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In 1503, Mr. Cranmer took the standard Arts program. It took 8 years to complete, a “surprisingly long time.” It’s 1511 when he graduates at age 22. He worked in classical texts. In his 3rd year of the program, he had logic and the 4th philosophy. The emphasis on the classics “was precisely what annoyed Tyndale in 1530, impatient as he was to turn education toward the text of the Bible” (19).
Mr. Cranmer’s “embryonic library” was founded on “medieval texbooks” which he kept “amidst his magnificent later collections” (19). Mr. MacCulloch's word, "magnificent" begs for elaboration, but we must move on. Some volumes:
• Peter of Spain’s Summulae Logicale, a text on logic
• Peter Tartaret’s commentary on Aristotle’s logic and philosophy
• Other commentaries on Aristotle
• Duns Scotus’ Questiones subtilissme. Mr. Cranmer’s volume was a 1497 edition. Unsurprisingly, it had “copious annotations” with “responses and objections” (20).
By graduation day for the B.A., he is listed with other notables: Thomas Goodrich, Hugh Latimer, John Lambert, Richard Astall and Richard Horne—the latter two becoming chaplains to Mr. Cranmer during his regency at Canterbury.
Of note, John Lambert would be burned at the stake in 1538 for being a “sacramentary,” that is, denying cannibalism (our fair word for it) at Holy Communion. This event would cause Cranmer's “admirers much embarrassment and heart-searching” (21). Indeed.
The question lingers long: what did Cranmer believe, affirm and/or deny and when? And here, more narrowly, what about Cambridge and the 1520s?
On the day of Mr. Cranmer’s graduation, another famous person would enter the story: Stephen Gardiner. (Gardiner will be buried as a Bishop inside Winchester Cathedral with a regal service during Mary’s burning times while Cranmer would go to the stake.) Gardiner will also be the man at the fateful meeting at Waltham in 1529, but we get ahead of ourselves. Gardiner is another man warranting investigation.
In 1515, Mr. Cranmer completes his M.A. He was 26 years old. He studied arithmetic, music, geometry, Faber, Erasmus, and some “good Latin authors” (21). Another volume is in his library: the “mathematical treatise by the humanist polymath Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples" (Faber). Shortly after getting the MA, he was elected as a Fellow to Jesus College, although the exact date is “uncertain” (21).
The interlude with his first marriage occurs, an “abrupt trespass on a conventional career” (21). He was not ordained, but it caused his dis-Fellowship at Jesus. It was a “definite step down in the status-conscious world” (21). There is some obscurity on dates, including whether this was forced marriage or inconvenient pregnancy. But, she and the child died. Had she lived, Mr. Cranmer’s entry to the ministry would have been foreclosed.
“Snobbishly malicious glee” would characterize the imputation of being an “ostler,” or one living in an Inn. But, whatever that means, he returns to Jesus College and is re-admitted as a Fellow.
At this point, his life takes a “decisive turn for the future” (22). His post-graduate work is now theology. This would be about the same time that Luther’s writings “on indulgences were beginning to work themselves out on the international scale” (22).
Undoubtedly, Mr. Cranmer would learn of the conflict. “Cranmer considered `what great controversy was in matters of religion’ and ‘applied his whole study three years into the Scripture. After this he gave his mind to good writers both new and old…This kind of study he used till he was made Doctor of Divinity” in 1526” (22).
If our dates and information are correct, Mr. Cranmer is an MA from 1515 until 1526. That means eleven years of labors in theology. By 1526, he is 37 years old when made a Doctor of Divinity. Commendable.
As an aside, we wonder what the requirements were for doctoral degrees at Cambridge in 1526?
Some things can be said:
• He did not study canon law. We offer this: Mr. Anthony Deane, another biographer, wrongly asserts that he [Cranmer] was a “canonist.” Mr. Deane, an Honorary Canon of Worcester, offers no footnotes in his little volume. We must dismiss this claim; it is unlikely that Mr. Cranmer was a "canonist." The school’s charter forbad “canon studies.”
