Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527
In 1535, Sir Thomas More defied King Henry VIII of England and died on the scaffold for refusing to accept the king’s break with the Catholic Church. He was canonized in 1935, but recent scholarship has uncovered a darker side to More’s career as a persecutor of early Protestants in England, who were subjected to judicial torture. Modern views of More are far more nuanced than those in the famous portrayal of the saint in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, as seen in the broadly negative picture of More in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.
Historian Jennifer Paxton explores the life and legacy of Thomas More, from his rise to power in the early years of the Tudor dynasty in the household of the ambitious pro-Tudor Bishop of Ely, John Morton, for whom he wrote a savagely critical study of the reign of Richard III, to his successful career as a barrister, to his rise in royal service, where he reached the exalted rank of chancellor. In addition to his legal and political work, More was the most distinguished English intellectual of his day. He forged a close friendship with the great Dutch reformist theologian Desiderius Erasmus, and became famous for his satirical treatise Utopia, which gave rise to a genre of literature that still flourishes today. Ironically, he may have ghostwritten King Henry’s defense of the seven Catholic sacraments against Martin Luther, for which the king was named a defender of the faith by the pope. Paxton looks at the ways in which More offers both a window onto the complexities of life in Tudor England and an example of political courage that still inspires today.
Paxton is director of the university honors program, associate dean of undergraduate studies, and an associate professor of history at The Catholic University of America.
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