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Medievalism of More's "Utopia"Author(s): P. Albert DuhamelReviewed work(s):Source: Studies in Philology, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Apr., 1955), pp. 99-126Published by: University of North Carolina PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4173125 .Accessed: 04/04/2012 17:32

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Studies in Philology

Volume LII APRIL, 1955 Number 2

MEDIEVALISM OF MORE'S UTOPIA

By P. ALBET DUHAMEL

Scholarly concentration almost exclusively on the political content of More's Utopia as an anticipation of modern liberal thinking has resulted in the unexpected paradox that probably the most medieval of More's works is commonly interpreted as the most Renaissance. Although most of the explicit content of the Utopia is concerned with contemporary Renaissance political and economic problems, the implicit heuristic method which determined this content is medievaL Just as some knowledge of the simplified medieval cosmic setting implied by Shakespeare throughout his works is of greater importance to an understanding of his plays than the recognition of any specific historical event which may be alluded to in a particular play, so the explicit content of Utopia can be better understood in terms of the Scholastic method which, though only implicit in the work, More employed in the construction of Utopia to make his criticism of the world created by an abuse of that method all the more ironical. The failure to recognize how the method controlled the content has been the greatest single obstacle to an understanding of the Utopia in its proper context and to its reconciliation with More's life and English works. In a somewhat similar paradoxical fashion, the Treatise on the Passion and the Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, which are commonly considered as representative of More's lingering medieval dogmatism, might be better understood as the humanistic documents they are, if their controlling method were generally recognized as similar to that developed by Erasmus and other Renaissance humanists.

99

100 Medievalism of MIore's " Utopia "

The method employed by an author in "inventing" and con- structing his work is certainly as significant in placing that work in its historical context as the ideas which the author discusses in that same work. The method will determine what the author dis- covers and how he arranges what he has discovered. The attempt to define a document as "medieval " or " Renaissance " in terms of a set of ideas which are considered as specifically definitive of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance is based on the dangerous assump- tion that each of these historical periods had an integrating principle or set of ideas peculiarly its own.1 Modern scholarship, in its continuing survey of the boundary line which separates Renais- sance from medieval, testifies to the dangers, or at least the difficulties, of defining an age in terms of its supposedly specific subject- matter.2 Few, if any, ideas rummaged out of the belfries of St. Gall and Monte Cassino were overlooked by the Middle Ages to become the peculiar property of a later age.3 Even if Poggio Bracciolini and Filelfo had dusted off any number of forgotten classical texts, these texts would have had little or no effect on prevailing ways of living and thinking if they had been read and examined in the same old way. The best fate they could have ex- pected would have been a niche in some latter-day Summa as new adversaries to be levelled in an extra " ad primum " in the refuta- tion.

The Renaissance can be distinguished, to a large extent, from the Middle Ages in terms of its reorganization of the trivium or the formal arts. From Abelard to Petrarch, logic was the archi- tectonic discipline to which grammar and rhetoric were subordinated. From Lorenzo Valla on, the three arts were oriented according to the needs of grammar, whose methods now controlled the investigation and interpretation of texts.4 The significance of this change can be better understood in the light of an old Scholastic maxim

I Cf. Richard P. McKeon, "Renaissance and Method in Philosophy," Studies in the History of Ideas III (New York, 1935), pp. 40-41.

2 Cf. W. K. Ferguson, The Renaissatce in Historical Thought (Boston, 1948) for a detailed survey of definitions of the Renaissance.

Cf. Pearl Kibr6, " Intellectual Interests in Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Libraries," Journal of the History of Ideas, VII (1946), 259, 279, 280; J. S. Beddie, "Ancient Classics in Medieval Libraries," ,Speculum, V (1930), 3-20.

