Tag Archives: Protestant Reformation

April 17, 2026

Martin Bucer: The Failed Protestant Peacemaker of Strasbourg

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity along the Rhine travel blog series….

Being a peacemaker is not easy. While the current conflict with Iran absorbs the headlines, it overshadows another long standing conflict: Just ask President Donald Trump, who since the beginning of his presidency has been trying to find a peaceful solution to the Russia/Ukraine conflict for well over a year.

Such was also the case in the 16th century in Europe, when theological giants, like Martin Luther and the Roman Catholic Pope, spread their influence across the land. With the exception the Holy Roman Emperor himself (Charles V), the Pope was the most prominent leader in Western Europe, whereas Luther was a seminary professor, with a sharp wit and stinging rhetoric, who knew how to use the printing press, the rough equivalent to today’s social media platforms on the Internet. The Reformation did not only result in a split within the medieval Catholic church, it also divided Protestants trying to forge a united movement in attempts to reform that medieval Catholic church.

The Protestant Reformation was not simply a theological, religious dispute. It had far reaching ramifications impacting kings, princes, and emperors, and the millions of subjects who served them. Within a century after Luther, the religious conflicts of the 16th century became intertwined with political conflicts, resulting in the Thirty Years War, where roughly one out of four Europeans died due to violence and (mostly) disease spread by the war.

Into the mix was another Protestant Reformer from Germany, Martin Bucer, who was just a few years younger than Luther, a man that most Christians have probably never heard of. Unlike Luther, Bucer was more cautious and reserved. Yet Bucer became a leading voice among the Protestants, trying to forge a “third way” through various theological conflicts, particularly in the city of Strasbourg, along the Rhine River, bordering France and Germany.

Back in October of 2025, my wife and I went on a river cruise on the Rhine River, and we spent a day in Strasbourg. I got to visit some of the sites where Martin Bucer lived much of his life.

In front of Martin Bucer’s home in Strasbourg, France. It was in this home where Bucer officiated the marriage between John Calvin and Idelette de Bure, a former Anabaptist. Calvin had been forced out of Geneva, Switzerland for several years. Bucer helped to arrange for his friend Calvin to move to Strasbourg, to get a job as a pastor for French Protestant refugees living in the city. It was a bit of a cloudy day in Strasbourg, when I took this photo in October, 2025.

 

Martin Bucer Becomes a Protestant

Not much is known about Martin Bucer’s early life. Born in 1491, Bucer joined the Dominican order perhaps in his late teenage years, and ended up studying theology in Heidelberg in 1515. But this was the era when the humanism of Desiderius Erasmus came to the foreground, particularly with Erasmus’ pivotal Greek New Testament, which helped inspire Martin Luther in Wittenberg, Germany to post his famous Ninety-Five Theses, reportedly on the Wittenberg church door.

Bucer’s family had encouraged him to join the Dominicans, which he did, but he was never wholly enthusiastic about it. Bucer heard Martin Luther in a disputation at Heidelberg, and that changed his life. Bucer’s interest in the humanism of Erasmus pretty much sealed his fate with the Dominicans, and he began the painful process of trying to be released from his monastic vows. He then sought to find some gameful employment outside of his world of being a Dominican monk. In 1522, Bucer married a nun, Elizabeth, who was forced out of her monastic order, for breaking off her celibacy vow. The penniless couple eventually made their way to Strasbourg, along the Rhine River.

Strasbourg

Ah, let me tell you about Strasbourg.

Strasbourg is a fascinating city, having gone back and forth between German and French control, over the centuries. They call it the “Alsace” region of France, the land “in-between,” I was told, or the land of a “foreign domain.”  Because of its unique position sandwiched between Roman Catholic France and Lutheran Germany, Strasbourg played a pivotal role in the Reformation controversy of the 16th century.

With a newly pregnant wife, Bucer and his family were forced to move in with his parents until he could find a job. At that point, Bucer was not unlike a typical twenty-something today, still living on mom and dad’s car insurance and cell phone plan. At first, Bucer offered to be a tutor for students interested in the humanism of Erasmus. That helped to feed his family, but it still was not enough. He was finally able to secure a decent job as a chaplain, getting out on his own, spending most of his years in Strasbourg.

Unfortunately for Bucer, he wrote a book defending the Reformation instigated by Luther, and his intellectual hero, Erasmus, heard of this and rejected Bucer’s thesis. Erasmus wanted reform within the medieval church, but he thought Bucer and Luther had gone too far in their criticisms of Rome.

