Strasbourg and the English Reformation: Alsatian Contributions to the Formation of the Church of England

In the sixteenth century, the ties between Strasbourg and the English Reformation were particularly close. Many Marian exiles flocked to the Alsatian city to avoid persecution in England, and Strasbourg became an important centre for the printing of polemical religious tracts. Martin Bucer was invited as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and his views on the Eucharist were used in the 1552 revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Bucer’s theology significantly influenced a range of figures from Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner in their controversy over the doctrine of transubstantiation, to Matthew Parker and Edmund Grindal, both of whom served as Archbishop of Canterbury. Strasbourg church music also found its way across the Channel, notably in the form of a new idiom which combined syllabism and melisma at the end of each musical sentence. Disseminated in England by Miles Coverdale, Jan Laski and Vallerand Poullain, this Strasbourg model of hymnody was eventually adopted by the Church of England.

The present volume offers fresh perspectives on these aspects of Strasbourg and Alsatian reformers’ contributions to the construction of the new Church of England.