Thompsett, Fredrica Harris. "Book reviews." Anglican Theological Review 80.1 (1998): 107. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 7 Nov. 2010.
Thomas Cranmer, A Life. By Diarmaid MacCulloch. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996. xii + 692 pp. $35.00 (cloth).
This is a magnificent book! It deserves to be widely and carefully (to paraphrase a famous Cranmerian Collect) read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested. This biography brings to life the long public career of the primary architect and leader of the English Reformation; further, it sheds nuanced light on the character and temperament of a notoriously private man. With consummate skill, MacCulloch studiously revises once-standard assumptions about the Primate's theological pilgrimage, including his changes of mind and, more significantly, the core integrity of his mature theological convictions. This biographer's Cranmer is not only more sympathetically presented, his genuine consistencies and passions, hesitations and confusions are developed, warts and all, so that by the end of this study we are reintroduced to a surprisingly more complex and theologically committed Cranmer.
This study outdistances all prior attempts to account for this major Reformation figure. J. G. Ridley's Thomas Cranmer (Oxford, 1962) was the last full biography of Cranmer. Although other scholars and religious polemicists over the past 35 years have written extensively and often decisively about him, Cranmer has remained a shadowy, largely misunderstood, controversial and underappreciated figure. This critical biography is the first scholarly study to take full advantage of the wide range of manuscript collections and other archival research now available on Cranmer and his English and Continental contemporaries. MacCulloch also draws with discrimination upon the large corpus of revisionist and other interpretations produced over the past three decades. Such scholarship has created a true renaissance in Reformation studies.
MacCulloch's vantage points are those of an historian grounded in the local details of patronage and kinship that permeated Tudor life, an archivist with a keen eye for re-evaluating textual and manuscript evidence, and an historical theologian whose sympathy for the classical texts and statements of the early English Reformation is appropriately nuanced by his experience as an ordained Anglican.
Structurally, the book proceeds in a predictable chronological fashion. There is such a wealth of detail to digest, some of it revisionist in fact and implication, that speed-reading of this lengthy text is not recommended. Digesting a chapter, or less, at a sitting is a more appropriate pace for studying the life of an Archbishop whose own tendency was to move forward by slow, safe degrees, not hazarding too much.
From the first part of this study, focusing on Cranmer's Cambridge years, MacCulloch sets aside Anglo-Catholic and Protestant myths alike. For example, Cranmer was distinctly not a member of the White Horse Tavern group of Cambridge reformers; instead, he was throughout the 1520s a conventional, biblical humanist and orthodox Catholic. Indeed MacCulloch describes him "certainly as a papalist, but even more a conciliarist" (p. 29). The relationship between Henry VIII and Cranmer--thanks to newly discovered correspondence with the Polish humanist, Johannes Dantiscus--is convincingly re-dated to the summer of 1527, long before the Boleyns' patronage kicked in. Even at this early date Cranmer was far from a retiring don; rather, MacCulloch depicts him as a "cosmopolitan figure" engaged in the "infinitely more dangerous life" of a diplomat (p. 37).
The sum and substance of bold revisions presented in Part II, "The King's Good Servant," effect a progressive reassessment of the early English Reformation. In these years, thanks to MacCulloch's wide vision on the progress of historical events and his careful appropriation of new scholarship, the decisive actions and theological passions of Thomas Cromwell, Stephen Gardiner, and Henry VIII also come into larger view. As one might expect of a scholar whose doctoral supervisor was Geoffrey Elton, MacCulloch's portrait of Thomas Cromwell is sympathetic. Cromwell's energetic reform imperatives eclipse Cranmer's less demanding pace, with Cranmer in the mid-1530s as un-jealous "junior partner" to Cromwell in spiritual affairs. Later, when in the early 1540s treason charges were brought against Cromwell, Cranmer responds to the King with courage and support for his patron and devoted friend. The Prelate's actions here are similar to his earlier courageous defense of Anne Boleyn. This biography expands the impact of Cranmer's central rivalry with the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner. Building upon and critically challenging recent scholarship about Gardiner by Glyn Redworth, MacCulloch illustrates the parallel careers of "the two men [who] were to become joint and rival keepers of Henry's Janus-like conscience" (p. 77). This centerpiece of Henry VIII'S efforts to control religious affairs ensured that religious power was not unilaterally claimed (at least for long) by either conservative or evangelical forces. Ironically, MacCulloch notes, it was Gardiner who brought Cranmer to Henry's attention for preferment in 1527, and again in 1529, although after 1531 their theological and political divergences widened dramatically. MacCulloch amplifies the scope and danger of the so-called "Prebendaries Plot" against Cranmer during the early 1540s, proving this complex and detailed scheme was craftily coordinated by Gardiner to convince the King that Cranmer was indeed the greatest heretic in Kent. The Plot failed, but Gardiner's hatred of Cranmer abided with telling effect into Mary Tudor's reign.
