BULLINGER, bul'lin-ger, HEINRICH.
Conversion to Protestantism ( § 1).
Friendship with Zwingli (§ 2).
The Successor of Zwingli (§ 3).
Political Activity (§ 4).
Pastoral and Educational Activity (§ 5).
Eucharistic Teachings (§ 6).
The Helvetic and Zurich Confessions and the Concensus Tigurinus (§ 7).
His Part in the Second Helvetic Confession (§ 8).
Views on the Relation of Church and State (§ 9).
The Works of Bullinger (§ 10).
1. Conversion to Protestantism.
Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer; b. at
Bremgarten (14½ m. e.s.e. of Aargau) July 18, 1504;
d. at Zurich Sept. 17, 1575. He was the son of a
priest, who looked after his bringing up. After receiving
his elementary education in the schools of his native
town, he was sent to Emmerich on the Lower
Rhine to the Brethren of the Common Life, and
in 1519 he went to Cologne. There, in the seat of
opposition to the Reformation, Bullinger gradually
became a convert to the new doctrines. When he
began the study of theology, his text-books were
the
Sententiœ of Peter Lombard and the
Decretum
of Gratian, but noting that these were based on
the Church Fathers, he resolved to study the latter
more closely, thus learning from Chrysostom,
Ambrose, Origen, and Augustine how widely the
scholastics had diverged in their treatment of
Christian truths. At the same time he came into
possession of some pamphlets of Luther which
convinced him that the Wittenberg
Reformer marked an advance over the
scholastics. Since, however, Luther
like the Church Fathers, appealed
to the Scriptures, Bullinger obtained
a New Testament, which nourished
his opposition to Roman doctrine. He was also
strongly influenced by Melanchthon's
Loci communes,
and by 1522, despite a bitter inward struggle,
he had broken definitely with the Roman Catholic
Church. Being thus debarred from an ecclesiastical
career, he resolved to become a teacher, and
after nine months he secured a position in the Cistercian
monastery at Kappel, where he remained
from Jan., 1523, to Pentecost, 1529. Not only
did he introduce his pupils to the classics, but he
also interpreted a portion of the Bible to them
daily, in addition to lecturing on other theological
subjects in the presence of the abbot, the monks,
and many of the residents of the city. Through
his preaching of a reformation of doctrine and life
the movement was completed in 1525-26, although
Bullinger's life was imperiled by the hostility of
the adherents of the ancient faith. In the early
part of 1527 the monastery was transferred to the
authorities of Zurich and the monastery church
became the parish church of the community, with
Bullinger as the preacher.
2. Friendship with Zwingli.
In close harmony with
Zwingli, whom he had known since the end of 1523,
and in consultation with Leo Jud, he began the
active preparation of a large number of tracts
designed to work for the Reformation
in central Switzerland. After being
invited by Zwingli in Jan., 1525, to
attend a conference with the Anabaptists,
he combated them, and in
1528 he accompanied Zwingli to the Disputation of
Bern, where the leading Reformers of Switzerland
and South Germany became acquainted with each
other.
3. The Successor of Zwingli.
In June, 1529, Bullinger succeeded his father as
pastor of Bremgarten, but his position was a perilous
one, and the Reformed strongholds were fortified
in expectation of the war between the Confederates,
which threatened to break out in 1529.
Despite the so-called "land-peace" and the sermons
delivered by Bullinger at the diets held at
Bremgarten in the summer of 1531, in which he
urged upon his hearers the horrors of civil war and
sought to reconcile the adherents of both creeds
by the weapons of the spirit and the word of God
without the effusion of blood, the Reformation
had long been political rather than religious, and
on Oct. 11, 1531, the battle of Kappel was fought,
in which the leaders of the Zurich Reformation fell.
