Thomas Cranmer
| | Full name | Thomas Cranmer |
|---|---|
| image | |
| birth_name | |
| began | 30 March 1533 |
| term_end | 13 November 1555 |
| predecessor | William Warham |
| successor | Reginald Cardinal Pole |
| birth_date = 2 July, 1489 | birthplace | Aslacton |
| death_date = 21 March,
1556 | deathplace | Oxford |
| tomb | Ashes scattered after execution |
Scholars credit Cranmer with writing and compiling the first two Books of Common Prayer, which established the basic structure of Anglican liturgy for more than four centuries. Many phrases from its services passed into the English language, either as deliberate quotations or as unconscious borrowings.{{cite book
Early years (14891536) :
Details of Cranmer's early life are scarce. Cranmer was born in 1489 in Aslacton, now Aslockton, near Nottingham. His parents, Thomas and Agnes (Hatfield) Cranmer, were from the lesser gentry and had only enough wealth and land to support their eldest son upon their death.p.428 Without the financial support of their parents, the scholarly Thomas and his younger brother entered the service of the Roman Catholic Church. Cranmer went to Jesus College, Cambridge in 1510. When he married a woman named Joan, the daughter of a local tavern-keeper, he lost his fellowship, but following his wife's death during childbirth, Cranmer was able to continue his studies and was ordained in 1523. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree of divinity and soon after he took his doctorate in divinity.{{cite bookAlong with Bishop Foxe and others, Cranmer helped compile the Collectanea Satis Copiosa (the sufficiently abundant collection) in 1530, giving legal and historical precedent of cases such as Henry's, allowing the king to build an academic case to break with Rome.p.428 With the legal arguments in hand, Cranmer was sent as part of the embassy to Rome to seek sympathy for Henry. In the same year, Cranmer received a clerical promotion to become Archdeacon of Taunton.{{cite book
Cranmer in Europe :
Archbishop of Canterbury :
In August 1532, Archbishop William Warham died. Henry arranged for Cranmer to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury to Cranmer's astonishment; Cranmer had held no major position in the Church previous to this extraordinary promotion. Much later, Cranmer would discover that his friendship to the Boleyn family had been crucial. Henry later told Cranmer that it was Anne whom he had to thank for his appointment. Cranmer tried to refuse and he had no desire to accept the position. As Cranmer was still on the Continent at the time with his new wife Margaret, he had an excuse to delay and duly did. Cranmer brought his wife Margaret with him to England, keeping her presence secret even from the king.p. 307Cranmer arrived back in England in January 1533, just before Henry found out that Anne Boleyn was pregnant.p.428 The pregnancy added urgency to the matter of the king's annulment, and the king and Anne were married secretly in that same month, on 25 January 1533. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, pressed the King's case for annulment through convocation while Henry rushed Cranmer into Lambeth Palace. Without the annulment, Anne's child would be born illegitimate and thus refused the throne. Henry cleverly used the fact that the pope and the papal nuncio in England were desperate to avert a final break between England and Rome. Thus, both suitably pressurized and influenced by money – Henry financed the huge cost of the papal bulls out of his own pocket – the pope issued the bulls and thus the papal authority needed to make Cranmer archbishop. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March 1533 and the consecration took place on 30 March 1533.p. 377 On 23 May 1533, Cranmer declared Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon void. On 25 May 1533 – two days later – the secret marriage to Anne Boleyn was declared lawful. Henry and Cranmer had successfully negotiated the impossible in five months.
On 1 June 1533, Cranmer then crowned Anne in Westminster Abbey.p. 307 Pope Clement VII responded to the marriage by excommunicating both Henry and Cranmer from the Roman Catholic Church. On 7 September 1533, the new queen gave birth to Henry's second daughter Princess Elizabeth; Cranmer was made her godfather.
