Will Durant---Thomas More

Thomas More the utopian the father of Thomas More was a successful lawyer and prominent judge Thomas received his education at st. Anthony's School in London was farmed out as a page to Archbishop Morton and was by him confirmed an orthodoxy integrity and a cheerful piety Morton predicted we are told that this child here waiting a table will prove a marvelous man at 15 the youth went to Oxford and was soon so fascinated with classical literature that his father to save the youth from becoming an impecunious scholar pulled him out of the university and sent him to study law in London Oxford and Cambridge still aimed at preparing students for an ecclesiastical career you in and Lincoln's Inn trained the men who were now taking over from the clergy the government of England only eight members of the House of Commons in the Reform Parliament of 15 29 to 37 had received a university education while a rising proportion were lawyers and businessmen in 1499 aged 21 more matter Rasmus and was charmed into humanism their friendship is one of the fragrant essences of the time they were both given to a measured merriment and salted their studies with laughing satire they shared a distaste for scholastic philosophy whose subtleties said more were as profitable as milking a he-goat into a sieve they both hoped for a reform of the church from within avoiding a violent disruption of religious unity and historical continuity Moore was not the peer of Erasmus in learning or tolerance indeed his customary gentleness and generosity were sometimes interrupted by strong passions even by bigotry in controversy he stooped now and then like nearly all his contemporaries to fierce invective and bitter vituperation but he was the superior of Erasmus encouraged sense of honour and devotion to a cause the letters that they exchanged are a precious testimony to the graces of an ungracious age farewell and one of mores sweetest Erasmus dearer to me than my eyes he was one of the most religious men of the century shaming with his late piety the worldliness of ecclesiastics like Wolsey 23 when he was already advanced in the study of law he thought of becoming a priest he gave public lectures in 1501 on Augustine's City of God and such older pundit says gross and sat in his audience though he criticized the monks for shirking their rule he fervently admired the sincere monastic state and sometimes regretted that he had not chosen it for a long time he wore a horsehair shirt next to his skin now and then it drew enough blood to visibly stain his clothing he believed in miracles and saintly legends therapeutic relics religious images and pilgrimages and wrote devotional works to the medieval tune that life is a prison and that the aim of religion and philosophy should be to prepare us for death he married twice and brought up several children in a Christian discipline at once sober and cheerful with frequent prayer mutual love and complete trust in Providence the manor house in Chelsea to which he moved in 1523 was famous for its library and gallery and its gardens extending for a hundred yards down to the Thames at 26 in 1504 he was chosen to Burgess delegate to Parliament there he argued so successfully against a measure proposed by Henry the seventh that the King briefly imprisoned and heavily fined the senior more as a devious means of teaching the young orator the comforts of conformity at the close of that Parliament Moore returned to private life and prospered in the practice of law in 1509 he was persuaded to take the office of undersheriff in the city that is ancient London north of the Thames his functions suiting his temperament were judicial rather than adventurous his judgments earned him wide renowned for wisdom and impartiality and his polite refusal of presents from litigants violated time dishonored precedents that were still vigorous in Francis Bacon's day soon he was back in Parliament and by 1515 he was Speaker of the House of Commons in a famous letter to Hooton on July 23rd 1517 Erasmus described more as of medium height pale complexion auburn hair careless of dress or formality obstinacy in food and drink cheerful with quick humour and ready smile inclined to jokes and pranks and keeping in his house a gesture a monkey and many minor animal pets all the birds in Chelsea came to him to be fed a faithful husband the loving and idolized father a persuasive orator a judicious counselor a man alert with charity and friendly offices in short concluded this font sketch what did nature ever create milder sweeter and happier than the genius of Thomas More he found time to write books he began a history of Richard the third but as its tenor was sharply against autocracy and autocracy was on the throne he thought it discreet to avoid the fatality of print it was published after his death Shakespeare based a play on it and the biography broadcast by the drama may bear some responsibility for the character that Richard bears in 1516 as if in a playful aside more tossed off in Latin one of the most famous of all books creating a word setting a precedent and pace for modern utopia's anticipating half of socialism and voicing such criticism of English economy society and government that again he put Balor behind discretion and had the volume published abroad in six Latin editions before allowing it to be printed still in Latin in England he professed to have written it for amusement with no intention to make it public but he thanked Erasmus for seeing it through the press at Lubin it was translated into German Italian and French before the first English version appeared in 1550 116 years after the author's death by 1520 it was the talk of the continent Moore had called it Ness kwame know where we do not know who