Talk:Thomas More

Execution allegations

I have pulled out the material on the controversy of whether More tortured and sentenced heretics to be burned into its own section. I have added many citations and re-phrased much material. I have tried to add both pro- and anti-More sources, for balance and NPOV. I think some recent sources, especially the Richard Rex article, are very useful.

To prepare and research, I first updated the Star Chamber section, in particular concerning the scope and limits of their power.

The thing that has struck me, reading various sources and allegations, is that many sources pass on information uncritically, without attending to the basic issues of legality, jurisdiction, and procedure. Consequently, many of the sources lack credibility to that degree.

In particular, what is raising my eyebow are the often-repeated statements that link More's time as Lord Chancellor with the number heretic executions that happened in England during that time: the idea seems to be that More was like the boss of England, so every execution that happened happened because he like directed it and stuff. "When More was Lord Chancellor, six heretics were executed" becomes "Under More, 6 heretics were executed" or "More executed six heretics" to "More wanted to exterminate all Protestants".

That More, the man who introduced the notion of fairness (equity) into English law, and who relied on legal principles against self-incrimination for his very life, was somehow a total cowboy taking the law into his own hands when it came to heretics. I mean, anything is possible, but it looks like a situation where you would demand your WP:RS sources provide hard evidence rather than what smells like a post hoc ergo procter hoc or Chinese whisper??? If there is no causal connection between More and the executions, then of what value is that information. (Richard Rex's paper brings out the excellent point that More was involved in heresy appeals at the Star Chamber for the previous decade. What made his time as Lord Chancellor so special?)

The Lord Chancellor position was concerned with common law (civil law) that included misdemeanours like rioting, and equity, not criminal law; I gather than many case of heresy also involved aspects of the law proper to the Lord Chancellor (illegal book sales, rioting, sedition) so they were often funnelled through his office before any trial procedure. (Due to De heretico comburendo sedition and heresy were explicitly conflated in English law.)

But at the other end of the process, in the Lord Chancellor's role as presiding judge of court of the Star Chamber he only had one vote from 10 to 30 others (and the Star Chamber's voting was not recorded, so we don't know what he voted anyway). The Star Chamber could not impose the death penalty, and was a kind of Appeals court with better procedures than general courts. Crimes, like treason, and so on were handled by the King's Bench, not the Star Chamber.

The aggregate impression I am getting from the non-partisan academic sources is that the Star Chamber could hear appeals on heresy charges, and could commute a death penalty or allow it, but not impose it.

Does anyone have any reliable source with better info for this, sometime near the 1520s? 

For heresy charges, when someone was apprehended and charged, they first went through a (civil) discover process by the arresting authorities to determine whether there was enough evidence to initiate the process. Then they were handed over to the local bishop (who had his own prison accommodation, like the Lollard's Tower) for examination (the Bishops would have also presumably have been bound by the general rules of the (Roman) Inquisition in their procedures.) So the Bishop returned them to the secular authority with their finding: not a heretic, re-canted heretic, minor heretic, major heretic, or whatever. If the Bishop found them to be persistent or relapsed major heretics, then they were handed over to the secular authorities and XXX and then they were executed.

...It is that XXX where I find academic source articles unclear or variable.

I would appreciate any pointers editors have: did they then get indicted by the secular authorities and tried, being able to appeal to the Star Chamber?   Or was the results of the Bishop's examination treated as a summary judgment not needing a further trial?  (My suspicion is that the former is true for capital cases, the later is true for non-capital cases where the person had abjured or only guilty of some minor infringement, like being illiterate and looking after the book for a friend without promoting its reading.) Did the bishops actually give the result of the examination with an expected or recommended punishment?

Thanks Rick Jelliffe (talk) 12:19, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Middle English

Many quotations by More are in such archaic language that they are incomprehensible to a speaker of modern English. They either need to be edited to have modern spellings or translated altogether. I have a BA in history, went to law school, and am presently employed as a writer. English is my first language. If I am struggling with these quotations, I know other people are as well. 2001:5B0:211B:F648:63AC:3F20:6C2B:3A21 (talk) 14:58, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

MOS:QUOTE requires "[…] the quoted text must be faithfully reproduced." Which are the problem passages, please, to give us more of a handle on the problem? --AntientNestor (talk) 16:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

BTW, it is "modern English" as in "Early Modern English", not "Middle English".--AntientNestor (talk) 16:20, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

N I have looked at the five quotations from More, and all of them use modern spellings, though sometimes more capitals than most of us use now. I wonder which quotes are meant? (Maybe it is non-More quotes, such as the laws?)

The epitaph is poetry, so saying things by allusion and indirection is its essense not a flaw. The "my darling" paragraph may be odd when reading silently, but if reading it aloud it is perfectly clear IMHO. But most of the quotes are not quips but statements about subjects introduced in the article: for example royal "Supremacy" has no simple 21st century analog term.

