Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was an English theologian who was a leader of the English Reformation and served as Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He is honoured as a martyr in the Church of England.
Cranmer was ordained a Catholic priest and served on the theology faculty at Cambridge University. At the behest of Cardinal Wolsey, he later served Henry VIII as a diplomat in Europe. Cranmer helped build the case for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was one of the causes of the separation of the English Church from union with the Holy See. Along with Thomas Cromwell, he supported the principle of royal supremacy, in which the king was considered sovereign over the Church within his realm and protector of his people from the abuses of Rome. During Cranmer's tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury, he established the first doctrinal and liturgical structures of the reformed Church of England. Under Henry's rule, Cranmer did not make many radical changes in the Church due to power struggles between religious conservatives and reformers. He published the first officially authorised vernacular (English) service, the Exhortation and Litany.
When Edward, who was devout and had been raised in the tenets of a reformed Church, came to the throne, Cranmer was able to promote faster changes. He wrote and compiled the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, a complete liturgy for the English Church, turning to the language of the people. With the assistance of several Continental reformers to whom he gave refuge, he changed doctrine or discipline in areas such as the Eucharist, clerical celibacy, the role of images in places of worship, and the veneration of saints. Cranmer promulgated the new doctrines through the prayer book, the Homilies and other publications.
After the accession of the Catholic Mary I, Cranmer was put on trial for treason and heresy. Imprisoned for over two years and under pressure from state and Church authorities, he made several recantations and reconciled himself with the Catholic Church. While this would have customarily absolved him from the heresy charge, Mary wanted him executed on the treason charge, and he was burned at the stake on 21 March 1556; on the day of his execution, he publicly withdrew his recantations, to die a heretic to Catholics and a martyr for the principles of the English Reformation. Cranmer's death was immortalised in Foxe's Book of Martyrs and his legacy lives on within the Church of England through the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles, an Anglican statement of faith derived from his work.
Origins
Cranmer was born in 1489 at Aslockton in Nottinghamshire, England.. The only authority for the date of his birth (2 July) is, according to Ridley, an anonymous biographer who wrote shortly after Cranmer's death. The biographer makes several mistakes about Cranmer's early life. He was a younger son of Thomas Cranmer by his wife Agnes Hatfield. Thomas Cranmer was of modest wealth but was from an established armigerous gentry family which took its name from the manor of Cranmer in Lincolnshire. A ledger stone to one of his relatives in the Church of St John of Beverley, Whatton, near Aslockton is inscribed as follows: Hic jacet Thomas Cranmer, Armiger, qui obiit vicesimo septimo die mensis Maii, anno d(omi)ni. MD centesimo primo, cui(us) a(n)i(ma)e p(ro)p(i)cietur Deus Amen ("here lies Thomas Cranmer, Esquire, who died on the 27th day of May in the year of our lord 1501, on whose soul may God look upon with mercy"). The arms of the Cranmer and Aslockton families are displayed. The figure is that of a man with flowing hair and gown and a purse on his right side. Their oldest son, John Cranmer, inherited the family estate, while Thomas and his younger brother, Edmund, were placed on the path to clerical careers.. The arms are emblazoned, "A chevron between three cranes" (Cranmer) and "Argent, five fusils in fesse gules each charged with an escallop or" (Aslacton).
Early years (1489–1527) Historians know nothing definite about Cranmer's early schooling. He probably attended a grammar school in his village. At 14, two years after his father's death, he was sent to the newly created Jesus College, Cambridge.; It took him eight years to attain his Bachelor of Arts degree, following a curriculum of logic, classical literature, and philosophy. During this time, he began to collect medieval scholastic books, which he preserved faithfully throughout his life. For his master's degree he studied the humanists Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Erasmus. He finished the course in three years. Shortly after receiving his Master of Arts degree in 1515, he was elected to a fellowship of Jesus College.;
Sometime after Cranmer took his MA, he married a woman named Joan. Although he was not yet a priest, he was obliged to give up his fellowship, resulting in losing his residence at Jesus College. To support himself and his wife, he took a job as a reader at Buckingham Hall (later reformed as Magdalene College). When Joan died during her first childbirth, Jesus College showed its regard for Cranmer by reinstating his fellowship. He began studying theology, and by 1520, he had been ordained, the university already having named him as one of its preachers. He received his Doctor of Divinity degree in 1526.;
Not much is known about Cranmer's thoughts and experiences during his three decades at Cambridge. Traditionally, he has been portrayed as a humanist whose enthusiasm for biblical scholarship prepared him to adopt Lutheran ideas, which were spreading during the 1520s. A study of his marginalia reveals an early antipathy to Martin Luther and an admiration for Erasmus.; When Cardinal Wolsey, the King's Lord Chancellor, selected several Cambridge scholars, including Edward Lee, Stephen Gardiner and Richard Sampson, to be diplomats throughout Europe, Cranmer was chosen for an embassy to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. His supposed participation in an earlier embassy to Spain mentioned in the older literature, has proved to be spurious.
