Thomas More: The Search for the Inner Man [Paperback]

Louis L. Martz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 1992

This book analyzes and studies More's writings as well as Holbein's portraits of More and his family. Louis Martz argues that there is no foundation for reviving the ancient charge that More was a bloody persecutor of heretics, and he questions the view put forth that More suffered from an "inner fury" resulting from sexual repression and a frustrated desire to be a monk. According to Mastz, More's furious attacks against heresy in his polemical writings do not reveal his deep inner self, but are treatises done in the common style of controversy in an era of savage religious disagreements. More's polemics are uncommon only in their wit and sardonic cleverness, says Martz, and they are matched by those of Martin Luther, his only peer in this kind of vitriolic attack. Martz makes his case primarily through exploration of More's mode of writing: the Augustinian "order of the heart" displayed in some of his major works - the "Confutation of Tyndale's Answer", and "Apology", the English treatise on the Passion, the "Dialogue of Comfort", and his last work, the "De Tristitia", his meditation on the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Product Details

• Paperback: 123 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (August 19, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300056680
• ISBN-13: 978-0300056686
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,659,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an elegantly written little volume, February 12, 2004

By 

B. F. Mooney "biologist" (Mooresville, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thomas More: The Search for the Inner Man (Paperback)

Martz has some good credentials in coming to write about More: for instance he is Sterling Professor (emeritus) of English at Yale and Chairman of the Editorial Board overseeing Yale's series of the complete works of Thomas More. And properly he writes from that grand vantage point, turning More's life and thought around like a crystal to be examined, facet by facet. What he fastens on to considered in this too-short book is interesting in itself, such as the conclusions to be drawn from the changes in the composition and poses of the family in the draft and revised final copies of a More family portrait. (Historians can learn much here.)

Martz asks the big questions, too. Was More a religious zealot, unceasingly hounding men like Tyndale to their deaths? Or, as Martz well argues, a man fulfilling the duties of his position in an age of harsh remedies and punishments? (These were not kind times for anyone.) Again and again, Martz maturely considers More and More's actions in the context of that period, and brings a sophistication, perhaps even a wisdom,to a debate that rages between those who wish the man to be fully a saint without blemish, and those who wish to find a monster under those rich robes. As experience would suggest, the truth is at neither extreme - and not even on a line to be drawn between these poles.

This is a book to savor and reflect on, and while Martz's insights may not bring the search for the inner More to conclusion, he starts us on the way. Here is More looked at as an actual human being, and not an icon for either camp or ideology, to worship or despise; here is the man that Erasmus loved and treated as a dear and close friend. More must have had some mightly virtues to engage the heart of the tolerance-loving Erasmus, and I think that is the man Martz is searching for, and that is the man, the More, he finds.