) and two privy councils: the Council of the Fifteen (die Fiinfzehn) and the Council of the Thirteen (die Dreizehn). When meeting together with the Senate, the Fifteen and Thirteen were called collectively
"the 'Iwenty-one" (die Einundzwanzig), even though they were actually twenty-eight.' The six Ammeister were elected by the Senate and the 'Twenty-one. The thirty members of the Senate—ten patricians, including the four Stettmeister, and the representatives of the twenty guilds— were elected for two-year terms. Once a year, half the members retired, being replaced by an equal number of new members.
The actual government of Strasbourg lay in the hands of the two privy councils, the Fifteen and the Thirteen. The Fifteen consisted of five patricians and ten guildsmen and was in charge of domestic affairs, which included local church matters. The four Stettmeister, the Ammeister, four of the five A/tammeister, and four further guild masters made up the Thirteen, which was responsible for diplomacy, including relationships to churches outside of Strasbourg.
A Preacher in Strasbourg
A further body, subordinate to all these institutions, was the assembly of the three hundred Schoffen of the guilds. This assembly, consisting of fifteen masters from each guild, was convoked in times of crisis—such as 1529 or 1548—to vote on proposals put to them by the governing bodies.
They met at the city hall, on the Martinsplatz (now Place Gutenberg). But more on that later.
This system, as complicated as it was, had one simple goal: to limit the power of the patriciate. It was impossible, however, to draw a clear line between the patricians and the wealthy guildsmen. In fact, the guildsmen majority was dependent on the cooperation of the minority of noblemen for the effective government of Strasbourg, since it was the nobles who had the leisure and money to devote themselves exclusively to politics. It comes as no surprise that the members of the urban elite ruling Strasbourg during these years had the following background: 42.9 percent of them were rentiers, 35.2 percent were merchants and goldsmiths, and only 13.3 percent were artisans.* However, it should be added that the apparent obsession of the ruling class with its own interests does not simplistically imply that it did not care for the general well-being of the population or have a sense of responsibility for the good of the entire city. The Schwortag, an annual assembly in which all citizens renewed their civic oath of loyalty to the constitution in front of the cathedral, poignantly demonstrated the cohesion of the Strasbourg political body.
Nevertheless, social resentment remained an undeniable reality.° There were essentially three sources of tension. First of all, there was the mass of artisans' servants and journeymen who had no prospect of ever ascending to the rank of master. This whole group was almost entirely devoid of rights. Laborers and journeymen had to endure meagerly paid sixteen-hour workdays. Ever tighter city regulations made it almost impossible for them to change jobs. They were forbidden from forming associations or even gathering. Finally, there were countless regulations stifling and controlling their every step. The result was growing discontent and frustration.
A second group, no less embittered, was that of the lesser master artisans, caught in a difficult economic and social situation between the mass of oppressed workhands and journeymen, above whom they stood, and the wealthier master artisans, whom they could never join. The more affluent master artisans expanded their shops in capitalistic fashion, able to dictate cheaper purchasing prices since they always bought raw materials in large quantities and therefore could produce and sell more cheaply.
Martin Bucer The smaller master artisans found it hard to survive under these circumstances. Of course, the whole idea behind the artisan guilds was to preclude unfair competition. There were, however, plenty of loopholes making it possible to circumvent guild statutes.
Third, all these artisans, no matter what their rank, were discontented with Strasbourg's ruling class. 'Vhey were especially angry with the city's tax policies. In Strasbourg, as in other cities, most taxes and duties were collected in the form of indirect taxes on wine and staple foods. This system of taxes burdened the lower classes much more than it did the wealthy, particularly when poor harvests made prices soar.
Although this pent-up anger and discontent was significant, it would certainly be wrong to make too much of it. Neither at this time nor later did the class of artisans and craftsmen have a revolution in mind. But the muffled opposition of this large section of the population was enough to make the ruling oligarchy tread very carefully, especially since the surrounding villages and towns offered plenty of examples of insurgences, conspiracies, and riots, local as well as regional. At the same time, the ruling class was adept at averting unrest by invoking a cause that served both the wishes of the civic elite and the interests of the broader populace: the urge to do away with the exempt status of the church and its institutions in the city and to reduce all clergymen to the same level as the rest of the citizenry.
Anticlericalism This was not an attack on the church, and even less on the Christian faith.
Like the inhabitants of countless other cities and regions of the empire, the people of Strasbourg were extremely religious and devout. The fierce anticlericalism so widespread in the population had other roots. Laypeople saw daily how clergymen and monks lived free of the constraints and obligations that civic laws, and indeed the burden of having to earn one's own living, imposed on everybody else. Clerics led instead a life of luxury and comfort, paying no taxes other than a symbolic fee for the city's protection
(Schutzgeld). 'They enjoyed countless privileges, among them economic ones, but particularly exemption from the city's laws. At the same time, they controlled ecclesiastical measures such as excommunication and anathema, which they could abuse to make their power felt over individuals, indeed, over entire cities. 'They were well off, if not outright affluent. And, according to a view widely held, there were simply too many of them in the city.
Besides its cathedral, which included the high choir and the cathedral chapter reserved for members of the high nobility, Strasbourg had three
A Preacher in Strasbourg &) collegiate churches with their respective chapters, as well as a canoness congregation. Additionally, there were nine parish churches; at least fifteen monastic establishments (eight for monks, seven for nuns); more than a hundred chapels; and with them a host of lower-rank priests, chaplains, and helpers. Rumors and accusations against the clergy were rampant. In particular, members of orders were looked upon as greedy and lazy and were charged with being stingy, slow-witted, undisciplined, and immoral.
These were, of course, exaggerations and false generalizations. But, for the first time, the clergy was under attack as a matter of principle and had to justify itself accordingly. Monks and priests represented practically the opposite of everything dear to the up-and-coming class of burghers who exalted hard work and economic achievement. The clergy did not keep pace with the vigorous growth of knowledge at this moment in history.
Neither did they share the laity's urge to understand the world and the manifold changes, big and small, taking place within it. Finally and most important, the clergy did not meet the higher ethical standards that were emerging. The popular preacher Geiler von Kaysersberg had used his pulpit at the cathedral of Strasbourg to viciously castigate the grievous state of the church and its leaders for decades, comparing scandalous reality with the ideal of the early church. Wimpfeling and Brant had done the same in their lectures and writings. Inspired by Erasmus, local humanists spread an ethical ideal of their own, in alignment with the New lestament and the church fathers, emphasizing deep piety, learning, and freedom.
Placed side by side with this ideal, the church certainly appeared decadent and corrupt. It was not so much that conditions had actually become worse as that the sensitivity and the ethical and intellectual expectations of the laity had increased. Even in circles little influenced by humanistic thought, there was a clear longing for higher moral standards and greater respectability. Priests and members of orders were increasingly perceived as a foreign body in the city, and lay citizens closed ranks to vie with them.
It was especially this civic patriotism that bound the Strasbourg oligarchy with the rest of the population. It would be incorrect to describe the city's rulers and its citizens as opponents of the church. What they wanted was to reform it and have as much control over it as possible. 'They wanted a say in the filling of vacant parish preacherships and more influence over the property and administration of monasteries, in which, after all, many of their own family members lived. Finally, the people of Strasbourg wanted the city's regulations and prohibitions to apply not just to the laity but to the clergy as well, and they expected the clergy to bear its share of civic obligations and duties. A plethora of diverse views, interests,
by Martin Bucer and hopes were thus funneled into the Reformation movement: political and moral aims, religious convictions, social discontent, widespread anticlericalism, and not least the craving for more intellectual freedom and spiritual responsibility. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that in Strasbourg, as well as elsewehere, it was primarily clergymen who absorbed the ideas of the Reformation and became its most fervent spokesmen and champions. Furthermore, instrumental in the success of the Reformation was the conviction that sinners are justified alone by God's grace, which released and set them free, pitting a liberating gospel against a law of increasingly strict ethical demands made on clergy and church.
Reformation Beginnings As in other cities, Luther's ideas were spread in Strasbourg primarily through the printed word and by preaching.° Six of his works were published in Strasbourg in 1519, sixteen only one year later. The publication of Reformation literature, encompassing everything from strictly theological essays to polemical works and including booklets and pamphlets, increased exponentially in the following years in Strasbourg.' Opponents of the Reformation were able to keep pace at first but soon lost commercial appeal and the protection of the council. The way the great Franciscan controversialist 'Thomas Murner was dealt with is typical for all Catholic apologists. His rude polemical tract The Great Lutheran Fool (Von dem grofen
Lutherischen Narren) appeared on December 19, 1522, and was prohibited by the city council already on December 22. Except for Johannes Griininger, all Strasbourg printers were now working for the Reformation.
We know little about the very first people to preach Lutheran ideas in Strasbourg. The only one able to hold his own was Matthew Zell, the staunch pastor of the cathedral congregation. After initially defending
Luther, he proclaimed in the summer of 1521 that he would restrict himself to preaching the pure word of God. His popular style made his sermons a huge success, drawing crowds of more than a thousand listeners from all social backgrounds. First he preached from his pulpit in the St.
Lawrence Chapel of the cathedral and then, because of the crowds, from the main pulpit in the cathedral nave. After he was forbidden to use it, carpenters made him a portable wooden pulpit of his own. Despite his brazenness, Zell was not expelled, probably due to the intense rivalry between the bishop, the cathedral chapter, and the city council. The bishop had canon law on his side as he called for Zell's dismissal. The cathedral chapter, however, protested against this measure and reached an
A Preacher in Strasbourg
agreement with the council to leave Zell alone as long as he proclaimed only the word of God and did not preach sedition. The bishop, however, remained determined to eliminate Zell and indicted him on twenty-four charges in December 1522, accusing him of heretical preaching, dereliction of duty, and the reckless introduction of innovations. Once again, an agreement was reached thanks to the council's support for Zell. At the same time, some had the impression the problem would take care of itself, since Zell's contract would expire regardless at the end of 1523.
