Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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Strassburg f496 was since 1254 a free imperial city of Germany, famous for
one of the finest Gothic cathedrals, large commerce, and literary enterprise.
Some of the first editions of the Bible were printed there. By its
geographical situation, a few miles west of the Upper Rhine, it formed a
connecting link between Germany, France, and Switzerland, as also
between Lutheranism and Zwinglianism. It offered a hospitable home to a
steady flow of persecuted Protestants from France, who called Strassburg
the New Jerusalem. The citizens had accepted the Reformation in 1523 in
the spirit of evangelical union between the two leading types of
Protestantism. Bucer, Capito, Hedio, Niger, Matthias Zell, Sturm, and
others, labored there harmoniously together. Strassburg was the
Wittenberg of South-western Germany, and in friendly alliance with Zürich
and Geneva.
Martin Bucer, the chief Reformer of the city, was the embodiment of a
generous and comprehensive catholicity, and gave it expression in the
Tetrapolitan Confession, which was presented at the diet of Augsburg in
1530. f497 He afterwards brought about, in the same irenic spirit, the
Wittenberg Concordia (1536), which was to harmonize the Lutheran and
Zwinglian theories on the Lord’s Supper, but conceded too much to Luther
(even the participation of the body and blood of Christ by unworthy
communicants), and therefore was rejected by Bullinger and the Swiss
Churches. He wrote to Bern in June, 1540, that next to Wittenberg no city
in Germany was so friendly to the gospel and so large-hearted in spirit as
Strassburg. He ended his labors in the Anglican Church as professor of
theology in the University of Cambridge in 1551. Six years after his death
his body was dug up, chained upright to a stake and burned, under Queen
Mary; but his tomb was rebuilt and his memory honorably restored under
Queen Elizabeth. His colleague Fagius shared the same fate.
The Zürichers, in a letter to Calvin, call Strassburg “the Antioch of the
Reformation;” Capito, “the refuge of exiled brethren;” the Roman Catholic
historian, Florimond de Raemond, “the retreat and rendezvous of
Lutherans and Zwinglians under the control of Bucer, and the receptacle of
those that were banished from France.” f498 Among the distinguished early
refugees from France were Francis Lambert, Farel, Le Févre, Roussel, and
Michel d’Arande. Unfortunately, Strassburg did not long occupy this noble
position, but became a battlefield of bitter sectarian strife and, for some
time, the home of a narrow Lutheran orthodoxy. The city was conquered
by Louis XIV. and annexed to Roman Catholic France in 1681, to the