Customer Reviews

Statesman and Saint

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The author, Mr Jasper Ridley, has a purpose in this book: to contest the moral character of Thomas More, a lawyer, writer and courtier who served as Chancellor in the times of Henry VIII of England, and died because of his convictions. He was later canonized.

Mr Ridley deplores the ecumenical admiration of More as a brave, principled humanist by most of his British contemporaries, as undeserved and misplaced.
He paints a much darker picture of More: fanatical, vengeful, wavering, coward, and even psichologically disturbed.

In order to contrast More's career with another character of more modern mentality, Mr Ridley chooses to describe at length the career of Thomas Wolsey, the powerful, capable and multifacetic clerygman who preceded More in the post of Chancellor.

The main problem with this book, is that the reader does not know what the goal of the author is; only in the last short chapter does Mr Ridley
hint his "thesis".
Most of the book has the dry tone of an historical reference book on the period, peppered by comments and conclusions about More's behavior, almost invariably negative and made in a more subjective tone.

The author makes his point, but in a clumsy way. The book is not an prderly exposition of his thesis, nor a reference book, nor a comparison betweenthe two men's (More and Wolsey) biographies in the line of Plutarch's "Parallel Lives". Surprisingly enough, not even much of the book is devoted to the interaction between the two, who were contemporaries.

Instead, Mr Ridley simply takes us through a dense enumeration of English and European historical facts during the reign of Henry VIII, focusing on the political careers of the two characters, and taking every opportunity to depict More and Wolsley in a contrasting fashion. When Wolsey prosecutes Reformists, he does it despite himself, when More does it, he is a rabid fanatic. When Wolsey political conduct takes paradoxical twists, he is a pragmatic, when More's does, he is a hypocrite.

Even the dignity of his final refusal to acknowledge the king's supremacy, the author takes away from More, by telling how he behaved less bravely than other Catholic martyrs, and clung to technicalities during his trial.

In sum, this book provides useful, not often seen information about More, Wolsey and their time, and an unusual and noteworthy insight on More's character; but it does in an "ammunition gathering" manner that detracts from scholarly, unbiased tone the subject deserves.