Thomas Cranmer

Life and work

Cranmer was an Cambridge academic drawn into royal service through his suggestion that Henry VIII's marriage annulment case be argued via university theological opinion rather than papal appeal — a solution the king liked enough to make Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, in which role he formally annulled Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Though initially cautious, Cranmer's own theology moved in a Protestant direction over the following decades, especially during the reign of the young Edward VI, when he was free to implement more thorough reform, most importantly authoring the Book of Common Prayer (1549, revised 1552), which replaced the Latin Mass with English-language worship and became the foundational liturgical text of Anglicanism.

When the Catholic Mary I came to the throne in 1553, Cranmer was arrested for treason and heresy. Under intense pressure he signed several recantations of his Protestant beliefs, but at his execution in 1556 he dramatically renounced the recantations and thrust the hand that had signed them first into the fire, declaring it should burn first for having "offended."

The Book of Common Prayer, revised further after Cranmer's death, remained the standard liturgy of the Church of England and its global Anglican descendants for centuries, and its cadences deeply influenced English literary style.

In their own words

Author of enduring English liturgical language, including the collect "Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things."Book of Common Prayer

Further reading

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Thomas Cranmer