However, an entirely new situation arose after the imperial governing council (Reichsregiment) issued a mandate on March 6, 1523, demanding that "only the holy gospel" be preached.
Opposing convictions and interests now clashed in an increasingly agitated and hostile atmosphere. 'Throughout it all, Strasbourg's ruling oligarchy kept clear goals in mind. As divided as council members were in their attitude toward the Reformation, they were certainly united in their desire to keep developments under their control and use them to further their own interests. For example, at the end of 1522, when negotiating with the monasteries over the renewal of the Schirm—that is, the city's protection of all monastic houses within its walls, as well as of collegiate churches and the high choir—the council compelled the clergy to assume citizenship. In the summer of 1523 it abolished the "perpetual rent" (ewzger Zins) owed to the church by usufructuaries of its houses and farmland. By paying the thirty or fiftyfold equivalent of this rent, tenants could now become owners. At the same time, the council introduced a new relief ordinance modeled after that of Nuremberg.® This ordinance was characterized by a combination of traditional concepts with Reformation ideas. In a Christian community, no one should suffer need. On the other hand, no one should be lazy and live off the toil of others. Begging was therefore forbidden, and needy townspeople were given aid only if the relief wardens appointed by the council had previously determined that they were really destitute and unable to work. The social disciplining of the population merged with a new bourgeois appreciation of work and achievement. Anticlerical implications as well were unmistakable: begging had entirely lost the aura of religious merit that previously surrounded it.
Matthew Zell pursued goals of his own. They can be discerned in his Christian Fustification (Christliche Verantwortung) of the early summer of 1523. In this very first publication of the Strasbourg Reformation, dedicated to the city council, not only did Zell stand his ground but he also took the offensive, demanding that the gospel be preached openly and freely to all people, for only in this way could they be saved.
Martin Bucer The Bible and the Holy Spirit are the foundation of the church, affirmed Zell. Therefore, the church's ordinances and ceremonies must be based on them and modeled after them. Finally, clergymen are not to be the masters but rather the servants of the church. Zell especially emphasized the clergy's responsibility for the common man. 'These ideas won the hearts of his listeners. Of course, there were also those who opposed the new faith, as well as a large number of the hesitant and undecided. A 1522 pamphlet declares:
You want to teach me, son, to believe something other than my parents believed?
That would be my eternal shame.
I will not let myself be led astray.'
But Zell's adherents among the common folk and the educated pressed on impatiently, oblivious to all doubts and scorning any cautious attempts at mediation. A Latin pamphlet in the late summer of 1523 called on the city council finally to clean up the church, get rid of the hordes of priests, abolish the many Masses being celebrated, confiscate the property of the monasteries and collegiate churches, and vigorously support those preachers who sought God's truth and the well-being of their congregations rather than their own benefit.!°
The city government, however, was not ready to take such far-reaching steps. The path it wanted to follow can be deduced from the important council mandate of December 1, 1523, which was essentially the city council's version of the decision of the imperial governing council (Reichsregiment).'' Admittedly, only the gospel was to be preached. But the mandate also called for an immediate stop to all hostilities between clergymen and laypeople. All verbal abuse and particularly inflammatory, agitative speeches had to cease. All these would be punishable from now on. The council wanted tranquillity and order in the city. The council edict made it clear that the criteria all further developments would have to measure up to were "a truly Christian mind and evangelical truth, but also brotherly love, unity and peace."
The First Successes of the Reformation Movement Bucer's Arrival in Strasbourg It was in this convulsive, restless city that Bucer arrived in the middle of May 1523.'* His most urgent concern was earning a livelihood. Initially,
A Preacher in Strasbourg
it was not certain that he would even be authorized to remain in the city.
On June 9, Bucer pleaded with Huldrych Zwingli to find him a position in Switzerland. Bucer emphasized that his wife should be no obstacle, for "she knew how to live most abstemiously, would contribute to the edification of many, and be a scandal to no one."!* For the time being, however, Bucer just seemed to run into closed doors in Strasbourg. While the council had assured him it would protect him against persecution, it rejected his application for citizenship. It also refused the petition of a group of laypeople and clergymen that Bucer be allowed to lecture them regularly in German on the Gospel of John. The council could not afford to get itself into further difficulties by sponsoring a married and excommunicated priest who had additionally discredited himself by supporting
Sickingen.
The bishop of Strasbourg, to whom Bucer had reported his presence, forbade him from carrying out any church ceremonies and demanded on June 16 that the city council withhold its protection so that the renegade priest might be duly tried according to canon law. Bucer was summoned to appear before a small committee to which a friend of the Reformation, the influential former Avmmeister Claus Kniebis, belonged. Bucer appeared before the committee, accompanied by his father. Instead of the expected cross-examination, he was given the opportunity to dictate his convictions to the minutes secretary. Bucer used the occasion to proclaim the legitimacy of marriage, including the marriage of former nuns and priests; describe the ban placed on him by the bishop of Speyer as a hasty and unjustified measure; and underscore that he wished nothing so much as to preach the gospel and discuss it further in lectures, and to do this with the consent of the authorities. He added: "I wish to look upon secular authority in every way as a layman should and do my utmost to obey it, regardless of whether my honor, my life or my property are at stake.
Divine law obliges me and many to this."!* The city did not remove its protection. Bucer's situation, though, remained precarious. His renewed application for citizenship was rejected again in January 1524. Finally, on September 22, he was granted this privilege. He promptly enlisted in the guild of the "Gardeners," to which most of his parishioners at the church of St. Aurelien belonged. Back in the summer of 1523, this development was still completely unforeseeable.
Bucer had understandably gone to Matthew Zell as soon as he arrived in Strasbourg. In his first months there, he essentially worked as Zell's unofficial chaplain. It was in Zell's house (behind the cathedral, today at no. 5 on the Rue des Fréres) that Bucer, after obtaining permission by the
Martin Bucer council, held his daily one-hour lectures in Latin on the letters to Timothy, on Titus, and on Philippians. And again, it was Zell who, because of the ever larger crowds Bucer was attracting, let him use a bigger room in his parish of St. Lawrence. In these facilities Bucer proceeded to give classes on both letters of Peter and on the Gospel of John—this time in German! The council did not do anything to stop him.'? Bucer's situation, however, was still far from secure.
The First Writings During these months, Bucer published three books that impressively convey his theological stance and his visions for the future. Theologically of greatest importance is the work That No One Should Live for Himself but for Others, and How We May Attain This (Das ym selbs niemant .
. leben soll).!° Here Bucer outlines his theology in a systematic way for the first time. The book consists of two parts: the first deals with God's ordering of all life and all being, and the second discusses "how we may attain this."
Interestingly, the structure of this treatise coincides to a great extent with that of Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologica. In the first part of his Summa,
Thomas discusses God as the foundation of all being and the cause of everything that happens. In the second he deals with man as God's likeness, and in the third he writes about Christ as he who makes the new life and being of man possible. Bucer followed this systematic pattern but condensed 'Thomas's first and second parts into one section of his treatise, in order to underscore the fundamental significance of Christ and his saving work all the more in the second section. This reveals how extensively
Bucer incorporated 'Thomas's legacy into his own theology.
Bucer also stood squarely in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas when assuming a divine order of being that God has implanted in all his creatures in the form of a law—a law that makes all creatures seek the benefit and well-being of the other and thus of the whole. For Bucer, loving one's fellow humans was this law. He saw neighbor-oriented love as the prime motive and driving force behind the entire universe. All created things carry within them the urge to help and to benefit others, from lowest inanimate nature all the way up to the highest angels. His theology thus took on a markedly ethical character. From these general premises Bucer drew concrete conclusions for marriage and the hierarchical structure of society. Every human being is dependent on her fellow human beings, said
Bucer. 'This is particularly the case for human beings in their condition as woman and man. It is only in coming together that they conform with
A Preacher in Strasbourg
God's universal laws, becoming fully human in body and in spirit. Therefore, whoever forbade marriage (e.g., by requiring celibacy of priests) was an enemy of all things human and an enemy of God. Indeed, his criticism of church and society was driven to a great extent by the ontological norm of love of one's neighbor. Bucer did not question the existing hierarchical structure of society in the least. In fact, he still clung to the conviction that the clerical estate was above the others: "Because serving the spirit is superior to serving the body, and what is general is superior to what is particular, it thus follows that the apostolate—in which one does not serve several specific persons but rather the entire congregation, and this not in matters concerning the body but rather the spirit, from which eternal salvation ensues—is the most perfect of all offices, callings and ministries."
However, by formulating the norm of serving and loving one's neighbor, Bucer created a norm that was above all estates, a norm to which all estates had to measure up, both clergy and rulers, and merchants as well as craftsmen and farmers. Understandably, this theological approach led Bucer to work zealously his entire life toward establishing a new, better order of church and society, an order that truly reflected God's will. There was, therefore, always a political dimension to Bucer's theology.
