21
October 1550 A.D. Martin
Bucer Gives Advice to King Edward VI
When Reformer Martin Bucer handed his book, The Kingdom of Christ,
to John Cheke on this day, October 21, 1550, he was
sure that England's King Edward VI would see it. The boy-king was under the
supervision of men who were in sympathy with the Reformation. One of them was
the royal tutor, John Cheke.
Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and
Zwingli are names from the Reformation that almost everyone recognizes. Martin
Bucer's name is not. And yet he was among the five or six most prominent
reformers, and was the author of many scriptural commentaries. John Calvin was
deeply influenced by his thought.
Martin Bucer began his religious
career as a Dominican, but converted to Protestant views in 1521 after reading
works of Luther and Erasmus. Excommunicated by the Roman Catholic church in
1522, he moved to Strasbourg where he became a Protestant leader.
With the success of
Protestantism, a new problem arose: Whose Protestantism? Each leader
interpreted the Bible differently. For example, Lutherans and Zwinglians could
not agree on the exact nature of the Eucharist (Lord's Supper). Bucer labored
to bring the two sides together, proposing formulas that he thought might be
acceptable to everyone. His attempts met with distrust on every side. Luther
scornfully said to him, "It is better for you to have your enemies than to
set up a fictitious fellowship."
Bucer himself thought that
"Those who do not make a whole-hearted effort to do the things that are
pleasing to the Heavenly Father" should not "declare themselves
citizens and members of the kingdom of Christ." In 1548 he refused to sign
a faulty peace agreement and had to leave Strasbourg. Thomas Cranmer, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, invited him to England and made him a professor at
Cambridge University.
Bucer's sharp eye quickly saw
the needs of his adopted country. Friends urged him to write a practical
proposal for reform. He called it De regno Christi (The Kingdom of
Christ). "It would seem fitting to write for Your Majesty a little about
the fuller acceptance and reestablishment of the Kingdom of Christ in your
realm," Bucer said in the preface. He defined the kingdom of Christ as
God's total administration by which saints are saved and preserved.
Did the book make any
difference? Edward died young and had little influence on England's future.
However, when the young king wrote an essay on reforms, it echoed Bucer's
ideas, listing the same abuses Bucer had named (including wastefulness, and
official corruption); and suggested remedies that could have come straight out
of Bucer's work. The Kingdom of Christ championed education and other topics.
Edward also became a champion of schools.
Bucer died in 1551; but his
story didn't end there. After Edward's death, the Catholic queen, Mary Tudor,
considered even the memory of Bucer so dangerous that she had his bones dug up
and burned. His tomb was destroyed. When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne,
she promptly reversed Mary and had Cambridge restore Bucer's honors.
Bibliography:
1. "A chronology of Martin Bucer"
http://www.seanet.com/~eldrbarry/heidel/bucer.pdf"
2. Hopf, Constantin. Martin Bucer and the English Reformation.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946; esp. at pp 27, 28.
3. "Martin Bucer." Encyclopedia Americana. Chicago:
American Corp., 1956.
4. "Martin Bucer." Encyclopedia Britannica, 1967.
5. "Martin Bucer." Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.
Oxford, 1997.
6. "Martin Bucer." Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation.
7. Schaff, Philip.History of the Christian Church. New
York: Scribners, 1910.
8. Weber, N. A. "Martin Bucer." Catholic Encyclopedia.
New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
Last updated June,
2007.
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