It is part of our American folk-lore that sooner or later a criminal will return to the scene of his crime. And perhaps it is a bad conscience which brings me to this topic. Nonetheless, if indeed this paper be an exercise in the amendment of life, I take comfort in the fact that a confession of sin is hardly a profession of achievement. Consequently, if at the close of this paper I leave this topic no better than I found it, the effort will yet have been a phase in my amendment of life. I do not think that any of us will come easily or quickly to an adequate understanding of how greatly we all must change our ways. Nor will the change itself be accomplished by mere good intentions.

It is not generally known that during the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries, England and Scotland were in fairly close cultural relations and religious contacts with Bohemia. But such was the case. The earliest such connection is traceable to the endowment established by Vojtěch Ranků of Ježov (Adalbertus Ranconis de Ericinio) for Czech students wishing to study at Oxford or Paris. Vojtěch was one of the most learned Czech Masters of the University of Paris, where in 1355 he had served as Rector. Later he had taught at Oxford. Furthermore, this initial tie between Bohemia and England was greatly strengthened when in 1382 King Richard II married Anne, the daughter of Emperor Charles IV and sister of the Czech King, Wenceslas IV. She was an unusually cultured young lady who read her Bible assiduously in three languages—Czech, German, and Italian. Many Czechs, among them Lord Peter of Wartenberg, accompanied her, and some of them even settled in England. Furthermore, a considerable number of Czech students matriculated at the English universities. Those who studied at Oxford became acquainted with the writings of John Wyclif, and upon their return home brought copies of them to Prague. At first, only the philosophical works of Wyclif were thus made available; but after 1400 his theological treatises were extant in Bohemia as well. Among those who introduced Wyclif's doctrines into Bohemia, the most important was Jerome of Prague. He returned from Oxford in 1401 and influenced Hus by his fervent Wyclifism. Hus transcribed many of Wyclif's works for his own use. Later, similar services were rendered by two Czech students, Nicholas Faulfiš and George of Kninice. They visited the Lollard centers, such as Kemerton near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire and Braybrook in Northamptonshire. There they copied many of Wyclif's works which were apparently no longer available in Oxford, and upon their return to Bohemia brought them along. They also delivered a document from the University of Oxford testifying to Wyclif's orthodoxy—although this was probably a forgery.

In assaying responsibility for the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the crescendo of persecution which preceded it, historians have shown rather noteworthy indecisiveness. It would seem that almost every member of Louis XIV's inner circle and every possible combination of individuals within that select group have been stigmatized at one time or another by some memoirist or historian for his part in the events of 1685. Louvois, Le Tellier, Châteauneuf, Harlay, Seignelay, Fr. La Chaise, Mme. de Maintenon, and others have had their reputations alternately blackened and whitewashed, or restored to a fairly satisfactory shade of gray. The Grand Monarch himself has been portrayed both as the innocent victim of unscrupulous and misleading advisers and as the archfanatic in an entourage of fanatics.

At the outset of Italy's struggle for political regeneration religious differences divided American opinion as to the justice of the Italian demands and continued to color that opinion throughout the years that followed. Before the election of Pius IX to the Papacy, Americans had read and heard a great deal about the tyranny of the various despotic governments of Italy after the Congress of Vienna. Books of travel, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, accounts of newspaper correspondents in various cities of the peninsula, stories told by returning travellers and by Italian exiles in America had painted a most gloomy picture of the spiritual and physical conditions under which many liberals were suffering in the dungeons of the despots who had been restored to power after the downfall of Napoleon. Nowhere were conditions worse, it was believed, than in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and in the Papal States.

It should now be evident that Bucer is no longer “the little known,” “the forgotten,” “the lesser prophet” of which the literature as late as the 'twenties and even the 'thirties spoke. The rediscovery of Bucer began earlier, with the assertion of his formative influence upon Calvin, in writings by Seeberg, Lang and Anrieh, by Pannier and Otto Ritschl. Hyma (19) suggested that Bucer “made Calvin a Calvinist”; and Pauck (15) concluded that Calvin left Strassburg as Bucer's “pupil or follower.” That thesis in its broad assertion prompted research into specific aspects of his influence upon Calvin. The question of church organization drew special investigation, to which Lang, Courvoisier, Stupperich and Strohl made important contributions. It was generally agreed that the Reformed “type of church” was Bucer's creation.