The progress of the entire movement was checked
and at Bremgarten at heavy cost a peace was made
from which the clergy were excepted. In the night
of Nov. 20 Bullinger fled to Zurich. The difficult
task of the reconstruction of the Reformed Church
and the maintenance of Zwingli's life-work now
devolved upon him, and on Dec. 9, 1531, he was
chosen pastor of the Grossmünster to
succeed the great Swiss Reformer. At
the same time, however, a controversy
arose between the adherents of the
ancient conditions, who advocated
peace at any price, and the evangelical party,
resulting in a decision to prohibit the clergy from
touching on political questions in their sermons.
4. Political Activity.
After consultation with his colleagues, Bullinger
declared himself ready to promote peace, but
declined to refrain from political problems which
were connected with religion. The liberty which
he demanded was granted him after long deliberation,
and the clergy accordingly placed themselves
in opposition to the reactionaries. The sermons
of Bullinger and Jud, however, resulted in their
being cited before the council. They were honorably
discharged, but were requested in future to
lay their political complaints before the council
on the chance that they might be settled without
the necessity of publicity. Through this recognition
of the spheres of Church and State as distinct
but not opposed, Bullinger sustained a more
healthy relation to the political body than Zwingli,
and he also avoided the struggles made by Calvin
to make the State subservient to the Church. A
still more difficult task was the stemming
of the Catholic reaction, and
it was chiefly due to him that the
disaster of Kappel had no worse
results. The evangelical communities, however,
suffered severely, and turned to Zurich for help,
and the council, in their eagerness to refute the
charge of Roman tendencies, unwisely inserted
in their manifesto words which the Catholics
claimed were an insult to the mass. In the controversy
which ensued, Zurich was cited before
the council of the Confederation, whereupon Bullinger,
while blaming the city for its folly, advised
the mutual surrender of the old letters of
confederation, the peaceable division of the common
territories, and the formation of a new union
with such bodies as held to the word of God.
Although it proved possible to preserve peace without
this dissolution of the Confederation, the result
was a partial humiliation of Zurich.
5. Pastoral and Educational Activity.
In the earlier years of his pastoral activity Bullinger
was an indefatigable preacher, delivering
between six and eight sermons each week, nor was
it until 1542 that his labors were lessened to two
addresses, on Sunday and Friday. Like Zwingli,
he was accustomed to interpret entire books of
the Bible in order, and his sermons were esteemed
far and wide, especially in England. He was also
active in education, and brought the schools of
Zurich to a high standard of excellence, proposing
an admirable scheme, which comprised both
teachers and pupils and prescribed their duties.
He likewise promoted theological training by the
establishment of scholarships and secured the
canons' fund for the maintenance of the schools,
in addition to preparing regulations for preachers
and synods. The first of these, drawn up by him
and Leo Jud, remained unchanged for almost
three centuries. The synod met twice
annually, and had as representatives
of the State a non-officiating burgomaster
and eight members of the
great council. The chief duty of the
synod was a complete report of the
activity, qualifications, and conduct of each and
every pastor. Bullinger was highly esteemed as
a pastor, especially in time of pestilence, while his
Quo pacto cum œgrotantibus et morientibus agendum
sit parœnesis (1540) is a work of unusual excellence.
A generous friend and patron of fugitives from
Germany, Locarno, and England, he also wrote an
enormous mass of letters, numbering among his
correspondents Lady Jane Grey, Henry II. and
Francis II. of France, Henry VIII. and Edward VI.
of England, Elizabeth, Christian of Denmark,
Philip of Hesse, and the palsgrave Frederick III.
