Thomas More: The Search for the Inner Man

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.