A man who rose by merit to the highest status any commoner in England can ever attain was decapitated because of his deep and demanding faith. An exemplar of spiritual discipline, he wore in his lifetime “a hair shirt next to the skin”, and subjected himself to occasional flagellation.
Even as a Lord Chancellor of England, he attended daily Mass, sang in the choir, walked in pilgrimages and processions and practiced a strict discipline in his prayer life.
On the scaffold, before he was beheaded on July 6, 1535, he announced, that he is a good servant of the king, “but God’s first”.
Honest public servant
Thomas More was born on February 7, 1478, the second among the six children of Sir Thomas More and Agnes Graunger. He attended Saint Anthony’s School.
The son of an illustrious judge in London, he mingled with scientists, writers, poets and humorists who frequented their home. For two years he served as a household page of John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who recognized his great potential.
He was sent to Oxford University to study Latin and Greek, then to London for legal training. He lived in the Carthusian Monastery in 1503 and 1504 and seriously considered to be a monk. Ultimately, he decided to be a lawyer.
At 26, he was elected to the parliament to represent Great Yammouth. As one of the two undersheriffs of London, he earned a reputation as an honest public servant. As a judge known for his scrupulous integrity, he dispatched cases with “unprecedented rapidity”, and was dubbed as the “best friend the poor ever had”. He became a member of King Henry VIII’s Privy Council and Chancellor of England in 1529.
Fame and honor did not change his personhood. He maintained his delightful nature and happy temperament. He would remark: “My Lord went on foot, so I will not follow him in horseback…We may not look to our pleasure to go to heaven in featherbeds.”
He never saved money or lived in luxury but gave it to alleviate the life of the poor and the sick. To adulation of people, for his achievements, he wrote, “Reputation, honor, fame, what is all that but a breath of air from another person’s mouth.”
Moral conscience
More was asked to sign a letter written by leading English church personalities and aristocrats to Pope Clement VII for the annulment of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. King Henry VIII demanded his loyalty—absolute loyalty which he refused. Rome, too, bluntly refused the request. The king was very furious and More resigned all his positions.
He retired, lived in the country and continued his passion for writing. A classical scholar with a sense of humor, he wrote Utopia, a brilliant, satire about the political condition of a society that can attain virtues “following natural reason with the aid of revelation”.
He penned Dialogue Concerning Heresies, The Last Four Things, Supplication of Souls, Comfort Against Tribulation, The Sadness of Christ, Dialogue on Conscience, A Treatise on the Passion of Christ, biographies, poems and a collection of correspondences, among others.
On February 1, 1535, the parliament approved the Act of Supremacy, declaring the king as the only supreme head of the Church of England.
The clergymen and bishops of England signed it except for Bishop John Fisher. Thomas More refused to sign, too, holding fast to the supremacy of the pope. The parliament could not overrule the universal church, was his staunch stand.
Convicted for treason, he was jailed in the Tower of London. After 15 months of imprisonment, he was doomed to death. Prematurely bent and aged, he did not loose his wit.
In a letter to his daughter Margaret, he said: “Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.”
As he ascended his way to the scaffold, he told the guard, “I pray you, master lieutenant, see me safe up, as for my coming down let me shift for myself.”
To the crowd who gathered to watch his decapitation, he remarked: “I die in and for the faith of the Holy Catholic church. Pray for me in this world, and I shall pray for you in that world. Pray for the king that it pleases God to send him good counsellors. I die as the king’s true servant but God’s first.”
Beatified on December 29, 1886, by Pope Leo XIII, More was canonized by Pope Pius XI on May 19, 1936,
Pope John Paul II, extolling Saint Thomas More as patron saint of statesmen and politicians on October 2000, said: “He demonstrated in a singular way the value of moral conscience.”
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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna and Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons