Thomas More: the search for the inner man

Abstract

This book analyzes and studies More's writings as well as Holbein's portraits of More and his family. Louis Martz argues that there is no foundation for reviving the ancient charge that More was a bloody persecutor of heretics, and he questions the view put forth that More suffered from an fury resulting from sexual repression and a frustrated desire to be a monk. According to Mastz, More's furious attacks against heresy in his polemical writings do not reveal his deep inner self, but are treatises done in the common style of controversy in an era of savage religious disagreements. More's polemics are uncommon only in their wit and sardonic cleverness, says Martz, and they are matched by those of Martin Luther, his only peer in this kind of vitriolic attack. Martz makes his case primarily through exploration of More's mode of writing: the Augustinian order of the heart displayed in some of his major works - the Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, and Apology, the English treatise on the Passion, the Dialogue of Comfort, and his last work, the De Tristitia, his meditation on the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.