Emblem of Faith Untouched
A Short Life of Thomas Cranmer
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Narrated by:
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Philip Zoutendam
About this listen
Relates one of the most remarkable lives in the tumultuous English Reformation. Thomas Cranmer was the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, the author of the Book of Common Prayer, and a central figure in the English Protestant Reformation. Few theologians have led such an eventful life: Cranmer helped Henry VIII break with the pope, pressed his vision of the Reformation through the reign of Edward VI, was forced to recant under Queen Mary, and then dramatically withdrew his recantations before being burned alive. This lively biography by Leslie Williams narrates Cranmer's life from the beginning, through his education and history with the monarchy, to his ecclesiastical trials, and eventual martyrdom. Williams portrays Cranmer's ongoing struggle to reconcile his two central loyalties - allegiance to the crown, and fidelity to the Reformation faith - as she tells his fascinating life story.
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For the first time in decades, here, in a single volume, is a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty, comprising some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country. Acclaimed historian G. J. Meyer reveals the flesh-and-bone reality in all its wild excess.
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OUTSTANDING!
- By The Louligan on 03-15-10
By: G. J. Meyer
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Reformation Women
- Sixteenth-Century Figures Who Shaped Christianity's Rebirth
- By: Rebecca VanDoodewaard
- Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In Reformation Women, Rebecca Vandoodewaard introduces listeners to 12 16th-century women who are not as well known today as contemporaries like Katie Luther and Lady Jane Grey. Providing an example to Christians today of strong service to Christ and his church, these influential, godly women were devoted to Reformation truth, in many cases provided support for their husbands, practiced hospitality, and stewarded their intellectual abilities.
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Excellent read
- By Ana L Thompson on 05-18-20
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The Queen's Agent
- Sir Francis Walsingham and the Rise of Espionage in Elizabethan England
- By: John Cooper
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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A captivating true story that chronicles the exploits of Sir Francis Walsingham - the first great English spymaster and the man who saved Elizabeth's regime and the country's independence. Elizabeth I came to the throne at a time of insecurity and unrest. Rivals threatened her reign; England was a Protestant island, isolated in a sea of Catholic countries. Spain plotted an invasion, but Elizabeth's Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, was prepared to do whatever it took to protect her. He ran a network of agents in England and Europe who provided him with information about invasions or assassination plots.
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The Power Behind the Throne
- By Troy on 02-21-15
By: John Cooper
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Bloody Mary
- By: Carolly Erickson
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 23 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the tragic, stormy life of Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Her story is a chronicle of courage and faith, betrayal and treachery - set amidst the splendor, pageantry, squalor, and intrigue of 16th-century Europe. The history of Mary Tudor is an improbable blend of triumph, humiliation, heartbreak, and devotion - and Ms. Erickson recounts it all against the turbulent background of European politics, war, and religious strife of the mid-1500s.
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A good history
- By A. Barrios on 05-21-15
By: Carolly Erickson
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Born in Blood
- The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry
- By: John J. Robinson
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Its mysterious symbols and rituals had been used in secret for centuries before Freemasonry revealed itself in London in 1717. Once known, Freemasonry spread throughout the world and attracted kings, emperors, and statesmen to take its sacred oaths. But where had this powerful organization come from? What was it doing in those secret centuries before it rose from underground more than 270 years ago? And why was Freemasonry attacked with such intense hatred by the Roman Catholic church?
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Interesting but not by a Freemason it seems.
- By What can I say? on 09-08-21
By: John J. Robinson
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The Life and Times of Chaucer
- By: John Gardner
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this exquisite biography, John Gardner brings to life Geoffrey Chaucer, illuminating his writings and their inspiration like never before. Through exhaustive research and expert storytelling, Gardner takes readers through Chaucer’s varied career - from writing The Canterbury Tales to performing diplomatic work at the Parliament - and creates a fully realized portrait of an author whose work would remake the English language forever. Written with passion and insight, this a must-listen for those interested in Chaucer and the medieval time period.
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Good book, but quoted passages are in Old English
- By Kathi on 02-26-14
By: John Gardner
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Light from Old Times
- Or, Protestant Facts and Men
- By: J. C. Ryle
- Narrated by: Ulf Bjorklund
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The 19th century was an age that witnessed great progress in many areas of exploration and learning. However, according to J. C. Ryle, it was an age of great ignorance too. What particularly distressed Ryle was the scant knowledge of the English Reformation evident amongst his contemporaries. In this lay a grave danger: one of the reasons so many congregations drift from their evangelical foundations is their sheer ignorance of Christian history, and their lack of understanding of the major doctrinal controversies and why they matter.
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Great Church History
- By Wes H. on 08-06-18
By: J. C. Ryle
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Young and Damned and Fair
- The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII
- By: Mr. Gareth Russell
- Narrated by: Jenny Funnell
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Written with an exciting combination of narrative flair and historical authority, this interpretation of the tragic life of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, breaks new ground in our understanding of the very young woman who became queen at a time of unprecedented social and political tension and whose terrible errors in judgment quickly led her to the executioner's block.
