 |
Martyrs Memorial,
marking the site in
Oxford where Thomas
Cranmer had been put
to death
|
I had mentioned in the previous post that Mary was
savoring her revenge on Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer had not only supported Henry in his
divorce from Mary’s mother, Katherine of Aragon, but he had, as Archbishop of
Canterbury and Primate of England, annulled the marriage which brought disgrace
on both Katherine and Mary. Mary was no
longer Princess of Wales, nor even princess, but no more than a bastard
daughter of the King, the Lady Mary. For
twenty years she was without rightful title, honors, or prospects for a royal
marriage. For twenty years she was
harassed because of her loyalty to her mother and to her Catholic faith. And while Henry was responsible, it was at
Cranmer’s doing. She not only would have
her revenge, she would make him pay, toying with him as a cat might toy with a
rabbit before killing it.
Mary came to the throne on July 19, 1553—twenty
years and two months after Cranmer had annulled her parents’ marriage and
changed the course of her life. On
September 14, of that year Cranmer was ordered to appear in Star Chamber where
he was accused of treason for having supported Lady Jane Grey as Queen against
Mary’s claims. He was remanded to the Tower of London as a prisoner. When Mary came to the throne, Cranmer had
advised other Protestant leaders to flee England but he himself determined to
stay and fight for his reformation.
Cranmer was tried at the London Guildhall for treason—along with Lady
Jane Grey, her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley and two of Dudley’s brothers. He—and they—were found guilty and sentenced
to death. But Mary had other plans for
her one-time nemesis than a traitor’s beheading. In March 1554 Cranmer, along with Protestant
bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, both of whom refused to conform to
the old religion, were confined in the Bocardo Prison in Oxford where they were
to be tried for heresy. The punishment
for heresy was far more dreadful than treason: being burned alive rather than
being beheaded. Cranmer and the others
were allowed to sit and ponder their destiny in the Bocardo for seventeen
months before being brought to trial.
All this time, Cranmer was still Archbishop of Canterbury—Mary not
having deprived him of his See, though having entrusted the primate’s normal
duties (such as her coronation) to Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and
her Lord Chancellor. The trials of the
three accused heretics began in September 1555 and all three were found guilty. Ridley and Latimer were executed almost
immediately after their trials—on October 16th 1555. Cranmer was brought to the site of the
judicial murders and forced to watch as his two faithful collaborators were
burned alive at the stake for their Protestant faith. It was only the following month, November
1555, that he was officially deprived of his See. But Mary did not act
quickly. Indeed she toyed with him—he
was moved from the Bocardo to the home of the Dean of Christchurch, the Oxford
Cathedral and College. Here he was
treated not as prisoner but as a guest.
A variety of Catholic academics visited him and debated with him over
issues of papal authority, Eucharistic doctrines, and purgatory. Cranmer submitted to the authority of the
Queen and accepted Catholic doctrine. He
attended Mass and asked for sacramental absolution. But then on February 14, 1556 he was
defrocked from the clergy and sent back to prison. Being defrocked left him vulnerable to
capital punishment and ten days later a royal writ for his execution on March 7th
was sent to the Mayor of Oxford. Cranmer
issued a recantation of his Protestant faith, accepting papal supremacy,
purgatory, transubstantiation, Eucharistic Sacrifice and the doctrine that
outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation. He fully repudiated any Lutheran or Zwinglian
doctrine. The writ for his execution was
put in abeyance. By Canon Law, having
recanted his heresy, he was to be spared.
But that would not satisfy Mary’s jealousy to make him suffer. He was to die and it was to be by
burning. He was told to prepare a final statement
affirming his Catholic faith that he was to proclaim from the pyre before it
was set alight. He did so. But on March 21st when he was
taken to the same site where Ridley and Latimer had been burned five months
earlier, he departed from the prepared text, repented of his recantation of
Protestantism, and cast his right hand into the fire first—his penance for
having signed the recantation with that hand.
As the flames rose around him he called “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit…I
see the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” This second phrase is taken from the
martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 7.
It is unfair to try to sum up a life as complex as
Thomas Cranmer but there are certain themes that emerge. He was an ambitious man and while one aspect
that that ambition was to advance the faith in which he believed, religious
zealotry does not explain it all. There
was a certain duplicity in him. He
concealed both his having a wife and his Protestant leanings from King Henry
knowing that his ideas would lead him, under Henry, at least to removal from
office and possibly to the stake for his understanding of the Eucharist, of
Masses for the Dead, of purgatory, and of the intercession of the saints. Indeed, despite his personal beliefs, he had
supported the Six Articles in 1539—articles that articulated a very Catholic
understanding of the Sacrifice of the Mass as well as confession, clerical
celibacy, and other Catholic perspectives.
Moreover, in addition to the duplicity there was certain instability to
Cranmer’s faith. He was no original
thinker or even a critical thinker; he began with Luther’s theological position
but over the years moved towards a more radical Swiss Protestantism without
ever really understanding either position in depth. Faith to Cranmer was more a matter of
intellectual stimulation, or even titillation, than inner experience. When Edward came to the throne, he could
express his Protestant views and indeed create a magnificent liturgy that
celebrated that theology, but he also was disloyal to Henry’s wishes regarding
the regency and broke his oath to the old King regarding as to how the Kingdom
was to be administered and how the succession to the Throne was to be arranged
during the minority of the new King.
When Mary came to the throne he did not flee even though he advised others
to do so, but his recantation of all he had worked for and done for
twenty-three years in a desperate hope to save his life, shows a certain lack
of spine. Only when he realized that he
was damned either way did he stand up for his Protestant principles. I don’t think he was insincere, but I think
for Cranmer faith was more a matter of intellectual assent than personal
commitment. He has been made a hero, the
closest thing they can manage for a saint, by the evangelical wing of the
Church of England but in fact I think there was less to Cranmer than meets the
eye. He was too vacillating to be a
hero; a martyr yes, but a most reluctant one.
It cannot be denied however that he was a master of the English
language, second only to Shakespeare in the ability to create elegant and pithy
phrases that draw from the depths of the human heart and can make the soul
soar. All in all, while he was most
talented he was no better a man than many—most—of the bishops of his day,
Protestant or Catholic, a climber, a theoretician, a man of ideas more than
deeds, a disappointment. He was not a
bad man but he lacked a certain compass that a man of faith would have. When you think about it, a self-indulgent
narcissist wearing the crown and a sycophantic dilatant wearing the miter was
no way to begin a Church. But then they
didn’t begin the Church of England—it was an ancient Church going back into
mists of early Romano-Britain—and its rich heritage would sustain it even
through the troubled times of Henry and Edward and Mary. And to be fair, Thomas Cranmer contributed to
that rich heritage by the magnificent Prayer Book that he created to replace
the beautiful but archaic rites that had preceded it. All in all then I think we have a man whose
moral compass kept pointing towards power rather than towards true north and
who was more articulate than intellectual, a man of his time rather than a man
for the ages, but no worse than many of his contemporaries and better than most.
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