BUCER, MARTIN (1491–1551), Christian humanist and reformer. Best known as the chief reformer of the Free Imperial City of Strasbourg, Bucer illustrates the combining of Martin Luther's evangelical theology with aspirations and traditions that predated the Reformation. A Dominican, Bucer was thus trained in the via antiqua of Thomas Aquinas but early fell under the spell of Erasmian humanism. Meeting and hearing Luther for the first time at the Heidelberg Disputation (1518) led him to become increasingly dissatisfied with his vocation and finally to secure release from his vows. He thus arrived in Strasbourg (1523) as a dispossessed and married cleric who could only appeal to that city's authorities for protection from the episcopal court. Friends arranged a position for him; he led in the efforts to abolish the Mass (1529), to erect a new church (1533–1534), and to construct the city's policy of mediation in the Sacramentarian Controversy. Eventually he...