Editing Thomas More (section)

== Controversy on extent of prosecution of heretics ==
There is considerable variation in opinion on the extent and nature of More's prosecution of heretics: witness the difference in portrayals of More in [[A Man for All Seasons (play)|''A Man for All Seasons'']] as an urbane hero of conscience and in ''[[Wolf Hall]]'' as a "mere dessicated fanatic."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rist |first1=Rebecca |title=A Historical Perspective on "Wolf Hall": Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More Revisited |url=https://unireadinghistory.com/2015/02/12/a-historical-perspective-on-wolf-hall-thomas-cromwell-and-thomas-more-revisited/ |website=Reading History |access-date=2 December 2024 |language=en |date=12 February 2015}}</ref> The English establishment initially regarded [[Protestants]] (and [[Münster rebellion|Anabaptists]]) as akin to the [[Peasants' Revolt|Lollards]] and [[Hussites#Hussite Wars (1419–1434)|Hussites]] whose heresies fed their sedition.<ref group=note>The intertwining of sedition and heresy can be seen in [[Henry VIII]]'s pronouncement about the Lutherans' heresy "tending principally and chiefly to the withdrawing of the obedience of the Church of Rome, and also of the governance, regyment and supreme dignity of Princes and all nobility." Luther's attacks on German princes were evidence of the seditious nature of his doctrine. {{cite journal |last1=Baker House |first1=Seymour |title=Richard Rex, ed., Henry VIII and Martin Luther: The Second Controversy, 1525–1527 |journal=Moreana |date=December 2022 |volume=59 |issue=2 |pages=254–269 |doi=10.3366/more.2022.0130|s2cid=254358434 }} Even 150 years later, "one of the assumptions that [[John Locke]] had to deal with in arguing for religious tolerance was that religious assemblies other than those sponsored by the established church invariably gave rise to sedition" {{cite journal |last1=Manning |first1=Roger B. |title=The Origins of the Doctrine of Sedition |journal=Albion |date=1980 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=99–121 |doi=10.2307/4048812|jstor=4048812 }}</ref>  Ambassador to [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]] [[Cuthbert Tunstall]] called [[Lutheranism]] the "foster-child" of the Wycliffite heresy<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ric.edu/faculty/rpotter/statutes.html |title=Documents on the changing status of the English Vernacular, 1500–1540 |access-date=11 March 2008 |publisher=RIC |last=Potter |first=R.}}</ref> that had underpinned [[Lollardy]].

Historian [[Richard Rex]] wrote:<ref name=rex/>{{rp|106}}

{{blockquote|Thomas More, as lord chancellor [1529–1532], was in effect the first port of call for those arrested in London on suspicion of heresy, and he took the initial decisions about whether to release them, where to imprison them, or to which bishop to send them. He can be connected with police or judicial proceedings against around forty suspected or convicted heretics in the years 1529–33.<ref group=note>There were a succession of policies towards heretics, from the [[Wolsey]]/[[John Fisher]] approach of persuasion, the 1529–1531 [[William Warham]] approach of reform and counter-propaganda, to More's brief approach of capital punishment of key networkers, to the subsequent Tudor policy of torture and terror. See {{cite journal |last1=D'Alton |first1=Craig |title=William Warham and English heresy policy after the fall of Wolsey |journal=Historical Research |date=1 August 2004 |volume=77 |issue=197 |pages=337–357 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-2281.2004.00213.x}} p.345</ref> }}

=== Torture allegations ===
Torture was not officially legal in England, except in pre-trial discovery phase<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hanson |first1=Elizabeth |title=Torture and Truth in Renaissance England |journal=Representations |date=1991 |issue=34 |pages=53–84 |doi=10.2307/2928770 |jstor=2928770 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2928770 |issn=0734-6018}}</ref>{{rp|62}} of kinds of extreme cases that the King had allowed, such as seditious heresy. It was regarded as unsafe for evidence, and was not an allowed punishment.

Stories emerged in More's lifetime regarding persecution of the Protestant "heretics" during his time as [[Lord Chancellor]], and he denied them in detail in his {{lang|la|Apologia}} (1533).