4 Cf. McKeon, op. cit., p. 87.

P. Albert Duhamel 101

which stressed that whatever is known is known, not according to its own nature, but according to the nature of the knower.5 In late Scholastic philosophy this became the very familiar, " Quicquid recipitur, recipitur secundum modum recipiendis," and as such was accepted by the Renaissance humanists. John Colet employs the principle in his Oxford lectures on St. Paul's Epistles in the form which may be translated, " Everything is such as the receiver." 6

Since it is the function of the formal arts of the trivium to form or discipline the faculties of the reader, to create the proper reader, a change in the orientation of these disciplines will change the reading habits of the proper reader. " But, to change the manner of reading Aristotle, Vergil, Moses and Paul is to change one's conception of God, nature, man, morals, and religion." 7

Peter Abelard was as radical an innovator in the twelfth century as Erasmus was in the sixteenth. Abelard turned Scholastic philosophy into a literature of questions by collecting some 1,800 texts from the early Church Fathers and sorting them out under 158 controversial " quaestiones," or seeming contradictions, in the Sic et Non. He attempted to resolve the resulting theological problems by the application of logical rules such as those governing the comprehension and extension of terms.8 He was consequently charged with rationalism by William of Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux for making the rules of logic the determinants of faith, and his De Unitate et Trinitate Divinae was condemned at Soissons in 1121.9 The followers of Abelard continued the development of

5 Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, V, Prose 5 and 6. Cf.. the discussion by Thomas Aquinas, Commentum super Lib. Boetii De Consolatu Philosophico (New York, 1930), XXIV, 140-41, 144. All references to Aquinas are to this photographic reproduction of the Parma 1852-1873 edition.

6 John Colet, Enarratio in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. J. H. Lupton (London, 1873), p. 164; John Colet, Enarratio in Primam Epistolam Pauli ad Corinthios, ed. J. H. Lupton (London, 1874), pp. 13, 167.

7McKeon, op. cit., p. 47. 8 Cf. ibid., pp. 67-69; also G. Pare, A. Brunet, R. Tremblay, La Renais-

sance du XIIe Siecle (Ottawa, 1933), pp. 289-91; Peter Abelard, Sic et Non, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 178, cols. 1339-49. All later references to the Patrologia will be made with the usual MPL followed by volume number, and then column number. Cf. also Abelard, Expositio in Epist. Pauli ad Romanos, MPL 178, col. 866 ff.

9Pare, Brunet, Tremblay, op. cit., p. 289; Bernard, MPL 182, col. 1055; William of Thierry, MPL 180, cols. 249-82.

102 Medievalism of More's " Utopia "

his logical methodology and concerned themselves with the inte- gration of Biblical statements into a systematic whole. Rarely, if ever, did they feel the need of examining original texts in an attempt to resolve contradictions by a closer study of the sources. They were satisfied with the second-hand knowledge of the Bible and the Fathers garnered in little snippets from the Glossa Ordi- naria of Walafrid Strabo or the Decretals of Gratian.'0

Erasmus, on the other hand, devoted his life to the re-editing of original sources. He edited the Greek New Testament, Jerome, Cyprian, Arnobius, Irenaeus, Ambrose, Augustine, Aristotle, Seneca, Demosthenes, Quintus Curtius, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, Livy, Terence, tracts of Lactantius, Chrysostom, Cicero, Plutarch, Galen, and Xenophon. Death found him working on Origen. Thus he reoriented the study of theology to a careful study and grammatical explication of the original texts.'1 Erasmus was for- ever insisting upon a return to the sources, "ad fontes," because an examination of the correct text frequently resolved the " quaesti- unculae" of the Schools, and a close attention to the historical context removed further difficulties. Erasmus read his texts as a grammarian to discover what was taught and he was little concerned with the construction of Summae or integrated speculative systems.'2 For him, knowledge of languages, of the precise meaning of words, became the most important part of erudition, and he belittled the knowledge of Barbara, Celarent, and Bocardo.13 Erasmus and the Renaissance humanists sought a total understanding of a text; Abelard and some of the other Scholastics limited themselves to an analysis of those aspects of a text subject

10 Cf. Martin Grabmann, Die Geschichte der Scholastischen Methode (Friburg, 1909-1911), II, 387.

11 Cf. Thomas More, " Letter to Martin Dorp," in The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Elizabeth F. Rogers (Princeton, 1947), pp. 45-72; Urban Regius, " Letter to Erasmus," in Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi, ed. H. S. Allen and H. M. Allen (Oxford, 1906-1947), V, 2.

12 Desiderius Erasmus, "Paraclesis," in Opera Omnia (Leyden, 1702-5), V, 141; cf. also " Ratione seu methodus compendio ad veram theologiam," in Opera Omnia, V, 77.

