Introduction

Abstract

Despite his authorship of a beautiful English liturgy, and the very considerable amount of time he spent on what became almost a ruling passion in later years — the writing and defence of lengthy treatises on the Lord’s Supper — there can be no doubt that the precise nature of Thomas Cranmer’s understanding of that sacrament is a much controverted question that has long intrigued the historian. It is certainly true to state that few sixteenth-century divines underwent such a gradual doctrinal development. But if the starting point is by no means lost in obscurity, when as a man of his age Cranmer was firmly grounded in the received doctrine of the Western Church, many a mist shrouds the milestones of his progress towards those beliefs of the Swiss Reformers that most contemporary churchmen viewed as the gravest of heresies.