Cranmer, Thomas

CRANMER, THOMAS. - First Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, b. at Aslacton (Nottingham) on 2 July 1489; d. at the stake at Oxford on 21 March 1556.

A student at Jesus College, Cambridge, he obtained there in 1510 an ecclesiastical benefice, of which he was subsequently deprived for having contracted a secret marriage. After the death of his companion, which occurred the following year, he recovered his prebend, was ordained a 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 asserted that the controversy should be resolved without the Pope, by the sole authority of Scripture and with the opinion of the professors of the English universities, who were no less competent in the matter than the Roman theologians. The king, informed of C.'s proposal, rejoiced greatly at it. Summoned at once to court, C. wrote a treatise to prove the invalidity of the royal marriage. Henry VIII, however, still hoping to obtain papal consent, sent C. to Rome so that he might defend the conclusions of his treatise in the presence of the Supreme Pontiff. Having failed to achieve his purpose, C. on his return went to Germany to advocate there the legitimacy of the royal divorce, adhered to Protestant opinions and secretly married the niece of the celebrated Lutheran theologian A. Osiander, whom he had met at the Diet of Regensburg (1532). In the same year the archbishop primate of Canterbury, G. Warham, died, and Henry VIII summoned C. to succeed him, succeeding through skillful maneuvers in obtaining for him confirmation from Rome (21 Feb. 1533).

Elevated thus to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity of the realm, the new archbishop did not delay in manifesting his gratitude toward the king, declaring invalid the marriage he 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, on his advice, decreed that the king be recognized as the sole and supreme head of the English Church on earth, with the right to appoint and depose bishops. From then on C. showed himself ever more devoted to Henry VIII, and to please him he successively annulled the marriages he had contracted with Anne Boleyn (1536), with Anne of Cleves (1540) and with Catherine Howard (1541).

C. seconded the king in all his actions directed toward the reform of the English Church; but the latter took good care not to support him on dogmatic principles. Only under the reign of his son Edward VI (1547-53) did C. begin to spread the Protestant doctrines of a Calvinist tone. Indeed in 1548 he set his hand to the first edition of the Common Prayer Book, which was followed very soon by a second, more radical one; he prepared a ceremonial for the ordinations of sacred ministers, and in 1553 he summarized in 42 articles the doctrine of Anglicanism. But in that same year Edward VI died and Mary Tudor ascended the throne, and she strove with extreme energy to restore the Catholic faith to the realm. C. conspired against the queen and was condemned to the stake, after degradation (14 Feb. 1556), under the twofold accusation of heresy and of violation of ecclesiastical celibacy for having unlawfully united himself with Osiander's niece. To avoid the torture, C. brought himself to compose six retractations. Nevertheless death was irrevocably decreed and the queen required C.'s retractation to be published in the church of St. Mary at Oxford before the capital execution.

Then C., seeing himself lost, withdrew his abjurations, confessing that he had retracted solely in the hope of saving his life, and ascended the stake, in the place where the "monument of the martyrs" now stands.

Despite the disturbances and incessant worries of his eventful life, C. devoted himself with passion to the study of theology. Of his literary production there are still remembered: Homilies (1547); Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament (1550); Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum (1551).

Emanuele Chietini