``Where
the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be;
even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' Ignatius of
Antioch, 1st c. A.D
Feast of St. Thomas More
St. Thomas More
was born on February 7, 1478, at the north end of Milk Street in London
England -- the site of a milk market in medieval times. He was the son
of Sir John More -- a barrister and, later, a judge -- and his wife
Agnes, who had six children altogether. When he was 13, after receiving
a basic education at St. Anthony's School in Threadneedle, he went to
work as a page for the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was also
Lord Chancellor. The man saw that Thomas was extremely bright, so
arranged to have him educated at Oxford. There, he studied Greek,
Latin, French, history, mathematics, and also learned to play the viol
and flute.
After a few years, he returned to London to study the law, and during
this time, became friends with the Dutch priest and theologian,
Erasmus, who referred to Thomas as "a man for all seasons" and
described him in this way:
To begin then
with what is least known to you, in stature he is not tall, though not
remarkably short. His limbs are formed with such perfect symmetry as to
leave nothing to be desired. His complexion is white, his face rather
than pale and though by no means ruddy, a faint flush of pink appears
beneath the whiteness of his skin. His hair is dark brown or brownish
black. The eyes are grayish blue, with some spots, a kind which
betokens singular talent, and among the English is considered
attractive, whereas Germans generally prefer black. It is said that
none are so free of vice. His countenance is in harmony with his
character, being always expressive of an amiable joyousness, and even
an incipient laughter and, to speak candidly, it is better framed for
gladness than for gravity or dignity, though without any approach to
folly or buffoonery. The right shoulder is a little higher than the
left, especially when he walks. This is not a defect of birth, but the
result of habit such as we often contract. In the rest of his person
there is nothing to offend . . .He seems born and framed for
friendship, and is a most faithful and enduring friend . . .When he
finds any sincere and according to his heart, he so delights in their
society and conversation as to place in it the principal charm of life
. . .In a word, if you want a perfect model of friendship, you will
find it in no one better than in More . . .In human affairs there is
nothing from which he does not extract enjoyment, even from things that
are most serious. If he converses with the learned and judicious, he
delights in their talent, if with the ignorant and foolish, he enjoys
their stupidity. He is not even offended by professional jesters. With
a wonderful dexterity he accommodates himself to every disposition. As
a rule, in talking with women, even with his own wife, he is full of
jokes and banter. No one is less led by the opinions of the crowd, yet
no one departs less from common sense...
Also during this time, Thomas lived near a Carthusian monastery and was
deeply
influenced by their practices, taking up various penances, such as the
wearing
of a hair shirt, for himself. He very much considered joining their
Order with the goal of becoming a priest, but, as Erasmus
explained later, "The one thing that prevented him from giving himself
to that kind of life was that he could not shake off the desire of the
married state. He chose, therefore, to be a chaste husband rather than
an impure priest."
So, he followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a lawyer, and, in
1505, he married the daughter of the Earl of Essex, a woman named
Joanna "Jane" Colt. They went on to have four children --
Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. Joanna died in 1511, and he
quickly married Alice Middleton, who already had a daughter of her own.
He and Alice then adopted two more children, Margaret and Anne.
St.
Thomas More, his family, and pets (note the pet monkey at the bottom
right). Click to enlarge.
He was a very kind and jovial father, always making jokes and making
music. He also educated his daughters in the same way he educated his
son.
In the meanwhile, his fame as a lawyer grew. In 1510, he was made the
Under-Sheriff of London, and by 1516, was made a member of King Henry
VIII's Privy Council. With the King, he attended the historic "Field of
the Cloth of Gold" meeting with Francis I in 1520, and was knighted the
next year, becoming Sir Thomas More. Then, in 1523, he became the
Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1529, he was appointed as
Chancellor of England, a position that called upon him to fight against
the Protestant heresies which were then raging in Europe. He enjoyed
the King's favor so much that His Highness would even, without
invitation, drop by his house -- now a mansion in Chelsea, near the
Thames -- for supper.
But all Hell would soon break loose: King Henry -- once so great a
Catholic that he was deemed "Defender of the Faith" by Pope Leo X --
fell in love. He appealed to Pope Clement VII for an annulment of his
marriage to his wife, the saintly Catherine of Aragon, so he could
marry Anne Boleyn, one of her ladies-in-waiting. That Catherine hadn't
borne Henry a son who lived longer than a few months motivated him even
further. But the Pope refused.