In the service of Henry VIII (1527–1532)
Henry VIII's first marriage arose from the death of his older brother, Arthur, in 1502. Their father, Henry VII, betrothed Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon, to the future king. The marriage immediately raised questions about the biblical prohibition (in Leviticus 18 and 20) against marriage to a brother's wife. The couple married in 1509, and after a series of miscarriages, a daughter, Mary, was born in 1516. By the 1520s, Henry still did not have a son to name as heir, and he took this as a sure sign of God's anger and made overtures to the Vatican about an annulment.. According to Diarmaid MacCulloch, he became convinced of this perhaps as much as two years before his passion for Anne Boleyn. He gave Cardinal Wolsey the task of prosecuting his case; Wolsey began by consulting university experts. From 1527, Cranmer assisted with the annulment proceedings in addition to his duties as a Cambridge don.
In mid-1529, Cranmer stayed with relatives in Waltham Holy Cross to avoid an outbreak of the plague in Cambridge. Two of his Cambridge associates, Stephen Gardiner and Edward Foxe, joined him. The three discussed the annulment issue and Cranmer suggested putting aside the legal case in Rome in favour of a general canvassing of opinions from university theologians throughout Europe. Henry showed much interest in the idea when Gardiner and Foxe presented him with this plan. It is unknown whether the King or his new Lord Chancellor, Thomas More, explicitly approved the plan. Eventually, it was implemented, and Cranmer was requested to join the royal team in Rome to gather university opinions.; Edward Foxe coordinated the research effort and the team produced the Collectanea satis copiosa ("The Sufficiently Abundant Collections") and The Determinations, historical and theological support for the argument that the King exercised supreme jurisdiction within his realm.. The full title is The Determinations of the most famous and most excellent Universities of Italy and France, that it is unlawful for a man to marry his brother's wife, that the Pope hath no power to dispense therewith and it is likely that Cranmer undertook the translation from Latin to English. Comparing the two language versions, MacCulloch notes that the document reveals the first indications of a change away from his humanist Catholicism towards a more radically reformist stance.
Cranmer's first contact with a Continental reformer was with Simon Grynaeus, a humanist based in Basel, Switzerland, and a follower of the Swiss reformers, Huldrych Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius. In mid-1531, Grynaeus took an extended visit to England to offer himself as an intermediary between the King and the Continental reformers. He struck up a friendship with Cranmer and after his return to Basel, he wrote about Cranmer to the German reformer Martin Bucer in Strasbourg. Grynaeus' early contacts initiated Cranmer's eventual relationship with the Strasbourg and Swiss reformers.
In January 1532, Cranmer was appointed the resident ambassador at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. As the Emperor travelled throughout his realms, Cranmer had to follow him to his residence in Regensburg. He passed through the Lutheran city of Nuremberg and saw for the first time the effects of the Reformation. When the Imperial Diet was moved to Nuremberg, he met the leading architect of the Nuremberg reforms, Andreas Osiander. They became good friends, and during that July Cranmer took the surprising action of marrying Margarete, the niece of Osiander's wife. He did not take her as his mistress, as was the prevailing custom with priests for whom celibacy was too rigorous. Scholars note that Cranmer had moved, however moderately at this stage, into identifying with certain Lutheran principles.; ; This progress in his personal life was not matched in his political life as he was unable to persuade Charles, Catherine's nephew, to support the annulment of his aunt's marriage.;
Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (1532–1534)
While Cranmer was following Charles through Italy, he received a royal letter dated 1 October 1532 informing him that he had been appointed the new Archbishop of Canterbury, following the death of Archbishop William Warham. Cranmer was ordered to return to England. The appointment had been secured by the family of Anne Boleyn, who was being courted by Henry. When Cranmer's promotion became known in London, it caused great surprise as Cranmer had previously held only minor positions in the Church. Anne Boleyn and her family had supported Cranmer who became archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer left Mantua on 19 November and arrived in England at the beginning of January.; Henry personally financed the papal bulls necessary for Cranmer's promotion to Canterbury. The bulls were easily acquired because the papal nuncio was under orders from Rome to please the English in an effort to prevent a final breach. The bulls arrived around 26 March 1533 and Cranmer was consecrated as a bishop on 30 March in St Stephen's Chapel, by John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln; John Vesey, Bishop of Exeter; and Henry Standish, Bishop of St Asaph. Even while they were waiting for the bulls, Cranmer continued to work on the annulment proceedings, which required greater urgency after Anne announced her pregnancy. Henry and Anne were secretly married on 24 or 25 January 1533 in the presence of a handful of witnesses. Cranmer did not learn of the marriage until 14 days later.;