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Magnifent scholarly work
- By Linda Erlich on 08-08-17
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Thomas Cromwell
- The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant
- By: Tracy Borman
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 14 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Cromwell has long been reviled as a Machiavellian schemer who stopped at nothing in his quest for power. As Henry VIII's right-hand man, Cromwell was the architect of the English Reformation, secured Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and plotted the downfall of Anne Boleyn, and upon his arrest, was accused of trying to usurp the King himself. But here Tracy Borman reveals a different side of one of the most notorious figures in history.
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narration is very well done & book is quite good
- By horoscopy on 02-18-15
By: Tracy Borman
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The Bad Popes
- By: E.R. Chamberlin
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The papal tiara has been worn by a number of infamous men through the course of its history. Some have been accused of murder, many have had mistresses, while others sold positions in the church to their followers or gave land and wealth to their illegitimate children. E. R. Chamberlin examines the lives of eight of the most controversial popes, from the reign of Pope Stephen VI, who had his predecessor exhumed, put on trial and thrown in the Tiber, in the ninth century, through to Pope Clement VII, whose failed international policy led to the Sack of Rome in 1527.
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Complete trash.
- By George on 07-16-21
By: E.R. Chamberlin
What listeners say about Emblem of Faith Untouched
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Justin Bellars
- 07-12-22
Informative, yet approachable biography of Cranmer
Maintains many typically missing details that paint a fuller picture of Cranmer's life, and the intrigues of court, and his would-be detractors. Clarifies details about Cranmer's theological and liturgical reformations which are not favourable to Anglo-Catholic revisionism. Robustly informative.
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- Malcolm
- 05-29-18
Interesting Biography. Nice narration
I didn't know much about Cranmer. Helpful biography that touches on all the high points without excessive detail. Solid narration by Zoutendam. Beautiful voice.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sea Lawyer
- 01-27-19
Inspiring history, substandard narration
Great summary of Cranmer’s life and a superb introduction to a critically important historical figure. But the narrator needs to know how to pronounce the words he reads (and this wasn’t an issue of British or American English). And how his error of confusing Jane Grey and Jame Seymour slipped through the review process is indefensible. I strongly recommend the book get a new narration, because this is in length and material a perfect book for the audio format.
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- Adam Shields
- 03-07-22
brief but thorough biography
Summary: A brief biography of the compiler of the original Book of Common Prayer and the first Protestant head of the Church of England.
I am a low church evangelical by history, but very few things have been as important in my faith development over the past 15 years as the Book of Common Prayer. As I have said before, my theology has become more in line with traditional Episcopal/Anglican theology and away from my Baptist heritage (episcopal ecclesiology, openness to infant baptism, more sacramental in theological orientation, etc.), even though I think I will likely remain non-denominational in my actual church membership.
While I am a fan of the Eerdman's Library of Religious Biography series and picked Emblem of Faith Untouched in part because of that, I started reading because I am trying to work through ideas of how we should think of flawed Christian "heroes." Thomas Cranmer was certainly flawed while being a very devoted Christian. He was a younger son of a minor noble and, as was common, went into the church and academy. He was very slow in school, taking roughly twice as long to get his bachelor's degree as usual. But he continued and became the rough equivalent of a professor before dropping out of the academy (which required celibacy and singleness) to get married. But his wife died, and he returned to the academy, albeit with some controversy.
While staying with some friends during a period of plague when people were avoiding larger cities, he walked through how he would approach Henry VIII's desire for a divorce theologically instead of through the ecclesiastical courts. In other words, Cranmer thought what was more important was whether the divorce was right according to scripture rather than whether the ecclesiastical courts agreed. Based on recounting that conversation, Cranmer was summoned to Henry and led a committee to investigate the marriage and reasons for divorce theologically and build support for divorce politically and geopolitically.
One part of Henry's divorce from Catherine that I had not understood with my previous reading was that Henry was betrothed to Cathrine when he was 13. Cathrine had already been married to Henry's brother, but Arthur died just a couple of months after the wedding, while Arthur was only 15. The marriage between Catherine, the youngest child of the Spanish king and queen Ferdinand and Isabella, and Arthur, and then Henry was for geopolitical reasons, not love. According to Emblem of Faith Untouched, Henry's confessor was convinced, and convinced Henry very early in their marriage, that Henry marrying Catherine was violating Christian ethics and that their marriage would be cursed because she had been married to his brother first. The first four pregnancies of Catherine and Henry ended in either miscarriage, stillbirth, or early death of the child. Only the fifth resulted in Mary, who was the only child of that marriage, to live to adulthood.