13 Cf. Christian Dolfen, Die Stellung des Erasmus von Rotterdam zur scholastischen Methode (Osnabruck, 1936), pp. 64-82 for many illustrations of the logical method as applied by the Scholastics, from Duns Scotus to Gabriel Biel, to various questions which Erasmus attempted to solve by grammatical exegeses.

P. Albert Duhacmel 103

to logical paraphrase. The Schoolmen willingly limited themselves, through the method they employed, to an investigation of those problems of the universe which were demonstrable by reason alone.'4

The explicit content of More's Utopia is the result of the application of that method of investigation employed by the Scholastics in establishing and solving their "quaestiones." This Scholastic Method is not dependent upon the use of such set phrases as " Respondeo dicendum," " E contrario dicitur," " at dicit aliquis," for these are only pedagogical devices, parts of the Lehrmethode, developed in the Schools for greater clarity in teaching.'5 The arrangement of material under various propositions introduced by " Utrum," followed by several commonly accepted solutions, then the constructive proof, and finally the replies to the rejected opinions-an arrangement familiar to all who have but glanced at some medieval Squmma-is not essential to the method and is not found in the works of the true father of the Scholastic Method, St. Anselm of Canterbury.'6 Anselm's motto of " Fides quaerens intellectum " roughly summarizes the essence of the method, for it was fundamentally an attempt to reach an understanding of the truths of revelation, or, in other words, to achieve a rational insight into the content of faith. Investigations conducted according to this method started by accepting some statement as true because it was revealed, and then developed by searching for some way in which reason alone might approximate, if not achieve, the same conclusion.'7 For Anselm, faith provided the goal and the impulse to investigate; the revealed truth served as the hypothesis and reason sought to make its content not more certain but merely more intelligible. For More, the Christian community made available to European man by revelation provided the hypothetical ideal, and he sought to demonstrate how closely it might have been approximated through the use of reason alone.

Anselm explains his method with some diffidence at the opening of his Monologium. He is writing these meditations, not because

14 Cf. Dom John Chapman, The Spiritual Letters, ed Roger Hudlestone (Fordham, 1935), pp. 195-96.

15 Cf. Grabmann, Methode, II, 517. 16 Cf. ibid., 1, 32. 17 Cf. ibid., II, 85 and 91.

104 Medievalism of More's " Utopia"

he has any conviction about his own ability to reason about these truths, but because he must fulfill the injunction, contained in the first Epistle of Peter (3:15), of first sanctifying the "Lord Christ in your hearts," and then of being " always ready to satisfy everyone that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you." Anselm, therefore, attempts to show that

nothing in Scripture should be urged on the authority of Scripture itself but that whatever the conclusion of independent investigation should declare to be true, should, in an unadorned style, with common proofs andl with a simple argument, be briefly enforced by the cogency of reason, and plainly expounded in the light of truth.18

He then examines the question of how many of the divine attributes known through revelation might be demonstrated by reason alone. He even attempts, in chapter 78, a rational proof of the nature of the Trinity, but the spirit and purpose of Anselm's work is usually much more restrained.19

As the use of this method spread throughout all the schools during the University Period, it became increasingly clear that skill in the use of the method depended almost exclusively upon a skill in the use of the canons of logic. The ability to infer and deduce from a few commonly accepted principles, and to do this in the jargon of the Schools, came to be identified with the ability to philosophize and theologize.10 The Scholastics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries moved further and further away from any concern with the Biblical content they originally sought to investigate, and mingled so much of the water of philosophy with the wine of Sacred Scripture that they only succeeded in working the worst of all miracles, changing the wine into water.2' By the end of the fifteenth century, the humble spirit and original purpose of Anselm and Hugh of St. Victor had been forgotten, and the Scholastics were concerned with validating and defending opposed systems of thought and extrapolating increasingly trivial

18 Anselm, Monologium, trans. by S. N. Deane (Chicago, 1935), p. 35. 19 Anselm, Proslogium, ibid., p. 7. Cf.. with the attitude of Hugh of

St. Victor, Summa Sententiarum, MPL 136, cols. 41-42, and the rationalism of Abelard in Introductio ad Theologiam, MPL 178, col. 1039.

