GERARD B. WEGEMER and STEPHEN W. SMITH, eds. The Essential Works of Thomas More. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. Pp. xxviii + 1473. $100 hbk. ISBN: 978-0-30022-337-8. Reviewed by Patrick F. O’CONNELL, Gannon University, Erie, PA 16541.

 

The Essential Works of Thomas More is, quite simply, a magnificent accomplishment. Rather than providing only snippets of less-well-known writings of the Tudor humanist, statesman, controversialist, martyr and canonized saint (1478-1536) to accompany major works like Utopia or Richard III, as previous anthologies have done, this massive compilation includes full-text versions of most of More's vast canon in a single volume, unmatched since the sixteenth century - and even then his English (1557) and Latin (1565) collected works appeared in separate tomes (the latter without translations into the vernacular). Edited by Gerard Wegemer and Stephen Smith, co-founders of the Center for Thomas More Studies at the University of Dallas, this Essential More depends principally (though not exclusively) on the scholarly edition of More's complete works issued by Yale University Press between 1963 and 1997, and was a feasible project financially only because Yale agreed to publish it as well.

Each work is prefaced by a brief but informative prefatory headnote. The English works retain the original language, with modernized spelling and punctuation and extensive glossing of obsolete or unfamiliar words at the foot of each page, along with brief explanatory notes, making for an attractive and easily comprehensible reading experience comparable, as the editors point out, to the usual process of editing Shakespeare. The Latin works are presented in modern English translation, also with explanatory notes and references to sources.


More's writings can be helpfully considered in three chronological and broadly thematic groups. The first of these, largely composed of explicitly literary and humanistic writings, dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century through the early 1620s. Virtually all of these works are included here: prose translations of his 280 Latin epigrams, in which the range of his interests and ideas is perhaps revealed more clearly than in any other work, called by its Yale editors incomparably the best such collection from its century; his Latin translations and imitation of the Greek satirist Lucian, whose witty use of the dialogue form would have a strong influence on much of More's best original writing; his so-called "Life" of the Italian humanist Pico della Mirandola, in fact a translation and adaptation of a variety of Pico's works prefaced by an English version of his life as written by his nephew; the handful of English poems of strikingly different styles and subject matter, from rollicking comedy to poignant elegy (two of which, a single stanza each, were actually written in the last months of his life); an unfinished meditation on the traditional "last things" (death, judgment, heaven and hell) that is in fact focused exclusively on human mortality; and of course his masterpieces, Utopia (1516), one of the seminal works of the Western literary tradition, which has provided both a name and a model for the numerous ideal commonwealths that have been imagined, and on occasion attempted in practice, from that day up to the present; and the unfinished History of King Richard III, which marks the beginning of modern historical writing in England and served as the principal source for Shakespeare's play (only the Latin version of this work, which largely parallels the English but is not identical to it and extends further than its counterpart, is not included in the material from this period).

A rich selection of More's letters is also included in this volume, comprising more than half the extant correspondence, including some not yet discovered at the time of the 1947 collected edition (unfortunately the projected Yale edition of the correspondence was never completed). The letters are gathered in three separate groups: most of those dated between 1501 and early 1534, shortly before More's arrest, comprise the first group and include letters to family, those concerning various political and religious issues and topics, and those to friends, particularly the great correspondence with Erasmus, the primary figure of the Christian humanist movement for religious reform and spiritual renewal in the Northern Renaissance and More's "other self." A separate section gathers More's great "open letters" to Dutch scholar Martin Dorp, to Oxford University, to future archbishop Edward Lee and to an anonymous monk (now identified as Carthusian John Batmanson) defending the "new learning" and the humanist reform program in general, and Erasmus's edition of the New Testament in particular, along with his epistolary response to a negative critique of his epigrams from the French poet Germanus Brixius, the object of More's satire in a few of these poems. The last group of letters, from the final months of his life, is included later in the volume.


