Cranmer himself was burned at the stake, with about 400 other protestant leaders during just 5 years of Bloody Mary's reign in England. Do you have a record, from a reliable source, as to Cranmer causing any executions at all?
As to CIVIL AUTHORITIES burning heritics, OF COURSE they did, as they alone were allowed to execute anyone. All Roman Catholic principalities throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance period had laws against heresy--however only Church authorities could prove heresy. Hence the Inquistion "proved" someone a heretic, then, knowing (and endorsing) exactly what would happen, turned the convict over the Roman Catholic civil authority to be burned. It is the HEIGHT of hypocrisy to claim "the Inquisition never killed anyone..." when you know very well--using the local authorities as its executioners--it did, burning them by the thousands.To say this is the same logic that claims Pharisee and Temple authorities had nothing to do with the execution of Jesus--since the Romans did the deed.
In the mid 1500s many thousands of Protestants were executed this way all over Europe, especially on the Continent, where in France the numbers topped tens of thousands.
The official Acts and records of the reign of Henry VIII show that while Cranmer was Archbishop of Canterbury and Vice-gerent of the Realm for Visitation (i.e. overseeing, or in his case despoiling and stealing, monasteries) he presided at the trials and sentencing of the Carthusian Martyrs - Roman Catholic monks.
Eighteen of them are recorded as being executed by hanging, disemboweling, drawing and quartering and enforced starvation.
Brother Thomas Johnson took almost three weeks to die. It was rumored that a jailer with subversive catholic sympathies had been sneaking him rainwater.
And these particular Carthusians were just some examples - they happen to be an especially well-documented case since they were particularly beloved by the local communities.
In the mid 1500s many thousands of Protestants were executed this way all over Europe, especially on the Continent, where in France the numbers topped tens of thousands.
Your numbers are off.
As many Catholics died at the hands of Protestants as Protestants did at the hands of Catholics in the days before the Peace of Westphalia.
One can play all sorts of games with the French numbers if one decides to count the Huguenots who took up arms against their king and died in battle as "martyrs" instead of military casualties.
And the issue of civil authority vs. ecclesiastical authority is relevant.
In Spain, where the King reigned, a conviction of heresy could get you burned - just like in Calvinist Geneva.
In the Papal States, where the Pope reigned much of the time as both civil and ecclesiastical authority, you were more likely to end up under hosue arrest like Galileo.
It was a real distinction - except in Protestant countries like England and Saxony and Sweden where the civil authority was the ecclesiastical authority and the King was the head of the Church.
The Catholic martyrs of England were killed directly by the Church of England at the order of the head of the Church of England.
The Pope ordered no executions in Spain and allowed convicted Spaniards to appeal over the King's head to the canonical courts in Rome.
Quite a few such cases were overturned on appeal.
To whom could an English Catholic appeal over the King's head when he had been caught saying a Paternoster in Latin instead of English? No one.
And in Protestant countries, they prosecuted Catholicism as "treason," whether or not any actual treason took place. (My namesake, St. Edmund Campion, swore his loyalty to Elizabeth I at his trial "in all matters save religion". He was executed as a "traitor" anyway.)
Although the law was not actively enforced, it was a capital offense to be a Catholic in Sweden until well into the 19th Century.
Calling someone a "traitor" and killing them because you reject their religion is not any more admirable than calling them a "heretic" and killing them because you reject their religion, is it?
What's even more offensive to me is that we're having this conversation at all, given the larger events that we're watching. I guess perhaps soon we'll have the same discussion over our bowls of fish and cockroach soup in the barracks at the concentration camp, in between having the snot beaten out of us by the Obama SS.
Perhaps then we'll start to come to the realization that we have more to gain by treating each other like brothers and sisters than by picking fights over 500-year-old grudges.