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The Controversial Sir Thomas More

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Brendan Bradshaw
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Extract

Perhaps the most notable achievement of the so-called renaissance in Morean studies in recent years has been to provide the historiography with a new focus, namely the phase of More's career that begins in the aftermath of Utopia (1516) and concludes with his imprisonment in 1534. Hitherto, interest in that period was confined largely to the domestic scene celebrated in Holbein's famous portrait and drawings, the household at Chelsea as a centre of humanist culture, Christian piety and cosy family virtue. Yet this was the period of More's public career in which he served as a councillor to Henry vm and in a number of major administrative posts before his elevation to succeed Cardinal Wolsey as lord chancellor in 1529. It was also the period in which he assumed a leading role in the campaign against the Reformation in England, partly as a prosecutor of heresy on behalf of the Crown, but more spectacularly as a polemicist, specifically commissioned by the Church to defend orthodox doctrine against the challenge of the reformers – a task on which he expended some million words in the period between his tract against Luther in 1523 and the changed circumstances which induced a more devotional literary mode in the much acclaimed Tower Works.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 535 - 569
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

This study was originally projected as a review of the books listed below. The format of the review article was eventually abandoned as it was felt that the need to offer the usual critical commentary would further complicate an already complex substantive discussion. Nevertheless, as will be seen, the works intended for review largely provide the basis for that discussion. It is hoped that their use in this way will also serve to indicate their scholarly worth – which is, after all, the main business of a critical commentary: St. Thomas More: A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, edited by Thomas M. C. Lawler, Germain Marc'hadour and Richard C. Marius (The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 6, i-ii), pp. xiv + 435 + 6 illustrations; pp. viii + 453 + 7 illustrations. New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 1981; St. Thomas More: The Apology, edited by Trapp, J. B. (The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 9), pp. ix + 461 + 14 illustrations. New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 1979Google Scholar; The Public Career of Sir Thomas More, by Guy, J. A., pp. xi + 220. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980Google Scholar, £20; Thomas More: History and Providence, by Alistair Fox, pp. viii + 271. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982; The Common Corps of Christendom, by Brian Gogan (Studies in the History of Christian Thought, xxvi), pp. xii + 404. Leiden: Brill, 1982 Gld. 140.

I am indebted, as ever, to Geoffrey Elton for helpful comments on this paper. His charity heaps burning coals upon my head. I also wish to thank Peter Iver Kaufman for much invaluable advice.

1 The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More (The St Thomas More Project, Yale University). Yale University Press, New Haven – London 1961Google Scholar.

2 The two articles in which Elton originally challenged the ‘orthodox’ tradition are ‘Thomas More, Councillor’ (1972), Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, Cambridge 1974, i. 129–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Sir Thomas More and the opposition to Henry viii’ (1968), ibid. 155–72. His case has been further developed in ‘The real Thomas More?’ (1980), Studies, Cambridge 1983, iii. 344–55Google Scholar; ‘Thomas More’ (1981), ibid. 355–72; ‘The works of Sir Thomas More’ (1974), ibid. 444–60; Reform and Reformation, London 1977Google Scholar, passim; ‘Persecution and toleration in the English Reformation’, Studies in Church History xxi (1984), 163–87Google Scholar.

3 Guy, J. A., The Public Career of Sir Thomas More, Brighton 1980Google Scholar.

4 Trapp, J. B., ‘Introduction’ in The Apology (Complete Works), New Haven – London 1979, pp. xvii–xciiiGoogle Scholar.

5 Fox, Alistair, Thomas More: History and Providence, Oxford 1982Google Scholar.

6 I exclude from consideration Ridley, Jasper, The Statesman and the Fanatic, London 1982Google Scholar, which belongs to the older tradition of Foxean vituperation. I also exclude two excellent biographical introductions which cater for a general readership and aim at balance rather than interpretative advance: McConica, James, Thomas More, London 1977Google Scholar; Kenny, Anthony, Thomas More, Oxford – New York 1983Google Scholar. Marius, Richard, Thomas More, New York 1984Google Scholar, appeared too late for inclusion.

