More About More: Joanne Paul's "Thomas More: A Life"

A reader of this blog sent me a copy of this review by Helen Castor in The Telegraph of Joanne Paul's new book Thomas More: A Life. Castor sets the parameters of the cultural issues with whichThomas More's story is told:

Over the last century, Thomas More has undergone three posthumous transmutations. In 1935 – exactly 400 years after he was executed for refusing to swear that Henry VIII was Supreme Head of the English Church – he was canonised by Pope Pius XI as a holy martyr. This declaration of his sanctity met a frosty reception in Anglican England, where the part More had played in putting Protestants to death for heresy before the break with Rome hadn’t yet disappeared from historical memory. [I'm not sure the linked book reviews have anything to do with her point.]

Then in 1967 came Paul Scofield’s moving performance as More in the film of Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons. Rooted in hagiographical accounts written by members of More’s family, it made him a hero, wise, erudite and humane, a man who chose to die rather than compromise his conscience in the face of tyranny. Yet a twist in the tale remained: the publication in 2009 of Hilary Mantel’s world-conquering Wolf Hall. In Mantel’s exquisite prose it’s Thomas Cromwell, not Thomas More, whose brilliant mind wrestles with the relationship between faith, integrity and power, while More, Cromwell’s opponent, becomes a callous, self-regarding zealot.

In Thomas More: A Life, her absorbing and deeply researched new biography, Joanne Paul sets out to rescue More from these violent swings of the historical pendulum. Her goal is to tell his story “forward”, using sources from More’s own lifetime, rather than “backward”, from texts indelibly coloured by the circumstances of his death. . . .

It seems to me I've heard this song before: in 2016, in fact, when Paul's Thomas More in the Classic Thinkers series was published and she had an article ("Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?"**) in the BBC History Magazine.

**The answer to that question: Yes.

Simon and Schuster, the U.S. publisher call Paul's book the "definitive biography" of More:

Born into the era of the Wars of the Roses, educated during the European Renaissance, rising to become Chancellor of England, and ultimately destroyed by Henry VIII, Thomas More was one of the most famous—and notorious—figures in English history.

Was he a saintly scholar, the visionary author of Utopia, and an inspiration for statesmen and intellectuals even today? Or was he the cruel zealot famously portrayed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall? Thomas More: A Life is a monumental biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning prior interpretations of this titan of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows Thomas More to have been intellectually and politically central to the making of modern Europe.

Based on new archival discoveries and drawing on more than a decade of research into More’s life and work, this is a richly told story of faith and politics that illuminates a man who, more than four hundred years after his execution, remains one of the most brilliant minds of the Renaissance.

Castor's review seems to conflict with the S&S comment above that More was "intellectually and politically central to the making of modern Europe" as she notes that "Paul points out that, in his entire political career, “Thomas More did almost nothing to change the course of English history”. Nor did he want to take a public stand on the issue for which he is venerated as a martyr."

I'm not sure that I'll purchase this biography because although he doesn't call his book a biography at all, Travis Curtright seems to me to have presented an integrated and consistent view of More's life and works in The Controversial Thomas More.

The dichotomy between Bolt and Mantel is wearing thin with me, and I'm really done with the "saint or sinner?" trope. R.W. Chambers wasn't a Catholic and yet he rated More's reputation/fame as high with Englishmen: even Jonathan Swift (born in Ireland of English parents)! For Swift, More “was the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced”.

Either/Or: Thomas More

I said that when I finally was able to get a copy of the May issue of BBC History Magazine, I'd read and comment on the cover article by Joanne Paul on "Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?". I had to wait until the Friday of the long Memorial Day weekend to purchase my copy at our only Barnes & Noble in town.

As the subtitle on the cover states, Paul wants to depict "The real character of Henry VIII's controversial statesman". She begins with the dichotomy of saint and sinner, contrasting Catholic and Protestant views that are absolute. Paul cites R.W. Chambers and Robert Bolt as offering the modern Catholic interpretation of More as a saint (though neither of them was Catholic); Richard Marius, G.R. Elton, and Hilary Mantel as offering the modern Protestant interpretation of More as a villain (I don't know their confessional standings). The beginning and first few paragraphs of the article set out opposites: "flawless Catholic saint vs. cruel ogre"; "saintly scholar or stubborn zealot"; "self-righteous villain" and "saintly hero"; and then Paul offers an anodyne alternative: consider More as a "flesh-and-blood individual" as though that precludes sanctity or villainy. I know what she means, of course, but because the opposites are so extreme (and one of them is straw man), it seems weak to me as an alternative to the dictate: "We are told we must pick a side." I don't think that's where we should start at all. We should start with his life and times, not with a judgment as final as "saint or sinner?".

