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 On March 30, 1533, Thomas Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. He figured prominently in the English Reformation and eventually paid for it with his life.
During the controversy between Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon, Cranmer, a Cambridge cleric, suggested that the king could bypass his appeal to Rome and submit the matter to the English clergy. This suggestion led to a number of rapid promotions by Henry. In 1532, Henry made him the English ambassador to the court of Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor.
The next year, Henry nominated him for the highest clerical post in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Rome approved the nomination, Cranmer returned to England. He had married the niece of the Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander while in Germany, but because the Roman Church required celibacy, he kept it a secret.
Two months after his accession to the archbishopric he annulled the marriage of Henry and Catherine. Five days later, he declared Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn legal.
Through the remainder of Henry’s reign, Cranmer worked tirelessly to establish the Reformation in England. The following is a brief list of some of his actions.
- He erased the pope’s name from every prayer book.
- He declared the king head of the English church.
- He distributed the English translation of the Bible.
- He revised the creed and liturgy of the church.
- He destroyed the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket at Canterbury.
- He abolished many festivals of the Roman Catholic Church.
- He invited Protestant refugees to England.
Cranmer served Henry’s son Edward VI for the six years of his reign. But when Edward’s half-sister Mary Tudor succeeded to the throne in 1553, she arrested Cranmer for treason and tossed him in the Tower of London.
She later removed him to an Oxford prison and subjected him to constant examination. Under great duress, he renounced his Reformation beliefs and signed a recantation declaring his whole-hearted faith in the doctrines of the Roman Church. It was to no avail. The court sentenced him to death by burning at the stake.
As they led him to the fire, he repented of his recantations saying, “As my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall be punished; for when I come to the fire it shall be first burned.” True to his word, as the fire began to rise, he placed his right hand in it until it was entirely consumed.
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