ABSTRACT
This introduction focuses on the life and career of Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), the sixty-eighth archbishop of Canterbury. The book provides new attention to members of his family, like his brother Edmund (c. 1496-c. 1557), who helped to build the successes that the archbishop enjoyed. Cranmer's spiritual development has posed difficult problems for his biographers, and they have not always been able to agree on its stages. The book presents a nuanced time frame for the theological shifts in the archbishop's thinking. Cranmer was obsessively interested in the Eucharist, and his opinions changed over time. They have been explored for us by Peter Newman Brooks, who has established that in his early years as archbishop, Cranmer believed as the Lutherans did: he rejected the tenet of transubstantiation, but he believed in the real presence. Cranmer has a unique status amongst the figures that appeared in the pages of the Actes and Monuments.