However, the reordering of society that Bucer had in mind was strictly a Christian one. It was sin, after all, that had definitively destroyed the harmony, so magnificently fashioned by God, of mutual love and partnership among all creatures. The only way out of the catastrophic deadlock of selfishness, hate, and enmity was the one Christ had opened. For Bucer as for Thomas, Christ was not just the savior of the individual human being but also the restorer of God's intended order of creation. As mentioned above, this is the subject matter of the second part of Bucer's treatise. Not all people grasp the significance of what Christ has done, says Bucer. Only faith is capable of recognizing it. This implies that faith to a great extent means understanding and acknowledging what God, according to the Bible, has said and done. But this is only one aspect. Just as important is Bucer's postulate that the believer receives the Holy Spirit, enabling him to center his life on the law God has implanted in creation—the law of loving one's fellow human beings. The Christian is thus called to struggle courageously so that God's salutary fundamental law may extend its reign in society. Bucer also repeats here what he had said in his Heidelberg theses: what it means to love God is spelled out concretely in our love for our fellow human beings. This has nothing to do with trying to gain God's favor through works. It issues wholly and exclusively from the gratitude of the believer who acts in the assurance that God accepts and loves her in spite
Martin Bucer of her inadequacy and shortcomings. We can therefore, writes Bucer,
"rejoice with all our hearts that it is our due to serve our fellow man and to show him the greatest compassion, for in so doing we display a modest share of gratitude to our most merciful Father and Savior and may continue, with hearts comforted, to look forward to His compassion, since we are endeavouring to carry out at least a small share of His will."!®
The theological foundations that Bucer laid in this treatise echoed in manifold ways in the other two booklets he published in the summer and fall of 1523. This included his proclaimed readiness to allow himself to be killed if someone should prove that he was a false prophet adulterating
God's law (Deut. 13:1—9). During this time Bucer displayed an extremely radical, even reckless attitude, based on his firm conviction that revealed truth was on his side. It is from this perspective that he defended his ministry in Wissembourg in the Summary discussed above. After this he wrote a Justification (Verantwortung)'? in which he defended himself against rumors about him circulating through Strasbourg. Bucer's unconventional background—a former monk who married a former nun and had previously worked for the mutinous Sickingen—provided endless motives for gossip and for conjectures of the wildest sort. Certain sections of the Strasbourg population, Bucer reports, took malicious delight in reading the anonymous pamphlet Schnaphan,'? which accused Bucer of grave sexual misconduct as well as the cynical abuse of Scriptural quotations in order to justify immorality, lawlessness, and violence. Bucer was outraged at these charges. "For the sake of God and truth, I ask of all those who love honesty and truthfulness not to believe such criminal and impudent liars—that's precisely what the people are who have said such things of me—and to allow me first to speak for myself. Even murderers are permitted this!"?!
We cannot determine whether and to what extent this Fustification had any effect on local public opinion. Ever since the late fall of 1523, the people of Strasbourg were preoccupied with other, more urgent topics. One of them was clerical marriage. On November 9, Anton Firn, the Leutpriester, or people's priest, at St. Thomas, married the woman with whom he had been living. For a consecrated priest who held a preaching position to marry publicly, and for Zell to conduct this wedding in the Strasbourg cathedral, was a deliberate provocation and demonstration.'" On December 3, Zell himself married the phenomenal Katharina Schiitz, the daughter of a master woodworker, who would later make history as a Protestant "church mother" of sorts.?? Then, in 1524, the cathedral preacher Caspar Hedio and several other priests followed suit, and finally,
A Preacher in S trasbourg
in August, the prominent provost of St. Thomas, Wolfgang Capito, was married at a service in which Bucer gave the wedding sermon. By this time
Bucer was no longer alone in his status as an anathematized and banned priest, for the bishop of Strasbourg solemnly excommunicated a// the married priests of the city on April 3, 1524. This ban, however, had little effect. The entire city was in turmoil. Monks were leaving their monasteries. Supporters of the Reformation, Claus Kniebis among them (since
1520), seized the upper hand in the Council of the Fifteen. The city government always strove to maintain a semblance of unity on the outside, and this could convey the false impression that the entire ruling class actively supported the new movement, including the desertion of monasteries by monks and nuns, the inventorizing of monastic property for the purpose of later confiscation, the introduction of changes in the liturgy, and, most important of all, the insistence of the vast majority of the population that evangelical preachers be hired in place of supporters of the traditional church.
Preacher at St. Aurelien Various strands were intertwined in this complex process: the initiative of the lay burghers of Strasbourg, the approval of the preachers, the intervention and ultimate success of the city council, and the delaying tactics of the religious traditionalists. Bucer's appointment as a preacher for the parish of St. Aurelien illustrates this phenomenon nicely.'* It was mostly small urban farmers, the so-called Gartner, or Gardeners, who belonged to this parish on the outskirts of Strasbourg. Their guild counted six hundred members and was therefore the largest, but also one of the poorest and least reputable, artisan guilds of the city. In January 1524, about thirty members of St. Aurelien asked the steward of congregational property to hire an evangelical preacher for the Sunday-afternoon and holiday worship services. The steward did not pass the request on to the collegiate chapter of St. Thomas, which was in charge of naming the preacher of St.
Aurelien, but instead advised the Gardeners to file a petition with the council. The latter responded on January 27 by creating a committee that studied the problem and reported on February 3 that 120 families wished for an afternoon preacher and were, in fact, ready to pay for him out of their own pockets. The dean of St. Thomas chapter complained to the council that this was an encroachment of its rights. An agreement was therefore reached that the chapter should name a new, more qualified preacher. While the chapter tried its best to find a suitable candidate, the
Martin Bucer Gardeners insisted on compliance with their original petition. On February 20, they also asked Bucer to preach for them in the afternoon of the following day in St. Aurelien. After consulting with several other preachers, among them Zell and Hedio, he agreed. Immediately after the service, in other words, on the evening of February 21, Bucer informed his "very special protector" Claus Kniebis what he had just done and requested that Kniebis defend his action before the council. Bucer affirmed that it had not been his intention to confront the council with a fait accompli, but in view of the circumstances, he had had no other choice. He expressly mentioned what he had preached his parishioners: the faith that enables and readies one to endure suffering and injustice.
He was aware of how vulnerable his situation was, but he was also fundamentally convinced that the renewal of church and society would succeed only if the authorities and the ministers worked together closely and could trust each other.
On March 29, the representatives of the congregation of St. Aurelien declared to the chapter of St. Thomas that they had waited long enough.
The chapter then agreed to make an exception and allow the council to fill the preacher position. It may be that Capito, as provost of St. Thomas, played a decisive role in granting this concession. In any case, the Gardeners chose Bucer as their preacher that very same day. The council, however, refused to confirm the vote, declaring to the congregation on April 4 that it would not appoint a married and excommunicated priest.
It was not until August 24, when the seldom-convoked assembly of the three hundred Schéffen (leading guild officials) approved the council's decision to adhere to the gospel and to appoint parish preachers itself, that Bucer officially became the pastor of St. Aurelien.
After almost a year in Strasbourg, he had finally found a firm footing and joined those at the forefront of the struggle to introduce the Reformation. Admittedly, he was far from being the leader of this group. The preacher whom the people followed and who was capable of drawing masses of listeners was and would remain Matthew Zell (even though his sermons were sometimes a bit too long). The distinction of being the most influential theologian and churchman of the city went to Wolfgang
Capito. He not only had a doctorate in theology and occupied one of the highest positions in the Strasbourg church hierarchy as a provost of the collegiate chapter of St. Thomas, but he was also an aristocrat through and through. He therefore caused quite an impression when he joined the Reformation in 1523, began preaching in German, got married, and took citizenship. Bucer fittingly said of him in the spring of 1524: "Truly, it is
A Preacher in Strasbourg
he who steers Christ's ship here."*? But also Dr. Caspar Hedio, the cathedral preacher and distinguished translator of ancient Christian, humanistic, and Reformation texts into German, stood far above Bucer on the social scale. What distinguished Bucer from the mass of priests and chaplains, and accounts for his gradual development into one of the Reformation's most important figures, was his intellectual strength and agility, as well as his ability to harmonize medieval, humanistic, and Reformation theological ideas; his capacity for hard work; his incessant urge, born out of his theology, to improve existing ecclesiastical and social conditions; and, finally, his living piety, together with his sharp political intuition.
Bucer's handwriting reflects exactly the increased pressure he was under.
It had always been difficult to decipher. Now it became rushed and hasty to the point of illegibility (see p. 226).
The Turning Poimt In the meantime, the mood of nervousness and restlessness pervading Strasbourg intensified. The preachers demanded that the city translate evangelical convictions into practical measures. 'They wanted God's truth to win the day in Strasbourg. While the council vacillated, the number of people acclaiming and backing the new teaching grew from day to day. But hostility toward the clergy grew as well. Bucer beseeched Capito in July 1524 to do everything in his might to overpower the opposition coming from supporters of the traditional church. He himself entered a debate with Thomas
Murner over the Mass and published a Latin treatise at the beginning of August, On the Lord's Supper (De caena dominica), in which he sharply repudiated the idea that the Mass was a sacrifice.'° But the real bone of contention soon became Conrad Treger, prior provincial of the Augustinian order. He had published a book of a hundred theses (Paradoxa) in Fribourg in Switzerland in March 1524, in which he not only placed the authority of the church and its councils above that of the Bible but also attacked Reformation preachers as ignorant fools who were leading the people astray.
What made the Strasbourg ministers particularly angry was 'Treger's refusal to take part in any public disputation with them over his theses. Treger knew all too well that such a debate would be of advantage only to the preachers, and for this reason he adamantly claimed that only a bishop was authorized to summon such a dispute. When 'Treger, in a Warning (Vermanung) published in Strasbourg on August 20, went a step further and attacked not just the preachers but all the burghers of Strasbourg as heretics and rebels, emotions reached the boiling point. What began as heated discussions and angry
Martin Bucer gatherings at the entrances of monasteries turned into violent riots on September 5. Mobs started breaking into monasteries, looting and destroying religious images, pursuing notorious opponents of the Reformation and handing them over to the council, forcing it to take them into custody.
Among those arrested was 'Treger.
Already before the outbreak of this revolt, the preachers had warned the ruling elites to be swift in introducing church reforms and addressing social concerns. They placed the blame for growing unrest entirely on adherents to the traditional church. "We demand only one thing of our opponents: that they no longer be allowed to belittle the honor of God, deceive the common man, and agitate the city with their godless lies, as they've done until now, without hindrance."?' At the end of September the council requested an official statement from the evangelical ministers on the points of contention, which Bucer immediately drafted.'* In twelve articles he summarized the teachings of the Reformation on the Bible and on justification and gave reasons for the rejection of the Mass and of all human ceremonies and inventions, including monastic vows, saint worship, purgatory, and the traditional liturgy. Just as vehemently as he emphasized that the gospel teaches obedience to government, he rejected the supposed authority of the pope and councils over the rest of the church.
