Who is cranmer

Thomas Cranmer was born in Aslacton, Nottinghamshire, on July 2, , the son of a village squire. He went to Cambridge University at the age of 14; though of indifferent scholarship, he received a bachelor's degree in and a master's degree in He also received a fellowship at Jesus College and seemed well on the way to an ecclesiastical career when, at 25, he abandoned his fellowship and married Black Joan of the Dolphin Inn at Cambridge.

Very little is known of this girl, who died, as did his child by her, within a year of their marriage. Cranmer then returned to his former way of life. His fellowship was restored, and by he had been ordained a priest and become a university preacher. Five years later he received the degree of doctor of divinity.

A chance meeting in August with two members of King Henry VIII's administration led to Cranmer's employment in the royal service; he worked toward obtaining the annulment of Henry's marriage with Catherine of Aragon.

At the latter town he made two acquisitions: Lutheran sympathies, if not convictions, and a young German wife, Margaret, a Lutheran and a niece of the prominent Lutheran scholar Andreas Osiander. In , he helped complete the book of common prayer. Her nine-day reign was followed by the Roman Catholic Mary I, who tried him for treason. After a long trial and imprisonment, he was forced to proclaim to the public his error in the support of Protestantism, an act designed to discourage followers of the religion.

Despite this, Cranmer was sentenced to be burnt to death in Oxford on 21 March He dramatically stuck his right hand, with which he had signed his recantation, into the fire first.

Search term:. Read more. Cranmer died in Oxford on March 21, and is considered a Reformation martyr by the Anglican church. While writing this biography, we used a couple resources that are available in our store! Our favorite is Reformation Heroes —a short book filled with biographies of the major players of the Reformation. Reformation Heroes. Next Post The Message of the Reformers. Jewish Customs in the Bible August 3, Only the personal intervention of the King saved him from the Tower and possibly the block.

A Wolsey, a Thomas More, a Cromwell, might be left naked to their enemies; an erring wife could expect no royal mercy. But towards the man who had solved his matrimonial problem and guided him on the path towards independence of Rome Henry showed an unexpected and uncharacteristic gratitude and loyalty.

He persevered, however, and was able to count upon a steadily increasing measure of support—clerical as well as lay. Two years later, at the request of the King, Cranmer compiled a Litany in English, based upon the Sarum Latin Litany with additional borrowings from Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox sources.

The way was now prepared for a complete translation and simplification of all the Latin service books and for their compression into one volume. A committee of divines, with the Archbishop as Chairman, met frequently to consider proposals upon the drafting of which Cranmer had long been engaged. This first English Prayer Book of professed to be, not so much an innovation in forms of service, as a return to what was believed to be the purer worship of the Primitive Church, so long overlaid with medieval corruptions and complications.

It was essentially catholic in tone, and consequently was accepted—though perhaps reluctantly—by the more conservative-minded of the bishops, such as Gardiner, Heath, Bonner and Tunstall. It has, of course, passed through several subsequent revisions, but in its main substance the Book of was the Prayer Book as we know and use it today.

During the brief reign of the boy King, Edward VI, the religious trend of the country was forced violently in a reforming direction and continental Protestant preachers poured into England.

It was in no small part due to their urgings that a revision of the Prayer Book was undertaken in and that this version contained many changes of a Lutheran character. He had gone far towards that of the Continental Reformers, but by no means all the way.

His aim was always reform of abuses rather than religious revolution, and his object was to pilot the Church of England firmly between the rival extremities of Rome and Geneva.

The death, at 15, of Edward VI spelt disaster for Cranmer and all who supported the Reformation, as well as for the Duke of Northumberland and the other political careerists who had sought to profit themselves by it. Cranmer, bravely enough, remained at his post, hoping desperately perhaps that some sort of co-existence might prove feasible between those who accepted the Prayer Book and those who were in loyalty bound to the Pope and the Latin Mass.

Although for a time the two rites did exist side by side, Queen Mary was merely biding her time. In September he was committed to the Tower on a charge of having spoken against the Latin Mass. A Bill of Attainder was then passed through Parliament involving his deprivation and degradation. The result of the debate, of course, was never in doubt, and the three men were kept in prison until such time as it might be convenient to try them for heresy.

Under the ancient statute De heretico comburendo Bishop Hooper was burned at the stake in his see city of Gloucester, Bishop Ferrar at St. Although Gardiner, recently restored to his bishopric of Winchester, and Tunstall, similarly restored to Durham, refused to take any part in the persecutions, Bonner in London was active in hunting out heretics, and during the next three years nearly three hundred persons were burned to death in his diocese alone.

On February 14th, , he was taken to the cathedral church in Oxford and solemnly degraded of his archie-piscopal robes and insignia. Two days later he declared his full acceptance of the doctrines of purgatory and transubstantiation, and abjured all the beliefs he had formerly professed of a Lutheran or Zwinglian nature.