St. Thomas More - 8

St. Thomas More - 8
In pursuit of the truth – cinops be gone – Monday, January 26, 2009
More’s Early Years - 7 p. 48 – 51

The newly married couple first took up residence in a part of London known as Bucklersbury; here More was to reside for nearly 20 years, and it was here that all four of his children were born: Margaret (c. 1505-1544), Elizabeth (c. 1507 - ?), Cecily (c. 1507 - ?), and John (c. 1508/09-1547).

Father Bouge says that More was his parishioner while in London and that he had baptized two of More’s children. He was also More’s spiritual director, probably from 1508 to 1510, and thus was in a unique position to assess the state of the soul entrusted to him:

This Mr. More was my ghostly child: in his confession to be so pure, so clean, with great study, deliberation, and devotion, I never heard many such” a gentleman of great learning, both in law, art, and divinity, having no man like him now alive of a layman. Item, a gentleman of great soberness and gravity, one chief of the King’s Council, Item, a gentleman of little refection and marvelous diet.

More’s scholarship from these years: the translation into Latin of several of the Greek works of Lucian. He and Erasmus collaborated on these translations, and the fruit of their labors entitled Luciani Opuscala … ah Erasmo Toterodamo et Thoma Mora, was published in Paris in November 1506.

More begins by defending the value of reading the classical works of pagan writers such as Lucian, for valid lessons may be derived from these authors that can be applied within a Christian context. Thus Lucian’s dialogue “Philopseudes”, he notes, teaches us the pitfalls of mixing superstition with religion; similarly Christianity is done a grave disservice by those who embellish the lives of the saint with unfounded and fantastic tales:

…{T}hey have not scrupled to stain with fiction that religion which was founded by {T}ruth {Himself} and ought to consist of naked truth. They have failed to see that such fables are so far from aiding religion that nothing can be more injurious to it. It is obvious, as St. Augustine himself has observed that where there is any scent of a lie, the authority of truth is immediately weakened and destroyed…

More’s words above should not be misunderstood as somehow constituting a rejection on his part of all reported miracles other than those contained in Sacred Scripture. We will later see from his own writings elsewhere that he most certainly did believe in approved miracles involving the Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints. Hence his criticism here is motivated, not by a naturalistic skepticism toward the supernatural, but, quite to the contrary, by a genuine zeal for the truth of his faith.

It was during this phase of his life that More appears to have first met Antonio Bonvisi, arguably the closest of his friends. The son of a prosperous, centuries-old family from the Italian city of Lucca, Bonvisi was born in December 1487, inheriting a career in banking and the merchant trade from his ancestors. It is probable that More first became acquainted with the young Italian merchant, some nine years his junior….

More and Antonio Bonvisi shared a common enthusiasm for the scholarship of Christian humanism; … for it was through a conversation with Bonvisi that he (More) came to a vastly deepened understanding of papal primacy, as we shall later see.
George H. Kubeck, P.O. Box 865, Stanton, Ca. 90680-9998