Thomas More (February 7th 1478, London - July 6th 1535, London), was a Juriste, Historien, Philosophe, Théologien and Politician English of the Renaissance.

Large friend of Érasme, philanthropist, it took part fully in the revival of the thought which characterizes this time, like to the humanism, of which it was most famous representing English, in one transition period of the Renaissance.

Sir Thomas More became Saint Thomas More since it was béatifié by the Catholic church in 1886 and canonized in 1935.

Biography

Thomas More is the son of the judge and knight John More. He studies with the Université of Oxford as from 1492, then in a school of right, New Inn, and in Lincoln' S Inn; among its Masters, John Collet and Erasme, which will become his/her friends. Registered voter with blackjack years with the bar of lawyers, it teaches the right until 1504. He becomes the lawyer of the merchants of the City, and is elected judge (under-sheriff) in 1510 by the inhabitants of London.

He makes about 1504 a long retirement in Chartreuse of London, then wife Jane Colt in 1505, of which he has three girls and a son. (“He rather preferred being a pure husband than a monk impudic” - Erasme). With its death in 1511, it remarie with Alice Middleton, widow and mother of two children. It will be famous for the high level education which it made give to his children, girls like boys.

Member of the Parliament as from 1504, it protests against the taxes requested by the king Henri VII for the war of Scotland. The king makes imprison John More and Thomas More withdraws himself in France (1508).

The advent of Henri VIII (1509) mark the beginning of a brilliant political career. The king takes it as Master of the requests, then to its private Council, and sends it on mission diplomatic and commercial to the Netherlands (1515), where it writes the Utopia , then in Calais (1517). It is named in 1521 treasurer of the Crown, and 1525 chancellor of Lancaster. It belongs to the delegation which negotiates in 1529 peace with Spain.

He is elected in 1523, against his liking, announcer of the Parliament.

The same year, it starts to take part in the polemic against the theses of Luther, it for what his/her friend the Tunstal bishop elects it in 1528: it will write seven English books until 1533.

It reaches in 1529 the highest load, that of chancellor of the Kingdom, first laic named at this station.

But the will of the king to marry Anne Boleyn, of which it is enthusiast in 1527, runs up against the refusal of the Pape to cancel his marriage with Catherine d' Aragon, which leads Henri VIII to break with Rome. This Schisme is at the origin of the Église Anglican.

Thomas More, faithful to a Christendom linked, resigns then, on May 16th, 1532.

After various annoyances, the king makes require priests and of Thomas More, then the other laic ones, an oath recognizing the spiritual supremacy of the king. More, refusing there, is imprisoned with the Tour of London, then considered to be guilty of high treason and condemned to death. The allowing king that he was decapitated and not hung, More comments on: “God preserves my friends of the favor of the king”. He is carried out on July 6th 1535.

Thomas More was béatifié in 1886 and canonized in 1935. The liturgical calendar extended as from 1970 its festival to the universal Church. The Pape Jean-Paul II did it owner of the responsible for government and the politicians in the year 2000.

Works

Thomas More is especially known for his political and social test Of optimo statu rei publicae deque nova insula Utopia ( the Utopia ). This one is however only one element of a considerable written work: translations of the Greek, epigrams Latin, poetries, treated, but also of the works which testify to a major spirituality.

Utopia

See also: Utopia (delivers), Utopia

The word “Utopia” is formed starting from the Greek or-topos , which means in any place or, in the world of the ideas, in any place (of the Greek have-topos ).

In this work written on the mode of the dialog with a narrator, the explorer Raphaël Hythlodée, Thomas More preaches the tolerance and the discipline with the service of freedom, through the portrait of an imaginary world, near of the ideal to the author.

Thomas More is pilot social devastations which in England of the 16th century the first Mouvement of the enclosures generates. Then stimulated financially by the development of wool industry, the Aristocratie tudorienne starts to create great private breedings of sheep. This irruption of the private property capitalist in the rural world is done with the detriment of the communal grounds and their collective uses, related to old the tenures which contributed to the subsistence of the country families within the framework of the feudal mode. This movement was carried out with dramatic social consequences, because it threw on the ways a mass of people stripped of any means of existence, but more especially amazing brutality. Thomas More denounces these consequences and this brutality in the first part of Utopia. In the second part, More describes the island of Utopia, luminous counterpoint in England of its time. Like that of the republic of Plato, the economy utopienne rests on the collective ownership of the means of production and the absence of commercial exchanges. This company, made up of about fifty managed cities in a similar way, lives without currency, and the collective exchanges take there the place of the private accumulation which causes in England misfortunes of the people. The first mission of the Senate, which counts three deputies per city, is the economic statistics, allowing the equalization of the richnesses between cities. Utopia trades intensively with the foreigner.

Peaceful and respectful of the religious liberty, Utopiens recognize however, all or almost, a supreme being and the immortality of the heart; several embrace the Christian doctrines that their visitors present to them. Based on the will of to live according to nature , the public morals of Utopie is rigorous, condemning the dissimulation, hunting, the games of chance, the Polygamie and the Adultère; the divorce by consent is possible.

Posterity of Utopia

Réalité is not truth but only state of the moment: large humanistic and very informed, Thomas More was a realistic intransigent , attentive with the unacceptable one. Utopia, Satire of England of its time, and assertion of desirable, is concluded by a warning as for the feasibility of a reform going in this direction: “I wish it more than I hope for it”. It thus acts, undoubtedly, rather of one invitation to the action, considering certainly its inherent difficulties, that of an expectancy, vain because full with a sterile hope.

At the 17th century, the communist vision of the Utopia was taken again by at the same time social and religious movements ( Diggers , Levellers ) which tried to represent into acts their reading of the Gospel by collectivizing the grounds.

Modern resurgence of the Republic Plato ician, the term of Utopia was taken again by the socialist great projects 19th century, with good of other sources often more Idéologique S:

Posterity

  • Thomas More inspired with Érasme its Éloge of the madness , that Érasme dedicated to him besides (Extraits from L ''' Éloge of the madness '').

  • Utopia passed in the current language: a Utopia means impossible dream, an inaccessible desire, even if the irrational character of a Utopia did not appear that there is little.
  • Gargantua and Pantagruel, the heroes éponymes of François Rabelais make stay in the town of Utopie , whose name is due to Thomas More.
  • It is the only personality at the same time venerated by the catholics ( holy Thomas More ) and appearing in good place among the precursors of socialism on an obelisk in the foot from the Kremlin in Moscow.

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