Thomas More, Grammarian and Orator

Abstract

Despite the intensive study of Thomas More during the last decade, a study stimulated by his canonization, by the fourth centenary of his martyrdom, and by the enthusiastic and scholarly work of A. W. Reed, R. W. Chambers, and other writers, there remain significant aspects of his life that have received comparatively little attention. In a stimulating paper published eight years ago, Marie Delcourt demonstrated that the “English” tradition of More biography, the tradition created by More's kinsfolk and devoted followers, represented a conscious attempt to emphasize his saintly qualities and those of his works which supported his claim to canonization. For this reason, these biographers gave little weight to More's humanist activities, his secular Latin writings, and his association with Erasmus, a dubious character from the point of view of the Counter-reformation. Aside from questions of bias, moreover, the period about which the “English” biographical tradition is least informative is that during which More was most interested in the humanities, since Roper, the primary source of the school of hagiographers, became More's son-in-law only after More had left academic study for the business of the royal court. The distortion created either by the ignorance or by the prejudice of More's early biographers, says Delcourt, has been repaired only partly by modern scholarship, and Chambers' account of Thomas More, though by far the best of recent studies, is nevertheless of the pattern laid down by Rastell, Roper, Harpsfield, and their followers. In the following pages, therefore, I have set down a few bits of information, some little known, others quite overlooked, which, in connection with the established circumstances of More's life, serve to emphasize the typically humanist character of his early career.