Many stories were later published by the 16th-century English Protestant historian [[John Foxe]] in his polemical ''[[Book of Martyrs]].'' Foxe was instrumental in publicizing accusations of torture, alleging that More had often personally used violence or torture while interrogating heretics.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rex |first1=Richard |author1-link=Richard Rex |editor1-last=Logan |editor1-first=George M. |title=The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More |date=2011 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-82848-2 |page=93}}</ref> Later Protestant authors such as [[Brian Moynahan]] and [[Michael Farris (lawyer)|Michael Farris]] cite Foxe when repeating these allegations.<ref>{{cite book|first= Michael| last= Farris | title = From Tyndale to Madison| date=2007 |publisher=B & H Publishing Group |location=Nashville, Tennessee |isbn=9780805426113}}</ref> Biographer [[Peter Ackroyd]] also lists claims from Foxe's ''Book of Martyrs'' and other post-Reformation sources that More "tied heretics to a tree in his Chelsea garden and whipped them", that "he watched as 'newe men' were put upon the rack in the Tower and tortured until they confessed", and that "he was personally responsible for the burning of several of the 'brethren' in Smithfield."<ref name="Ackroyd" />{{rp|305}}<!-- However, the rack was not introduced to England until after More's death, wasn't it, apart from one unusual case? -->

Historian [[John Guy (historian)|John Guy]] commented that "such charges are unsupported by independent proof."<ref group=note>"Serious analysis precludes the repetition of protestant stories that Sir Thomas flogged heretics against a tree in his garden at Chelsea. It must exclude, too, the accusations of illegal imprisonment made against More by John Field and Thomas Phillips. Much vaunted by J.A. Froude, such charges are unsupported by independent proof. More indeed answered them in his Apology with emphatic denial. None has ever been substantiated, and we may hope that they were all untrue." {{cite book |last1=Guy |first1=John |last2=More |first2=Thomas |title=The public career of Sir Thomas More |date=1980 |publisher=Harvester Pr |location=Brighton, Sussex |isbn=085527963X}}</ref>  Modern historian [[Diarmaid MacCulloch]] finds no evidence that More was directly involved in torture.<ref group=note>"[More]{{nbsp}}[...] turned to waging implacable war on enemies of the Church whom he could crush without inhibition.{{nbsp}}[...] He had a positive relish for burning heretics.{{nbsp}}[...] Claims{{nbsp}}[...] that he personally tortured heretics have no evidence to back them up. {{cite book |last1=MacCulloch |first1= Diarmaid |author-link1=Diarmaid MacCulloch |title=Thomas Cromwell: a life |date=27 September 2018 |isbn=978-1-84614-429-5 |pages= 160–62|publisher= Penguin Books }}</ref>   [[Richard Marius]] records a similar claim, which tells about James Bainham, and writes that "the story Foxe told of Bainham's whipping and racking at More's hands is universally doubted today".<ref group=note name="Marius406" >Marius suggests that the rumours of More's cruelty started with renegade priest John Constantine, who was arrested, betrayed Bayfield, and escaped from More's house to stay with a friend in Antwerp who he also later betrayed. p.404</ref>

More himself denied these allegations:

{{blockquote|Stories of a similar nature were current even in More's lifetime and he denied them forcefully. He admitted that he did imprison heretics in his house – 'theyr sure kepynge'{{refn|group=note|I.e., "their sure-keeping"}} – he called it – but he utterly rejected claims of torture and whipping... 'as help me God.'<ref name="Ackroyd" />{{rp |298–299}}}}

More instead claimed in his ''Apology'' (1533) that he only applied corporal punishment to two "heretics": a child servant in his household who was caned (the customary punishment for children at that time) for repeating a heresy regarding the Eucharist, and a "feeble-minded" man who was whipped for disrupting the mass by raising women's skirts over their heads at the moment of consecration, More taking the action to prevent a lynching.<ref name="Marius">Marius, Richard (1999). Thomas More: A Biography, Harvard University Press</ref>{{rp|404}}

=== Executions ===
Burning at the stake was the standard punishment by the English state for obstinate or relapsed, major seditious or proselytizing heresy, and continued to be used by both Catholics and Protestants during the religious upheaval of the following decades.<ref>Guy, John A. ''Tudor England'' Oxford, 1988. p 26</ref>  In England, following the [[Lollard]] uprisings, heresy had been linked to sedition (see {{lang|la|[[De heretico comburendo]]}} and [[Suppression of Heresy Act 1414]].)

