Welcome to five minutes in church history hosted by Dr Stephen Nichols, where we take a little

break from the present to go exploring the past. Travel back in time as we look at the people,

events, and even the places that have shaped the story of Christianity.

This is our story, our family history. Let's get started.

On this episode of five minutes in church history we're going to be talking about a

very important reformation document it's known as the Edwardian homilies and

it's from 1547. The Edwardian homilies is actually a

collection of sermons. That's what a homily means and so these are 12 sermons.

They were written mostly by Thomas Cranmer. They were shown to some others and he did have some help. But by and large, Thomas Cranmer wrote these. And we call them the Edwardian homilies because Edward the six, this is Henry's one son, Henry the

8th, one son was king at the time.

And so we don't call them the Cranmer homilies even though Thomas Cranmer wrote them.

As you might know or might remember, Thomas Cranmer of course was a significant figure in

the English Reformation that started under Henry, but he was always sort of kept in check as it were by Henry and by the time that

Edward the 6th comes to the throne the reformation that had started under Henry was able to make

vast headway and move along very significantly and these

homilies were a crucial piece of this. What Cranmer was trying to do in these

homilies was well actually he was trying to accomplish a couple of things.

First he recognized that many of the priests and the churches throughout England were never

trained how to preach.

The service was the Mass and so they would know the liturgy of the mass and occasionally during Lent or during Advent

there would be a short homily, but they weren't trained how to preach. They weren't used to preaching

sermons. And so these homilies could actually be read from the pulpit so that people would be

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