Book Review: Eamon Duffy's "A People's Tragedy: Studies in Reformation"

Note the subtitle: not studies in the English Reformation, but just "Reformation"--Duffy explores the reformation of how historians (and even novelists) have written about the English Reformation in these studies, exploring the revisions to commonly accepted tenets of the Whig version of English history. The Whig version proposes that Henry VIII's break from the Catholic Church and the establishment of Protestantism in England was necessary for progress and liberation. Therefore, any losses, material, spiritual, or personal, may have been regrettably cruel and destructive, but were absolutely necessary for liberty to flourish (even as the State imposed its religion on it subjects, restricting their liberty). 

As I expected, these studies are adapted from lectures and previously published works, for which Duffy provides details in the extensive notes for each essay.

The book is also very well illustrated, with captions referring to points Duffy makes in the essays. The contents of the book:

Introduction

Part One: Studies in Reformation

1. Cathedral Pilgrimages: The Late Middle Ages
2. The Dissolution of Ely Priory
3. 1569: A People's Tragedy?
4. Douai, Rheims and the Counter-Reformation
4. The King James Bible
6. Richard Baxter, Reminiscent

Part Two: Writing the Reformation

7. Luther through Catholic Eyes
8. James Anthony Froude and the Reign of Queen Mary
9. A.G. Dickens and the Medieval Church
10. Walsingham: Reformation and Reconstruction
11. Writing the Reformation: Fiction and Faction

Starting from last chapter, Duffy demonstrates how both Protestants and Catholics used historical fiction to further their interpretations of the English Reformation, highlighting several Catholic revisionist works. He includes several of the novels of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (By What Authority; The King's Achievement; Come Rack, Come Rope). He highlights Ford Madox Ford's The Fifth Queen which presents Catherine Howard as a Catholic trying to bring Henry VIII back to the Church. Duffy particularly praises and analyses the achievement of the Anglo-Catholic H.F.M. Prescott in The Man on a Donkey--too bad he did not mention the Anglo-Catholic Catholic convert Sheila Kaye-Smith's Superstition Corner (it is a similarly complex historical novel on a smaller scale)--then he moves on to Hilary Mantel's historical fiction in her Cromwell trilogy. 

He deprecates the influence her novels have had on the historically valid reputation of Saint Thomas More--at one point making an awkward joke about historical errors in a draft of Pope John Paul II's 2000 Apostolic Letter proclaiming Saint Thomas More the patron of statesmen and politicians as proof the Pope couldn't have written it, because he's supposed to be infallible (ha, ha)--but even more deprecates the fact that some historians have accepted Mantel's unproven depiction of More as a torturer while ignoring the documented fact that Cromwell did torture Catholics and other dissenters. 

Trying to set this record straight, Duffy cites the historical record that Cromwell, under Henry VIII's orders, sent more heretics (25 Anabaptists) to be burnt alive at the stake than More (also under Henry VIII's orders), and that he "managed the process" of the Carthusians left to die of dehydration in Newgate prison without trial or sentence. Mantel's secular saint is not as tolerant as she wants him to be, so she ignores these cruelties, and passes off Cromwell's thoughts about the torture he supervises of Pilgrimage of Grace survivors as failures of persuasion--and "chains and heated irons" are his means to "pinch a man with pains". In other words, Cromwell tortures but really hates to do it.

But the dramatic presentation of Mantel's view of the contest between Cromwell and More in the novels, the miniseries, and the stage play probably mean that Duffy's efforts will have just as much impact as those of Richard Rex and others. Those who will read historical articles and appraise the record honestly will be persuaded--but how many of us are there? and how many more captivated by Mantel's manipulative words and images?

Duffy performs similarly revisionist analyses of A.G. Dickens's historical interpretation of the Medieval Catholic Church and of James Anthony Froude's view of the reign of Queen Mary in chapters 8 and 9. What he discloses is that Dickens and Froude's negative views of Catholicism tainted their historical evaluations of the past: when Dickens says that anything in Medieval Catholic culture is "charming" he means that it's deceitful and false; while Froude regrets injustices during the reign of Henry VIII, he thinks they were necessary for progress and freedom, but he condemns injustices during the reign of Mary I as horrific examples of Catholic repression and cruelty.

He surveys Catholic historic and theological views of Martin Luther in chapter 7, culminating with Richard Rex's The Making of Martin Luther. I think it would have been interesting if he had also addressed Brad S. Gregory's Rebel in the Ranks.

To now jump back to the beginning: In chapters 1, 2, and 3 in the first part of the book Duffy explores aspects of the destruction of the religious culture of pre-Reformation England, its monasteries, shrines, traditions, worship, and prayer. He notes that previous historians downplayed these losses and indeed ignored their effect on "the English imagination": the destruction of shrines to historic and holy great men and women, the loss of devotion, the end of community. In the chapter on the 1569 Northern Rebellion he recounts how former Catholic clergy at Durham Cathedral were reconciled to the Church while the Rebellion's leaders held the city, but then reverted to the safety of the Elizabethan Church as the Queen enacted her justice. The only priest-martyr of the Northern Rebellion was Blessed Thomas Plumtree, a chaplain to the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland. 

The chapter on Douai and Rheims highlights William Allen's efforts to prepare priests for the mission to England with a specific curriculum focused on knowledge of the Holy Bible and of apologetic arguments--familiar material from Chapter 5 "Founding Father, William, Cardinal Allen" of  Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants, and the Conversion of England and his contribution to Memory, Martyrs, and Mission. Duffy has made excellent use of that material, adapted to different purposes and audiences.

The chapter on the King James Bible is as fascinating whirlwind of praise and reappraisal of its influence and achievement. He notes that the prose and style of that English translation is often appreciated most by those who ignore its content and teaching! 

And finally, the chapter on Richard Baxter, of whom I know little. Duffy surveys the Reliquiae Baxterianae, a memoir posthumously collected from his works, demonstrating that the Puritan pastor of Kidderminster provides another great first-person view of the seventeenth century, not as popular as Pepys or Aubrey, but significant for its vivid detail and story-telling skill.

As I noted before, Duffy's insights into the history and the historiography of the English Reformation era are always enlightening and informative. Highly recommended--Eighth Day Books will be getting a copy for the shelf in soon, I think.

A Cromwell Without Purpose or Opponent

I admit that I have not read all Hilary Mantel's trilogy of novels on Thomas Cromwell--or at least not read all three of them through*. I've engaged with her characterization of Saint Thomas More in the first book, Wolf Hall, which I did read (and watched the miniseries based upon it). I skimmed through Bring Up the Bodies and have not read The Mirror and the Light. I am not a great fan of the stream of consciousness narrative style.

Nevertheless, I found this review by Nicholas M. Gallagher of the third book in the trilogy, the publication of which was rather delayed, in National Review to be well-written and even convincing. Gallagher points out the excellent qualities of the book, Mantel's mastery of stream-of-consciousness narrative, and her control of the third person narration's limited omniscience. But Gallagher points out the big problem in this book, much of which takes place while Thomas Cromwell was Vicar General and Viceregent of the King in Spirituals (implementing the Henrician reformation): the narrator's omniscience and the stream of consciousness never show us what Thomas Cromwell believed about God, salvation, Jesus, and the Church.

As Gallagher notes, Cromwell is never depicted as practicing his faith:

The tell is that, with one possible exception, we never hear Cromwell pray. Like Moses in the desert, the early Protestants — of whom Cromwell was one — spoke to God face to face. Along with reading the Bible in their native tongues, this defined their internal experience: They had stripped away priests, saints, and sacraments, and gloried in this direct communion. With Mantel’s Cromwell, though, we hear that he wakes up early and “says his prayers” — but we never hear the prayer. We learn that he attended services, but never see them through his eyes. We hear him address a dead cardinal and live servants in his head, but never God. Similarly, Cromwell describes his political actions as advancing “the cause of the gospel,” and risks his life and position to see the scriptures translated into English — but he never, to our eyes, reads them.

Gallagher believes this is important because without knowing what Cromwell believes and what he stands for or against--because there is no real conflict in the novel--we don't understand his motivation or his purpose. We knew why Mantel's Cromwell did what he did in the first novels; he had worthy opponents: Thomas More in Wolf Hall; Anne Boleyn in Bring Up the Bodies. Mantel's Cromwell has no worthy opponents in this novel. Yes, he contends with the nobles who resent his power and influence with the king, he deals with Catholics who rebel against the Dissolution of the Monasteries, etc, but Gallagher writes that for pages nothing much happens and that when trouble finally starts for Cromwell, on about page 600 of 754, he doesn't adapt to protect himself and we don't really know why:

Mantel’s Cromwell is smarter, more pragmatic, and more cunning than all the fanatics, fop-headed aristocrats, and would-be Machiavels that he runs up against. It is not credible that he would not see the crisis that leads to his downfall coming and adapt to it pragmatically: trimming his sails to accommodate Henry VIII’s desire not to get too far from traditional Catholic practices, forging temporary alliances with the conservative nobles that come for his head, taking them in and then casting them down as he had so many other, more dangerous foes before. Unless. Unless he had a damn good reason not to, a point of principle on which he would not yield even at the cost of his life.

In Gallagher's opinion, Mantel does not provide us with that principle; therefore, the Cromwell of Mantel's third novel is strangely passive. Please read the rest of the review here.

Perhaps the problem is that if Thomas Cromwell had an opponent in the last years of his life, it was Henry VIII. Having done everything Henry VIII wanted--getting rid of Catherine of Aragon, destroying the power of the Catholic Church, the Pope, and the English hierarchy, gathering up the wealth of the Catholic Church including the monasteries, and then getting rid of Anne Boleyn and finally finding a wife who would bear him a son who seemed likely to survive to inherit the throne--what else could Cromwell do but keep doing what Henry VIII wanted? That was the only way to stay in power and in favor. One question about Cromwell's character in the first novels was did he really want to do everything Henry VIII wanted him to do or did he just do it because it was the way to achieve what he wanted?

Remember also that one of the motivations for Cromwell's actions in the earlier novels was revenge against those--including Anne Boleyn--who had brought down Cardinal Wolsey, Cromwell's first mentor. 

Who else brought down Wolsey? 

Henry VIII. 

He would have been a worthy historical fiction opponent of Cromwell. That opposition would have created a different stream of consciousness: how do I, Thomas Cromwell, get revenge on Henry VIII? How do I seem to serve my king while serving my own purposes for power, prestige, wealth, and great achievement? 

Cromwell can't overthrow the king since Henry VIII's favor is the source of the power he has, but how can he manipulate the king to get what he wants? If Cromwell wanted to remake the world--the medieval world of England, the status quo world of Continental Europe--how could he do it when his master won't always cooperate? Mantel would have had a great story there.

Perhaps I should read The Mirror and the Light.

*Referring to an anecdote from the Life of Johnson: Mr. Samuel Elphinston commented on a new book to Samuel Johnson, who replied that he had "looked into it". Elphinston asked "have you not read it through?" Boswell reports that Johnson, "offended at being thus pressed, and so obliged to own his cursory mode of reading, answered tartly, 'No, Sir; do you read books through?'" We are not told Mr. Elphinston's reply.

"Thomas More changed the course of the narrative"

In a presentation on June 25, 2019, Richard Rex spoke in Dublin -- in the Church Blessed John Henry Newman built for the Catholic University of Ireland, which is under the stewardship of the University of Notre Dame as the Notre Dame-Newman Centre for Faith and Reason -- on what Hilary Mantel has done to the reputation of St. Thomas More for the sake of elevating the reputation of Thomas Cromwell. The Iona Institute website offers this introduction:

Professor Richard Rex of Queen’s College, Cambridge, addressed a packed University Church in Dublin last week on the topic: The Two Thomases, namely Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. In particular, he examined the portrayal of both in Hilary Mantel’s best-selling and widely-praised novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Professor Rex, who lectures in Reformation and Tudor history, offers a wry, learned and ultimately devastating analysis of how Mantel essentially reversed the personalities and characters of both men.

As Professor Rex . . . says: “They are two of the emblematic figures of English history: More, the defender of the Catholic Church in England against the tyrannical pretensions of Henry VIII to be the Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England; and Cromwell, the pliant instrument of tyranny. Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons cast More as a liberal hero of freedom of conscience and Cromwell as the ruthless agent of State pragmatism. Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has reversed those polarities for a new age, with Cromwell now the apostle of humanist tolerance and More the hate-filled prophet of religious fanaticism. My aims this evening are to investigate and document this reversal, to show how it was achieved, and to speculate on why it has enjoyed so much success. The key to this final aim is the idea that Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell have, in one little cultural niche, served to embody or represent the changing position of the Catholic Church in modern – or postmodern – western culture. But before we come to that we must unpack and unpick the role reversal and comment on its rationality and plausibility.”

Or as Professor Rex says elsewhere in his address: “To destroy More, the symbol of Catholicism, More must be diminished to the scale of an ant, that Cromwell may trample upon him. Mantel’s fiction shows us a nasty man getting his Tudor come-uppance. History shows us something rather different.”

You may watch video of the presentation here. The Iona Institute website also provides a link to the text of the presentation (which contains some additional material). One of the more interesting insights to me was Professor Rex's analysis of how "Thomas More changed the course of the narrative" that is, changed what Hilary Mantel planned to write:

According to the author, Wolf Hall was originally conceived as a single novel, retelling the rise and fall of its hero. However, as she got to grips with the events of 1534-35, in which Thomas More was targeted and ultimately destroyed by the regime for his refusal to go along with Henry’s assumption of the title of Supreme Head, under Christ, of the Church of England, she found the duel between More and Cromwell irresistibly dramatic. One sees her point. This duel became the dominant theme of the narrative, with a natural end in More’s execution. Thus the original novel was therefore recast as a trilogy, each closed by a beheading: Thomas More in 1535, Anne Boleyn in 1536, and, presumably, in the final volume, which has now been promised for next year, Cromwell himself in 1540. What you should note is that Thomas More changed the course of the narrative. In a sense, I would argue, he took over the story, despite his allotted role as a merely secondary presence within it. More’s impact on the story itself serves to undermine the author’s intentions and assumptions and assertions. Crucially, it was the portrayal of More, not that of Cromwell, which accounts for Wolf Hall’s early vogue.

The bold emphasis is in the text as downloaded. He later comments:

As one review of Wolf Hall put it, ‘you cannot back Cromwell without spitting on More’. If you can’t back Cromwell without spitting on More, can you back More without spitting on Cromwell? You certainly can’t back both horses. But you can esteem and praise More, even making room for appropriate criticism, without really having to take Cromwell into account at all. Bolt and Mantel once again offer a useful contrast. In A Man for All Seasons, Cromwell is definitely down among the ‘minor characters’ in the credits. But in Wolf Hall, Thomas More is central to the action. This imbalance reflects reality, despite the author. Thomas More has never been forgotten. People fell over themselves to write his biography, even in the Tudor era. The biographies by William Roper, Nicholas Harpsfield, and Thomas Stapleton all survive. The one written by William Rastell is preserved only in a few stray fragments. There have been more editions just of Roper’s Life of More than there have been biographies of Cromwell. Not a century has gone by without its share of biographies of More. No one rushed to write the life of Cromwell. . . .

And Rex concludes with Mantel's own comments about Holbein's portrait of Cromwell at the Frick:

And in the case of Cromwell and More, the pictures are there for us to see. They can be seen in the Frick Collection in New York, where More and Cromwell gaze at each other across a fireplace, captured by the hand of the sixteenth century’s greatest portraitist, Holbein. The author of Wolf Hall herself describes his Cromwell as an ‘incredibly dead picture’. The art critic Waldemar Januszczak more memorably labels Cromwell ‘the least attractive sitter in the whole of Holbein’s art’. The picture is the evidence. A great painter, they say, paints not just the face but the soul. And Holbein’s More is famously and sublimely living. This is the evidence: Cromwell – dead, dull; More – alive, alert. Holbein got it. Seeing is believing. But there’s none so blind as them that will not see.

A full quote of Waldemar Januszczak on the contrast between the portraits: 

That is why I recommend a visit to the Living Hall at the Frick Collection, and a good gawp at Holbein’s portraits of More and Cromwell. Holbein was there. He knew them both. So what does he make of them?

Of More, he makes one of the most noble presences in the whole of British portraiture. Determined. Handsome. Resolute. With his velvet sleeves and his gold chain, More is a man of rank, but there’s something kindly about his face, too. And in the exact capturing of his five-o’clock shadow, Holbein has produced one of his finest records of the true textures of humanity.

On the other side of the fireplace, the new hero of Wolf Hall, Cromwell, has none of those qualities. Indeed, with his piggy eyes and his veal-like complexion, he is one of Holbein’s least appealing sitters. He’s shown at a desk, writing. A death warrant, perhaps. Or further instructions for the destruction of a monastery. As soon as I saw him, that famous observation by Hannah Arendt about the “banality of evil” flashed into my thoughts.

So, who to trust? Holbein, who was there? Or Hilary Mantel, who is a great writer, and a worthy winner of the Booker prize? Over to you.

"Over to you" is a weak conclusion!

Rex, in contrast, presents a devastating critique of Mantel's vaunted historical accuracy and how people have fallen for her anachronistically "nice" Thomas Cromwell.

Psychoanalytic criticism: Man is Wolf to Man

First Things has made one of its February 2017 subscriber access articles available for free: Patricia Snow discusses the personal background behind Hilary Mantel's Cromwell novels:

Psychoanalytic criticism may have fallen out of favor, but it has not ceased to be useful. Even so bare an outline of Mantel’s life, drawn from her 2003 memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, makes clear the connections between Mantel’s biographical backstory and the goings-on at Henry VIII’s court. In her novels about Cromwell, all of Mantel’s formative issues are in play: the plot-driving engine of marital unhappiness; divorce and the impossibility of divorce; ambiguous sexual situations; the desirability but also the powerlessness of children. Mantel’s early experiences explain not only her richly ambivalent attitude toward her Tudor characters, but also her impressive “negative capability” as their artist—her ability, that is, out of the small circle of her original family, either to play or to cast all the parts.

For example, she herself is Mary, the king’s awkwardly placed oldest daughter who is banished from his presence together with a rejected, painfully dignified spouse (Katherine of Aragon). She is also Elizabeth, another unwanted but ultimately triumphant (if sterile) daughter who, at a stroke, lost a parent (Anne Boleyn) as a child. Mantel’s mother, of course, is Henry, the books’ capricious, death-dealing sovereign, and Jack is Anne Boleyn, the sallow Protestant parvenu. But Mantel’s mother is also Boleyn: small and catlike in her movements, unscrupulous and shape-shifting. Cross-referencing Mantel’s memoir with the novels, the reader encounters the same clusters of descriptors again and again, shared out among Mantel’s mother, Jack, and Anne Boleyn, or among Cromwell, Mantel herself as a child, and Cromwell’s small daughter, Anne. Sometimes a phrase or sentiment from the memoir is lifted virtually unchanged into the novels, as when Mantel’s mother and Jack, like Henry and Anne, are described as “[the] couple who had endured, to be together, so much adverse public opinion.”

In the novels, Mantel is reimagining the small-scale squalor of her parents’ domestic arrangements on a large scale, as consequential history. The exercise may have been exhilarating, or cathartic, as when history requires that she banish Queen Katherine and her daughter, Mary, not to a yellowing bedroom down a dimly lit hall, but to far-flung palaces. But any temptation on Mantel’s part to use the novels to romanticize or exorcise her own past is balanced in the writing by an equally strong authorial impulse to expose it.

For example, there is Mantel’s puzzling choice of a title: Wolf Hall. Scarcely mentioned in the novel that bears its name, Wolf Hall is the family seat of Jane Seymour, the eventual third wife of the king. Halfway through Wolf Hall, in a brief digression, the reader learns that old Sir John Seymour slept with his son’s wife for two years, during which time she gave birth to two boys. Laughing when the scandal of the boys’ dubious parentage becomes known, Anne Boleyn says to Henry, “They could tell Boccaccio a tale, those sinners at Wolf Hall.” Inexplicable as a title choice apart from a familiarity with Mantel’s history, Wolf Hall is the world for Mantel personally. Or as Cromwell puts it to himself elsewhere: homo homini lupus, man is wolf to man.

Read the rest there. 

At the end of the article, Snow points out that The Mirror and the Light, Mantel's third novel about Thomas Cromwell, is taking longer to write (the first two books were published in 2009 and 2012). Snow suggests that killing off her father figure must be hard for Mantel. I wonder if Mantel will respond to Snow's comments: this cuts close to the quick and perhaps the article demonstrates why "Psychoanalytic criticism may have fallen out of favor". Man is wolf to man.

St. Thomas More and Conscience (Again)

In a letter to History Today, Hilary Mantel states that Thomas More's "conscience [was] captive to tradition and authority"--as though that were a bad thing. Thomas More's understanding of conscience, its formation, and its decision-making process was that the individual conscience must be responding to God's authority and the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church. I'm presuming now, but Mantel might think of conscience as being captive only to the individual's interpretation of events and actions and being consistent with oneself--what Blessed John Henry Newman in the nineteenth century would call conscience's counterfeit.

More offered Cromwell an explanation of the true meaning of conscience in his June 3, 1535 letter to his daughter Meg about his recent interrogation in the Tower of London. Cromwell was accusing him of a double standard, claiming his conscience was better than a heretic's conscience. More explained that the heretic was not appealing to conscience, which should have led him to follow the Church Jesus founded, but to his own ego, which had led him to reject the truth and develop individual ideas about the Church and salvation:

Whereunto I answered I would not dispute the King's authority, what his Highness might do in such case, but I said that verily under correction it seemed to me somewhat hard. For if it so were that my conscience gave me against the statutes (wherein how my mind giveth me I make no dec­laration), then I nothing doing nor nothing saying against the statute, it were a very hard thing to compel me to say either precisely with it against my conscience to the loss of my soul, or precisely against it to the destruc­tion of my body.

To this Master Secretary said that I had before this when I was Chan­cellor examined heretics and thieves and other malefactors and gave me a great praise above my deserving in that behalf. And he said that I then, as he thought and at the leastwise Bishops did use to examine heretics, whether they believed the Pope to be the head of the Church and used to compel them to make a precise answer thereto. And why should not then the King, since it is a law made here that his Grace is Head of the Church, here compel men to answer precisely to the law here as they did then concerning the Pope.

I answered and said that I protested that I intended not to defend any part or stand in contention; but I said there was a difference between those two cases because at that time, as well here as elsewhere through the corps of Christendom, the Pope's power was recognized for an undoubted thing which seems not like a thing agreed in this realm and the contrary taken for truth in other realms. Whereunto Master Secretary answered that they were as well burned for the denying of that as they be beheaded for deny­ing of this, and therefore as good reason to compel them to make precise answer to the one as to the other.

Whereto I answered that since in this case a man is not by a law of one realm so bound in his conscience, where there is a law of the whole corps of Christendom to the contrary in matter touching belief, as he is by a law of the whole corps though there hap to be made in some place a local law to the contrary, the reasonableness or the unreasonableness in binding a man to precise answer, standeth not in the respect or difference between beheading and burning, but because of the difference in charge of con­science, the difference standeth between beheading and hell.

In his chapter on St. Thomas More in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More ("More and the Heretics"), Richard Rex notes that More--and in this he certainly was a man of his time--was certain that he knew the truth. Catholic Christianity was the truth and no one had the right to deny or ignore the truth. Rex notes that we post-modernists can hardly imagine this certainty (our only certainty would be perhaps that we cannot be certain!). In his role as Henry VIII's Chancellor, he was sworn to assist the Church in finding heresy and he fulfilled that role. More regarded the obdurate heretic as a danger to society, an egoist deciding his own interpretation of God's revelation, and a person in certain danger of damnation. Thus, when More made his appeal to his right to follow his conscience, he asserted that his conscience was responding not to his own interpretation but to the teaching of the universal Church, an authority high above Henry VIII, even if the monarch did take over the Church in England.

On the Acton Institute website, writer Marc D. Guerra sums up More's understanding of conscience well; he was indeed guided by tradition and authority:

Whereas modern doctrines of conscience characteristically emphasize the self-sufficiency of the individual’s judgment, More stresses its communal nature. More, to be sure, recognized the uniqueness of the individual conscience. More was, after all, imprisoned precisely because he could not, in good conscience, swear allegiance to Henry VIII’s oath. But in contrast to the modern claim that the individual can create his own moral values, More saw the “formation of conscience” as “the fruit” of an education “in the truth.” Far from being the arbitrator and creator of its own moral order, the human conscience is in need of conforming to the truth. For More, the formation of conscience is the result of a long process in which one discovers a preexisting created moral order. This was, in some sense, the issue in More’s dispute with Henry. Henry sought to substitute his own law for the “higher law of God and Christ’s Church.” Nothing underscores the profound differences between More’s and the modernist’s understanding of conscience more than this fact: Whereas modern thought views the individual’s conscience as being above all other authorities, More’s conscience testifies to the superiority of the church’s authority to his king’s. More’s refusal to take Henry’s oath was not an act of civil disobedience but, rather, of obedience to truth and thus, in his view, an act of “genuine liberty.”

Cutting off Cromwell's Story at the End of "Wolf Hall"

Wolf Hall, the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, ended last night on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre with Thomas Cromwell in Henry VIII's arms after the execution of Anne Boleyn. Henry is very happy; Cromwell looks stunned.

Nancy Bilyeau provides her as usual excellent review and analysis here. I agree with this comment from The New York Times review by Louis Bayard:

Mantel is currently writing the last volume of the “Wolf Hall” trilogy, and I can’t help but wish this superb production had waited to incorporate that final strand. The story, as it stands, is “complete” enough, but it lacks the full arc that Cromwell demands. We need to see him go to his end, not for the sake of retribution but for the sake of reckoning.

Bayard also emphasizes that, whatever modern heroism Hilary Mantel wants to impute to Thomas Cromwell, her protagonist has committed great acts of injustice and violence in this final episode. He may be doing it because the mockery of his former master Chancellor/Archbishop Thomas Wolsey at Court after Wolsey's death, or because his current master Henry VIII wants rid of Anne Boleyn. Cromwell has gone too far, as Bayard contends:

Until Sunday night’s episode, I think, a Cromwell apologist could have written off his actions — even his prosecution of Thomas More — as a kind of hard-edged Realpolitik, anchored to an innate sense of justice. No longer. As we watch Cromwell fasten his web around the lovesick musician Mark Smeaton (Max Fowler), we see an inner rot take hold. “I need guilty men,” he says to Norris. “So I found men who are guilty. Though not necessarily as charged.”

Cromwell knows he is perverting the system of justice in England in the service of the King. Remember the scene in A Man for All Seasons when Thomas More would give even the Devil the benefit of English Law? While Cromwell is approaching the heights of his power in Mantel's narrative, he will soon discover the results of destroying English justice and laws: without evidence of guilt, he will be attainted a traitor and sentenced to death--and Bayard is correct: as the BBC's Wolf Hall stands now it is incomplete, like Henry VIII's own play mentioned last night. He says he's written his own story in a tragedy. Henry has forgotten what happens to the hero of classical tragedy: he dies.

Mantel's More a Mistake

In the TV miniseries adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell face off again, just as they do across the fireplace at the Frick. Now that the words of a book are images on the screen, Mantel's mischaracterization of Thomas More gets another viewing. I have not read Wolf Hall and really don't intend to see the miniseries when it comes to the USA later this year, but commentators are reflecting on how historically accurate Mantel's view of More is. See this article, for example, in The Guardian.

This issue came up in 2012 when a review of Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies mentioned Mantel's presentation of More: "In Mantel’s version, More is no saint, as he almost certainly was not in real life: he’s fussily pious, stiff-­necked and unnaturally fond of torturing heretics." (Note that Thomas More does not appear as a character in Bring Up the Bodies because he was executed in the pages of Wolf Hall.) The Guardian article sums up Mantel's More thusly: "Mantel’s portrait, however, is of a torturer of heretics with a penchant for self-punishment and a misogynist to boot."

If these two summaries of Mantel's More are accurate, her portrait is entirely untrustworthy. I won't repeat the discussion of Thomas More and torture, which has been done over and over again, but it is ridiculous to say that Thomas More was a) fussily pious and stiff-necked, b) with a penchant for self-punishment, and c) a misogynist to boot.

a) One man who hated fussy piety and stiff-necked religiosity was Desiderius Erasmas, and he loved Thomas More:

For I do not think, unless the vehemence of my love leads me astray, that Nature ever formed a mind more present, ready, sharpsighted and subtle, or in a word more absolutely furnished with every kind of faculty than his. Add to this a power of expression equal to his intellect, a singular cheerfulness of character and an abundance of wit, but only of the candid sort; and you miss nothing that should be found in a perfect advocate.

and from his written portrait of Thomas More

He seems born and framed for friendship, and is a most faithful and enduring friend. He is easy of access to all; but if he chances to get familiar with one whose vices admit no correction, he manages to loosen and let go the intimacy rather than to break it off suddenly. When he finds any sincere and according to his heart, he so delights in their society and conversation as to place in it the principal charm of life. He abhors games of tennis, dice, cards, and the like, by which most gentlemen kill time. Though he is rather too negligent of his own interests, no one is more diligent in those of his friends. In a word, if you want a perfect model of friendship, you will find it in no one better than in More. In society he is so polite, so sweet-mannered, that no one is of so melancholy a disposition as not to be cheered by him, and there is no misfortune that he does not alleviate. Since his boyhood he has so delighted in merriment, that it seems to be part of his nature; yet he does not carry it to buffoonery, nor did he ever like biting pleasantries. When a youth he both wrote and acted some small comedies. If a retort is made against himself, even without ground, he likes it from the pleasure he finds in witty repartees. Hence he amused himself with composing epigrams when a young man, and enjoyed Lucian above all writers. Indeed, it was he who pushed me to write the "Praise of Folly," that is to say, he made a camel frisk.

In human affairs there is nothing from which he does not extract enjoyment, even from things that are most serious. If he converses with the learned and judicious, he delights in their talent; if with the ignorant and foolish, he enjoys their stupidity. He is not even offended by professional jesters. With a wonderful dexterity he accommodates himself to every disposition. As a rule, in talking with women, even with his own wife, he is full of jokes and banter.

No one is less led by the opinions of the crowd, yet no one departs less from common sense. One of his great delights is to consider the forms, the habits, and the instincts of different kinds of animals. There is hardly a species of bird that he does not keep in his house, and rare animals such as monkeys, foxes, ferrets, weasels and the like. If he meets with anything foreign, or in any way remarkable, he eagerly buys it, so that his house is full of such things, and at every turn they attract the eye of visitors, and his own pleasure is renewed whenever he sees others pleased.

Thomas More was not fussily pious and stiff-­necked--Erasmus would not have been his friend if he had been and More would have certainly been the target, not in on the joke, of The Praise of Folly.

b) Yes, Thomas More wore a hair shirt, fasted, used the discipline, and otherwise practiced self-denial. These are all common to saints who do rather extraordinary penance--but More kept those matters secret and did not flaunt or advertise them. Thomas Cromwell should not have known about it--there is that famous story about Thomas More's hair shirt peaking up under his outer garments and him stuffing it back out of sight, but otherwise, it was unknown. He gave his hair shirt to this daughter Meg just before his execution, meaning that he wore it in the Tower of London while he was preparing for death, natural or judicial, but did not want it revealed when he was taken for execution. Mantel's Cromwell perverts More's private penitential practices--and for a 21st century public that made the "50 shades" books best sellers, it's just too twisted that it now judges Thomas More as some sort of sado-masochist (torturing both heretics and himself).

c) Thomas More was not a misogynist if that word has its usual meaning. Does a misogynist educate his daughters as well as his son and rejoice in one daughter's academic accomplishments? The relationship between Thomas More and his daughter Meg, depicted in John Guy's A Daughter's Love, puts the lie to Mantel's misogynistic More. More married the eldest Colt sister in spite of being in love with one of the younger--he thought of her feelings above his own. A misogynist does not do that. There is also the story of his father-in-law reminding his daughter Jane, that More could by rights punish her in ways other than teaching her to read and write, again demonstrating that More was unusual for his time in how he treated women. 

Why does Mantel pile on Thomas More so much? Is it because he is Catholic hero and saint? Aren't all of us, past and present, an inconsistent mixture of goodness and sinfulness? No one is perfect, not even Thomas Cromwell, yet Mantel's Cromwell seems to have all the postmodern virtues and Thomas More all the medieval vices (in the modern view). For Mantel to create such a caricature of Thomas More, especially in historical fiction where it has so much reach and influence, is both bad history and bad art.

I'm working on some interviews, presentations, and articles during the US broadcasts of the series on PBS in April/May; it's a good opportunity to explain what the Church means when she canonizes a saint and talk about the history of the English Reformation!

The Play's The Thing--Then and Now

Times Higher Education reviews The Drama of Reform: Theology and Theatricality, 1461-1553 by Tamara Atkin (reviewed by Helen Smith):

Whereas the drama of the English Renaissance is celebrated, frequently performed and a staple of school and university curricula, the plays of the English Reformation (or rather the multiple, incremental and partial reformations of the four British nations) are neglected with almost equal enthusiasm. In part, this can be explained by their unfortunate chronological position, wedged awkwardly, in stylistic as well as temporal terms, between the medieval and early modern. In part, it comes down to our lack of knowledge about where and why many of these plays were performed, despite some diligent detective work. Ultimately, though, the lack of widespread zeal for the plays may be a result of their own passionate espousal of the religious arguments that transformed personal and national identities in the middle years of the 16th century.

The Drama of Reform follows the lead of recent scholarship in embracing the complexities of reformist drama, from the polemical plays of John Bale to the likes of Jacke Jugeler, which claims to be only a “merie” reworking of Plautus, but is centrally concerned with debates concerning the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Tamara Atkin’s book concentrates on four plays, dedicating a chapter to each and identifying telling, and often precise, links between their contents and the proponents of reform. What we get rather less of, however, is a sense of how representative these plays are and how they fit alongside more traditional, orthodox drama.

And The Independent reviews the Royal Shakespeare Company theatrical adaptation of the first two novels about Thomas Cromwell written by Hilary Mantel--which have their own "theology":

One hesitates to use the phrase “a marriage made in heaven” in the vicinity of Henry VIII but that would be a fair way of describing this brilliant union between the RSC and Hilary Mantel.

The Company has just unveiled its epic six-hour stage version of her two prize-winning novels which view the English Reformation and the deadly intrigues of the Tudor court from the vantage point of Thomas Cromwell, the Putney blacksmith's son who rose to be royal fixer-in-chief.
 
The marathon press performance began at 1pm and, after a dinner break, concluded at 10pm. But such is the dramatic skill of the adaptation by Mike Poulton (with whom Mantel has worked closely) and the unflagging power and fascination of Jeremy Herrin's fleet, incisively acted production that, if the final instalment of the trilogy had been completed and turned into a play, I would gladly have stayed up all night.

There are inevitable losses in the transition from page to stage - from the atmospheric richness of Mantel's prose to the flashbacks to formative experiences in Cromwell's past, such as his witnessing, in boyhood, the pitiless auto-da-fe of a female heretic.

But Ben Miles is superlative at conveying the inner complexities of the man – the shrewd watchfulness, the sense of banked-down grief, the little flashes of sardonic humour. David Starkey once described Cromwell as “Alastair Campbell with an axe” but in these plays we get a thoroughly three-dimensional figure.

Beyond the pages of a book, literary or theological, the representation of personal drama on stage, comic or tragic, has an attractiveness that reaches out to another audience. Someone who would never read John Bales's theological arguments in the 16th century would learn from his plays. In the same way, Mantel's fiction translated to the stage becomes even an even more powerful representation of her characterizations of Cromwell and Thomas More, for example. That is certainly why the Society of Jesus developed a dramatic tradition in their schools, to teach their students about the art of persuasion (rhetoric) and to inculcate virtue. More on the Jesuits and drama here.

Archbishop Chaput, Book Reviewer

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia writes about St. Thomas More and a new biography, which I've mentioned before, The One Thomas More and takes issue with Hilary Mantel's view of the saint in her Wolf Hall:

Critics of More are not new. His detractors had a voice well before his beheading. As Henry VIII’s chancellor, he earned a reputation as a hammer of heretics and a fierce opponent of Martin Luther and William Tyndale. Yet Erasmus of Rotterdam revered More as a scholar and friend. Jonathan Swift, the great Anglo-Irish writer, described him as “a person of the greatest virtue this kingdom [of England] ever produced.” When Pope John Paul II named Thomas More as patron saint of statesmen in 2000, he cited More’s witness to the “primacy of truth over power” at the cost of his life. He noted that even outside the Church, More “is acknowledged as a source of inspiration for a political system which has as its supreme goal the service of the human person.”

Ten years later, speaking to leaders of British society in Westminster Hall, Pope Benedict XVI returned to the same theme. Benedict noted that More “is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose ‘good servant’ he was, because he chose to serve God first.”

So which is it: More the saint or More the sinner? Was he the ruthless, sexually repressed rage addict suggested by historians like G.R. Elton, fearful of change and driven by helpless fury? Or was he the humble and generous “man for all seasons” praised by his friend Robert Whittinton and so many others among his contemporaries? Were there really two Thomas Mores: the young, open-minded humanist, and the older royal courtier, gripped by religious fanaticism?

The moral integrity of More’s life has been argued with persuasive skill in the various works of Gerard Wegemer, among many others. And Peter Ackroyd’s fine biography, The Life of Thomas More, vividly captures the whole extraordinary man—his virtues, his flaws, and the decisive nature of his moment in history. Travis Curtright has now added to the luster of the real More’s legacy with his excellent new book The One Thomas More.

Bickering over the “real” Thomas More has importance beyond the scholarly community. Why? Because just as the nutty premises of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code confused millions by reinventing the backstory of Christian belief, so too the novel Wolf Hall offers a revisionist Thomas More wrapped in popular melodrama. The author, Hilary Mantel, a lapsed Catholic whose disgust for the Church is a matter of public record*, drew her portrait of More in part from the work of Elton. The “hero” of her novel is Thomas Cromwell—More’s tormentor, and in reality, a man widely loathed by his contemporaries as an administratively gifted but scheming and vindictive bully. Unlike the widespread European shock that greeted More’s judicial murder, few wept for Cromwell when he finally followed More to the scaffold.

The One Thomas More is not a book for beachside browsing. While it’s well-written, modest in size and rich in content, it is a scholarly effort. Some casual readers may find it heavier than they bargained for. But as a resource on Thomas More, it’s invaluable. Curtright’s final chapter, “Iconic Mores on Trial,” has special importance. It directly challenges Mantel’s loose treatment of facts, for which it deserves wide circulation.

*In May 2012, Ms. Mantel proclaimed, "I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people." When has it ever been for respectable people? It's for sinners and saints, now and through the ages--she should remember who Jesus ate with and who thought it wasn't "respectable"--ridiculously ignorant statement.

Cromwell and Mantel via Wilson

I have not read Hilary Mantel's two novels on the life and times of Thomas Cromwell (Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies) and I don't have immediate plans to do so, either. In History Today magazine, however, Derek Wilson acclaims her work and the rehabilitation of Cromwell's reputation:

‘And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.’ The accolades – and two Man Booker prizes – won by Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the published parts of her fictional trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, draw attention to one of the more remarkable rehabilitations in modern historiography. It is half a century since some of us were privileged to sit at the feet of Geoffrey Elton as he lectured on the ‘Tudor Revolution in Government’. Hitherto Thomas Cromwell had been, for many, a rather shadowy, sinister figure and certainly a minister who bore no comparison with the more flamboyant Thomas Wolsey or the saintly Thomas More. Now he is acclaimed as the architect of the English Reformation and the brief era of his ascendancy (1532-40) is portrayed as one of the most formative in the nation’s history.

The last 50 years have seen great shifts in the reputation of this man about whom, despite his importance, we still know remarkably little. Indeed it is the enigma behind the public figure which provides such rich pickings for novelists. Elton’s presentation of Cromwell as an administrative genius who single-handedly transformed a ‘medieval’ system of household government into a ‘modern’ bureaucracy was vigorously (in some cases bitterly) challenged by his peers. This somewhat esoteric debate over the nature of institutional change was significant in that it served to highlight the importance of the 1530s. England on the day after Cromwell’s execution, we now realise, was a vastly different place from the England that had awoken to the news of Cardinal Wolsey’s death.

Read the rest here.

Derek Wilson attempted to contribute to this re-evaluation of Thomas Cromwell, the Earl of Essex in his book, In the Lion's Court: Power, Ambition, and Sudden Death in the Reign of Henry VIII, a book I attempted to read ten years ago:

In the Lion’s Court is an illuminating examination of the careers of the six Thomases--Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton---whose lives are described in parallel. Wilson traces their family and social origins, their pathways to the royal Council chamber, their occupancy of the Siege Perilous, and the tragedies that, one by one, overwhelmed them. By showing how events shaped and were shaped by relationships and personal destinies, Derek Wilson offers a fresh approach to the political narrative of a tumultuous reign.

When I tried to read the book, I found that Wilson lost the focus on the six Thomases--he proposed an interesting thematic device and then just wrote a straightforward biographical narrative that needed an editor's help to tighten up the story. "Sudden Death"? No one dies for chapters and chapters! Wilson certainly displayed great disdain for any other interpretation of the English Reformation than the Whig view that it was necessary and inevitable for English freedom and progress. He would like Mantel's depiction of Thomas More as a radical zealot!

Some Relevant Current Events

1)--This story from the BBC:

A collection of centuries-old skeletons excavated in Oxfordshire and stored in a museum are to be reburied as part of a "celebration" mass.

The human remains were found during the extension of a church graveyard in Eynsham, leading to excavations between 1989 and 1992.

Father Martin Flatman, of St Peter's Catholic Church, said he was pleased he could give them a "proper burial".

Six bodies are thought to be monks from the medieval Eynsham Abbey.

The remains of two women and a man have been dated to after the Reformation, and are believed to have been secretly buried in the consecrated ground.

The Catholic church was built on the site of the ancient abbey in the 1940s.

'Rib fractures'

Father Flatman said: "Suddenly it dawned on me that I didn't know where the bodies were. I found out they were in the museum's storage and I applied to have them back.

"As a Catholic we honour the dead and we wouldn't want to leave them, particularly those faithful 16th and 17th Century Catholics who faced persecution."

The finding of those bodies at Eynsham Abbey is another demonstration of what Eamon Duffy indicated in his article in The Telegraph I posted yesterday: for too long, England has ignored its past. In burying those recusant faithful, Father Flatman is reminding England of a time when a Catholic was forced to conform to the national church at birth, at her marriage, and at death.

2)--This interview from Hilary Mantel in The Telegraph:

Mantel was raised a Roman Catholic and educated at convent school.

However, the 59-year-old writer said child abuse scandals involving Roman Catholic priests demonstrated the “cruelty” and “hypocrisy” of the church.

Asked if she would call for a priest on her deathbed, Mantel replied: “No. I might very well call for a Church of England vicar, but I would not call for a Catholic priest.

“I’m one of nature’s Protestants. I should never have been brought up as a Catholic. I think that nowadays the Catholic Church is not an institution for respectable people.”

Which reminds me of the Oscar Wilde comment, "The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do." (Remember that Oscar Wilde became a Catholic on his deathbed.) Francis Phillips responded here in The Catholic Herald. Mantel may think she was being remarkably current and astute ("nowadays") in her comment, but she is ignoring the past five hundred years in England, too--not to mention the Gospel stories of Jesus dining with tax collectors and publicans--they weren't respectable either. For a literate and learned person, she made a most illiterate and ignorant statement.

3)--This story from Maryland:

The Rev. Edward Meeks and his flock attended to a "million and one details" last week in the run-up to a momentous day for their church. People to talk to. Flowers to arrange. Food to cook. And, of course, the new sign. On Sunday, Christ the King Church — Anglican — became Christ the King Catholic Church. The Towson congregation of about 140 is one of the first groups in the United States to join a new "ordinariate" established for those who want to be Catholic but hold on to Anglican traditions. The largest Anglican church in the country to do so, it follows in the footsteps of Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore and St. Luke's Parish in Bladensburg.

Liberal stances by Anglican leaders, particularly Episcopalians, have driven some clergy and members to the Roman Catholic Church. But Meeks, who studied to become a Catholic priest as a young man, speaks not of rejection but of reunification — becoming one with the "authentic apostolic authority" of the church that dates back 2,000 years.