So, in 1531, the King issued a decree requiring priests to take an oath
acknowleding him as the Supreme Head of the Church of England lest they
be accused of commiting the crime of praemunire -- that is, the crime
of acknowledging a foreign jurisdiction, especially that of the Pope,
over the jurisdiction of the English monarchy. Many took that oath
after the words "as far as the law of Christ allows" were added;
others, like Cardinal John Fisher, refused. And because of all this,
Sir Thomas More resigned as Chancellor. And when Henry civilly married
Anne, More refused to attend her coronation.
After that snub, Henry set out to punish him, and there followed a slew
of false accusations, trumped-up charges, and whatever other means
could be used to get rid of him, one of them being looking askance at
his association with Elizabeth Barton, a woman known as "the Holy Maid
of Kent." Barton was a young, sickly domestic servant who, at the age
of 19, began to have visions and later became a Benedictine nun. She
was examined by clerics, including the highest cleric in England,
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, and St. John Fisher. She also met with King
Henry VIII himself. By all she was found to be orthodox, and accurate
in her predictions. But then came "the Anne Boleyn situtaion," and when
Elizabeth Barton spoke out against it all, she was hanged. After her
death, she was beheaded, and her head was put on a spike on London
Bridge to serve as a warning to others who'd dare to disagree with
Henry VIII's doings.
A week before Barton's death, More was asked to swear his allegiance to
the parliamentary Act of Succession. But he could only go so far,
affirming parliament's right to declare Anne Boleyn the Queen of
England, but denying anyone's right to affirm the validity of her
"marriage" to Henry, or to affirm the English King as the Supreme Head
of the Church of England. He did not speak out against the King, but
refused to positively assent to what he knew was wrong.
Nonetheless, four days later, he was imprisoned for treason in the
Tower of London.
He was put on trial in July (one of the judges was Anne Boleyn's
uncle), found guilty, and taken to Tower Hill on July 6, 1535 to be put
to death. He didn't lose his good humor, not even at the point of
death; he jokingly asked his executioner to help him up the scaffold,
but reassured him that he would find his own way down. Then he got
serious and told him, "I die the King's good servant, and
God's first." He prayed the Miserere
(Psalm 50), forgave his
executioner, and was beheaded. His head, too, was displayed on
London Bridge -- replacing on the spike the head of St. John Fisher,
the priest who'd been executed a few weeks earlier, on June 22.
His headless body was interred without ceremony in the Tower of
London's St. Peter ad Vincula chapel. His head was eventually rescued
by his daughter
and can now be venerated at St. Dunstan's Church in Canterbury -- an
Anglican parish, incredibly enough. His hair shirt can be venerated at
the Benedictine Buckfast Abbey, near Buckfastleigh in Devon, England
Just a year later, Anne Boleyn would follow St. Thomas More to the
executioner's block after Henry grew bored with her and frustrated
that, like his first wife, she, too, did not produce for him a male
heir. She was beheaded after being falsely charged with treason,
incest, and adultery.
St. Thomas More is the patron of lawyers, statesmen, politicians, and
adopted children.
He is the writer of many treatises against heresy (especially those of
Tyndale and Luther), letters, poems, and other works, including the
novel "Utopia" -- a bit of satire (the title means "Nowhere") about an
ideal society that was
later taken seriously by socialists and Communists -- a strange twist
of fate that led to his name being inscribed on the Alexander Garden
Obelisk -- "Monument obelisk of outstanding thinkers and
personalities of the struggle for the liberation of workers" -- just
outside the Kremlin in 1918. Know that while his feast is
traditionally kept on July 9, it is celebrated on June 22 in the Novus
Ordo (the same date as the Feast of St. John Fisher on the Novus Ordo
calendar), and it's on that latter date that most celebrations of
Thomas
More's life occur.
Customs
Some Catholics may prepare for this feast by praying the Novena to St. Thomas More starting
on June 30 and ending on July 8, the eve of this feast. For the feast
itself, there is the Litany of St.
Thomas More, and the following prayers -- the first for all
Catholics, the second especially for attorneys:
St. Thomas, your
fidelity to the truth and your courage left behind a shining example
for all to see. Though your death appeared to be a defeat at the time,
your love of God and love for the king who killed you live on. Please
pray for me, that I will imitate your courage and fidelity to Christ,
going so far as to lay down my life, in every way that I am called, for
the glory of God and the salvation of others. Amen.