Anabaptists, fleeing persecution in both Roman Catholic and Reformation controlled areas of Europe, soon made their way to Strasbourg, and so Bucer found himself fighting a multi-sided theological and intellectual war, with Roman Catholics on one side and the Anabaptists on the other. Yet Bucer was optimistic, hopeful that dialogue with such factions would eventually yield some peace, without compromising core convictions. In the midst of this, Bucer sought to find an irenic approach which could bridge the differences between these various theological camps.

Bucer was also hopeful that a rift between the Swiss Zurich reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, and the German Wittenberg reformer, Martin Luther, could be healed at the Colloquy of Marburg in 1529, regarding the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. However, Luther believed that Bucer was just as intransigent and wrong-headed as Zwingli regarding the Eucharist, and reconciliation was not achieved.

However, despite this failure at Marburg, it did not keep Bucer from trying to be a peacemaker. Bucer traveled across the German-speaking land meeting with different followers of Luther and Zwingli, looking for areas where different parties could find some common ground, and even resolving conflict with Rome. Bucer’s list of friends reads like a “Who’s Who” of the Reformation.

Street in the old part of Strasbourg. Martin Bucer lived in a house on the left hand side of this street (just to the left of where the two people on the street are walking). To keep automobile traffic out of the old part of the city, during certain times of the day, a column is raised and lowered to keep vehicles out so that tourists like myself could wander around and take photos…. and not get run over!!

 

Martin Bucer in the Crucible of Life

Sadly, the year 1541 proved to be the most challenging year for Bucer. A meeting at Regensburg, Germany between Protestant leaders like Philip Methlancthon and Roman Catholic theologians like Jonathan Eck, was envisioned as an effort to bridge the gap between the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics. A coalition of moderates on both sides of the controversy had high hopes for this meeting. However, the colloquy at Regensburg turned out to be a last ditch effort at theological unity which failed to satisfy either Luther or the papal authorities.

Also, during that year just after the meeting in Regensburg, Bucer’s wife, Elizabeth, died of the plague, along with three of their children. Bucer’s close friend and colleague, John Calvin, was forced by the plague to move back to Geneva, not too long after the city fathers of Geneva asked Calvin to return to the Swiss city and be their pastor again. With his wife dead and his close friend Calvin gone from Strasbourg, Bucer had suffered great loss.

A few year earlier, Bucer had gained a friendship with another Protestant moderate, Johannes Oecolampadius, who pastored a church in Basel, Switzerland, further up the Rhine River. Oecolampadius had died ten years earlier, leaving a widow, who in turn became married to a colleague in Strasbourg, Wolfgang Capito. However, Capito himself died of the plague himself, leaving his wife to be widowed yet again.

Bucer was in a difficult situation, with no wife and several surviving children to care for. Bucer quickly remarried Oecolampadius’ and Capito’s widow, Wibrandis Rosenblatt.  The now thrice-married Wibrandis Rosenblatt found a faithful husband in Bucer, and partner in raising children. However, Bucer was criticized by other reformers for remarrying too soon.

Nevertheless, other reformers looked to Bucer as a trusted friend, who believed he was able to intercede and tone down the often-violent rhetoric of others. For example, when Martin Luther in 1543 wrote his most unfortunate tract, On the Jews and Their Lies, a letter was written on December 8, 1543, from the Zurich reformed preacher, Heinrich Bullinger, to his friend, Bucer, urging Bucer to try to persuade Luther to come back to his senses:

“Luther has written in a way that is utterly indecorous and entirely without moderation — plainly scurrilous, not serious. He writes against the Jews, and what might have been a fortunate and persuasive argument he renders offensive — indeed, even ridiculous — by his vile insults and crude invective, which befit no one, least of all an aged theologian.

This may someday bring great evil upon the Church. Perhaps you, his close friend and brother, could restrain him as a teacher — so that he may remember himself and his modesty, and write and act with greater humility, purity, and circumspection. Many pious and learned men are offended by his arrogance, which is excessive beyond measure.

A theologian should embody modesty, prudence, piety, and gratis. However, the example of his audacious impudence has spread and has now infected many church ministers” (Referenced by John Dickson, author of Bullies and Saints, reviewed here on Veracity. Original Latin source).

Sadly, Bullinger was prophetic, as Luther’s anti-Jewish sentiments were picked up and amplified by the Nazi party movement of 1930’s Germany. I am not aware of any evidence that Bucer was ever successful in intervening with the great Martin Luther, before the latter’s death in 1546.

Alas, Bucer’s position was precariously unstable in Strasbourg, and within a few years the pressure got the best of him. The setback at Regensburg, the continued vitriol leveled by Martin Luther against Huldrych Zwingli’s successor at Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger,  and the returning fire from Bullinger against Luther, along with the personal losses in 1541, began to zap at Bucer’s energy. If strife among his Protestant colleagues was not enough, the defenders of medieval Catholicism were constantly seeking to have him ousted from Strasbourg, including the Emperor Charles V himself.

Bucer was effectively in a theological (and political) “no man’s land,” which ultimately forced him out of Strasbourg in 1549.

Martin Bucer pastored this church, St. Thomas, in Strasbourg, France, until he was forced to leave the city in 1549.

 

Martin Bucer’s Final Years…. In Cambridge, England

Charles V finally found enough leverage to get Bucer kicked out of Strasbourg. Bucer and his family found refuge in England. Bucer was assigned a teaching post at Cambridge, by another English reformer and moderate, Thomas Cranmer, who received him warmly as a colleague. Thomas Cranmer is most well known for crafting together the Book of Common Prayer, for the Church of England, as well as being a martyr for the Reformation, under the persecution of Queen “Bloody” Mary. Cranmer’s temperament mirrored that of Bucer, and most English speakers unwittingly feel Cranmer’s influence today through his translation of the Lord’s Prayer, which many memorize  (“forgive us our debts” versus “forgive us our trespasses“).

But Bucer’s exile in England made him a very unhappy man. The colder northern climate in Cambridge did not help his health, either. Hopes for trying to resolve the differences between Rome and Reformers like Luther ultimately left him alienated from both sides. Conflicts with others wore him down, and within two years of being in England, in 1551, Bucer died.

Despite his death, Bucer’s troubles would haunt beyond the grave. In 1555, the new English monarch, the Roman Catholic Mary (the Queen who had Cranmer burned at the stake), had the bones of Bucer dug up and had him ceremonially burned as a heretic. It was not until Queen Elizabeth, a Protestant, took the throne that in 1560, Bucer was given a second burial with full honors.

 

Life Lessons from Martin Bucer

Martin Bucer embodied what it meant to wear a Union top along with a Confederate bottom. Bucer got shot at from all sides.

In many ways, in our day when so many Christians feel divided from one another, we can learn something from the Dominican monk turned Protestant reformer. From a book entitled Common Places, which features extracts from Bucer’s writings, Bucer believed the church was united in…..

“the unity of the Spirit, of love, the word of God, Christ, the sacraments, and the sharing of gifts, that we may aspire together to the same goal, and hold and express the same beliefs.”

And….

“It is essential that we hold completely in common everything instituted for the building up of the Church.”

That desire to always seek common ground among believers, without compromising essential Christian distinctives, is a virtue which is in short supply today.

Bucer believed that the medieval Roman Catholic Church was in desperate need of reform. Yet he concurred with other reformers that the Bible was indeed the written Word of God, and it was authoritative for all believers. This placed Bucer firmly in the Protestant camp, though his efforts to form a unified coalition among his fellow reformers were frustrated.

Martin Bucer’s most significant theological contribution was in defining a concept called “double justification.” He combined Luther’s theology of “imputed righteousness,” which lined up with Luther’s ideas about justification, with a Roman Catholic theology of “inherent righteousness” (or “imparted righteousness”), emphasizing growth in sanctification over time, as part of a second element of justification, a life well-lived full of good works as one follows Christ. This idea of “double justification” was thought to strike a middle-way between Roman Catholicism and the Reformation tradition of Martin Luther.

But as is so often the case, such “middle-way” theologies tend to be rejected by opposing parties in such discussions. The more extreme voices in a conversation tend to dampen voices of moderation.

Ah, such is the life of a peace maker!!

 

As my wife and I wandered around Strasbourg, we enjoyed (well, at least, I did!) passing by several sites associated with Martin Bucer, such as his home and the church where he served as a pastor. I had just finished reading Martin Bucer: An Introduction to His Life and Theology (Cascade Companions), written by Donald K. McKim and Jim West, a short book that filled in many of the above details about Bucer’s fascinating life. So, if you ever want to read more about Bucer, Martin Bucer: An Introduction to His Life and Theology (Cascade Companions)  is a nice investment, at only 164 pages.

Martin Bucer: An Introduction to His Life and Theology (Cascade Companions), by Donald K. McKim and Jim West. The whole Cascade Companions series is a collection of short biographies of leading Christian figures in church history. This was the first book I read in the series, and it was a good read: short and sweet.

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April 3, 2026

Martin Luther in the Hot Seat at Worms and Heidelberg

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity along the Rhine blog series….

Martin Luther once delivered a sermon on Good Friday, where he said this:

“Until the present we have been in the Passion week and have celebrated Good Friday in the right way …. Cast your sins from yourself upon Christ, believe with a festive spirit that your sins are His wounds and sufferings, that He carries them and makes satisfaction for them…..Press through all difficulties and behold His friendly heart, how full of love it is toward you, which love constrained Him to bear the heavy load of your conscience and your sin.” 

A lot of ink has been spilled on Martin Luther… and I have read a few pages of it!

One of my closest friends from high school, Thomas Coyner, died a few years ago due to a debilitating life-long illness. Eight years before Thomas died, his father, Boyd Coyner, a retired professor of history at the College of William and Mary (where I work as an IT engineer), died as well.

The Coyner family loved books.

When Dr. Coyner died, my friend Thomas gave to me his dad’s collection of books on Martin Luther. It was a bunch of books! Thomas’ dad was apparently an expert on the life of Martin Luther, the famous German Protestant reformer of the 16th century. This made sense in that Dr. Coyner had grown up in a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, named after Martin Luther himself.

I have heard it said that there are more books written about Martin Luther than any other figure in Western history.  I can believe it! Some of Dr. Coyner’s collection are tomes, including Martin Brecht’s three volume set, with some 1400 pages total…. and that is not counting the endnotes!!

I deeply treasure these books on Luther, though I confess that I hardly have read them all. The standard, recommended biography of Luther, which is nicely short and compact, is Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Bainton’s book got me hooked on Luther, not just as a pivotal Protestant theologian, but as a shaper of Western culture more broadly.

So, when my wife and I embarked on a cruise on the Rhine River, in October, 2025, I was determined to check out some of the spots where Luther made his mark in Germany, during those crucible years of the Protestant Reformation movement. A day-long bus tour scratched my church history itch.

The Reformation Monument in the city of Worms, Germany, where Martin Luther (statue in the middle) made his famous “Here I Stand, I Can Do No Other” speech before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. I had to navigate around the Japanese tourists who surrounded the monument, to get my friend to snap a photo of me!

 

Walking the Streets of Worms, Germany

First up was a visit to the city of Worms. As a seminary professor still in his thirties, Martin Luther had been summoned to Worms to appear before Charles V, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in the year 1521.

Historians call this the “Diet of Worms,” which has nothing to do with some sort of creepy health fad to help you lose weight. A “diet” is an antiquated reference to a meeting of a legislative body, and “Worms” is simply the name of the city where this meeting was held.  So, it was at this “Diet of Worms” where Luther uttered (at least, it is commonly told that way) the famous saying, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

Four years earlier, in 1517, Martin Luther had published a criticism of the medieval practice of the sale of indulgences, which crudely put would allow a dead relative to lessen their time in purgatory, if a living relative were to hand over some cash to the medieval church authorities. This got Luther into some hot water with the church establishment, which only emboldened Luther to publish criticisms of other medieval Catholic practices and doctrines.

At the Diet of Worms, Luther had been asked to recant his writings. What prompted Luther to get into so much trouble?

Back in 1453, the great Christian city of Constantinople had finally fallen to the Turks. Intellectuals from that city fled towards the West, bringing ancient copies of the New Testament with them. Luther had been impressed by a newly researched version of the Greek New Testament, published by the Dutch scholar, Desiderius Erasmus, who spent several years researching some of those ancient copies of the New Testament from the East. From that version of the New Testament, Luther had felt compelled to challenge the Western medieval doctrine of purgatory, among other doctrines, putting his ideas into book form.

The printed book, using the newly acquired technology of the printing press in Germany, was like the Internet of the 16th century. Luther was a master in using this 16th century form of “social media” to broadcast his ideas to the world. The likes of Taylor Swift may rule the world of Instagram today, but in the 16th century, it was Martin Luther dropping a stack of papers at the door of the Wittenberg printing shop, to be converted to movable type, which shook up the medieval world.

 

A statue in Worms, Germany, of Martin Luther, the hero of the Reformation…. and a thorn in the flesh to the medieval church establishment. My photo, October, 2025.

 

Luther had set off a firestorm of controversy, engulfing his whole life, thus starting a conversation which set the intellectual course of the West for the next 500 years. Along the way, millions have experienced spiritual joy resulting from his fresh look at the basic essentials of the Christian faith, and what it means to be a Christian. Nevertheless, on the downside, thousands, if not millions of people have tragically lost their lives through wars and persecutions, partly related to the controversy which Luther ignited.

Luther himself dodged the fate of almost certain death, by the hands of authorities, in the wake of his appearance before Charles V. After refusing to recant his writings, Luther was able to leave Worms safely, before being kidnapped by those who sought to protect Luther’s life. Luther would go on and translate the Bible into the common language of the German people.

