The Yoke of Christ. Martin Bucer and Christian Discipline.

If pastoral care in the contemporary Church conforms more to the model of therapy than anything else, for the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century it was above all discipline. None of them was as tireless and versatile in promoting it as the Strasbourg Reformer whose last two years were spent, fairly unhappily, as Regius Professor at Cambridge. Burnett's concern is not narrowly with 'church discipline' in the sense of formal measures implemented for the correction of sinners, but with 'Christian discipline' as

the means by which the entire life of each and every Christian was shaped and guided. It includes not only excommunication but contained other elements, such as catechetical instruction and confirmation, which together formed an integrated system for religious instruction, moral oversight, and pastoral care. The goal of this system was the internalisation of religious values and moral norms which would ultimately lead to a new, Christian society whose members lived in accordance with evangelical teachings.

In tracing the evolution of Bucer's ideas through the successive phases of his Strasbourg ministry and activity further afield, especially in Hesse, the Cologne archdiocese and the colloquies with Catholics (the epilogue in England added nothing new; Bucer 'saw no need to alter the elements of Christian discipline to fit the circumstances of the English church'), Burnett has produced a work of first-rate importance for all students of Bucer, of the Strasbourg reform, of sixteenth-century endeavours to indoctrinate and discipline laity and of significant topics such as confirmation. The method is painstakingly thorough, the exposition always lucid, the bibliographical coverage without obvious gaps (although since it cuts off two or three years before publication, there is no apparent awareness of the work on the Genevan consistory minutes led by the author's research mentor, Robert Kingdon), the transcription of Latin and German sources highly accurate (and confined to the notes, so that the main text is wholly accessible to readers limited to English) and their translation almost of the same standard (no mean feat with Bucer's dense Latin; on one occasion Burnett would have benefited from the reviewer's translation in a volume she uses elsewhere), and only the index is disappointingly selective.

Among the book's particular contributions is a re-reading of the significance of the 'Christian "fellowships"' which Bucer attempted to implement in his last Strasbourg years. The quotation marks are deliberate in her translation of 'christliche Gemeinschaft', for gatherings of laity in fellowship groups were not part of the original design drafted in late 1546. When such conventicles did emerge in this context, the initiative was that of Paul Fagius, one of his fellow ...