The Prayer Book and Martin Bucer

If you love the Book of Common Prayer, you owe much to Martin Bucer. Bucer was the German Strasbourg Protestant reformer (1491-1551) that Thomas Cranmer invited to England to help him write the Book of Common Prayer. He arrived in England with the returning Protestant exiles who had fled England under Henry VIII. He was given the prestigeous Regius Professor of Divinity chair at Cambridge University.

The term "Book of Common Prayer" comes from Bucer, and many of the changes made in the 1552 edition (our 1662 version) are thanks to him. From the 60 criticisms of the 1549 Prayer Book offered in his book “Censura,” 23-25 were addressed in the 1552 revision. He made sure that a lectionary was included in the new Book in which the Bible was read in church services completely in one year, as well as added the congregational involvement and responses that are so much a part of Anglican worship today. Bucer insisted that the “epiclesis” be deleted (fancy word for “invoking the Holy Spirit” to change the bread & wine into the body and blood of Christ) and other ceremonial gestures that suggested an understanding of “real presence” too close to transubstantiation.

On this day January 31, 1517 Martin Bucer began his studies at the University of Heidelberg where he accidentally stumbled into the Heidelberg Disputation in which Luther was making the mind-blowing claim that “law and gospel” are two different parts of the Bible’s teaching: the law says “Do this” and it is never done; grace says “Believe this” and it is already done (Disputation # 26). Bucer was converted to know that the gospel (Jesus) is the answer to the law's demands, and he would never be the same. When the Catholic queen, Mary Tudor, was enthroned, she considered Bucer’s ideas so dangerous that she had his bones dug up and burned. This didn't bother him a bit.