Ancient city wall of Worms, Germany, built by the Romans, about the time of Christ. A moat surrounded the city, fed from the waters of the Rhine. But now it is just a sidewalk and a city street. My photo, October, 2025.

 

Worms, Germany, is a remarkable city to visit. During the period of the ancient Roman empire, Worms had been an outpost along the Rhine River. What is weird today is that the Rhine River is actually a few miles away from the city now. The Romans had built a wall around the city at the shore of the Rhine, to protect against Germanic invaders. For centuries, the Rhine was marshy and difficult to navigate, particularly for larger boats.  In the 19th century, the Rhine was dredged to make for a deeper, straighter channel, thus eliminating the more marshy areas.

The city had been mostly flattened during World War 2, as Americans chased the German army out of the city. The oldest cathedral in the city was spared the artillery barrage of the Americans. Nearby that cathedral is the spot where Luther appeared before Emperor Charles V, to make his bold defense of the Reformation, just less than 400 years before American tanks entered the city. The layers of history across the centuries in Worms makes anything in America look rather piddly!

The area around the cathedral in Worms, Germany, not long after the American bombing raids towards the end of World War 2. Photo preserved inside the cathedral, where I took a snapshot of it.

 

From Worms, Germany, to Heidelberg

Thankfully, there was a restroom near where the bus stopped to pick our group up. This was one of the few restrooms that did not cost me a Euro coin to use it!

Europe travel tip: Keep a few Euro coins in your pocket as you travel across the continent. They will come in handy.

After visiting Worms, the next stop was in the city of Heidelberg, at the eastern edge of the Rhine River valley. Heidelberg is known for its great castle, looking over the Neckar River. A good part of Heidelberg, including part of the castle, was destroyed by the “Sun King,” Louis XIV of France, in the late 17th century. For decades after World War 2, the American military had a significant military presence there, as the city was largely spared of the destruction from the war.

The old bridge crossing the Neckar River, in Heidelberg, Germany, with the famous castle above.

 

But my main interest with Heidelberg was in finding the spot where Martin Luther participated in the “Heidelberg Disputation,” a defense he made of his theology in 1518 at an Augustinian seminary, where the University of Heidelberg is located today. Luther managed to persuade at least some of his Augustinian monastic colleagues of the validity of the theological principles he championed at Wittenberg, where he served as a professor of the Bible. This was just three years before his fateful meeting before Emperor Charles V in Worms.

It was at this Disputation in Heidelberg where a young Dominican monk, Martin Bucer, heard Luther speak for the first time. Bucer became a follower and friend of Luther, and a pivotal figure in his own right, though his influence today is overshadowed by theological giants like Luther and later, John Calvin. The life of Martin Bucer will be a topic of a future Veracity blog post.

The spot where Martin Luther delivered his Disputation in Heidelberg before fellow Augustinian monks, in defense of the Reformation.

 

An Educational Dinner Conversation at a Wedding Reception…

One more little anecdote….

At a wedding reception a few years ago, I sat next to Philip Cary, a theologian at Eastern University in St. David’s, Pennsylvania. Cary has done several recorded classes for The Teaching Company, as he is an expert on both Saint Augustine and Martin Luther. It was an unexpected surprise to be at a sit-down wedding reception, having dinner with a world-class scholar like Philip Cary.  The Bible-geek in me enjoyed the conversation just as much as the food! I kept Dr. Cary talking so much with all of my questions, I do not think he ate hardly anything!

Cary believes that Augustine and Luther are the two most influential thinkers in the Protestant Christian West ( I have written two blog posts about Augustine earlier this year). Interestingly, Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk, about the time he triggered the revolution of the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther has been one of my theological heroes (as well as Augustine), but like Augustine, he had his faults, too. Luther’s legacy is enduring, but it has been tarnished by some of his anti-semitic writings of his later years, prompting a deficiency in Protestant thinking which is being corrected by scholars over the last few decades. I will be writing more about this in the future. In the meantime, it is worth celebrating the man’s positive side, as Luther pretty much gave us the Five Solas of the Reformation:

  • Sola Scripture (Scripture alone)
  • Solus Christus (Christ alone)
  • Sola Fide (Faith alone)
  • Sola Gratia (Grace alone)
  • Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone)

Luther’s Good Friday sermon focused on the cross, but he also reminded his listeners about the resurrection:

“If we deal with our sins in our conscience and let them continue within us and be cherished in our hearts, they become much too strong for us to manage and they will live forever.  But when we see that they are laid on Christ and He has triumphed over them by His resurrection and we fearlessly believe it, then they are dead and have become as nothing.”

