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This book challenges the recently established consensus that the
trial was a carefully prepared and executed judicial process in
which the judges were amenable to reasonable arguments. Thomas
More's treason trial in 1535 is one of history's most famous court
cases, yet never before have all the major documents been
collected, translated, and analyzed by a team of legal and Tudor
scholars. This edition serves asan important sourcebook and
concludes with a 'docudrama' reconstructing the course of the trial
based on these documents. Legal experts H. A. Kelly and R. H.
Helmholz take different approaches to the legalities of this trial,
and four experienced judges [including Justice of the Queen's Bench
Sir Michael Tugendhat] discuss the trial with some disagreements -
notably on the meaning and requirement of 'malice' called for in
the Parliamentary Act of Supremacy. More's own accounts of his
interrogations in prison are analyzed, and the trial's procedures
are compared to and contrasted with 16th-century concepts of
natural law and also modern judicial practices and principles. The
book is a 'must read' not only for students of law and Tudor
history but also for all concerned with justice and due process. As
a whole, the book challenges Duncan Derrett's conclusions that the
trial was conducted in accord with contemporary legal norms and
that More was convicted only on the single charge of denying
Parliament the power to declare Henry VIII Supreme Head of the
English Church [testified to by Richard Rich] - a position that has
been uniformly accepted by historians since 1964. HENRY ANSGAR
KELLY is past Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, UCLA. LOUIS W. KARLIN is an attorney with the California
Court of Appeal and Fellow of the Center for Thomas More Studies,
University of Dallas. GERARD B. WEGEMER is Director of the Center
for Thomas More Studies.
The year 2015 marks the fifteenth anniversary of Thomas More's
becoming Patron Saint of Statesmen and Politicians. Yet during
these years no serious answer has been given by a community of
scholars as to why More would be the choice of over 40,000 leaders
from ninety-five countries. What were More's guiding principles of
leadership and in what ways might they remain applicable? This
collection of essays addresses these questions by investigating
More through his writings, his political actions, and in recent
artistic depictions.
The term ""statesman"" entered the English language during the
Renaissance as a result of the widespread return to the Greek and
Roman classics. Sir Thomas More, who brought his careful study of
Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Augustine to bear upon his
political life, contributed most to the recovery of the ancient
Greco-Roman concept of the statesman. Throughout More's writings
and his actions one finds a consistent and principled approach to
statesmanship that emphasizes the free character of the human
person and integrates classical and Christian thought with the best
of England's common law tradition of self-rule. This study is the
first to examine More's complete works in view of his concept of
statesmanship, and, in the process, link More's humanism, his
faith, and his legal and political vocations into a coherent
narrative. In Part One Gerard B. Wegemer sets forth More's theory
of statesmanship, drawing heavily from the entire corpus of his
work. In the second part he presents More's understanding of
literature and applies this understanding to his book Utopia. In
Part Three he investigates the two most controversial events in
More's life: his treatment of heretics and his refusal to obey his
king. More presented a consistent defense of institutional
arrangements now taken as basic to all democratic government: rule
of law, division of power, separation of church and state, elected
representation, and protected forms of free and public
deliberation. He believed that the essential work of the statesman
is to draw upon the nation's deepest and longest-standing
consensus, as expressed in its literature and its laws, in order to
govern with the people's consent. More was convinced that law, not
individual persons, should rule. This book, which integrates the
literature, philosophy, history, and politics of the Renaissance,
will appeal across disciplines to scholars of early modern England
and to anyone fascinated by the life and times of St. Thomas More.
Gerard B. Wegemer is the author of Thomas More: A Portrait of
Courage (1995) and has written about More and his times for such
journals as Renascence, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Moreana, and The
Review of Politics. He holds master's degrees in political
philosophy and literature from Boston College and Georgetown
respectively, and a doctorate in English literature from Notre
Dame. He is associate professor of literature at the University of
Dallas, and he teaches and lectures regularly on St. Thomas More.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
""Professor Wegemer's book is an extraordinary work of
interpretation. The key to its success is a comprehensive grasp of
More's life and work, rooted in a profound sympathy for the man and
his goals. With a calm and confident hand, Wegemer sheds new light
on More's views of statesmanship and its requirements, on the inner
structure of his enigmatic and playful masterpiece Utopia, and on
the guiding conceptions of his practical political life. Rarely do
authors show such a capacity for leaping across the chasm of
culture and years to understand the vision that makes sense of a
man's life and thought.""-- Professor Christopher Wolfe, Department
of Political Science, Marquette University Table of Contents
Introduction I. More's Understanding of the Statesman's Work 1. Can
Reason Rule the Free? 2. First, Self-Rule 3. Ruling Citizens: What
Is Needed? II. Utopia: A Statesman's Puzzle 4. Literature and the
Acquisition of Political Prudence 5. Utopia 1 and 2: Dramatizing
Competing Philosophies of Life 6. Utopia 1: Ciceronian
Statesmanship 7. Utopia 2: Augustinian Realist III. Issues in
More's Career as Statesman 8. The Limits of Reason and the Need for
Law 9. Reform over Revolution: In Defense of Free
This source book brings together texts by and about Thomas More -
poet, scholar, statesman, family man, educational reformer,
philospher, historian and saint. In addition to serving as an
introduction to More's life and writings for the general reader,
this collection is a companion to the study of 16th-century
history, literature, philosophy or politics. The writings focus
upon More's views of education, political theory, church-state
relations, love and friendship, practical politics and the vexing
issue of conscience. They shed light on the distinctive Christian
humanism that More expresses and embodied. Also included in the
book are three famous 16th-century accounts of More's life by
Erasmus, Roper and a team of London playwrights including William
Shakespeare.