'Treger was released on October 12 and left the city. Overt opposition to the Reformation by supporters of the Catholic Church thus came to an end in Strasbourg. But Bucer, as well as Capito and Hedio, continued to battle Treger's ideas with the printed word.'' In his treatise Dispute with Conrad Treger (Handel mit Cunrat Treger), Bucer gruffly asserted the exclusive authority of the Bible, in diametrical opposition to Treger's affirmation of church and councils as normative.
Yet how can one know that the Bible is the word of God and not human writ? "The Spirit, the comforter, who guides us in all truth according to Christ's promise, it is he who tells me this."3° For Bucer, the Bible could and should claim unreserved authority, not because of a quality of supremacy attributed to it by man but as a result of the simple fact that it spoke to people and changed their hearts. He understood the church in the same way. Those whom the Holy Spirit had taught in this way, and therefore were elected by the Spirit (Bucer speaks of them for the first time as having been called by God before birth), constitute the true church of Jesus Christ. This true church, however, is hidden amid the mass of those who call themselves Christian and is thus not coterminous with any ecclesiastical organization, be it in Strasbourg, Rome, or elsewhere. In this respect, it is an invisible church.
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Reforming the Worship Service New problems were already besetting the preachers of Strasbourg as Bucer was writing those lines. Opposition to the Reformation by adherents to the traditional church may have been shattered, but the ministers were still far from their goal of reforming the church. Only the prerequisites for reform had been attained. 'The preachers' first goal was to create a standardized order of worship for the entire city. Convinced that this worship ordinance had to be squarely footed in the Bible, they presented their views to the theologians of Wittenberg and Zurich, hoping they could arrive at a conception that would be shared by the entire Reformation movement.*! But already at this time the beginning conflict over the right understanding of the Lord's Supper began to eclipse all other topics.
This is discussed in greater detail below. At this point it is important only to note that Bucer, who was particularly emphatic about the urgency of introducing a new liturgical order, was now acting in full accord with his colleagues. In the booklet Ground and Cause (Grund und Ursach), printed in the last days of December 1524, Bucer explained and justified the changes in the worship service.*" Bucer prefaced his treatise with a letter to his former superior, Count Palatine Frederick, requesting that he give these ideas a hearing and scrutinize the alleged grounds critically, since they were intended for everybody, including laypeople. Eleven chapters followed in which Bucer discussed the liturgical innovations introduced in Strasbourg. All of seven were devoted exclusively to the Lord's Supper. A cool spirit of sternness and sobriety now pervaded worship in Strasbourg.
Bucer did not just attack the idea that the Mass was a sacrifice; he also rejected priests' liturgical garments, the altar, and any form of ritual. Holy water and candles were to be done away with, as well as oil, salt, and consecrated water at baptisms. A simple table, prayers, psalms sung in German, a sermon—that was it. The Lord's Supper was celebrated every
Sunday, and those attending were given the cup as well as the bread. 'The Strasbourg ministers were exceptionally rigorous in dealing with the numerous medieval church holidays, images, altarpieces, and side altars, abolishing them in their entirety. In this, the Strasbourg churchmen followed the model set by Zwingli and the church in Zurich. Whereas the Strasbourg liturgy retained the elevation of the eucharistic elements of bread and wine during the reading of the words of consecration as late as November 1524, this practice was now also dropped. Bucer gave a longwinded explanation for this measure, omitting to mention, however, that Zwingli as well had spoken out against elevation. Throughout all this, two
Martin Bucer things remained essential for Bucer: the clear teaching of the Bible and the conviction that external practices, ceremonies, and sacraments just diverted one's attention from what was ultimately important. "Since we have become dead to all earthly statutes through the death of Christ and have received only two earthly ceremonies and signs from the Lord, baptism and the Lord's Supper, we therefore admonish the people to pay more attention to why he instituted them for us than to what they are in themselves."* Only the future would tell whether this view could carry the day.
Liturgical changes in the worship services of the parish churches did not mean that the Reformation had triumphed in Strasbourg. The Catholic Mass—for the evangelicals, an intolerable blasphemy and abomination to the Lord—was still being celebrated in Strasbourg, most prominently in the cathedral itself and in the collegiate churches of St. Thomas, Old St. Peter, and Young St. Peter. Besides, there were still monasteries in which worship services continued to be held as in times past. The preachers fought these last bulwarks of the Catholic Church in Strasbourg by every available means. The city council, however, kept a low profile. It did require all clergymen to enlist in the roster of citizenship on January 3, 1525. But it did not make up its mind to abolish all
Masses in the city until February 1529. As of May 1525, it had prohibited Masses in Strasbourg but expressly excluded from this interdiction the daily High Mass in the cathedral and in the three collegiate churches. The council had good reasons for giving in, if only partially, to the Reformation: the ruling elite realized all too well that they were in danger of being overrun by the peasants in the country and by their supporters in the city.
Rifts The Peasants' War From the beginning of the sixteenth century, growing social unrest in the countryside found expression in local and sometimes regional movements of uprising peasants, in Alsace as elsewhere. The Reformation message provided these movements with a new and exciting rallying cry.4+ The peasants' grievances over the manifold forms of economic, fiscal, political, and social oppression they endured, together with what they had traditionally described as their ancient law, probably also "divine law" and "divine justice"—these gained sudden new strength and momentum when combined, if not downright identified, with the gospel, understood as the unequivocal expression of God's will in the Bible.
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One should by no means underestimate the peasants' religious motivation and sincerity. Their frustration with the half-hearted services rendered them by the poorly paid, indifferent, and often absent chaplains was certainly authentic. They demanded that evangelical preachers be hired, and they were ready to pay for them out of their own pockets. Bucer himself drafted and supported many such requests. Indeed, it was events in Strasbourg that provided the peasants with models they could imitate when dealing with the despised, affluent clergy, such as laying claim to their income, especially the tithe, for the benefit of the local parish and making it a point to use the Bible to vindicate their demands. Ties between country and town were close anyhow. Entire villages belonged to the city or to its collegiate churches. Others were fiefs owned by members of the patriciate. But wealthy burghers also owned land in the country and leased it to the peasants or lent money to them. Peasants from the surrounding countryside and villages came to Strasbourg regularly, not just on religious holidays but also during the weekly market days to sell their produce. On the whole, they had very close ties to Strasbourg's urban peasants, the aforesaid Gardeners, to many of whom they were related. For this reason, the Reformation movement spread early on from the city to the country, not just by means of pamphlets and sermons by clergymen but also through laypeople. Towns' craftsmen started showing up in the villages surrounding Strasbourg around February 1524, preaching. 'Their presence increased during the winter of 1524/25, coinciding with rising unrest in the countryside. The prohibition of this preaching activity by the city council on February 25, 1525, clearly did not stop it. 'Uhese sermons and the twelve articles of the Swabian peasants, which also circulated widely at this time, created the right conditions for the peasants' uprising also to gain a foothold in Alsace at the beginning of April 1525.
The twelve articles are an interesting mixture of grievances, reform proposals, and revolutionary demands. In them the peasants lament the loss of their traditional economic and social rights, demand the reinstatement of earlier conditions, and call, in the name of the gospel and divine law, for a comprehensive reorganization of all of society. According to their wishes,
God was to be given honor and earthly conditions were to be refashioned according to the injunctions of the Bible, in brotherly love and for the good of all. The peasants thus saw themselves as standing on God's side.
At the same time, they thought it self-evident that the people of Strasbourg were their allies. The council did, in fact, send two of its members to begin negotiations with them on the twelve articles. It insisted, however, on speaking only to a committee elected by the peasants. 'The remaining
Martin Bucer peasants were to return to their homes in exchange for the promise of exemption from punishment. In answer to this, Erasmus Gerber, the leader of the peasant troops encamped at the abbey of Altorf near Molsheim, asked the Strasbourg ministers on April 17 to come and talk with them.*> The council gave its consent, probably favorably impressed with the declaration by Capito, Bucer, and Zell that they did not want to meddle with the negotiations but rather confront the peasants "with what the word of God allows" and admonish them "to desist from such riotous assemblies." This is exactly what they told the peasants on April 18. On their way back to Strasbourg they drafted a letter to the peasants, repeating their warnings in concise form. In it they reassured the peasants that they wished to help them, but that this was possible only if the peasant troops disbanded and allowed a committee representing them to negotiate with the city council in a conciliatory atmosphere. The council finally reminded them that they could not place themselves on God's side, for no revolt could be justified with the Bible.
Gerber succeeded in keeping his troops together in spite of these injunctions. This placed the Strasbourg government in a difficult situation, for the revolting peasants were establishing increasingly close contacts with the city's Gardeners and artisans. Eager to eliminate as many sources of conflict as possible and to consolidate its own power, the council decreed tax rebates and abolished, as mentioned above, most of the Masses.
'Tensions in the city approached their highest point when the peasants decided to march on Strasbourg to force the expropriation of those clergymen who had taken citizenship only recently just to benefit from the city's protection. Could the city in this situation continue to defend the right of anybody to become a citizen? The council consulted the Schoffen, the assembly of guild representatives, on May 11, and these procured the answer of the guilds on May 14. The vast majority chose to defend
Strasbourg.
