Thomas More and Tyranny

Author: Guy John  

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

E-ISSN: 2398-4961|49(Number189-190)|3-4|157-188

ISSN: 0047-8105

Source: Moreana, Vol.49(Number189-190), Iss.3-4, 2012-12, pp. : 157-188

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Abstract

Although for some twenty years the scholarly consensus has been to stress the Ciceronian imperatives of the good citizen and the vita activa in shaping Thomas Mores attitude to royal service, especially shortly before and after the writing of Utopia, a reconsideration of Mores life experiences between 1509 and the onset of Henry VIIIs first divorce campaign in the spring of 1527 suggests that a rejection of a courtiers life may have ranked equally high in his consciousness. This conclusion is reinforced by Mores sustained interest in the writings of Seneca, an interest he had shared with Erasmus since the latters second stay at Bucklersbury in 1509-11. The coincidence of the publication of Senecas moral essays in Erasmuss Senecae Lucubrationes of 1515, the first printing widely available outside Italy, and the gestation of Utopia is suggestive. It is likely to have been the call to duty arising, first, from the Lutheran threat after 1521, and then from the divorce after 1527, that finally turned More into a full-blooded Ciceronian.