Joanne Paul follows the lead the of Richard Rex in his chapter for the Cambridge Companion to Thomas More (Chapter 5, "Thomas More and the heretics: statesman or fanatic?"). She proposes, for example, that More's prosecution of heresy cases as Chancellor and his writing of polemics attacking the heretics and apologetics defending Catholic Church teaching were part of his efforts to maintain unity and the common good: first in England, then in the Church, and then in Christendom. There is one odd line: "We cannot know how much of a personal hand More took in the fight against heresy in England." I think that Richard Rex and others have indicated how personally More took his fight against heresy in England--so much so that he wished his efforts were successful and therefore could be forgotten.

I mentioned that one of the alternatives is a straw man: the idea of a "flawless Catholic saint" and the tone of hagiography and the smell of incense in the biographies of Thomas More written by his proponents. Just reading the Catholic Truth Society pamphlet on St. Thomas More by Alvaro de Silva for the CTS Saints of the Isles series would show that's not the only view his admirers have of him. The Catholic Church does not require our saints to be perfect: if that were true, there would be only one saint: the Blessed Virgin Mary. More knew he was a sinner and that's why he spent his time in the Tower of London preparing for death, expiating his sins, and meditating on the Lord's Passion. Also, the sins of which More is accused today are according to modern, secular standards of tolerance and individual autonomy, and those standards will shift with time. Who knows of what sins our heroes will be accused in 400 or 500 years?

When I presented an "expert" talk for the Tudor Society, I also participated in a chat room, and this issue of Thomas More: Saint or Sinner came up. Discussing Catholic doctrine in almost twitter-length comments is difficult, and, of course, I thought of a good answer after the chat was over.

While those extreme views of Thomas More are deceiving and misleading, there is one set of choices that is not deceiving. For Catholics and Christians, there are two alternatives for eternal life: Heaven or Hell (remember that the Poor Souls in Purgatory are on their way to Heaven). Either Thomas More is in Heaven or Hell: the Catholic Church only proclaims that the dead are in Heaven; if someone condemns him to Hell (as a villain, zealot, or cruel ogre), he or she is taking on an authority that the Catholic Church has never dared to do. Jesus gave St. Peter and the Apostles authority on Earth and in Heaven; He never gave them authority over Hell and its denizens. The Catholic Church had every right to proclaim More a saint: reading his devotional works can't help but impress the reader that he loved Jesus and His Church; he died heroically dedicated to the unity of that Church: he is a martyr and a saint.

There They Go Again: the Saint or Sinner Choice

It will be a couple of weeks before I'll see the May 2016 issue of the BBC History Magazine at our local Barnes & Noble, but their cover story, by Joanne Paul, has the headline I'm tired of seeing, posing a poor question: "Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?" If it must be answered, it's simple: "Both". The Catholic Church never says that a saint is not a sinner or that a sinner cannot become a saint. Moral perfection is not a requirement, although of course the desire never to be separated from God is necessary for sanctity. 

The subtitle is also interesting: "The real character of Henry VIII's controversial statesman". That second adjective, "controversial", could apply to almost all of Henry VIII's statesmen, Wolsey, Cromwell, Wriothesley, etc. I eagerly await this article by Joanne Paul, who is working on a monograph for Wiley's Polity Classic Thinkers Series and other works considering More as a statesman, according to her website:

Thomas More's works are analysed in history, politics, literature, philosophy and theology departments throughout the world. He remains one of history's most alluring and enigmatic figures - his reputation fiercely debated since the moment of his execution in 1535.

My monograph on More focuses on his place within the history of political and philosophic thought, and will be published as a part of Polity's Classic Thinkers Series, October 2016, coinciding with the quincentary of More's most famous text, Utopia (1516). I have published on Utopia in History Today (April, 2016), and I am currently developing a monograph on Utopia for Palgrave, at the request of the editors.

You can be sure that I'll let you know what I think of this article once I obtain the magazine. In the meantime, I have a little bit of a lull before starting on two projects for June (one article and one presentation), a presentation in July, and one in August--and then a nice break until November, when I'll teach a class at the Regan Catechetical Institute for Catholic teachers in the Diocese of Wichita.