Sir thomas more (1478 – 1535)

Thomas More was one of the most versatile and most enigmatic figures of the English Renaissance.

He was born in London, the son of a prominent lawyer. As a boy he served as a page in the household of Archbishop Morton. He studied at Oxford and at the Inns of Court, and was deeply torn between the appeal of a life of ascetic devotion and an active role in public affairs. His literary interests appeared early. He became a close friend of Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) and, like him, was a great humanist.

More’s masterpiece is Utopia. Designed for the educated readers of all Europe, Utopia was written and published in Latin. However, it has become a classic of English literature.

Emphasis on classical learning was at the heart of the humanist movement, but the Latin and Greek classics were not monuments to dead cultures for More and his friends. He was profoundly influenced by Plato's Republic when he wrote his Utopia, but he was also fascinated by accounts of the recent explorations of Amerigo Vespucci (1507). Newly contacted lands with their strange customs provided a fresh perspective from which to view the older societies of Europe, burdened by wars, fierce economic rivalry, and feudal hierarchies.

Book 2 of Utopia, a description of the laws and customs of an imagined society, was written first. Though the name of the country denotes “nowhere located”, More presents its geography, history and economy, as well as mineral resources, marriage customs, religions, and other aspects of life. In More’s ideal country there is no division between city and rural inhabitants: every citizen completes a two-year stint in the country. Utopians have scorn for gold or silver; and while they eat from earthenware dishes and drink from glass cups, their chamber pots and the chains of their slaves are made of “precious metals”. Women do not marry till they are eighteen, nor men till they are twenty-two. Premarital intercourse brings severe punishment: the guilty parties are forbidden to marry for their whole lives; their father and mother suffer public disgrace for having been remiss in their duty. Divorce is allowed only in case of adultery or intolerably offensive behaviour. The guilty party suffers disgrace and is permanently forbidden to remarry. A divorce never takes place through old age or illness. There is freedom of religion, and there are different forms of religion on the island. Some worship as a god the sun, others the moon, still others one of the planets or a man of past ages, conspicuous either for virtue or glory. “The vast majority of Utopians, however, believe in a single power, unknown, eternal, infinite, inexplicable, far beyond the grasp of the human mind, and diffused throughout the universe, not physically, but in influence.” After Utopians heard the name of Christ, and learnt of his teachings, many of them gladly converted to Christianity. There is no private property in Utopia, free education for everybody, obligatory work for all, a nine-hour working day, exercise of arts and sports in free time.

When More came to write the introduction to it, book 1, his dramatic instincts led him to make it a dialogue, an argument between a character named More and a returned traveller named Raphael Hythloday. Their debate focuses on a subject that greatly troubled the real More personally: should the scholar participate in government or should he confine himself to the ivory tower?

More is a very ironic and witty writer. In this he resembles his friend Erasmus, who dedicated his Praise of Folly to More. Erasmus's title, in the original Latin, is Moriae Encomium (“Praise of More” as well as "Praise of Folly,” because the Greek word for a fool is “moros”). Central to the constitution of Utopia is community of property, for which More had a precedent in Plato and in the rules of the monastic orders of More's own time. No fundamental reform in society is possible; the reader is led to believe, until private property is abolished. Yet a standard defence of private property is put into the mouth of the character named More, against the position of the main speaker, Hythloday.

About the same time that he wrote Utopia More undertook his very important English work, the History of King Richard III. Although it was never finished, it had tremendous influence. More's characterization of the last Yorkist king was adopted by the chroniclers Edward Half and Richard Grafton and so came down to Shakespeare, whose Richard III (1597) fixed the portrait of Richard as a deformed, malicious, hypocritical villain.

More's sense of obligation to active citizenship and statesmanship finally won out over his monastic inclinations, and his rise to high office under Henry VIII was spectacular: master of requests, privy councillor, speaker of the House of Commons, and finally, lord chancellor, the highest office under the crown. He resigned this post when the king married Anne Boleyn and when he was required to take the oath of allegiance. He could not, in con­science, affirm that Henry was supreme head of that spiritual body, the church. From the point of view of the government, his refusal was treason, and in 1535 he was beheaded. Four hundred years later he was canonized by the Catholic church as St. Thomas More.