The Renaissance world of learning -- Court and embassy -- Henry's archbishop -- Word and worship -- Common prayer -- Defence and controversy -- 'Given to hospitality' -- The time of tribulation -- 'In the clutches of Clio the Muse': Cranmer in myth and history.
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 significant scholar-priest. His active ministry in high places sets him in the front rank of reform in Tudor England, just as the liturgical grasp that composed the Books of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552) earns its author a literary reputation that is well-nigh Shakespearean. High claims perhaps, but readily substantiated in this book, particularly in the wide range of extracts it contains from the correspondence, controversies, treatises and prayers of the sensitive soul whose genius made enduring virtue from temporary compromise. - Preface.