Product Information
Thomas Cranmer was the architect of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. He was the Archbishop who guided England through the early Reformation, and Henry VIII through the minefields of divorce. Diarmaid MacCulloch traces Cranmer from his East-Midland roots to early Tudor Cambridge, into the household of the family of Anne Boleyn, and through the political labyrinth of the Henrican court. By then a major English statesman, living the life of a mediaeval prince-bishop, Cranmer navigated the church through the king's vacillations and finalized two successive English Prayer Books. MacCulloch reconstructs the crises which Cranmer negotiated, from his compromising association with three of Henry's divorces, the plot by religious conservatives to oust him, his role in the attempt to establish Lady Jane Grey as Queen, to the vengeance of the Catholic Mary Tudor. In gaol after Mary's accession, Cranmer nearly succumbed to recant his life's achievements, but was able to turn the very day of his death at the stake into a dramatic demonstration of his Protestant faith. From this account, Cranmer emerges as a sharply-focussed figure, more conservative early in his career than admirers have allowed, more evangelical than Anglicanism would later find comfortable. His legacy is his contribution to the shape and structure of English speech and, through his Prayer Book, to the moulding of an international language and the theology it expressed.Product Identifiers
PublisherYale University Press
ISBN-100300066880
ISBN-139780300066883
eBay Product ID (ePID)96212578
Additional Product Features
Place of PublicationNew Haven
Spine59mm
Content Note40 Illustrations
PrizesWinner of Duff Cooper Prize 1996 and Whitbread Book Awards: Biography Category 1996 and Whitbread Prize (Biography) 1996 and James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Biography) 1996. Shortlisted for Marsh Biography Award 1997.
Out-Of-Print Date31/01/2012
FormatHardback
LanguageEnglish
Author(s)Diarmaid Macculloch
Date of Publication02/05/1996
SubjectBiography: Historical, Political & Military
ImprintYale University Press
Country of PublicationUnited States
GenreBiography: Historical, Political & Military