Bucer, Martin

(1491–1551)

   Theologian.

   Bucer was born in Sélestat in Alsace. At the age of fifteen, he joined the Dominican Order, but was released from his vows in 1521, after being converted by the views of Martin luther. He was one of the first of the Reformers to marry; he settled in Strasbourg, was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church and became a leader of the Reformed community. He was involved in the drawing up of the constitutions of several new Churches and, between 1538 and 1541, John calvin was among his students. At the Conferences of Leipzig in 1539, Hagenau and Worms in 1540 and Regensburg in 1541, he was a leading Protestant negotiator against the Catholics. However, because he resisted the Interim Settlement of 1548, he was exiled to England where he became Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He made suggestions for Archbishop cranmer’s 1549 revision of the Anglican Prayer Book and he dedicated his own book, The Kingdom of Christ, to the young King Edward vi. Bucer is primarily remembered for his influence on Protestant liturgy, particularly in the Scottish, English and Genevan versions.

   H. Eells, Martin Bucer (1951);

   W.P. Stephens, The Holy Spirit in the Theology of Martin Bucer (1970);

   C. Hopf, Martin Bucer and the English Reformation (1946).