In 1536, Queen Anne miscarried a boy, which led to the king's decision to remove her from the throne. The court created a fictional case against her involving charges of adultery and other offences. Seeing that Anne was doomed, Cranmer, who owed his position to Anne's initial support, claimed that she had misled him. He did express astonishment at the allegations to Henry and his belief that "she should not be culpable." Still, owing to the vulnerability wrought by his own closeness to Anne, he declared Henry's marriage to Anne to be void, like Catherine's before her. Anne was executed on 19 May 1536.p. 307
Definition of the English Church :
In 1536 it became clear that guidelines were needed for the Church of England as it became independent of Rome. Cranmer was the primary author of the Ten Articles – each article was a brief doctrinal statement of the new English Church; today, the phrase 'ten points' or 'ten arguments' would convey the same meaning.Issued with the approval of the Convocation, the articles denounced both Roman and Protestant practices. The first five articles dealt with doctrine and stated that the Bible, the three creeds – Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed – and the decisions of the Four Great Councils were the basis of faith. They went on to affirm three sacraments (baptism, the Eucharist, and penance) as being instituted by Christ. This was a Lutheran innovation and eliminated the additional Roman Catholic sacraments of confirmation, matrimony, Holy Orders and the Anointing of the Sick. The second five articles were very Roman Catholic in tone, being concerned with maintaining ceremonies under attack on the continent. They permitted the use of icons, allowed invocation of the saints, and encouraged prayers for the dead.{{cite web
These reforms deeply divided the kingdom. Both Cranmer and the king's court were shocked when Catholics revolted in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the court began to see Roman Catholicism not simply as a religion but rather as treason against the state.p. 315 Henry and Cranmer strongly feared another revolt, which caused them to target as "superstitious" any religious practices that brought together large numbers of people. For this reason, they banned pilgrimages, saints' days, and the display of relics. They were also certain that an army loyal to Rome would soon invade England.p. 315 To raise funds for the defence of the kingdom, they looted the shrines of Walsingham, St Thomas Becket and others. This did not provide enough money, however, and the monasteries became the next target. Despite having little to do with imposing the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538,p.428 Cranmer influenced public opinion against the monks. He preached, in his sermons at St. Paul's Cross, that if the abbeys went down, the king would never want to impose any taxes again.
Later under Henry VIII (1537–47) :
A committee of bishops headed by Cranmer wrote The Institution of the Christian Man (also called The Bishops' Book), which was published in 1537. It was an official formulary of the new Anglican faith in England, and functioned as the step beyond the Ten Articles. The following year, three German theologians – Francis Burkhardt, vice-chancellor of Saxony; George von Boyneburg, doctor of law; and Friedrich Myconius, superintendent of the church of Gotha – were sent to London and held conferences with the Anglican bishops and clergy in the archbishops palace at Lambeth for several months. The Germans presented, as a basis of agreement, a number of Articles based on the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg. Bishops Tunstall, Stokesley and others were not won over by these Protestant arguments and did everything they could to avoid agreement. They were willing to separate from Rome, but their plan was to unite with the Greek Church and not with the evangelical Protestants on the continent. The bishops also refused to eliminate what the Germans called the "Abuses" (e.g., private Masses, celibacy of the clergy, invocation of saints) allowed by the reformed English Church. Stokesley considered these customs to be essential because the Greek Church, as it was called at that time, practiced them.Vol.2 In opposition, Cranmer favoured a union with the Germans. It was a confused issue for some of the bishops:The German doctors had nothing more to propose and finally Henry, unwilling to break with Catholic practices, dissolved the conference.
Reforms reversed and the Bible in English :
Henry VIII felt uneasy about the appearance of the Lutheran doctors and their theology within his kingdom. The Six Articles, issued in June 1539, was an Act of the Parliament of England which reaffirmed the general national leaning towards Catholicism. The articles reaffirmed six key Catholic doctrines, such as transubstantiation, clerical celibacy and the importance of confession to a priest, and prescribed penalties if anyone denied them. Penalties under the Act ranged from imprisonment and fines, to death. An act of 1540, however, reduced its severity and retained the death penalty only for denial of transubstantiation; a later act limited the original Six Articles' arbitrariness. The secretly-married Cranmer opposed the Six Articles and lay low to avoid punishment. The reforming bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Shaxton resigned their sees in response to the act, and thereafter spent time in custody. Many other arrests under the Act followed.Book of Common Prayer :