In the long run it is none other than Henry VIII who emerges even larger than life as the true master of early Reformation progress, and lack thereof. MacCulloch depicts Henry from 1529 on as "the major influence" in Cranmer's life (p. 613), despite their significant theological differences, most sharply divergent on matters of justification and good works. There has not been as revealing a depiction of this King's religious passions and theological persuasions since Lacey Baldwin Smith's Henry VIII, The Mask of Royalty (Boston, 1971). What is surprising overall is not Henry's domination of religious affairs, nor his willingness to permit Cranmer, quietly and intermittently, to experiment with different liturgical directions; rather the keystone in MacCulloch's assessment is the true friendship between this King and his Archbishop. This biographer concludes, after depicting the scene between the two men at Henry's deathbed, "thus ended the most long-lasting relationship of love which either man had known" (p. 360).
Part III of this biography, described as "The Years of Opportunity," is significant for the coherence and integrity of MacCulloch's portrayal of Cranmer's mature theology. Cranmer the theologian, somewhat like Cranmer the liturgist, has often been portrayed as a mere synthesizer of others' works, a cut-and-paste artist without theological integrity of his own. MacCulloch first and foremost recovers from obscurity the fact that Cranmer was a predestinarian, a theologian who repeatedly emphasized God's omnipotence and "the all-sufficiency of Christ's mercy for salvation" (p. 211). MacCulloch emphatically concludes, "Thomas Cranmer, theologian, without the doctrine of predestination is Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark" (p. 428). Cranmer argued theologically against his royal master's desire to emphasize the necessity of good works and of doing one's duty to God. Cranmer's insistence on putting one's faith in God alone provides the central theological thread in his homilies, polemical writings and liturgical schemes.
Overall MacCulloch shows, both in Henry's and Edward's reigns, the coherent sweep of Cranmer's theological and liturgical assessments. From 1538 onward he traces Cranmer's interests in liturgical change, charting research, early drafts, and the compilation of Commonplace Books. MacCulloch's interpretations of these efforts differs considerably from prior liturgical assessments, whether of Burnet, Brightman, Peter Brooks (on the development of Cranmer's eucharistic theology), and others. Intriguingly he notes that Cranmer's schemes did not always move from conservative to more radical revisions. Anglicans and others will want to follow with care MacCulloch's reassessments from Cranmer's "more-or-less Lutheran years," through his decided rejection of transubstantiation in 1547 and 1548, to his advocacy of a "'spiritual presence' view of the eucharist" (p. 392). Liturgically, MacCulloch's central thesis is that Cranmer and his evangelical colleagues "knew from the start" of Edward's reign the liturgical directions they wanted to pursue; any hesitations were largely intended to bypass major conservative opposition (p. 365). Moreover, he speculates that the 1552 Prayer Book was probably not intended to be the last liturgical statement, with Martyr, Bullinger and Calvin influencing a third version (p. 619)--that is, if Queen Jane's reign had succeeded.
MacCulloch's reconstruction of the last months of Cranmer's life is alone worth reading for the compelling portrait of a man of faith and integrity facing severe theological and emotional distress. It is no mean achievement to attract contemporary readers sympathetically to the bizarre, brutal machinations of executions for heresy, which at one point MacCulloch calls "the gruesome Henrician equivalent of a grand finale firework display" (pp. 274-75). Drawing upon a careful realignment of old and new sources, MacCulloch details Cranmer's presence of mind as it wandered through the scholarly challenges, twists, turns, recantations, and the surprising declaration of faith in his last hour. His narrative unfolding of the changes in Cranmer's stability and morale is at once credible, poignant and even more dramatically telling than that portrayed by Protestant martyrologist, John Foxe. MacCulloch ends his passionate recovery of Cranmer's reputation by dramatically comparing him with such other "reluctant martyrs" as Bonhoeffer, Janani Luwum and Oscar Romero. This author delights in enticing his readers with enthusiastic modem observations and comparisons.
On the whole, this biography is fascinating reading in terms of its scholarship and spirited hunches, although with respect to the latter, I found MacCulloch's psychological speculations about Cranmer's own marriages unnecessary. This is a minor quibble. I do question MacCulloch's admittedly "relentless ... usage" of "evangelical" instead of "Protestant" to label Cranmer. All such labels contain historical anachronisms and distortions. While this designation makes theological sense, based primarily upon Cranmer's soteriology, this usage evokes a premature identification with a later "party" alignment in the Church of England and tends to distort Cranmer's early theological development. Nor is this pattern used with discrimination, for example, when he describes Cranmer as an "evangelical humanist" (p. 267) in a context where "Christian humanist" would clearly suffice.
Advocates of recent Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran conversations will find much of interest both in terms of early theological emphases and distinctions made in this study. At a time when Protestants are increasingly moving away from labels into dialogue about commonalities, MacCulloch provides new historical background, affirming the richness of practical cooperation among theologians and religious leaders, then as now. It is worth getting to know Cranmer and the English Reformation anew through this engaging biography.
~~~~~~~~
By FREDRICA HARRIS THOMPSETT, Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
No comments:
Post a Comment