7 Chambers, R. W., Thomas More, London 1935Google Scholar.

8 Elton, G. R., ‘The myth of More’, New York Review of Books xxx, no. 1 (1983), 3–4Google Scholar; Trapp, J. B., ‘Midwinter’, London Review of Books v, no. 21 (1983), 16–17Google Scholar; Barker, Nicholas, ‘Working to God's designs’, Times Literary Supplement (25 Feb. 1983Google Scholar). Fox has been fortunate not only in receiving the approbation of highly influential scholars but also in receiving it in highly influential literary periodicals.

9 Fox, Thomas More, 36–45.

10 Ibid. 76–101, especially pp. 95–8.

11 Ibid. 50–74.

12 Ibid. 111–46, 199–205.

13 Ibid. 209–53.

14 The claim is explicitly formulated in ibid. 166.

15 Ibid. 20–3. On the Platonic influence on Colet sec Miles, Leland, John Colet and the Platonic Tradition, London 1962Google Scholar, passim; Jayne, Sears, John Colet and Marsilio Ficino, Oxford 1963Google Scholar, passim.

16 For a summary of Fox's thesis with regard to the early works see Fox, Thomas More, 10.

17 This theme as found in the writings of Erasmus is discussed in my ‘The Christian humanism of Erasmus’, JTS (NS), xxxiii (1982), 411–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 426, 436–9. The confusion into which Fox was led by his failure to consider the Morean texts in their intellectual context is illustrated by his exposition of the ironic effect of the ‘absurd visual image’ of Lucian's Cynic. Fox believes that the comical appearance of the Cynic was intended by Lucian, and following him by More in his Latin translation, to undermine the persuasiveness of the appeal to reason in the Cynicus; Fox, Thomas More, 38–41. In fact the irony functions in quite the opposite direction. The point of it is that the apparent fool is in reality a wise man. It thus highlights the capacity of reason, according to the Platonic epistemology, to transcend outward appearances (illusion) and to apprehend the inner reality (truth). The figure of the apparently contemptible as a mask for the truly estimable and, therefore, as a metaphor for reason confounding sensual values is, of course, a familiar trope in the literature of Renaissance Platonism. It receives classic expression in Erasmus's adage ‘Sileni Alcibiadis’. It serves to inaugurate Rabelais’ Gargantua. It provides the pivot of the casket story in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (’ So may the outward shows be least themselves; | The world is still deceived with ornament …').

18 It should, perhaps, be emphasised that the argument offered here is not intended to deny the possibility that More's writings reflect an inner tension, nor is it intended to reject the validity of the attempt to bring such a tension to light and to assess its significance in moulding his attitudes and values. The intention here is simply to indicate the inadequacies of Fox's attempt to tackle the problem.

19 Fox, Thomas More, 130.

20 Loc. cit. (my italics).

21 Fox, Thomas More, 131.

22 The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Rogers, Elizabeth F., Princeton 1947, no. 143, pp. 325–65Google Scholar at pp. 335–6.

23 Fox, Thomas More, 130.

24 Utopia (Complete Works), ed. Surtz, Edward, sJ, and Hexter, J. H., New Haven – London 1965Google Scholar, Bk. 11, 220–3.

25 Fox's confusion on this score is compounded by his failure to distinguish between the two categories of intellectual conflict in the religious sphere which More discerned. One related to heresy, i.e. the repudiation of the fundamental tenets of orthodoxy accepted throughout the Universal Church. The other related to the interpretation of obscure and/o r inessential aspects of the corpus of revelation. In the former case More explicitly rejected the view attributed to him by Fox, that heretical propositions could contain truth and, therefore, deserved tolerant treatment. On the contrary, in More's view, since heresy entails a fundamental perversion of revealed truth it must be resisted uncompromisingly. More's unyielding polemic against the Reformation was, therefore, in perfect accord with his concern for truth. On the other hand his criticism of scholastic disputation must be viewed in the light of the second category of religious conflict which he distinguished, i.e. differences of a speculative kind, relating to obscure and/or inessential aspects of the corpus of revelation. As a humanist More berated the scholastics for excessive preoccupation with the latter to the detriment of the more urgent pastoral task, as it seemed to the humanists, of moral and spiritual renewal. For this distinction, and for More's rejection of eirenicism as a response to heresy, see A Dialogue (Complete Works), 153–76 (Bk 1, chs. xxvi-xxviii), especially pp. 169–70.

26 The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer (Complete Works), ed. Schuster, Louis A. et al., New Haven – London 1973Google Scholar. The Letter to Dorp is available in English translation in St. Thomas More: Selected Letters (Complete Works), ed. Rogers, E. F., New Haven – London, 8–64Google Scholar.

