Martin Bucer

Martin Bucer was one of the leading lights of the Reformation in Strasbourg. He was born in 1491 and died in 1551, and he, like Martin Luther, was an Augustinian monk. In 1518, he found himself in Heidelberg at the Augustinian chapter house with Luther himself.

In October 1517, Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door at Wittenberg, beginning the Protestant Reformation. Luther's brothers in the Augustinian order wanted to take him up on his invitation to debate, so they invited him to the Augustinian chapter house in Heidelberg. Luther arrived in April 1518, and rather than presenting the Ninety-Five Theses, he drafted a new set of twenty-nine points for debate.

Bucer was just a young monk in the audience. Seeing the debate had a significant impact on Bucer, and sometime in the next year or two, he was converted. He was one of the first Reformers to leave the monastery and get married. In 1523, he was invited to Strasbourg, and he stayed there until 1548.

Strasbourg was a leading center of the Reformation. During that time, it was considered a German city; today, it is considered a French city. Strasbourg had the pulpit from which Bucer put forth Reformation ideas and also had what would become the University of Strasbourg, a center of Reformation thought.

Strasbourg was a leading center in the academic world in Europe. It was at Strasbourg that Johannes Gutenberg first put his printing press into practice. Some of the best printers for the Reformation could be found there. In fact, John Calvin, long after he was at Geneva, would send his manuscripts to Strasbourg because he so appreciated and respected the Strasbourg printers.

Bucer was a genius, especially when it came to the biblical languages. He was a skilled interpreter of Hebrew and a skilled exegete in Greek. He was also a very skillful pastor. He had the ability to take the ideas of the Reformation and bring them right down to the pew and to the people of God.

He was involved in a number of theological issues and tried to smooth over some of the theological controversies of his day, including attempting to mediate the dispute between Luther and Ulrich Zwingli over the Lord's Supper. In 1548, Emperor Charles V imposed the Augsburg Interim on the Holy Roman Empire, which mandated certain Roman Catholic rites and practices. Bucer was forced to sign the document under duress, but he continued to fight against it and was eventually forced into exile. He accepted a position at the University of Cambridge and spent the last three years of his life there. So, he was involved not only in training up a whole generation of Reformed pastors and scholars in Germany, but in England as well.