Cranmer in Context

by Peter Newman Brooks

Cranmer in Context is a book of edited extracts from the writings of the Tudor primate who was born five hundred years ago, on 2 July 1489. His writings were once readily available, but are now hard to find. A quincentenary celebration ought certainly to prompt a wider public to examine at least something of Cranmer's legacy; and this volume is published to set the spotlight on the remarkable contribution he made to sixteenth-century national politics and piety. As an archbishop of the Reformation, Thomas Cranmer was one of those who molded the English Church when Henry VIII's vision of the 'imperial kingship' and independence determined on schism with Rome. Cranmer than had the task of presiding over a Church in transition -- revising services, re-formulating doctrine, and re-drafting law. In pastoralmMinistry he afforded both faithful and not-so-faithful reasonable diversity of worship within a single comprehensive Church. These pages provide an introduction to the life and work of a