Contributions
A quiet Cambridge scholar, Thomas Cranmer entered history in 1529 by suggesting that the universities of Europe be consulted on the validity of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533, he annulled that marriage, clearing the way for the union with Anne Boleyn and the break with Rome. But his greatest work was liturgical and literary. In 1549, and again in a more plainly reformed version in 1552, he composed the Book of Common Prayer, the first unified prayer book in the English language. Its prose, of a limpid musicality - the collects, the burial office, the marriage vow ("to have and to hold") - entered the memory of the English people and remained there for four centuries. He also drew up the Forty-Two Articles, the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism, and promoted the English Bible in the parishes.
Significance
Cranmer was the spiritual architect of the Church of England, as Cromwell was its political architect. By giving worship a vernacular of lasting beauty, he did more than reform a doctrine: he created a monument of English prose, rivalling the King James Bible it foreshadowed. His Book of Common Prayer shaped the religious sensibility of the English-speaking world, from England to America. Yet his path was also that of a man torn between loyalty to his prince and loyalty to his faith, and therein lies both his shadow and his grandeur. Under the young Edward VI he could unfold his reform; at the accession of the Catholic Mary I he was arrested, tried for treason and heresy, and pressed to recant. Worn down, he signed several recantations renouncing Protestantism - a weakness that might have erased him. Condemned to the stake regardless, he chose at the last to recant his recantations. On 21 March 1556, at Oxford, he mounted the pyre and performed a gesture that became legendary, turning his moral defeat into one of the founding acts of the English Protestant martyrology.
Influence
Through the Book of Common Prayer he left a lasting imprint on the language and spirituality of the English-speaking world; its liturgical phrases are still spoken today. He founded the doctrinal and aesthetic identity of Anglicanism, a middle way between Rome and the continental reformations, and nourished the great tradition of English religious prose.
Anecdote
Condemned to death, Cranmer had given way: he had signed several recantations abjuring his reformed faith. On the day of the burning, 21 March 1556, a final public recantation was expected of him. To the astonishment of the crowd, he instead repudiated his recantations and declared that the hand which had signed against his conscience would be punished first. When the fire was lit, he thrust his right hand into the flames and held it there until it was consumed, repeating "This hand hath offended."