Thomas More (1478–1535) was recognized as one of the foremost early modern humanists in England, known for Utopia and History of King Richard III.
There's controversy over whether More remained a humanist throughout his life or became repressive.
More mastered ancient Greek, encouraging Erasmus to do so, emphasizing a return to classical and biblical sources.
He stressed the importance of philosophy, dedicating early morning hours to study, resulting in twenty books, 291 poems, and 151 letters.
More identified as a "citizen of London," a lawyer, judge, member of Parliament, ambassador, and proponent of women’s education.
He served as Speaker of the House of Commons, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Lord Chancellor of England.
As Lord Chancellor, More prosecuted heretics under King Henry VIII, upholding heresy laws.
More was executed for not recognizing Henry VIII as head of the Church of England and for not supporting his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Intellectually, More was indebted to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, the Bible, and the Latin and Greek Church Fathers (Augustine, Jerome, Basil, and Chrysostom).
1. Introduction
Erasmus described the young Thomas More as devoted to the study of Greek literature and philosophy.
Erasmus later described More as having a “clearly philosophic character” and a home that could be called “another Platonic academy”.
More's home prioritized piety, Scripture, and the Church Fathers, and his daughters received the same education as his son.
Elizabeth McCutcheon summarized More’s daughters' education as including Greek and Latin texts and the liberal and humane arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, poetry, mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, theology, and medicine).
Erasmus and Richard Pace described More as a second Democritus, the “laughing philosopher”.
Pace stated that More approved of every school of philosophy in part but had a special talent for revealing the “ridiculous”.
The ridiculous are those mistaken about themselves, not following the Delphic “know thyself” prescript (Plato, Philebus48c).
More worked on a dialogue supporting Plato’s doctrine of communalism, extending it to wives, based on Greek and Latin texts.
More admired Lucian for using “Socratic irony” and combining delight with instruction while refraining from the arrogant pronouncements of philosophers.
Erasmus shared More’s admiration for Lucian, who portrays the manners, emotions, and pursuits of men as if with a painter’s vivid brush.
More was “faithful to Aristotelian realism” and studied Greek with William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre, and William Lily.
More presented a “philosophically sophisticated” treatment of dialectic and language in his “Letter to Dorp”.
He explained that word meanings depend on custom and common usage and that true dialectics is an “intellectual exercise” whose goal is truth, not winning a quarrel.
More esteemed Aristotle but maintained independence of mind.
Thomas Stapleton remarked that More read Plato especially and imitated Plato’s manner of writing.
This imitation is noted in studies of Utopia but rarely in writings on More’s other dialogues, though his “dialogic” cast of mind has long been recognized.
2. Plato’s Socrates: the “best philosopher”
More gave pride of place to “Plato alone,” describing him as “the great philosopher” and “wise”.
More called Plato's Socrates "the best philosopher".
Socrates defined philosophy as “the meditation or exercise of [i.e., the preparation for] death” since “the study of philosophy labor[s] to sever the soul from the love and affections of the body while they be together”.
Socrates achieved “merry cheer”, “wisdom”, and “liberty” by escaping the “bondage” of Fortune and understanding the “secret draughts of nature”.
More’s Socrates was primarily concerned with ethics, alluding to Plato’s Phaedo, in which Socrates argues that the true philosopher must be freed from bodily appetites and pleasures.
In the Phaedo, Socrates calls the body a prison of the soul and looks forward to the liberty that death will provide his soul.
More drew attention to distortions in perception caused by the senses and undisciplined passions, but his incarnational view acknowledged that the body and soul are knit together to make one person.
This person can act harmoniously with proper education, diligent training, and recourse to grace.
More, following Augustine, saw the soul as created in the image of God by reason, endowed with memory, understanding, and will, resembling the Trinity.
He saw that “brutish appetites” can make the soul leave the noble use of his reason, turning the image of God into a beast.
A frequent theme was the “spiritual battle” needed to allow “reason to rule as a king”—facilitating liberty through law as reason embodied over time for the good of all.
More addressed freeing the soul “for truth and right reason in all things” in rhyme royal poems about the spiritual life in his addition to The Life of John Pico, Earl of Mirandola.
There, he developed “Twelve Rules” and “Twelve Weapons” of “Spiritual Battle” needed to achieve joy through virtue and conscience.
He thought, "Of virtue more joy the conscience hath within / Than outward the body of all his fi lthy sin" and "Thou shalt no pleasure comparable fi nd / To th’inward gladness of a virtuous mind".
