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 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 regained his prebend, was ordained a priest (1524), and appointed professor of theology at the University of Cambridge (1525). In the matter of the divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon, he asserted that the controversy should be resolved without the Pope, solely by the authority of Scripture and with the opinion of the professors of the English universities, no less competent in the matter than the Roman theologians. The king, informed of C.'s proposal, was delighted. 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 to defend the conclusions of his treatise in the presence of the Supreme Pontiff. Having failed to achieve his purpose, C. went on his return to Germany to advocate there the legitimacy of the royal divorce, embraced 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 that same year the primate archbishop of Canterbury, G. Warham, died, and Henry VIII called C. to succeed him, managing by skilful manoeuvres to obtain his confirmation from Rome (21 February 1533).
Thus elevated to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity of the kingdom, the new archbishop did not delay in showing his gratitude to the king, declaring the marriage he had contracted with Catherine of Aragon invalid, 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 should be recognized as the sole and supreme head of the English Church on earth, with the right to appoint and de-
pose bishops. From then on C. showed himself increasingly submissive to Henry VIII, and, to please him, successively annulled the marriages he had contracted with Anne Boleyn (1536), Anne of Cleves (1540), and Catherine Howard (1541).
C. supported the king in all his actions directed toward the reform of the English Church; but the latter was careful not to support him on dogmatic principles. Only under the reign of his son Edward VI (1547–53) did C. begin to disseminate Protestant doctrines of Calvinist character. Indeed, in 1548 he undertook the first edition of the Common Prayer Book, which was soon followed by a second, more radical one; he prepared a ceremonial for the ordination of sacred ministers, and in 1553 summarized Anglican doctrine in 42 articles. But in that same year Edward VI died and Mary Tudor ascended the throne; she worked with extreme energy to restore the Catholic faith to the kingdom. C. conspired against the queen and was condemned to the stake, after degradation (14 February 1556), on the twofold charge of heresy and violation of ecclesiastical celibacy, for having entered into an illicit union with Osiander's niece. To avoid execution, C. reduced himself to composing six recantations. Nevertheless, his death had been irrevocably decreed, and the queen required C.'s recantation to be published in the church of St Mary at Oxford before the capital sentence was carried out.
Then C., seeing himself lost, withdrew his abjurations, confessing that he had recanted solely in the hope of saving his life, and mounted the stake at the place where the “martyrs’ monument” now stands.
Despite the disturbances and incessant anxieties of his eventful life, C. devoted himself passionately to the study of theology. Among his literary works, the following are also remembered: Homilies (1547); Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament (1550); Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum (1551).