Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight Exile and Final Days England Arrival Bucer remained one of the most prominent and highly esteemed figures of the Protestant camp. This was evident not least from the countless invitations that he started receiving from 1547 on, among others from Melanchthon in Wittenberg and Calvin in Geneva, offering him sanctuary. He ended up choosing England, however, essentially because he was convinced that it was in this country in which the Reformation was apparently advancing so successfully that his special gifts and unique experiences could be put to use in the most meaningful and fruitful way and had the greatest chance of making a lasting impact.
Bucer had already cultivated many, if somewhat casual, ties with England and with its people previously. Not to be overrated but certainly worth mention is his acquisition of Thomas More's Utopia while a monk. More significant is the fact that he drafted an opinion on Henry VIUI's marital difficulties,! met with Bishop Stephen Gardiner—soon becoming involved in an acrimonious literary altercation with him—and corresponded with other English bishops, even dedicating some of his books to them, particularly to Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury. All of these connections, however, were little more than incidental and probably also perceived as such by Bucer. In the measure, however, that his position in Strasbourg became more vulnerable and the invitations from England more insistent, Bucer made increasingly concrete plans to emigrate to the British Isles. The financier and statesman John Hales, a personal friend of Cranmer and of the duke of Somerset and one of the most powerful men
22s
Martin Bucer of England, established the decisive connections that created the necessary conditions and paved the way for Bucer's emigration to England.'
Bucer and Fagius left Strasbourg under cover of night by boat on the River Il. On April 7, 1549, in Raon, on the western foothills of the Vosges, some fifty miles west of Strasbourg, they were joined by their traveling companion Valérand Poullain, who would serve them as guide and interpreter. Poullain had pastored the French refugee congregation in Strasbourg from 1542 on and had also spent some time in Canterbury in 1547, setting up an expatriate congregation. One of Fagius's students of Hebrew, the twenty-seven-year-old Matthias Negelin of Wiirttemberg, as well as a servant by the name Peter, responsible for the horses, completed the traveling party.
The trip took place without any major hitches, except for an incident in Amiens on April 15, when the group was temporarily arrested under the suspicion of being on a secret mission to smuggle money and secret documents to England. The precious little cash they actually had on them and Poullain's persuasiveness quickly convinced their captors otherwise, and they were set free. By April 18 they were in Calais, at the time an English outpost. There they rested for five days and sold their horses—in Negelin's opinion, much too cheaply.
On April 23 they crossed the English Channel to Dover by calm weather. The passage took five hours. From there they traveled on to Canterbury, where Fagius's son, who would also help them as an interpreter, was expecting them. Bucer and his company finally arrived in London on April 25, where Thomas Cranmer received them with full honors in Lambeth, at the time a small town on the opposite bank of the Thames. Peter
Martyr Vermigli and many other religious refugees from the Continent also welcomed them there as part of Cranmer's entourage. Bucer spent the following months in Croydon, where Cranmer had his summer residence, some twenty miles south of London. A few days after his arrival,
Bucer and Fagius were introduced to King Edward VI and the entire court. Bucer described this encounter enthusiastically in a letter to Jacob
Sturm.' In glowing terms he praised the scholarship and piety holding sway at the court, referring not only to the duke of Somerset but particularly to the king himself. He also retold Sturm, with great satisfaction and a certain measure of implicit reproach, how he, Bucer, had explained to the twelve-year-old king that the negligence of church discipline lay at the root of the German Protestants' downfall, and how the king responded, with tears in his eyes, that God may have punished his people for their ungratefulness and disobedience, but that God would certainly receive it mercifully once again, if it repented and did penance.
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Everything thus seemed to start off quite promisingly for Bucer. Even before his arrival, his publications had made him a renowned man in England, not least because he had dedicated two of his most important books, his commentaries on the Gospels and on Romans, to leading church figures of this country. Bucer was obviously esteemed by and could count on the warm support of those wielding power in England. He was aware of the challenging tasks and great opportunities awaiting him, and he was determined to make use of them. Yet, how much did Bucer really know about the country in which he was now living? And what means did he have at his disposal to influence events effectively?
The Kingdom The political, economic, and social reality of England had little to do with Bucer's deludingly pleasant first impressions at the royal court." In fact, a full-scale uprising, especially of peasants, had been underway since April
1549 in a whole range of counties, beginning in the southwest, in Cornwall, but then spreading also to the east, to Norfolk, and elsewhere. A motley combination of factors—social, economic, as well as religious— had led to this mass rebellion. Enclosures of common land, new land-lease contracts, and, as a result, the loss of traditional social security structures played just as much a role as inflation and the dismantling of traditional religious life with its saints' days, images, and familiar Latin liturgy. The protest thus had a markedly conservative character; farmers demanded the reestablishment of "old law." This did not prevent their opponents from perceiving this revolt as a radical attempt, inspired by the devil, to overthrow the entire established order. Archbishop Cranmer asked in outrage:
"Will you now have the subjects to govern their King, the villains to rule the gentlemen, and the servants their masters? If men would suffer this,
God will not; but will take vengeance on them that break his order, like Dathan and Abiram."> Bucer agreed wholeheartedly.
By midsummer of 1549, the insufficiently armed and poorly led bands of insurgents had suffered a monumental defeat. The crucial problems remained, however. Bucer had arrived in England at the very climax of a erave and all-encompassing crisis. Unrest and insecurity were widespread, along with feelings of fear and mistrust—the kingdom was clearly in the throes of profound social and economic upheaval. In rural areas, where 95 percent of the English people lived, farms were increasing in size and land previously cultivated was now turned into pasturage. It was the middle and smaller tenant farmers who bore the brunt of these changes: their leases were shortened, the levies and duties they had to pay increased, and soon
250) Martin Bucer they were unable to support their families. Whoever did not wish to become a day laborer was forced to emigrate to the cities.
