1545 Historiarum Superioris

Heinrich Bullinger (1504 – 1575) was a Swiss Reformer and Theologian, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster. One of the most important leaders of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger co-authored the Helvetic Confessions and collaborated with John Calvin another very important English Reformer, to work out a Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper.

In 1522, as a follower of Martin Luther, Bullinger earned his Master of Arts degree but ceased receiving the Eucharist. He also abandoned his previous intention of entering the Carthusian order. When he returned to Bremgarten, his family accepted his new theological views. Though Bullinger was called to lead an abbey in the Black Forest, he found its monks worldly and licentious and so returned home again and spent some months reading history, the church fathers, and Reformation theology.

Bullinger's writings exceed Luther and Calvin combined, including 12,000 surviving letters. During his lifetime they were translated in several languages and counted among the best known theological works in Europe.

1587 Bullinger's Sermons

The work featured here is known as Bullinger's main theological work, The Dekaden, or The Decades, which is a compilation of 50 sermons that Bullinger published from 1549 to 1551. This feature is a 1587 Printing of that work. Many regard The Decades to be comparable to Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and Peter Martyr Vermigli's Loci communes as an early Reformed theological explication.

This is a very rare and important work indeed.