Cranmer next contributed to an English language liturgy of a more Protestant character than the traditional Roman Mass. The Book of Common Prayer (BCP), as it came to be known, was heavily influenced by continental theologians, such as Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer (both of whom Cranmer hosted in England),p.428 and Hermann of Wied. Cranmer was credited with the first two editions of the BCP. The first edition, published in 1549, was very Catholic in its outlook. The communion service, lectionary, and collects in the liturgy were all based, with some changes, on the Sarum Rite"Portraits of the Archbishops of Canterbury" as practised in Salisbury Cathedral. One change was due to an order of Convocation of the previous year, which dictated that Communion was to be given as both bread and wine.A bill was to the same effect was simultaneously going through Parliament.The full prayer book included several liturgical texts, including the following: a daily office; readings for Sundays and Holy Days; the Communion Service; services for public baptism, confirmation, matrimony, and visitation of the sick; rites for burials; and the Ordinal (added in 1550).The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI The preface to this edition, which contained Cranmer's explanation as to why a new prayer book was necessary, began: "There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted."p.225,417
Although Cranmer is credited with the overall editorship and structure of the BCP, its detailed origins are obscure.p.45p.414 A group of bishops and divines, drawn from both conservatives and reformers, met first at Chertsey and then at Windsor in 1548 and agreed only that "the service of the church ought to be in the mother tongue".p.47 Cranmer was a great plagiarist; even the opening of Preface (quoted above) was borrowed.p.225, 417
At the time of its introduction, popular rebellions by Roman Catholics, such as the Prayer Book Rebellion, took place in Devon, Cornwall, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and East Anglia. Rather than slowing the pace of reform, these revolts emboldened Cranmer.p.321 Use of the Prayer Book was enforced by an Act of Uniformity 1549 but it served only to antagonise Protestants and Roman Catholics in the realm. Outside of bloody reprisals in Cornwall, the Duke of Somerset and Cranmer did not encourage persecution. They refrained from it, as they feared invasion by Europe's powerful Catholic monarchs, especially Emperor Charles V.p.321
Cranmer's second edition of the Book of Common Prayer was issued in 1552. This new edition was more Protestant in nature, greatly toning down the sacrificial element in the Eucharist, removing prayers for the dead, and removing many ceremonies, including the admixture of water with the wine at Communion, the exorcism of the salt and the triple immersion in baptism. At this time, Cranmer encouraged the destruction of art work, statues, and relics.p.428 More than 450 years later, these first editions of the BCP remain largely intact and authoritative for much of the Anglican world.
Other works :
Cranmer published Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, which propagated a new doctrine of the Eucharist, in July 1550. Cranmer disagreed with the view that the elements are simply ordinary bread and wine and did not require respect, but he denied transubstantiation. The exact wording of his opinions in the book, however, has created many differences of opinion as to his precise belief about the nature of the Eucharist. Throughout the book, Cranmer referred to a book written by Bishop Gardiner in 1546. Gardiner wrote this book as a retort to Cranmer while imprisoned in the Tower of London during the summer and autumn of 1550. It was severely critical of all of Cranmer's arguments and successfully cited a range of sources supporting the doctrine of the Real Presence, such as the Book of Common Prayer, Martin Luther, Cranmer's own Catechism, and other Lutheran writers.{{cite bookFinal years (1553–56) :
Against his better judgement, Cranmer sided with Northumberland and endorsed Lady Jane Grey as queen after young Edward's death on 13 April, 1553.p.428 Within days of Jane's perceived usurpation of the throne, Mary Tudor became queen. Mary was the child of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and had been brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. In line with her Catholic beliefs, she began the process of restoring the kingdom's old ties with Rome. Inevitably, this had a profound effect on Cranmer and the institutions of church and state with which he was inextricably associated.Cranmer was first charged and convicted of treason for his support of Lady Jane Grey, but Mary spared his life. Mary resolved to have Cranmer tried for heresy, and he remained in prison until charges were brought against him in February 1556.p.428 Cranmer remained the Archbishop of Canterbury, however, because the negotiations for reunion with Rome were not yet complete.
In 1554, Reginald Cardinal Pole, the papal legate, was sent to England to receive the kingdom back into the Roman fold. Queen Mary and her cousin, Emperor Charles V, however, deliberately delayed his arrival until 20 November 1554, due to apprehension that Pole might oppose the Queen's forthcoming marriage to Charles' son, Philip II of Spain.{{cite web
Pole's arrival was followed by an Act of Parliament, the Revival of the Heresy Acts. This revived three former Acts against heresy; the letters patent of 1382 of King Richard II, an Act of 1401 of King Henry IV, and an Act of 1414 of King Henry V. All three of these laws had been repealed under Henry VIII and Edward VI. On 13 November, 1555, Cranmer was officially deprived of the See of Canterbury.{{cite web |last=Hanson|first=Marilee|url=http://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/marygovt.html