Review of Diarmaid MacCulloch's Thomas Cranmer: A Life (revised edition: 2016)

     Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2016 [1996]. 632 pp., pbk.  ISBN 978-0-300-22657-7

The English Reformation played out very differently than those on the Continent, and by the time it got underway, the continental reform movements were already welcoming a second generation of leaders.  In modern evangelical contexts, much attention is given to the nonconformists of 17^th & 18^th-century England while those figures who initially moved the English Church away from Rome during the 16^th century are largely unknown due to neglect.  Surely Puritans, Baptists and Wesleyans are easier to include in the evangelical family tree than paedobaptist Bishops who struggled to reform an established Church from the top down.  I believe that this “life” of Cranmer will serve 21^st-century evangelicals by introducing them to a theological ally (and ancestor), albeit one who found himself at the head of an established Church and involved in matters of state at the highest level, and who was obliged to navigate all the ethical and theological ambiguity associated with such a position.

What was once famously said of the NT Gospels could just as easily be claimed about MacCulloch’s magisterial biography of the first “evangelical”[1] Archbishop of Canterbury – it is a passion narrative with a rather lengthy introduction.  The book’s penultimate chapter consists of a sensitive account of Cranmer’s trials – both psychological and ecclesiastical – leading up to his condemnation, following that of his fellow Oxford martyrs, as a heretic.  Cranmer was arrested in September 1553 and burned at the stake on 21 March 1556 by order of Queen Mary, who had taken the throne following her younger brother’s untimely death and was intent on undoing the “evangelical” damage done during Edward’s reign.  Cranmer’s struggle for survival and his prevarication during his imprisonment between a “traditionalist”, Roman position and his particular Reformed stance mirrored that of the Church of England since Henry VIII’s 1534 Act of Supremacy, i.e. the struggle both to define its theological identity and negotiate its political allegiances (or lack thereof) to crown and Pope.  In the words of the author, “In him, the whole of the English Reformation was put on trial” (p. 618).  Throughout a lengthy series of both public disputations and private interrogations, Cranmer was obliged to explain his views on the nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist as well as justify his failure to recognize the universal primacy of the Bishop of Rome.  His loyalty to Mary as his Queen was also questioned, and Cranmer repeatedly insisted throughout the proceedings that he would submit to the rule of Mary and her Spanish husband Phillip if ever he was afforded the chance to serve them as a free man.  Although the principle of Cuius regio, eius religio could perhaps not be applied to Henry, by the time his daughter Mary had been crowned, it was most definitely the case.  Under Mary, England lurched back into a state of “papal obedience” akin to that which had existed prior to 1534.  As successive English monarchs tottered between agendas of reform and allegiance to Rome, the incarcerated Cranmer, for his part, struggled against the temptation to reconsider the validity of those views he had come to embrace over decades of theological reflection (and publication) and political maneuvering.

Eventually, the long months of isolation, the distress at having to witness the burning of his friends Latimer and Ridley, and the strain of being constantly interrogated, entreated and threatened wore Cranmer down to the point where he issued a series of six statements, the final one written just a few days before his death, offering recantations of his heretical views and promising submission to the Pope and the rites of the Roman mass.  By this point, it was clear that he would not be shown clemency by the Queen.  Cranmer prepared a final discourse to be delivered during the service at the Oxford University Church, to be followed immediately by his execution.  The text of the speech was submitted to the authorities in advance and consisted of a penitential plea for God to have mercy on his many “errors”.  However, in a dramatic departure from his prepared remarks, Cranmer shouted to the large assembly that he recanted all his recantations, called the Pope the Antichrist, and affirmed his published (and “heretical”) views on the Eucharist.  Thus, Cranmer went to the stake, not a repentant son of the Roman Church, but rather as the martyr of his Reformed views and champion of the evangelical cause.  Ironically, Cranmer was condemned by Mary I for his decades-long defense of the right of the monarch to be the Supreme Head of the Church in England, a right that the Queen repudiated.  However, a mere three years later, the Elizabethan Settlement would consolidate enough of Cranmer’s theological and political gains to allow the Church of England to maintain its unique theological identity within a polarized Western Christendom.

Of especial interest are MacCulloch’s discussions of the evolution of Cranmer’s views on the Eucharist and predestination.  Cranmer abandoned transubstantiation in favour of a more Lutheran understanding of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, before ultimately arriving at a view somewhat akin to that of Zwingli, all the while not reducing the bread and wine to mere symbols (cf. pp. 614-15; also 173-84).[2]  Cranmer’s fully-developed views resemble the “symbolic parallelism” of H. Bullinger (1504-75), who, together with Calvin (1509-64), published the Zurich Agreement of 1549.  The author is confident that had Lady Jane Grey remained queen, Cranmer would have been able to fully reform the English Church, indeed to make it the preeminent Reformed Church in close theological affinity to that of Calvin (pp. 618-20).  On the question of predestination, it is interesting to note that though Cranmer firmly believed in this doctrine, he was loth to preach about it openly, for fear that it would not serve to comfort the faithful (pp. 210-12)!

All in all, I heartily recommend this book.  The fruit is well worth the work required to pluck it from its many pages. 

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[1] Of course, the term “evangelical” carried connotations within the 16^th-century English Church (as well as Anglican historiography) which may not be shared by all those who now identity themselves as evangelicals (whether Anglican or otherwise).

[2] Pace Sean Lawrence’s review of the first edition: https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/04-3/lawrrev.html (accessed 21 October 2020).