On this Good Friday, as we remember what Jesus accomplished for us and our salvation on the cross, it is good to recall the message of the Gospel that Martin Luther risked his life to guard, to protect, and to proclaim to the whole world.

My favorite podcast (still) is The Rest is History, narrated by historians Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland. Here is the episode where they talk about Martin Luther’s encounter with Charles V at Worms, nearly 500 years ago. Standing in that spot where Luther uttered his memorable defense really brought the story alive to me!!

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January 27, 2023

Christendom Under the Habsburgs in Vienna

By Clarke Morledge

In the days when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five-Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, the Holy Roman Empire was the greatest unifying force in all of Western Christendom, under the Emperorship of Charles V. Despite various attempts to heal the rift between Roman Catholics and Protestants, most notably at a meeting (Diet) in 1541 at Regensburg, Germany, the theological split in Europe put the Holy Roman Empire under severe stress.  By 1648, some 130 years after Luther’s protest at Wittenburg, the unity of the Christian West in Europe lay in tatters. What superseded the Holy Roman Empire was the emergence of a single royal family headquartered in Vienna, Austria: the Habsburgs.

My wife and I spent two nights in Vienna during our trip to Europe in 2022. The presence of the Habsburgs’ influence could be felt everywhere.

Bust of Ferdinand II, a leading Habsburg and Holy Roman Emperor from 1619 to 1637, during the Thirty Years War. Photo taken in Vienna, Austria.

The Habsburgs left Europe a checkered legacy. The Thirty Years War, which ended in 1648, had divided Central Europe into many autonomously governing districts. But the Habsburg family remained the primary power broker in the region, adored by some, despised by others. On the one hand, what emerged from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia was a renewed effort to reinvigorate the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation in the various lands ruled by the Habsburgs, and their networks of ruling families, particularly in lands surrounding Vienna, Austria. Along with that renewed Catholicism came the suppression of Protestantism, particularly in Bohemia, and its most prominent city, Prague.

The Habsburgs managed to rule a large chunk of Europe until its final breakup, at the end of World War One. Names like Ferdinand, Leopold, and Maria Theresa pepper the family tree and made their mark on the world (it is a rather complex family tree!). Staunchly Roman Catholic, they were great patrons of the arts. Names like Wolfgang Mozart, Franz List, and Ludwig van Beethoven all gained measures of support from the royal family.

The royal family built some of the most impressive buildings and estates in Vienna. The standout features are the Hofburg Palace, the Habsburg winter estate near the city center of Vienna, and the Schönbrunn Palace, their summer estate on the outskirts of Vienna, both of which were on our tour.

Part of the Swiss Wing of the sprawling Hofburg Palace estate. Vienna, Austria.

The Habsburgs also formed the greatest line of defense against invasion from the Turks, from the Islamic East. For several hundred years, on and off, the Turks laid siege to Vienna, seeing that this city on the Danube River was the gateway to Western Europe. But in 1683, the last and greatest siege was broken, and the Turks were driven back to their territories around Istanbul, in modern day Turkey. In the wake of the upheaval of World War One, the situation is much different now, but the signs of the medieval Austrian/Ottoman conflict remain. At St. Stephens’s Cathedral, one can look up one of the spires and find a cannon ball lodged in the stone, a memory recalling the great battle that took place on September 11, 1683 (Unfortunately, the ball is up so high, I could not get a good photo of it)….. For the curious, the date of the attack on the World Trade Center, in New York City, on September 11, 2001, was not picked by accident. It was intentionally set on that date to recall the events from this final siege of Vienna, centuries ago.

Capistran Chancel, outside of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, Austria. A Franciscan friar under an extravagant sunburst, trampling on a beaten Turk, in response to the 1456 crusade. The Turks made numerous attacks against Vienna until 1683, when the Turks were finally repelled during the last great siege of Vienna.

What was most interesting about our recent trip to Europe was the different responses I got from tour guides when I asked about the legacy of the Habsburg family. In Vienna, glowing reports about the Habsburgs were mentioned as we toured the various palaces that the family owned. In contrast, in Prague, the name of the Habsburg family was largely synonymous with oppression.

Today, with few exceptions, glorious monarchies like the Habsburg family are pretty much a thing of the past. Along with the decline of such monarchies, the Christian influence that animated the spiritual life of the family and their supportive subjects, or infuriated those who despised their enforcement of their religious convictions, has been effectively replaced by secularism. For example, in nearly every church in Vienna that I visited, curious tourists far outnumbered reverential worshippers. Love ’em or despise ’em, the Habsburg family has left a multiple centuries long influence across Central Europe.

