Universalism and Tolerance in a Follower of Erasmus from Zurich: Theodor Bibliander

In my essay I analyse the thought of the famous Zurich theologian Theodor Buchmann, called Bibliander (1505-1564). Bibliander is a ‘fully Erasmian’ man. However, his role as Erasmus’s heir, as well as his own achievements, has until recently remained unacknowledged. Such oblivion is fully unjustified in view of both Bibliander’s personal activities and his importance in the reception of Erasmus’s thought. Bibliander espoused several central ideas of Erasmus – from free will to the limitless mercy of God – and also included a fundamentally ethical and a-dogmatic notion of Christianity, as well as the tolerant, pacifist, and universalistic vision deriving from it. On these bases, however, he created an original and bold conception, showing himself to be a worthy follower of his master’s antidogmatism. Bibliander was Zwingli’s successor to the Chair of Holy Scripture at Zurich, and consecrated himself to theology and exegesis, giving them sound foundations through the critical-philological method and the study of classical and oriental languages. He became the major European Hebrew scholar and the ‘father’ of modern exegesis. The idea of tolerance emerging from his conception was boundless, and the attitude toward the ‘other’, because of its incipient comparative perspective, was innovative. Among his most important publications were a Hebrew grammar (1535, the best at that time), the first Latin edition of the Koran accompanied by a monumental corpus of writings on Islamic civilization (1543), De ratione communi omnium linguarum et literarum commentarius (1548), a revolutionary project on linguistic and religious unification by means of the identification of laws common to different faiths and idioms, De fatis monarchiae Romanae somnium vaticinum Esdrae prophetae (1553), and an interpretation of Esdrah’s prophecy in view of a vast work of evangelization and pacification of all of the peoples of the world anticipated by the Holy Roman Empire.