Editing Thomas More (section)

== Personality according to Erasmus ==
Concerning More's personality, [[Erasmus]] gave a consistent portrait over a period of thirty-five years.

Soon after meeting the young lawyer More, who became his best friend{{refn|group=note|Victorian biographer Seebohm commented "Along with great intellectual gifts was combined in the young student (More) a gentle and loving disposition, which threw itself into the bosom of a friend with so guileless and pure an affection, that when men came under the power of its unconscious enchantment they literally {{em|fell in love}} with More."<ref name=Seebohm>{{cite book |last1=Seebohm |first1=Frederic |title=The Oxford Reformers. John Colet, Erasmus and Thomas More |date=1869 |publisher=Longmans, Green and Co |edition=3rd |url=https://reformationchurch.org.uk/book_oxford-reformers_seebohm.php}}</ref>}} and invited Erasmus into his household,  Erasmus reported in 1500 "Did nature ever invent anything kinder, sweeter or more harmonious than the character of Thomas More?".<ref name="BS">{{cite journal |last1=Baker-Smith |first1=Dominic |title=Erasmus and More: A Friendship Revisited |journal=Recusant History |date=May 2010 |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=7–25 |doi=10.1017/S0034193200012607|s2cid=164968766 }}</ref> In 1519, he wrote that More was "born and designed for friendship;<ref group=note>"More held that the experience of friendship is a partial anticipation of the secure friendship of heaven, where we may hope that all will "be merry together"—not just our friends in this life but our enemies too." {{cite journal |last1=McEvoy |first1=James |title=The Theory of Friendship in Erasmus and Thomas More |journal=American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly |date=2006 |volume=80 |issue=2 |pages=227–252 |doi=10.5840/acpq200680243}}</ref> no one is more open-hearted in making friends or more tenacious in keeping them."<ref>{{cite web |title=Brethren of the Christian humanist life, Christian History Magazine |url=https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/ch-145-thomas-more-and-erasmus |website=Christian History Institute |access-date=29 July 2023 |language=en}}</ref> In 1535, after More's execution, Erasmus wrote that More "never bore ill-intent towards anyone":<ref name="BS"/>

{{blockquote|text=We are 'together, you and I, a crowd'; that is my feeling, and I think I could live happily with you in any wilderness. Farewell, dearest Erasmus, dear as the apple of my eye.|source=Thomas More to Erasmus, October 31, 1516<ref>Translated by R.A.B. Mynors & D.F.S. Thomson.</ref>}}

{{blockquote|When More died I seem to have died myself: because we were a single soul as Pythagoras once said. But such is the flux of human affairs.|Erasmus to [[Piotr Tomicki|Piotr Tomiczki]] (Bishop of Kraków), August 31, 1535<ref>Translated by Gerald Malsbary & Mary Taneyhill.</ref>}}

In a 1532 letter, Erasmus wrote "such is the kindliness of his disposition, or rather, to say it better, such is his piety and wisdom, that whatever comes his way that cannot be corrected, he comes to love just as wholeheartedly as if nothing better could have happened to him."<ref>Erasmus to John Faber (later Bishop of Vienna), 1532</ref>

In a 1533 letter, Erasmus described More's character as {{lang|la|imperiosus}} – commanding, far-ruling, not at all timid.<ref>Erasmus to Conrad Goclenius (Chair of Latin, Louvain), 2 September 1535</ref>

For his part, "Thomas More was an unflagging apologist for Erasmus for the thirty-six years of their adult lives (1499–1535)."<ref name="Thomas More: First and Best Apologi">{{cite journal |last1=Scheck |first1=Thomas P. |title=Thomas More: First and Best Apologist for Erasmus |journal=Moreana |date=June 2021 |volume=58 |issue=1 |pages=75–111 |doi=10.3366/more.2021.0093|s2cid=236358666 }}</ref>