Sir Thomas More - Renaissance - Essay Example

Sir Thomas More- Renaissance The period of Renaissance began in Italy and than spread to Europe by 16th century. Renaissance characteristics, such as individualism, love of nature, and secularism or the concentration of human interest upon the affairs of this world, are to be found in broad reaches of the Middle Ages. Many of the so-called medieval characteristics of the Renaissance involve submissiveness to authority, supernaturalism or interest in the transcendental, and superstition1. In general, the Renaissance is described as 'rebirth' of antiquity, Latin and Ancient Greek art and literature. Many historians, including Peter Acroyd, stress the evolutionary rather than the revolutionary nature of the Renaissance 2. The fine arts, and discoveries and inventions, with the growth of science, during the so-called period of the Renaissance, enlarging its conventional frontiers whenever it proves helpful, and to draw such conclusions as the evidence will support. Sir Thomas More was an English lawyer, philosopher, statement and author. He is considered one of the most distinguished early Tudor humanists. In his works, History of King Richard III (between 1513 and 1518), Utopia (1515), response to Martin Luther On Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Reply to Luther (1523). His thought on war and peace reveals how leaders of the English Renaissance strove to describe, as a model for their age, the outlines of a radically improved social order. Its basic principles were to be drawn from a revitalized Church and from the social application especially of neo-Stoic ideas found in medieval as well as classical sources 3. Since it was plain to the humanists that unless wars could largely be prevented, social reconstruction would be well-nigh impossible, much of the London Reformers' literary and political energies went into labors for peace in their time. The 'propaganda' furnishes indeed a signal illustration of the tendency, since the Renaissance, for conscious modification of public opinion and reshaping of society toward an ideal state. The vital principle of a society may be found in its visions of a good life and of the ways and means by which the human pursuit of happiness may be made triumphant. Ideas, however, cannot wisely be separated from the men who discover or rediscover them and who, inevitably, are molded by them 4. An awareness that war was a monstrous folly which could destroy civilization did not, to be sure, dawn for the first time on men's minds at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Utopia was one of the main books of this period of time reflecting views and ideas of the European Renaissance. Utopia (1515) appeared when England was at peace and when a rather well-tempered humanist optimism existed, based on the hope that, at least in England, peace might continue and that a golden age of social reform might yet be possible 5. This optimism, one surmises, endured until the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. the Utopia stands as a unified work of art, comprising what may be called the Dialogue of Counsel (Book I) and the Discourse (Book II) which sets forth a romantic account of the remarkable commonwealth The criticism of war in Utopia begins in the two realistic and dramatic discussions of sore contemporary social problems in England and western Europe which comprise Book I. One is a treatment of the causes of corrupt government, together with comment on princes, good and evil. The other part of the Dialogue centers on justice, the causes of vagabondage and theft, and generally on the social causes of crime against property and persons. In both sections matters relating to war are touched on, but attention is mainly focused upon economic and administrative maladies affecting the state as a whole and in its international relations 6. From an English humanist viewpoint, More's principal mouthpiece in Book I of Utopia where contemporary European royal follies are satirized), all this had in it precious little to justify England's entering the war. In contrast, continued peace with France had the most obvious advantages: peace in the Channel, peace with the restive chivalry of Scotland, even money tribute. And unquestionably war with France would endanger the treaty of "permanent" peace with Scotland and hence the civil peace of England. The English humanists' attack upon the nonsense which the English Renaissance inherited from the degenerate world of romantic chivalry is, indeed, an integral part of their social criticism. A key idea of the humanist social criticism (in the minds of Colet and Erasmus) appears in the Dialogue's broad discussion of justice and the causes of crime 7. More was forced to admit that, despite the harshest infliction of the penalty which he asserted would cure the evil, thieves were never more numerous in England. Because evidently More owed much to Plato, there has been a recurrent tendency to conclude that he intended to picture Utopia as an "ideal" republic, in approximately the same sense as ideal applies to Plato's imaginary state. Plato did construct an ideal republic, in the sense that, substantially turning his back on human limitations (e.g., in his dream of incorruptible guardian-rulers), he escaped the bounds of reality. Hence perhaps his Republic has influenced certain poets more than it has practical politicians. The unity of the freeman's life in Utopia appears best when its major aspects are seen to be a logical, internally consistent development of one basic idea. This is that uncorrupted men will and do "by nature" that is, by the natural law of their being-human nature, actively prefer to live "according to reason" for the sake both of maximum personal happiness and for the common good of all. The freemen must (to retain full citizenship) subscribe only to two absolute ideas 8. The most persistent and original theme (original for the sixteenth century) in More's epigrams, many of which were done between 1509 and 