The results were a rural exodus, unemployment, and an explosive increase in poverty. Further causes for this development were the rapidly increasing prices of foodstuffs as well as of wool and, correspondingly, cloth. 'The wealthy tried to take advantage of this situation, either by enlarging their farms or by fencing in or "enclosing" as much pasture land as possible for their sheep. This being an extremely conspicuous measure, it soon stood at the center of all the political, economic, and religious and ethical confrontations, diverse as they were. Doubtless the enclosure of common land was being overrated in its actual consequences. In a sense, the sheep became an excuse for all the difficulties, problems, and calamities that common people were having to endure. It is, of course, undeniable that at a local and maybe even regional level the common people did experience the process of enclosure as the destruction of the very foundations of village life. However, these enclosures never reached the dimensions their opponents claimed in their statements. Additionally, they were not the cause of the inflation that was weighing upon the entire population.
'The common people remained convinced, however, that the enclosures diminished the amount of land available for farming and thus forced prices up. In light of these assumptions, it is hard to explain, however, why prices rose sharply in 1548/49 after a very good harvest—only to fall considerably in 1551/52, when yields were particularly poor. 'Today we are aware of the central significance of two factors that led to this extreme crisis in the late 1540s in England: rapid population growth and the disastrous effects of England's war against Scotland and France.
Some two million people lived in England and Wales around the year 1540. By 1547 that number had increased to almost three million. This population explosion caused a shortage of food and an increase in prices.
Many poor people, particularly those living in the country, had to resort to additional sources of income. They therefore spun wool or wove cloth for master manufacturers who supplied them with raw material and bought the finished products from them. This contributed considerably to the burgeoning export of English wool and coarse cloth to the Spanish
Netherlands and especially to Antwerp. But since the Crown continually reduced the proportion of fine metal in gold coins from 1544 onward, and nearly doubled the number of coins circulating by the year 1551, increased exports kindled inflation. Not until after Bucer's death did the economic tide show signs of turning.
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It had long been clear to all involved that something needed to be done.
Yet few realized that it was especially the unremitting wars against France and Scotland that were ruining the country. These conflicts tied up much of the energy of government and devoured enormous resources. 'They led
Henry VIII to forfeit the financial independence of the Crown in the final years of his rule. After his death the fighting continued, first against Scotland and, from August 8, 1549, against France again. And since the new king, Edward VI, was a child, not only were social and economic security sorely wanted, but confidence in leadership as well. The sense of crisis grew. The country became increasingly difficult to govern.
Besides, Edward Seymour, the duke of Somerset, had awakened great expectations upon becoming the "Protector of the Realm" and thus the leading political figure in England after the death of Henry VIII. These hopes found a concrete expression in a series of writings demanding a comprehensive solution to the deplorable state of affairs. 'The authors of these works—among them John Hales, Hugh Latimer, William Turner, Thomas
Becon, and John Hooper—were socially conservative, made reform proposals expressive ofa certain evangelical paternalism, and believed that profound changes could be brought about through legislation. 'They were later given the common title "Men of the Commonwealth," although in reality they never constituted a monolithic group, nor did they ever submit a joint program for reform. They had much to say about moral decay, divine wrath, and the responsibility of the Christian but were ata loss when it came to proposing concrete political and social measures.
Protector Somerset's reforms also remained unclear, irresolute, and ineffective because he always subordinated them to the political and financial requirements of war-making. Therefore, his struggle against enclosures, his attempts to fix the prices of basic foodstuffs, and his efforts at establishing poor relief and reforming the universities all failed. To make matters worse, Somerset made many enemies because of his self-conceit and stubbornness (and even more because of similar qualities in his wife), so that he soon lost all credibility and authority. On November 11, 1549, he was overthrown and imprisoned in the 'lower.
John Dudley, the earl of Warwick and, since the fall of 1551, duke of Northumberland, was England's new strong man. His political goals started to become apparent in the spring of 1550. Initially, he obtained the support of the Catholic opposition in his endeavor to overthrow Somerset. Later, however, he turned against the Catholics in order to stabilize his own power base. He urgently needed the support of all forces of reform in the country—from the king, an avid Reformation supporter, to the
Martin Bucer great landowners and noblemen, whose interest in change was more pragmatic—in order to make up for the ruinous policies of the past decades, as well as to consolidate his own position. An attempt at monetary reform was among the measures he took. Peace was made with France on March
29, 1550, and finally with Scotland as well on July 19, 1551. At the same time, the Church of England began to open itself increasingly to the influence of Protestantism.
The State of the Church Among the tremendous hopes pinned upon the Protector after the death of Henry VIII were important religious expectations.° It was manifest that the former king's strategy had failed, but the course to be adopted in its place was far from obvious.
Henry VHI had made himself the supreme head on earth of the Church of England in the Supremacy Act of 1534. The aversion to Rome widespread in the kingdom had paved the way for this decision. Yet, beyond this measure, Henry wished to leave the church as it was, refraining from introducing any changes, particularly in the church's doctrine. He met with only limited success, for new evangelical ideas were being washed ashore from the Continent, and incompletely suppressed local traditions such as John Wycliffe's legacy and the popular Lollard movement began making themselves felt once again. Besides, Henry's supremacy over the church had the consequence of relativizing canon law. Finally, the dissolution and expropriation of monasteries by Henry and his leading statesman 'homas Cromwell represented a significant encroachment on the financial foundations of the church.
For things not to slip out of hand, Henry issued a law in 1539 fixing the central tenets of church doctrine in six articles that were in agreement with traditional Roman Catholic teaching. These articles concerned transubstantiation in the Mass, auricular confession, the prohibition of clerical marriage, as well as withholding the communion cup from the laity. Any deviation from this norm was persecuted brutally. Henry stuck to these six articles until his death. By 1547 not only the new young king but also Somerset, Archbishop Cranmer, and many more agreed that this course should not be continued. At the same time, they realized the need to proceed very cautiously in order to stir as little outrage as possible among the common people. In any case, Somerset deemed Charles V's neutrality essential. The Protector deliberately pursued a religious policy that could be interpreted as reform Catholicism, in order not to give the emperor any excuses to
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forestall English trade with Antwerp or, more alarmingly, to enter the war on Scotland's side. The result—like most of Somerset's politics—was an unclear compromise that left everybody dissatisfied.