A Lawyer's Prayer
Thomas More, counsellor of law and statesman of integrity,
merry martyr and most human of saints: pray that, for the glory of God
and in the pursuit of His justice, I may be trustworthy with
confidences, keen in study, accurate in analysis, correct in
conclusion, able in argument, loyal to clients, honest with all,
courteous to adversaries, ever attentive to conscience. Sit with me at
my desk and listen with me to my clients’ tales. Read with me in my
library and stand always beside me so that today I shall not, to win a
point, lose my soul.
Pray that my family may find in me what yours found in you:
friendship and courage, cheerfulness and charity, diligence in duties,
counsel in adversity, patience in pain -- their good servant, and God’s
first. Amen
And I must present St. Thomas More's own prayer, written in the margins
of his prayer book while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Psalm on Detachment
by St. Thomas
More
Give me Thy grace, good Lord:
To set the world at nought;
To set my mind fast upon Thee,
And not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths;
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company;
Little and little utterly to cast off the world,
And rid my mind of all the business thereof;
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly phantasies may be to
me displeasant;
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for His help;
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labor to love Him;
To know mine own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of
God;
To bewail my sins passed,
For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity;
Gladly to bear my purgatory here,
To be joyful of tribulations;
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,
To bear the cross with Christ;
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at
hand;
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell;
To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the passion that Christ
suffered for me;
For His benefits uncessantly to give Him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost;
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness;
Recreations not necessary – to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all,
to set the loss
at right nought for the winning of Christ;
To think my most enemies my best friends,
For the brethren of Joseph could never have done him
so much good
with their love and favor as they did him with their
malice and hatred.
These minds are more to be desired of every man
than all the treasure of all the princes and kings,
Christian and heathen, were it gathered and
laid together all upon one heap.
There are no traditional foods for the day that I know of, but for
entertainment's sake, there is a wonderful, Best Picture Oscar-winning
movie about our Saint: A Man for All Seasons
(1966), starring Paul Scofield, who also won an Academy Award for his
role as
St. Thomas More. The movie is based on a play by Robert Bolt, which you
can read here in pdf format: A Man for All Seasons
(pdf). For a movie depicting the events that led up to St. Thomas
More's murder, you can watch as a prequel "Anne of the Thousand Days"
starring
Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn, and Richard Burton as Henry VIII
(note, though, that Queen Catherin of Aragon was ginger-haired, not
brunette, and she was forbidden to see her daughter, Mary, after Anne
Boleyn became Queen. Also, the climactic meeting between Henry and Anne
in the
Tower of London never took place).
Also from the secular world comes this song by Al Stewart, singer of
"The Year of the Cat" -- a song
about St. Thomas More called, of course, "A Man for All Seasons," which
can be found on his "Time Passages" album (note that the song
incorrectly refers to "Henry Plantagenet" rather than to "Henry
Tudor"). Its chorus challenges the
listener to consider what he would do in More's position:
What if you
reached the age of reason
Only to find there was no reprieve
Would you still be a man for all seasons?
Or would you just disbelieve?
Something important to do with your children is teach them about the
importance of the rule of law, something about which St. Thomas More
was most passionate. The "A Man for All Seasons" script includes this
famous exchange, which, if not a strictly accurate historical quote, is
historical in spirit:
WILLIAM ROPER:
So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
SIR THOMAS MORE: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the
law to get after the Devil?
ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil
turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being
flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast,
Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the
man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds
that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my
own safety’s sake!
Get them to think of why laws (rules) are important by asking them to
imagine a game without rules -- or, better, play one. Have them make up
a new game -- first with no rules, then adding rules as they go, then
adding too many rules. Ask them which game was the most fun and makes
the most sense. You could also get them to consider what sorts of laws
they would institute if they were monarchs or legislators. You could
also have some fun teaching your children about the law by holding a
mock
trial, with your children and their friends as attorneys, witnesses,
judge, etc. This Mock Trial of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears (pdf) published by the American Bar
Association might give you some ideas -- and here is the story of Goldilocks
and the Three Bears (pdf) that you can use first.
