A Saint on Trial: Analyzing the Condemnation of Sir Thomas More (original) (raw)

Thomas More, England and the Martyrs: Martyrs of conscience.

Conference talk presented at the 2018 Europa Christi Congress 14-22 October, Częstochowa, Warszaw, Rzeszów, Lublin Lodź, Kraków. This Paper will both ambitiously cover a few notable English martyrs as well as some of their institutions, and meekly confine itself to a panoramic view of the topic. It will present the English Martyrs, as Martyrs both of the Libertas Ecclesiae and Conscience.

Thomas More on Liberty, Law, and Statesmanship

2015

REGISTER __________ online at thekirbycenter.org Before entering national politics at the age of 40, how did Thomas More prepare himself? What was his theory of statesmenship after studying the Greek, Latin, and medieval classics for 17 years, and after 20 years of experience as a lawyer, judge, city leader, member of Parliament, and international ambassador? Why did he become such a threat to Henry VIII and Cromwell that these once-close friends decided to have him executed? And why was he elected “Lawyer of the Millennium” by the Law Society of Great Britain in 2000? Gerard Wegemer is professor of literature at the University of Dallas and the founding director of the Center for Thomas More Studies. He earned master’s degrees from Boston College and Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Notre Dame. He has written or edited several books, including Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty, Thomas More’s Trial by Jury: A Procedural and Legal...

Saint Thomas More's Conscientious Objection

Connor Court Quarterly

Saint Thomas More is one of those legendary figures about whom we can speak volubly and yet wonder whether perhaps the truth still eludes us. We are able to quote his extensive written works, speak of his martyrdom, and write informatively about many aspects of his personal life; but, like many saints, there is something about him that is difficult to grasp. I do not presume to solve the enigma of Thomas More, but I hope to contribute a little to both the unravelling and the retention of myth and truth in the case of More's conscience.

Thomas More and the Politics of Conscience

Relying on their intimate knowledge of More’s life and writings, and drawing from the best recent scholarship (including their own), Karlin and Oakley provide a lucid account of More’s lifelong struggle to practice the “indirect approach” to philosophic statesmanship amidst the turmoil of Tudor politics. Along the way, they offer valuable suggestions about how to apply More’s thinking to a changed political, moral, and intellectual landscape.

“To Assyst the Ordynaryes”: Why Thomas More Agreed to Become Chancellor

Moreana, 2008

Revisionists’ explanations for Thomas More’s willingness to serve as Chancellor have him scheming to support the Aragonese faction at Court--or conspiring with Hapsburg agents to revive papal influence in England in the wake of Campeggio’s departure and Wolsey’s “fall.” In late 1529, More was obviously concerned with lay disaffection, troubled by the prospect that sectarian dissidents might capitalize on it to reform the church recklessly, and confident that the realm’s bishops, assisted by the government, could outmaneuver the critics of Roman and English Catholicism, whose arguments for an alternative ecclesiology and soteriology he had opposed earlier that year. “To Assyst” presents More’s concern and confidence as a more plausible answer to the question in its title, more plausible than rival responses on offer.

Sejanus: His Fall, and: Sir Thomas More (review)

Theatre Journal, 2006

... The program features an article by Mike Blakemore, media director of Amnesty International, on "prisoners of conscience," another example of the strained attempts by this production to be a modern condemnation of both civil violence and capital punishment. ... Kristen Mcdermott. ...

DE TRISTITIA TEDIO PAVORE ET ORATIONE CHRISTI ANTE CAPTIONEM EIUS: THE LAST WORK BY ST. THOMAS MORE

Annales Theologici, 2021

SUMMARY: I. Biographical Introduction and some of the writings of St. Thomas More. II. The autograph manuscript of the De tristitia tedio pavore et oratione Christi ante captionem eius. III. Composition. IV. The background of More's last work. 1. Context of More's writings within his own life, vocation, and sources available to him at the time. 2. The continental context. 3. Erasmus's Disputatiuncula de taedio, pavore, tristicia Iesu. V. De tristitia tedio pavore et oratione Christi ante captionem eius immediate sources, title, content and commentary. 1. The title of the book. 2. Content and commentary.

Review Essay: Thomas More's Trial by Jury

Today, as in More’s time, the principles and practicalities at stake in clashes of personal belief, religious authority, and political power remain complex. Though attention to More’s legal defense cannot furnish us with simple solutions in theory or policy, however, it can raise crucial questions not only about what legal procedures are necessary to guarantee justice to criminal defendants, but also about the proper boundaries and interrelations of natural, divine, and human law. Although it says more about some of these questions than others, Thomas More’s Trial by Jury provides both a valuable contribution to our understanding of an important legal conflict, and a salutary spur to reflect on what is best as well as what is most questionable in the foundations and development of modern political doctrine and practice.