The second period, extending from 1523 until 1533, years when More's attention was principally occupied with concerns of state, consists almost exclusively of works engaged in the controversies of the early Reformation, written on commission from political and religious authorities concerned to halt the spread of Lutheran influence, especially in England, beginning with his Latin Responsio (1523) to Martin Luther's attacks on Henry VIII's treatise on the sacraments. The best of these works is certainly the first written in English, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529; 1531), a series of fictional conversations with a young visitor leaning toward Protestantism in which More draws on the entire spectrum of persuasive devices, including frequent humorous anecdotes, to warn of the dangers of the religious innovations entering England from the continent and to bring his interlocutor back to orthodox belief. Described by C. S. Lewis as perhaps the best specimen of Platonic dialogue ever produced in English, this work was followed in rapid succession by a series of polemical works of more theological and historical than strictly literary significance. The Supplication of Souls (1529) is a plea made by those suffering in purgatory defending current church practices of prayer and almsgiving for the dead, in response to a pamphlet entitled The Supplication of the Beggars that had attacked the alleged covetousness of clerics and disregard of the poor; The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer (1532; 1533) is a massive two-part sequel to the Dialogue that systematically replies to the English Lutheran William Tyndale's attack on that work; The Apology of Sir Thomas More, Knight (1533), structured as a defense against various charges made about his theory and practice in combating heresy, widens its scope to defend the clergy and church against accusations of corruption in an anonymous work issued by the king's own printer; before the year was out, the original author (lawyer Christopher St. German) had responded, and More had published a sequel, The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, repeating much of the argument, and even of the text, of the Apology and defending the independence of the church, an issue that of course would be of crucial importance for More in the months that lay ahead; finally The Answer to a Poisoned Book, appearing at the very end of 1533, was a defense of the traditional Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. Four of these texts, the Dialogue, Supplication, Apology and Answer, are included in full here, with excerpts from the other three, the Latin Responsio and the two "sequels" B the Confutation and Debellation. This is certainly the most thorough assemblage of More's controversial works ever made available in a single collection since the sixteenth century, and allows readers to make an informed evaluation of the significance of this aspect of his thought at a critical moment in ecclesial and political history.


The writings of the final phase, usually referred to as the Tower Works, although the first of its three principal components was almost certainly written completely or in great part before More's arrest and imprisonment on April 17, 1534, are included here in toto. That work, the Treatise on the Passion, and its completion, the separately titled Treatise on the Blessed Body, actually focus on the Last Supper and serve as a non-polemical development of the discussion on the Eucharist begun in the previous year's Answer to a Poisoned Book. His greatest English work, A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, is a classic of prison literature, revealing in the fictional form of conversations between uncle and nephew in contemporary Vienna, threatened by Turkish invasion, the profound significance of Christian faith in the face of suffering and persecution, with unstated but clear pertinence to More's own precarious situation, indicted for treason for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to Henry VIII as head of the English Church.  More's final work, the Latin De Tristitia Christi (The Sadness of Christ), which survives in a holograph manuscript smuggled from his cell, is a series of very personal meditations on Christ's agony before the Passion, and provides an intimate picture of More's own mind as he faced impending execution. Also found here are the brief series of prayers and meditations composed in the Tower, especially the famous prayer "Give my thy grace, Good Lord, to set the world at naught," written in More's own hand in the margins of his prayer book, and the deeply moving group of letters to family and friends, the last on July 5, 1535, the very day before his death, that allow the reader an unmatched revelation of the state of More's mind and heart, his fidelity to his God and his convictions, as he endured imprisonment, trial and condemnation.

Supplementing these primary sources are an 8-page chronology; a detailed reconstruction of More's trial; early biographical testimony of his son-in-law William Roper, his close friend Erasmus and others (including Robert Whittington, source of the famous description of More as "a man for all seasons"); the text of the never-performed drama The Book of Sir Thomas More, by Anthony Munday and others, including, according to many scholars, William Shakespeare; a listing of online resources, including full texts of those works excerpted in the printed volume, available on the companion website; a map of More's London on the front endpapers and a chronological listing of all his works along with a handy glossary of most frequently encountered obsolete terms on the back endpapers; more than 80 illustrations, plus a life-size full-color detail on the front cover from Hans Holbein's 1527 portrait of More (the entire painting is on the spine in much-reduced size) B a close-up of More's face so meticulously depicted that individual facial hairs are visible, some of them already gray. Here indeed is God's plenty.    

Of course, the Essential More cannot replace the magisterial Yale edition, with its comprehensive introductions, meticulous textual editing and detailed annotations, nor is it intended to do so. But it should bring the full spectrum of More's writings, the most extensive in the England of his era, to the attention of prospective general readers who might never attempt to engage the complexities of the original versions of these texts, as well as of scholars who may be drawn to those very volumes through acquaintance with the works in their now more readily accessible form. The $100 price-tag is of course substantial, but in view of the 1500 pages of double-columned text, not at all exorbitant. If it is too steep for some individual readers, it is not too expensive for their libraries, whether academic or public, and should be made available in one venue or another to every reader desiring to encounter this figure of immense religious, political and literary significance in his own (voluminous multitude of) words.