On my Reading Wish List: "The Controversial Thomas More"

I received an email from The Center for Thomas More Studies last Wednesday night and contacted my favorite bookstore, Eighth Day Books, the next morning to ask the proprietor to special order a paperback copy of The Controversial Thomas More: Politics, Polemics, and Prison Writings by Travis Curtright.

Curtright confronts the issue head-on, as the interview posted at the University of Notre Dame Press website notes: More is Controversial:

He is controversial in many ways. More’s trial and execution were part of a prolonged and public dispute over the laws passed by Parliament in 1534. His death, too, was subject to competing narratives about his character and conduct from early modern detractors and hagiographers.

Even today, More himself remains a subject of contention. Some argue for Thomas More, the humanist; others present Chancellor More, the heresy-burner; there is also Saint Thomas More, the martyr. Such multiple Mores are signs of how he remains a controversial figure.

I allude to all the above in the book’s title, but I write of “controversial More” in reference to him as a participant in and one subject to religious and political disputes even while a prisoner and during the last months of his life. He is an author of controversial literature. More wrote his way through the religious and political events in 1534-35, and he wished to convey his thinking on these contested matters to others before his death. Every major Tower Work, in effect, responds to a perceived threat to Church unity presented by the Henrician Reformation.

Please read the rest there.

There's an excerpt from the book here.

I look forward to reading it and posting a review here!

I don't think there should be any surprise that More is controversial (isn't everyone?) but I certainly want to read Curtright's thoughts about him and this crucial period of More's life.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us! On April 17, 1534, More was sent to the Tower of London after refusing to sign the Oath of Succession.

Saint Thomas More and the Princes in the Tower

My local PBS station is airing episodes of Lucy Worsley Investigates and I watched the first installment on the Princes in the Tower Sunday night. The Princes in the Tower are of course King Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, the sons of King Edward IV.

Saint Thomas More's History of King Richard III was rather important to her investigation of the mystery: did Richard III order their murder? did Thomas More have good reason to name the murderers? or did Henry VII murder the princes after he defeated Richard III on Bosworth Field? were the two Pretenders (Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck) really the Princes?

Partisans for and against Richard III offer their opinions and Worsley tries to find documentation and evidence about the mystery.

I don't want to give away her conclusions, except to say that she does not agree entirely with Josephine Tey!

But Travis Curtright provides us with free resources, should you want to read a student edition of More's Richard III and a study guide.

One of the vignettes of this episode included her visit to Buckfast Abbey to view the hair shirt of Saint Thomas More, displayed there for public veneration since 2016. She questioned the authenticity of this relic, and Abbot David Charleswell, who had escorted her to the side altar, provided some explanation, but this blog gives much more detail:

In the century after More’s death a few competing stories sprang up about the hair shirt, and these are what I’m trying to unpick at the moment. One tradition has it that More sent the hair shirt to his daughter, the extraordinarily learned Margaret More Roper (1505–1544), who gave it to her equally learned sister by adoption, Margaret Giggs Clement (1508–1570), who later went into exile with her family to practice her faith, reportedly taking the hair shirt and other More relic-objects with her. Other traditions hold that Thomas More sent it to Giggs rather than Roper, who kept it until her death. Still other traditions state that he sent it to Giggs, who gave it to Roper, who returned it to Giggs, while another source claims that he sent it to his wife Alice. In any case, the hair shirt ultimately passed to Giggs Clements’ youngest daughter, Prioress Margaret Clement (1539–1612), a nun of the English convent of St Monica’s, founded in Louvain during the period when it was illegal to practice Catholicism in England. The nuns of St Monica’s claim to be More’s spiritual heirs through Margaret Giggs and her daughter Margaret Clement.

The hair shirt remained in Prioress Clement’s community and the communities descended from St Monica’s up until the 1980s, by which time most of the exiled English convents had returned to England. When I first began my doctoral studies in 2010 the exact whereabouts of the hair shirt were not clear. I recently discovered that when the modern-day St Monica’s convent closed, the hair shirt went to the Diocese of Plymouth for safe keeping. In 2011 it was transferred to Buckfast at the request of Abbot David Charleswell who arranged for it to be put on public permanent display at Buckfast starting in 2016.

