Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Thomas Cranmer/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 14:14, 17 September 2007.

[edit] Thomas Cranmer

Nom restarted. (Old nom) Raul654 07:14, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Support per previous nom. I enjoyed this article, and I appreciate SECisek's speed and willingness to make changes. It's improved from when I first read it, and I wish you luck! Karanacs 01:09, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose (per previous nom). I will reiterate and expand my points:

• 1b) I do not believe that this article is comprehensive. A quick comparison with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article on Cranmer reveals several omissions. Here is a short list of examples:

• Cranmer's delay in graduating from college.
• The connection between Cranmer's first wife's death and his readmittance to Jesus College.
• Cranmer's role as a diplomat in the 1520s.
• The Cranmer group published two works to support the King's annulment claim: The determinations of the most famous and most excellent universities of Italy and France, that it is unlawful for a man to marry his brother's wife; that the pope hath no power to dispense therewith and Collectanea satis copiosa - only one of these is discussed in the article.
• Details regarding Cranmer's early days as Archbishop.
• Details regarding the sale, lease, and gifting of church lands by Cranmer to buy political support.
• Details regarding the important Prebendaries Plot which was a serious threat to Cranmer.
• It would appear that Cranmer made alliances with tutors and advisors to Edward VI as well as ingratiating himself with Edward VI. This does not come across in the article.
• Many of Cranmer's activities from the early 1550s are missing, such as his effort to establish a European-wide statement of Christian doctrine.

The article contains quite a bit of information regarding the Reformation and English history - this is not surprising given its sources. Cranmer-specific sources would have yielded a more Cranmer-specific article; the article in the DNB, which is based on Cranmer biographies, is more Cranmer-specific. Our article, on the other hand, seems to be more of a discussion of the Reformation with Cranmer at its center than a discussion of Cranmer with the Reformation at its center.

• 1c) I do not believe that this article "accurately represents the relevant body of published knowledge" since the article is primarily sourced to Schama's general history book and an encyclopedia article. (Even consulting the DNB would have helped the article considerably.) Diarmaid MacCulloch's book is now the standard biography on Cranmer. All of the scholarly reviews I read of this book (easily accessible through JSTOR) said that it is superb. Why is it not the basis for this article, since it is the only major biography of Cranmer to be published since 1964? There are more references to Schama's general history of Britain and the Oxford History of the Christian Church than to MacCulloch's book, the authoritative biography on Cranmer. Awadewit | talk 05:39, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.