To distinguish this approach from that of the Stoics, he developed “The Twelve Properties … of a Lover,” making clear that a “perfect lover” will gladly “suffer trouble, pain, and woe” for his human beloved, and all the more so for God.
The early set of poems on the “spiritual battle” was followed by prose writings such as The Four Last Things and portions of his Dialogue of Sir Thomas More, Knight.
These writings concerned the “spiritual exercise by which the soul willingly worketh with the body” to cultivate “inward spiritual pleasure” based on contemplation and “the very pleasures of the soul”.
Regarding cultivating the soul “to rule and bridle sensuality” and to be “subject and obedient to reason,” More alludes to the Phaedrus, where Socrates says that the reasoning charioteer must bridle and govern his passionate horses.
More urges readers to cultivate the “garden of our soul” by engendering, planting, and watering in it the “spiritual affections” that God instructs our reason to lean unto.
3. Early Poetry, Conscience, and Philosophic Considerations
Lord Chancellor and Archbishop John Morton marveled at the twelve- year-old More’s extraordinary theatrical ability.
He could step in among the players and make up a part of his own, which made the lookers-on more sport than all the players besides.
Richard Sylvester observed that More had an awareness “of himself in relation to others”, showing “conscience in the old sense of the word, ‘a knowing with’”.
This enabled him to determine a “part of his own”.
In his earliest known poem, “Pageant Verses,” More shows his fl air for dramatic representations of life.
Each of the nine fi rst-person monologues expresses a different perspective about the ages of life and their speci fi c characteristics, each with a touch of humor.
The poem includes the full scale of life (Childhood, Youth, Maturity, Old Age) and what follows one’s earthly life (Death, Fame, Time, and a secular Eternity).
It ends in Latin with the Poet’s view in the light of a loving God, challenging the reader to re fl ect and choose.
“Pageant Verses” begins with Childhood boasting of his stage of life and calling upon God twice to enable him to play games all day and to have all those “hateful books” burned.
This stanza brings out the power of pleasure’s allure.
The child naturally turns to God and reveals an awareness of his own mind and of death.
The next stanzas dramatize the pursuit of pleasure in different forms according to the particular age of life, all showing the prominence of pride.
Even the old ruler boasts of his wisdom and discretion in achieving the “public weal” in the stanza entitled “Age”.
“Rueful Lamentation,” written in 1503, is a moving fi rst-person monologue by Queen Elizabeth of York on her deathbed, bearing witness to what the Poet of “Pageant Verses” said about the “goods of th[is] fragile world” being “slippery”.
Queen Elizabeth makes this point powerfully in the concluding refrain for each of her twelve stanzas: “Lo, here I lie”.
More’s last two English poems, written in prison, are also about “ fl attering Fortune” and unreliable “Lady Luck”.
More’s greatest English poem is “The Fortune Verses,” a dialogue between Lady Fortune and two other speakers with differing perspectives.
The speaker in the opening Prologue is identified as “T.M.” and the meter is rhyme royal.
The speaker addresses the reader directly, giving a simplistic and negative view of Fortune and quoting a poet dismissing Fortune as “perverse”.
The lines that follow are an engaging dialogue between Lady Fortune and an exceptionally wise and persuasive interlocutor, all with More’s customary humor.
In the Fortune Verses, More dramatizes how human beings contend with the powerful allure of Fortune’s fl eeting goods.
He gives the examples of “wise Socrates” and other “old philosophers” who achieved “felicity” and “free liberty” by choosing “glad Poverty” instead of Fortune.
More’s Fortune Verses present a three-way dialectical consideration of how best to live one’s life in the world controlled by Fortune.
The poem progresses from speaker to speaker to present an increasingly accurate understanding of Fortune and her relationship to human life.
By choosing poverty, Socrates and like-minded philosophers chose only “what nature may sustain, / Banishing clear all other surplusage”.
The nature of “free liberty”, along with its relations to wisdom and virtue is one of More’s major themes throughout his writings.
These early poems show More’s preoccupation with challenging the reader to participate in, reflect on, and nourish his soul on “true things” through the “fashioned fi gures” of “wondrous art”.
This youthful focus on truth and wonder is another early sign of More’s philosophic cast of mind.
In 1501, at 23, More was invited by William Grocyn to lecture on Augustine’s City of God.