So this first episode of Lucy Worsley Investigates provides almost as much information about St. Thomas More as it does about Richard III and the Princes in the Tower! It's interesting, also, that she finds more evidence about St. Thomas More than she does about the mystery she investigates.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Picture credit (Public Domain): The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower, 1483 by Sir John Everett Millais, 1878, part of the Royal Holloway picture collection. Edward V at right wears the garter of the Order of the Garter beneath his left knee.

Studying Margaret More Roper

Last week I received the Center for Thomas More Studies email newsletter in which some important upcoming dates in the life and times of St. Thomas More were listed:

13 April 1534. More is interrogated at Lambeth Palace.
17 April 1534. More is imprisoned in the Tower of London.
18 April 1523. More delivers his petition for free speech in Parliament.
30 April, 1557. Rastell's English Works of Sir Thomas More, Knight is published

16 May 1532. More resigns as Lord Chancellor

Even more exciting, the newsletter announced the publication of a major study of Margaret More Roper, my favorite non-martyr heroine of the English Reformation era:

"In September of 2022, Elizabeth McCutcheon and William Gentrup will publish the book, A Companion to Margaret More Roper Studies."

This volume is an important contribution to the field of Margaret More Roper studies, early modern women's writing, as well as Erasmian piety, Renaissance humanism, and historical and cultural studies more generally.

Margaret More Roper is the learned daughter of St. Thomas More, the Catholic martyr; their lives are closely linked to each other and to early sixteenth-century changes in politics and religion and the social upheaval and crises of conscience that they brought. Specifically, Roper's major works - her translation of Erasmus's commentary on the Lord's Prayer and the long dialogue letter between More and Roper on conscience - highlight two major preoccupations of the period: Erasmian humanism and More's last years, which led to his death and martyrdom.

Roper was one of the most learned women of her time and a prototype of the woman writer in England, and this edited volume is a tribute to her life, writings, and place among early women authors. It combines comprehensive and convenient joining of biographical, textual, historical, and critical components within a single volume for the modern reader. There is no comparable study in print, and it fills a significant gap in studies of early modern women writers.

It's from Catholic University of America Press, so it's expensive: I'm going to start my Margaret More Roper savings account now!

Defending "Utopia"

December 2016 will mark the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More's Utopia. In History Today, Joanne Paul writes about the place of Utopia in More's reputation as a statesman:

It may be time, however, to reassess the place of More’s Utopia in this litany of his shortcomings. This year we have an opportunity to do so, as it marks the quincentenary of the publication of Utopia in Louvain in December 1516.

Guy suggests that More’s imaginary country is ‘totalitarian par excellence’, citing its lack of pubs, brothels and ‘secret meeting place[s]’, as well as the mandate against discussion of public policy outside of the popular assembly. This totalitarianism, Guy suggests, lies at the heart of More’s later attitude towards heretics and suggests that his ‘repressive discipline’ against them was similar to the ‘totalitarianism of Utopia’.

Describing Utopia as totalitarian (a 20th-century term) paves over what More was attempting to do in his text, which was to remind his readers of the importance of community. For More, the prioritisation of self-interest had the effect of tearing apart the bonds that ought to unite people. To use examples from Utopia: land-owners who enclosed common land for sheep-grazing, or greedy kings who overstretched themselves in their conquest of new lands both tore apart the unity of the commonwealth. The island of Utopia becomes the inverse of such tendencies. Homes are allocated to families for only a decade at a time, there are no locked doors and no personal possessions.

Rather than totalitarian, Utopia is fundamentally republican. Like property, political power is shared, reflecting More’s belief that authority resides in the body of the people. Within Utopia’s cities, households elect representatives who, in turn, elect both the councillors and their prince. Council and prince together make decisions in regular consultation with the people. The country as a whole is ruled by a general council, the members of which are, once again, elected directly by the people. Thus, although discussing public matters outside the public forum is punishable by death, for fear of the division and distortion of public opinion, the people are directly involved in every political decision made on the island.

Read the rest there.

More lived in a kingdom ruled by a monarch and he served that monarch while also representing the people as a member of Parliament. He wanted his prince, Henry VIII, to make decisions for the kingdom in consultation with Parliament, and therefore he defended Parliament's right to free speech in debating the king's policies and voting on the funding of the same. The Center for Thomas More Studies offers many tools for the interpretation of Utopia here.