Study Guide to Utopia by Thomas More

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781645424970
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Thomas More’s Utopia, originally written in Latin in 1516 and considered a great political and philosophical satire. As a rhetorical work from the early 16th century, there has been much debate amongst scholars on what More’s intentions were for writing. Moreover, Utopia makes a mirror so that readers may be able to see themselves more clearly and more realistically. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of More’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including
essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

INTRODUCTION TO SIR THOMAS MORE

The support of Erasmus, the famous humanist scholar of More’s time, is not necessary for the confession that Thomas More is too deep, too rich a human reality for a simple biography - indeed, as Erasmus clarified, he is too deep, too rich for a complex biography. Many students of Thomas More’s life and works, many zealous admirers of this great man, have sought to preserve his mind and spirit; and so, we have a library of books about Thomas More.

What follows is the barest outline of More’s life. Any biographical study that approaches the comprehensive must confront more within the historical context of his time, and his era was one of tumultuous change and development. Even more than Francis Bacon, the harbinger of the new scientific method, the author of Utopia is a transitional figure; in many ways he is at the end of what we know as the Middle Ages and at the beginning of what we have learned to call the Renaissance, even though any alert student of history will know that the Middle Ages were not all dark and that the Renaissance was not all light.

MORE’S FAMILY RELATIONS AND EARLY LIFE

Thomas More could not make a claim to renowned ancestry, but his family was of good and respectable heritage and accomplishment. Thomas More’s father, John, carried after his name that treasured title of the times, gentleman. J. H. Lupton has included the Latin phrase non celebris, sed honesta for More’s family; More’s own legend for his tomb says the same thing. His family was not famous, but it was from honest stock.

R. W. Chambers, in a chapter of his book on More, a chapter sub-titled “Father and Son,” has made some interesting clarifications about More’s birth. He corrects the usual birthday of Thomas More from 7 February 1478 to 6 February 1478. Thomas More’s father had preserved in Latin, still in that time the “official” language (but soon to be replaced by English), the event of his son’s birth:

Memorandum, that on the Friday next after the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, between two and three in the morning, was born Thomas More, son of John More, gentleman, in the seventeenth year of King Edward, the Fourth after the Conquest of England.

Mr. Chambers shows the problem in the proud father’s memorandum to be an insertion that reads, “to wit, the seventh day of February.” It is not a colossal difference, but the error made by John More, gentleman, when researched, as Mr. Chambers reminds us, reveals that More’s year of birth was the year of the first book printed in England. This was the seventeenth year in the reign of King Edward IV.

Thomas More had three sisters and two brothers: Joan More, born 11 March 1475; Agatha More, born 31 January 1479; John More, born 6 June 1480; Elizabeth More, born 22 September 1482.

John More brought up his family in London, perhaps in Milk Street, Cripplegate, perhaps in St. Giles, Cripplegate.

MORE’S FORMAL SCHOOLING

The leading school in London in More’s time was St. Antony’s. Nicholas Holt was schoolmaster at St. Antony’s, and it was there that More was educated in the disciplined Latin ways of the times. It was at St. Antony’s that Thomas More first learned of the technique of intellectual argument that we know as debate. The technique was to find vivid application in More’s writings: we need only sample Utopia for illustration of the fact. A sixteenth-century writer by the name of John Stow left the following record of the educational procedures at St. Antony’s School, a school noted for its capable scholars:

The arguing of the schoolboys about the principles of Grammar hath been continued even till our time. For I myself in my youth have yearly seen, on the eve of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers [various] Grammar schools repair unto the churchyard of St. Bartholomew, the Priory, in Smithfield, where, upon a bank boarded about under a tree, some one scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered, till he were by some better scholar overcome and put down.

In studying Thomas More - indeed, in studying all of the sixteenth century - we should never forget the importance of eloquence, learned eloquence, in the education of the young man. It is probably true that the limited number of books available in those days when Thomas More was receiving his education was an incentive to the young men to cultivate more intensely their powers of retention. The curriculum of More’s school was designed to produce a young mind that could not only read and write the Latin tongue but also dispute in it.

A PAGE IN THE HOUSE OF JOHN MORTON

It was still the custom in More’s youth for young men to go to live for some years in a household other than their own. Thomas More left St. Antony’s at about age twelve to take up residence with John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury. Morton would later become cardinal. Young Thomas More would serve in his house as page. More was to give praise to Archbishop Morton years later in Utopia, for in the home of and under the eye of that wise man Thomas More was to learn much. The feelings that Morton had about this young scholar were not only favorable but admiring, as is revealed in the following quotation from William Roper, More’s son-in-law, who wrote what has no doubt remained the most popular life of More (however undependable it might be as a chronicle of More’s life because of Roper’s own particular purposes in writing it):

In whose [More’s] wit and towardness the Cardinal much delighting, would often say of him [More] unto the nobles that divers times dined with him: “This child here waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man.”