27 J. H. Hexter, ‘Introduction’, Utopia (Complete Works), pp. xv-xxiii, lxxxi-xcii. Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge 1978, 216–18Google Scholar.

28 Fox, Thomas More, 50–74.

29 Utopia (Complete Works), Bk. 1, 56–9.

30 Op. cit. Bk. 1, 107–9; Bk. ii, 178–81.

31 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, Utopia (Complete Works), pp. li-lvii; Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought i. 244–62.

32 The opposite viewpoint, i.e. favouring experience (history) over abstract reason (philosophy) is presented in Machiavelli's exactly contemporary classic, The Prince, cc. xiv, xv. For a contemporary English political treatise vindicating the latter perspective – interestingly, in the context of an attack upon Utopian philosophising – see Smith, Sir Thomas, De republica anglorum, ed. Dewar, Mary, Cambridge 1982Google Scholar, Bk. 1, ch. xv; Bk. in, ch. ix, especially the peroration. For a general discussion see Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought i. 169–70; 220–1.

33 See Seigel, Jerrold E., Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism, Princeton 1968, especially pp. 31–168CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Guy, Thomas More. I have attempted to assess Guy's achievement in Parliamentary Yearbook ii (1983), 228–32.

35 Fox, Thomas More, 53.

36 Now appearing as ‘The works of Sir Thomas More’, Studies iii. 444–60.

37 Trapp, ‘Introduction’, The Apology [Complete Works), pp. xix-lxxxix, especially pp. xix, lxxxvii-lxxxix.

38 Fox, Thomas More, 125.

39 Elton, EHR lxxxvii (1972), 182–3.

40 Trapp, ‘Introduction’, The Apology (Complete Works), pp. xix, xx.

41 Ibid. pp. xxi, xxiii.

42 Professor Elton does indeed draw comparisons between More and contemporary polemical writers – invariably to More's disadvantage. However, his treatment remains unanalytical.

43 The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, ed. Louis A. Schuster et al., New Haven – London 1973, iii. 1344.

44 The Apology (Complete Works), 42. 11. 30–5.

45 This is likely to have a crucial bearing on the literary assessment of More's polemics. Yet the study of the genre itself is still largely undeveloped. See the editor's ‘Introduction’ to Bartolomeo Facio, Invective in Laurentium B. Vallam, ed. Rao, Ennio I., Naples 1978Google Scholar. I am grateful to Thirza Castello-Cortes of Cambridge University Library for this reference and for much useful discussion of the literary context of More's polemical writings.

46 A pioneering attempt has been made to analyse the literary techniques of More's polemical writings in Pineas, Rainer, Thomas More and Tudor Polemics, Bloomington-London 1968Google Scholar. Two comments on Pineas's work seem pertinent in the present context. One relates to its pioneering quality. Without decrying the value of Pineas's contribution it clearly leaves scope for further development and refinement before an authoritative assessment can be offered. Secondly, nevertheless, Pineas's conclusions, for what they are worth, are more creditable to More than the revisionists would allow. He is particularly impressed by More's development of the dialogue form as a polemical weapon and by his skilful use of ridicule. On the negative side Pineas stresses the uneven quality of More's performance, faulting the later polemics for their excessive length and lack of formal coherence. Like the revisionists, therefore, Pineas repeats the stock charges of More's contemporary adversaries. However, unlike the revisionists – or More's contemporary critics – Pineas's negative criticisms are balanced by a highly complimentary assessment in other respects, as we have seen. Nor does he find symptoms of moral or mental morbidity in More's literary lapses. His explanation is more normal and more persuasive – lack of time.

47 For details of publication in the Yale edition see the list above p. 535.

48 For an account of these episodes see Dickens, A. G., The English Reformation, London 1964, 70–82Google Scholar.

49 This metaphor is suggested with the best of intentions in M. C. Lawler, ‘A general view of the Dialogue: An anatomy of heresy’, A Dialogue (Complete Works), 439–54.

50 Before reaching that fundamental issue (ch. xviii ff.) More extended the scope of the debate (chs. iv-xvii) to include the subject of miracles, since it was on the belief in the intercessory power of the saints that the orthodox cult as well as the reformers’ charge of superstition were based.