20 D. Erasmi, Opuscula, ed. Wallace K. Ferguson (The Hague, 1933), pp. 178 ff.

21 St. Bonaventure, Collatio, Hexaemeron, in Opera Omnia (Quarrachi, 1882-1902), V, 421.


points from their own philosophical premises.22 So-called "divinity lectures " were really on the Summae of Scotus or the Quaestiones Quodlibetales of other medieval commentators. When John Colet actually lectured on the Epistles of St. Paul at Oxford, in the Michaelmas Term of 1496, he made a radical break with many of the then accepted traditions.23 The world of the early sixteenth century was still dependent in its law, philosophy, theology, ethics, and politics upon the resources of the Scholastic Method, and it was this method that More employed to construct a work which demonstrated the inadequacies of the world the method had pro- duced.

In his Utopia, More attempted to define the kind of society which reason alone, but properly directed,24 might achieve, and how closely this purely rational society might approximate the ideal of the Christian state in theory, and even surpass contemporary Christian Europe in practice. Although the distinction between reason and revelation had become part of the Christian heri- tage, More employed the distinction as the Scholastics had, keeping the conclusions of reason separate from those of revelation. Thus the hypothetical Christian state, which would have involved revealed truth in its definition as in the De Civitate Dei, is only implied, and the explicit content of Utopia is to be understood as the result of demonstration conducted by unaided human reason. The learned reader of More's day understood that More was actually demonstrating the limits of reason in its attempts to define an ideal state, and that he was not actually defining an ideal which, for him certainly, would have required the considera- tion of the material available through revelation. In his letter to Lupset, prefaced to the 1518 edition of Utopia, William Bude points out that Christ "left among His followers a Pythagorean communion and love." 25 The establishment of this principle of

22 Cf. Karl Werner, Die Scholastik des spdteren Mittelalters (Vienna, 1887), IV, passim. Ernest V. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (New York, 1935), chap. 1.

28 D. Erasmus, Lives of Jehan Vitrier and John Colet, ed. J. H. Lupton (London, 1883), pp. 23-24; cf. also P. A. Duhamel, "Oxford Lectures of John Colet," Journal of the History of Ideas, XIV (1953), 493-510.

24 Cf. Edward L. Surtz, " Logic in Utopia," Philological Quarterly, XXIX (1950), 389-401; also P. Boehner, Medieval Logic (Chicago, 1952), pp. 1-5.

25 Thomas More, Utopia, ed. J. H. Lupton (Oxford, 1895), pp. lxxxvi-

106 Medievalism of Alore's " Utopia "

love should have abolished, "at least among His followers," all the quibbling over rights according to civil and canon law. Justice in Europe and Utopia is defined according to the express dictates of civil law. No matter how logical and impartial this justice may be, it is still inferior to the law of the New Testament; and the state founded only upon natural law has accepted only one of the avenues open to it for the ordering of its polity. If men were agreed to use all the sources of truth at their disposal, which in- clude "the simple gospel," the

dullest would understand, and the most senseless admit . . . that in the decrees of the canonists, the divine law differs as much from the human; and, in our civil laws and royal enactments, true equity differs as much from law; as the principles laid down by Christ, the founder of human society, and the usages of HIis disciples, differ from the decrees and enactments of those who think the summum bonum and perfection of happiness to lie in the money-bags of a Croesus or of a Midas.28

Bude does not define the nature of the true equity of which he speaks, but presumably he would have referred to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (I Cor. 13 :1-8) on charity, as a supplement to the strict justice of the law of reason. More never defines the ideal state which he would have envisioned in the light of both reason and revelation. Presumably his daily reading of the Bible and the lectures he gave on the De Civitate Dei while studying law at Lincoln's Inn and residing in the London Charterhouse would have furnished some of his ideas. Nicholas larpsfield, while commenting on these lectures given in the church of St. Lawrence in Jewry in 1501, stresses the difficulty of a text like Augustine's, which requires both divine and profane knowedge to be well understood. The De Civitate Dei, he says, is a book

very hard for a well-learned man to understand, and [it] cannot be pro- foundly and exactly understood, and especially cannot be with commendation openly read, of any man that is not well and substantially furnished as well with divinity as profane knowledge.27

The Utopia can be read, as it has always been read, by anyone

lxxxvii. All later references are to this edition and the translation of Robinson has occasionally been modernized in spelling and phrasing.

26 Ibid., pp. lxxxiv-lxxxv. 27 Nicholas Harpsfield, Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, ed. E. V.

Hitchcock for EETS 186 (London, 1932), p. 13.


familiar with only "' profane " learning. Its full significance, however, cannot be grasped without some knowledge of the implied "divine " knowledge.

