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Summary: Misleading information on Cranmer's theology--rubbish.
Review: As a descendant of the famous Archbishop, and a lover of biographies, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this tome. Well...as scholarly as the author's perspective, and as meticulous as his research, it was still a rather laborious read. Maybe in this case, less is more. Readers should prepare themselves for the long haul...Hillaire Belloc's biography is a much more enjoyable read.
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Summary: MacCulloch on Thomas Cranmer is a masterpiece
Review: Exquisely researched and engagingly written, Diarmaid MacCulloch brought to life a figure who played a substantial role in both English and church history during the Reformation, and whose legacy lives on. I feel that for the first time in more than 30 years of bumping into Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury, and of regularly using the Book of Common Prayer that he master-minded, I have properly met the man. MacCulloch obviously adores Cranmer, but is not blind to his shortcomings. He also shows the cost to Cranmer of bringing about fundamental change in the English Church -- ultimately losing his life. I came away from the book marveling at the richness and stature of the Anglican way of believing, and the part Cranmer played in making it happen. I have been heralding it from the housetops! Like all good books, I was sorry when it ended.
Rating: 
Summary: Quality Biography
Review: I am not much of a biography/history reader, but I was forced to read this hefty volume for a research paper on Cranmer (took me all of nine days, reading for several hours a day). This is quality, scholarly research, well-written and keeping a good balance between describing the events of Cranmer's life and career, and analysing his theological development. MacCulloch writes favourably about Cranmer, and his account is bound to inspire sympathy and admiration for someone who was a flawed hero, but a hero nevertheless.
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Summary: Thorough scholarship and an excellent presentation.
Review: MacCulloch has penned a prodigious and comprehensive biography of Thomas Cranmer. Serious questions about the development of his thought, theology and ecclesiology are given special attention. These are cast in relations to the contemporary political (local and international) situtations to better enable a reader to understand the man, his times and his influence. Given the stages over which the Henrician and Edwardian church reformations progressed, understanding Cranmer's central and guiding actions seems to be MacCulloch strongest sections. Emphasis, then, on Cranmer's central work in life is properly and comprehensively treated, without being severely colored by all that has been penned about his final days. Nevertheless, MacCulloch has done a convincing job of helping one to see Cranmer's sincerity of reform purposes, his pragmatic concerns about the pace of change, his understanding of the needs of commonfolk (as opposed to the middle and upper classes), his fierce opposition to established orders (friers and, later, radicals [nonconformists]). Especially instuctive is the secion on Cranmer's Prayer Book writing purpose, style and method, his borrowings, his innovations, and his synthses. For a 600 page, book, I found it a thoroughly compelling reading experience from first to last (about 6 days).
Rating:
Summary: Thorough scholarship and an excellent presentation.
Review: MacCulloch has penned a prodigious and comprehensive biography of Thomas Cranmer. Serious questions about the development of his thought, theology and ecclesiology are given special attention. These are cast in relations to the contemporary political (local and international) situtations to better enable a reader to understand the man, his times and his influence. Given the stages over which the Henrician and Edwardian church reformations progressed, understanding Cranmer's central and guiding actions seems to be MacCulloch strongest sections. Emphasis, then, on Cranmer's central work in life is properly and comprehensively treated, without being severely colored by all that has been penned about his final days. Nevertheless, MacCulloch has done a convincing job of helping one to see Cranmer's sincerity of reform purposes, his pragmatic concerns about the pace of change, his understanding of the needs of commonfolk (as opposed to the middle and upper classes), his fierce opposition to established orders (friers and, later, radicals [nonconformists]). Especially instuctive is the secion on Cranmer's Prayer Book writing purpose, style and method, his borrowings, his innovations, and his synthses. For a 600 page, book, I found it a thoroughly compelling reading experience from first to last (about 6 days).