More treated the work from the standpoint of history and philosophy, not theology.
In the same year, under Grocyn’s instruction, he began the serious study of Greek, mastering it in three years.
He challenged Erasmus to a Greek-translating contest that resulted in his fi rst publication, in 1506, of Lucian Dialogues and Declamations.
Thomas More began his career as a dialogist by collaborating with Erasmus as a translator of Lucian.
The three Lucian dialogues that More translated all humorously satirize supposed philosophers’ “arrogant pronouncements” and “fruitless contentions”.
For the same publication, More challenged Erasmus to write responses to a declamation on tyrannicide—revealing More's “special hatred of tyranny”.
More’s declamation set forth a theory about tyranny and how the tyrant differs from other criminal leaders. It also speaks of civic liberty and the civic virtues needed to maintain liberty.
More’s choice to translate three comic depictions of philosophic confusion calls to mind The City of God’s lengthy expositions of the perennial disagreements among philosophers.
Augustine cites the failure of philosophers to agree on any “universal” guide to life, the ongoing “wars” between schools of thought, Varro’s distinguishing 288 different sects of philosophy, and Cicero’s admission that only a very few achieve “true philosophy” by a gift from God.
More quoted Augustine more than any other author but affirmed independence of mind dramatically at the end of his life, in prison.
More affirmed that Augustine, being a man, could make a mistake, and he takes his word seriously but not unconditionally.
More asserted he would never pin his soul at another man’s back, not even the best man that he knows, for he knows not whither he may hap to carry it.
For his own children, More insisted on an education ordered to “good judgment” and the ability to listen to popular opinion without being overly swayed by it.
A main reason for translating Lucian’s comic dialogues was the Greek satirist’s “ fi rst rate” ability to probe deeply without disturbing the reader’s “equanimity”.
Like Socrates, More’s major philosophic interest was the properly ordered soul equipped to seek truth and virtue, not victory and applause.
Unlike Socrates, More’s fi nal Socratic dialogues make clear that truth and virtue can be found—with the assistance of revelation.
5. Towards a “Civil” Philosophy: Life of Pico, Epigrams, Richard III
In 1510, More published a work he had begun years earlier, having been introduced to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola by friends and teachers.
Pico’s nephew published a biography of his uncle and anthology of his works in 1496.
More’s edited biography and anthology radically re-envisioned Pico’s life and philosophic project.
Everything foreign to More’s orthodox outlook is eliminated, with Thomas Aquinas singled out for mention.
In his version of The Life of John Pico, More modified the texts he translated to register his disagreement with Pico’s understanding of philosophy.
Contrary to Pico’s aristocratic view that philosophy should never be “mercenary” or “servile,” More adds with comic irony that philosophy brings “pro fi t”, especially by providing “instruction in moral virtue”.
More’s many omissions, selections, and additions emphasize the necessity of the active life and the insuf fi ciency of the reclusive life of the solitary scholar.
More promotes a Ciceronian and Senecan perspective, casting philosophy as a useful art while criticizing Pico for not ful fi lling duties of the “civil and active life”.
This is further explored in insisting that “philosophers love liberty; … they cannot serve,” thus neglecting the ordinary duties of everyday life, as will Raphael Hythloday in Utopia.
The dangers of an active civic life and the consequences of neglect by civic leaders are seen in More’s History of King Richard III, a work never published during his own lifetime.
In both versions, More dramatized how human beings use their reason to decide not to follow reason.
King Edward IV, for example, ends up tragically “taking counsel of desire” rather than of reason.
Queen Elizabeth Woodville, despite powerful reasons for not abandoning her young and sick son to Richard, goes against those reasons and freely hands him over.
This foolish propensity to follow passion rather than reason is a major topic of More’s many satirical epigrams.
His satires point to the importance of self-knowledge and of a well-ordered and peaceful state of soul.
Reason is thus unhindered from making a “good judgment”, which are the educational goals More set for his children and for himself.
The 102 of More’s Latin poems that are translations from the Greek, combined with his own 179 original epigrams, show his interest in the full scope of human life.
More's refreshing new range of subjects makes us feel we are leaving the study of a scholar or a cleric and entering the world of merchants, lawyers, and courtiers.
More’s “Epigrammata” is the best book of Latin epigrams in the sixteenth century because of vivid interest in life in all its aspects.
A large number of these witty poems highlight the ridiculous, but many of the most distinctive ones are political and address the question of tyranny versus good rule.