'The city was spared this test of wills. The army of the duke of Lorraine caught up with the peasants near Saverne on May 17 and attacked them ruthlessly, causing a horrific bloodbath. A stream of refugees, mostly the wives and children of the defeated peasants, poured into Strasbourg, fleeing the victors' vicious revenge. In the midst of this situation, Capito wrote a moving letter to Ammeister Kniebis, warning him of God's impending anger toward all who were now rejoicing. At the same time he pleaded for the council to be merciful, particularly toward the innocent:
"I hear such gruesome reports that my ears are tingling. Disdain this by no means, my dear sir, and save the innocent!"?° We know of no such
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statement by Bucer. 'This must not necessarily mean that he did not share Capito's feelings. Bucer did, however, remain remarkably silent during this period. 'The issues that really moved him were the struggle against the Mass and the papacy. He was outraged at the accusation that evangelical teaching had brought about the uprising. Exactly the opposite was true, he claimed in a letter to Beatus Rhenanus in August,*' for the gospel and its proclaimers emphatically demanded obedience to the authorities from everyone. Long before the peasants' uprising, Bucer had become convinced, for pragmatic as well as theological reasons, that his goal of renewing the church and society could be achieved only in league with the government. He did not see quite as clearly that severing the Reformation movement from the religious and social concerns of vast portions of the population would also deprive his own plans of additional momentum from which they could have profited.
The Anabaptists The defeat of the peasants and their allies did not signify the end of the Reformation in Strasbourg. But a spirit of disillusionment, passivity, and even total lack of interest in church issues undeniably started to spread— in the council as well as amid the population in general. This climate was propitious to the Anabaptists, who started arriving in Strasbourg as refugees as early as 1524 and were received quite warmly, particularly into the milieu of the Gardeners. These urban peasants also had a fiery lay preacher of their own, Clemens Ziegler, whom they refused to abandon.
Ziegler himself, however, never joined the Anabaptists.*® Anabaptism grew out of many different sources and was anything but homogeneous. Two things about it, however, were clear. First, it represented a radicalization of Reformation positions, primarily those of Zurich but certainly of some Wittenberg positions as well. Second,
Anabaptists preached and lived out an alternative to the mainstream of the Reformation, which the authorities had increasingly domesticated and channeled. Just how popular Anabaptist ideas were in Strasbourg, at least for a limited period, is made evident by the fact that those printers who were particularly sensitive to current moods preferred publishing Anabaptist pamphlets over ones written by the city preachers, and that the censors let them have their way. An anonymous pamphlet printed at the beginning of August 1528 also reveals the disenchantment of some Christians with the course the official church in Strasbourg was taking.'' In a first section, the author complains that being evangelical apparently only
Martin Bucer means vilifying the Mass, clergymen, and monks and rejecting images in churches, church laws, and the pope. He then goes on:
Love should be the only watchword for clearly identifying Christians.
Now everybody goes his own way, to the detriment of the whole community.
You notice this in the entire world, from the city mayor to the swineherd.
Each claims to be the better Christian: under this cloak they disguise their evil, just as long as they can interpret everything, to support their own profit and enjoyment.
But as soon as they can't, they promptly call it "rebellion" and "fanaticism."
At the time this text—written by Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, who was at least an Anabaptist sympathizer—appeared, Anabaptist congregations with hundreds of members were already an integral part of the religious landscape of the city. These congregations, however, consisted almost entirely of refugees. The council's attitude toward dissenting religious views and beliefs was one of leniency, nonchalance, and to a certain extent even indifference, just as long as its political predominance was left untouched and peace and order in the city were not disturbed. This turned
Strasbourg during these years into a refuge attractive to all religious outsiders and marginal groups.
The first to come were Anabaptists from Switzerland, who initially refrained, however, from proclaiming their views publicly. This changed in the course of 1526. Wilhelm Reublin's activities led to the development of a congregation inspired by his theological views. Soon a second
Anabaptist congregation emerged, made up of followers of Hans Denck.
Not too long after this, important additional Anabaptist leaders showed up in Strasbourg: Michael Sattler, Martin Cellarius, and Ludwig Hatzer.
The Anabaptist movement was, of course, significantly broader than just these leaders and their respective supporters. 'There was the weaver Hans
Wolff, for instance, from the little town of Benfeld between Sélestat and Strasbourg, who sometime in the spring of 1526 stormed Zell's pulpit during a sermon and tried to shove him away, hurling wild imprecations and announcing the end of the world at noon on Ascension Day, 1533. Bucer saw more than just religious fanaticism in all this. In all his dealings with
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Anabaptists, he remained concerned not merely to have perfunctory conversations but rather to engage in serious discussion of fundamental theological issues with them.
A first opportunity for such an exchange finally arrived in December 1526. The first of these debates pitted Bucer and Capito on the one side against Michael Sattler on the other. Before long, decisive differences emerged. Whereas the Strasbourg theologians emphasized that love of one's fellow humans had to express itself in the assumption of political responsibility for the common good, Sattler gave utmost importance to the Sermon on the Mount, whose commandments Christians were called to obey unreservedly. Sattler's personal qualities, however, left a deep impression on Bucer and Capito, and they acclaimed him as a "martyr of Christ" upon hearing the shocking news of his brutal execution by the Austrian authorities several weeks later in Rottenburg on the Neckar River.
Talking to Hans Denck turned out to be much more difficult. Bucer perceived Denck as a dangerous deceiver, and he strove to expose him as such. For this reason, he made a point of confronting him in a public disputation in the Dominican church on November 22, 1526—against the will of the city council. It was decided that the topic of debate would be
Denck's recent book On the Law of God (Vom Gesetz Gottes). Denck succeeded brilliantly in concealing his views through evasive answers, which led an outwitted and frustrated Bucer to accuse him of hypocrisy. Denck was expelled from Strasbourg on December 25, and on December 31 the council issued a mandate against Anabaptists, which was not published, however, until July 27, 1527.7? The primary offense condemned in this mandate, the accommodation and harboring of Anabaptists, implies that most members of this movement in Strasbourg were outsiders who had sought refuge in the imperial city.
Wishing to warn the people of Strasbourg against what he perceived as Denck's dangerous teachings, Bucer published a booklet at the end of June 1527 in which he attacked seven theses drafted by the Worms preacher Jacob Kautz, whom Denck had just won over to his views.
Bucer's Faithful Warning (Getrewe Warnung)*' reveals how much he actually had in common with spiritualistic Anabaptists: as they did, he attributed a central role to the Holy Spirit, believed in God's election of the faithful, relativized the sacraments, and attached great importance to church discipline. Bucer drew a sharp line, however, when he saw Christ's saving work being diluted for the sake of turning him into an ethical model to be imitated. He also clearly rejected the Anabaptists when they selfrighteously separated themselves from the rest of the community and
Martin Bucer when they refused to assume political responsibility in the form of governmental posts.
Bucer was in a heightened state of alert on this issue because his close colleague Capito began to dally with Anabaptism in the course of the year
1527. Martin Cellarius, whom Capito had taken into his home, succeeded in convincing the respectable provost of more and more of his ideas, which boiled down to an apocalyptic sort of spiritualism: the end times were at hand and the truly faithful were to turn inward and, in a process of gradually increasing spiritualization, detach themselves from all external church rituals.t* Capito wrote a commentary on the book of Hosea that reflected these new ideas. Bucer was alarmed about this and entreated
Zwingli and Pellikan in Zurich, Oecolampadius in Basel, and Ambrosius Blarer in Constance to do all they could to stop Capito from joining the Anabaptists. They succeeded in this. But the Anabaptists benefited immensely from the open sympathies displayed toward them by a churchman of such high reputation in the city and far beyond. 'These events contributed further to Bucer's emergence as the leading theological and intellectual figure of the Strasbourg Reformation.
A new wave of refugees brought about one hundred Augsburg Anabaptists to Strasbourg in the first half of 1528. For the first time there were revolutionary elements in town, shaped in their ideas by Hans Hut, a former follower of Thomas Mintzer. They preached the gathering of the faithful church in the end times and predicted that the persecution and oppression suffered at the present would abruptly change into their opposite, with the Anabaptists helping God out when he destroyed all his opponents on the day of wrath. Bucer was now ready to resort to harsh measures. He contemplated the death penalty for these militant Anabaptists and deportation for all the rest. The council, however, continued its policy of merely banishing undesirable persons.
The Controversy over the Lord's Supper From the end of 1524, nothing engaged Bucer's attention more than the disagreement within the evangelical camp over the right understanding of the Lord's Supper.*? This gradually became the topic most often addressed in his private and public statements. At first sight it is difficult to understand what this quarrel, conducted with ever growing hostility and accompanied by waves of bitter invectives and malicious allegations, was all about. For this conflict's central protagonists in Wittenberg and Zurich, and their respective supporters, what was at stake was the heart,
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indeed, the very essence of the Reformation. Before we look at this controversy more closely, it is important that we take a number of intrinsic and extrinsic preconditions into account. None of these was fundamental to this sharp theological split, but all were essential for understanding the course taken by this bitter struggle.
To begin with, all participants in the controversy over the Lord's Supper were former priests. That is, the Mass had stood at the very center of their ministry. Regardless of how rigorously and fundamentally they later rejected this theology, there can be no doubt that the question of the Lord's Supper occupied a much more significant place in their thoughts and emotions than any other theological topic. In addition, all those taking sides in this conflict or working out an independent position were acquaintances or even friends, especially those living in southwest Germany. Because of common intellectual roots and intersecting personal backgrounds, they were extremely well informed about the convictions and misgivings of "the other side" as it slowly began to crystallize here and there. Finally, what Zwingli and Luther were ultimately fighting about became evident only gradually. Only after cutting through layer after layer of accusations—that one side was betraying the Reformation and relapsing into Roman Catholicism, that the other was destroying the Word and Sacraments of God in the manner of enthusiasts and spiritualists—were the core theological issues at stake finally uncovered.
Bucer was an inextricable part of, and indeed thrived on, this network of personal contacts. Keeping in touch with people like Andreas Osiander in Nuremberg or Johannes Brenz in Schwabisch Hall did not just give
Bucer new ideas; these contacts challenged him to seek understanding and true theological agreements beween conflicting parties. Bucer's inclination, already encountered at an earlier time in his life, to seek and maintain contact with as many like-minded people as possible, became evident here. This turned Bucer into a man of compromise: someone seeking to settle differences once and for all in a conflict he felt was not only senseless but downright disastrous. At the same time, however, Bucer established contacts not just with opponents in the Lord's Supper controversy but also with people in places as far away as Silesia, and in France, Italy, and the Netherlands, in order to win people over to his own understanding of the Reformation.
