ABSTRACT
Guillaume du Buc or Bucanus (d. 1603) taught at the Lausanne Academy in the 1590s. His Institutiones theologicae was first printed in 1602 and was used and reprinted very widely as a general handbook of Reformed theology: we excerpt the corrected Bern edition of 1605. Bucanus was more militant that Keckermann, and insisted that wars fought in defence of true religion were just on the basis of both divine and natural law. But he insisted that these wars fought in defence of religion were limited to one’s own jurisdiction: one could not invade other countries to defend religion there, and evangelization by force was also prohibited. He urged moderation in the manner in which wars were fought. Finally, Bucanus allowed that, in extreme circumstances, subjects could fight wars of self defence against tyrannical monarchs on the basis of natural law. It was this doctrine that caused his book to be condemned by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in 1622, alongside David Pareus’s commentary on Romans.
