Saint Thomas More

More, Thomas (1477–1535)

Thomas More was a classical, biblical and patristic scholar, an author in many genres, a lawyer who became Lord Chancellor, a humanist ‘born for friendship’ according to Erasmus, a widowed husband who remarried and could not decide which wife he loved more, a father who established a ‘school’ with the best of tutors in his home so that his daughters could have the same formal education (denied to women) as his son, and a martyr who refused to recognize Henry VIII as head of the church in England and was therefore beheaded by the king he had vindicated against Martin Luther. With his Utopia he coined a word and inspired subsequent writers to imagine both ideal and non-ideal societies.

1 Life

Born in London, February 1477, Thomas More studied at Oxford and the London Inns of Court and was called to the Bar in 1501. He married in 1504, became the father of four children, was widowed and remarried in 1511. As Undersheriff of London (1510–18) he won the favour of Henry VIII, for whom he travelled on diplomatic missions to Bruges (1515 and 1521), Calais (1517) and Cambrai (1529), and accompanied Henry to the Field of Cloth of Gold (1520). He was knighted and made Undertreasurer in 1521, Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523 and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1525. In 1529 he succeeded Thomas Wolsey as Chancellor. Unable to support the King’s proposed divorce, More resigned the chancellorship in May 1532. Refusing to take the Oath of Succession he was sent to the Tower in April 1534. His refusal of the Oath of Supremacy recognizing Henry as head of the Church in England meant high treason, and he was decapitated on July 6, 1535. He was canonized a saint in 1935.

2 Scholar and diplomat

Thomas More has been called England’s greatest humanist. Renaissance humanism was not a philosophy as such, but a programme of studies of ancient texts including scripture and the Church fathers, studia humanitatis (see Humanism, Renaissance). After testing the possibility of a religious vocation and deciding to marry instead, More looked to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – at least after the latter’s conversion – as a lay model of virtue and learning. His first published work was also the first biography of the English Renaissance, a translation and adaptation from Latin of Gianfrancesco Pico’s life of his uncle, printed in 1510 by More’s brother-in-law John Rastell, along with a selection of Pico’s spiritual writings and poetry (The Complete Works of St.Thomas Moore – hereafter CW – Vol.1 ). More also lectured publicly on Augustine’s City of God (see Augustine).

More had met Erasmus in 1499, during the latter’s first visit to England. During his second visit, 1505–6, they translated works by Lucian from Greek into Latin, comparing their translations (CW3, Part I). Another humanist, William Lily, vied with More in translating some poems from the Greek anthology. More’s writing of poetry, both English (CW1, CW13) and Latin (CW3, Part II) lasted into the Tower. In 1509, Erasmus, while a guest in More’s household, wrote In Praise of Folly. This work’s title, Enconium Moriae, puns on More’s name, and in his prefatory letter to More, Erasmus applied to him the phrase omnium horarum hominem, translated by Robert Whittinton (1520) as ‘a man for all seasons’ (instead of ‘all hours’).

While on a diplomatic mission to Bruges in 1515, More went to Antwerp with a letter of introduction from Erasmus to the civic humanist Peter Giles. He made Giles a character in his Utopia, written during that mission and published in 1516. The book’s title puns on Greek u-topia (no place) and eu-topia (happy place), indicating the speculative nature of its consideration of the ideal commonwealth. It draws on the vision of Isaiah the Prophet, on the speculations of Plato’s Republic (see Plato §14), Aristotle’s Politics (see Aristotle §§27, 28), Cicero’s De Republica (then known only through Augustine) (see Cicero §2) and Augustine’s City of God. The dialogue form of Book I suggests Plato’s Socratic dialogues but also those of the church father Justin Martyr. The entire work itself enters into dialogue with More’s The History of King Richard III (CW2), the first English imitation of classical historians, particularly Tacitus and Suetonius. Written over generally the same years as Utopia, Richard III – which has both English (CW2) and Latin (CW15) versions – describes the reverse of the ideal commonwealth: the chaos of a kingdom ruled by a tyrant.

3 Living out humanism and theology

More was on warm terms with humanists from all Europe and spent much ink in lengthy defences of Erasmus, which were also defences of humanism (CW15). Erasmus’ light irony in In Praise of Folly, his insistence on editing the Greek New Testament and thereby correcting the Vulgate, his veneration of classical rhetorical discipline, even to the extent of denigrating the late Scholastics, alarmed conservatives. At the time More was finishing Book I of Utopia (1515), he penned his Letter to [Martin] Dorp (CW15), and through him to the other theologians at the University of Louvain, in defence of his friend and their common studies. Later defences include More’s Letter to Oxford (CW15) against those detractors of Erasmus who resisted Greek studies, Letter to Edward Lee and Letter to a Monk (CW15 for both), both attackers of Erasmus.

As More had defended his friend, he defended also his faith. In 1523, he published his Responsio ad Lutherum (CW5), a vindication of his king against the attacks of Martin Luther which grew into a defence of Catholic teaching on the sacraments and thus on the Church. In 1528 the Bishop of London commissioned him to defend the Catholic faith against heresy, not in Latin for a cosmopolitan Continental audience but in English for his compatriots. A Dialogue Concerning Heresies of June 1529 (CW6) returns to that favoured form to treat in a sometimes witty fashion, images, pilgrimages, relics, repression of heresy and the language of Biblical translation, where More’s chief opponent is William Tyndale. When Tyndale published An Answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue (1531), More responded with his longest work, The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer (CW8), 1532 and 1533. In the autumn of 1529 he had published Supplication of Souls (CW7), a defence of the doctrine of Purgatory. Various other works upholding the Catholic belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist ( CW7, CW11, CW13) were to follow. He defended himself in The Apology (CW9) of early 1533. The controversial works (especially CW6 and CW8) have recently been receiving their share of scholarly attention, particularly for their rhetorical structure and practices.

During his tenure as Chancellor three men were condemned to death by the bishops and burned with More’s approval. In his Life of Jerome (1516) Erasmus had written that in the matter of heresy tolerance is a fault, not a virtue. The two whippings that More ordered were for sexual or blasphemous offences.

4 The Tower works

Confined to the Tower in April 1534, More wrote A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation (CW12), sometimes thought to be More’s ultimate spiritual testament. The older Antony and his young nephew Vincent discuss human suffering, drawing upon scripture and the tradition of prison literature, notably The Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius (§5) . In the unfinished De tristitia Christi (On the Sadness of Christ) (CW14) More turned to the Latin language and the Vulgate Bible for the drama of Christ’s Passion, meditating on ‘The Sadness, the Weariness, the Fear, and the Prayer of Christ Before He Was Taken Prisoner’, so that he can face all these in himself. More’s last words, as recorded by an unidentified Frenchman, were ‘that he died his [the king’s] good servant and God’s first, et de Dieu premièrement’. The ‘and’ is important because it does not place the king and God in opposition – as does the misquoted ‘but God’s first’. Rather, it echoes the words of Christ (Matthew 22:21): ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’