Tuesday, April 18, 2023

It is the 18th of April 2023 Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

I am fascinated by failure. Sure, we tend to tell history from the perspective of the great winners and inventions and innovations- but for all of those, there is a heap of “not-quite” and “never-made-it’s”. And these are interesting not just as “what-ifs” but for a fuller picture of a time period, what a movement became, and how we might understand it before the ossification of history leaves us with hard and fast categories and labels.

All this is to introduce you to a so-called “failed” Reformer in the 16th century-  a man with connections to Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, and others with statues, books, and cities named after them. He was Francois Lambert- we could anglicize his name and call him “Frank Lambert,” but that’s the name of an American historian who was also once a punter for the Steelers- also, the name of the dad on the 90’s TGIF show “Step by Step”. OK- Francois, it is.

We don’t know much about his early life- he was born around 1486. He was from Avignon in France- his father was a private secretary in the Papal palace at Avignon. It has been suggested that he may have had connections to the Waldensians there- those “proto-Reformation” critics of the church.

We do know that his mother put him in a Franciscan monastery around 1501, and he stayed there for some time. Eventually, he joined the stricter “Observant” Franciscans and gained some renown as a preacher in the order. But he could be critical of the church, which caused him some grief from his fellow Franciscans. When he was found with some of Luther’s early writings, he was harassed enough to leave his monastery. However, he would still wear his Franciscan habit and identify as a Franciscan on his travels across Europe.

In was in May of 1522 that he left Avignon for good and made his way through Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, Eisenach, and then to Wittenberg. He would meet Zwingli and Bucer, and he would write Biblical commentaries with theology similar to the reformers but did not identify as a “Lutheran” or “evangelical” right away- it seems he wanted to reform the Franciscan movement. By the time he came to Wittenberg, it seemed he would be finished with his Order and was amongst the first reformers to marry.

He would leave Wittenberg, despite having taught at the University, and made his way to Strasbourg- another center of reform but with more elastic boundaries. He eventually made his way to Marburg, where he would become a professor at the newly reformed University of Marburg. But then, once again, he would be itching to move. He wrote to the Reformer Bucer and asked about possibly leaving his academic post perhaps to become a preacher again- in his native French tongue, perhaps amongst the Swiss. As a postscript to this letter, in 1530, he told Bucer of a friend who had died from the plague and to pray for him and his family.

Within weeks the plague would get to Francois Lambert, his wife, and one of his sons. Francois would die on this, the 18th of April in 1530. Born in or around 1486, he was around 44 years old.

Why was he a “failure”? Why couldn’t he stay put in one place or find his niche? Apparently, his interpersonal relationship skills were lousy. People seemed to grow tired of him quickly, and he went from being a novelty to a pain. He never landed firmly in one of the theological camps coalescing in the first decades of the Reformation- and this may have been more common than not. Not everyone fits the Lutheran, Zwingli, or Reformed camps that would emerge and are thus shoehorned into one of those camps or left behind as “failures.” Nonetheless, we see the transnational nature of the early Reformation and the difficulty of labels with the Frenchman Francois Lambert, who died on this day 493 years ago on this day in 1530.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary- back in Corinthians 15 again- a good Eastertide reading:

It is necessary for [Jesus] to rule until he puts all enemies under his feet. 26 Death is the last enemy to be brought to an end, 27 since he has brought everything under control under his feet. When it says that everything has been brought under his control, this clearly means everything except for the one who placed everything under his control. 28 But when all things have been brought under his control, then the Son himself will also be under the control of the one who gave him control over everything so that God may be all in all.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 18th of April 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite failures include the Edsel, New Coke, the Zune Mp3 player, Colgate Frozen Entrees, and Harley Davidson Perfumes (all real). He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man, who, speaking of failures, watched both the XFL and USFL this weekend- there back! For a limited time, I’m sure. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.