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MARTIN HALL relishes a new intellectual history of Sir Thomas More that cuts through the myth and returns to primary sources

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HADFIELD and Paul’s new intellectual history of Thomas More attempts to steer a course through two dominant views of the English statesman and scholar: one which sees him as a martyr and signpost for the importance of the individual conscience against the state; another which views him as a persecutor of religious dissent who stood shoulder to shoulder with the state (until he didn’t, of course).

This is achieved through close textual analysis made in the context of the set of social relations in which More found himself, and which he helped shape. The subtitle of the book, “Humanism and Heresy” guides the reader in this regard from the outset.

To bring in a useful anachronism, More was part of a group of public intellectuals engaged in contributing to the debates between Renaissance humanism and medieval scholasticism, the dominant intellectual tradition in Europe since the 12th century, which brought classical Greek philosophy to the field of theology.

Given what the reader is likely to know about More, the term “humanism” might provoke some surprise. But this is not humanism as we understand it today, though it is its roots. The movement in which More was involved “critiqued the medieval curriculum, with its focus on logic and abstraction, vehemently decrying the ignorance of the ‘theologians’ or ‘scholastics’ to real-world concerns.”

There’s no space here for anything beyond the thinnest outline of this intellectual explosion but suffice to say that it is the beginning of the move to putting man (as they would have said) at the centre of the universe rather than God, in so doing igniting the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution that form the intellectual backbone of the world today.

Of course, this wasn’t More’s intention, nor that of his “Republic of Letters,” which included Erasmus, Pieter Gillis, Maarten van Dorp and others. Erasmus, the most well-known and leader of this group, and More maintained a friendship for over 30 years, often in epistolary form, as well as through extended periods in each other’s company.

Of particular interest for us is Erasmus’s criticism of his friend taking a position at court, rather than having the relative freedom which independence brought to the Dutchman. The difficulty of marrying intellectual enquiry, conscience and public service was of course brought home to More when the crisis caused by Henry VIII’s desire to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon began in the 1530s.

After a brief biography, the book takes us through More’s writings, from the early humanist work, through the friendship with Erasmus, Utopia (1516), the writings on heresy, the Oath of Supremacy, later spiritual writings and his trial and execution, finishing with some remarks about how More is perceived now.

The difficulty of this project is alluded to early in the book, as the authors refer to the “multiple Mores thesis,” hence the decision to return to the source through the texts themselves as seen through nearly 500 years of context.

Unlike the rest of his oeuvre, Utopia is one of the most famous books in the world, giving us a term used both pejoratively and longingly to this day. Hadfield and Paul devote a chapter to it, as well as returning to it in the epilogue. Its English translation in 1551 “set the tone for a Protestant acceptance of Utopia, by attaching to it a proto-Protestant inclination of More that he later betrayed.”

This is the start of the claiming of More by different camps, which we can see in the various representations of him in literature, theatre, film and TV, from Engels to A Man for All Seasons and Wolf Hall. Religious zealot, proto-communist, Catholic martyr — take your pick, or all three? Of course, the title of Robert Bolt’s play alludes to this diversity.

The authors’ skill in using all his works to elucidate More��s life contributes greatly to the recovery of “a holistic and historical view of More as a complex figure.” But they recognise, as intellectual historians ought to, that this doesn’t mean there’s a “real” More there waiting to be uncovered. 

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