Arches Above
Arches Above
It’s the birthday of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, born in Nottinghamshire, England (1489). He was a scholar and lecturer in divinity. In the late 1520s, King Henry VIII was trying to get the Pope’s permission to divorce his wife so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Cranmer suggested that the King didn’t need the Pope’s permission. After presiding over the divorce trial, Cranmer was made an archbishop. He helped encourage England’s break from Rome, which resulted in the foundation of the Anglican Church.
…he cometh up, and is cut down…
The greatest achievement of his life was his work compiling the Book of Common Prayer, which was a collection of English prayers that would be said at all kinds of church ceremonies, from masses and funerals to baptisms and weddings.
Cranmer didn’t write or translate all the prayers from Latin himself, but he picked what he liked best about the existing translations and stitched them together. It was Thomas Cranmer who chose the passage from Job that would be read at so many funerals: ““Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.””
Cranmer is responsible for the wedding vow, ““I take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us depart.””
After the death of King Henry VIII and his successor Edward IV, Thomas Cranmer was arrested by the new Catholic queen, Mary Tudor. Cranmer was eventually burned at the stake.
From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
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Further episcopal reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK
Available by e-mail daily.
Further episcopal reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK
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