Initially, before the end of July 1547, the Book of Homilies, an official volume of sermons to be read and expounded every Sunday, was published in the name of the king. These sermons were a clear expression of Reformation ideas: they proclaimed the justification of men by God through faith in Jesus Christ alone, the administration of both bread and wine to all communicants in the Lord's Supper, the abolition of auricular confession and of all images and ceremonies conducive to "superstition," and, finally, the permission of clerical marriage and the use of the vernacular in worship services. However, the Book of Common Prayer published in June 1549 not only discontinued this course toward Reformation but actually went back on steps already taken. Many elements of the Roman Catholic teaching on the Mass reappeared, and liturgical vestments, candles, hallowed anointing oil, and prayers for the dead were all once again mentioned. It was now evident that what was being sought was only the modification of existing structures, not the definitive establishment of the Reformation. This latter and quite decisive step did not follow until 1550, under Warwick. In the spring of that year, a new Ordinal for the ordination of clergymen was presented; soon afterward, Bishop Ridley began replacing altars with tables in his London diocese. Of considerable more import was the fundamentally revised version of the Book of Common Prayer that appeared in 1552. Even though it retained many ceremonies and rites of the medieval church, it purported to exclude all Roman Catholic doctrines. Finally, in June 1553, the "Forty-two Articles" appeared, formulating the teachings of the Church of England in an evangelical sense, partly under the influence of Heinrich Bullinger but of John Calvin as well. Bucer was able to contribute only indirectly to these developments.
Projects and Conflicts During their first months in England, Bucer and Fagius spent most of their time in Croydon.' There they were charged with the daunting task of preparing a new Latin translation of the Bible, accompanied with a brief commentary. This ambitious enterprise did not get very far, however.
Only the draft of Bucer's commentary on the first eight chapters of the Gospel of Matthew has survived. Probably about this same time, Bucer produced a small treatise on the appropriate selection, training, and ordination of clergymen.*
Martin Bucer It had been intended that Bucer and Fagius take up teaching positions at the University of Cambridge, with Bucer assuming the Regius Professorship of Divinity created by Henry VII with funds obtained from the confiscation of church property. Bucer's salary amounted to 100 pounds a year, a sum sufficient to allow him a comfortable life in spite of inflation.
Bucer would have time—until September 29, 1549, when Michaelmas 'Term (as the semester beginning in the autumn was called) began—to become accustomed to his new environment, engage his new colleagues in conversation, and appraise the situation in England. His first actual visit to Cambridge took place around the middle of June, when he came for several weeks, looking for living accommodations for himself and his family. Bucer gained not only new acquaintances during these months but many new friends as well. By this time he perceived conditions in the English kingdom much more realistically—and, in fact, gloomily—than he had in the previous months.
During these weeks in June, Bucer was dragged entirely against his will into a controversy raging between Peter Martyr and his Oxford colleagues over the Lord's Supper. Catholicism was still firmly entrenched at the University of Oxford. To change this situation, Peter Martyr, who was
Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford from 1547, initiated a debate over the Mass and the Lord's Supper. Now he was asking Bucer to support him.
Both men had become better acquainted with one another in recent years; they did not, however, see entirely eye to eye on the Lord's Supper. Martyr's wish that Bucer speak out publicly on this issue was certainly understandable but not without its perils, for it threatened to expose significant differences in the theological views of the two friends and thus was hardly conducive to increasing their impact upon the Reformation in England.
Furthermore, Bullinger—whose understanding of the Lord's Supper deeply influenced Martyr—was mistrustfully keeping tabs on Bucer from his vantage point in Zurich, and a good many of Bullinger's supporters not only openly opposed Bucer but even felt unmitigated hatred toward him?
Bucer could therefore only lose by entering into this debate and issuing the requested statement. He thus vigorously entreated Martyr to temper the flames of conflict. The devastating consequences of the eucharistic controversy in Germany, as well as the bitter memories of his concord efforts—"when I rolled a Sisyphean stone up a hill, as it were" —were still painfully fresh in his mind. Bucer wanted nothing more than to prevent a similar conflict from repeating itself in England. He wished to follow neither the papists nor the Lutherans, asserted Bucer, nor Zwinegli and his supporters, but rather to adhere simply to the mystery of the real pres-
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ence of Christ in the Supper, where the Lord gives himself to believers.
Bucer concluded with an appeal that neatly summarizes what he felt on other issues as well: "We must aspire with the utmost zeal to edify as many people as we possibly can in faith and in the love of Christ—and to offend no one."!9 Martyr allowed himself to be won over to this view.
Bucer was seriously ill by the time the semester was supposed to begin.
He was not able to come to Cambridge until the beginning of November."!
His friend and companion of Strasbourg days, Paul Fagius, died there on November 13, 1549, barely forty-five years old. His death dealt Bucer a tremendous blow. From now on he felt completely isolated in England.
His many acquaintances and even friends could do little to change this— not even the conferral, with much pomp and ceremony, of an honorary doctorate in theology, probably after December 4, the official date of Bucer's appointment as a professor. Never before had the University of Cambridge bestowed such a degree. In his thank-you speech, Bucer underscored the need for state and church, for their own mutual benefit, to work in close cooperation training and teaching young people.!?
In the same speech, Bucer described himself as a sick, old, and thoroughly decrepit man. This harsh depiction did justice to reality. Bucer was not able to begin his lectures until shortly before Christmas. He began by expounding Psalm 119 to his students at his own home. Then, on January 14, 1550,! he began giving public lectures on the letter to the Ephesians.!* Ecclesiology thus stood clearly at the center of his interests and his efforts. Bucer also began presiding over academic disputations and preached repeatedly on John 6. But in March 1550 his health once again suffered a serious setback, from which he recovered only gradually. It was not until May that he was able to set foot in the lecture hall again, overwhelmed by feelings of restlessness and impatience with himself—so much lay waiting to be done for the reform of the church!
