Anglicanism, not Cranmerism

Thomas Cranmer, who was one of the main English Reformers and Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and Edward VI, was born at Aslockton, Nottinghamshire, on July 2nd 1489. Educated at Cambridge, he entered royal service in 1527, serving as Henry VIII's representatives to the German Universities in 1531-32. Already interested in reforming ideas from his days as a Cambridge don, Cranmer had the opportunity to observe the Reformation in action whilst on his diplomatic mission. He spent a considerable amount of time in the Imperial Free City of Nuremberg where he met Andreas Osiander, the Lutheran Superintendent, and was close enough to Osiander's circle to end up marrying into his extended family. Why Cranmer, who at this point was a priest of the still Catholic Church of England, would do this was unclear. Perhaps he thought Henry was going to leave him in Germany long-term. However, with the death of William Warham, who had been Archbishop of Canterbury since 1503, Henry decided he wanted his own man as Primate of All England, and he chose Cranmer for the job.

The traditional formalities were followed, including seeking the traditional permissions, and the pallium from the Pope, and Cranmer was consecrated as a bishop March 30th 1533 by John Langlands, the Bishop of Lincoln. Cranmer piloted through both the final stages of the annulment of Henry's VIII's marriage to Katherine of Aragon, which Cranmer genuinely believed to be invalid, and presided at the baptism of Elizabeth in September 1533. During the mid-1530s he seems to have occupied something of a back seat with Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Chancellor, taking the lead through the Reform of the Universities, and the abolition of the Monasteries between 1535-40. Cranmer's attention was occupied by the need to find common ground with representatives of the Lutheran churches whose temporal rulers were members of the Schmalkaldic league. This lead to talks between English theologians and Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, etc., in Wittenberg in 1536, and between German Evangelical delegates and Cranmer and other English theologians in London in 1538/9. The first set of talks produced the Wittenberg Articles, and the second the Thirteen Articles which remained unpublished until the 1800s, but influenced the shape of the Forty-two Articles of 1553.

Cranmer's influence waxed and waned depending on who dominated Henry's government. In the early 1540s, with the Howards in the ascendent, Cranmer was almost tried for heresy. Mid-decade, with the Parrs, the Seymours, and the Dudleys back in English politics, Cranmer became increasingly important, and he began preparations for further Reforms. When Henry VIII died on January 28th 1547, Cranmer was by his side. As part of the regency council for Edward VI, Henry's nine-year-old son, and a close associate of the Seymours, he piloted through a series of Reforms 1547-1550 which included the abolition of certain ceremonies, such as the Candlemas blessing of candles; an end of clerical celibacy; the first Book of Homilies, the first Book of Common Prayer; and the reformed Ordinal for the ordination of bishops, priests, and deacons for the now Protestant, Church of England.

However, this was always a team effort. Cranmer relied on a team of Reformers which included both foreigners such as Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Jan Laski, and Paul Fagius, as well as home-grown Evangelicals such as Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, Roland Taylor, Robert Horne, and Henry Holbeach. The influences were first Humanistic, and then Reformed, but this did not stop Cranmer trying to secure the services of Philipp Melanchthon for the University of Cambridge after the death of Bucer in 1551. This team produced both a revised Prayer Book in the fall of 1552, and a confessional statement - the Forty-Two Articles - in the spring of 1553. With the death of Edward VI, and the failure of Northumberland's plot to put his daughter-in-law Lady Jane Grey on the throne to ensure a Protestant succession, the Catholic Mary I came to throne, and Cranmer was quickly imprisoned initially for treason, but then charges of heresy were brought, and Cranmer was burnt for heresy on March 21st 1556, one of approximately 283 English Protestants who perished between February 1555 and November 1558.

Unlike Luther and Calvin, Cranmer did not have an "-ism" named after him. When the Church of England returned to Protestantism in 1559-1563 some of Cranmer's positions were moderated, and whilst the Church of England under Elizabeth I was largely Reformed, other influences survived from Christian Humanism, and the early engagement with Melanchthon's strain of Lutheranism. The reason we do not have "Cranmerism" is that the martyred Archbishop was somewhat more radical than the eventual mainstream of the Church, and because the English Reformation had been a team effort. Rather than emphasizing a particular strand of Protestant thought, the English Reformation emphasized basic Evangelical doctrines such as the authority and sufficiency of the Bible, Justification by Grace through Faith, and the sufficiency of Christ's work on the Cross, whilst broadly agreeing with Lutherans on Election, the nature of the Church, and Baptism, and Calvin on the Lord's Supper. However, the retention of the historic threefold ministry, and a very traditional, though Reformed liturgy, ended up being the special sauce that made Anglicanism Anglican.