CRANMER, THOMAS. - First Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, b. at Aslacton (Nottingham) on 2 July 1489; d. at the stake in Oxford on 21 March 1556.
A student of Jesus College, Cambridge, he obtained an ecclesiastical benefice there in 1510, which he later lost for having contracted a secret marriage. After the death of his partner the following year, he regained his prebend, was ordained priest (1524), and appointed professor of theology at the University of Cambridge (1525). In the matter of Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he maintained that the controversy should be resolved without the Pope, relying solely on the authority of Scripture and the opinion of English university professors, who were no less competent in the matter than Roman theologians. The king, informed of Cranmer’s proposal, was greatly pleased. Summoned to court forthwith, Cranmer wrote a treatise to prove the invalidity of the royal marriage. Henry VIII, however, still hoping to obtain papal consent, sent Cranmer to Rome to defend the conclusions of his treatise in the presence of the Supreme Pontiff. Failing to achieve his aim, Cranmer returned to Germany to advocate the legitimacy of the royal divorce there, adhered to Protestant opinions, and secretly married the niece of the renowned Lutheran theologian A. Osiander, whom he had met at the Diet of Regensburg (1532). In the same year, G. Warham, the primate archbishop of Canterbury, died, and Henry VIII appointed Cranmer to succeed him, succeeding through clever maneuvers in obtaining his confirmation from Rome (21 February 1533).
Elevated thus to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity of the kingdom, the new archbishop did not delay in showing his gratitude to the king by declaring invalid the marriage Henry had contracted with Catherine of Aragon and solemnly confirming his new union with Anne Boleyn (15 May 1533). Threatened with excommunication, he appealed to Parliament, which, at his suggestion, decreed that the king should be recognized as the sole and supreme head of the Church of England on earth, with the right to appoint and depose bishops. From then on, Cranmer remained ever more devoted to Henry VIII, and to please him, he subsequently annulled the king’s marriages to Anne Boleyn (1536), Anne of Cleves (1540), and Catherine Howard (1541).
Cranmer supported the king in all his actions directed toward the reform of the English Church; but the king carefully avoided endorsing him on doctrinal principles. Only under the reign of his son Edward VI (1547–53) did Cranmer begin to disseminate Protestant doctrines of Calvinist orientation. Indeed, in 1548 he began work on the first edition of the *Book of Common Prayer*, soon followed by a second, more radical edition; he prepared a ceremonial for the ordination of sacred ministers, and in 1553 he summarized Anglican doctrine in 42 Articles. But in that same year, Edward VI died and Mary Tudor ascended the throne, energetically working to restore the Catholic faith to the realm. Cranmer conspired against the queen and was condemned to the stake, after degradation (14 February 1556), on the double charge of heresy and violation of clerical celibacy for having unlawfully married Osiander’s niece. To avoid execution, Cranmer was induced to compose six retractions. However, death was irrevocably decreed, and the queen insisted on Cranmer’s retraction being published in the church of St Mary in Oxford before the execution.
Then Cranmer, seeing himself lost, withdrew his recantations, confessing that he had recanted solely in the hope of saving his life, and ascended the pyre in the place where the Martyrs’ Memorial now stands.
Despite the turmoil and incessant anxieties of his eventful life, Cranmer devoted himself passionately to the study of theology. Among his literary works still remembered are: *Homilies* (1547); *Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament* (1550); *Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum* (1551).