Saint Sir Thomas More is remembered best as the tolerant author of Utopia and the saintly victim of King Henry VIII. This is not the reputation he tried to build. Thomas More was one of the great defenders of Catholicism in Europe. He literally gave his life defending the unity of the Catholic Church and argued passionately for the punishment of heretics, burning six of them. He was a "Man for all Seasons," simply because his beliefs did not change or bend.
More wrote Utopia in 1516. He seems to have written its more liberal passages as a joke for the Humanistic scholars of Europe. The joke was over, however, when Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door of Wittemburg’s cathedral. More was asked to help King Henry VIII write Defense of the Seven Sacraments. Luther counter-attacked with German Response to the Book of King Henry and More was asked to write a response. More wrote that Luther was a heretic and utterly evil, and his followers were criminals who “bespatter the most holy image of Christ crucified with the most foul excrement of their bodies destined to be burned.”[1]
After writing his Responsio ad Lutherum, More became Speaker of the House. In 1526, More and Chancellor Wolsey began to restrict the importation of Lutheran books into England. The next year, More personally oversaw a raid on the German Steelyard, a London neighborhood of Hanseatic League merchants. No heretical materials were found, but More issued a strong warning to the Germans the next day. In 1528, More interrogated and had sent to the Tower a financial supporter of Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible.[2] In response to Tyndale’s other works, More wrote his A Dialogue Concerning Heresies.
In the Dialogue, More argued that heretics were anarchists who denied the right of the king of England to “make any law or statute for the punishment of theft or any other crime, by which law man should suffer death.”[3] Worse, according to More, heretics taught against pilgrimages, praying to saints, worshiping images, belief in miracles, and believed that reason was incompatible with faith and that scripture needed no authority to interpret.[4] More strongly believed that heretics should be punished by the state, as “there is no fault that more offendeth God.”[5]
King Henry made More Lord Chancellor of England in 1529. One of More’s top priorities was the elimination of heresy in England. The first effort he made was to issue a proclamation on 22 June 1530 forbidding specific heretical books and authors and the importation of any books in English. Everything printed in England had to be personally “examined and approved” by a bishop.[7] Six heretics were burned during More’s three years as Chancellor. Forty other heretics were punished in varying degrees.[8] For example, three distributors of Tyndale’s New Testament translation were imprisoned and forced to ride through the streets while being pelted with rotten fruit.[9] More even occasionally held heretics at his house for interrogation.
More wrote his own epitaph, saying that he “was a source of trouble to thieves, murders and heretics.”[10] When writing to Erasmus of Rotterdam about the epitaph, he said he had written it “with deep feeling. I find that breed of men [heretics] absolutely loathsome, so much so that, unless they regain their senses, I want to be as hateful to them as anyone can possibly be.”[11]
More should be remembered as the staunch upholder of Catholic values, as well as a hater of heretics, as he wanted to be remembered. He felt that his religion was worth his own, as well as other’s lives.
[1] J.A. Guy, “Sir Thomas More & the Heretics,” History Today 30 (February 1980): 12-13.
[3] Saint Sir Thomas More. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More; volume 8: The Confutation of Tyndales’s Answer. ed. by Louis A. Schuster, Richard C. Marius, James P. Lusardi and Richard J. Shoeck. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 16.
[4] Saint Sir Thomas More. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More; volume 6: A Dialogue Concerning Heresies ed. Louis A. Schuster, Richard C. Marius, James P. Lusardi and Richard J. Shoeck. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 5-11.
[5] Ibid, 407.
[6] Ibid, 410.
[7] J.A. Guy, “Sir Thomas More & the Heretics,” History Today 30 (February 1980): 14.
[8] James Wood. “Sir Thomas More: A Man For One Season.” in The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief. (New York: Random House, 1999), [http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/wood.htm].
[9] J.A. Guy, “Sir Thomas More & the Heretics,” History Today 30 (February 1980): 14.
[10]Saint Sir Thomas More. A Thomas More Source Book ed. by Gerard B. Wegemer and Stephen W. Smith. (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 308.
[11]Saint Sir Thomas More. St. Thomas More: Selected Letters. ed. by Elizabeth Frances Rogers. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1961), 180.
