Martin Bucer is driven from Strasbourg in…
June 1549 CE
Martin Bucer is driven from Strasbourg in 1549 following Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s defeat of the Protestant princes in the Schmalkaldic War.
The German has received several offers of sanctuary from fellow Protestant leaders, including Melanchthon's from Wittenberg and Calvin's from Geneva.
He accepts Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's invitation to come to England; from his correspondence with several notable Englishmen, he believed that the English Reformation had advanced with some success.
Bucer, Fagius, and others had arrived on April 7, 1549, in London, where Cranmer received them with full honors; a few days later they were introduced to Edward VI and his court.
Bucer takes the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, where, under the guidance of Cranmer, he will be able to influence the second revision of the Book of Common Prayer.
He enters a controversy in June when Martyr, holding the equivalent Regius Professor position at Oxford University, debates with Catholic colleagues over the issue of the Lord's Supper.
Martyr had asked Bucer for his support, but Bucer does not totally agree with Martyr's position and thinks that exposure of differences will not assist the cause of reform.
Unwilling to see the Eucharist conflict repeat itself in England, he tells Martyr he does not take sides, Catholic, Lutheran, or Zwinglian.