The Christian churches like to memorialize people on the date of their death, when they are supposed to have gone on to their heavenly reward. There is something to that, even for those of us who find the continuance of the human ego past the disruption of the body, past unlikely. It puts a period on things, and notes the totality of their lives. So, while I continue to prefer to mark the birth of a person with all that potential and the multiplicity of possible directions and constraints that will pick one and not another, I do appreciate picking the time of one’s death.
That said, this is a birthday notice. Thomas Cranmer was born on this day in 1489. Cranmer, one time toady to a king, a priest and an archbishop, brilliant writer and complicated thinker, the principal architect of a reformed Catholicism, and eventually after being imprisoned, tried, and convicted of heresy, and equivocating at the thought of the stake, recanting and repudiating his weakness in the face of the fire, died fully acknowledging his life and its actions.
At the behest of a king Cranmer created a church. At least Cranmer laid out some critical elements that eventually would become that church. He retained the basic forms of Catholicism, but he infused it with much of the rationalism of the Reformation, and in the process created one of the masterworks of the English language, the Book of Common Prayer. Now, that church doesn’t owe everything to him and that king, there would be various disruptions and going back and forth until a queen would enforce a settlement that would provide the solid structure allowing the church to go forth, and, I feel, create the openness that would allow for modern Anglicanism, as well as its inherent tensions. But, then, nothing lives forever.
One can get all Hegelian about his work finding a thesis, and then an antithesis, and then coming up with a grand synthesis. But, it probably would be wise to avoid such a simple, perhaps the right word is simplistic analysis. What he created was a mess. Sort of like he couldn’t leave his wife for his mistress, or, perhaps it was the other way around. But, the good archbishop did create something with some staying power. That’s for sure.
And, so, today, just a brief pause in all the hubbub to note the birth of Thomas Cranmer, one of those great and troubled minds and hearts of human history.
A toast to Thomas, one of those who loved too much.
He was a good man. But… And, oh, my, what hangs in that hesitation. One could say a whole religion.
In the Zen tradition we speak of life and our way as one continuous mistake.
And with that in mind, I raise my glass…
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In