This book challenges the recently established consensus that the
trial was a carefully prepared and executed judicial process in
which the judges were amenable to reasonable arguments. Thomas
More's treason trial in 1535 is one of history's most famous court
cases, yet never before have all the major documents been
collected, translated, and analyzed by a team of legal and Tudor
scholars. This edition serves asan important sourcebook and
concludes with a 'docudrama' reconstructing the course of the trial
based on these documents. Legal experts H. A. Kelly and R. H.
Helmholz take different approaches to the legalities of this trial,
and four experienced judges [including Justice of the Queen's Bench
Sir Michael Tugendhat] discuss the trial with some disagreements -
notably on the meaning and requirement of 'malice' called for in
the Parliamentary Act of Supremacy. More's own accounts of his
interrogations in prison are analyzed, and the trial's procedures
are compared to and contrasted with 16th-century concepts of
natural law and also modern judicial practices and principles. The
book is a 'must read' not only for students of law and Tudor
history but also for all concerned with justice and due process. As
a whole, the book challenges Duncan Derrett's conclusions that the
trial was conducted in accord with contemporary legal norms and
that More was convicted only on the single charge of denying
Parliament the power to declare Henry VIII Supreme Head of the
English Church [testified to by Richard Rich] - a position that has
been uniformly accepted by historians since 1964. Henry Ansgar
Kelly, Distinguished Research Professor, is past Director of the
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA. LOUIS W. KARLIN
is an attorney with the California Department of Justice and Fellow
of the Center for Thomas More Studies, University of Dallas. GERARD
B. WEGEMER is Director of the Center for Thomas More Studies and
Professor of Literature at the University ofDallas.
The first comprehensive one-volume collection of St.Thomas More's
writing "[A] tremendous scholarly undertaking. . . . Accessible and
transparent to both scholars and the general audience."-Renaissance
and Reformation In this book, Wegemer and Smith assemble More's
most important English and Latin works for the first time in a
single volume. This volume reveals the breadth of More's writing
and includes a rich selection of illustrations and artwork. The
book provides the most complete picture of More's work available,
serving as a major resource for early modern scholars, teachers,
students, and the general reader.
What does it mean to be a free citizen in times of war and tyranny?
What kind of education is needed to be a 'first' or leading citizen
in a strife-filled country? And what does it mean to be free when
freedom is forcibly opposed? These concerns pervade Thomas More's
earliest writings, writings mostly unknown, including his 280
poems, declamation on tyrannicide, coronation ode for Henry VIII
and his life of Pico della Mirandola, all written before Richard
III and Utopia. This book analyzes those writings, guided
especially by these questions: Faced with generations of civil war,
what did young More see as the causes of that strife? What did he
see as possible solutions? Why did More spend fourteen years after
law school learning Greek and immersed in classical studies? Why do
his early works use vocabulary devised by Cicero at the end of the
Roman Republic?
What does it mean to be a free citizen in times of war and tyranny?
What kind of education is needed to be a 'first' or leading citizen
in a strife-filled country? And what does it mean to be free when
freedom is forcibly opposed? These concerns pervade Thomas More's
earliest writings, writings mostly unknown, including his 280
poems, declamation on tyrannicide, coronation ode for Henry VIII
and his life of Pico della Mirandola, all written before Richard
III and Utopia. This book analyzes those writings, guided
especially by these questions: Faced with generations of civil war,
what did young More see as the causes of that strife? What did he
see as possible solutions? Why did More spend fourteen years after
law school learning Greek and immersed in classical studies? Why do
his early works use vocabulary devised by Cicero at the end of the
Roman Republic?
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