RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Craig- Cranmer
Seminary, and since 1906 has been pastor of Bramerd Union Church, Easton, Pa. He has written The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Holy Spirit (New York, 1905).
CRANMER, THOMAS: The first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury; b. at Aslacton (9 m. e. of Nottingham), Nottinghamshire, July 2, 1489; d at Oxford Mar. 21, 1556. He spent eight years at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. in 1510 or 1511 and his M.A. in 1515, and was elected to a fellowship. About the time of the publication of Erasmus's New Testament (1516) and Luther's theses (1517), he began a systematic study of the Scriptures; he was ordained before 1520, and in that year was university preacher and examiner in theology. About 1525 he had begun " in private to pray for the abolition of the papal power in England," but did not commit himself openly.
In the summer of 1529, talking over the question of the divorce with the king's chief agents, Fox and Gardiner, Cranmer j suggested Connection ^^^^^^^ ^he matter out of the hands of
with the ^YiQ lawyers and referring it to the Royal Di- theologians of the univers'ties. Henry vorce. grasped at the suggestion, summoned Cranmer, and commissioned the preparation of a treatise on the question, making use of Cranmer's influence also in other ways, and attaching him to the embassy which left England early in 1530 to see the pope and the emperor. He brought back little definite result, but the king rewarded his services by the gift of the archdeaconry of Taunton, and early in 1532 made him ambassador to the emperor. During his sojourn in Germany he was brought much into contact with the Lutheran leader Osiander, and married his niece Margaret. -In the autumn of the same year Henry determined to appoint him to the archbishopric of Canterbury, vacant by W..rham's death; and he was consecrated on Mar. 30, 1533, after having drawn up a formal protest to the effect that he would consider the- oath of obedience to the pope a form and not a reality, and that he did not intend to bind himself to do anything contrary to the king and commonwealth of England, or to restrain his liberty in things pertaining to the reformation of the Christian religion and the government of the Church of England. In April he asked the king's leave to proceed with the trial of Catherine's case, opened his court in May, and on the 23d pronounced sentence, declaring that the marriage of Henry and Catherine had been void from the beginning. Five days later he declared the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn valid, and on June 1 crowned her as queen.
The breach with Rome on the side of jurisdiction widened steadily; that in doctrine was somewhat behind it. In 1534 Cranmer issued a pastoral enjoining silence in regard to masses for the dead, prayers to the saints, pilgrimages, and celibacy — points on which it was hoped that an authoritative decision might be reached within a year. In 1536, though speaking with the greatest personal regard for Anne Boleyn, he was obliged officially to pro-
nounce Henry's marriage with her also void, and on the day she was beheaded issued a license for him to marry Lady Jane Seymour. The Beginnings revision of doctrine proceeded by deof the Ref- grees, and was assisted by the publiormation. cation of the English version of the Scriptures, which had been a favorite project of Cranmer's for some time. He remained at his post under the reactionary system enforced by the Six Articles, but during the last years of Henry's reign was subject to continual assaults from the Roman party. Sheltered by Henry's unfailing protection, he went quietly on maturing his plans for religious reform. He worked at the preparation of English services, of which the Litany that appeared in 1545 was the first to come into use. The First Prayer-book of Edward VI. was, in the form in which it came before Parliament, to all intents and purposes the work of Cranmer, though afterward modified into the shape of a compromise between the two parties. The new ordinal, published in Mar., 1560, was also principally his work. During the reign of Edward VI. he was constantly busy with projects for completing the new order of things, including the revision of the canon law known as Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, and the Forty-two Articles, afterward reduced to thirty-nine.
The Second Prayer-book of Edward VI. represented Cranmer's furthest advance toward Continental Protestantism; but he adhered firmly to it after Mary's accession, knowing that he did so at the peril of his life. A manifesto which he wrote to define his position got into circulation before he intended it, and led to his arrest in Sept., 1553, and to his trial for treason two months later, on account of his yielding to the plan to proclaim Lady Jane Grey queen. He was condemned to death, but his ecclesiastical character Fall Under made it impossible to carry out the Mary and sentence, as the law then stood. For Death. months he lay a prisoner in the Tower, until the passing of the statute De hoeretico comburendo in Jan., 1555, warned him to prepare for his end. He was taken to Oxford, and there submitted to a searching examination before a court possessing papal jurisdiction. On Nov. 25 he was pronounced contumacious by the pope for not appearing in Rome and solemnly excommunicated. Pole was appointed to the vacant archbishopric, and a commission was issued for Cranmer's degradation and dehvery to the secular arm.
He appealed in vain to a general council, and m t'^e following February Bonner and Thirlby went to Oxford to execute the sentence. Cranmer now signed the documents which have been known as his successive recantations; but the first three, at least, are not really recantations, but submissions to authority, such as his political principles always impelled him to make. His fifth, or real, recantation was signed rather under the influence of seductive hopes held out to him than under that o fear. It surrendered every point for which he had fought, anathematized the whole heresy of Luther and Zwingh, and recognized the pope as Christ s vicar and supreme head of the Church on earth. A
Cranston Creation