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 BCCHLEIN

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BUCK

enthusiastic disciple of Luther. He heard the Saxon monk at a public disputation, held at Heidelberg in 1518, on the occasion of a meeting of the Augus- tinian unk-r, became personally acquainted with him, and was immediately won over to his ideas. Having openly adopted the new doctrine he withdrew from tin- Dominican order, in 1521, became court chaplain of Frederick, the Elector Palatine, and laboured as sec- ular priest at Landstuhl, in the Palatinate (1522), and as a member of the household of Count Sickengen and at Weissenburg, Lower Alsace (1522-23). _ During his incumbency at Landstuhl he married Elizabeth Sil- bereisen, a* former nun. When, in 1523, his position became untenable at Weissenburg, he proceeded to Strasburg. Here his activity was soon exercised over a large held; he became the chief reformer of the city and was connected with many important religio- political events of the period. His doctrinal views on points controverted between Luther and Zwingli at first harmonized completely with the ideas of the Swiss Reformer. Subsequently he sought to mediate between Lutherans and Zwinglians. The highly questionable methods to which he resorted in the interest of peace drew upon him the denunciation of both parties. In spite of the efforts of Bucer, the Conference of Marburg (1529), at which the divergent views of Luther and Zwingli, especially the doctrine regarding the Eucharist, were discussed, failed to bring about a reconciliation. At the Diet of Augs- burg, in the following year, he drew up with Capito the "Confessio Tetrapolitana", or Confession of the Four Cities (Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau). Later on, moved by political considerations, he abandoned this for the Augsburg Confession. In 1536, he brought about the more nominal than real "Concordia of Wittenberg" among German Protes- tants. He gave his own, and obtained Luther's and Melanehthon's approbation for the bigamy of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, attended in 1540 the re- ligious conference between Catholics and Protestants at Hagenau, Lower Alsace, and in 1541 the Diet of Ratisbon. The combined attempt of Bucer and Melanchthon to introduce the Reformation into the Archdiocese of Cologne ended in failure (1542). Po- litical troubles and the resistance of Bucer to the agreement arrived at by Catholics and Protestants in

1548, and known as the "Augsburg Interim", made his stay in Strasburg impossible. At the invitation of Archbishop Cranmer, lie proceeded to England in

1549. After a short stay in London, during which he was received by King Edward VI (1547-53), he was called to Cambridge as Regius Professor of Divinity. His opinion was frequently asked by Cranmer on church matters, notably on the controversy regarding ecclesiastical vestments. But his sojourn was to be of short duration, as he died in February, 1551. Under the reign of Queen Mary (1553-58) his re- mains were exhumed and burned, and his tomb was demolished (1556), but was reconstructed in 1560 by Queen Elizabeth (155S-1603).

Bucer was, after Luther and Melanchthon, the most influential of German Reformers. For a clear statement of doctrine he was ever ready to substitute vague formulas in the interest of unity, which even his able efforts could not establish among the Re- formers He forms a connecting link between the German and the English Reformation. Of the thir- teen children he had by his first marriage, only one, a weak-minded son, survived, Wibrandis Rosen- blatt, the successive wife of several Reformers ((VI- larius, CEcolampadius, Capito. and Bucer), whom he married after his first wife died from (lie plague in 1541, bore him three children, of whom a daughter survived. ( >nly one of the tin folio volumes in w liieh his works "ere to appear was published (Basle, 1577). It is know ii a- " I omus Anglieanus" because its con- tents were mostly written in England.

Victor De Bcck

Baum, Capito una* Butzer (Elberfeld, I860); Mf.ntz and F.richson, Zur 40(1 jtihritien Ceburtsjntr Martin Butzers i Stras- burg, 1891 ); Stern, Martin Butzer (Strasburg, 1891 ); Pwlvs, Die Strasburaer Reformatoren (Freiburg, 1895); Schaff, His- tory of the Christian Church i New York, 1904 1, VI, 571-57:j ami passim; Ward in Diet, of Nat. Bioij., VII, 172-177.

N. A. Weber.

Biichlein. See Hebrew Language and Literature.

Buck, Victor De, Bollandist, b. at Oudenarde, Flanders, 21 April, 1817; d. 28 June, 1876. His family was one of the most distinguished in the city of Oudenarde. After a brilliant course in the humanities, at the municipal college of Soignies and the petit scminaire of Roulers and completed in 1S35 at the col- lege of the Society of Jesus at Alost, he entered this Society on 11 Oc- tober of the same year. After two years in the no- vitiate, then at Nivelles, and a year at Tronch- iennes reviewing and finishing his literary studies, he went to Namur in September, 1838, to study philosophy and the natural sci- ences, closing these courses with a public defence of theses bearing on these subjects.

The work of the Bollandists (q. v.) had just been revived and, in spite of his youth, Victor De Buck was summoned to act as assistant to the hagiog- raphers. He remained at this work in Brussels from September, 1S40, to September, 1845. After devoting four years to theological studies at Louvain, where he was ordained priest in 1848, and making his third year of probation in the Society of Jesus, he was permanently assigned to the Bollandist work in 1850, and was engaged upon it until the time of his death. He had already published in part second of Vol. VII of the October "Acta Sanc- torum", which appeared in 1845, sixteen commen- taries or notices that are easily distinguishable be- cause they are without a signature, unlike those written by the Bollandists. Moreover, during the course of his theological studies which suffered thereby no interruption, and before becoming a priest, he composed, in collaboration with Antoine Tinnebroeck who, like himself was a scholastic, an able refuta- tion of a book published by the professor of canon law at the University of Louvain, in which the rights of the regular clergy were assailed and re- pudiated. This refutation, which fills an octavo vol- ume of 640 pages, abounding in learned disserta- tions, was ready for publication within four months. 1 1 was to have been supplemented by a second vol- ume that was almost completed but could not be published because of the political disturbances of the year 1847 which were but the prelude to the revolu- tions of 1848, and the work was never resumed.

Father De Buck's literary activity was extraor- dinary. Besides the numerous commentaries in Vols.' IX. X, XI. XII. and XIII of the October "Acta Sanctorum", which won the praise of those best qualified to judge, lie published in Latin, French, and Flemish, a large number of little works of piety and dissertations on devotion to the saints, church history, and Christian archaeology, the partial enu- meration of which fills two folio columns of his eulogy,