Thomas More The Last Letters of Thomas More.

John Guy, Thomas More

(Reputations Series.) London: Arnold, 2000. xviii + 251 pp. $65 (cl), $9.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0- 340-73139-7.

Alvaro de Silva, ed., The Last Letters of Thomas More

Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000. viii + 214 pp. $20. ISBN: 0-8028-3886-3.

John Fisher said that of all things reputation is the most precious. In Thomas More, John Guy investigates More's fame in regard to key issues, such as his link to the Charterhouse, his reluctance to enter Henry VIII's court, his roles as father, lawyer, social reformer, and politician, his hunting of

heretics and his beliefs on royal supremacy and on papal power. A blurb claims that he demythologizes More. Guy questions the existence of some facts and the validity of inferences drawn from others which figure in More's reputation. Although he arrives at a quasi-Pyrrhonist conclusion, namely, we cannot arrive at a true history of More, his book will be a focus for future studies on More's life.

Guy faced daunting obstacles -- the dissimulation which is a chief characteristic of sixteenth-century literature, the sectarian bias which distorted early and even more recent biographies and the extreme caution which More exercised in the Tower. In addition, More's stature in the Kremlin and in the Vatican, his portrayal by Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons and -- in the impeachment of President Clinton -- Congressman Henry Hyde's allusion to him as a man who would die rather than "take an oath in vain," consolidated More's fame as the martyr-saint, the tyrant's foe, the man of conscience. Mote, as well as Erasmus and others, drew some of the lines of this image. But alongside of it stands another one, that of the fierce polemicist and persecutor of heretics. Although More was duty-bound to crush heresy and although he believed that it led to damnation, Guy thinks that More was too extreme. Were there two Mores -- the Soft Man prior to 1523 and the Hard Man thereafter?

In spite of the problems, Guy avoids the Pyrrhonist's silence. The first shibboleth he addresses deals with Mote's relationship with the Charterhouse. Was he testing a religious vocation? Was he a failed monk, obsessed by sex? Guy focuses on Erasmus's quip that More "chose to be a chaste husband rather than a lewd priest." This commonplace suited Erasmus. He was fashioning an ideal Erasmian humanist, a pious, lay intellectual who rejected monastic contemplation (monachatus non est pietas) and chose the active life. In places, Erasmus's vignettes of More and Colet strain credibility. In their studies, which see Mote tormented by sex, Elton and Marius accept Harpsfield who, taking Erasmus literally, made the quip central to his biography. If More did make the comment, Guy finds the evidence and a psychoanalytical approach insufficient to claim that he was tormented by sex. We lack the facts in the primary sources to determine the nature and consequences of More's link to the Charterhouse. With Guy, we know Mor e was among a lay spiritual elite drawn to the Carthusians. We also know that, when More was there, its Prior, William Tynbygh, received from the continent Thomas Kempis's The Imitation of Christ -- a manual for the cloister. For More, it was one of the best books for increasing devotion. By reflecting on it, on the Carthusian silence and motto, Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, and on what we know of More's spirituality, we can infer that More was the Hard Man at the Charterhouse (1499-1503). Mirroring Kempis's values, More's Life of John Picus sees Pico's humanistic period as a vanity and his dedication to sacred literature and to the following of Christ after his conversion as admirable. Throughout his life, More practised a monastic spirituality, one most unlike that in Erasmus's Enchiridion.

Future studies will have to reckon with Guy's convincing arguments that call for revision of the portrayals of More on all of the issues listed above. We hope that they may get at the truth about the Utopia and More's conscience. Guy shows how readings of More's masterpiece led to incorrect judgments about his life. The dissimulation in More's critique of Erasmus in the Utopia and More's understanding of Original Sin and its relationship with private property as both a punishment and a protection make it a challenge to relate the Utopia to More's beliefs. Odd as it may seem to us, early Protestants, who trusted in Scripture alone, disparaged his Utopia and linked More's views on the papacy and on Purgatory with it. Equally difficult is the question of conscience, the site where state, church, God, and the individual meet. Henry VIII relied chiefly on the Scriptures to form his conscience and justify the divorce from Catherine. Spending years fashioning his conscience, More first looked to God and then on his understanding of the state and of the church to form his and to Justify civil disobedience. In regard to the forming of conscience, Guy sees a sort of ecclesiolatry in More. The dissimulation and extreme caution in More's last letters make us appreciate Guy's comment that we seem to stand "in a hall of mirrors" when we discuss More's stand against Henry as well as his concept of the papacy. Thanks to Guy's incomparable knowledge of More and Tudor England, historians will now aim to dispel the confusion and tell the story of the man behind the myth. But, until then, Guy's conclusion in his earlier and equally fair-minded work on More will hold -- More "earned his place among the very few who have enlarged the horizon of the human spirit."

De Silva, who has edited the Tower works, De tristitia Christi and A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation in Spanish, has, to complement them, gathered twenty four letters written between February 1533/34 and 5 July 1535. Three are by More's daughter Margaret Roper, two by his wife Alice, one by Alice Alington and the remainder by More. The text is a modernized version of The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More by Elizabeth Rogers. The endnotes provide valuable information for those not well acquainted with the political, religious, and intellectual milieu of More as well as quotations from prisoners like Bonhoeffer and Solzhenitsyn. De Silva offers one of the best accounts of More's relationship with Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Canterbury, and of his strenuous efforts to protect himself from being named with her in the bill of attainder that accused her of prophesying the king's death. The letters also reveal the affection that binds More and his children, an affection in keeping with the way he nurtured their intellects in his earlier Latin metrical epistles and letters to them. Number 12, a masterpiece of prison literature, is the lengthy letter on conscience from Margaret to Alice Alington, which More himself had composed. In it, More delves into his position on conscience in order to defend his precious reputation from charges of obstinacy and of treason. It could be entitled More's "Letter to Posterity." For de Silva, More's refusal to take the oath because of conscience preserved his integrity and his identity. De Silva's collection enables More to take the place he deserves in prison literature.