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Home , John Strype, Nicholas Ridley (martyr), Parker Society, Thomas Cranmer

CHAPTER ONE

TRACES OF A LUTHERAN EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE IN

When Thomas Cranmer was questioned in m September 1555, Martin, Queen Mary's commissioner at that interrogation, observed concerning the eucharistic teaching of the accused: "For you, master Cranmer, have taught in this high of the altar three contrary doctrines, and yet you pretended in every one verbum Domini". Cranmer's answer was a denial: "Nay, I taught but two contrary doctrines in the same". To the question, which eucharistic doctrine Cranmer taught at the time he condemned Lambert as a heretic ( 1538), the reply was: "I maintained then the papists' doctrine". Martin insisted, however, on the grounds of Cranmer's translation of Jonas' catechism in 1548 that the , having aban­ doned the Roman viewpoint, had become a Lutheran. "Then from a Lutheran ye became a Zwinglian, which is the vilest of all in the high mystery of the sacrament". Cranmer's only acknowledg­ ment was: "I grant that then I believed otherwise than I do now" and he added that this state of affairs lasted until persuaded him otherwise.1 Cranmer's contemporaries were inclined to share his judge's opinion. Both the martyrologist 2 and Cranmer's biographer 3 mention that the archbishop went through a Lutheran period in his ideas concerning the . Others, however, have denied this. 4 Our aim here is to show that Martin's observation was correct and that in consequence one must distinguish three phases in Cran­ mer's view of the eucharist, a Roman, a Lutheran, and one closely related to that of the Swiss reformers. It is the second phase which we will be discussing here. Its begin­ ning is obscure. The transition from the Roman to the Lutheran

1 Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, ed. for the , 1846 (subsequently referred to as PS, II), p. 217 f. 2 Foxe's Acts and Monuments, 1583, p. 1224. Cit. PS, II, p. 376. 3 John Strype, Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, New Ed. 2 Vis., Oxford 1812, p. 176, 569. 4 PS, II, p. 218, note 1. In our time C. W. Dugmore, The and the English Reformers, London 1958, p. 176-183. Kerkhistorische Bijdragen III 2 LUTHERAN EUCHARISTIC DOCTRINE IN CRANMER

standpoint was probably gradual. There is no difficulty, however, in determining the end of the Lutheran phase, i.e. in r 546. We are concerned thus with a period in which Cranmer the archbishop emerged more in the foreground than Cranmer the theologian and accordingly received more attention.1 The lack of interest in his thought between the years 1533-1547 is linked with the idea that during this period Cranmer in his theology was entirely dependent on Henry VIII. This idea dominates the books of A. C. Deane 2 and Th. Maynard 3 who are not favourably disposed towards Cran­ mer. Even Gregory Dix, in his study of the history of the liturgy in which he dismisses Cranmer's entire work as "an incident, and that of no central interest to the subject of liturgy as a whole" ,4 did not consider the period described here as worthy of mention.5 When one reviews the theological estate of the first evangelical 6, one must agree with G. W. Bromiley when he writes: "the temperament of Cranmer was more that of the pure scholar than of the independent thinker. His primary impulse was to amass knowledge rather than to state or discuss it". 7 Indeed Cranmer's Protestant conviction sprang more from an intellectual need than from the deep religious distress which led Luther to his discovery. It may be an exaggeration to say that: "it was the study of the Scriptures and not the wrestling of the Spirit, that first aroused Cranmer's doubts",8 but it is certain that a difference in mentality between the British archbishop and the continental reformers resulted in a different working out of the great religious questions of the six­ teenth century which, for the rest, were the same on both sides of the North Sea. Contrasted with Luther's passionate conviction we have Cranmer's continual cautious weighing up of various possi-

1 A. D. Innes, Cranmer and the in , Edinburgh 1900; A. F. Pollard, Thomas Cranmer and the r489-r556, New York/London 1904; C. H. Smyth, Cranmer and the Reformation under Edward VI, Cambridge 1926; F. E. Hutchinson, Cranmer and the English Reformation, London 1951; G. W. Bromiley, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop and , London 1956; G. W. Bromiley, Thomas Cranmer, Theologian, London 1956. 2 A. C. Deane, The Life of Thomas Cranmer, London 1927. 3 Th. Maynard, The Life of Thomas Cranmer, London 1956. 4 G. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, London 1960, p. 613. 5 G. Dix, I.e., p. 640. 6 Collected in two parts: Writings and Disputations of Thomas Cranmer, relative to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, ed. for the Parker Society, Cambridge 1844 (subsequently referred to as PS, I) and the Miscellaneous Writings already mentioned. 7 G. W. Bromiley, Th. Cranmer, Theo/., p. 7. 8 A. F. Pollard, I.e., p. 228.