Editing Defrocking (section)

==History==
In the [[Medieval]] and [[Renaissance]] church, priests were publicly defrocked or "degraded" by having their vestments ceremonially removed. The procedure was intended to evoke shame and humiliation in the subject.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Ayris |editor1-first=Paul |editor2-last=Selwyn |editor2-first=David  |date=1999 |title=Thomas Cranmer: Churchman and Scholar |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v38KbocqEScC&pg=PA273 |publisher=Boydell Press |page=274 |isbn=978-0851157405 }}</ref> A description of the degradation of Archbishop [[Thomas Cranmer]] for [[heresy]] in 1556, based on eye-witness accounts, was recorded by [[John Foxe]]:
<blockquote>...when they came to take off his [[Pallium|pall]], (which is a solemn vesture of an archbishop,) then said he, "Which of you hath a pall, to take off my pall;" which imported as much as they, being his inferiors, could not degrade him. Whereunto one of them said, in that they were but bishops, they were his inferiors, and not competent judges; but being the pope's delegates, they might take his pall. And so they did, and so proceeding took every thing in order from him, as it was put on. Then a barber clipped his hair round about, and the bishop scraped the tops of his fingers where he had been anointed... Last of all they stripped him out of his gown into his jacket, and put upon him a poor [[yeoman]]-[[beadle]]'s gown, full bare and nearly worn, and as evil-favouredly made as one might lightly see, and a townsman's cap on his head; and so delivered him to the secular power".<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Berry |editor-first=William Grinton |date=1907 |title=Foxe's book of martyrs : an edition for the people |url=https://archive.org/details/foxesbookofmar00foxe/page/378/mode/2up |location=New York |publisher=Eaton & Mains |pages=378–379 }}</ref></blockquote>