All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
Some exit on their sick-bed, some on the battlefield, others, like Socrates and Thomas More, were executed by the state they had loved and served.
Thomas More lived in late 15th and early 16th century Europe, in the time of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. Peter Ackroyd’s sympathetic and well-researched biography places More in this historical and cultural context, and portrays him as a man who embodies the medieval worldview, in which the religious and the political are inseparable in both public and private spheres.
In the mediaeval worldview, the world has many dimensions, firstly, the past and the present coexist, and saints of the past can bestow benefits on those in the present; secondly, the spiritual and the material also intertwine, spirits play on the same stage as men; thirdly and above all, there are universal law and order in all things, which are also reflected in the rules of grammar and rhetoric. Like many other Christian humanists of his time, More believed that classical learning is conducive to piety. He was proficient in both classical and legal studies, and taught his own children the classics.
From More’s perspective, the Protestant Reformation disrupts the law and unity of Christendom, and would ultimately destroy the Western world and the Catholic way of life. Understandably, he employed everything in his power to fight against it. In his capacity as a magistrate of the state, he prosecuted heretics, sentencing some to burning at the stake. He also wrote many treatises defending the Church, matching the vitriol of Martin Luther and William Tyndale tit for tat. He was probably the only Catholic layman, who had the learning, knowledge and skill, to engage in this historic struggle.
“I do nobody no harm, I say none harm,
I think none harm, but wish every body good.
And if this be not enough to keep a man alive,
in good faith I long not to live.”
Unfortunately for More, his master Henry VIII had a personal motive to break the unity of the Church he dearly desired to preserve: Henry wished to re-marry but the Pope refused to annul his first marriage. In the midst of the general revolt against corruption of the clergy, Henry found support in the Parliament to establish his supremacy over the Church in England, supplanting the Pope. This is, incidentally, the origin of the Anglican Church. Thomas More refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Henry’s supremacy, although the latter appointed him Lord Chancellor, the most powerful office under the King. The die was cast, however, in only three years, More was forced to resign, and eventually tried and convicted of treason.
References:
- Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas More. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998.
- Roper, William. The Life of Sir Thomas More. The Centre for Thomas More Studies. Accessed Jan. 20, 2020. https://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/Roper.pdf