• Rather, his specialty was biblical and theological studies. The “biblical character of theological study in Jesus was underlined by the provision of the college theological lectureship endowed for a Fellow of the College in 1512 by the civil servant Sir John Rysley” (23). The lectureship was “restricted to the Old and New Testaments” (23) and Mr. Cranmer held that lectureship.
Mr. MacCulloch asserts what other biographers note: “…there is so much that is not known about Cranmer’s nigh-on three decades at Cambridge” (emphasis added, 23). Ergo, efforts at filling the gaps are problematic (just as Mr. MacCulloch proceeds to fill the gap).
Again, we are talking about 1503-1529, but, more notably the 1520s, the days of intense and widening conflict over Lutheranism.
Enter Chancellor/Bishop John Fisher—a man who valued Aquinas, Scotus, “alongside those of modern humanist giants like Lorenzo Valla [who debunked the Papal Constantinian forgeries], Erasmus, and Pico della Mirandola” (23). Mr. Fisher is important because Cranmer will carefully study Mr. Fisher’s tango over Lutheranism. More below.
Mr. MacCulloch briefly suggests--interestingly--that Mr. Stephen Gardiner [faithful Marian Bishop of Winchester] may have had “more reformist” sympathies than Mr. Cranmer during the 1520s at Cambridge:
• In Feb., 1526, Gardiner helped the early English Reformer, Robert Barnes, an Augustinian Prior, craft a sophisticated “abjuration of Lutheran sympathies” (25). This needs further research.
• Further, Gardiner spoke up for another early English Reformer, George Joye, when “Wolsey’s officers” were investigating Lutheranism. So, we clearly infer that Lutheranism was becoming-big-time-problematic. We are getting some good details here from Mr. MacCulloch. We recollect that later Mr. Joye was a Bible translator who would tango with Tyndale on the Continent, but that postdates Mr. Gardiner’s intervention at Cambridge.
• Gardiner forewarned another early English Reformer, George Stafford, of an “impending prosecution” (25). Again, evidence that Lutheranism was roiling the environment in the 1520s.
Mr. MacCulloch notes Mr. Cranmer’s silence as over against Mr. Gardiner.
But we must be cautious about the conclusions.
Mr. MacCulloch does critique--perhaps justifiably so--admirers who conferred “retrospective honorary membership” to Mr. Cranmer for involvement in the White Horse Inn, e.g. Alfred Pollard, William Clebish, and Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (the latter being my revered Church of England professor). We will continue to weigh this.
Mr. MacCulloch then does a wonderful, albeit far too brief, service in reviewing Mr. Cranmer’s marginalia or annotations on Mr. Fisher’s attack on Luther in Fisher's Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio. This scholarly review is worth the price of the book (as well as his stated friends-list in the bibliography).
We are on track to get Mr. Fisher’s volume and review it, Deo volente. Mr. Cranmer’s edition of Mr. Fisher’s was dated 1523; this edition was published in Antwerp. No doubt it was published in Latin and no doubt for review by Continental Romanists. Mr. Fisher was an international scholar. So, what did Cranmer know, believe, affirm and/or deny and when?
Clearly, Mr. Cranmer is studying Lutheranism. 1523 is the very earliest date for Cranmer's work on Mr. Fisher's volume; also, notably, although we digress, Mr. Tudor is pleased with Fisher's anti-Lutheran polemics (until his fall from Henry's good graces and you know what that means).
Some notes from Mr. MacCulloch on the marginalia by Mr. Cranmer on Mr. Fisher writing about Luther (did you get that sequence?):
• Cranmer uses “black ink” and “red ink,” indicating two different periods of time
• Cranmer critiques Fisher for an interpolation to Chrysostom’s text “suggesting that St. James the Great received his bishopric of Jerusalem from St. Peter” (26). Fisher gratuitously inserted the comment and Cranmer calls him on it, if only privately.
• The “red ink” offers “consistent criticisms of Fisher.” Mr. MacCulloch is not clear here. The suggestion is that the red ink is a later date.
