572 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
The chief reformer of Strassburg was Martin Bucer (1491- 1552).!1 He was a native of Alsace, a Dominican monk, and ordained to the priesthood. He received a deep impression from Luther at the disputation in Heidelberg, 1518; obtained papal dispensation from his monastic vows (1521); left the Roman Church; found refuge in the castle of Francis of Sickingen ; married a nun, and accepted a call to Strassburg in 1528.
Here he labored as minister for twenty-five years, and had a hand in many important movements connected with the Reformation. He attended the colloquy at Marburg (1529) ; wrote, with Capito, the Confessio Tetrapolitana (1530); brought about an artificial and short-lived armistice between Luther and Zwingli by the Wittenberg Concordia (1536) ; connived, unfortunately, at the bigamy of Philip of Hesse; and took a leading part, with Melanchthon, in the unsuccessful reformation of Archbishop Herrmann of Cologne (1542). Serious political troubles, and his resistance to the semi-popish Interim, made his stay in Strassburg dangerous, and at last impossible. Melanchthon in Wittenberg, Myconius in Basel, and Calvin in Geneva, offered him an asylum ; but he accepted, with his younger colleague Fagius, a call of Cranmer to England (1549). He aided him in his reforms; was highly esteemed by the archbishop and King Edward VI., and ended his labors as professor of theology in Cambridge. His bones were exhumed in the reign of Bloody Mary (1556), but his memory was honorably restored by Queen Elizabeth (1560).
Bucer figures larg sly in the history of his age as the third (next to Luther and Melanchthon) among the Reformers of Germany, as a learned theologian and diplomatist, and especially as a unionist and peacemaker between the Lutherans and Zwinglians. He forms also a connecting link between Germany and England, and exerted some influence in framing
1 Butzer in German, Bucerus in Latin.
§ 96. THE REFORMATION IN NORTH GERMANY. 573
the Anglican standards of doctrine and worship. His motto was: “ We believe in Christ, not in the church.” !
He impressed his character upon the church of Strassburg, which occupied a middle ground between Wittenberg and Ziirich, and gave shelter to Calvin and the Reformed refugees of France. Strict Lutheranism triumphed for a period, but his irenical catholicity revived in the practical pietism of Spener, who was likewise an Alsacian. In recent times the Strassburg professors, under the lead of Dr. Reuss, mediated between the Protestant theology of Germany and that of France, in both languages, and furnished the best edition of the works of John Calvin.
§ 96. The Reformation in North Germany.
In Magdeburg the doctrines of Luther were preached in 1522 by Melchior Mirisch, an Augustinian prior, who had studied at Wittenberg. The magistrate shook off the authority of Archbishop Albrecht, invited Luther to preach in 1524, and secured the services of his friend Nicolaus von Amsdorf, who became superintendent, and introduced the necessary changes. During the Interim troubles the city was a stronghold of the Lutheran party headed by Flacius, and laid under the imperial ban (1548). In the Thirty Years’ War it was burnt by Tilly (16381), but rose anew from destruction.?
In Magdeburg appeared the first Protestant church history, 1559-1574, in thirteen folio volumes, edited by Flacius, under the title ‘The Magdeburg Centuries,” —a work of colossal industry, but utilizing history for sectarian purposes against popery. It called forth the Annales of Baronius in the opposite interest.
Breslau and Silesia were reformed chiefly by John Hess,
1 “Wir sind Christglaubig, nicht kirchgliubig.”
2 Seckendorf, I. 246. Wolter, Gesch. der Stadt Magdeburg (1845); Hoffmann, Chronik der Stadt Magdeb. (1850, 3 vols.); Rathmann, Gesch. Magdeb. ; Preger, Matth. Flacius Illyricus und seine Zeit (Erlangen, 1859-1861).
574 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 15380.
who studied at Wittenberg, 1519, a friend of Luther and Melanchthon. He held a successful disputation in Breslau in defense of the Protestant doctrines, 1524.1
Kaspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig (1490-1561), a nobleman in the service of the Duke Frederick II. of Liegnitz, was one of the earliest promoters of the Reformation in Silesia, but fell out with Luther in the eucharistic controversy (1524). He had peculiar views on the sacraments, similar to those of the Quakers. He also taught that the flesh of Christ was deified. He founded a new sect, which was persecuted in Germany, but is perpetuated among the Schwenkfeldian congregations in Eastern Pennsylvania.?
Among the later leaders of the Protestant cause in Breslau must be mentioned Crato von Crafftheim (ἃ. 1585), who studied at Wittenberg six years as an inmate of Luther’s household, and became an eminent physician of the Emperor Maximilian IJ. His younger friend, Zacharias Ursinus (d. 15838), is one of the two authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. Crato belonged to the Melanchthonian school, in distinction from the rigid Lutheranism which triumphed in the Formula of Concord.’
Bremen accepted Protestantism in November, 1522, by calling Heinrich Moller, better known as Heinrich von Ziitphen (1468-1524), to the parish of Ansgari, and afterwards two other Protestant preachers. Moller had studied at Wittenberg, 1515, and taken a degree in 1521 under Melanchthon.
1 Of this disputation Luther reported to Spalatin, May 11, 1524 (De Wette, II. 511): ‘‘ Vratislavie disputatio Joannis Hess processit feliciter, Srustra resistentibus tot legatis regum et technis episcopi.”’
2 Professor Hartranft, D.D., of Hartford, Conn., a descendant of the Pennsylvania Schwenkfelders, has investigated the Schwenkfeld literature at Breslau, and issued a prospectus for its publication (1887).
8 Késtlin, biography of Hess in the ‘‘ Zeitschrift des schlesischen Geschichtsvereins,’”’ vol. VI. Gilett, Crato von Crafftheim und seine Freunde, Frankfurt-a.-M. 1860, 2 parts. A very learned work. To Ursinus we shall return in the history of the Reformation in the Palatinate. In the cities of the Hanseatic League the Reformation was introduced at an early period,