The rear view of Schönbrunn Palace, from the far side of the expansive gardens.

Yet despite the conflicted legacy the Habsburgs’ left, they knew how to build some immensely grand buildings, and beautiful gardens to surround them, particularly at the Schönbrunn Palace.

 

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January 13, 2023

Regensburg: The 16th Century “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” … (That Failed)

By Clarke Morledge

Our tour group walking the streets of Regensburg, Germany. Remnants of the old Roman wall, dating back to the era of Marcus Aurelius, are embedded in various buildings throughout this old and beautiful city.

Our tour guide in Regensburg, Germany this past October had given us an excellent overview of this ancient city on the banks of the Danube. It had once been one of the northernmost points of the ancient Roman Empire, dating back to the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. During World War II, Regensburg was one of the few German cities that escaped bombardment by the Allies, in the attempt to defeat the Nazis, which means that much of the city’s history is well preserved.

Still, I was filled with curiosity and asked our tour guide about the Diet of Regensburg in 1541, which was not mentioned during our 2-hour walk through the city.  After the tour was officially over, he kindly took us to the place where this famous dialogue was held, between representatives of the Roman Catholicism elite and the growing Protestant movement of the 16th century. The building where the meeting was held was next to a beautiful, yet unassuming city square.

Haidplatz. In this building, off of this city square (though shaped like a triangle), the Diet of Regensburg took place in 1541. Today, Haidplatz is one of the locations where the popular Christmas Markets are held in Regensburg.

 

A virtual who’s-who of leading thinkers made the journey to this old city, to see if there was any way to heal the breach between the Roman Pontiff and Martin Luther. Luther’s number one cohort, Philip Melanchthon, as well as Johann Eck, Luther’s papal interlocutor at their famous debate in Leipzig, headlined the conference. But then there was Martin Bucer, the Reformation leader from Strasburg, along with Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, a leading Roman Catholic theologian, who sympathized much with the Protestants. Even a young John Calvin was in attendance.

The stakes were high. Unlike today when doctrinal debates among Christians might lead to church splits, where two or more groups simply agree to move along their own separate ways, confessional unity in 16th century Europe impacted more than just determining what church you would attend. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, wanted the Christian peoples of Western Europe be of one accord in political allegiance, and political allegiance was drawn on church confessional lines.

While the followers of the Papacy and the followers of Luther squabbled with one another, a threat had been continuing to emerge from the east. The Islamic Turks had captured the famed Byzantine Christian city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453, and they were moving towards the west, in hopes of ultimately conquering Vienna, Austria, which was the gateway into the rest of Europe. Charles V was anxious that some acceptable theological/confessional solution be reached in order to contain the Turkish threat. A Europe with divided churches might not be able to stand against this looming threat from the east.

On top of the external threat, concerns internal to Western Christendom weighed heavily among Europe’s political leaders. What would become of the church lands scattered across the regions where Protestantism was gaining ground? According to some scholars, somewhere around 7% of the land in central Europe, on average, belonged in some fashion to the church: Would the Protestants lay claim to much if not all of the land being contested, or would the Roman church still retain title? It was a recipe for war within Christendom. It was a mess.

According to Peter Matheson’s Cardinal Contarini at Regensburg, which chronicles much of the story behind the 1541 proceedings at Regensburg, Charles V was willing to accept some form of toleration of Protestant beliefs within the empire. However, the official legate representative of Rome, Gasparo Contarini, was hoping for something more that just “toleration.” Contarini envisioned a start towards formal reunion among the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, at least by embracing what he considered to be certain essentials of “Catholic” faith.

Way behind the gate, behind me, is a painting on the wall, marking the spot where the Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders tried to hammer out a peace solution between the two different theological camps.

 

Remarkably, both sides in the dialogue came to a number of conclusions that were in agreement with one another. For example, both the doctrines of creation and sin were discussed, and met with substantial agreement by both sides (It would only be until the Council of Trent took place that different theological conceptions of sin and sanctification would stiffen the divide between Protestants and the Roman Church). Surprisingly, a formulation regarding the doctrine of justification was agreed upon by all parties present.

So far, so good.

However, there were a few main sticking points that kept the conference itself from being a full success. First, there was the nature of Scriptural authority. What had the final say, the Bible itself, or the magisterial teaching authority of the Bishop of Rome?

The two sides were unable to agree. This was probably the biggest deal breaker, but the issue of the Eucharist made for another huge obstacle. A lesser dispute over the sacrament of confession and penance was another.