had the happy thought of changing this amid the printing to the Greek equivalent utopia the meson sin of the tale was so ingenious that many readers took it as authentic history and the missionary was said to a plan to go and convert the utopians to Christianity more had been sent by Henry the 8th on an embassy to Bruges in 1515 then C had passed to Antwerp with a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Peter Giles the city clerk the prelude pretended the child's had introduced more to a bearded weather-worn portuguese mariner raphael hitler de greek for skilled in nonsense who had sailed with Amerigo Vespucci in 1504 had made his way round the globe six years before Magellan's voyage and had visited in the new world a happy island whose inhabitants had solved most of the problems plaguing Europe at that time the Louvre an edition made the hoax more plausible by prefixing a woodcut of the Isle and the specimen of the utopian language only one slip gave the plot away if lo de digresses to praise Archbishop Morton in terms more natural to mores gratitude than to the Mariners experience the imaginary Magellan describes the communism of the Islanders among the utopians all things being common every man hath abundance of everything I compare with them so many nations where every man call it that which he have gotten his own proper and private goods I hold well with Plato that all men should haven't enjoy equal portions of wealth and commodities for where every man under certain titles and pretenses draws and pluck it's to himself as much as he can so that a few divided among themselves all the whole riches there to the residue is left lack and poverty in Utopia each man takes his product to the common store and receives from it according to his needs none asks more than enough for security from want for stores greed meals are eaten in common but if a man wishes he may eat at home there is no money in utopia no buying cheap and selling dear the evils of cheating stealing and quarreling over property are unknown Gold is used not as currency but to make useful things like chamber pots no famines or lean years come for the communal storehouses maintain a reserve against emergencies every family engages in both agriculture and industry men and women alike in order to ensure adequate production six hours of work per day are required of each adult and choice of occupation is limited by collective needs the utopians are free in the sense of freedom from hunger and fear but they are not free to live on the labour of others there are laws in Utopia but they are simple and few therefore every man is expected to plead his own case and no lawyers are allowed those who violate the laws are condemned for a time to serve the community as bondman they do the more disagreeable tasks but after finishing their turn they are restored to full equality with their fellow men those who repeatedly and seriously offend are put to death the supply of bondman is raised by ransoming prisoners condemned to death in other lands the unit of society in Utopia is the patriarchal family the wives be ministers to their husbands the children to their parents monogamy is the only form of sexual Union permitted before marriage the betrothed are advised to view each other naked so that physical defects may be revealed in time and if they are serious the contract may be annulled the wife after marriage goes to live with her husband in his father's household divorce is allowed for adultery and by free neutral consent conditional on the consent of the communal counsel anyone Willy every 30 families choose a file art to govern them every 10 file arcs choose a cheap file art to administer a district of 300 households the 205 lakhs serve as a National Council which elects for life the prince or King a basic obligation of the file arcs is to preserve the health of the community by providing clean water public sanitation medical and hospital care for health is the chief of all earthly boons the rulers organize education for children and for adults they stress vocational training support science and discourage astrology fortune-telling and superstition they may make war on other people's if they judge that the good of the community so requires they count this the most just cause of war when any people holdeth a piece of ground void and vacant to no good nor profitable use keeping other from the use or possession of it who by the law of nature ought thereby to be nourished and relieved was this a defence of the colonization of America but the utopians do not glorify war they hated as plainly brutal and contrary to the sentiment of nearly every other nation they regard nothing more inglorious than glory derived from war religion in Utopia is almost not quite free tolerance is given to any critics eped atheism and the denial of human immortality the utopian may if he wishes worship the Sun or the moon but those who you violence of action or speech against any recognized religion are arrested and punished for the laws seek to prevent religious strife deniers of immortality are not punished but they are excluded from office and are forbidden to voice their views to any but priests and men of gravity otherwise it should be lawful for every man to favor and follow what religion he would and might do his best to bring other to his opinion so that he did it peaceably and soberly without haste and contentious rebuking and inveighing against other so in Utopia there are various religions but the most and wisest part believe that there is a certain godly power unknown everlasting incomprehensible inexplicable far above the reach and capacity of man's wit dispersed through the world monasticism is permitted provided the monks will busy themselves with works of charity