One of the characteristics of Bucer's ecclesiology was the emphasis he put on the necessity of a strict church discipline. According to him the abolition of the mass in Strasbourg in February 1529 was but a stepping-stone on the way towards the building up of a true Christian city. Therefore he and his colleagues did their best to get this point across to the Strasbourg Senate. Their first breakthrough came in August of the same year, with the proclamation of the ‘Constitution’ which codified the numerous rules issued by the city council regulating the citizens' moral conduct for which the magistrate was exclusively responsible. By the same token, a matrimonial court was set up in December 1529 in which pastors had only consultative power. Discipline thus lay entirely in the magistrates' hands. Yet they and the civil servants were either too busy with political, administrative or economic matters, or too lenient or even hostile towards the Reformation to apply the ‘Constitution’ with sufficient vigour.

Pastors, on the other hand, had to face the religious indifference of many of their so-called church parishioners. They were also confronted by more or less passive resistance on the part of those who still held to the former faith, but most of all by the criticism of an increasing dissident group which asked for more radical reforms. Thus they felt the need for decentralized disciplinary power, additional to that exercised so far by the city, by making each parish responsible for its own discipline.