More’s favorite concern is for the difference between a good king and a tyrant, but it is evident from a reading of this group of epigrams that, whereas the existence of good kings is a theoretical possibility, the existence of tyrants is a present danger.
More’s criticisms of King Henry VII in Epigram 19 were so severe that Germanus Brixius accused him of defaming the monarch, but More refuted.
More’s collection of epigrams was to be published with Utopia but because of printing difficulties it was instead fi rst published with the 1518 edition of Utopia.
This added yet another element of dialectical engagement since the epigrams contain terms and themes present in Utopia.
Several of the epigrams portray the character of the true princeps, a term used throughout Utopia and fraught with historical and cultural controversy.
More uses “citizens” and “people” rather than “subjects” in his literary works and explicitly criticizes kings who treat “subjects” as “slaves”.
6. Socratic Dialogue on Philosophy and the City: Utopia
Utopia, More’s most famous dialogue, combines elements from the dialogue forms of Plato and Cicero, with allusions to both, starting with the title.
Cicero translated Plato’s title Politeia as Res Publicae and established the conversation with Plato that More continues in Utopia.
More adds comic elements from Lucian’s dialogues.
Book 1 of Utopia raises the large question of philosophy’s relation to the city.
Raphael Hythloday argues that philosophy will never have a place in any city unless that city imitates Utopia.
The character “Thomas Morus” maintains that a philosophy “more civil” than Hythloday’s “academic” philosophy not only has a place, but even poses a challenge and a duty not to desert “the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds”—while making things “as little bad as you can”.
Because Hythloday does not convince Morus and his friend Peter Giles by the end of Book 1, Morus invites both him and Giles to lunch, urging Raphael to tell all he can about Utopia and how to educate citizens well.
Book 2 of Utopia follows, an afternoon-long monologue by Hythloday, who presents a selective description of life in Utopia; afterwards, Morus observes that Hythloday is not in the mood to be questioned.
Utopia ends with Morus commenting that “quite a few of the institutions” of Utopia were “quite absurd”.
A letter written a year later recommended that future readers ask questions to “ferret … out” the truth of what Hythloday had said.
The setting and many plot details of Utopia provide thought-provoking contrasts to both Plato’s Republic and Cicero’s.
Utopia begins with Morus leaving a church in the middle of Antwerp, welcoming Giles and Hythloday to his home where he treats them to lunch and then dinner.
Given the dramatic character of classical dialogues, these comparisons of settings are an important part of Utopia’s literary and philosophic design.
The dialectical challenge posed by the conversation between Hythloday and Morus is playfully but seriously seen even in the names chosen.
Utopia is Greek for “no place”, and other Greek names negate what they express: the river Anyder means “no water”; the ruler ademos means “no people”.
This intellectual play is also seen in Utopia’s more than 140 uses of litotes in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite.
This game-playing is especially pointed in the oxymoron formed by Hythloday’s full name: Raphael is Hebrew for “healer from God”, and Hythloday is Greek for “speaker of nonsense”.
These kinds of playful puzzles fi ll the Utopia, requiring the reader’s constant attention in light of a long philosophic tradition.
These conflicting elements are seen in the debate about the central Utopian philosophic controversy regarding the nature of virtue.
Utopia’s philosophic position is a strange mixture of an Epicurean emphasis on pleasure and the Stoic definition of virtue, while alluding throughout to Cicero’s criticisms of both positions and elements characteristic of Christianity’s distinctive perspectives.
Although the scholarship on Utopia far surpasses any other of More’s works, no consensus has emerged regarding the intricate intellectual puzzle More has created.
7. “True dialectic and true philosophy, especially Aristotelian”
In his 1515 controversy with Martin Dorp, More defended “true dialectic and true philosophy, especially Aristotelian”.
In 1518 he again publicly defended philosophy, specifically Greek philosophy, in the curriculum at Oxford University.
More also included philosophy in the curriculum for his children, and encouraged his daughters to dispute philosophy before Henry VIII in 1526.
His daughter Margaret devoted herself “diligently to philosophy” along with “medical science and sacred literature” but without neglecting “humane letters… because in these latter studies in particular “a good judgment is formed or perfected”.
The “most learned” of the philosophers serve usefully as “guides of human life”, and wisdom depends “on the inner knowledge of what is right [recti conscientia]”—or, “on a right conscience”.
