Thomas Cranmer

Life

Cranmer studied at the University of Cambridge and later taught there. When Henry VIII sought the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Cranmer worked on the king's behalf. In 1533 he became Archbishop of Canterbury (the highest ecclesiastical office in the Church of England), and that same year he declared the king's marriage to Catherine null and void. Under Edward VI (1547–1553) he pursued Protestant reform in earnest. When the Catholic Mary I came to the throne, however, he was tried for treason and heresy. While in prison he signed several documents recanting his faith, but on the day of his execution he repudiated them all. He was burned at the stake in Oxford in 1556. According to tradition, he first thrust into the fire the right hand with which he had signed the recantations.

Ministry and Achievements

• Book of Common Prayer: In 1549 and 1552 he compiled the Book of Common Prayer in English, providing English-language worship in place of the Latin Mass. It has since been revised many times and remains the standard for Anglican worship to this day.
• English Bible and prayers: He supported placing the English Bible in churches. In 1544 he published an English litany (a form of prayer in which priest and congregation respond alternately).
• Doctrinal formulation: He issued the Book of Homilies (1547) and the Forty-Two Articles (1553). The Forty-Two Articles later became the basis for the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles.
• Theology: On the Lord's Supper, he gradually moved away from transubstantiation (the Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine are changed into the actual body and blood of Christ). He is regarded as having inclined toward a position close to that of the Reformed churches, holding that Christ is spiritually present to believers.

Influence on the Korean Church

The Anglican Church of Korea carries on the Book of Common Prayer tradition and worships using a Korean-language prayer book. In this sense Cranmer is regarded as a distant root of Anglican worship in Korea. Phrases in English-language wedding vows such as "for better for worse ... in sickness and in health" are also said to derive from the Book of Common Prayer.

Assessment

Anglicans and Protestants honor him as a martyr of the Reformation, a view popularized by John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. The prayers he wrote are counted among the classics of English liturgical literature.

He has also drawn criticism. Some argue that he was overly compliant with the king's divorce and church policies. His involvement in the execution of people condemned as heretics under Edward VI is also cited against him. His repeated recantations in the face of death are interpreted in different ways: some see them as an expression of human weakness, while others see his final reversal as a resolute act of holding fast to his convictions. The Catholic Church has traditionally viewed him as the man who separated the Church of England from Rome.