During the holiday month of July, Bucer spent some time in the country at the residence of the duchess of Suffolk. After that, he spent eleven days in Oxford, visiting Peter Martyr. While Bucer was slowly regaining his strength, a most unpleasant conflict was brewing behind his back in Cambridge. One of his colleagues, John Young, derided Bucer's understanding of justification in a lecture. Young particularly took offense at Bucer's assertion that the good works of unbelievers were sinful. 'Iwo concerns collided here: an overriding emphasis on ethics and the evangelical and biblical conviction that any human action not inspired by faith displeased God. But there apparently was more to the conflict than this. Following a public disputation on August 8, Bucer senta written record of the
Martin Bucer altercation—which dealt with the Bible as a sufficient foundation for the church, the latter's fallibility, and the justification of man by faith alone and not works—to his opponents Young, Thomas Sedgwick, and Andrew
Perne, asking them for their comments and corrections. The three refused to even look at the text.!° At the same time, all three, and Young in particular, continued to stir up emotions against Bucer with all available means, both written and oral, in public and in private. These Cambridge scholars perceived him as an outsider who was obviously being given preferential treatment and now was even assuming the airs of a teacher and daring to place constraints on and introduce foreign innovations into the English church. He had clearly become a thorn in their sides. The whole affair aroused a great deal of attention. Young must have met with substantial support, for he eventually submitted a formal denunciation against Bucer to the vice chancellor Walter Haddon, accusing the Strasbourg reformer of false teachings that contradicted the Bible and the church fathers.
Bucer was outraged and deeply hurt. He immediately drafted five theses and convoked a day-long public disputation on these theses to take place in June. Following this, after being allowed to see Young's statement, he drafted a lengthy confutation of his opponent.!° He sent this counterstatement to his friend Edmund Grindal on August 31, asking him to forward it to John Cheke as well as to the bishop of London.!" This time around, Bucer turned heavy guns on his opponents: appealing to the authority of the Book of Homilies, he accused Young of bringing the errors of Pelagius, already condemned by the early church, back to life, and then proceeded to charge Young with sins against God, the Bible, the church, and the king. Cheke then came from London to prevent matters from getting out of hand. He attempted to settle the controversy in Bucer's favor— and ultimately succeeded.
An intriguing subordinate issue in this heated debate was the question as to whether Christians are allowed to lend money in exchange for interest. Young embraced church tradition wholeheartedly by answering negatively, whereas Bucer gave a positive answer, thus assuming a more modern standpoint.'® The question was of current relevance, since many were dependent on interest income for financing their university studies.
Bucer began by distinguishing between interest and usury and then developed the principle of his theology, that every Christian should live for his fellow man, connecting it to the notion of equity (Billigkeit) and Jesus'
Golden Rule: "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you" (Matthew 7:12). Therefore, those who only possessed money or their salaries—as examples Bucer mentioned widows, children, students,
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clergymen, and state officials—should lend their money for interest to peasants, craftsmen, or merchants, in case these need it for their work.
"For money is also God's gift, and God demands that we use it rightly."!"
Shortly thereafter, the controversy over the Lord's Supper threatened to flare up one more time. In September,
Jan Laski (John a Lasco), the pastor of the London refugee congregation ("Stranger Church") since 1549, visited Bucer in Cambridge, hoping to reach a doctrinally sound agreement over the Lord's Supper among the émigrés. Bucer initially suggested to the distinguished Polish exile that they exchange views confidentially.
He then sent Laski a Confession*® consisting of fifty-four articles steering a cautious course between Zwinglians and Lutherans. Bucer wished for the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper to be understood in a "symbolic" way, as a "metaphor" to be resolved neither rationally nor magically.
One cannot fail to notice the proximity to Calvin's understanding of the Lord's Supper. Bucer's death, however, would cut the conversations short.
Bucer was much more involved in the vestments controversy that took place at the same time. At issue was whether clergymen were required to continue wearing their traditional habits. The conflict was triggered by the refusal of John Hooper, the new bishop of Gloucester, to don the timehonored episcopal garments on the occasion of his ordination. Hooper was influenced by Bullinger, who—in the wake of Zwingli—rejected all traditional rites and ceremonies as superstitions detrimental to the purity of Reformation doctrine. Laski, Martyr, and Hooper as well now began trying to obtain Bucer's support for their position. After all, it was no secret that he had carried out similar reforms in Strasbourg. On the other hand,
Archbishop Cranmer found it unacceptable for the new episcopal Ordinal to be overruled so soon after it had been published, with his very own authorization, in March 1550. As soon as he was informed about the controversy, Cranmer sent a formal inquiry to Bucer, asking him whether it was permissible to wear the prescribed liturgical vestments without offending God. He also asked inversely whether anyone refusing to wear the prescribed garments did not sin against God and the authorities." As seriously as Bucer took these inquiries and opinions, he still managed to stay above the fray and raise the debate to a level somewhat more sublime.22 Of course he had attempted to recover the simplicity of the early church his entire life, and this in many aspects, including the outward form of worship services, Bucer admitted to Hooper. But he still could not see— and this was directed as much against Cranmer as it was against Hooper— how the indeed very crucial question of obedience to God could be reduced to a controversy over vestments. Did Paul not write extensively
Martin Bucer and compellingly about Christian freedom? Who could doubt that the church was, and is, entitled to find pragmatic solutions to countless controversies over external matters?
A further aspect was just as important to Bucer. Were there not questions much more important than the issue of clerical garments? It is a known fact, he wrote to Hooper, that we do not have enough pastors; we do not have
Christian congregations worth the name; we neither administer the sacraments in the right way, nor do we impart true pastoral care; we give no catechismal instruction, not to mention the absence of any church discipline.
Most Christians in this country do not know what the word church really means; they know nothing of living congregations or of the fellowship of saints, and even less about the kingdom of Christ. That is where we should begin if the church is to be reformed—not with squabbles over vestments!