Finally, you should also know that many
different legal groups have adopted St. Thomas More as their patron,
and many of them organize "Red Masses" in his honor. A "Red Mass" is a
Mass offered for the good of all those who work in the legal
profession. They're an ancient tradition, first begun in the Middle
Ages -- in Paris, in 1245. Vestments for Red Masses are red, as they
are on the Feast of the Pentecost, hence the name of the liturgy. (For
information's sake, Blue Masses are a newer tradition, begun in 1934
and offered on or around the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel -- the
patron
of police officers -- and on May 15 in the United States. They are
Masses offered for the good of those who work in emergency services --
e.g.,
policemen, firemen, etc.)
Both of these readings come from "The fame of Blessed Thomas More :
being addresses delivered in his honour in Chelsea, July 1929"
A Turning Point in History
by G. K.
Chesterton
Blessed Thomas More is more important at this moment than at any moment
since his death, even perhaps the great moment of his dying; but he is
not quite so important as he will be in about a hundred years time. He
may come to be counted the greatest Englishman, or at least the
greatest historical character in English history. For he was above all
things historic; he represented at once a type, a turning point and an
ultimate destiny. If there had not happened to be that particular man
at that particular moment, the whole of history would have been
different.
We might put the point shortly by saying that the best friend of the
Renaissance was killed as the worst enemy of the Reformation. More was
a humanist, not only in the sense in which many crabbed and pedantic
scholars earned that name by their real services to Greek and Latin
scholarship, but in the sense that his scholarship was really both
human and humane. He had in him, at that relatively early date, all
that was best in Shakespeare and Cervantes and Rabelais; he had not
only humour but fantasy. He was the founder of all the Utopias; but he
used Utopia as what it really is, a playground. His Utopia was partly a
joke; but since his time Utopians have seldom seen the joke. He was
even famous for taking things lightly; he talked, I believe, about
whipping children with peacock’s feathers; and there came to be a
legend that he died laughing. We have to realise him as a man thus full
of the Renaissance before we come with a sort of shock to the reality
of his more serious side.
The great Humanist was above all a Superhumanist. He was a mystic and a
martyr; and martyrdom is perhaps the one thing that deserves the cant
phrase of practical mysticism. But he was not, like so many mystics of
his time, one who lost his common sense in face of the mysteries. And
it will remain a permanent and determining fact, a hinge of history,
that he saw, in that first hour of madness, that Rome and Reason are
one. He saw at the very beginning, what so many have now only begun to
see at the end: that the real hopes of learning and liberty lay in
preserving the Roman unity of Europe and the ancient Christian loyalty
for which he died.
The Witness to Abstract Truth
by Hillaire
Belloc
I come to speak to you today upon the Blessed Thomas More, and I come
to speak of him under one aspect alone; for what one man can say in the
few brief moments of a public address should not, upon such a subject,
touch more than one aspect, lest his audience be confused. But that
aspect is surely the chief one in connection with such a name.
I come to speak to you of the nature of his sacrifice; not of his life,
its scholarship, its humour, its worldly greatness, his voluntary
decline therefrom; the affection which he gave and received; the
multiple humanity which has endeared him to those who least understand
his last and tremendous act. For we must all remember that it has
become the fashion among those who least comprehend or least love the
Catholic Church to make certain exceptions in her favour, inverted
scapegoats, as it were, and to cite in history one or two Catholics out
of the great host of martyrs and confessors and doctors and plain
saints, let alone of common Catholic men and women, whom they deign to
praise; there is St. Francis of Assisi, because he was fond of animals;
there is (for some of them) St. Bernard, because he stopped a riot
against money-lenders; and there is the Blessed Thomas More -- because
when you are praising Cranmer, Henry his master, and, for all I know,
Thomas Cromwell himself, you must have some counterweight in order to
look liberal and broadminded. And the Blessed Thomas More is there
ready to hand.
Now all that, I confess, I despise as it deserves to be despised; nor
am I here to speak of those other excellencies in him which we
deservedly praise, and for the right motives -- his love of justice and
of the poor, his contempt of wealth, his self-discipline in life, his
merry bearing of the burden of this world -- but only the fashion in
which he left it.