Finally, yes Wikipedia helps people understand new things, but this is not only by providing facts but also by exposure to a wider vocabulary and language constructions that may not be idiomatic in some regions of e.g. the Anglosphere. But they need to be explained enough that people can grok. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 03:10, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The "my darling" quote now has an explanatory footnote.--AntientNestor (talk) 17:33, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

An "amateur" theologian?

I was surprised that Thomas More's theological work is described as "amateur" in the opening paragraph (".. social philosopher, author, statesman, amateur theologian, and noted Renaissance humanist"). This may be technically correct, but it is not clear why his theological work is singled out as if there is some significant distinction between the amateur and professional theologians of the 16th century. Could the sentence be improved by leaving out "amateur"? Mnjuckes (talk) 22:45, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Agree. Apart from the point that that such a distinction seems incongruous for the period, many of his published works concern theology. AntientNestor (talk) 06:06, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

@Mnjuckes:Removed it.--AntientNestor (talk) 09:57, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Thomas More

what was thomas mores last words 38.57.37.148 (talk) 07:53, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

See section "Execution".

For a summary of his last hours, see https://thetudorenthusiast.weebly.com/blog/the-execution-of-sir-thomas-more

Rick Jelliffe (talk) 14:58, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Interestingly, that source has different content to the current article text and doesn't mention Psalm 51? That psalm is quite long, so not sure if we can assume he recited it in its entirely or not. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:18, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I expect he said or chanted it all but not loud enough for the crowd to hear, as he as not allowed to address them. And 19 verses is not so long: they had phenomenal memorization then. It would be the Latin, which More was fluent in. Reciting 51 was often given as the penance after Confession by priests, and he would have been well familiar with it. More's Palter (Gallican) is now in the possession of Yale University. Psalm 51 (in the old numbering, 50) was one of Penitential Psalms in his Book of Hours, so he would have recited it often.

Article at https://www.jstor.org/stable/40858178 Rick Jelliffe (talk) 16:06, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I see that Gallican Psalter is explained at Latin Psalters. Yes, I expect he would have known large chunks of the Bible in Latin. So what about "Pick up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office; My neck is very short, take heed therefore thou strike not awry for having thine honesty."? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:18, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that is a famous thing he is reported to have said. If you think it is interesting, put it in the article with attribution: I don't think it is very enlightening myself, but have no strong opinion.

It was the convention for the condemned to forgive their executioner in advance, and to encourage them, even to tip them, to do a good job. Having a clean strike was important, as having to take several hacks was upsetting for all involved (including the executioner), could mutilate the head, and risked an awareness of pain by the condemned. The high risk of something going wrong with the manual axe stroke was what lead to Dr Guillotin's invention. (When the execution sentence was particularly gruesome and spectacular, executioners would sometimes try to make sure the person was at least unconscious as soon as possible, as their job was to execute not torture. Horrible.)

"Gallows humour" (like his comment on not needing help to come down) is a real thing: the most famous was Saint Laurence when being grilled, supposedly saying: "Turn me over, I am done on that side!"

On the issue of different accounts: that is to be expected: someone in the crowd will not hear what happens on the platform. And hagiographers and opponents (like Foxe) are prone to making things up, or to present paraphrases into quotations. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 01:36, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I imagine a great many of these "famous last words" have been invented. The source you suggested for "My neck is very short... " is a blog. I was wondering if there were any other, more convincing sources, for that quote. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:20, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

The story actually comes from the biography his son-in-law William Roper wrote: see https://origin-rh.web.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/16Croper-more.asp

Roper is interesting because he perhaps allows a nuance about More's views that is often missed: More actually tolerated a partial Lutheran (Roper) living in his own home. (So much for the Wolf Hall fanatic...) As far as I can work out, More (and Erasmus') thing was that sedition and public heresy were evil, but that no-one should be blamed for having their own private doubts about religious things: in fact, that is one of the functions of friends as people you could express and work through your doubts and difficulties. (For example, Erasmus clearly never felt that transubstantiation made sense as as explanation of the real presence, which he certainly believed, and even made a joke about it to More after not returning a horse he had "borrowed" from his fiend.) More tried to rely on this private/public distinction in his silence about his opinion on the Royal Supremacy etc. of course.

I suspect you can see this same thing at work in More's raid of the German cloth merchants of the Steelyard district: Wolsey wanted it to be a coordinated lightening raid, but More left a full day between showing up with his posse and starting to search for banned books, giving plenty of time for merchants to rid themselves of incriminating material: it was the public performance of spreading heresy that should be criminal, not that the merchants were sympathetic to the Lutheran views 'per se' (which should be dealt with outside the criminal system.) Rick Jelliffe (talk) 11:14, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

That looks a very robust source and the closeness of the author William Roper recommends the addition of that quote. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:22, 19 March 2025 (UTC)