There is no doubting the extent of More’s sophistication in the affairs of man and the world that came from his residence with Morton. The impress of the conversations that he overheard reverberated through all his later life and work.

A POOR SCHOLAR AT OXFORD

It was probably Canterbury College at Oxford that Thomas More entered after two years of residence with Archbishop Morton. More was about fourteen at the time. The rigors at Oxford were still what they had been throughout the Middle Ages. More was one of many poor scholars. About him it is said that he did not have the money at Oxford to pay for the repair of his shoes without appealing to his father. The day at Oxford began at five in the morning and did not end until ten in the evening. Totaled, there were about fifteen hours in each study day. William Roper reports that More studied both Latin and Greek at Oxford. By the time he left Oxford in 1494, More would have acquired extensive learning in the classics.

THE STUDY OF LAW

After about two years of study at Oxford, More went to London. There he was to be prepared for the life of a barrister. This move to “an Inn of Chancery called New Inn” was not a demotion for More. If he had stayed at Oxford it would have been because he was to prepare for the priesthood, “to take Holy Orders.” London was the place for all young men of the time to go who were intended for accomplishment in the secular world.

More’s progress in his profession by age eighteen was marked enough that he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, and not long thereafter he was called to the Bar.

We would be wrong to think of these years of legal training as being only a tangent in More’s life; his intellectual powers would, of course, continue to strengthen. It may be well for us to be reminded that these days of More’s sojourn in London were days of world exploration and swelling intellectual, commercial, and religious opportunity. Besides the voyage of Columbus to the new world, John Cabot in 1497 left Bristol, England, on a voyage that would discover Newfoundland. During these London years More read in the narratives of Vespucci, lectured in the church of St. Lawrence on Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, and listened to the numerous accounts of world travel and exploration, all influences that were to find direct expression later in Utopia.

A TIME OF SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE

More’s father wanted him to be a lawyer. But after about three years of work as Reader in Law at Furnivall’s Inn, Thomas More began to feel intensely the pressures of a deep indecision that had probably always existed, however single-mindedly he worked as student and scholar. He began a struggle over whether he would remain in the world, marry, and pursue the profession for which his study had fitted him, or enter the priesthood. The struggle would not end until some five years later when he married Jane Colt.

In order that he might have more freedom from the noise and intrusion of practical affairs, More in about 1499 removed himself to the Charterhouse of London. There “he gave himself to devotion and prayer,” and lived “religiously,” to use the words of William Roper, as much the life of the monks as he could. He did not take monastic vows, of course, but he entered otherwise fully into the penance and prayers of the brothers.

Thomas More was to earn his father’s disapproval - even rejection. The rupture is due to the way More spent his time during those Charterhouse years. Many of More’s studious hours were spent in the pursuit of mastery in Greek and in the reading of philosophy, an application of time that did not have - so the father thought - much to do with making him a good and successful lawyer. John More eventually withdrew his support of his son. Although Erasmus informs us that English law and true learning were not that closely related, we cannot forget the importance of the study of law for the life of eminence in English society at that time; a deep study of the law was necessary for a position of any considerable standing.

THE MAKING OF A HUMANIST

Before his twenty-second year Thomas More had been named by Erasmus as belonging to a company of men who were among the most famous scholars of the time: Colet, lecturer at Oxford in Paul’s Epistles; Grocyn, vicar of St. Lawrence Jewry, one of More’s teachers in Greek; Linacre, lecturer in medicine at Oxford and Cambridge; and, of course, Erasmus, perhaps the most famous humanist scholar of them all, whose most passionate ambition was the publication of the New Testament in the original Greek with a Latin paraphrase so that the Christian could move beyond the confinements of the old Vulgate translation of the Bible and be more knowledgeable in his Faith.

We can hardly know Thomas More without knowing his humanist learning. But More’s zealous study of Greek, the language that was to open up to man’s eyes so many areas of knowledge that had been to that time locked in a strange language, did not mean that More turned against the old learning - it is in this way that he was to differ most essentially from the Protestant Reformers, those men who used the results of the new humanistic studies for showing the misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and corruptions in the existing Catholic (Universal) Church. More belonged in his most basic affinity and devotion to that body of humanists who wanted to keep the new learning in the service of the established, existing Catholic Church.