Hooper was not swayed by Bucer's arguments. Only after Bucer's death did he submit to Cranmer, following a prolonged imprisonment in the Tower.
Among Bucer's last theological treatises is a major memorandum, completed on January 5, 1551, on the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer had requested an opinion as to how this prayer book should be revised.
Whether Bucer's statement had any influence at all on the revision, and, if so, the degree to which Cranmer actually followed Bucer's recommendations—these remain matters of conjecture.*+ The leitmotiv of this memorandum, as of so many other of Bucer's works, was that faith and love among people be furthered. This was the norm for deciding what to do and what to retrain from doing in the church. Bucer deemed as unnecessary and superfluous the overabundance of holidays, the frequent ringing of church bells, genuflections in worship, crossing oneself, blessing and consecrating all kinds of objects, liturgical vestments, private masses, extreme unction, prayers for the dead, and other ceremonies. Instead, he considered it crucial for the congregation to know and understand what the worship service, church life, and especially faith were all about. He therefore called for a summary of Christian doctrine to be drawn up. A catechism should be written according to which the people could be taught. He also demanded a major overhaul of the administrative structures of the church.
Bucer was thus once more pressing for a comprehensive and radical reform of the English church, the state of which he appraised increasingly pessimistically.*? For example, on May 25, 1550, he wrote Calvin that seemingly everything was wrong here: the clergymen were uneducated papists responsible for several churches at one time, to which they ministered only superficially. There were many congregations that had not heard a sermon for years. The university professors were either papists or
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Epicureans "who, as far as they are able, entice young people to come to their lectures and imbue them with hatred for sound Christian teaching and discipline." Influential people at the royal court and elsewhere in England appeared to be entirely oblivious to religious issues, saying that it was the business of the bishops to attend to these. The bishops, on their part, claimed they could do nothing without the support of government! At the same time, the noblemen were enriching themselves shamelessly with the church's property. Therefore, "it is greatly to be feared that the dreadful wrath of God will very shortly blaze forth against this kingdom also."*°
Bucer was not painting an exaggeratedly dismal picture of reality. Other sources confirm his assessment. For instance, an inspection of the diocese of Gloucester in 1551 revealed that 168 priests out of a total of 311 were unable to recite the Ten Commandments; 34 did not know who had formulated the Lord's Prayer, and 10 did not know it by heart.?" What could be done about this? Bucer remained convinced of the utter necessity of training a new generation of pastors. It was for this reason that he began teaching a course on "the significance and practice of the sacred ministry."?8 In it, Bucer presented a pastoral theology of sorts that concentrated on the person of the minister. This made it possible for him to discuss the intellectual and moral requirements as well as deal with fundamental theological topics—such as church and congregation, the essence and variety of ministries, and church offices. The further development of this theme was also interrupted by Bucer's death.
The Rule of Christ Bucer certainly did not come to England to live the quiet, secluded life of a small-town professor. Neither was it enough for him to formulate expert opinions every once in a while. On the contrary, his writings show that he aspired to nothing less than the radical, comprehensive renewal of England that was to begin with religious reform and would be followed by a reshaping of social and moral conditions, as well as a recasting of the economic and administrative structures of the country. This is what Bucer meant when he spoke or wrote about spreading and consolidating the rule of Christ in England.
In other words, he wished to establish the Reformation in the broadest sense and have all areas of life subjected to the lordship of Christ—and not merely organize a church. And Bucer was convinced that he knew the right ways and means of achieving this goal. He was thus disappointed, even embittered, that those in power hardly consulted him. He then found
Martin Bucer out about the custom of presenting a memoir to the king at the beginning of a new year. On October 21, 1550, he sent his friend John Cheke a manuscript version of his major treatise On the Kingdom of Christ (De Regno
Christi) in order that Cheke pass it on to King Edward VI. The book was not printed until 1557 in Basel.*? In this work, Bucer developed his program for a sweeping Reformation. He presented the king with the principles and rules he should follow in order to establish new church structures in England with lasting success. This treatise condensed Bucer's long years of experience and activity as a practical Christian, a church leader, and an ecclesiastical organizer in Strasbourg and many other German cities and territories. But it also was an epitome of Bucer's theology as developed from 1523 onward. De Regno Christi thus constitutes a summary of Bucer's thought and his practical visions, a compendium that he himself described as his legacy.*° In terms of its linguistic style and compositional structure, the work was admittedly far from being a masterpiece. Bucer remained too true to his writing habits for things to be otherwise. The treatise consists of two parts.
The first one addresses the essence of the kingdom of Christ and, departing from there, discusses the duties and tasks of the church, including its assumed close cooperation with the civil authorities. The second part of the book lists the practical measures the king should take, presenting them in the form of fourteen lengthy laws, including detailed instructions on their implementation. Two familiar elements of Bucer's theology thus reappear: his great confidence in legal measures and—closely related to the first—his demand that church and state act in unison.
All of this was also somewhat related to the conviction, dating back to classical antiquity and also developed by the theology and philosophy of later periods, that religion is the most secure foundation of any state and thus the most reliable guarantee for the well-being of the individual and of entire society. 'This theme had always occupied Bucer's thought under the aspect of the common good, or bonum commune. His reflections on this topic, however, had always been considerably more sophisticated—and this was particularly the case in De Regno Christi. For in this work Bucer described the relationship between temporal rule and the rule of Christ as one of mutual submission: just as the person who is subject to Christ's rule—the Christian, in other words—obeys government and therefore finds a place for himself within the existing political and social orders, in the same way do those who govern, wherever their place in government may be, submit themselves and their political power to the rule of Christ.