The point of Calvin's debt to Bucer has been well taken. But recent Calvin scholarship has tempered the claim (cf., 24, 25, 30). And Bucer scholarship inclines to redirect attention to the man himself, to his whole life and work.

Two concerns mark the trend in Bucer study. The first is to understand his personality, and thus more fully his contribution. Strohl (30) notes “the openness of his mind, his faculty of comprehension and assimilation, which qualified him to be an agent of liaison among the great minds of his time.” Ritter (32) marks the same trait. Courvoisier (21) contrasts it to Calvin's greater clarity of mind. And Heinrich Bornkamm cites it as the reason why Bucer did not produce a firm kirchcntypus, why his work found no enduring form, why his contribution is so hard to grasp; for he “sought conciously the whole above particulars, unity above opposites”: Martin Bucers Bedeutung für die europäische Reformationsgeschichte: Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, Nr. 69, Jahrg. 58, heft 2. Another side of his personality, according to Strohl (and Ritter and others), was “his practical sense, his pastoral spirit, his preoccupation of cultivating the Christian life individually and collectively, of realizing a Christian society.” Pauck (114) and others have found this trait underlying his social ethics. Weber (29) describes his thought as ein praktisches Erleben des Christusglaubens. Again, scholars have called attention to Bucer's humanism—Pauck (114) in terms of his social and political ethics, Strohl in reference to both his ethics (124–26) and his educational policies (111–12), Stupperich (127) in connection with his unitive efforts. Again, Holsten (128–29) has noticed the “germ” of Pietism in his attitude toward non-Christian religions. Frick (130) speaks of him more confidently as “the Pietist of the Reformers.” And Lang begins his study of Puritanismus und Pietismus (152) with Bucer. But Van de Poll (92) concludes:

He cannot be called a spiritualist, as Köhler did, for then one forgets the connection with the whole of his liturgical activities; no more is it right to entitle him the pietist among the reformers, as Lang has done, for this name would do no justice in his conceptions on Church, Office and Holy Supper.

The second concern is to reveal the extraordinary range of Bucer's activity and influence. Hastings Eells wrote Martin Bucer (8) to satisfy students of the Reformation who “have found his footprints not only in Germany but in Switzerland, France, England, and other countries as well.” Under “The contributions of Martin Bucer to the Reformation” (51), Eells lists: Reformer of Strassburg, Conciliator of the Lutherans and Zwinglians on the Eucharist; Imperial Statesman; Protestant Partisan (after Regensburg, 1541) and Reformer of Cologne; and Contributor to the English Reformation. Bornkamm (180) concludes that

the union of inner-German Protestantism, Divine Worship and the organization of the Reformed Church, the Anglican conception of church and state, the Puritan and Pietist movements bear his touch in various degrees.

Studies of this extensive career underscore Bucer's importance and make him an appealing figure to the twentieth century. In an era of ecumenical effort, McNeill recalls him to us as “the most zealous exponent of church unity of his age.” His teachings and negotiations concerning the Lord's Supper have been interpreted in many studies by Eells and illuminated in the important documentary articles by Ernst Bizer. In a time of liturgical reflection, Maxwell presents him as the father of the Reformed tradition; and Van de Poll ascribes to him the development of “the actual character” of the Reformed Church. His contribution to the English Reformation has been reported by Hopf; the enduring importance of his De Regno Christi upon English religious affairs, by Pauck; his influence upon Puritanism and Pietism, by Lang. Questions about the sacramental teachings of the Book of Common Prayer have prompted serious and controversial studies of Bucer by Smyth, Dix, Timms and Richardson. Bucer's influence upon Calvin need not again be mentioned; he is numbered among the fathers of the Reformed Church.

Why then has Bucer been so little known? It was not his purpose to leave behind a separated church; and history counts him less than the founders. In Strassburg and elsewhere, the Gnesio Lutherans suppressed his writings and tried to discount him entirely. His career was marked by failures; but even they reflect the measure of his ambitions. “There is much of the tragic about his work,” writes Bornkamm (180), citing the frustrations in Strassburg and the failure of his unitive efforts. “But for that his stimulus flows in the whole of European Reformation history.”