Sadly, even if the conference were to come to a full agreement on everything, the chances of the Diet’s success turned out to be slim. Luther himself was suspicious of the Diet, thinking that it was a waste of time and would not be fruitful, and the office of the Roman Catholic Pope pretty much thought the same way. In other words, the Diet of Regensburg might have been doomed before it even started.

The reputations of some of those who worked hard towards reunion suffered in the wake of the failure at Regensburg. On the Protestant side, Martin Bucer’s legacy was tarnished in the eyes of more entrenched Protestants, for trying to give too much of certain Protestant principles away at Regensburg, particularly on the doctrine of justification.

On the Roman Catholic side, while a frustrated Cardinal Contarini had ultimately and regrettably rejected the Protestant counter-proposals in contrast to his own, Contarini’s efforts at reunification with the Protestants were viewed as compromise among hard liners at the Vatican. Contarini died the year after the Diet of Regensburg. One can only speculate that the stress of being caught in middle of this dispute contributed to his death at age 59. As the conflict wore on through the mid-16th century, the Roman Catholic/Protestant divide only got wider.

Few today even know about the Diet of Regensburg. For example, I have yet to find an English translation of the full transcripts of the Diet available in print or online.

 

Zooming in on the photo above:  Roughly translated, the wall painting which features Melanchthon and Eck on either side reads: “in this house doctor phil melanchthon and doctor johann eck led their famous religious discourse during the imperial diet in 1541”

 

Neverthless, the Diet of Regensburg serves as a reminder of the importance of theological dialogue, in order to try to preserve the unity of the church, and work through theological disagreements.

But perhaps the timing was just all wrong….

Let us speed up some 450-ish years….

In 1994, the Lutheran-turned-Roman-Catholic theologian and First Things magazine editor, Richard John Neuhaus, and evangelical Protestant leaders, including Prison Fellowship’s Charles Colson and theologian J.I. Packer gathered together to hammer out a joint statement entitled Evangelicals and Catholics Together. That meeting was sort of like the 20th century version of the Diet of Regensburg. Out of those series of meetings, the joint statement noted points of agreement between Protestant Evangelicals and Roman Catholics in areas of doctrine as well as marking out common causes that both parties can work towards in promoting Christian concepts of culture. Evangelicals and Catholics Together has had their supporters, as well as their detractors.

Not too long after my wife and I returned from Europe, another session of Evangelicals and Catholics Together had met again and released an updated statement, 2022 Evangelicals and Catholics Together. This new statement is more about sharing a common vision of what it means to be Protestant Evangelical and Roman Catholics together in an age which has seen incredible culture shifts over the last ten years or so. Surely, the same type of criticisms that plagued the 1994 Evangelicals and Catholics Together statement, as well as the 1541 Diet of Regensburg, are still there. What is perhaps new this time around is that the dominant mode of Western culture in the 21st century appears to be at odds with certain core assumptions about cultural life shared by both Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. In other words, Roman Catholics and Protestant Evangelicals have their serious points of disagreement, but both parties have far less in common with the trajectory that secular culture is taking. We have come a long way since the era of a divided Christendom in 16th century Europe.

Is this a new opportunity to try to heal the rift between Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism that the Diet of Regensburg tried to tackle (and eventually failed)? Time will tell.

For more on the Diet (or Colloquy) of Regensburg, read more about it from this previous Veracity blog post.

Crossing over the Old Stone Bridge, looking towards the old city center of Regensburg. Hundreds of tourists, mainly from the Danube-Rhine cruise ship industry, were in town the day I snapped this photo, and listened to this street musician crank up his battery-operated guitar outfit to play Led Zeppelin songs.

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October 31, 2020

Luther In Real Time

By Clarke Morledge
Martin Luther nails his Ninety-Five Theses to the Wittenberg church door. Most people associate October 31st with Halloween, but students of church history know this as “Reformation Day“

October 31 is commonly known as Halloween. But it is also “Reformation Day,” remembering the day that Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, igniting the fire of the Protestant Reformation, 503 years ago.

Three years after that, in 1520, Luther was condemned with a papal bull, excommunicating him from the medieval Church. With excommunication, Luther’s words were considered to be a heretical, in an era when heresy was a crime against the state. Suddenly, Luther’s words were not simply opinions expressed on paper. They became a matter of life and death.

Ligonier Ministries is releasing a new podcast, Luther in Real Time, that traces key events in Luther’s life, exactly 500 years ago. The audio narrative is extremely well-done, with short narratives about 10 minutes long. I have listened to the first few episodes, and I highly recommend them, as it makes for a very exciting listen. Below is a promo video on YouTube:

 

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