"Thus, as the kingdom of Christ subjects itself to the kingdoms and pow-
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ers of the world, so in turn every true kingdom of the world (I say kingdom, not tyranny) subjects itself to the kingdom of Christ, and the kings themselves are among the first to do this, for they are eager to develop piety not for themselves alone, but they also seek to lead their subjects to it."*! Put in simpler terms: the king who is a Christian bears his responsibilities as a Christian in his place in society—in the same way as peasants, craftsmen, or noblemen who are Christians do—and must fulfill the duty imposed on all Christians to work for the establishment of Christ's rule in this world.
This goal only made sense for Bucer because he at the same time called for changes, if not in the structures, at least in numerous regulations and customs of society. This aspect had also occupied his thought from the very beginning of his Strasbourg ministry, as we have seen. Bucer was not concerned with doing away with "upper" and "lower," and he was not working toward making social equals out of kings, peasants, patricians, artisans, and day laborers. What he rather wanted was that the needs of one's fellow man be attended to within these social structures; or to put it in theological terms, that the love of fellow man be realized. And precisely this had always been for Bucer, and thus was also in De Regno Christi, not just a matter of principles, convictions, or faith but always one of rules and regulations—and therefore of law.
The tension between God's law governing all of life and the freedom bestowed by the Holy Spirit, a tension that pervades Bucer's entire thought and ministry, also dominates this work. The fundamental order of creation and hence the law according to which all of creation exists, the self-evident commitment of all creatures to their fellow creatures, had been destroyed by sin. Believers, in whom the Holy Spirit reigns—Bucer usually designates them as "the elect" and "the predestined" in order to preclude any notion of meritorious human works as radically as possible—will naturally and self-evidently behave in congruence with how God originally disposed his creation: they will love their fellow human beings; they will live for others and not for themselves. But such people were exceptionally few. In order for them not to end up being a negligible minority, not only in the world but in the church as well, church discipline was necessary. This second aspect had become increasingly important for Bucer in the recent past. For this reason he vigorously emphasized discipline as the third note or defining characteristic of the church besides the right preaching of God's Word and the proper administration of the sacraments. At the same time, Christ's kingdom could by no means be limited to the church. Setting up Christ's rule therefore meant promulgating ordinances, enacting laws, and taking concrete measures that affected and permeated all of society.
Martin Bucer We can understand this way of thinking that runs through and characterizes all of De Regno Christi only if we grasp it as the reestablishment of a humaneness that finds its truest expression in the love of man for his fellow man. 'This was at least the goal, in Bucer's view, of all the legal measures taken by the Christian king, who bore special responsibility and power: these measures aimed at amending the disruption by sin of God's order of existence—an order that essentially boiled down to love of one's neighbor.
A problematic aspect of Bucer's concept was that he identified the order implanted by God in creation of love for one's fellow creatures specificially with the laws and norms of the Old Testament. The criterion for interpreting and applying God's law, which aimed at loving one's fellow man, was not so much the imperative of love but ended up consisting of specific biblical rules. It is thus not exaggerated to claim that the inflexible biblicism that Bucer also manifested in this work at least hindered, if not foreclosed, important theological insights. For all of a sudden love of one's fellow man was no longer the standard for interpreting the Bible; instead, biblical formulations and wordings threatened to ossify into rigid laws. And whenever the letter of the Bible flatly and glaringly contradicted the ontological principle of commitment to one's fellow creatures, Bucer emphasized and repeated unremittingly that God—who was goodness, mercy, and loving-kindness personified—could not do other than to aim toward social humaneness and love in all his ordinances and laws. Often enough, this was not a train of thought one could reasonably follow. But Bucer would respond to his critics by asking how man could presume to know better than God what is good and salutary.
As a matter of principle, Bucer also understood law in metaphysical, and therefore timeless, terms. Unlike man, God does not change, stressed
Bucer. Therefore, biblical laws, especially those of the Old 'Testament, remained normative inasmuch as Christ had not expressly abolished them.
In addition, the Holy Spirit did not relativize God's law in the slightest; on the contrary, it allowed Christians to understand the meaning of the law and conferred on them the will and the capacity to fulfill its requirements. In doing what the law demanded, they provided the following generations with examples and precedents. For Bucer it went without asking that these models were to be found primarily in the Bible. But they could also be found among the church fathers and in the legislation of the Christian emperors of late Roman antiquity.
The comments made above provide the background for the fourteen laws of reform that Bucer wished to see enacted in England. They also shed light on the content of those fourteen laws. Before going on to pre-
Exile and Final Days
sent these laws in detail, Bucer embarked on a preliminary discussion of the fundamental characteristics of the church, beginning with the preaching of the gospel, the good news of the sinner's justification by God's mercy alone. He then set forth the essence of church offices, which are necessary for serving the congregation, and wrote at some length on the proper administration of the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's
Supper. He concluded this first section with a detailed exposition of church discipline, which Bucer interpreted as care, companionship, and custody, as the coordination of the penance process, and as a ceremony.
As much as Bucer allowed temporal authority to intervene in church matters, he made it clear beyond all doubt that the state was not free to do as it pleased but rather bore the responsibility of helping the church become once again an independent institution. Bucer therefore vigorously upheld the autonomy of the church in De Regno Christi.
This did not prevent him from strongly urging the king to take the reform of the church into his own hands. After all, the Bible was full of reports of great political rulers devoting their attention to religious issues and working to renew the faith of their subjects. The king had to be ready to die, if necessary, for this cause—a side-swipe at Jacob Sturm's and the Strasbourg city council's pusillanimity toward the Interim. Of course,
Bucer did not expect that Edward VI would be able to carry through all of the legal measures envisioned. Bucer's plans called first for itinerant evangelists to wander through England preaching the gospel. Equipped with a great deal of patience and good arguments, they would attempt to win over as many people as possible. Bucer was convinced beyond the shadow of doubt that their endeavor would succeed. Afterward, the Parliament would approve the introduction of the Reformation. Finally, the entire people would endorse this process; Bucer believed a national council should be convoked that would include ecclesiastical and secular representatives from all counties of the kingdom. The fourteen laws of reform, drafted by Bucer and thereafter to be enacted by the king, would constitute the summary, the confirmation, and, not least, the charter of the thusrenewed covenant between God and the English people.
