Dr. A. Waller Hastings
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

 
 
 

Biographical Background
Historical Background 
Discussion Questions
Background Information for
Thomas More's Utopia




         

Biographical Background to the Utopia

         Thomas More was the son of a prominent London attorney and judge.  After preliminary education at St. Andrews public school (what we would call a private school), he became a page at age 13 in the household of John Morton, Archbishop of Canter-bury.  With Morton’s sponsorship, he was then sent to Oxford, where he studied Greek and Latin literature.
            In 1494, More returned to London to study law and was admitted to the bar several years later.  However, he remained undecided about his vocation, torn between the public life of a lawyer (and eventually a politician) and the private, meditative life of the monastery.  Although he finally settled on a career of public service, he continued through his life to be attracted toward the contemplative life and practiced such penitential acts as the wearing of a hair shirt under his outer garments.
           At Oxford, More was influenced by the first generation of English humanists, scholars whose embrace of classical learning was one of the first signs that the Renaissance had reached Britain.  By the end of the 15th century, More was recognized as one of the greatest scholars of his time, counting among his friends English humanists like John Colet and Hugh Latimer, as well as the great Dutch humanist, Erasmus.   More and Erasmus first met when the latter visited London in 1499; they quickly became close friends, and Erasmus wrote part of his most famous work, The Praise of Folly, while a guest in More’s home.  It was Erasmus who arranged an introduction between More and Peter Gilles, another prominent humanist who appears in Utopia.
          More married in around 1504.  When his first wife died, leaving left him with four small children to care for, he remarried within a month to “the best woman he knew,” Alice Middleton, who was somewhat older than him but an excellent housewife.  His marital experience, and the apparent functionalist view he had of marriage, may have influenced his depiction of family structures in Utopia.
          More first entered Parliament in 1504, where he angered King Henry VII by opposing some of the king’s efforts to raise tax revenues.  As he would later with Henry’s son, More was careful not to overstep the line; by avoiding direct mention of the king by name, he may have saved his own life.  However, Henry took out his anger by imprisoning More’s father until a fine was paid.
          In 1515, More was appointed to a delegation negotiating with the Low Countries (present-day Holland and Belgium).  During a prolonged break in negotiations, More visited Peter Gilles at Antwerp, where Gilles was the town clerk.  The two men, predisposed to like each other by their mutual friend Erasmus, spent considerable time discussing contemporary social and political problems.  During this visit, More wrote a preliminary account of an imaginary kingdom, which would become Book II of Utopia.
         Book I, which is set against the factual background of More’s  visit to Gilles, was written over the course of the next year and focuses more on the diagnosis of Europe's social problems.  More was also personally preoccupied during the writing of Book I with the decision whether or not to take a post in Henry VIII’s government; his internal debate forms the basis for his discussion with Raphael Hythloday (Nonsenso in the Penguin translation) over the appropriateness of serving as an advisor to kings.
         As More had already learned in his dispute with Henry VII, it didn’t pay to be too explicit when criticizing the English monarchy.  So Utopia’s form, in which all of the truly revolutionary ideas are put into the mouth of a fictional character (the only fictional character in Book I) and in which the ideal society is situated in an unknown country, acted to protect More from political attack as much as to entertain the reader.  (The names, which were all derived from Greek words in the original, were similarly meant to be humorous while at the same time driving home the imaginary character of the land.)
         In 1518, he was appointed to the Privy Council by Henry VIII, who had observed his abilities and valued More’s contributions, despite More's dispute with Henry’s father.  Henry knighted More three years later, and employed him in a variety of tasks, most notably as his private secretary and, later, as Lord Chancellor of England. More’s royal connection led to wealth and prominence, but also, ultimately, to his death (the story of More’s struggle with the king and his conscience is told in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons).
         More acted as a ghostwriter for Henry in an attack on Luther, whose Ninety-Five Theses were published the year after Utopia, initiating the Protestant Reformation.  At this time, Henry was still connected to the Catholic church, and was even named “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X in 1521.  However, when Henry sought to divorce his first wife, Katherine of Aragon (on grounds that she had failed to provide him with a male heir), he had a falling-out with Rome.  The Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, was unsuccessful in persuading the Pope to grant a decree of divorce.  More himself did not support the king’s action, but declined to openly rebuke his sovereign, and when Wolsey was removed from office in 1529, More was named his successor – the first layman named to the post, which was roughly equivalent to today’s Prime Minister. As Chancellor, More made the judicial system more efficient and also actively prosecuted “errors which he considered seditious and destructive of both state and church.”
         Henry ultimately broke with Rome so as to divorce Katherine and married Anne Boleyn in 1533, by which point More had already resigned his government position as an act of conscience.  (He had tried once to submit his resignation, but Henry refused to accept it; when he did so again in 1532, the king, furious at his inability to break More, replaced him with a more pliable official.  His tenure in the Chancellor’s office was just under three years.)  Continued pressure from the king failed to budge More from his opposition, although the cautious More carefully refrained from saying anything that might be deemed treasonous.
         By 1534, however, even silence was insufficient protection from the king’s wrath; More refused to swear to the Act of Succession, by which any children born to Anne were recognized as rightful heirs to the throne, and to the Oath of Supremacy, which established the king, not the pope, as the chief authority on religious matters in England.  He was arrested, found guilty of treason, and beheaded in July of 1535; for his suffering on behalf of the faith, he was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church on the 400th anniversary of his death.
 

Historical Background to the Utopia

         England during Thomas More’s adult life was just emerging from a prolonged conflict over the royal succession; the Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York had ended with the triumph of Henry Tudor in 1485 and the establishment of a new royal family.  The restoration of peace to England created an appropriate soil for the rebirth of classical learning that we know as the Renaissance; while the Renaissance had begun in Italy as far back as the 14th century, it was only at the very end of the 15th that its features emerged in the North.
        More’s life was a period of great discoveries and intellectual and artistic ferment.  In 1492, when More was 14 years old, Columbus made his first voyage to the Americas, and new discoveries were being reported continuously throughout More’s adult career.  Thus, while More was creating his imagined country, Europeans generally were excited to read about the new discoveries – both the factual accounts of the explorations and more fanciful travelers’ tales.  More is known to have read about at least three of the expeditions of Amerigo Vespucci.
        In 1517, one year after the Utopia appeared, the Protestant Reformation – which had been foreshadowed by religious debates for over a century – began in earnest when Martin Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses and broke from the authority of the Pope.
        Machiavelli’s treatise on government, The Prince, appeared in 1513.  While it is not clear whether More had seen The Prince before composing Utopia, the kinds of political advice that Machiavelli profes there resemble the positions that Raphael Hythloday (Nonsenso) argues against in Book I of More’s book.

Sources: Hudleston, G. Roger, “Thomas More.” The Catholic Encyclopedia; Jokinen, Anniika, “The Life of Sir Thomas More”; Priest, Harold M.  More’s Utopia and Utopian Literature: Notes,  Lincoln, NE: Cliffs Notes, 1976; Turner, Paul.  Introduction. Utopia, by Thomas More,  London: Penguin, 1965; Wegemer, Gerard, “Thomas More’s Life.” ONLINE at http://www.d-holliday.com/tmore/bio.htm
 

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