Ackroyd and MacCulloch agree that More zealously approved of burning.<ref name="Ackroyd" />{{rp|298}} [[Richard Marius]] maintained that in office More did everything in his power to bring about the extermination of heretics.<ref name="Marius406">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DdAYSzj20t0C&q=Thomas+More++burned+heretics+at+Smithfield&pg=PA406 |title=Thomas More: A Biography |author=Richard Marius |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1999 |isbn=0-674-88525-2 |page=406}}</ref>

During More's chancellorship, six people were burned at the stake for heresy, the same rate as under [[Wolsey]]: they were [[Thomas Hitton]], [[Thomas Bilney]], [[Richard Bayfield]], [[John Tewkesbury]], [[Thomas Dusgate]], and [[James Bainham]].<ref name="Ackroyd" />{{rp|299–306}}  However, the court of the [[Star Chamber]], of which More as Lord Chancellor was the presiding judge, could not impose the death sentence: it was a kind of appellate [[supreme court]].<ref name=maitland>{{cite book|last=Maitland|first=Frederic William|title=The Constitutional History of England: A Course of Lectures|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=211LvgAACAAJ|year=1911|publisher=University Press|location=Cambridge}}</ref>{{rp|263}}

More took a personal interest in the  three London cases:<ref name=rex>{{cite journal |last1=Rex |first1=Richard |title=Thomas More and the heretics: statesman or fanatic? |journal=The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More |date=27 January 2011 |pages=93–115 |doi=10.1017/CCOL9780521888622.006|isbn=9780521888622 }}</ref>{{rp|105}}
* [[John Tewkesbury]] was a London leather seller found guilty by the [[Bishop of London]] [[John Stokesley]] of harbouring English translated New Testaments; he was sentenced to burning for refusing to recant.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Daniell |editor1-first=David |editor1-link=David Daniell (author) |title=Tyndale's New Testament |date=1995 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven, CT |isbn=0-300-06580-9 |page=xxix|quotation=[More]{{nbsp}}[...] with the new Bishop of London, burned John Tewkesbury, Richard Bayfield and James Bainham for the heresy of not renouncing what Tyndale had written.}}</ref> More declared: he "burned as there was neuer wretche I wene better worthy."<ref>{{cite book|publisher=Yale|series=Complete Works|first=Thomas|last=More | volume = 8|title=The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer|editor-last=Schuster|editor1-first=LA | editor2-last =Marius|editor2-first=RC|editor3-last= Lusardi|editor3-first= JP|editor4-last = Schoeck | editor4-first=RJ|year=1973|page= 20}}</ref>
* [[Richard Bayfield]] was found distributing Tyndale's Bibles, and examined by Bishop [[Cuthbert Tunstall]]. More commented that he was "well and worthely burned".<ref name="Ackroyd" />{{rp|305}}
* [[James Bainham]] was arrested on a warrant of Thomas More as Lord Chancellor and detained at his gatehouse. He was examined by Bishop John Stokesley, abjured, penalized and freed. He subsequently re-canted, and was re-arrested, tried and executed as a relapsed heretic.

Historian [[Brian Moynahan]] alleged that More influenced the eventual execution of [[William Tyndale]] in the Duchy of Brabant, as English agents had long pursued Tyndale. Historian [[Richard Rex]] argues that linking the execution to More was "bizarre".<ref name=rex/>{{rp|93}} Moynihan named Henry Phillips, a student at the [[Old University of Leuven|University of Louvain]] and follower of Bishop Stokesley, as the man More commissioned to befriend Tyndale and then betray him.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Moynahan |first1=Brian |author1-link=Brian Moynahan |title=If God spare my life: William Tyndale, the English Bible and Sir Thomas More—a story of martyrdom and betrayal |date=2002 |publisher=Little, Brown |location=London |isbn=0-316-86092-1 |pages=325–328, 340}}</ref> However, the execution took place on 6 October 1536, sixteen months after More himself had been executed, and in a different jurisdiction.

=== Modern treatment ===
Modern commentators have been divided over More's character and actions.

