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Thomas Cranmer

Type Figure Region England Time 1489–1556 Also known as Thomas Cranmer、Archbishop Cranmer of Canterbury

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) was a central figure of the English Reformation and the first Archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of England.…

Timeline

  1. 1489–1529Cambridge · CambridgeshireCranmer studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, earning a doctorate in theology, where he encountered Lutheran reform ideas and was briefly married. After his wife's death he returned to the college and became a theology lecturer, laying the deep theological foundation for his later leadership of the English Reformation.
  2. 1533–1540Canterbury · KentIn 1533 Cranmer was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, declared Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon invalid, supported the new marriage to Anne Boleyn, and led the passage of the Act of Supremacy, formally establishing the English monarch as supreme head of the English Church and removing the Church of England from Roman jurisdiction.
  3. 1547–1556Oxford · OxfordshireUnder Edward VI, Cranmer drafted the Book of Common Prayer and the Forty-Two Articles, pushing the English Church in a clearly Protestant direction. After Mary I's accession Cranmer was arrested and, for maintaining his Protestant stance, burned at the stake at Oxford in 1556, becoming a martyr and symbol of the English Reformation.

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