6. Eucharistic Teachings.
Bullinger took part in the controversy over the
Lord's Supper as the chief representative of German-Swiss
doctrine. After the death of Zwingli
both the Romanists, headed by Johann Faber, and
Luther assailed the doctrines of his followers, only
to be answered by Bullinger in his Auf Johannsen
wienischen Bischofs Trostbüchlein tröstliche Verantwortung
(Zurich, 1532) and in the introduction
to Leo Jud's translation of the treatise De corpore
et sanguine Domini of Ratramnus, a monk of
Corvey. Even in these earlier works he emphasized
the objective side of the sacrament, the work of
Christ in the faithful, whereas Zwingli
had taught rather the subjective
aspect as a memorial. The controversy
involved the Protestant party
in Germany, and in the ensuing efforts
for reconciliation Butzer and Bullinger were active
figures, the latter preparing a confession for the
former, showing how far a union with Luther was
possible. This confession was sent in Nov., 1534,
to the remaining Swiss cities and was gladly accepted
by the majority, Bern alone refusing to
subscribe to it until after the Conference of Brugg
in Apr., 1535. This was, however, little more than
an agreement of the clergy, and the desirability
of an understanding with Luther, as well as the
expectation of a general council, rendered it advisable
for the Swiss Church to make an official formulation
of its creed.
7. The Helvetic and Zurich Confessions and the Consensus Tigurinus.
The result was the First Helvetic
Confession (see
HELVETIC CONFESSIONS), framed at
Basel in 1536, Bullinger being one of its authors.
Meanwhile Butzer had framed the
Wittenberg Concord, which was accepted by the cities of Upper
Germany, but was opposed by Bullinger in Zurich
and rejected by Bern. The Swiss responded with
an elucidation of the Helvetic Confession prepared
by Bullinger and addressed directly to Luther
(Nov., 1536), seeking the middle way between
transubstantiation and the concept of a mere
memorial meal. The reply was conciliatory, but
the peace was soon broken by Luther, who bitterly
attacked the Zwinglian doctrines of the Lord's
Supper in 1544. Bullinger replied in the Zurich
Confession of 1545, and, though no understanding
was reached between the Swiss and the Lutheran
churches, the French and German sections of the
Swiss Church were drawn together all
the closer, a matter which was the
more momentous since the Reformed
had found a second center in Geneva,
thus giving rise to the danger of a
schism like that headed by Luther
and Melanchthon in Germany. The
peril was averted, however, by the
Consensus Tigurinus, which was quietly
prepared by Bullinger and Calvin in 1549 and
which was in complete harmony with the previous
views of Bullinger on the Lord's Supper, while it
emphasized the divine work of grace, though it
restricted it to the elect. In his later years he was
involved in a controversy with Brenz, who defended
the doctrine of the ubiquity of the sacraments
but reached no definite conclusion. The views
concerning the Lord's Supper were closely connected
with the doctrine of predestination.
8. His Part in the Second Helvetic Confession.
While
still in Kappel, Bullinger had maintained that free
will was incompatible with the foreknowledge
of God, but later he was gradually led to accept
the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, his views
finding their ultimate expression in the famous
Second Helvetic Confession, which he prepared
in consultation with his friend Peter Martyr to
serve as a posthumous testimony of his own belief
and that of his church. It was published, however,
in 1566, when Frederic III., who was accused
of Calvinism, wished to defend himself before the
Diet of Augsburg. At his request Bullinger sent
him the confession, which he printed
and which was accepted not only by all
Swiss churches with the exception
of Basel, but also by the Reformed
in France, Scotland, and Hungary
and highly praised in Germany, England,
and Holland. It was, strictly
speaking, the bond uniting the scattered members
of the Evangelical-Reformed churches.
9. Views on the Relation of Church and State.
In the controversies concerning the relation of
Church and State, Bullinger regarded the two as
united, Christian citizens forming both Church and
State, and temporal officials being likewise the servants
of God. The chief duty of the Church was
the unrestricted preaching of the word, and the
power of admonishing the authorities, when necessary,
of their obligations. Neither Church nor
State, however, should interfere in
each other's affairs. External administration
of the property of the Church,
on the other hand, was to be left to
the State, which was also to execute
ecclesiastical punishments. With this
was closely connected his attitude
toward heretics. While in his earlier career he
had expressed the utmost tolerance, he later reached
the conclusion that preaching and writing against
heresy must be supplemented by state punishment.