What I am here today to emphasise is this: the Blessed Thomas More died
in the support of one particular isolated truth, because it was the
truth, and for no other reason. He did not make a sacrifice of this or
that -- he had made plenty of sacrifices -- he did not give up, as
heroic men give up around us day by day, position and income and the
comfort of those who are dearest to them for the general Faith. He gave
up life itself, deliberately; he accepted a violent death as of a
criminal, not even for the Faith as a whole, but on one particular
small point of doctrine -- to wit, the supremacy of the See of Peter.
Now let me discuss the magnitude of this act. It is of sufficient
greatness that it was performed for one isolated point of truth. But
there was much more. It was a sacrifice not supported.
This it is that I desire to affirm, to reaffirm, to repeat, and to
repeat again. This is that to which I desire to bear witness and which,
had I the power, I would make prominent in every history. Not that this
unique man gave up much for his conscience; that, to the honour of
mankind, myriads have done and will do. Not even that he gave up life
itself in that cause. Not even that he gave it up for one detached
article out of so many. But rather that he found it in him so to act
without support: a triumph of the will.
Now consider how men are supported in their rare heroisms.
There is in the first place the support of those who, weaker than the
martyr himself, wish him well; those for whom he is a symbol, and who
turn to him secretly as a flag-bearer, and by whom they hope perhaps to
be later reconciled with that which they know to be the truth, but
which they have not the courage to proclaim. He was not supported by an
ambient fashion; he was not even supported, properly speaking, by a
tradition, and -- the most awful thing of all -- he was not supported
from within by anything more than that supreme instrument of action,
the Catholic Will.
Newman said very well that we all die alone; but this is to die alone
indeed! To allow oneself to be killed, of one’s own choice, in full
life, rather than to pay the price of yielding upon one dry, narrow
intellectual point; having to applaud one and to support one and to
sustain one; neither enthusiasm within nor the sense of agreement from
others without.
Let me put before you those two points. They are essential to an
understanding of the scale upon which the martyr acted.
First, I say, he was not supported from within.
He had no enthusiasm for the papacy; he had fashioned for himself no
tradition of defending it; no habit, no formed body of argument and
action in its favour. He did not defend the papacy (in a day when its
rights were everywhere doubted) because it was second nature to him. No
: just the other way.
All his life he had been -- as indeed was every man of intelligence,
judgment and heart, in the turning point between the Middle Ages and
the Modern -- a reformer in the full sense of that word. He had been in
his youth the English Erasmus, denouncing with contempt, as did a
thousand others, not only the manifold and crying abuses into which
clerical organisation had fallen, but many things which were not abuses
at all, rather honest devotions, if a little exaggerated. His
enthusiasm, the flame of his thought, his memories of sharp emotion in
those affairs were all in tune with that flame of reforming zeal, which
can so easily in such a moment be deflected into rebellion against the
unity of Christendom. About this particular point of Papal Supremacy he
had never worried. He had come out of a generation profoundly shaken in
the matter; its intellectuals, contemptuous of the state into which the
See of Rome had fallen, full of memories of the Schism and of the
Councils, far from admiring the temporal pomp, and what was worse, the
mechanical revenues of the Papal Court. Had Thomas More’s death been a
death for the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar,
for the Most Holy Mother of God, for the golden light which is thrown
across the earth by the movement of the wings of the Faith, it would
have been quite another matter. He would have had ample support from
within. His affections would have been engaged, and the whole man would
have been at work. So has it been with great troops of martyrs. But not
with him.
He had in this matter of the Supremacy closely examined the thing, as
one might any other historical problem: “reading it up” and thinking
out the pros and cons. And at one moment -- a man of very grave
reading, an excellent lawyer, with a brain like a razor for separating
one category from another -- he had hesitated whether the supremacy of
the Pope over Christendom were man-made or not. He had inclined to
think it a man, made thing. When he had thrashed the whole thing out
fully and thoroughly, he came to his conclusion, as might a judge,
without “affection,” without any particular movement of the heart. The
Supremacy of Peter and of his successors (he decided) was of divine
origin.
So far so good. That one point being isolated -- intellectual, not
moral, in no way attached to the heart, nothing that could inflame a
man -- he kept it carefully segregated and clear. He was willing to
admit the succession of Anne’s child; to take oaths of loyalty of any
degree and in any respect, save in that one point of the Supremacy. And
did he run out to defend it with warmth? Far from it! He kept it in the
background; he tried not to answer upon it; he followed the debates as
might a counsel for the defence, making his points, reserving action.