The first seven of the fourteen laws dealt with church topics in the narrow sense of the term. Beginning with catechetical instruction, the hallowing of Sundays and holidays, and the reverence due to church buildings,
Bucer went on to set up principles for reorganizing church offices, dealing with church property, establishing a comprehensive system of poor relief, and, finally, overhauling matrimonial law. The chapter on marriage turned out inordinately long, since Bucer incorporated his hitherto unpublished
Martin Bucer matrimonial treatises into this section. Once again he presented, extensively and in great detail, his surprisingly modern ideas on divorce and on women's rights.
The next seven laws dealt with social and economic issues, questions of general education, administration, as well as with civil and criminal law in the broadest sense. Bucer attempted to address conditions in England much more specifically in this section than in the one dedicated to purely ecclesiastical matters. He had remarkable success in this respect. Bucer knowledgeably expounds the need to reform the existing administrative structures as well as criminal law; he speaks of the need to protect farmers and check enclosures; he demands that women be taught to weave so that England be able to export cloth besides raw wool; on the whole, he calls for the governmental control of trade and for wages and prices to be fixed by law. These were essentially the same demands that English critics had been making for quite some time already. Like them, Bucer wished to improve the well-being of the general population in England. In his proposals, however, Bucer did more than echo the complaints of the past and supplement them with calls for a higher morality. Absolutely crucial for any reform endeavor, stressed Bucer, was a comprehensive religious renewal that included the formation of new, different human beings who dared to live radically changed lives based on faith and love. To be sure, he was counting on the close cooperation of the civil authorities, who were to promulgate the laws and enforce them. If there was one point at which Bucer's deepest convictions were fundamentally and self-evidently coterminous with those already holding sway in England, it was certainly this one: the belief that the king should have dominant influence on the church. When Archbishop Cranmer stated the view that government, through its laws, should reestablish God's order and in this way create the outward conditions that would enable the Holy Spirit to bring about inward changes in people,?? he was expressing exactly what Bucer believed.
Bucer's ideal society, it should not be denied, bore distinctively authoritarian features. Bucer not only considered psychological and social compulsion to be necessary and, in fact, perfectly admissible, but even physical coercion as well. He was similarly enthusiastic in advocating a surveillance state in which everybody would have his own—private and public—
"watchman, inspector and observer."3+ Bucer obviously did not have our hindsight over the totalitarian nightmares of the twentieth century to learn from. We must also be fair in recognizing that the vision of an intimate, close-knit Christian fellowship was guiding him. Yet a tendency toward legalism in Bucer's theology cannot be denied.
Exile and Final Days
Bucer wanted living congregations: Christians living in close fellowship with one another but who also, because of their faith, assumed responsibility for the social and economic spheres of the surrounding world. One distinctive feature characterized Bucer's theology from its very inception up to this grand design: the conviction that faith permeated all areas of life and that Christians therefore bore responsibility for them. 'This went fundamentally beyond the moralizing laments and reproaches of many of his English contemporaries, as well as their calls for improved ethical and religious attitudes. Bucer wanted to create something new; he wanted to reshape the kingdom of England in congruence with the kingdom of Christ, comprehensively and down to the last detail. To be sure, many of his proposals were very traditional. Others, like the attempt to stop enclosures, were economically and politically obsolete. However, among them were many modern features that pointed to the future. There are certainly traces of the happy balance between self-interest and commonweal, properly described as the central progressive element in the literature of the period and manifested most clearly in Sir Thomas Smith's Discourse of the Commonweal of this Realm of England,*> present in Bucer's De Regno Christi, for instance, if one considers his statements on interest revenue and especially on divorce. To be sure, as thematically rich and stimulating as Bucer's work "on the kingdom of Christ" was, it did not become the charter of the Reformation in England, as Bucer had wished and hoped.
Life in Cambridge and Death Day-to-Day Life Bucer would never feel at home in England. His remaining time was too brief to allow him even to begin acclimatizing himself to life in Cambridge. Everything here was unfamiliar, he complained in a letter to William Farel in January 1550: "the weather, the language, the food, the customs, the housing, and just about everything else."'° The open fireplaces did not provide him with the accustomed warmth, making him feel as if he was freezing constantly. The wine he was used to drinking was unaffordably expensive. Furthermore, worries over political and ecclesiastical developments in Germany as well as over his family, which had stayed behind in Strasbourg, weighed down his spirits. A letter Bucer wrote to Calvin in August 1549 poignantly expresses how imprisoned and forlorn he felt in England: "I am spending my old age in exile, far away from my native country, banished from my church I loved so dearly, my school, and my city—where I was able to accomplish a few things by God's
Martin Bucer grace—separated from my beloved friends and brethren: all of this in order to live now in a country that may be kind and gracious to me, but whose language I do not know, whose food I cannot get used to, whose way of life is unfamiliar—and, finally, a country in which I see no clear perspective of achieving something for the Lord through my efforts.">7
Of course, Bucer had friends and patrons in Cambridge and elsewhere.
Walter Haddon, professor of Roman Law and vice chancellor of the university, was among them, as were John Cheke, the Greek scholar Nicholas
Carr, the theologians Matthew Parker and Edmund Grindal, who later would become successive archbishops of Canterbury. These men were the vehicles by which at least some of Bucer's convictions and goals made their way into the further development of the Anglican Church. Women of noble rank also supported Bucer, for instance, Lady Jane Grey and especially the duchess of Suffolk. The numerous attentions and favors showered so lavishly upon Bucer could not obscure the fact that he was no longer an influential churchman, as he had been in Strasbourg and in Germany, but was now only a small-town professor, far from the centers of power.
Cambridge had about twenty-five hundred inhabitants at this time.