It would be a misconception to interpret Bucer's readiness to dialogue during these years and his long-term endeavor to play down and, if possible, overcome the controversy over the Lord's Supper as evidence that he had no position of his own on this issue. The opposite is true. In the
Martin Bucer late fall of 1524, Bucer definitely abandoned the idea that the body and blood of Christ were physically present in the elements of bread and wine.
A combination of motives was at work here.** He had always harbored doubts about the physical presence, he wrote later. In this he was possibly influenced by Erasmus. Initially, Bucer refused to give in to these doubts, since Luther himself seemed to cling to this understanding of the presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements. 'This changed, however, after Bucer read a sermon by Luther on John 6, in which the Wittenberg theologian put all emphasis on faith only—without intending to apply this biblical text to the Lord's Supper. But this is exactly what Bucer did. He thus underscored the importance of faith in the crucified and resurrected
Christ, a faith that is strengthened through this sacrament, enabling all Christians, both individuals and entire congregations, to love their fellow human beings. What need was there, then, for the external elements of bread and wine, and even for this sacrament in the first place? That was exactly the question asked by Andreas Karlstadt, Luther's former colleague and now uncompromising opponent, in October 1524. Karlstadt published a series of pamphlets in Basel in which he tirelessly expounded his interpretation of the biblical words of consecration. According to Karlstadt, Christ was pointing at himself when he spoke the words "This is my body." We are therefore called to accept and receive Christ in spirit.
This line of reasoning did indeed turn any external celebration of the Lord's Supper into something one could almost do without. Regardless of any appeal Karlstadt's interpretation may have had, Bucer could not help protesting vociferously, as an exegete and biblical scholar. Jesus himself had solemnly consecrated the Lord's Supper, and for this reason alone it could not be inconsequential. Besides, Karlstadt's exegesis was grammatically untenable. 'This was the situation when the Dutchman Hinne Rode came to Strasbourg on November 21, 1524, with a treatise-like letter from his countryman Cornelis Hoen. On the basis of comparison with other, similar biblical passages, Hoen interpreted the "is" in the words of consecration ("This is my body") as "means" or "signifies." In other words, the elements of bread and wine referred to the crucified Christ but did not contain his body and blood. This exegetical explanation, which Hinne
Rode expounded and defended in greater detail, convinced Bucer thoroughly. And he was delighted when he found out that Zwingli endorsed this interpretation.
But leaving grammar and phraseology aside, what was this conflict ultimately about? At stake was the question of how God approaches man through Christ. The church's traditional response, that this took place by
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means of the sacraments, no longer convinced the Reformers. Did that not bind Christ and place him at the disposal of the church? Could he in this case still be the Lord to whom one was to entrust one's self in faith, and in whose hands one was to place one's entire life? What was the origin of this faith? All Reformers agreed that faith was a gift: not something that man could accomplish but rather a work of the Holy Spirit, brought about by God on the spur of the moment. How does God work in people when he changes their minds and convinces them of the truth of God's unconditional love in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ? Zwingli claimed that God acted directly and immediately. God could also use external means, such as the preached word and the sacraments. These externalities, however, dare not be overemphasized, lest they usurp the place reserved for what is most important: God's gift. It was not least the attacks by his Catholic opponents, claiming Luther's interpretation of the supper as proof of the truth of their own views, that convinced Zwingli he was the lone defender of the fundamental Reformation credo of justification alone by faith in Jesus Christ.
Yet what guards such a faith from being a mere mood, an illusion, or a form of pious self-deception, if it is not qualified by something objective— something beyond man's disposal precisely because it is an external, objective authority, such as the preached word and particularly the word of the Bible? That was Luther's fundamental objection." In the same way that God became man in Jesus Christ, God had bound his further presence and activity to the preached word of God and the dispensation of sacraments.
The implications are enormously comforting: sinners plagued by selfdoubt and fear can be certain that their Savior is there for them, not only in the preached word of God but in a very real and tangible way in the Lord's Supper, where Christ imparts himself freely to sinners in the elements of bread and wine. Whoever disputed this, thought Luther, was flatly denying the Reformation teaching of justification by grace, or, worse yet, was in league with Satan, who typically tried to turn all certainties of faith into subjective whims. This was precisely what Karlstadt was doing, said Luther. He condemned all others who opposed his views on this matter just as harshly, accusing them of dissolving what was indissoluble, of spiritualizing an eminently corporeal and concrete fact: that God had become man in Christ and that for this reason God comes to humankind tangibly and perceptibly in the elements of the Lord's Supper.
This is not the place to discuss the further altercations between Zwingli and Luther, which soon led to questions involving Christology and theology in general. This debate was certainly interesting, but Bucer made a
Martin Bucer point of not becoming involved in it.
For both Zwingli and Luther, as the theological assumptions above demonstrate, the truth of the Reformation movement itself hinged upon the right interpretation of the Lord's Supper. For Bucer, this was simply not the case. He gave utmost importance to the Holy Spirit, who kindles in people's hearts trust that God will justify sinners, thus not only giving them joy and consolation but also moving them to love their fellow human beings. For this reason he never fully understood why Luther attached so much importance to the external signs and means to which God had bound himself. At the same time, he could not fully identify with Zwingli's uncompromising struggle against Luther's views. 'Io be sure, Bucer found Zwingli's interpretation of the Lord's Supper to be the right one from an exegetical and, generally speaking, a theological standpoint, for he emphasized faith and the work of the Holy Spirit. In this respect, Bucer clearly stood in the camp of Zwingli as well as of Oecolampadius, who buttressed Luther's opponents in Basel.
Bucer differed from Zwingli significantly, however, in that he never ceased to attribute the greatest importance to faith in Christ's reconciling act and the renewed life of the justified sinner—only these were decisive and therefore sufficient for church unity. All other issues were of only secondary importance for Bucer. Was it not possible to reach an accord at this level?
The Strasbourg preachers attempted an agreement of this type in October 1525, when they asked Gregor Casel, a common acquaintance well liked on both sides of the theological divide, to present their views in Wittenberg. In his instruction to Casel, Bucer tried to present the views of the Swiss theologians in a sympathetic light and pleaded for the mutual acceptance of differing views on the Lord's Supper. Luther responded with a harsh no. Unfazed by this reaction, Bucer concluded that he just had to work at finding the right wording that would satisfy both sides of the conflict. Solving the controversy over the Lord's Supper became his overriding concern, for he was convinced that it was nothing more than a trivial squabble over words that was distracting the Reformation movement's attention from more important things and destroying the unity much needed to confront supporters of the traditional church. But it was not just political and pragmatic reasons but also his theological convictions that led Bucer to be concerned about church unity. If all people, theologians and laypeople alike, are to read the Bible on their own and form their own opinions on what they've read—Bucer wrote in 1528—differing interpretations will inevitably result. But imperfect understandings of Scripture and even blatant errors are to be tolerated and do not jeopar-
A Preacher in Strasbourg ) dize church unity, as long as they "do not overturn a child-like faith in God." "It is sufficient for our dear brethren if others agree with us on the fundamentals of the faith, those being: that we all are nothing and that God wants to save us and make us holy alone through Christ."*" Bucer had thus taken up a position that strikes us as modern and that allowed him to enter into dialogue not only with Luther and his colleagues but also later with the Anabaptists and even with Roman Catholics.
However, Bucer himself thwarted this fruitful approach by taking it for granted that his and his Swiss friends' interpretation of the Lord's Supper was the only right one. Their opponents, the Wittenberg Reformers, were unfortunately wrong on this issue, but they were to be graciously tolerated in spite of this error, and everything possible was to be undertaken to set them right. With this understanding, Bucer wrote a defense, or Apologia, that he published in March 1526. Unfortunately, he interpolated his own interpretation of the Lord's Supper into two books by Wittenberg theologians that he published at the same time. In the first, Bugenhagen's commentary on the Psalms, which Bucer translated into German, Bucer inserted some remarks of his own on Psalm 111:5, without identifying them as an interpolation on his part. In the second, Bucer's Latin translation of the fourth volume of Luther's Postils, the Strasbourg theologian expressly corrects Luther's wrong understanding of the Lord's Supper in a series of separate annotations. The Wittenberg theologians were outraged.
Luther was little convinced by Bucer's later claim that all he had wanted to do was invite readers to come to their own conclusions regarding the Lord's Supper. And Bugenhagen was even less persuaded by Bucer's attempt to place himself in the setting of late 1525, when there were no clear-cut, mutually hostile camps on this issue; nor did he take kindly to Bucer's reminder that he, Bugenhagen, had authorized Bucer to take liberties and use his own judgment in translating the Psalms commentary."®
As far as the theologians in Wittenberg were concerned, Bucer had now manifestly proven himself to be a trickster and a hypocrite who talked about peace and understanding only in order to deceive his opponents.
Capito had warned Bucer ahead of time, foreseeing that his colleague's dubious methods would cause great harm. But no, wrote Capito to Zwingli on September 26, 1526, "our peasant" would not allow himself to be dissuaded.*? This is a fitting characterization of Bucer. He was far from being someone who wanted to reach an agreement at any price. He could also vehemently demand that those positions he had determined to be true win recognition and be enforced. Would not everybody simply have to agree if one found clear and compelling wording?
Martin Bucer This was just one side of his complex personality. At the same time,
Bucer was further developing his already latent sensitivity to elements of truth in the arguments of his opponents. This changed the way in which he strove to solve the conflict over the Lord's Supper. He had not succeeded in making people ignore it as a trifling matter. Neither had he managed to carry the day merely on the persuasive power of his arguments, which had not convinced and won over his opponents as originally expected. It was therefore a question of finding the right formulation or wording that did justice to the views of both sides of the conflict. This is precisely what Bucer attempted to do as he now grappled with Luther's
Confession Concerning Christ's Supper (Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis),>° which the Wittenberg theologian had described as his last word on this subject.