and communal utility such as repairing roads and bridges cleaning ditches cutting timber and acting as servants even as bondman and they may marry if they so desire there are priests but they to marry the state keeps as religious feasts the first and last of every month and here but in the religious exercises of these holy days no image of any God is seen in the church and no prayers be used but such as every man may boldly pronounce without the offending of any sect on each of these holy days wives and children prostrate themselves before their husbands or parents and ask forgiveness for any offence committed or any Duty omitted and no one is to come to church until he has made peace with his enemy it is a Christian touch but mores youthful humanism appears in his partial acceptance of the Greek view of suicide if a man suffers from a painful and incurable disease he is permitted and encouraged to end his life in other cases Moore believes suicide is cowardice and the corpses to be cast and buried into some stinking Marsh we do not know how much of this represented more is considered conclusions how much was Erasmus how much was half playful imagination however the young statesmen carefully dissociated himself from the socialism of his utopians I am of opinion he represents himself as saying to if lo day that men shall never live wealthily where all things are in common for how can there be abundance of goods where the regard of his own gains drive us not to work but the hope that he hath in other men's travails maketh him slothful it is not possible for all things to be well unless all men were good which I think will not be yet these good many years yet some sympathy with radical yearnings must have inspired so extensive a picture of the Communist ideal other pages of the Utopia criticized with angry severity the exploitation of the poor by the rich enclosures of one's common lands by English Lords are condemned with such detail and spirit as seem unlikely in a foreigner says Hitler datum or the unreasonable covetousness of a few have turned to the utter undoing of your island suffer not these rich men to buy up all to engross and forestall and with their monopolies to keep the market alone as pleases them when I consider an way in my mind all these Commonwealth's which now anywhere flourish I can perceive nothing so God helped me but a certain conspiracy of rich men promoting their own commodities under the name and title of the Commonwealth they invent and devise all memes and crafts how to hire and abuse the labor of the poor for as little money as may be these devices be then made laws it is almost the voice of Karl Marx moving the world from a foot of space in the British Museum certainly utopia is one of the most powerful as well as one of the first indictments of the economic system that continued in modern Europe until the 20th century and it remains as contemporary as a planned economy and the welfare state 3 the martyr how did it come about the demand with such ideas seething in his head should have been appointed to enry the eighth's council in the year after the publication of utopia probably the king despite his reputation for learning could not bear to read the book in latin and died before it was English more kept his radical fancies for his friends Henry knew him is a rare synthesis of ability and integrity valued him as a tie with the House of Commons knighted him made him under treasurer in 1521 and entrusted him with delicate tasks of diplomacy more opposed to foreign policy by which Woolsey led England into war with Charles v the emperor in more view was not only dangerously resourceful he was also the heroic defender of Christendom against the Turks when Wolsey fell more so far forgot his manners as to review in Parliament the faults and errors that had caused the fall as leader of the Opposition he was the logical successor of the cardinal and for 31 months he served as Chancellor of England but the real successor to Wolsey was the King Henry had discovered his own power in capacity and was resolved he said to free himself from an unfriendly and obstructive papacy and to legitimate his union with the woman whom he loved and who could give him an heir to the throne more found himself no guide of policy but a servant of aims that ran countered to his deepest loyalties he consoled himself by writing books against Protestant theology and prosecuting Protestant leaders in a dialogue concerning heresies in 1528 and in later works he agreed with ferdinand ii Calvin and the Lutheran princes on the necessity of religious unity for national strength and peace he feared the division of England into a dozen or are a hundred religious sects he who had defended Erasmus as Latin translation of the New Testament protested against Tyndall's English version as distorting the texts to prove lutheran points translations of the Bible he felt should not be turned into weapons for tavern philosophers in any case he held the church was too precious of vehicle of discipline consolation and inspiration to be torn to pieces by the hasty reasoning of vane disputants from this mood he passed to the burning of Protestants at the stake the charge that in his own house he had a man flogged for heresy is disputed mores account of the offender seems far removed from theology if he spied any woman kneeling in prayer and if her head hung anything low in her meditations then he would steal behind her and would labor to lift up all her clothes and cast them quite over her head it may be that in the three death sentence is pronounced in his diocese during his chancellorship he was obeying the law that required the state to service the secular arm of ecclesiastical courts but there is no doubt that he approved of the burnings he