Cranmer, Thomas
CRANMER, THOMAS (1489–1556), archbishop of Canterbury (1533–1556), a principal figure in the reformation of the Church of England. Born of a gentry family in Nottinghamshire, Cranmer entered Jesus College, Cambridge, at the age of fourteen. After taking his B.A. (1511) and M.A. (1515), he became a fellow of the college. His marriage to a gentlewoman named Joan cost him the fellowship, but it was restored when Joan, with her baby, died in childbirth.
After his ordination (before 1520), he was appointed one of twelve university preachers and, on obtaining his B.D. (1521) and D.D. (1526), a university examiner in divinity. Cranmer kept aloof from other Cambridge scholars who met frequently to discuss Luther's writings. Instead, he privately tested these writings by his own independent study of the Bible and early church fathers.
Cranmer left Cambridge in 1529 to serve the cause of King Henry VIII's annulment of his marriage to Queen Catherine. During an embassy to Emperor Charles V in 1532 he became acquainted with several Lutheran leaders, among them Andreas Osiander at Nuremberg, whose niece Margaret he secretly married. She bore him a daughter and a son. Few were privy to this marriage until the next reign.
When Archbishop William Warham died in 1532, Henry decided that Cranmer would succeed him at Canterbury. The king was convinced that Cranmer would be dutiful not for any personal convenience, much less ambition, but from his sincere (and somewhat extreme) belief that scripture taught obedience to the divine right of kings and princes. This conviction explains many compromises and vacillations in Cranmer's life. Privately he would advise and admonish Henry and plead for mercy for the king's victims, but he would never openly disobey him.
In January 1533, Henry's secret marriage to Anne Boleyn, already pregnant, made the annulment issue urgent. Although Pope Clement VII suspected Henry's intentions, he consented to Cranmer's consecration, which took place on March 30. Both before and twice during the rite Cranmer read a protestation that his oath of obedience to the pope did not bind him if it was against the law of God, the laws and prerogatives of the Crown, or the reformation of the church.
Within a few weeks, Cranmer pronounced the marriage to Catherine null and that to Anne valid. In July the pope issued but did not publish excommunications of Henry, Anne, and Cranmer. Any hope of reconciliation ended when the Act of Supremacy (1534) declared the king and his successors "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England."
Cranmer supported but did not initiate the major reforms of Henry's reign: the dissolution of all monastic and religious houses between 1536 and 1539 (carried out more because of the Crown's greed for their vast properties than for the sake of any principle) and the official authorization in 1539 of the English "Great Bible," for which Cranmer wrote a notable preface in 1540.
The stringent Act of Six Articles (1539) closed the door to any reforms in doctrine or practice. Cranmer spoke against it in the House of Lords, but he voted for it because the king willed it. By now Cranmer was commonly believed to be a Lutheran. In 1543 the privy council voted to arrest him as a heretic, but Henry intervened and saved him. Until Henry's death Cranmer worked quietly on projects of liturgical reform, but of these only the English Litany of 1544 was authorized.
Reformers dominated the privy council of King Edward VI (1547–1553), Henry's precocious young son, who was educated by Protestant tutors. Among the councillors committed to religious reform were the young king's uncle the duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, and Cranmer, his godfather. Cranmer soon published a Book of Homilies, one part to be read every Sunday, and translated a Lutheran catechism by Justus Jonas. Clerical celibacy was abolished. Communion including both bread and wine was ordered, for which Cranmer prepared The Order of the Communion (1548), a vernacular devotion for the people's Communion at Mass.
At Pentecost 1549 The Book of Common Prayer came into use under an act of uniformity. The book's reforming principles were derived from Lutheran sources; but its Catholic heritage was preserved by Cranmer's skillful adaptation and translation of liturgical forms and prayers from Latin service books. The daily offices were reduced to two, matins and evensong, with one chapter from both the Old and New Testaments read at each. The Holy Communion eliminated all sacrificial references except "praise and thanksgiving" and forbade any elevation of the consecrated elements. The prayer book was not popular, however, with either conservatives or radical reformers.
After Somerset's fall from power, the duke of Northumberland became Lord Protector. He was more interested in the church properties he acquired than in the radical reforms he promoted. In 1550 Cranmer published The Form and Manner for ordaining bishops, priests, and deacons, based on the Latin Pontifical and a work of Martin Bucer, and also his principal theological work, A Defence of the True and Catholike Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Bloud of Our Saviour Christ.
A revised prayer book was issued in 1552 under an act of uniformity. Most of the old vestments and ceremonies were abolished, and the Communion service was rearranged and conformed to the Swiss reformers' doctrine. All images, crosses, rood screens, and other ornaments were smashed, removed, or sold; and a wooden "holy Table" replaced all altars.
While Edward lay dying, Northumberland plotted to place his cousin Lady Jane Grey (granddaughter of King Henry VII) on the throne. Cranmer strongly opposed this until Edward commanded him to submit. But the coup was short-lived. Mary I, the elder daughter of Henry VIII, was acclaimed queen. Many reformers fled to the continent, and Cranmer sent his family back to Germany.
An ardent Roman Catholic, Mary persuaded Parliament to revoke all reforms of Edward's reign. Cranmer was arrested, tried, and condemned as a traitor; but Mary had other plans. When Cardinal Reginald Pole, papal legate and archbishop-designate of Canterbury, arrived in 1554, he absolved the kingdom and restored papal authority. The burning of heretics then began.
Under pressure, Cranmer wrote several recantations, but to no avail. On the day of his degradation and burning, March 21, 1556, he publicly recanted all his recantations, hastened to the stake, thrust his fist into the fire crying "This hand has offended," and soon collapsed. His monument lives in The Book of Common Prayer, often amended and enriched, which is used in the worship of all churches of the Anglican communion.
Bibliography
The principal collections of Cranmer's writings can be found in The Remains of Thomas Cranmer, D. D., Archbishop of Canterbury, 4 vols., edited by Henry Jenkyns (Oxford, 1833), and the two volumes edited by John Edmund Cox for the Parker Society, Writings and Disputations of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1556, Relative to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper (Cambridge, U.K., 1844) and Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1556 (Cambridge, U.K., 1846).
Many other sources and later assessments of Cranmer are evaluated in the biography by Jasper Ridley, Thomas Cranmer (Oxford, 1962), with full bibliography and index of names. On the controversies over Cranmer's doctrine of the Eucharist, with much bibliographical detail, see Peter Brooks's Thomas Cranmer's Doctrine of the Eucharist: An Essay in Historical Development (London, 1965). A learned, fair, and readable account of the background of Cranmer's work can be found in W. K. Jordan's Edward VI: The Young King (Cambridge, Mass., 1968) and Edward VI: The Threshold of Power (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
MASSEY H. SHEPHERD, JR. (1987)
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