In the early summer of 1528, Bucer published a Conciliation between Dr.
Luther and His Opponents Regarding Christ's Supper in the form of a remarkable dialogue.°! Two merchants, one from Nuremberg representing
Luther's views, the other from Strasbourg and a supporter of Bucer's interpretation, discuss the Lord's Supper. Predictably, the Strasbourg spokesman has better arguments at his disposal and ends up winning over his opponent. Bucer's purpose in writing this dialogue is thus clear: if he was not going to succeed in convincing Luther, at least he could try winning over some converts amid the latter's supporters. His second aim was to demonstrate that both sides coincided fundamentally in their respective interpretation of the Lord's Supper. Bucer felt he could prove this by taking up Luther's concept of a "sacramental union." The Wittenberg theologian had written that the bread and the body of Christ are definitely two completely different things; in the sacrament, however, they become an inseparable whole. By this Luther was trying to express his theological conviction that human beings, regardless of their worthiness and the strength of their faith, actually receive Christ, and that the Christ in the Lord's Supper is the same Christ who died for sinners on the cross. Both conclusions were unacceptable in this form for Bucer. Bucer tried to prove with logical and exegetical arguments that Luther was wrong when he believed that all who took Communion truly received Christ, irrespective of their faith. Neither was Bucer convinced that the raised Lord present in the Lord's Supper was simply identical with the crucified Christ. At the same time, however, Bucer emphasized that one could tolerate this mistaken understanding of the Wittenberg theologians, because Luther was finally no longer speaking of a Christ baked into the bread (Christus ympanatus) but rather of a spiritual presence in the sacrament. And that was
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the decisive element for Bucer. "That is why we are reminded of the death of Christ: in order that we may believe and bear in mind that we are saved by means of his death. Wherever this happens, Christ is truly in our midst, we truly eat his flesh, truly drink his blood, and are true guests at his table; and even then we do not eat and drink mere bread and wine, but the bread and the cup of the Lord. The bread and the wine are then a true sacrament, a genuine sign and image, for the heart is spiritually and truly strengthened and edified by that which is represented and expressed externally through words and signs."°* These sentences are clear evidence of the care Bucer took to express Christ's presence in the elements of the supper in particularly blurry terms. Luther accordingly rejected this interpretation in the harshest language. Bucer made no effort to accommodate, as far as Luther was concerned, persevering instead in views just as ungodly as they were mistaken. The fact that Bucer defended not only Zwingli and Oecolampadius but also the spiritualist Caspar Schwenckfeld and, in a sense, even Karlstadt convinced Luther beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Carrying Out the Reformation Zwingli's Comrade in Arms It is appropriate to look more closely at Bucer's relationship to Zwingli at this point.>? Ever since Bucer's almost desperate letter to Zwingli in the spring of 1523, asking the Zurich reformer to procure him a position, correspondence between the two men had increased and become very personal. All issues of Reformation theology and practice became the subject of intense consultations between the Strasbourg theologians, led by Capito and Bucer, and Zwingli. These included topics such as images in churches, liturgical ordinances, the dissolution of monasteries, and degrees of consanguinity compatible with marriage but also encompassed fundamental issues such as baptism and the Lord's Supper. Events in Zurich during these years were seen as normative by the Strasbourg preachers, especially Bucer. A further factor was significant: a city council faction to which Claus Kniebis belonged was extremely interested in following the religious but even more the political course steered by this "democratic" city, which was a member of the Swiss Confederation. However, this was just one aspect of the question. No progress was being made toward reaching an accord that would allow Strasbourg to join a "Christian Federation" (Christliches Burgrecht) with Zurich, since opposition in the Strasbourg city council was too great. Neither were the Strasbourg preachers successful in convincing the council to carry through all the Reformation
Martin Bucer measures they deemed necessary. But it was not just these external factors that prevented the Strasbourg preachers from following Zurich's example entirely. Bucer's independence regarding Zwingli became evident early on and was much stronger than, say, Capito's. This did not mean Bucer was not willing to learn from Zwingli. But he certainly did not hesitate to formulate his own conceptions, object to Zwingli's arguments, and make his own suggestions as to how to proceed. Both were independent, self-reliant personalities who had common theological goals and supported one another against shared opponents.
The controversy over the Lord's Supper brought them even closer together. The actual differences between Zwingli and Bucer, as well as those between them and Oecolampadius in Basel, took second place to the need to close ranks. The disappointment was all the greater when this united stand began to dissolve after 1529. Initially, however, what they had in common prevailed. On no single occasion was this unity, at least as perceived from the outside, more evident than at the Bern disputation in January 1528, when Zwingli, Bucer, and Oecolampadius succeeded superbly in umpressing their Swiss and southern German supporters with the power and effectiveness of the Reformation movement in this region.
Bern council elections in the spring of 1527 had paved the way for a possible victory of the Reformation.°* Admittedly, the new city government left no doubt that it was going to maintain a firm grip over the local church. After considerable hesitation on the part of the authorities, Capito and Bucer were finally invited to a theological disputation organized by the council from January 6 to 26. The two were probably still in Bern immediately following that dispute, when the city magistrates decreed a number of sweeping changes in church matters on January 27, 1528, the most radical of which entailed the abolition of the Mass. Bucer and Capito had additionally made a lengthy stop in Basel in the last part of December on their way to Bern, taking time for thorough discussions with Oecolampadius and using the occasion as well to preach in the cathedral of Basel on December 26 and 27. They reached Bern at the beginning of January 1528. Their first contact with the Bern preacher Berchthold
Haller, and especially with the Constance churchman Ambrosius Blarer, soon laid the foundation for lasting, close friendships. Bucer preached in Bern cathedral on January 22.
'The Bern disputation consisted of three weeks of theological debates that took place in the Franciscan monastery in the presence of some 250 theologians. Admittedly, the vast majority of them sympathized with the Reformation before the disputation even began. Of the most prominent
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opposing theologians, not a single one attended except for Conrad 'Treger, who was present for only part of the debate. At issue were ten theses, five of which dealt with dogmatic fundamentals such as the meaning of the Bible, Christ, and the church, and the other five with church ordinances and ceremonies. Bucer intervened a total of sixty-two times in the discussion of the first group of topics. He was thus not only the most zealous disputant after Zwingli (who gave voice to his views 107 times) but also an eloquent speaker, skillful at gaining the sympathies of the public. In these debates, Bucer assumed a position entirely in line with what he had proclaimed up to this point: faith is all that counts; the Holy Spirit is of central importance; decisive for church unity is that all agree on the doctrine of justification—everything else can be tolerated, if necessary; there is no fundamental criterion other than the Bible; people become convinced of its truth through the work of the Holy Spirit. This sounds like a complete accommodation to Zwingli and his theology. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Already in April 1524, when the issue of images in churches was acute, Bucer was unmistakably clear in telling the Zurich preachers that the biblical norm was only one side of the question, "for if the Holy Spirit is not instructing our hearts, Scripture can also become the letter that kills.">> Bucer's theology is characterized by a fundamental tension between God's justice and law on the one side and the activity of the Holy Spirit on the other—ethical obligations toward our fellow human beings on the one hand and empowerment by the Spirit to fulfill these obligations on the other. Because of this, Bucer could emphasize different things in different contexts, following the guideline of love for one's neighbor but also keeping in mind what was necessary to promote this neighbor's faith. This made it easier for Bucer to approach other theological positions. But it never implied accommodating fully to another theological position, be it Zwingli's or—as we shall see later on—Luther'.
Education and Training For Bucer, God's law was summed up in the commandment to serve our fellow human beings. Christians not only needed to be informed about this, but they also had to be educated and trained in this new way of life.
Naturally, it was ultimately the Holy Spirit who played the decisive role.
Nevertheless, church representatives and secular goverments had to do everything in their power to promote what was good and prevent evil in the city. Therefore, Bucer demanded of the ruling authorities that they permit the free preaching of God's truth, and also do away with false teach-
rai) Martin Bucer ing and with forms of worship that contradicted God's commandments.
Bucer placed great importance on the instruction and education of adults, and even more so of young people. For this reason he continued to give onehour classes every day on books of the Bible at the Dominican monastery
(today the Gymmnase Jean Sturm). In addition, he and his colleagues arranged for catechism lessons for children to begin every Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1526. This was not enough: he also called on the city council to found German and Latin schools in order that the youth "be instructed and trained" in a form that is "Christian before God and also beneficial to the world." After all, as Bucer had already written in the summer of 1524, "the hope of benefit for all rests upon the youth."°° These schools were to be funded with the income previously recetved by monasteries and collegiate churches. In 1526, the city decided to take on educational responsibility and entrusted three schoolmasters (Scholarchen), one of them Jacob Sturm, with this task. This commission, however, did not take action until 1528, when a Latin school was set up in the Dominican monastery under the leadership of Johannes Sapidus, and Otto Brunfels placed his own private school under the authority of the new educational commission. A major concern of Bucer's was also that the city of Strasbourg maintain a strict moral discipline. Hoping that church and city council would cooperate closely, he sought the establishment of a carefully structured system of church discipline that would include procedures such as personal admonishments but would not shy away from more drastic measures such as banning from the congregation. At the same time, the city council was to issue mandates that made disorderly and immoral behavior punishable.