admitted no inconsistency between his conduct and the large toleration of religious differences in his utopia for even there he had refused toleration 2/8 it's deniers of immortality and those heretics who resorted to violence or buy cheaper Asian yet he himself was guilty of operation and arguing against the English Protestants the time came when more thought Henry the most dangerous heretic of all he refused to approve the marriage with Anne Boleyn and he saw in the anti-clerical legislation of 1529 232 a ruinous assault upon a church that to his mind stood as an indispensable base of social order when he retired from office to the privacy of his Chelsea home in 1532 he was still in his prime at 54 but he suspected that he had not much longer to live he tried to prepare his family for tragedy by talking so reports his son-in-law William Roper of the lives of holy martyrs and of their marvelous patience and of their passions sufferings and deaths that they suffered rather than they would offend God and what an happy and blessed thing it was for the love of God to suffer loss of goods imprisonment loss of lands and life also he would further say unto them that upon his faith if he might perceive his children would encourage him to die in a good cause it should so comfort him that for the very joy thereof it would make him merrily to run to death his expectations were fulfilled early in 1534 he was indicted on a charge of having been privy to the conspiracy connected with the nun of Kent he admitted having met her and having believed her to be inspired but he denied any knowledge of conspiracy Cromwell recommended and re granted forgiveness but on April 17th Moore was committed to the tower for refusing to take oath to the Act of Succession which has presented to him involved a repudiation of papal supremacy over the church in England his favorite daughter Margaret wrote to him begging him to take the oath he replied that her plea gave him more pain than his imprisonment his second wife visited him in the tower and according to Roper they rated him for obstinacy what the Goodyear mr. Moore I marveled at you that have always been hither unto taken for a wise man will now so play the fool to lie here in this closed filthy prison and be content to be shut up among mice and rats when you might be abroad at your liberty and with the favour and goodwill of the king and his council if you would but do as all the bishops and best learned of this realm have done and seeing you have a Chelsea a right fair house your library your books your gallery your garden your orchards and all other necessary so handsomely about you where you might in the company of me your wife your children and your household be merry I news what a God's name you mean here still thus fondly to tarry other efforts were made to move him but he smilingly resisted them all on July 1st 1535 he was given a final trial he defended himself well but he was pronounced guilty of treason while he was returning from Westminster to the tower his daughter Margaret twice broke through the guard embraced him and received his last blessing on the day before his execution he sent his hair shirt to Margaret with a message that tomorrow were a day very neat to go to God farewell my dear child pray for me and I shall pray for you and all your friends that we may merrily meet in heaven when he mounted the scaffold on July 7th and founded so weak that it threatened to collapse he said to an attendant I pray you mr. lieutenant Seany safe up and for my coming down let me shift for myself the executioner asked his forgiveness more embraced him Henry had given directions that only a few words should be allowed the prisoner more begged the spectators to pray for him and to bear witness that he suffered death in and for the faith of the Holy Catholic Church he then asked him to pray for the king that God might send him good counsel and he protested that he died being the Kings good servant but God's first he repeated the 51st psalm and he laid his head upon the block carefully arranging his long gray beard that it should take no harm pity that should be cut he said that has not committed treason his head was affixed to London Bridge a wave of Terror passed to an England that now realized the resolute mercilessness of the king and a shudder of horror ran through Europe Erasmus felt that he himself had died for we had but one soul between us he said that he had now no further wish to live and the year later he too was dead charles v apprised of the event told the English ambassador if I'd been master of such a servant of who doing I myself have had these many years no small experience I would rather have lost the best city in my dominions than lose such a worthy councillor Oh Paul the third formulated a bull of excommunication outlawing Henry from the fellowship of Christendom interdicting all religious services from England forbidding all trade with it absorbing all British subjects from their oaths of allegiance to the king and commanding them and all Christian princes to depose him forthwith as neither Charles nor Francis would consent to such measures the Pope withheld issuance of the bull till 1538 when he did promulgate it Charles and Francis for bandits publication in their realms unwilling to sanction papal claims to power over Kings the failure of the bull signalized again the decline of papal Authority and the rise of the sovereign National State Dean Swift thought more the man of the greatest virtue perhaps using this word in its old sense of courage this Kingdom ever produced on the 400th anniversary of their execution the Church of Rome enrolled Thomas More and John Fisher among her Saints

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Published: Wed Aug 07 2019