Some biographers, including [[Peter Ackroyd]], have taken a relatively tolerant<ref group=note name=Ackroyd-ch22a>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8J9uNOydymUC&q=burned+as+there+was+neuer+wretche+I+wene+better+worthy |title=The Life of Thomas More |author=Peter Ackroyd |author-link=Peter Ackroyd |publisher=Chatto & Windus |year=1998 |page=244 |isbn=1-85619-711-5 |quote=(Chapter 22){{nbsp}}[...] Already, in these early days of English heresy, he was thinking of the fire. It is a measure of his alarm at the erosion of the traditional order that he should, in this letter, compose a defence of scholastic theology—the same scholasticism which in his younger days he had treated with derision. This was no longer a time for questioning, or innovation, or uncertainty, of any kind. He blamed Luther for the Peasants' Revolt in Germany, and maintained that all its havoc and destruction were the direct result of Luther's challenge to the authority of the Church; under the pretext of 'libertas' Luther preached 'licentia' which had in turn led to rape, sacrilege, bloodshed, fire and ruin. }} (Online citation [https://1000vampirenovels.com/pdf-novels/the-life-of-thomas-more-by-peter-ackroyd-free/47-page here]) {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180927204114/https://1000vampirenovels.com/pdf-novels/the-life-of-thomas-more-by-peter-ackroyd-free/47-page |date=27 September 2018 }}</ref> or even positive<ref group=note name=JoannePaul2016a >{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KN2qDQAAQBAJ&q=%22thomas+more%22+german+peasants+Revolt&pg=PT140 |title=Thomas More |author=Joanne Paul|publisher=[[John Wiley & Sons]]|year=2016 |isbn=978-0-7456-9220-3|quote=Princes were 'driven by necessity' by the 'importune malice of heretics raising rebellions' to set 'sorer and sorer punishments thereunto' (CTA, 956). In other words, the heretics had started it: 'the Catholic Church did never persecute heretics by any temporal pain or any secular power until the heretics began such violence themself' (CTA, 954). More had in mind violent conflicts on the continent, such as the German Peasants' War (1524–5) and the Münster Rebellion (1532–5).}}{{page needed|date=September 2018}} (CTA=''Confutation of Tyndale's Answer'')</ref> view of More's campaign against Protestantism by placing his actions within the turbulent religious climate of the time and the threat of deadly catastrophes such as the [[German Peasants' Revolt]], which More blamed on Luther,<ref group=note>"...civil chaos will surely follow" (691–93). This prediction seemed to come true very quickly, as More noted in his next polemical work, ''A dialogue Concerning Heresies''. There he argued that the Peasants' Revolt in Germany (1525), the Lutheran mercenaries' sack of Rome (1527), and the growing unrest in England all stemmed from Luther's inflammatory teachings and especially the lure of false freedom {{harv|Wegemer|1996|p=173}}.</ref> as did many others, such as [[Erasmus]].<ref group=note name=Wegemer2001a>{{cite web| last = Wegemer| first = Gerard| author-link = Gerard Wegemer| title = Thomas More as statesman| publisher = The Center for Thomas More Studies| date = 31 October 2001| access-date = 27 September 2018| url = http://thomasmorestudies.org/docs/More_as_Statesman.pdf| page = 8| quote = In the Peasants' Revolt in Germany in 1525, More pointed out, 70,000 German peasants were slaughtered – and More, along with Erasmus and many others, considered Luther to be largely responsible for that wildfire.| archive-date = 10 March 2017| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170310165901/http://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/More_as_Statesman.pdf| url-status = dead}}</ref>

Others have been more critical, such as writer [[Richard Marius]], an American scholar of the Reformation, believing that such persecutions were a betrayal of More's earlier humanist convictions, including More's zealous and well-documented advocacy of extermination for heretics.<ref name="Marius" />{{rp|386–406}} This supposed contradiction has been called "schizophrenic."<ref name="rex"/>{{rp|108}} He has been called a "zealous legalist{{nbsp}}[...] [with an] itchy finesse of cruelty".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wood |first1=James |title=The Great Dissembler |journal=London Review of Books |date=16 April 1998 |volume=20 |issue=8 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n08/james-wood/the-great-dissembler |language=en |issn=0260-9592}}</ref>

[[Pope John Paul II]] honoured him by making More [[patron saint]] of statesmen and politicians in October 2000, stating: "It can be said that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience{{nbsp}}[...] even if, in his actions against heretics, he reflected the limits of the culture of his time".<ref name=JP2PatronSaint />

[[Australian High Court]] judge and President of the [[International Commission of Jurists]], Justice [[Michael Kirby (judge)|Michael Kirby]] has noted:

{{Blockquote|More's resignation as Lord Chancellor demonstrates also a recognition of the fact that, so long as he held office, he was obliged to conform to the King's law. It is often the fact that judges and lawyers must perform acts which they do not particularly like. In Utopia, for example, More had written that he believed capital punishment to be immoral, reprehensible and unjustifiable. Yet as Lord Chancellor and as councillor to the King, he certainly participated in sending hundreds of people to their death, a troubling thought. Doubtless he saw himself, as many judges before and since have done, as a mere instrument of the legal power of the State.
|"''Thomas More, Martin Luther and the Judiciary today,''" speech to Thomas More Society, 1997<ref>[https://www.michaelkirby.com.au/images/stories/speeches/1990s/vol40/1997/1444-Thomas_More%2C_Martin_Luther_and_the_Judiciary_Today_%28St_Thomas_More_Society%29.doc Speech to St Thomas More Society, 1997]</ref>}}