51 The formula actually occurs in the summary of the argument of Book I contained in the opening chapter of Book n. A Dialogue (Complete Works), 188. 11. 20–4. The equivalent formula at the conclusion of Book 1, is ibid. p. 184. 11. 22–5.

52 A Dialogue, Bk. 11, chs. i-v.

53 Ibid. chs. vi-xii.

54 The debate about the source of the radical solution – king or minister – is not material o t this discussion. The course of the struggle between supporters of the radical solution and its opponents is meticulously reconstructed in Guy, Thomas More, chs. 7, 9. See also Elton, Reform and Reformation, ch. 6.

55 Guy, op. cit. ch. 9.

56 Trapp, ‘Introduction’, The Apology (Complete Works), pp. xlviii-liv.

57 For the dating see ibid. pp. xxxvii, xcii. Elton has pointed out that on the basis of existing evidence St German cannot be directly linked with the campaign organised by Cromwell; Policy and Police, Cambridge 1972, 173–4. Nevertheless, Trapp and Guy in subsequent analyses of the episode have both argued persuasively for a connection. In any case, the publication of St German's work at the critical moment, and the content of St German's argument, were of obvious advantage to the radical faction; Trapp, ‘Introduction’, The Apology (Complete Works), pp. lii-liii; Guy, Thomas More, 151–6. Guy has considerably strengthened his argument in a recent article,’ Thomas More and Christopher St German: The battle of the books’, Moreana xxi (1984), 5–20.

58 The text is reproduced in The Apology (Complete Works), 177–212.

59 The Apology (Complete Works), 5. 11. 25–30; 52. 11. 1–10.

60 Guy, Thomas More, 97–103; Elton, ‘Sir Thomas More and the opposition to Henry viii’, Studies i. 155–72.

61 Trapp, ‘Introduction’, The Apology (Complete Works), pp. xxvi-xxvii.

62 If More's wit is reduced to a matter of ‘merry tales’ it could be claimed that The Apology lacks wit. However, that kind of humorous anecdotage would not have suited the cryptic style of The Apology. Instead More resorted to ironic satire and by this means contrived to maintain a humorous tone throughout the work – in pleasing contrast, it might be said, to the lugubrious earnestness of The Division.

63 Consideration of the charge of partiality levelled against his writings (ch. x) provided More with the immediate context in which to introduce The Division (ch. xi), which his critics commended for its impartiality.

64 Trapp, ‘Introduction’, The Apology (Complete Works), p. lxxxviii.

65 Fox, Thomas More, ch. 4; Elton, ‘The real Thomas More?’, Studies iii. 344–55; idem, ‘The works of Sir Thomas More’, op. cit. 444–60.

66 Above, p. 54.

67 Elton, ‘The real Thomas More?’, 349–50.

68 Fox, Thomas More, 147–66, especially pp. 150, 156–8.

69 Fox's analysis of the polemical writings from the point of view of their ideological standpoint reflects some inconsistency. In ch. 4 he sets out to demonstrate that they express the attitude of a ‘reactionary ultra-conservative’ (p. 118). In ch. 6 he eventually concludes that More's authoritarianism was, in fact, only ‘apparent’ and that in reality More assumed a stance midway between the extreme libertarianism of Luther and the extreme authoritarianism of Tyndale, op. cit. p. 165. It must be mentioned in passing that Fox nowhere indicates an awareness that Luther's teaching on authority combined both extreme libertarianism and extreme authoritarianism, on which see Thompson, W. D. J. Cargill, ‘The “Two Kingdoms” and the “Two Regiments” : Some problems of Luther's Zwei-Reiche Lehre’, in Studies in the Reformation, ed. Dugmore, C. W., London 1980, 42–59Google Scholar.

70 Fox, Thomas More, 111–65, especially pp. 118, 133–7, 149–61.

71 Ibid. 168–70.

72 For Fox's treatment of the episode see ibid. 170–2.

73 The best treatment of all of this is now Guy, Thomas More, 97–201.

74 Fox, Thomas More, 174, 201.

75 For Elton's even more drastic assertion of More's ideological opposition to reform see his Reform and Reformation, 43–6; idem, ‘The real Thomas More?’, in Studies iii. 344–55.

