Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Cranmer (1489 - 1556) was the Archbishop of Canterbury (starting in 1533) under King Henry VIII. He was a leader of the Reformation in England and oversaw the creation of the Anglican Church's Book of Common Prayer.
Career
Cranmer in Nottinghamshire and from age 14 he attended Cambridge University, where he received a sound humanist education and was elected Fellow of Jesus College about 1511. He forfeited his fellowship when he married, but was reelected on his wife's death. He took holy orders as a Roman Catholic priest in 1523 and became a university examiners in theology. Cranmer in 1529 suggested that the university faculties of Europe should be consulted on the controversial legality of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. thereby avoiding an appeal to Rome for its annulment. Henry welcomed the idea and put Cranmer in charge of its execution. Cranmer headed a delegation to Rome to discuss the matter.
In 1531 the king sent Cranmer to Germany to arrange an alliance with the Lutheran princes. In 1532 he married a niece of the German Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander.
Archbishop of Canterbury
He became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. As archbishop, he at once declared Henry's marriage to Catherine null and void and confirmed as valid the king's marriage to Anne Boleyn. When Anne's daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth I was born, he served as godfather. In 1536 he accepted alleged evidence of Anne's adulteries and annulled her marriage.
As archbishop he did much to make possible the reading of the Bible in English and opposed the reaction that led to the Six Articles in 1539; these reasserted most points of Catholic doctrine, including celibacy of the clergy and transubstantiation.
The "Litany" of the Book of Common Prayer, which was issued in 1545 and bears Cranmer's name, is substantially the one still used in the Anglican church. Under the boy King Edward VI, Cranmer had a large share in preparing the prayer books of 1549 and 1552, as well as the Forty-two (later the Thirty-nine) Articles of 1553. His translation of the liturgy into the sonorous English of the 16th century was a remarkable achievement and had a lasting effect on English literature.
Death
In 1553 Mary, daughter of Henry by Catherine of Aragon and a staunch Catholic, came to the throne. Cranmer was charged with treason and sedition when Lady Jane Grey was overthrown; Cranmer had approved her appointment as queen. He was burnt to death in 1556 with the Oxford Three. He is a saint in the Anglican Church.
External links
Further reading
- MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1996) 692pp, the standard scholarly biography
- MacCulloch, Diarmaid.