Life of Thomas More, The 
asked by nutshell on November 29, 2006 7:10 AM
The Life of Thomas More is Peter Ackroyd's biography--from baptism to beheading--of the lawyer who became a saint. More, a noted humanist whose friendship with Erasmus and authorship of Utopia earned him great fame in Europe, succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as Lord Chancellor of London at the time of the English Reformation. In 1535, More was martyred for his refusal to support Henry VIII's divorce and break with Rome. Ackroyd's biography is a masterpiece in several senses. Perhaps most importantly, he corrects the mistaken impression that Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons has given two generations of theater and film audiences: More was not, as Bolt's drama would have us believe, a civil disobedient who put his conscience above the law. Ackroyd explains that "conscience was not for More an individual matter." Instead, it was derived from "the laws of God and of reason." If the greatest justice in this book is analytic, however, its greatest joys are descriptive. Ackroyd brings 16th-century London to life for his readers--an exotic world where all of life is enveloped by the church: "As the young More made his way along the lanes and thoroughfares, there was the continual sound of bells." --Michael Joseph Gross
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Thomas More lived an exemplary life during hard times. His faith in the Catholic Church was put to the test by his king, and though he failed his king and paid the price on the scaffold, he served his God and was rewarded with martyrdom and sainthood. Peter Ackroyd's book is a brilliant and dramatic telling of More's life.
Thomas More was born in London in 1478. He was educated at Oxford where upon his father's insistence he studied law. But he was also interested in theology and thought for a while of becoming a monk. Famously he wore a hair shirt his entire life. Instead of taking vows, however, he took a wife and had four children. He made sure his daughters received as rigorous an education as his sons. (His wife died in 1511 and he married Alice Middleton and adopted her daughter.)
The law was More's lifelong profession where he represented various groups in the courts and helped settle trade disputes abroad. He wrote a history of King Richard III, wherein he portrayed Richard as a cruel, even criminal, ruler. In 1516, he published his most famous book, UTOPIA, which described an ideal community governed totally by reason. When Cardinal Wolsey failed to secure an annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, he was replaced by More as lord chancellor. He worked diligently in this position and became a friend to the king. But troubles were already visible in the horizon.
When Henry, through the Act of Supremacy, declared himself the head of the Church of England, More was in opposition to him: he refused to take an oath of allegiance to Henry that would deny papal supremacy of the church. He was tried, found guilty, and beheaded five days later.
Ackroyd is especially good in relating the dramatic events during these last few years in More's life. He narrates this with the power and skill of a novelist; indeed, it's almost impossible to put the book down during the last 100 pages. Anyone in want of moral uplift need only read these last pages for complete satisfaction. More went to the scaffold bravely, even telling the executioner to stay calm and aim true. He joked after stumbling on the scaffold steps and received help: "When I come down again let me shift for myself as well as I can." Then "he died the King's good servant but God's first," which is his life in a nutshell. Ackroyd writes with authority and tremendous style, but it's the drama that he infuses in his account that truly sets this book apart. Highly recommended.
Thomas More was born in London in 1478. He was educated at Oxford where upon his father's insistence he studied law. But he was also interested in theology and thought for a while of becoming a monk. Famously he wore a hair shirt his entire life. Instead of taking vows, however, he took a wife and had four children. He made sure his daughters received as rigorous an education as his sons. (His wife died in 1511 and he married Alice Middleton and adopted her daughter.)
The law was More's lifelong profession where he represented various groups in the courts and helped settle trade disputes abroad. He wrote a history of King Richard III, wherein he portrayed Richard as a cruel, even criminal, ruler. In 1516, he published his most famous book, UTOPIA, which described an ideal community governed totally by reason. When Cardinal Wolsey failed to secure an annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, he was replaced by More as lord chancellor. He worked diligently in this position and became a friend to the king. But troubles were already visible in the horizon.
When Henry, through the Act of Supremacy, declared himself the head of the Church of England, More was in opposition to him: he refused to take an oath of allegiance to Henry that would deny papal supremacy of the church. He was tried, found guilty, and beheaded five days later.
Ackroyd is especially good in relating the dramatic events during these last few years in More's life. He narrates this with the power and skill of a novelist; indeed, it's almost impossible to put the book down during the last 100 pages. Anyone in want of moral uplift need only read these last pages for complete satisfaction. More went to the scaffold bravely, even telling the executioner to stay calm and aim true. He joked after stumbling on the scaffold steps and received help: "When I come down again let me shift for myself as well as I can." Then "he died the King's good servant but God's first," which is his life in a nutshell. Ackroyd writes with authority and tremendous style, but it's the drama that he infuses in his account that truly sets this book apart. Highly recommended.
reviewed by jan1975 on November 29, 2006 5:50 PM
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The moment I finished Peter Ackroyd's "Life of Thomas More," my strongest impulse was to close it, open it up to the first page again, and start -- immediately -- reading it all over again, word by word, page by page.