MORE’S SERVICE IN PARLIAMENT

More served in 1504 as a burgess in Parliament, a representative for a borough or a university; we do not know the particulars of his representation. The incident is significant for showing More’s frustration of the King’s purposes when Henry VII sought to exact a heavy grant of money from Parliament. William Roper tells us that Thomas More made

such arguments and reasons there against, that the King’s demands thereby were clean overthrown. So that one of the King’s privy chamber, named Master Tyler, being present thereat, brought word to the King out of the Parliament house that a beardless boy had disappointed all his purpose. Whereupon the King, conceiving great indignation towards him, could not be satisfied until he had some way revenged it. And, forasmuch as he, nothing having, nothing could lose, his Grace devised a causeless quarrel against his father, keeping him in the Tower until he made him pay to him a hundred pounds fine.

The incident was an expression of that resentment of royal tyranny that comes through in a number of More’s Latin epigrams from his youth. Clearly Thomas More was not to follow very closely the paths to success that his father had envisioned for him.

MORE’S MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

Colet had advised More to marry. He shrewdly recognized in the young More a predisposition to family life stronger than yearnings after the life of monastic celibacy. The account that Erasmus wrote to Ulrich von Hutten of More’s devotion to his home testifies to the insight and wisdom of Colet’s counsel. More’s first marriage was formed with Jane Colt, and they made their home at Bucklersbury in London. Despite the objections his young, uneducated bride of seventeen made to his tutoring her, there is every reason to think that their life together was joyous. Four children were born, three daughters and a son: Margaret in 1505, Elizabeth in 1506, Cecily in 1507, John in 1508 or 1509.

More’s marriage to his second wife, Alice Middleton, within the year of Jane Colt More’s death in 1511 should not lead us to think that the loss of his first wife did not bring him sorrow. Our knowledge of More’s life at the time clearly shows that his second marriage was formed primarily out of concern for the best interests of his children. More’s marriage to Alice Middleton, a widow, did not yield to him the happiness that he had realized in his first marriage. In fact she was not sympathetic with More’s concerns and involvements, and she did not possess the mind to realize the problems of the times. She was a good mother, however, and we have every reason to think that More was greatly devoted to her. A very dependable explanation for More’s expedient second marriage is the amount of work he was doing at the time. The most cursory examination of the facts of More’s life in 1511 will reveal an enormous expenditure of hours outside the home. In addition to his own private labor in his profession, at which he was notably prosperous, he had been made Under-Sheriff of London, an office requiring much judicial work; he was Bencher of his Inn, a post that required regular duty; he was at this time also engaged in the writing of his History of Richard III, a work that attacks the immoral means by which the affairs of state are administered. (If Machiavelli’s The Prince had been printed at the time, it would be easy to read More’s Richard III as an attack on that book.)

AN AMBASSADOR FOR MERCHANTS

The foremost of the guilds of London was the Mercers’ Company. More had had a connection with that corporation since 1508. When economic relations between England and Flanders became acutely strained in 1514, his association with the Mercers in addition to his other public responsibilities made him the logical choice for a diplomatic mission to the Low Countries. Since the thirteenth century English wool had been transported to Flanders for processing into cloth. English merchants now faced the disruption of this most important source of income. The cause was the fracture of royal marriage plans - the sister of Henry VIII had been intended for marriage with the son of the Archduke of Austria, Prince Charles (afterward Charles V). When the arrangement was broken, English resentment was expressed in a manner of dubious wisdom, namely the cancellation of the wool trade with Holland and Zealand. The English were as much punished as the reprimanded foreigners. Thomas More was chosen for the corps of diplomats who went to the Low Countries in May of 1515 to heal this economic wound. Needless to say, it was a situation requiring the most deft diplomatic touch.

More’s mission to Flanders is of particular interest to the reader of Utopia, for it was there that More wrote Book II of the work. (Book II was written first; Book I was composed in the spring or summer of 1516.) Besides, the references that one finds at the beginning of the First Book are from the experiences of the mission to Flanders. More tells us at the beginning of Book I that the first meeting with the Flemish deputies took place in Bruges; from there they went to Brussels; having found it impossible to reach agreement on the matters at hand, they next traveled to Antwerp, where More met the exceedingly excellent Peter Giles (or Petrus Aegidius), the town clerk of Antwerp.

Although this was not the first journey to the Continent for More, his eye was probably keener for comparisons and contrasts with his home country on this stay in Bruges and Antwerp than it had been in previous travels. The differences he observed found permanent recording in Utopia, however much the hall of mirrors that Utopia is might elongate or compr...