The third term in More's elaborate equation is the Europe of his day. More's criticism of his England is not direct but is rather implied in the other two terms. If the completely rational state of Utopia surpasses Europe in its integrity and administration of justice, a fortiori, how much further would the ideal Christian state surpass this same early sixteenth-century Europe? As Swift employed le mythe animal, in the voyage to the llouyhnhnms, to show the irrationality of human conduct, so More used the fiction of the imaginary state to show that Christians without charity are worse than good pagans guided by reason alone. The natural reason of the Utopians, unaided by grace, is superior to the uncharitable Christianity of the Europeans, as the natural reason of the Houyhnhnms is superior to the warped reason of the Europeans. Thus Utopia and Gulliver's Travels can both be read as meditations upon the foolish pride of European man.28

Professor Hexter is undoubtedly correct in his reconstruction of the order of composition of Utopia when he points out that the published version falls into two parts which represent two different and separate sets of intentions. The first part of the work was finished by More during his stay in Antwerp and consisted of an introduction and the discourse of Book II. Upon his return to England, More added some prefatory lines and the entire dialogue of the first book on conditions in England, and added a few con- cluding pages. It is thus clear that two-thirds of the entire work consists of a theoretical description of a purely rational state, and it is this second book, the original Utopia, which provides the clearest illustration of More's method of composition.29

Book II of Utopia can be analyzed either logically or descrip- tively. A descriptive analysis would involve an orderly explication de texte which would consider the various details of social, domestic, and political life. More's treatment of the elements of society

28 Ricardo Quintana, The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (London, 1953), p. 71; cf. J. H. Hexter, More's Utopia (Princeton, 1952), p. 76.

29 Hexter, op. cit., pp. 26-29. In Lupton's edition the original Utopia consists of pp. 24-34, 115-307; and the sections written later in London of pp. 21-24, 34-114, 307-9.


follows-very roughly, for he was working from memory in Ant- werp-the order of chapters 4-12 of Book VII of Aristotle's Politics.0 He begins with a description of the advantages of the location of the island, its cities, and natural resources; proceeds to a discussion of its inhabitants and their occupations, and only then, as in the Politics (chapters 13-15), does he analyze the theoretical bases of Utopia. The explicit content of Book II could also be analyzed under the six elements which Aristotle considered necessary for the existence of a state-farmers, artisans, warriors, wealth, priests, judges-and these elements are very heavily stressed in More's probable source, the Commentary on the Politics by Aquinas.3" Such a continuing descriptive analysis would bog down in a multitude of details and is far more appropriate to an edition of the Utopia. Finally, it is possible to analyze the second book of Utopia in terms of a logical structure which seems to grow out of two principles which are the basis of the entire work. The first principle, the definition of the end of man and consequently of the state, is based on Aristotle's Politics.32 The second principle, the definition of the norm of morality, is derived from the discussion of pleasure in Book IX of Plato's Republic.33

3o More could have used the editio princeps of Aristotle by Aldus Manu- tius (Venice, 1495-98) or the very free translation of the Politics (c. 1435) by Leonardo Bruni Aretino, originally dedicated to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. He could have derived little from the French translation (1371) of the Politics made by Nicholas d'Oresme (cf. F. Ueberweg, Geschichte der Philosophie [Berlin, 1928], II, 595, 599, 784) from the Latin of William of Moerbeke. This translation, completed about 1260 (cf. M. Grabmann, Guglielmo di Moerbeke: il traduttore delle opere di Aristotele [Rome, 1946], p. 112) at the request of Aquinas, usually ac- companied the latter's commentary on the Politics, and it is most likely in this form that More knew the work.

31 Aquinas develops Politics, 1328b 5-15 throughout the entire sixth Lectio of Book VII of his commentary (Comm. in Politicorum, XXI, 654-56) clarifying the six requirements without which a state cannot exist. More's reading of Aquinas can be argued from his descriptions of the site of Amaurot (cf. Utopia, p. 126, with Aquinas, op. cit., p. 650) and the discussion of the necessity of city walls (cf. Utopia, p. 129, with Aquinas, op. cit., p. 666 )>

"2More's elaboration on this principle is also similar to Aquinas' commentary on Politics 1278b 15-25. Cf. Aquinas, op. cit., XXI, 463.