I hung on every word of this text. I wanted to understand Thomas More.
I wanted to understand a man whose misogyny was obvious in his many derogatory statements about women. For example, when asked why he liked short women, he said that it was best to choose the lesser of evils.
When a mature man, More married a mere girl and got her pregnant so many times in such rapid succession that she lived only a few short years after marrying him.
More married his second wife, as the saying goes, while still in mourning clothes for his first. He mocked that second wife, Dame Alice, publicly. He wrote texts that associated women exclusively with sex and disgusting bodily functions like vomiting and diarrhea.
And, yet, More was exceptional for his time in educating his beloved daughter, the one great passion of his life, Margaret More Roper.
More persecuted his countrymen who deviated from the Catholic faith, and published vile condemnations of Luther, and eventually, knowingly, and humbly, sacrificed his own life to his own interpretation of that faith.
More rose, through obediance, flattery, and dogged labor, from relatively humble circumstances to being Henry the VIII's chancellor, and a wealthy man, and then tossed away his considerable worldly goods and power to die an ignominious death.
You want to understand a man who could encompass so many passionate apparent contradictions.
And, so, I hung on every word of Ackroyd's detailed and yet economical text.
My attention was amply rewarded. Ackroyd marshalls the kind of authentic, telling details of the Medieval life that More lived that can make an era, and its inhabitants, come alive. Even so, Ackroyd is never wordy. When he has said enough, he simply stops.
Along the way, Ackroyd brings to light the life and impact of a woman he says has been nearly forgotten: Elizabeth Barton, a seeress and nun in Kent. Barton spoke against Henry VIII's divorce of his wife, Catherine of Aragon.
Her voice was considered so important that Henry himself visited her.
For her trouble, Barton and her priestly followers were tortured to death.
As I read, I could not help but reflect: in our own age of "celebrity," we know too many details about non-entities we don't care about at all -- the Britney Spears and Paris Hiltons enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame. We can view film footage of their most intimate moments on the internet; hear their every thought in televised interviews.
Thomas More lived five hundred years ago. We can't ask him to reconcile for us his hateful diatribes against women and his love of Margaret, his ant-like accumulation of worldly goods and his sacrifice for his beliefs.
The records just don't exist.
And, yet ... even though the More in these pages has to remain something of a cypher, even though More, as was the norm in his time, wrote with extreme caution in ambiguous, tradition-bound, unspontaneous and sometimes flowery prose, I felt I had an encounter, through Ackroyd's book, with a remarkable human being. I was in tears throughout the final passages leading up to More's death.
A final word: I am a fan of "A Man for all Seasons." Again and again, reviewers pit Ackroyd's book against the Robert Bolt play and subsequent movie.
One does not necessarily cancel out the other...both the film and this book work, for me, from what I know about More, as explorations of his life and impact, and his famous final choice.
I never saw Paul Scofield's More as a Thoreau-like figure, as some reviewers have said; he was not depicted as living in a house in the woods, after all, and he did base his decision on adherence to a greater principle than personal conscience, i.e., the law, just as Ackroyd's More does.
So, yes, do see the movie, and do read this book.
I hung on every word of this text. I wanted to understand Thomas More.
I wanted to understand a man whose misogyny was obvious in his many derogatory statements about women. For example, when asked why he liked short women, he said that it was best to choose the lesser of evils.
When a mature man, More married a mere girl and got her pregnant so many times in such rapid succession that she lived only a few short years after marrying him.
More married his second wife, as the saying goes, while still in mourning clothes for his first. He mocked that second wife, Dame Alice, publicly. He wrote texts that associated women exclusively with sex and disgusting bodily functions like vomiting and diarrhea.
And, yet, More was exceptional for his time in educating his beloved daughter, the one great passion of his life, Margaret More Roper.
More persecuted his countrymen who deviated from the Catholic faith, and published vile condemnations of Luther, and eventually, knowingly, and humbly, sacrificed his own life to his own interpretation of that faith.
More rose, through obediance, flattery, and dogged labor, from relatively humble circumstances to being Henry the VIII's chancellor, and a wealthy man, and then tossed away his considerable worldly goods and power to die an ignominious death.
You want to understand a man who could encompass so many passionate apparent contradictions.
And, so, I hung on every word of Ackroyd's detailed and yet economical text.
