In 1553, in a formal address to the city council of Zurich advocating publication of a German translation of the Forty-Two Articles of the Church of England, Heinrich Bullinger made the striking assertion that “the Crown of England has entirely the teaching and faith that we also have.” Four hundred years later, the Reformed roots of the Church of England, once commonly acknowledged, have been relegated to the darkest recesses of memory, almost to oblivion. Recent revisionist historiography of the English Reformation(s) has severely downplayed links between England and the continental Reformed churches while the exceptional, insular character of English religious history has been advocated as a more acceptable paradigm of interpretation. It is especially interesting to note that historians as diverse as A. G. Dickens, G. R. Elton, C. Haigh, and E. Duffy have all downplayed the relation between England and Zurich, albeit for quite diverse reasons. Some historians (for example P. Collinson, P. Lake, and D. MacCulloch) have recently resisted this trend and, following in the steps of Gilbert Burnet, have endeavored to portray the sixteenth-century Church of England as a leading representative of the Reformed faith. Yet even among the latter, only a few have recognized the extraordinary debt owed by English reformers to the teaching and example of Zurich. Through her splendidly thorough and acute study of the massive correspondence and numerous mid-sixteenth-century English translations of works by Zurich reformers, Carrie Euler provides a broad evaluation of the reception of the Zurich theological tradition in England. By drawing attention to the steady flow of books and ideas between England and Zurich during the Reformation, she has succeeded brilliantly in expanding awareness of a variety of factors—theological, political, and personal—that influenced the transmission of doctrines and practices across early modern Europe. As Euler refreshingly urges, “What is needed now in order to understand the Reformation are not further debates over ‘above versus below’ or ‘rapid versus slow’ but negotiation between rulers and subjects, clergy and laity, and on interactions between English and Continental Europeans” (6). Amen to that.

Euler's Couriers of the Gospel focuses not only on the exchange of specific ideas between Zurich and England in the period 1531–1558, but also on the actual processes of transmission—in this it makes a worthy contribution to the history of the book and the transmission of early modern culture. The discussion begins with a detailed look at the origin and development of the distinctive Zurich brand of the Reformed tradition under the guidance of Zwingli and Bullinger with particular attention paid to 1) rejection of material aspects of Catholic piety, 2) strong anti-Anabaptist tendencies, and 3) constitutional emphasis on the unity of the religious and secular spheres under the authority of the civil magistrate. Subsequent chapters address the mechanisms of cultural exchange, principally through examination of the considerable extant correspondence (950 published and unpublished letters) and over twenty different works by five Zurich authors translated and published in English between 1531 and 1558. (All of these sources are most helpfully catalogued in appendices.) The second half of the study explores each of the three major themes already mentioned—namely, material piety, Anabaptism, and the union of church and commonwealth—as they were taken up in England and as evidence of the profound influence of the Zurich model of Reform. Euler's treatment of the third theme concentrates attention on Bullinger's The Christen State of Matrimonye (1550), the most frequently published continental work of evangelical thought in England during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, with no less than seven editions between 1541 and 1552. If there is a weakness in this study, it is the disappointed expectation of an exploration of the full constitutional implications of the relationship between the church and the civil power. Where the relation between church and commonwealth in the ecclesiology of Zwingli and Bullinger is established at the outset of this study as one of three major themes of influence, when addressed in the concluding chapter the theme is nonetheless largely confined to the context of the institution of marriage. Consequently, the proto-Erastian heart of England's admiration for the Zurich model of Reform and the broader themes of shared political theology are to some degree sidestepped.

Carrie Euler's book lends substantial support to the view that Heinrich Bullinger deserves to be ranked among the most eminent theologians of the English Reformation. She adduces strong evidence of his exercising decisive influence in matters of doctrine, liturgy, and discipline, specifically in the formulation of the Forty-Two (later Thirty-Nine) Articles of Religion, the 1552 Book of Common Prayer with its attendant affirmation of “adiaphorism,” as well as the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum of 1553. (Eight members of the Edwardian Royal Commission charged with the reform of the canon law were correspondents of Bullinger's.) Bullinger judged the theology of the Articles in particular to be neither “English” nor “foreign,” but rather “Reformed”— the same as those professed by the people of Zurich: “They will see that the kingdom of England has entirely the teaching and faith that we also have” (Zurich Staatsarchiv MS E II 102, 279; cited p. 96).

One small correction is in order. Euler notes that none of Hans Asper's famous series of portraits of the worthies of the Zurich Reformation ever reached England. In fact, one portrait in the series, that of Peter Martyr Vermigli, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.