Almost all aspects of town life were influenced in some way or another by the university. Admittedly, its scholarly and religious reputation had declined considerably in recent years. In spite of an official endorsement by the university, it was clear that getting the Reformation firmly established—in Cambridge as elsewhere—was going to be much more difficult than merely ridding Great St. Mary's and the college chapels of side altars and images or whitewashing religious murals in churches. In addition,
Bucer's altercation with Young and other fellow professors had repercussions on students' attitudes. 'The new professor from Germany, so rigorous and lacking in charm, could hardly lay claim to popularity. The fact that Bucer began his morning lectures one hour earlier than was the norm?® also did little to ingratiate him with students. As one student wrote toa friend in May 1550, "Doctor Bucer cries incessantly, now in daily lectures, now in frequent sermons, that we should practice penitence, discard the depraved customs of hypocritical religion, correct the abuses of feasts, be more frequent in hearing and having sermons, constrain ourselves by some sort of discipline. Many things of this kind he impresses on us even ad nauseam.">?
During his stay in Cambridge, Bucer lived in housing owned by Trinity College, of which he was a member by virtue of his Regius Professorship. The house in which he quite probably lived, Physwick Hostel, no
Exile and Final Days
longer stands, having disappeared in the course of the expansion of the Great Court at Trinity College in later years.*? Bucer was joined in September 1549 by his wife Wibrandis Rosenblatt and his stepdaughter Agnes
Capito. In March 1550, an Alsatian tiled stove, made possible through a gift of 20 pounds by the king, was built in Bucer's study on the second floor of the family residence. A second one on the ground floor was built some time later. This greatly appreciated convenience was no luxury but rather a bitter necessity for Bucer's ill and aged body.*! Life in such close proximity to the predominantly Catholic Trinity College, outraged at the conspicuous presence of a married former priest, must certainly not have been easy for Bucer and his family."
Wibrandis returned to Strasbourg in May 1550 in order to settle household affairs. By the close of the summer she was back in Cambridge with the furniture and their personal effects, accompanied this time by her own children and her elderly mother Magdalena Strub. Since Bucer's salary was apparently paid only irregularly, the whole family often had to do without basics. Unlike some of his colleagues, he lacked the necessary means for carrying out a little farming or animal husbandry on the side— although the duchess of Suffolk did give him a cow and a calf. On the other hand, it would be exaggerated to claim the family suffered actual privation. After Bucer's death, Wibrandis still would be in possession of the stately sum of 380 pounds after settling the family's Cambridge household and selling her deceased husband's books.
A set of rules for daily life (Formula vivendi) that Bucer probably drafted in the fall of 1550 gives us a fascinating glimpse into day-to-day existence in the Bucer household." Quite likely Bucer had already established similar sets of rules during his life in Strasbourg. The same guiding principles that he had formulated once again in his magnum opus on the kingdom of Christ were also to become reality in the household and the family: moral and religious discipline, love of God and of one's fellow human beings. Only those persons willing to submit themselves to these rules were welcome to live under his roof. This also implied their assuming quite precise duties that were monitored quite strictly by the head of household. Especially the two students living with the family, Martin
Brem and a certain Wilhelm, were expected to follow these rules. 'This meant they had to get up every morning at four. After prayer they had to light up the house and get the fires going in the stoves. The main work of the students consisted of copying Bucer's manuscripts—no easy task in view of the Strasbourg reformer's almost illegible handwriting. 'They also were to keep careful record of all incoming and outgoing mail, as well as
Martin Bucer give private lessons to Bucer's infant daughters. 'They were to wait on the family during meals as well as take care of and wash Bucer's clothing. One of the students was always expected to accompany Bucer wherever he went. There is no doubt that these strict rules, based on the assumption that the household head bore supreme authority, were in line with the presuppositions and convictions of the times. Yet the thoroughness with which Bucer regulated even the smallest details gives ample reason to assume that life under his roof was not necessarily simple—especially if one considers that his wife Wibrandis was hardly less domineering.
The End As we saw previously, Bucer was already old, feeble, and physically almost completely exhausted by the time he arrived in England. Illnesses without end bound him time and again to his bed, among them chronic coughing, rheumatism, lithiasis, intestinal ailments, and leg ulcers. In the final months of his life he was additionally plagued by fits of persistent vomiting, shivering, and sweating. For a time he even suffered under a partial paralysis of the right side that particularly hampered the use of his arm and hand— a situation that he had difficulty accepting, considering how much work he was hoping to carry out yet. All these symptoms point quite probably toward a severe case of tuberculosis, which eventually cost him his life.
After every one of these recurrent attacks, Bucer managed to muster enough strength to continue his work. However, when his health broke down once again on February 13, 1551, it soon became clear that his weakened body had no more reserves to fall back on. Bucer's condition became increasingly worse in spite of continuous, devoted care. On February 22,
1551, he dictated an addition to his last will. In it he named Walter Haddon and Matthew Parker as executors of his testament, commended his loved ones to Thomas Cranmer, thanked his stepdaughter Agnes Capito for her loving care, and closed with the words: "May the Lord rule everything else. He is the protector of widows and the father of orphans."
The situation of the church in Germany tormented and anguished Bucer until his very death. Did not the very same fate threaten England, should it respond with the same indifference to God's Word now revealed so openly and clearly? On the afternoon of February 28, 1551, Bucer urged those surrounding his deathbed to do all they could to make his grand design for the kingdom of Christ come true. That very same night he died, at only fifty-nine years of age.
Exile and Final Days
He was solemnly laid to rest in the choir of Great St. Mary's in the presence of a large crowd of university professors and students, as well as of local townspeople. Haddon held a Latin funeral oration, whereas Parker gave a eulogy in English.* This impressive event had a gruesome sequel some years later. On February 6, 1556, in the midst of her campaign of militant re-Catholicization, Queen Mary had Bucer and Fagius posthumously tried as heretics. Their caskets were disinterred and chained to the stake at the Cambridge marketplace, and later burned along with all the available books of both theologians. On July 22, 1560, Elizabeth I rehabilitated Bucer and Fagius in a formal act. A brass plaque on the floor of the choir in Great St. Mary's reminds visitors today of the earlier location of Bucer's grave.