Although Bucer's greatest emphasis was on morality, he did not lose sight of economic problems. In August 1524, for instance, he demanded that the city of Strasbourg spend more on its poor. At the same time, he spoke out vigorously against the exploitative practice of fiirkauff, by which wealthy citizens bought up an entire crop or all the wine before the actual harvest or vintage in order to set arbitrary prices later on. Finally, Bucer never missed an occasion to criticize wealthy merchants harshly, be it in his very first written work in 1523, his Conciliation (Vergleichung) with Luther of 1528, or his attacks on this social class in 1549 in connection with the Interim. This same excoriation of the unchristian and antisocial craving for "mammon" can be encountered in Luther's and the other
Reformers' writings. Bucer was trying to win the people of Strasbourg over to an all-encompassing vision of a Christian restructuring of society and it was his special wish that the city magistrates in particular commit themselves to carrying out such a vision. The central model to which
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Bucer appealed over and over again was at least in part a reappearance of the traditional idea of seeking the general benefit of the community.
Bucer's theology gave this model additional depth and weight. At stake were more than practical considerations of usefulness; at stake was God's law itself, which demanded an unreserved commitment to one's fellow humans and their needs. Therefore evangelization, preaching, edification, education, training, church discipline, and the enforcement of Christian day-to-day behavior by the magistrates were necessarily and logically intertwined from Bucer's perspective. Bucer was convinced that if the pure gospel were preached in Strasbourg, it would be clearly reflected in the morality of the lives led by its inhabitants.
All this was, of course, a program, a demand, and it had little to do with reality for the time being. But it did not leave Strasbourg untouched.
When the city of Basel requested of the Strasbourg city council that Bucer be allowed to come to them for a limited period of time or, better yet, permanently, the council refused. It thus identified itself de facto with Bucer's goals.°' When, soon after, a group of churchmen and laypeople asked the council to provide Bucer with a more centrally located apartment so that he would not have such a long way to his Bible classes in the Dominican monastery, the council consented immediately. Bucer was offered a house in the vicinity of St. Thomas Church (today no. 3, Rue Salzmann). It 1s not an exaggeration to observe symbolic significance in this move. Bucer was definitely no longer at the margins, but had found his place at the very ecclesiastical and political center of town.
A Biblical Scholar During these years, Bucer published, in rapid succession, a number of commentaries on Old and New Testament books. All these exegetical writings were the fruit of the lectures he had given to educated churchmen and laypeople in the past years, which explains their broad approach and repetitiousness.°* Capito proceeded in much the same fashion. He first gave a series of lectures on Habakkuk, Malachi, and Hosea and thereafter published a commentary on Habakkuk in 1526, then one on Hosea in German in 1527 and in Latin in 1528. In 1527, Bucer began an exegetical study of the Synoptic Gospels on the basis of Matthew. 'This commentary, dedicated to the Strasbourg city council, appeared in the spring of that year in two volumes. A commentary on Ephesians followed in the summer, and in April 1528 a commentary on the Gospel of John appeared with a preface to the Bernese ministers. In 1530, Bucer decided to merge
Martin Bucer both the commentary on the Synoptic Gospels and the one on John into a one-volume Gospel commentary without undertaking any major changes. In September 1528 he published a commentary on the book of Zephaniah, and one year later his exceedingly learned commentary on the Psalms. This last work appeared under the pseudonym of Aretius Felinus and was dedicated to the successor to the French throne. Most of these commentaries went through several editions.
Bucer's central goal as an exegete was to determine with the greatest possible clarity what the respective biblical author had intended to say.
This required the ability to read the Bible in the original. Bucer not only had an excellent command of Greek, but he was also a first-rate Hebraist.
But that was not enough. A biblical exegete, Bucer was convinced, must be extremely careful not to insert a conjured-up, supposedly more profound "spiritual" or mystical meaning into the message of the Bible. The allegorical interpretation of these texts only led one astray. Grasping the exact meaning of individual statements in the Bible would allow one to know what God intended in the past as well as today. He had chosen to interpret the Bible in this way, wrote Bucer in the preface to the commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, because "it is necessary that nothing other than the certain words of God be preached in the churches, words on which reason can rely beyond all doubt." Bucer therefore placed much importance on finding out as much as possible about the historical circumstances in which the statements of the Bible were spoken and he made a point of consulting medieval Jewish commentaries when studying the Old 'Testament. Finally, Bucer tirelessly called on his readers to be selfreliant and to examine and judge for themselves, in order to come to their own conclusions as laypeople. On the whole, Bucer's biblical interpretations impress one as remarkably modern and progressive, although their style and systematic structure are less than engaging.
Bucer's aim was not just to write sophisticated and learned books. He did not just want to teach—he wanted to edify; he wanted to inspire his readers to do the right thing, to take the right kind of action. In this regard, he stood squarely in the tradition of Erasmus, of whose New Testament paraphrases he made avid use. Consequently, Bucer always combined the interpretation of a passage of Scripture with dogmatic and ethical observations, and also took the opportunity to bring the Bible to bear upon current issues, such as the Anabaptists and their understanding of baptism and secular government, on the one hand, or the right interpretation of the Lord's Supper, on the other. For Bucer, these were not extraneous questions foreign to the text. On the contrary, this was a con-
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sequence of how much he valued the Bible: if it contained God's truth, then it also had to contain the answers to all the questions with which the church was wrestling. Conversely, these problems were to be solved on this foundation, through the laborious study of Scripture, and not by means of speculations removed from the Bible.
Bucer pursued another important goal through his commentaries. As in his Latin translation of Luther's biblical expositions, for instance, on the epistles of Peter and Jude or the six volumes of the Postils (1525-1527),
Bucer wanted to help the Reformation movement spread and to encourage embattled evangelicals in Italy, France, and the Low Countries. 'Io outwit the censors and quietly disseminate Reformation ideas in countries such as France, Bucer not only used a pseudonym and wove Gallicisms into his Latin but also deliberately pretended to advocate the views of a humanistically educated adherent of the Catholic Church who was open to new ideas. Bucer's world went far beyond the city walls of Strasbourg and the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. It extended to the countries from which the big trade routes came that met in Strasbourg. Religious refugees from these countries arrived at Strasbourg early on—and not a few of them returned to their home countries as missionaries for the Reformation. "Strasbourg is the city of refuge for the expelled brethren," wrote Capito in July 1524 to the Leipzig doctor Heinrich Stromer.
"Everybody who's persecuted somewhere comes here, and from here they are sent out again to serve the Word of God."
The Abolition of the Mass Manifold efforts at educating and training the population according to Christian principles, untold sermons, teaching and admonitions—all these could have only limited success, believed Bucer and his colleagues, as long as the forms of worship of the traditional church, especially the Mass, continued to be celebrated in the city. From the end of the Peasants' War, that is, the early summer of 1525, the Strasbourg preachers assailed the Mass without ceasing and pleaded with the council in ever new petitions to finally do away with this abominable "blasphemy."°! Their arguments always ran as follows. The Mass is blasphemous because it claims to repeat Christ's unique sacrifice on the cross and even turns this act into a human work justly earning divine merit. The Mass has no basis in Scripture; in fact, it contradicts God's clear instructions on how to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Finally, the Mass does not promote Christian community but rather hinders it, and it does so in a complete and absolute
Martin Bucer fashion, ever since the truth has become manifest at least to a minority of Strasbourg citizens. This religious disunity of the population was an impending threat, argued the Strasbourg ministers in the spring of 1527, that would ultimately bring about "the doom of the city and of the common good."°
The city magistrates, including those members of the council who sympathized with the Reformation, saw things quite differently. The evangelical preachers and their supporters were, after all, just one of many groups in the city. A considerable number of citizens stubbornly clung to the traditional church. Most important, the bishop and the influential canons of the collegiate churches threatened the council and wielded enough power to cause the city a great deal of political trouble should it dare to flout the emperor's prohibition by going ahead with the suppression of the Mass. In addition, there were theological and pastoral aspects to the question. Jacob Sturm, for example, strongly criticized any attempt to change the old forms of worship in a moving statement drafted in August 1525.° The preachers' intimidating menaces and insults, he asserted, diverted attention from the essence of this sacrament, which was
"brotherly love." Shouldn't we have patience with one another? "After all, there are Christians on both sides—may God have mercy!" Sturm was convinced that the rapid innovations of the past months had brought about only unrest, discord, and much damage, including the Peasants'
War. For Sturm, it was a violation of people's consciences to presume one could amend in one year what had deteriorated in the course of centuries.
Bucer countered in May 1526: "It is unchristian to say: 'Should we really change everything at once ... ?? Who would not, if there was poison in his drink and he found out, immediately overturn his cup and empty it?"
'The preachers once again pressed the council to abolish the Mass a year later: "If you are worried that there is only little faith in the church, demonstrate all the more a stronger faith and put to an end what prevents a true understanding of God's law and of faith in the church!"® The strongest argument of the ministers was the conviction that they were fighting for the cause of divine justice and truth.
Pressure on the council increased during 1528. Not only were the preachers warning and beseeching the magistrate, but now upper-rank citizens and groups within artisan guilds also filed petitions demanding the abolition of the Mass in order to save the city from God's wrath.
'loward the end of 1528, the authorities became increasingly inclined to leave the decision on this matter up to the rarely convoked Schéffen of the guilds. This did not mean, however, that the authorities had reached a
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consensus. It is quite revealing, for instance, that Jacob Sturm, writing from Worms and on his way to the imperial diet in Speyer, implored his colleagues by no means to undertake any liturgical innovations. Conversely, Capito beseeched Claus Kniebis on January 3, 1529—that is to say, shortly before the decisive session of the council—to do everything in his might to ensure that the Mass finally be abolished. "This must now hold true: your city has to accept either the Pope or Christ completely and exclude the opposite."
On January 9, 1529, the council called on the Schéffen to give this question careful consideration until February 20, when the voting was to take place. The results were 184 votes for the immediate abolition of the Mass,
1 against, and 94 in favor of postponing the decision until the diet of Speyer was no longer in session (of the three hundred Schéffen, twentyone were not present). Although the council was quick to declare that the Mass had not been abolished, but rather its celebration suspended until it could be proven that it was a form of worship that pleased God, Strasbourg had definitely joined the Reformation through this decision.
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