Voices and influences
Thomas Cranmer
The archbishop who gave English worshipers their prayer book, then held his recanting hand in the fire first.
Summary
This site quotes Thomas Cranmer 4 times across 4 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived 1489 to 1556, English.
- Quoted here most in Proverbs: 1 of 4.
Thomas Cranmer
- Lived
- 1489 to 1556
- Nation
- English
- Tradition
- English Reformation
4 of 4 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Thomas Cranmer died in 1556 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
“Briefly, to the reading of the scripture none can be enemy, but that either be so sick that they love not to hear of any medicine, or else that be so ignorant that they know not scripture to be the most healthful medicine.”
Preface to the Great Bible (1540), Parker Society (1846), page 121
Undated in the archive this site cites.
Proverbs 4:22 For they are life to those who find them, and health to the whole body. BSB
“And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished there-for; for, may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned.”
Last speech, 21 March 1556, in Foxe's text of 1583, Cattley (1839), volume 8, page 88
Undated in the archive this site cites.
Matthew 5:30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to depart into hell. BSB
“forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished there-for”
in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, the martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer, volume 8, page 88
Undated in the archive this site cites.
Acts 7:59 While they were stoning him, Stephen appealed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” BSB
“It is more like a game and a fond play to be laughed at of all men, to hear the priest speak aloud to the people in Latin, and the people listen with their ears to hear; and some walking up and down in the…”
Answer to the Fifteen Articles of the Rebels, Devon, on the eighth article
Undated in the archive this site cites.
The rest of the quotation
church, some saying other prayers in Latin, and none understandeth other.
1 Corinthians 14:19 But in the church, I would rather speak five coherent words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Thomas Cranmer 4 times across 4 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Thomas Cranmer was a careful Cambridge scholar who never sought power and spent twenty-three years at the center of it, serving as Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and then under the boy king Edward VI. His lasting work was not politics but language: the Book of Common Prayer put the church's daily worship, its weddings, and its funerals into English so plain and rhythmic that people memorized it without trying, and much of it is still prayed today. When Mary I came to the throne and Protestants were being burned, Cranmer was imprisoned, worn down, and signed a series of recantations — the only one of England's leading reformers to break. Told he would burn anyway, he stood in the university church, publicly took back everything he had signed, and named the pope as Christ's enemy. At the stake, witnesses said, he stretched his right hand into the flame first, because that was the hand that had signed.
4 quotations across 4 books