The Myth of the Swiss Lutherans: Martin Bucer and the Eucharistic Controversy in Bern

Authors

Amy Nelson Burnett, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

2005

Comments

Published in Zwingliana XXXII (2005), pp. 45-70. Copyright © 2005 Theologischer Verlag Zürich.

Abstract

Most accounts of the eucharistic controversy assume that after the Swiss cities rejected the Wittenberg Concord, Martin Bucer had no more influence in Switzerland. In Bern, however, a party supporting Bucer's concord theology dominated the church from the later 1530s through the 1540s. Although traditionally identified as Lutherans, the theological statements of this group demonstrate their loyalty to Bucer's "middle way" between Luther and Zwingli. The expulsion of this party from Bern in 1548 meant the end of Bucer's influence in western Switzerland, finalized by the Consensus Tigurinus, which carefully avoided any Buceran terminology.