1519, is exposure of the essential nature of tyranny 9. Some twelve of the most piercing and grim of these poems treat some phase of this idea. In his use of the classics More thus revealed once again the quality of his humanism, the power and understanding for present use that he had gained from his readings in antiquity. Let On an Iron Statue illustrate: "To you, the king who ravaged the world, they set up a statue of iron-as far cheaper than bronze. This economy was the result of starvation, slaughter, the clash of arms, and destitution. These are the instruments by which your lust for wealth has brought ruin to all" 10. In his Richard III More drew a basic contrast between two types of princes-the relatively just king versus the tyrant, Edward IV versus the Machiavellian Richard of Gloucester. The historian John Guy writes the following: Individuals could not invoke their own opinions in a matter of conscience', nor could national States enforce a collective opinion, because the principles of conscience' must conform to the doctrines or traditions which the Catholic Church had established since the time of the Apostles" (Guy 2000, 15). The Renaissance philosophy is founded upon certain basic premises concerning the divine powers in the universe and concerning human nature itself. While God or Nature (the terms are interchangeable for the European humanists) cannot be known by human reason directly, the divine intent can be known through God's handiwork, of which man, the beasts, and the entire natural environment are and have long been open to acute observation. In man's nature are apparent several mighty gifts of the divine creator 11. Following More, the first is man's godlike reason: the Utopians believe that man was divinely intended to live "according to nature," being then ruled by "reason," in the sense of uncorrupted right reason. Hence the Utopians delight, as scientists, in perceiving natural law working everywhere in the universe-a pleasure no beast could know. No less important than reason is Nature's great second gift to man. Again as compared with the beasts, man is distinguished by his power of mutual benevolent solicitude for the common welfare Since Nature's benevolence to man is so apparent, the Utopians generally deduce that "the merciful clemency of God" takes no "delight in blood and slaughter"-that is, it would be illogical for the benevolent creator of life to enjoy its destruction. Hence the Utopians abhor all bloodshed as contrary to nature and as cumulatively destructive of the "clemency" which is the "gentlest affection of our nature". Certainly More merits high praise for his faithful work toward a stable agreement to restore law and order 12. According to the Renaissance thought, man's soul is immortal, and that after death every one will be rewarded or punished in proportion to his merits. These postulates the Utopians adopted pragmatically as well as on religious grounds. That is, they cannot be proved by material evidence but are the most practical known basis on which to construct a good life for the greatest number of people. From the humanists' viewpoint, no doubt the golden age seemed on its way, not beginning with an imaginary pagan prince but with an existing Christian prince, Henry VIII, who at last understood the genius of his island 13. In every respect, the Renaissance conceptions of value-religious, political, economic, esthetic-together with the operating practices and institutions which realize these values, are those approved as necessary for the achievement of happiness here and now, both by reason and by the test of experience during the seventeen centuries required to evolve the society out of initial conditions closely resembling those still prevalent in Renaissance Europe 14. Humanists by no means felt that the recently established peace was as solid as its faade might indicate. This fact shows curiously that the newly arrived golden age presented novel, tender, and potentially explosive conditions. In sum, the period of the Renaissance marked great changes in philosophical ideas and forced people to rethink their values, relations with the outside world and their inner self. By Renaissance humanists, at least, no grave conflict between Christian and natural ethics, or between Christianity and natural science, was anticipated. The humanists take it to be man's natural capacity for and strong inclination toward a close-knit and loving family and communal social life. Within the bounds of these limitations or assumptions, Thomas More then proceeded, wittily and realistically, to imagine a good society. The natural causes of such man-made European social evils as poverty, crime, and war are attacked at their roots in irrational and vicious custom. Endnotes 1. Peter Burke, The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries. (Blackwell Publishing Limited, 1998): 19, 47. 2. Peter Acroyd, The Life of Thomas More. (Anchor, 1999): 4. 3. Peter Burke, The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries. (Blackwell Publishing Limited, 1998): 92-93. 4. ibid, 107. 5. ibid, 135. 6. Peter Acroyd, The Life of Thomas More. (Anchor, 1999): 23, 26. 7. Ibid, 133. 8. ibid, 174, 175. 9. Peter Burke, The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries. (Blackwell Publishing Limited, 1998): 205. 10. Peter Acroyd, The Life of Thomas More. (Anchor, 1999): 25. 11. John Guy, 'The Search for the Historical Thomas More'. History Review, (2000): 15. 12. Peter Burke, The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries. (Blackwell Publishing Limited, 1998): 131. 13. John Guy, 'The Search for the Historical Thomas More'. History Review, (2000): 15. 14. Peter Burke, The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries. (Blackwell Publishing Limited, 1998): 151. Bibliography Acroyd, P. The Life of Thomas More. Anchor, 1999. Burke, P. The European Renaissance: Centres and Peripheries, Blackwell Publishing Limited, 1998. Guy, J. 'The Search for the Historical Thomas More'. History Review, 2000, p. 15. Read More