Another major objective of education is an inward “calm and peace” allowing a person to be stirred by praise or stung by the follies of mockers of learning.
More gave a special place to the classical authors but also to the Bible and the Church Fathers.
More emphasized the special importance that should be given to Greek writings classical, biblical, and patristic while also recognizing the important contributions of Cicero, Seneca, the Latin Church Fathers, and Thomas Aquinas.
8. Free Speech, Conscience, and Dialectical Inquiry
As Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, More delivered an oration requesting freedom of speech in the House of Commons because person’s “mind is often so occupied with the matter” being discussed, it might happen that the person “rather studieth what to say than how” to say it.
More requested that king give to all Commons there assembled license and pardon, every man to discharge his conscience and to declare his advice without doubt of dreadful displeasure.
This “discharge” of one’s conscience was ordered “to declar[ing] … the very truth” using diligence and troth.
More’s case for free deliberation “using diligence and troth”—i.e., for genuine dialectical inquiry—in Parliament and legal matters was similar to the case he made for deliberating political and theological matters.
For example, “Epigram 198: What Is the Best Form of Government?” opens as a debate regarding which is better, a hereditary monarchy or a senate.
After giving arguments on both sides and after presenting the choice as between one person who by "blind chance" is "ruler of his advisers" and a group of persons "elected by the people to rule" by "reasonable agreement [certum consilium]", the poem narrator ends, leaving reader to ponder issue.
This concern for genuine dialectical inquiry free from self-interest was expressed by More most dramatically to Henry VIII after the king fi rst asked his support in 1527 for his divorce from Queen Catherine.
More studied all the materials he was given, discussing them with the advisors Henry identi fi ed, but suggested that because they all are servants of Henry, he should consult Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, and diverse other old holy doctors, both Greeks and Latins.
One of More’s objectives as a young man in studying Greek had been to read the Greek Church Fathers; he studied both the Latin and Greek “old holy doctors and fathers” to determine the “consent of the common Catholic Church” regarding contested matters.
Even at his trial, More emphasized the importance of international councils to study matters, aware of the influence exerted by national or historical interests.
At his trial, he argued that England’s unilateral action was “contrary to the unity and concord” of “the whole Christian world”—a determination More made after long study for “the exoneration of my conscience”.
9. Judgments “in conscience”
“Right conscience”, for More, is a judgment of the practical intellect about some particular matter, in light of principles discovered to be true.
If doubt arose about a fundamental principle, he held it to be the duty of a properly convened international General Counsel to clarify the principle involved, judged in light of the entire received tradition.
More explained this to his daughter Margaret, pointing out the danger of “framing oneself a conscience” to gratify one’s desire rather than to determine what is true.
Accused of being a “foolish scrupulous ass”, More told one of his most famous “merry tales” about Company who refused to perjure himself as a jury member, being concerned about if I shall then say to all you again, ‘Masters, I went once for good company with you, which is the cause that I go now to hell, play you the good fellows now again with me; as I went then for good company with you, so some of you now for good company with me.
“Conscience” became a word More used with great frequency towards the end of his life.
Even in his earliest education letter, he twice identified a “right conscience [recti conscientia]” as one of the main goals of education.
In his earliest poetry, he wrote that: “Of virtue more joy the conscience hath within / Than outward the body of all his fi lthy sin” and that there is “no pleasure comparable … / To th’inward gladness of a virtuous mind”.
He expressed this same thought in prison, writing that “the clearness of my conscience hath made my heart hop for joy”, knowing that he had searched for seven years and was “very sure … in refusing to swear against mine own conscience”.
Judgments made “in conscience” were so central to More that he discussed this issue with Henry VIII before agreeing to enter the king’s service in 1518 and as Lord Chancellor of England in 1529.
Both times, More reported, Henry gave the most virtuous lesson that ever prince taught his servant: that I should perceive mine own conscience should serve me, and that I should fi rst look unto God and after God unto him.
10. Polemical Works: Status of Reason, Liberty, Law
As Stephen Greenblatt indicated, the “principle of intelligibility” is a major topic in More studies, posing serious epistemological issues in questioning how we know.
In his fi rst polemical work, “request[ed] by the king and court”, More created the persona of an easily-angered, common-sense English lawyer who questions Luther, asking by what reason do you prove that you alone must be believed, and continues until reaching endless self justification.
More regularly addresses his readers and asks them to judge for themselves—in light of reason and in light of an international agreement achieved through conciliar and scholarly deliberation.
