In HBTS 7 (Kommentare zu den neutestamentlichen Briefen: Gal, Eph, Phil, Kol), editor Luca Baschera does a fine job introducing readers to this 1535 publication. Baschera helpfully situates the book in its context by highlighting Bullinger’s pastoral objectives (rather than, say, more strictly philosophical, theological, or polemic discussion). He comments on the book’s relation to sermons that Bullinger preached in 1533–34 and further back to lectures given at the Kappel monastery in 1525–26. Bullinger’s own apologia for the book rests on the grounds that his present publication retains a more consistently pastoral perspective than many other such commentaries. One suspects that the Zurich clergy itself, for whom Bullinger served as a sort of synodal pastor of the pastors, constituted the primary audience. The pastoral objective is still further evident in that Bullinger dedicated the 1535 publication to the Blarers and Zwicks of Constance, explicitly aiming to leverage their star power into attention for his book among a broader swath of readers. In all such observations, Baschera signals one of the great upshots of the whole book, namely the compact portrait of Bullinger as pastor to Zurichers in general and to the Zurich clergy in particular, and also as quasi-pastor/patriarch of Reformed Christianity well beyond Zurich.
Baschera’s introduction also helps orient readers by noting the usual and the unusual suspects among Bullinger’s influences. Humanists (enormously, if not exclusively, Erasmus) feature prominently, along with the customary stock of humanist models among classics (Terence, Cicero, Seneca, Quintilian, et al.). Other details are somewhat more surprising. For example, in this book Bullinger conflated Ambrosiaster with Ambrose proper, which was a conflation that most humanists of the time avoided. Readers may be further interested to notice that Bullinger’s citations of Jerome exceed even his reliance upon commentaries by Augustine (who otherwise looms so large in Reformed theology). It is still more remarkable to observe how little Bullinger explicitly cites his fellow contemporary Reformers, and how much, conversely, he makes positive use of Pauline commentaries by the medieval Bulgarian archbishop Theophylact of Achrida (d. 1108). Bullinger’s dismal periodization of medieval Christian history after Gregory VII is otherwise well documented.
Throughout the edition of HBTS 7, the textual apparatus is clear and helpful. Distinctions between the 1535 and 1537 editions are easy to track, and footnotes are unobtrusive, while also including useful textual details and pertinent biographical sketches. The book’s concluding appendixes are terrific. Beyond bibliographical sources and secondary works, there are four separate registers for biblical references, sources, persons, and places, respectively. Finally, a CD-ROM inside the book’s back cover includes a searchable PDF of the entire contents of the physical volume. If I were to raise one small desideratum, it would be for more indication within the editor’s introduction concerning ways in which the 1535 publication was received. Other than the brief thanks expressed by Johannes Zwick for the dedication (and, later, for a copy of the book itself), a quick search does not turn up much obvious sign of reaction among scholars, pastors, or other contemporaries.
Scholars will also happily greet the publication of HBBW 15 (Briefe des Jahres 1545). Editor Reinhard Bodenmann alerts readers to several of the ways in which 1545 was an especially eventful year, and how this particular collection of letters illustrates that momentousness. Modern scholars of many fields can find much to work with in this book. Major issues that fill the pages of correspondence include political complications of confederational, Zuricher, and regional Reformed positions vis-à-vis imperial Habsburgs, France, the papacy, and the Schmalkald alliance. Bodenmann also highlights major religious topics of 1545 from the beginning of the Catholic Council of Trent — with corresponding reactions among Reformed Christians — to the outbreak of yet another contretemps between Luther and the Swiss Reformed. Numerous letters in the present volume address ramifications of the Luther controversy, including the Europe-wide fallout of Zurich having printed their own indignant Warhafftes Bekanntnuss together with Luther’s offending treatise of 1544, Kurtz bekenntniss. Bodenmann notes that this publishing strategy — the opposite of damnatio memoriae — became something of a hallmark of Reformed publications in Zurich and beyond. The collected correspondence of so eventful a year also casts a good bit of light on various political and religious perceptions among the people involved, and, after all, those perceptions were also part of the lived experience of 1545, regardless of whether or not they actually happened. Concerns of this sort notably include various suspected and/or imagined roles of the Turks in European affairs.
Like all books in the series Heinrich Bullinger Werke, this volume includes a remarkably clear and useful textual apparatus and a concluding index. The editors also make a conscientious effort to continue building upon the past strengths of the series. They supply, for example, fuller synopses at the beginning of each letter — a gracious help to modern researchers whose Latin has not yet quite attained the Renaissance humanist ideal. A second great aid to research comes in the reminder that the contents of this book (together with all the correspondence of the series to date) are available in a free, searchable database via irg.uzh.ch/hbbw.
I only raise three desiderata and/or modest regrets about the work. First, I echo Bodenmann’s own wish that the not-yet-extant letter of Bullinger to Georg Frölich concerning matters of clerical nomination, ordination, installation, and general church protocol could be discovered somewhere in the Augsburg archive. Second, while I completely understand the rationale, it still seems unfortunate that 42 of the 259 letters in this volume’s purview must be sought rather in sundry other texts published in the course of the past hundred years. It strikes me as a mild nuisance that the edition of record of Bullinger’s correspondence would be missing such a quantum of its content. Third, I found myself wondering if perhaps Bodenmann in his introduction may have overstated the pattern established by the 1545 Warhafftes Bekanntnuss, which so many of the letters in this volume comment upon — that is, the strategy of publishing a Reformed antidote together with a reprint of an originally offending text. Bodenmann does not mention any possible relation of this strategy to Calvin’s 1539 printed response to Cardinal Sadoleto. Perhaps the editor is rather focusing on the Warhafftes Bekanntnuss as a trendsetter of specifically inner-Protestant polemic (as opposed to Protestant-Catholic controversy). I would have liked just a bit more clarity in this.
These two recent volumes in the enormous, ongoing project of Heinrich Bullinger Werke persevere in an established pattern of excellence. In several respects, they even improve upon what was already good about prior volumes. All told, these are elegant, precise, and helpful books, and they do a commendable job eschewing the awkwardness that too often besets a reference work of such technical rigor.