My attention was amply rewarded. Ackroyd marshalls the kind of authentic, telling details of the Medieval life that More lived that can make an era, and its inhabitants, come alive. Even so, Ackroyd is never wordy. When he has said enough, he simply stops.
Along the way, Ackroyd brings to light the life and impact of a woman he says has been nearly forgotten: Elizabeth Barton, a seeress and nun in Kent. Barton spoke against Henry VIII's divorce of his wife, Catherine of Aragon.
Her voice was considered so important that Henry himself visited her.
For her trouble, Barton and her priestly followers were tortured to death.
As I read, I could not help but reflect: in our own age of "celebrity," we know too many details about non-entities we don't care about at all -- the Britney Spears and Paris Hiltons enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame. We can view film footage of their most intimate moments on the internet; hear their every thought in televised interviews.
Thomas More lived five hundred years ago. We can't ask him to reconcile for us his hateful diatribes against women and his love of Margaret, his ant-like accumulation of worldly goods and his sacrifice for his beliefs.
The records just don't exist.
And, yet ... even though the More in these pages has to remain something of a cypher, even though More, as was the norm in his time, wrote with extreme caution in ambiguous, tradition-bound, unspontaneous and sometimes flowery prose, I felt I had an encounter, through Ackroyd's book, with a remarkable human being. I was in tears throughout the final passages leading up to More's death.
A final word: I am a fan of "A Man for all Seasons." Again and again, reviewers pit Ackroyd's book against the Robert Bolt play and subsequent movie.
One does not necessarily cancel out the other...both the film and this book work, for me, from what I know about More, as explorations of his life and impact, and his famous final choice.
I never saw Paul Scofield's More as a Thoreau-like figure, as some reviewers have said; he was not depicted as living in a house in the woods, after all, and he did base his decision on adherence to a greater principle than personal conscience, i.e., the law, just as Ackroyd's More does.
So, yes, do see the movie, and do read this book.
reviewed by axelrose on November 29, 2006 7:28 PM
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Gosh, golly gee, crikey - the superlatives could go on all day. This is a superb, densely textured biography. Ackroyd revels in the complex psychology and sociology of his subject, e.g., his devotion to duty, his father fixation, etc. He also places Thomas More firmly in the London of his time and in his historical moment - the Reformation - especially through More's own writings.
It has been remarked that the chapters amount to a series of vignettes. That's true, and the amount of knowledge retailed in each glimpse of More and his world is staggering.
To give but a few examples:
Chap. 3 - St. Anthony's Pigs: we follow young More through the streets of Tudor London to his school and get insight into the Renaissance education system.
Ch 4 - Cough Not, Nor Spit: Thomas' early career as a page to Archbishop (of Canterbury) Morton, Henry VII's notorious "enforcer". This relationship illuminates More's later dealings with Cardinal Wolsey.
Ch 8 - We Talk Of Letters: sketches of Grocyn, Linacre, Lily, Colet, More - the "London humanists", or More's intellectual circle.
And so on. The book continues in the same fascinating vein. It is a hard slog to read, and I'm sorry that Peter Ackroyd did not give a glossary of A) Latin and Greek expressions, and B) even some of his more obscure English words. I also regret that there's no map to illustrate Ackroyd's loving depiction of the London where More learned, lived, worked and suffered.
More's story is well known and often told. Ackroyd has given a fully-rounded portrayal of the man, his background, career, family and friends.
What a pleasure to read.
It has been remarked that the chapters amount to a series of vignettes. That's true, and the amount of knowledge retailed in each glimpse of More and his world is staggering.
To give but a few examples:
Chap. 3 - St. Anthony's Pigs: we follow young More through the streets of Tudor London to his school and get insight into the Renaissance education system.
Ch 4 - Cough Not, Nor Spit: Thomas' early career as a page to Archbishop (of Canterbury) Morton, Henry VII's notorious "enforcer". This relationship illuminates More's later dealings with Cardinal Wolsey.
Ch 8 - We Talk Of Letters: sketches of Grocyn, Linacre, Lily, Colet, More - the "London humanists", or More's intellectual circle.
And so on. The book continues in the same fascinating vein. It is a hard slog to read, and I'm sorry that Peter Ackroyd did not give a glossary of A) Latin and Greek expressions, and B) even some of his more obscure English words. I also regret that there's no map to illustrate Ackroyd's loving depiction of the London where More learned, lived, worked and suffered.
More's story is well known and often told. Ackroyd has given a fully-rounded portrayal of the man, his background, career, family and friends.
What a pleasure to read.
reviewed by reviewer on November 29, 2006 7:30 PM