More also addressed directly Luther’s early claims that “reason hindereth us in our faith, and is unto faith an enemy” and that a spiritual elect had independence from all governors and from all civil and ecclesiastical laws.
More saw these claims as undermining what he, Erasmus, and others saw as the path to lasting reform of both church and state: improved education resulting in better laws.
More pointed out the danger of denying free will and teaching that it is “vain” to resist “sinful appetites”— advice that countered the view of virtue that both the classical and the biblical traditions shared.
If human beings are not responsible for their actions, then Luther’s “liberty of the gospel” is, for More, “unbridled license” and a sure path to lawlessness and violence.
For More, law was itself the product of collective reason over time, comparing the biblical law against stealing with human laws about private property, stating that "reason alone prescribe[s] the forms of determining property together with an agreement, and this a public agreement taking root in usage or expressed in writing [which] is public law”.
Luther’s undermining the status of law is in opposition to the judgment of all learned men, in opposition to the judgment of all good men, in opposition to the public agreement of the whole world.
More recognized that laws can be like cobwebs, in which the little gnats and fl ies stick still and hang fast, but the great [bumble]-bees break them and fl y quite through.
In his second major polemical work, More countered Luther’s and Tyndale’s criticisms of philosophy and the role of reason by arguing that reason plays an essential role but must be a well-trained reason within a well-tempered body and soul.
Without a proper order or “good temper” of the soul, reason “will not fail to fall in rebellion”.
More used the classical image of training the powerful horses of the soul with bridle and bit if they are ever to be happy and serviceable.
Arguing further for the essential role of reason, More goes on to show its role in the interpretation of Scripture: “Now, in the study of Scripture—in devising upon the sentence, in considering what ye read, in pondering the purpose of diverse comments, in comparing together diverse texts that seem contrary…”.
A mind that does not recognize the necessary role of a well-trained reason in human life to be mad.
As More scholar Joanne Paul argued, the problem as More saw it was that Luther removes “the authority of judging doctrines from the people and delivers it to anyone whatever”, which is problematic in that encourages pride in others to interpret scripture according to their own judgement.
More satirizes Tyndale calling his “feeling faith” by contrasting it with synods and counsels that represent whole church.
11. “Reason ought to reign like a king”
How can reason pilot a soul suffering the greatest of interior storms while being attacked by the most terrifying external forces?
How can a charioteer guide powerful horses spooked by fear?
More addressed these questions during the last years of his life, even as he himself faced the prospect of torture as well as the most painful and shameful death that England had devised.
Prior to his imprisonment, More confessed to being scandalized by his own resistance to suffering, yet he also confessed that despite such fear he never intended to consent to anything that would go against “mine own conscience”.
Against this background, More wrote A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, focusing on the role of reason in preparing the soul to be guided in a time of great trial by a reason enlightened by faith and strengthened by grace.
In his fi nal work, The Sadness of Christ, “in a human being, reason ought to reign like a king”.
But if this ought to be the case, why does it rarely turn out that way?
Even Christ’s human nature rebelled to the point that he sweated blood, even angels and the fi rst human beings with all of their special gifts failed, since human beings are created to be responsible for learning how to govern freely their own God-given faculties and they will fail “all for … negligence” in using their freedom properly.
In A Dialogue of Comfort, Vincent is obsessed with fears for himself, his family, and his country as the Turks prepare to return to Hungary after recent violence.
It takes Antony some time to calm him down to address the fi rst and most important of his concerns using Socratic strategy and leading Vincent to self-knowledge so that he can begin the work of self- government.
Antony confirms essential seeds are planted in the garden of Vincent’s soul and reveals the seeds that are missing and has Vincent play the part of a rich man to lead him to self knowledge.
After conversation, Antony judges Vincent has achieved courage and help Vincent calmly consider his fear.
For reason to riegn, one must learn equanimity and self-government.
Antony explains that human is obliged to undertake self-government, with More considering it a sign of madness to not recognize essential role of reason.
Vincent ends A Dialogue of Comfort by resolving and transforming his affections.To do so, he not only writes down Antony’s counsels in Hungarian but translates them into multiple languages to imprint them in his mind and working to fulfil Antony’s requirement of “suf fi cient minding”.
More was imprisoned for his life and executed.
His last works and days put to the test his earlier theory of philosophy as a preparation for death, making this Renaissance fi gure whom Erasmus described as a “man for all seasons" an intriguing study.