dual personalities

On this day in 1556 Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake at Oxford. At the very end, he repudiated his final letter of submission, and announced that he died a Protestant. He said, “I have sinned, in that I signed with my hand what I did not believe with my heart. When the flames are lit, this hand shall be the first to burn.” And when the fire was lit around his feet, he leaned forward and held his right hand in the fire until it was charred to a stump. Aside from this, he did not speak or move, except that once he raised his left hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Cranmer is commemorated in the Anglican Communion as a Reformation Martyr on 21 March.

Merciful God, through the work of Thomas Cranmer you renewed the worship of your Church by restoring the language of the people, and through his death you revealed your power in human weakness: Grant that by your grace we may always worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

“Cranmer said to him, when they were talking late one night, St. Augustine says we need not ask where our home is, because in the end we all come home to God.”
–Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall