Book Review: "The Controversial Thomas More"

As I commented before, this is an important book about Saint Thomas More--whose martyrdom took place 490 years ago this July 6 and whose canonization 90 years ago on May 19 (the day I'm writing this review)--because Curtright wants to adjust our view of More's last months in the Tower of London. Although I haven't read it, I can see that this volume is in continuity with another of Curtright's books, The One Thomas More in which he finds the unity among the usually applied divisions in More's life: "Thomas More" the humanist. "Sir Thomas More" the statesman. "Saint Thomas More" the martyr."  

In this book it's Thomas More the Humanist; Thomas More the Controversialist; Thomas More the Devotional writer: and through his analysis of the "Tower Works" Curtright argues for continuity: More writes as humanist, using classic Ciceronian and Erasmian methods and forms, rhetorical and literary, throughout these Tower Works. He continues to engage the crisis of England, through its monarch and parliament, separating itself from the universal Catholic Church by denying the primacy of the pope, at the same time that he comforts his family and prepares himself for death and martyrdom with meditation on the Agony in the Garden in De Tristitia Christi.

First, in chapter one, "The Creation of More's Tower Works", Curtright deals with how the More family and friends, Roper, Rastell, and Harpsfield framed More's last months in their biographies and crucially, how Rastell edited the Tower Works for the Catholic audience in England during Mary I's reign. He argues that these presentations have been very influential in the biographies and studies of More in the last century, and in the publication of the collected works by Yale University Press. One crucial issue is how Rastell conflated a work More wrote before he was taken to the Tower of London with one he did write during his imprisonment: A Treatise upon the Passion of Christ Reconsidered and De Tristitia Christi.

The former work is the subject of chapter two, "A Treatise upon the Passion of Christ Reconsidered, 1534" as Curtright untangles the circumstances of its composition while More was still at home in Chelsea--and how he continues the theme of defending the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament against the Sacramentarians of the time. More upholds the Scholastic explanation of Accidents and Substance in his own terms against Tyndale's view that what mattered was the recipient's belief, not the mysterious reality of the impassible being passable. 

In chapter three, Curtright examines "The (Auto) Biographical More and "A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation," 1534-1535. He posits that More writes this to prepare his family for what he and they and Catholic believers in England are facing, that is "A Dialogue of MORE Against Tribulation". Applying Ciceronian rhetoric tropes, "Deliberative Discourse" arguing for preparing and being willing to do the honorable thing in spite of the dangers faced, More is the uncle Anthony helping his nephew Vincent (Margaret and others) to endure pain and even death to be faithful and true. Thus, he's preparing Margaret for faithful resistance to the "Henrician schism" to come. (p. 77)

The words referring to More's exchange of letters with Margaret More Roper as "masterpiece of rhetorical self-fashioning" on page 85 of chapter four, "A Letter from Prison to Alice Allington, 1534" led me to the Bibliography where sure enough I found Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare which I read in graduate school decades ago! In this chapter, Curtright looks back at More's Utopia and the crucial argument between "More" and Hythlodaeus about whether or not a humanist scholar should become an advisor to a monarch--an obvious sign of continuity of how More thought about and dealt with practical issues based on principles. Again, the forms of discourse, "Forensic Dialogue" and the "Familiar Letter" are important tools for Curtright in this chapter, explicating both method and medium.

In chapter five, "The True Martyr in De Tristitia Christi, c. 1535", the passage of the Bill of Attainder against More and Fisher made it clear that More could not use his strategy of silence for much longer, so his efforts to meditate on the Passion of Christ as preparation for suffering and the death of a traitor--hanging, drawing, and quartering--intensified. "Spoken malice" did not require words to be spoken--"More's intentions [treason and sedition] are declared for him in the bill" (p. 114) So More, figuratively in my words, thinks back to John Colet and Erasmus debating years ago (in 1498) about whether or not Jesus really felt fear and anguish even unto death in the Garden of Gethsemane or just "let" Himself express such agony. Colet said no; Erasmus said yes. (Again this is a subject I studied in an undergraduate class at WSU with J. Kelley Sowards, one of the great Erasmus scholars of that time.) More is also afraid, but he is also ready to chastise "the sleeping apostles" of his time, the bishops of England, who were then siding with the enemies of the Church (Judas). They're the shepherds of the flock and except for John Fisher, also in the Tower, they've abandoned both the flock and The Good Shepherd.

The "Conclusion: The Case of Malicious or Merry More" posed the cases of More's trial as presented in A Man for All Seasons and/or Wolf Hall. In the former, Richard Rich is the perjurer; in the latter, More! The real text to be dealt with is however the account and grounds of More's "moot" with Richard Rich in the Tower--a hypothetical exercise of "putting the case"--so again, More could argue that in that disputation with Rich he was not malicious or treasonous. He had not presented HIS case; he had argued A case. But the "regime's pursuit of More" (p. 137) ended with him unable to defend himself against the one indictment he lost at his trial.

But then Curtright demonstrates that More had really provided the regime with plenty of evidence to condemn if only Cromwell, Rich, Audley, et al., knew how to read in the controversial works he'd been writing in the Tower: Henry VIII was the tyrannous Turk of the Dialogue of Comfort; the Schism of England was the Passion of Christ repeated; the rebuke of the Greek Church at the Council of Florence was the rebuke of England's parliament and king; the bishops of England were "the sleeping Apostles," not praying and watching with Jesus . . . 

Finally Curtright directs us to More's final words in his defense--he is Stephen the Martyr; his judges and jury are Saul (who may repent like Paul):

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.

As Curtright notes, those words are "a customary mixture of humility and humor, irony and honesty" (p. 142), both excusing and accusing.

Did St. Swithun Wells know that More had said that? Before his execution on December 10, 1591, he said to Richard Topcliffe, Elizabeth I's chief pursuivant and bloody torturer: "I pray God make you a Paul of a Saul, of a bloody persecutor one of the Catholic Church's children." Wells could have read the trial accounts or some of the works published before 1558.

This book is volume in "The Beginning and the Beyond of Politics" series from Notre Dame Unversity Press. There's a very helpful Appendix of Key Dates, Notes (I need to look at them again), an extensive Bibliography, and an Index. Highly recommended--reminder: I bought the book. 

Now I'm anticipating another delivery: an edition of 1929's The Fame of Blessed Thomas More from Cluny Media:

In 1929, seven of the leading men of the English Catholic Church gathered to give evidence of [More's] reputation, their words foreshadowing the message of Pope Pius XI in the years to come: that this star of sanctity, shining in a dark period of history, was a bright champion of the Christian people, undaunted by the fallacies of heretics and the threats of the powerful, willing to shed his blood in testimony of devotion to Jesus Christ and His Church.

The Fame of Blessed Thomas More offers that evidence in these essays by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc; Bede Jarrett, O.P., and Ronald Knox; Henry Browne, S.J., and Reginald Blunt; R. W. Chambers and Lord Justice Russell .

Originally published in limited editions in 1929 and 1933, The Fame of Blessed Thomas More is a rare piece of Catholic literature and a profound tribute to a great saint by his own countrymen, celebrating—in the words of Monsignor Knox—“one of the most successful men who ever lived,” who sought, and won, the favor of Almighty God.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Progress Report: "The Controversial Thomas More"

I tell you what: Travis Curtright--based on the first few chapters I've read--has written an extraordinary book about Saint Thomas More. It highlights crucial problems caused by the presentation of his "Tower Works" by his heirs, Rastell and Roper and Harpsfield, and how they--especially Rastell who edited More's works--have influenced biographers and even the modern editors of the collected works from Yale University Press. 

The received argument is that More eschewed controversy, about papal/Church and royal authority, about the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, and other matters once he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. As he prepared for death, either natural or judicial, he is thought to be completely focused on spiritual matters, meditating on the Four Last Things and preparing for Judgment.

But authority in the Church and the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist are spiritual matters, and as he cared passionately about the Truth, More had to continue to defend those Truths. For example, when I read The Sadness of Christ in the Vintage Spiritual Classics edition ten years ago, I noted:

Even as he devoted himself to meditating on the Agony in the Garden, with the drama of Jesus's three prayers to His Father to let the cup of suffering pass by, the sleeping Apostles neglecting His vigil, and the betrayal of Judas, More was thinking of his own day. He compares the sleeping Apostles to their negligent successors, the Bishops, in the midst of the attacks on the Church and  at the same time he contrasts the negligence of the Apostles to the activity and decision of Judas, betraying Jesus and turning Him over to the Sanhedrin. He was as much concerned by the betrayal of Jesus in the 16th century as he was [about] Judas' betraying kiss that first Holy Thursday night. He was concerned about the growing disbelief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and also about those "autodidacts" who interpreted Scripture on their own authority, not based on the teaching and Tradition of the universal Catholic Church.

(As Curtright states on page 23, in his discussion of how firmly More upheld the authority of the Pope and the Councils, Henry VIII had been such an autodidact when he argued that the passages from Leviticus condemning a brother marrying his brother's widow trumped the command from Deuteronomy for the brother to marry his brother's widow if she was childless "to continue the family line." Henry chose his interpretation over "the Church's traditional practice and . . . canon laws" in weighing the authority of these passages.)

Scholars through the centuries may have relied too much on Rastell's publication of More's works during the reign of Mary I and how he edited and interpreted them, Curtis explains. It's clear that Rastell produced these works for the Marian reign, even revising More's comments on the Nun of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, in that context. Since Barton had upheld the validity of Henry and Katherine of Aragon's marriage, More couldn't be seen as disparaging her. That's just an example of how Rastell "framed" More's involvement in the controversial issues of his last years as a private citizen and then prisoner in the Tower.

More (!) to come of course, as Curtis re-examines four major works:

A Treatise upon the Passion (1534, before entry to the Tower)
A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, 1534-1535
A Letter from Prison to Alice Alington, 1534
De tristitia Christi, c. 1535 (The Sadness of Christ)

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

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.

A Fifteenth Anniversary: St. Thomas More as Patron of Politicians

Edited by Travis Curtright, Director of Humanities and Liberal Studies and Associate Professor of Humanities and Literature at Ave Maria University and research fellow of the Center for Thomas More Studies at the University of Dallas, this forthcoming book celebrates an unusual and perhaps now controversial anniversary:

The year 2015 marks the fifteenth anniversary of Thomas More’s becoming Patron Saint of Statesmen and Politicians. Yet during these years no serious answer has been given by a community of scholars as to why More would be the choice of over 40,000 leaders from ninety-five countries. What were More’s guiding principles of leadership and in what ways might they remain applicable? This collection of essays addresses these questions by investigating More through his writings, his political actions, and in recent artistic depictions.

In the book:

Introduction: Why Patron of Statesmen (Travis Curtright)

Chapter 1: Thomas More on Liberty, Law, and Good Rule (Gerard Wegemer)

Chapter 2: Statesmanship, Tyranny, and Piety: Thomas More’s Response to Lucian’s The Tyrannicide (Carson Holloway)

Chapter 3: Utopia’s Images of the Statesman (James R. Stoner, Jr.)

Chapter 4: Passing Strange, Yet Wholly True: On the Political Tales of Plato’s Critias and More’s Hythlodaeus (Jeffrey S. Lehman)

Chapter 5: Thomas More’s Utopia and Catholic Social Doctrine (J. Brian Benestad)

Chapter 6: Faith, Reason, and Order: Thomas More and Natural Law (Samuel Gregg)

Chapter 7: Sir Thomas More and his Opposition to Henry VIII in 1533 (Travis Curtright)

Chapter 8: Thomas More: Patron Saint of Leading Citizens (Stephen W. Smith)

Chapter 9: What Bolt Got Right and What Mantel Got Wrong (Louis Karlin)

Chapter 10: The Place of Sir Thomas More in Political Philosophy: A Reflection on “A Man for All Seasons.” (James V. Schall, S. J.)

Appendix: Apostolic Letter, Issued Motu Proprio, Proclaiming Saint Thomas More Patron of Statesmen and Politicians. (Pope John Paul II.)

Travis Curtright contributed an article to Crisis Magazine previewing his introduction, I presume, which I think reflects too much on Robert Bolt's heroic More:

As its fifteenth anniversary approaches in October, Pope John Paul II’s proclamation of More as Patron Saint of Statesmen remains widely ignored and often misunderstood. John Paul II’s understanding of More not only recapitulates Catholic social teaching; it also emphasizes many of the same key attributes that are highlighted in Robert Bolt’s famous play, A Man for all Seasons (1960).

Bolt’s More possesses an “adamantine sense of self” that derives from his “conscience.” This characterization of More comports with John Paul II’s longstanding account of conscience. As early as 1962, while auxiliary Bishop of Krakow, he wrote: “The conscience provides the basis for the definitive structure [of the self] and defines me as that unique and unrepeatable self or I.” Bolt’s distaste for Catholicism notwithstanding, he and the pope both stress the inseparability of selfhood and conscience.

Integrity emerges in those leaders who follow their conscience. The Vatican proclamation emphasizes More’s “unity of life,” his commitment to pursue sanctity through and within his legal and political work. Integrity in government leaders best serves the common good because, as Bolt’s More observes, “when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties … they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

As John Paul II puts it, More’s “defense of the Church’s freedom from unwarranted interference by the State is at the same time a defense, in the primacy of conscience, of the individual’s freedom vis-à-vis political power.” The Church’s freedom, in other words, cannot be untethered from that of the individuals who uphold its teachings. More himself made this point in self-defense, invoking the Magna Carta Libertatum (1215)—and its doctrine that the Church shall be free—at his trial. So both More and John Paul II argue that no definition of the individual’s conscience can exclude God’s moral law or the Church that interprets and teaches it.

On this point, the pope’s treatment of More invokes the earlier encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993). That document teaches that “human freedom and God’s law meet and are called to intersect” because “man’s free obedience to God’s law effectively implies that human reason and human will participate in God’s wisdom and providence.” Thus, the pope proposes conscience as the actualization of humanity’s highest faculties and the proper exercise of freedom as a participation in divine life, a point exemplified by More’s life and death.

Do John Paul II and Robert Bolt really paint a historically accurate image of More? Or are they merely making anachronistic impositions upon history?

This would be a fascinating study to read, due out next month (but very expensive!) This is a book for Inter Library Loan!