76 Guy, Thomas More, 1–93.

77 Ibid. 80–93, especially pp. 85–6.

78 The debate was precipitated by a study by Richard C. Marius entitled ‘Thomas More's view of the Church’, in The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer (Complete Works), ed. Schuster, Louis A. et al., New Haven – London 1973, 1269–1361Google Scholar. In the course of that article (pp. 1309–15) Marius challenged the view of John M. Headley elaborated in an earlier volume of the Yale edition, ‘Introduction’, in Responsio ad Lutherum, New Haven – London 1969, 760–74Google Scholar. The debate was continued in the pages of Moreana with additional contributions from Francis Oakley, Moreana xi (i) (1974), 5–10Google Scholar; xvi (iv) (1980), 82–8, 89–90, 91–9.

79 Brian Gogan, The Common Corps of Christendom, Leiden 1982.

80 Ibid. 120–8, 155–7, 186–92, 283–8.

81 Gogan, op. cit. 212–17, 289–94; Oakley, Francis, ‘Headley, Marius and the matter of Thomas More's conciliarism’, Moreana xvi (iv) (1980), 82–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Gogan, op. cit. 120–2, 127–8, 148–54, 276–8, 317–22. Even though the issue in debate in the 1970s concerned rival claims for More as a papalist (Headley) or a conciliarist (Marius) it was recognised by all contributors that the focus of More's ecclesiological view was that of ‘the common corps of Christendom’, see especially Oaldey, op. cit. at p. 86.

83 For a polemic against Luther that gives classic expression to the late medieval clericalist ecclesiology see ‘The sermon of Johan the bysshop of Rochester made agayn the pernicyous doctryn of Martin Luther’, The English Works of John Fisher, ed. Mayor, J. E. B., London 1876, 311–47Google Scholar. For a discussion of Fisher's ecclesiology see Surtz, Edward, The Works and Days of John Fisher, Cambridge, Mass. 1967, 31–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 Gogan, Common Corps of Christendom, 96–9, 123–4.

85 Op. cit. 309–72; Gogan, , ‘The ecclesiology of Erasmus of Rotterdam: A genetic account’, Heythrop Journal xxi (1980), 393–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 This explanation of Erasmus's stand is found, for instance, in Huizinga, J., Erasmus of Rotterdam, London 1952, 161–2Google Scholar. A more perceptive account of the episode is provided in Phillips, M. M., Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, London 1949, 166–201Google Scholar.

87 Gogan, Common Corps of Christendom, 134.

88 A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Bk. iv, ch. xvii. The passage quoted by Gogan is intended to summarise a theme that dominates Bk. iv.

89 More's concern with Luther's denial of free will is indicated by the fact that by far the longest chapter in A Dialogue is devoted to the subject, Bk. iv, ch. xi. The chapter occupies over 24 pages in the Yale edition, A Dialogue (Complete Works), 377–402. It was also the main theme of his earlier ‘Letter to Bugenhagen’, The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Rogers, no. 143.

90 Erasmus's first treatise, De Libero Arbitrio, appeared in 1524. It prompted Luther's uncompromising rejoinder De Servo Arbitrio in 1525 to which Erasmus responded with Hyperaspistes 1 (1526) and Hyperaspistes ii (1527). The unusual vigour and bulk of Erasmus's two rejoinders are an indication of the significance of the issue for him.

91 On all of this see my ‘More on Utopia’, Historical Journal xxiv (1981), 1–27Google Scholar, especially 9–14; idem, ‘The Christian humanism of Erasmus’, JTS (NS) xxxiii (1982), 411–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 The attempt by Luther's humanist followers tofinda place for’ perfectionism’ within the scheme of Protestant soteriology began with Philip Melanchthon in the 1530s. It proved to be one of the most divisive issues within Protestantism throughout the early modern period. For an account of Melanchthon's vicissitudes see Carl E. Maxcey, Bona Opera, Nieuwkoop 1980, passim.

93 For the mature Luther's conception of fallen human nature see ‘The Disputation Concerning Man’, ed. Spitz, L. W., Luther's Works xxxiv, Philadelphia 1960, 137–44Google Scholar. For a discussion of Luther's interpretation of man as imago Dei see Trinkaus, Charles, ‘Luther's hexameral anthropology’, in Church, E. F. and Grace, T. (eds.), Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History, Leiden 1979, 150–68Google Scholar.

94 On all of this see Thompson, ‘The “Two Kingdoms” and the ”Two Regiments’”, 42–59.