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In Defence of Magisterial Reformation: Martin Bucer’s Writings Against the Spiritualists, 1535
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The Protestant Reformation was the largest and most sustained challenge to authority ever experienced within the western Church. It involved a repudiation of existing teachings and forms of worship, along with a rejection, even a demonization, of the clergy and ecclesiastical hierarchy. From the 1520s a number of evangelical Churches developed which were often as hostile to each other as they were to the Catholic Church, and, as a result of polemical public discussions over competing teachings and beliefs, it was no longer clear to many people what constituted the Church or who should exercise authority over religious life. Some were led to question whether there was any need for a Church which imposed dogma and religious discipline on all people within a community or country. It is the discussion on the role and powers of the visible Church which will be examined here, by focusing on the city of Augsburg, but doing so through two significant writings by Martin Bucer, the leading theologian of the Protestant Church in Strasbourg. Recent research has added to our awareness of Bucer’s understanding of the relationship between Church and community, and this contribution will provide insight into how the views of Bucer impacted upon the debate on religious separatism which was taking place in Strasbourg, Augsburg and elsewhere in Germany. They show that even after Bucer had persuaded the government of his own city to expel religious radicals, he continued to believe that support for separatist and spiritualist ideas constituted a substantial challenge to the establishment of disciplined Protestant Churches.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2007
References
1 Some of the most important recent work on Bucer’s views on the Christian community includes: Greschat, Martin, Martin Bucer Ein Reformator und seine Zeit (Munich, 1990)Google Scholar, English trans., Buckwalter, Stephen E., Martin Bucer: a Reformer and his Times (Louisville, KY and London, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, D. F., ed., Martin Bucer. Reforming Church and Community (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gäumann, Andreas, Reich Christi und Obrigkeit: Eine Studie zum Reformatorischen Denken und Handeln Martin Bucers (Bern, 2001)Google Scholar; Krieger, Christian and Lienhard, Marc, eds, Martin Bucer and Sixteenth-Century Europe, Actes du colloque de Strasbourg (28–31 août 1991), 2 vols (Leiden, 1993)Google Scholar; Strohm, Christoph, ed., Martin Bucer und dos Recht: Beiträge zum internationalen Symposium vom 1. bis 3. März 2001 (Geneva, 2002).Google Scholar
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30 Dialogues, 57.
31 Of the Office, 29.
32 Dialogues, 50, 65.
33 Ibid., 74.
34 Ibid., 147–8.
35 Ibid., Of the Office, 28.
36 Dialogues, 148.
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39 Dialogues, 153. ‘Derohalb werden sy [die obren] verschaffen, das yederman doch höre das Evangelium und im niemand widerspreche oder davon abziehe, weder mit falscher leer noch üppigem leben, alle unzucht und unerbarkait werden syzum ernstlichen anziehen’.
40 Of the Office, 32.
41 Ibid., 33.
42 Dialogues, 98.
43 Ibid., 100.
44 Of the Office, 29.
45 Dialogues, 130.
46 Ibid., 167–8.
47 Ibid., 148. ‘So mag das mitt der warhait nit widersprochen werden, die gutthaten und straffen, durch die oberkaiten recht gemässiget und in namen Gottes wol außgespendet, vermügen vil, die leüt vom gotlosen wesen zu warer und selbwilliger gotsaligkait zu füren und auch entlich zu bringen’.
48 Of the Office, 33.
49 Dialogues, 178.