While there are some theoretical arguments justifying Henry's divorce of Catherine, later divorces were even less justified. Henry had affairs throughout his marriages, and it had to have been clear to Cranmer that regardless of Cranmer's theological support of the divorce of Catherine, there was no theological support of mistresses and continued divorce and remarriage. Part of Cranmer's commitment was the divine right of kings and the positional authority of the king as an ecclesiological leader, not just a political one. In addition to this, Cranmer eventually was convinced by his interaction with German Protestants that the Pope's authority was geographically and theologically limited and that local countries should have primary political and ecclesiastical control of their territory. Practically, this meant that for Cranmer, there was almost nothing that would be inappropriate (sinful) for Henry to do if Henry wanted it. While Cranmer was the Bishop of Canterbury, Henry took many income-producing properties from the church and exchanged them with other properties so that the church was left with less and the crown with more. Cranmer rarely pushed back against these exchanges.
While Cranmer was acting as the King's ambassador and traveling throughout Europe on a variety of business for Henry, he married the daughter of a German Protestant. At the time, Cranmer was not ordained and did not have a church position. But Henry drew him back to England and appointed him as Archbishop of Canterbury, which required both ordination and celibacy, and Cranmer was married. So he came back took the position, and his wife remained in Germany until later when Cranmer reformed the rules to allow for married clergy.
I am not going to spend a lot of time on his history, other than to note that when Henry died, and eventually Mary rose to the throne and started a bloody persecution of Protestants, Cranmer was eventually arrested and spent years in prison before being executed. During that time in prison, Cranmer was very clearly tortured and wrote or had written for him at least eight confessions. Some were mild confessions, and some were more extensive confessions repudiating his Protestant beliefs. Nearly all of them are tainted by torture and threats. But at his execution, he renounced all prior confessions.
Two quotes I thought were worth sharing here. First, in 1534 Cranmer ordered all pastors to stop preaching on several subjects while a theological consensus was built. He prioritized slow change that was more broad-based.
"That summer of 1534, Cranmer issued a proclamation ordering silence from the pulpit on the subjects of masses for the dead, prayers to saints, pilgrimages, and the celibacy of the clergy. Most likely, Henry had not made up his mind on these topics, and wanted the space to figure out what to do. Cranmer, who had been swayed by the reforms he’d seen in Germany, took a slow but steady, drip-by-drip approach to reforming the English church under an absolute monarch. He realized that any reformation could take place only in subtle moves. Without creating a splash, he took every opportunity to license men with the same inclinations, promoting like-minded reformers to the bishop’s bench."
Second, as I have hinted already, Cranmer struggled with what it meant to follow Christ as king and Henry as king. He had an influential dream that illustrated this.
"This dream represented the hub of his dilemma: Was service to Christ incompatible with service to the supreme head of the Church in England? Which king would win his soul? The horror in the dream was that both kings rejected him. Silent, Henry excluded him from his court, condemning him to death, while Christ turned away and closed the gate of heaven. “Cranmer, shut off from both life and the afterlife, could turn only to the mouth of hell.”"
I do not, in the end, really have a better model for how to think about our Christian "heroes" of the past after reading this, but I do think that at least part of the answer is that we should better understand both the good and bad of those that have come before us. We need to see and discuss where people were right and wrong and where there is more ambiguity. Two, I think there really should be some limitations to how we honor people of the past. I heard someone say this past week, "well maybe we should stop naming buildings after people," and in many ways, I think that may be right. No one is worthy of honor in all areas of life, even if they do individual things that are worth honoring. My classic reflection on this is AW Tozer's wife, who, after she was widowed and remarried, said, "Aiden loved Jesus, but [my new husband] loves me," is a very classic illustration. She was not saying that AW Tozer was not a good Christian or hadn't done many good things. But she was illustrating the limitations of his honor. He should be honored for the way he brought people to Christ, but he was still a lousy husband and father. And we need to be able to see the whole person because we are all flawed and limited creatures.
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- Robert S. Trumpolt
- 09-02-19
An Important Reformer in His Own Right
From a purely personal perspective, I was raised a Lutheran but I have always been interested in other protestant reformers of the Church, and Thomas Cranmer played the key role in England in this regard. I enjoyed this book, in which I gain a better view of this man and his contributions to that general cause. Each European country developed its own version of Protestantism that worked for them and this book provides that background in this case quite well. I appreciate Thomas Cranmer, who was quite sympathetic to the Lutherans from very early on, agreeing with many of their ideas and even secretly marrying a German woman who was the daughter of one of the German reformers of the time. Thomas Cranmer is on the Lutheran commemorative calendar and rightfully so. Although he had to work from a different starting point and proceed more cautiously in his country with his style of reform, he did achieve in my opinion, more than any other in the establishment of the Church of England and in the end, died for his beliefs. This book,, to me, is an important addition to anyone's desire towards greater understanding of the Protestant reformation as a whole and how it so greatly impacted the modern Western World in so many ways.
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- Clayton A Lindsey
- 03-23-18
Need a new Narrator!
Great Story but VERY POOR narration!
Very disappointing! Expected so much more. Wish Audible had reviewed this audio book before posting online. 😢
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- Janet Armstrong
- 12-31-18
Terrible narration!
The narration was so bad that I had to steel myself to concentrate on the content and not pay attention to the narration. The content, when I could focus on that, was interesting.
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