united campus ministry @ ecu

Thomas Cranmer died today in 1556. The first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, it was he who organised Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and wrote the Anglican Prayer Book. So when Catherine's daughter the Catholic Mary became Queen, he was in trouble. He was sentenced to death, but, not a martyr by inclination, he was persuaded to recant his Protestant faith. But Mary couldn't resist burning him anyway, so he used his farewell sermon – which was supposed to confirm his recantation – to recant his recanting, and died a Protestant martyr after all. When the fire was lit he put his right hand down into it, that the hand that signed his recantation might burn first. (courtesy of ship-of-fools.com)