• The “black ink” offers “gentle criticisms” of Fisher
• But, Cranmer offers “furious and horrified condemnations of Luther’s arguments”
• Mr. MacCulloch notes that it’s not so much Fisher’s arguments but Luther himself “which provokes Cranmer’s greatest emotion” (27)
• Cranmer says “Luther wantonly attacks and raves against the Pontiff” and “this malice grows worse” (27). We would add that Mr. Cranmer may be a bit late to the ballgame. Mr. Luther has been in the fight since 1517, had been banned, condemned by Emperor and Pope, and was battling for his very life. Mr. Cranmer is Mr. Luther's junior by six years. But, it is here that the intersection between Mr. Cranmer and Mr. Luther must be explored.
• Cranmer says “…he [Luther] accuses a whole council of madness; it is he who is insane.” “He calls a most holy counsel impious; oh, the arrogance of a most wicked man” (27).
• Mr. MacCulloch throws these two gems out: “…a clutch of Cranmerian cheers from the sidelines as Fisher scores points against this hapless German opponent” so “here is Cranmer the papalist” (27). Clearly, we need much more from Mr. MacCulloch here for a full review of the marginalia; or, we need it from other scholars. Perhaps it is out there?
• These annotations are no later than 1532 and, by definition of the date in Cranmer's own volume, are no earlier than 1523.
• These are not “the emotional jottings of a youth” but from a “man who is at least thirty-four years old and more probably in his late thirties” (27). This is a weighty point by Mr. MacCulloch. We might add that this could have been done during his doctoral studies leading up to 1526?
• A summary of the black ink: these comments are reserved for Luther’s comments about Councils.
• On Councils, Mr. MacCulloch offers this note that “From then on, Cranmer’s sympathy for Luther is gone” and he has “provoked Cranmer to a fever pitch” (29). That is quite a summary: a “fever pitch.”
• Fisher entirely “side-steps the possibility of a clash between Popes and Councils”
• Cranmer was, at a minimum, a “Concilarist” a commitment that would later inform his 1552-letters to Wittenberg, Zurich and Geneva, rather than Rome, in an effort to put together a Council “for a defense against Trent” (29)
Mr. MacCulloch also points us to the classic imbroglio between Erasmus and Luther. Erasmus shot across Luther’s bow with De Libero Arbitrio. Cranmer’s edition is 1524 and was published in Antwerp. Mr. Luther, on our view, entirely demolished Eramus with his must-read Bondage of the Will, 1525. Mr. Cranmer has copious notes as summaries and believes that “Luther’s argument about the will is dangerous because they touch on secret matters” (29). We would add Mr. Cranmer, if fairly characterized by Mr. MacCulloch, is seriously behind the power-curve on this question. But, he will mature as The Thirty-nine Articles show. It also suggests some lack of exegetical saavy.
Mr. Cranmer offers this:
“…we go on swiftly to better things…or if we are entangled in sins, let us strive with all our might and have recourse to the remedy of penance…and what evil is in us, let us impute to ourselves, and what is good, let us ascribe wholly to divine benevolence, to which we owe our entire being, and for the rest, whatever befalls us in this life, whether joyful or sad, let us believe it to be sent by him for our salvation.”
Mr. MacCulloch calls it “reverent agnosticism” (29). We call it weak. Mr. Luther "ruled that school" on this issue.
In the closing section of this chapter, Mr. MacCulloch offers an important note that Cranmer went to Spain on a minor diplomatic mission. Date: Summer, 1527. While school was recessed? We don't know. He points to some diplomatic correspondence. On this view, Cranmer may have had a brief audience with Mr. (Henry VIII) Tudor upon his return from Spain; this, Mr. MacCulloch tells us, “completely re-dates the relationship between the two men” (37). In other words, Mr. Cranmer may not have been entirely unknown to Mr. Tudor. (By the way, Mr. Cranmer had a rough ride by sea from Spain back to England—thirteen days at sea.)
But largely, upon return from Spain to England, Mr. Cranmer returned to Cambridge until 1529. And the story of Lutheranism is far from over. And Mr. Tyndale is busily at work too.
Mr. MacCulloch closes this chapter with: “Within two years of the Spanish mission, he would leave the university for good…and at the age forty, he committed himself to a new, spectacular, and infinitely more dangerous life” (37). Indeed, Mr. Cranmer's quiet academic life would turn into a life of servitude--er, service--to Mr. Tudor.
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