Martin Bucer and the Reform of Worship

Posted on February 9, 2018 
Filed under History, Theology

“If Martin Bucer (1491-1551) is not an unsung hero of the Reformation, he is certainly an undersung hero. This particularly is the case when it comes to public worship.

Bucer’s fingerprints are all over Calvin’s Form of Church Prayers (1542) as well as the Book of Common Prayer (1552, 1559, 1662).

Calvin acknowledges that most of his Form was borrowed from Bucer, while Bucer’s 50-page response to King Edward VI’s first Book of Common Prayer (1549), entitled Censura, led to major alterations in a solidly if incompletely Reformed direction.…”

– At Reformation21, Terry Johnson provides a bunch of reasons to give thanks for Martin Bucer. Bucer’s influence on Sydney Anglicans is not insignificant.

See also:

Remembering Martin Bucer – Steve Tong at The Australian Church Record –

“In 1556 the Catholic Queen Mary exhumed Bucer’s remains from Great St Mary’s, chained his bones to a stake in the town marketplace, and burnt them along with all his available works. This unceremonious treatment was overturned by Queen Elizabeth I in a formal act of rehabilitation on 22 July 1560 and a brass plaque was placed on the location of Bucer’s original grave.

Unlike the very public memorial to Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer in Oxford, Bucer’s brass plaque is hidden from everyday sight. So it is with Bucer’s legacy for Anglican evangelicals.”