Roused by Anabaptism, he urged in 1535
that no heretics should be admitted to the city
and that, if all efforts at conversion proved fruitless,
they should be punished by the secular arm, though
with due consideration of the circumstances of
each individual case. This position did not exclude
capital punishment, and while Bullinger
did not avail himself of it in the case of the Anabaptists,
it is easy to see how he could counsel the
execution of Servetus and the exile of Ochino.
The years 1564-65 were marked with sorrow for
Bullinger, who lost many of his relatives and
closest friends by death, and was himself so seriously
ill with the plague that his life was despaired
of. Even after his apparent recovery his health was
shattered, and his sufferings from calculi increased
until he was repeatedly near death. His last
sermon was delivered on Whitsuntide, 1575, and
four months later he died.
10. The Works of Bullinger.
Bullinger's works are extraordinarily numerous
but have never been published in collected form
and some are extant only in manuscript. The
catalogue of the municipal library of Zurich lists
about 100 separate works, and this number is
raised to 150 by J. J. Scheuchzer. Especially
noteworthy are his Latin expositions of all the books
of the New Testament with the exception of the
Apocalypse, which were prepared up to 1548,
when their place was taken by collections of sermons,
the majority also in Latin, comprising 100
on the Apocalypse, sixty-six on Daniel, 170 on
Jeremiah, and 190 on Isaiah. His sermons on the
decalogue, the Apostles' Creed, the sacraments,
etc., were highly esteemed and published under
the title, Sermonum decades quinque
(Zurich, 1557; translated into Dutch
and French; Eng. transl., The Decades,
London, 1577, ed. for the Parker Society
by T. Harding, Cambridge, 1849-1851).
Among his theological works special mention
may be made of his De providentia (Zurich, 1553);
De gratia Dei justificante, and De scripturœ sanctœ
auctoritate et certitudine deque episcoporum institutione
et functione (1538, Eng, transl., Woorthynesse,
authoritie, and sufficiencie of the holy Scripture, London,
1579). He was likewise the author of a drama
on Lucretia and Brutus and of a hymn beginning:
"O holy God, have mercy now!" Bullinger also
wrote a chronicle and description of Kappel, and
later prepared a similar work entitled Antiquitates
aliquot ecclesiœ Tigurinœ, which is preserved in
manuscript in the municipal library. An important
source for the history of the Anabaptists is found
in his Der Wiedertaüfern Ursprung, Fürgang, Sekten
(Zurich, 1560), but his chief historical work was his
detailed chronicle of the Swiss, the most valuable
part being the history of the Reformation up to
1532 (ed. J. J. Hottinger and H. H. Vögeli, 6 vols.,
Frauenfeld, 1838-40).
(EMIL EGLI.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Sources: Bullinger's autobiography was
printed in Miscellanea Tigurini, iii. 1-171, Zurich, 1722;
valuable also is his Reformationsgeschichte, 3 vols., Frauenfeld, 1838-40. Other early sources are; J. W. Stucki,
Oratio funebris, Zurich, 1575; J. Simmler, De ortu, vita,
et obitu Heinrici Bullingeri, ib. 1575; Archiv für die
schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte, vol. i., Solothurn,
1868. For his life consult: J. F. Franz, Merkwürdige Züge
aus dem Leben des . . . H. Bullinger, Bern, 1828; S.
Hess, Lebensgeschichte Bullingers, 2 vols., Zurich, 1828-1829; G. Friedländer, Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte.
Sammlung ungedruckter Briefe des Bullinger, Berlin, 1837;
C. Pestalozzi, Heinrich Bullinger, Elberfeld, 1858; R.
Christoffel, H. Bullinger und seine Gattin, Zurich, 1875;
G. R. Zimmermann, Die Zürcher Kirche und ihre Antistes,
ib. 1877; Schaff, Christian Church, vii, 206-214,
514, 618; Moeller, Christian Church, vol. iii. passim.