Rating:
Summary: Flawed Saint of the Church
Review: MacCulloch's book provides access to the singularly foundational figure of the reformation in England. Most who recognize Cranmer's name at all know him only as the author of the first Prayer Book or the man who attained Henry VIII's annulment from Catherine. MacCullogh gives depth to Cranmer as a flawed yet faithful agent of the Church, one who sought with conviction the reformation of the Church of England but was also willing to slavishly follow his prince in order to achieve that reformation. The final chapter, chronicling Cranmer's fall and ultimate martyrdom, reads with the pace of a good novel. For Episcopalians and others with an affinity for the Anglican tradition, insight into Cranmer's life and thought is crucial, and MacCulloch presents that insight with skill.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed Saint of the Church
Review: MacCulloch's book provides access to the singularly foundational figure of the reformation in England. Most who recognize Cranmer's name at all know him only as the author of the first Prayer Book or the man who attained Henry VIII's annulment from Catherine. MacCullogh gives depth to Cranmer as a flawed yet faithful agent of the Church, one who sought with conviction the reformation of the Church of England but was also willing to slavishly follow his prince in order to achieve that reformation. The final chapter, chronicling Cranmer's fall and ultimate martyrdom, reads with the pace of a good novel. For Episcopalians and others with an affinity for the Anglican tradition, insight into Cranmer's life and thought is crucial, and MacCulloch presents that insight with skill.
Rating:
Summary: Vast Scholarship
Review: This work gives the reader an excellent historical account not only of the life of Cranmer, but of the chaotic situation in Tudoe England during the Reformation. Cranmer's extraordinary ability to develop a new and moving liturgy with a basis in history yet more moving and compassionate than ever in such a political climate is a miracle in itself.
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Summary: Supplementary reading
Review: Traditionally, one is to give something up or take something on as a Lenten discipline. I did the latter, albeit inadvertently. Around Ash Wednesday of 1998, I began Darmaid MacCulloch's magisterial biography of Thomas Cranmer (Yale University Press 1996). I finished this magnificent tome on Holy Saturday. As the time passed, I came to realize that this Lent was for me a time to study a key figure in the Church and compare his often--to modern Episcopalians-- unorthodox theology against what I have come to believe. Thomas Cranmer is a pillar of Episcopal history (and hagiography). One literally cannot participate in a Sunday service without reciting or hearing his words. In 1549, he compiled the first Book of Common Prayer. Many of the collects we say are either his original compositions or alterations upon existing texts. MacCulloch says of the Collects: There is little doubt we owe him [Cranmer] the present form of the sequence of eighty-four seasonal collects and a dozen or so further examples embedded elsewhere in the 1549 services: no doubt either that these jewelled miniatures are one of the chief glories of the Anglican liturgical tradition, a particularly distinguished development of the genre of brief prayer which is peculiar to the Western Church. Their concise expression has not always won unqualified praise, especially from those who consider that God enjoys extended addresses from his creatures; but they have proved one of the most enduring vehicles of worship in the Anglican communion. To me, today, the Collects focus and gather the scripture for each service. Cranmer's beliefs were distinct, certain, and in some respects quite different from what I had thought. He was a strong predestinarian, and for this reason felt that "good works" had no effect upon where a soul went after death. He viewed the Pope as the Antichrist, and profoundly believed that the Ruler of England was the Head of the Church. (This led to his profound spiritual disorientation and crisis when the Catholic Mary succeed Edward VI; suddenly the person whom he viewed as Head of the Church was allied with evil personified). Cranmer was decidedly "low church" in his beliefs and liturgy. The Eucharist, for him, was purely a memorial, and the bread and wine were not the true Christ. In his view, Christ was sacrificed once only at Golgotha; to say that each Eucharist was a new sacrifice was for him anathema. (A vestige of Cranmer's clear belief survives in the language of the Rite One Eucharist--"one oblation of himself once offered.") During his time, he had rood screens and images removed from churches, removed many saints' and holy days from the Church calendar, moved altars away from the church wall and toward the worshipers (this, at least, agrees with our modern theology), and changed the language of worship to English. What made the Cranmer biography a Lenten discipline, and not just leisure reading, was for me to see again how literally every rite, word and image in our service comes from serious theological reflection and humankind's continuing effort, sometimes stumblingly, to find and reflect God's will in worship. I do not agree with Cranmer's view on predestination, although I certainly understand the sincerity with which it was held, and the struggles which brought him there. I have always found the Eucharistic language "one oblation of himself once offered" terribly stilted and prosaic; I now understand that Cranmer and subsequent Prayer Book compilers said exactly what they meant to say. (One of the great gifts of the "big tent" of Episcopalianism is that all of us --both those who view the Eucharist as memorial only and those who see the true body and blood transformed--may worship at the same table). While and since reading this fine biography, I find myself approaching almost everything we say and do in worship in a different, more reflective, posture. Next year for Lent I perhaps will give up chocolate. (I have tried this in other years, never making it as far as Refreshment Sunday.) Reflective Christians, however, who do not mind serious scholarship (this is not light reading) conveyed through lively prose could do worse than to take up this life and biography of Archbishop Cranmer.
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