The one Thomas More

4. Humanism, Heresy, and the One Thomas More, ca. 1523–33

105 4 Humanism, Heresy, and the One Thomas More, ca. 1523–33 If Utopia is Thomas More’s most contested humanist text, how More addresses heresy proves the most difficult issue of his controversial writings, a topic that degrades the “man for all seasons” in the minds of some. Jasper Ridley accuses More of turning from a “brilliant intellectual ” to “a sycophantic courtier and then into a persecuting bigot ,” an “intolerant fanatic.”1 So, too, David Daniell asserts that More lost his “Erasmian lightness” in writing against heretics because “he was so desperate to destroy heresy that what balance he once had was eaten away.”2 Daniell sympathizes with Tyndale and other English reformers who must have felt that “More had sold himself” by abandoning humanism for power with Henry.3 Most recently, Brian Moynahan imagines that More commissioned “Tyndale’s destruction,” a plot More orchestrated from prison, and thus, he became a villain 1. Jasper Ridley, Statesman and Saint (New York: Viking Press, 1982), i. 2. David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), 276. This biography shows “open partiality” according to John A.R.Dick, “Review: William Tyndale: A Biography,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2 (1997): 596–97. James Hitchcock, “Review: William Tyndale: A Biography,” American Historical Review 101, no. 2 (1996): 478, believes Daniell presents “Tyndale’s theology as self-evidently true.“ 3. Daniell, Tyndale, 272. 106 Humanism, Heresy who sends the true man of conscience, William Tyndale, to martyrdom .4 Even the popular television show The Tudors (1997–2010) depicts More with a wild look in his eye as he gazes into a fire that consumes a man. Yet behind such depictions are important if uneven critical studies . First, with regard to More’s intellectual biography, Richard Marius argues that More’s theological concerns began as early as 1521 with More’s work on the Responsio ad Lutherum. Eventually, More moves from a “theological councilor” to a “public defender of the faith” in 1525.5 Marius’s division of More’s writings augments the “two Mores ” thesis, emphasizing a “humanistic period (1500–20)” from a “theological period (1520–35)” with the latter devoted to polemics, especially from 1523 to 1533 (CW 8.3, 1144).6 The years from More’s work as the king’s secretary to his service as chancellor roughly constitute a single period of focus upon theology, a time during which More solidifies his notion of ecclesial “consensus” that would determine his later refusal of the Act of Supremacy. Second, though John Guy does not introduce new findings on this question, he precisely and yet with broad scope reviews the ebb and flow of the debate over More as “heresy hunter,” carefully distinguishing fact from fiction in authors ranging from Foxe to Marius himself, and Guy iterates two important points of emphasis. He affirms the substance of Chambers’s original position that defending the Church was a “secular” duty incumbent upon More, following from De Hereti4 . Brian Moynahan, God’s Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible—A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal (St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 352. See Moynahan ’s connection to Daniell at 392, 403. Ridley and Marius provide “excellent modern biographies ” at 399. 5. Marius, Thomas More, 276–91; 325–50. 6. Cf. CW 8.3, 1265, where Louis A.Schuster adds: “It should be observed, however, that the comparative inaccessibility of More’s English polemical works over the centuries help account for the theory of two Mores: of the early humanist who had assumed positions fundamentally inconsistent with the older More’s stand on the catholic church, its clergy and its practices.” For Schuster, billingsgate and harsh words, often interpreted as More’s rage and fury by revisionists, show More’s appeal to commoners: “When More’s vernacular controversy is approached from this perspective of audience-orientation, most of its formal characteristics are explainable by function.” Humanism, Heresy 107 co Comburendo, which was passed by parliament in 1401.7 And Guy stresses that Henry directed More to the anti-Lutheran campaign, and so in attacking heresy, More was continuing the king’s policy.8 One important reason More’s polemical tracts against the Reformation remain dismissed and unpopular is because his critics often define humanism in ways that undervalue or misrepresent its religious character.9 Such a representation of humanism directly corresponds to the divisions of...