All that is very cold and very disappointing. But he died -- which is
more than you and I would have done. And he died merrily.
Nor was this extraordinary man supported from without. I am not sure
that such support is not of even greater value (though I admit that the
idea is paradoxical) than support from within.
Many a man and woman, I fancy, have died martyrs or have suffered some
lesser inconvenience after having within their own hearts and
intelligences suffered grievous assaults against the Faith, but
consoled by the ambient atmosphere of Christendom. “I may through my
own fault and negligence have lost my firm hold upon the Faith, but it
is my duty to support others who are in a better case. They all agree.
They regard me as their standard bearer; and I will not yield.” Such
martyrs, I fancy, will have a very high place; for to serve the Faith
by an act of will is greater than to serve it without interruption from
any human frailty. But at any rate Thomas More was not of this sort. He
was not supported from without.
After four hundred years we have today forgotten how the matter looked
to the men of the early sixteenth century. The average Englishman had
little concern with the quarrel between the Crown and Rome. It did not
touch his life. The Mass went on just the same and all the splendour of
religion; the monasteries were still in being everywhere, there was no
interruption whatsoever. Most of the great bodies -- all the bishops
except Fisher -- had yielded. They had not yielded with great
reluctance, but as a matter of course. Here and there had been
protests, and two particular monastic bodies had burst, as it were,
into flame. But that was exceptional. To the ordinary man of that day,
anyone, especially a highly placed official, who stood out against the
King’s policy was a crank.
We must firmly seize that or we do not understand the period at all.
Kings had quarrelled with Popes over and over again. In the matter of
doctrine and practice Henry was particularly devout, and strenuously
Catholic. Kings had been reconciled with Popes over and over again. For
generations the King of England had in practice been absolute master of
his realm, and in ninetynine cases out of a hundred papal action was
but a formality. It would be bad enough to make oneself unpopular and
to stand out and to look a fool in defence of one particular point of
definition -- which, after all, might have no meaning a few years
hence, when Anne Boleyn should be dead, perhaps, and the two parties to
the quarrel reconciled again. That was the point of view (among other
millions) of the Blessed Thomas More’s wife, and he was very much what
is called a family man, tolerant of nagging. That was the point of view
of pretty well all his friends. And it was the more difficult to resist
because they loved him and desired to save him. Had they united in
chorus to say, “This fine strong man is standing out; would we were of
the same metal!” it would have been a support. But that was not their
attitude at all. Their attitude was rather, “This imaginative and
highly-strung man, who has done more than one silly thing in his time,
who threw away his great position as Chancellor and who in his youth
published a Socialist sort of a book, is doing it again! You never know
what he will do next! Really, he is such a good fellow that somebody
ought to argue him out of the nonsense!”
No. He was not supported from without.
Let me end by saying that he was not to be supported by posterity.
There are men who can repose under the strain of an ordeal in the
conviction that their suffering is a seed for the future. I will
confess to the superstition that men like More have, in my judgment,
some confused vision of the future. If he had, he must have known that
his sacrifice was apparently in vain. Gould he return to this earth
to-day (and I am sure that it must be the least of his desires !) he
would not find that he had sown a seed. He would not find -- I do not
say that he had saved the Faith in this country -- even that the Faith
had retained such a hold on English life as a reasonable man might have
hoped for in 1535. Should the Blessed Thomas More return to life in
this, his own country, today he would find the Faith an alien thing and
himself praised as what I have called a “scapegoat the other way
round,” a “scapegoat a rebours ,” an exception which must be praised in
order to give the more elbow room for praising the vile spirits who
served the court. At all this he would smile, being a man of humour; or
more probably does now smile. At any rate he has not the support of
posterity.
If ever a man died alone, he died alone.
And the moral is clear. It is our business to give up all for whatever
is truth, whether it appeals to our emo¬ tion or not; whether we have
others with us or not; whether our mood concurs or repels. The
intelligence is absolute in its own sphere. Intelligence commands us to
accept the truth, and for the truth a man must lay down his life.
Let all those, therefore, who in defining the truth, though it be but
in one corner and with regard to one arid thing, to them seeming dead,
invoke the patronage of this very national Englishman. His fun, his
courage, his scholarship will be of advantage to them; so also will his
sanctity -- if in such days as these I may speak of such a quality.