"We're just overjoyed by this," said the Rev. Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, who heads the U.S. ordinariate, the equivalent of a diocese but national in scope. As parishioners of all ages scurried past to take their seats for the Mass, he added, "It's such a healthy community — you can see it's full of children."

The parishioners who became Catholics Sunday morning were joining the church for the first time or returning after years apart. A handful of parishioners haven't decided whether to make that leap, though they're remaining in the congregation.

Others left. The 140-member church had about 200 parishioners when it started down the road to Catholicism almost two years ago, losing both those who didn't want to be Catholic and those who opted for a more traditionally Catholic experience.

That loss has been painful, parishioners say. But they add that the transformation from Protestant to Catholic has not been acrimonious — in contrast to the roiling discontent that produced the Church of England more than 450 years ago and that spawned Anglican churches around the world. Some parishioners who went elsewhere return for social events.

"We've still got a good relationship with virtually all who have left," Meeks said.


and 4)--This story, also from The Telegraph from a few months back, about the community left behind by the Anglican Ordinariate:

Members of the congregation at St Michael and All Angels parish church in Croydon, south London, don’t ask for much. A decent sermon, perhaps a few rousing hymns; clean pews; a tidy garden at the back; someone to help with Sunday school. But this month, they need something rather more important: a new vicar, to replace the one who converted to Catholicism and took 69 of his flock with him to a church up the road.

A “Parish priest: vacant” sign now stands outside the towering red-brick church behind West Croydon train station. Seven weeks ago, it housed 100 parishioners and a vicar who had served there for 16 years. Today, St Michael’s has less than half its original congregation, after the Rev Donald Minchew quit his post and was received into the Catholic faith at St Mary’s, 500 yards away.

This extraordinary leap of faith was prompted by the Rev Minchew’s decision to join the Ordinariate, a structure within the Roman Catholic Church that allows Anglicans to enter into full communion while retaining some of their C of E heritage. The practice started last January, when three former Anglican bishops were ordained as Catholic priests, following a decree from Pope Benedict XVI to heal division between the faiths. Since then, dissatisfaction with aspects of Anglican doctrine – including the Church’s attitude towards homosexuality and its willingness to consider female bishops – has led hundreds to take up the offer of conversion.

The Rev Minchew’s reasons for leaving St Michael’s were rooted in his doubts about the Anglican faith. “In the Church of England, you don’t know what the Church believes from one synod to the next,” he said. “I think there is great comfort in the Catholic church: you know what you believe and what the Church teaches.”

But what of those he left behind? St Michael’s is one of many Anglican parishes for which the Ordinariate has meant empty pews, an interregnum and a gaping hole in church life for the congregation.

St. Thomas More and Torture

Wolf Hall, the first volume in Hilary Mantel's trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell casts St. Thomas More in an unflattering light, one that reviewers might be relishing. The Mirror of Justice blog posted this discussion on whether Chancellor More, in the process of enforcing England's heresy laws, used torture:

This past Sunday's NY Times Book Review includes a review of Bring Up the Bodies, the much-anticipated sequel to Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall about Henry VIII and his court. The hero, of sorts, in Mantel's novels about the period is Thomas Cromwell, whom Mantel sets off against Thomas More (depicted in Wolf Hall as an eager torturer of Protestants). The reviewer, Charles McGrath (former editor of the Book Review), writes: "In Mantel’s version, More is no saint, as he almost certainly was not in real life: he’s fussily pious, stiff-­necked and unnaturally fond of torturing heretics."


Let me be clear: Thomas More generally shared in the prejudices of his age and was complicit in practices (most especially the use of state coercion with regard to religious belief) that we would today regard as morally odious. That's just to say that he lived in the early sixteenth century and not the early twenty-first century, and we could have a lively discussion about how the Catholic Church should assess the sanctity of people with the benefit of historical and moral hindsight.

And Michael Moreland, the author of the post, goes on:

But a couple of further observations about the review:


1. McGrath's statement (characterizing Mantel's view) that More was "fussily pious" and "stiff-necked" is open to debate based on the contemporaneous accounts of More, though I'd simply make the point for now that More's canonization in 1935 was largely based on the manner of his death--the fact that More (alongside John Fisher and later joined by the 1970 canonization of 40 martyrs and the 1987 beatification of 85 martyrs from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England) suffered martyrdom for the Catholic faith rather than acquiescing to Henry VIII's assertion of power over the Church in England.

2. It's another thing altogether to make the slanderous claim that More was "unnaturally fond of torturing heretics," for the scholarly consensus is that there is no historical evidence that More engaged in torture. As summarized by John Guy in The Public Career of Sir Thomas More (Yale, 1980), "Serious analysis precludes the repetition of protestant stories that Sir Thomas flogged heretics against a tree in his garden at Chelsea. It must exclude, too, the accusations of illegal imprisonment made against More by John Field and Thomas Phillips. Much vaunted by J.A. Froude, such charges are unsupported by independent proof. More indeed answered them in his Apology with emphatic denial. None has ever been substantiated, and we may hope that they were all untrue" (165-66). See also G.R. Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, Papers and Reviews 1946-1972, Volume 1, 158 ("It is necessary to be very clear about More's reaction to the changes in religion which he saw all around him. No doubt, the more scurrilous stories of his personal ill-treatment of accused heretics have been properly buried, but that is not to make him into a tolerant liberal.").

I posted the following comment about the charge that St. Thomas More was "fussily pious" and "stiff-necked", which I find ridiculous, given the "contemporaneous accounts of More's life" with the examples of his humor, charity, and friendship that even detractors have to acknowledge. I'd also have to say that the comments about St. Thomas More in a review about a book in which he does not appear are rather gratuitous. The reviewer just wants to attack More since More is the patron saint of conscience, politicians and statesmen:

Beyond the issue of St. Thomas More and the persecution of heretics, how can a man be called "fussily pious" and "stiff-necked" who expresses the hope that he and his judges will meet merrily in Heaven?--"More have I not to say, my lords, but that like as the blessed apostle Saint Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was present and consented to the death of Saint Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends forever: so I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your lordships have now in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation."

Desiderius Erasmus, who could not abide fussy piety, would certainly disagree with Mantel's characterization of "More"--"Friendship he seems born and designed for; no one is more open-hearted in making friends or more tenacious in keeping them, nor has he any fear of that plethora of friendships against which Hesiod warns us.... Nobody is less swayed by public opinion, and yet nobody is closer to the feelings of ordinary men."