88 The editio princeps of Plato was that of Aldus Manutius (Venice, 1513) but the translation of Ficino was completed by 1477 and printed in


In their definition of the just state, the UJtopians were completely dependent upon a traditional use of reason which they had perfected to the point where in " music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry they have found out in a manner all that our ancient philosophers have taught." 34 Their system of logic had not been refined to such a point that it frustrated the natural movements of the mind in its search for truth, as More thought had happened with logic in the later Scholasticism.35 Thus the Utopians faced the problem of discovering the just state in the same fashion as the Greeks, whom, More is careful to stress, they most closely resemble. What they lacked of Aristotle and Plato, obviously a hint to the reader, traveller Hythloday was able to supply.36 Their resources in attacking an intellectual problem would also be similar to those available to the medieval philosopher who set aside the proofs from revelation to answer the gentile who asked the reason "for the hope that was in him." More's method of solving the problem of the just state to be created by reason alone can be described by paraphrasing from chapter 9 of the first book of the Summa contra Gentiles. Aquinas says that he will first try to explain the truth which proceeds from faith but which reason can investigate, giving the demonstrative and probable reasons taken from the philosophers and the saints by means of which the truth is confirmed. More cannot, because of the terms of his problem, take Aquinas' second step, which involves the exploration of that truth which surpasses reason and the solution of various objections by supplementing the probable arguments of reason with the certain arguments provided by faith.37

1484. The translation of the Republic begun by Chrysoloras and concluded by Pier Candido Decembrio in 1439 included only the first five books. Plato is only the possible ultimate source, for since More worked from a principle, and not the particular statement of the principle, he may have known the discussion through Cicero De finibus v. 7-8. or elsewhere.

S4 Utopia, p. 184. 85 Cf. Surtz, " Logic in Utopia," pp. 400-1. I6 Utopia, pp. 214-15. 87 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 9; op. cit., V, 6. "Modo ergo

posito procedere intendentes, premium nitemur ad manifestationem illius veritates, quam fides profitetur et ratio investigat; inducendo rationes demonstrativas et probabiles, quarum quasdam ex libris philosophorum et sanctorum collegemus, perquas veritas confirmetur et adversarius con- vineatur. Deinde, ut a manifestioribus nobis adminus manifesta fiat pro-

110 MIedievalism of M1ore's " Utopia"

Since More limits his arguments to rational ones which, in some matters, can only reach probable conclusions, his Utopians must tolerate certain practices which would be unacceptable to revealed religion. More pictures the Utopians as tolerating mercy killing, divorce, and diversity of religions, practices to which he certainly did not subscribe, and which were outlawed throughout Christian Europe. More thought that, without the Decalogue and its express prohibition " Thou shalt not kill," reason alone would conclude that a man who is suffering from an incurable disease and continuous pain, unable " to do any duty of life, and [who] by over- living his own death is noisome and irksome to others, and grievous to himself" would be wiser to consent to his own death.38 Although More's Utopians are careful to limit the conditions under which suicide is permitted, they still concede to man an authority over his own life which Christianity would consider an invasion of Divine rights.39 The Utopians also had a high opinion of the matrimonial bond, but adultery or "intolerable wayward manners" did give either party to the contract the right to seek a license from the council to take another partner.40 Aquinas argued that the indissolubility of the marriage bond was a natural quality which had not been recognized until after the promulgation of the New Law. There was a right of repudiation under the Old Law which was not finally abandoned until it became obvious that "it was against the nature of the sacrament." 4' So More was squarely within the common teaching of his day in maintaining that reason alone could not have arrived at the idea of the indissolubility of the marriage contract.

The knowledge of God which More attributes to the Utopians is very similar to that which Aquinas maintained in the Contra Gentiles was available through reason. Of the Utopians

the most and wisest part believe that there is a certain Godly power [Contra Gentiles, I, cap. xii-xiii] unknown, incomprehensible, inexplicable,

cessus, ad illius veritatis manifestationem procedemus, quae excedit sol- ventes rationes adversariorum; et rationibus probabilibus et auctoritatibus (quantum Deus dederit) veritatem fidei declarantes."

88 Utopia, pp. 223-24. 89 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, cf. 100, 8, ad. 3. 40 Utopia, p. 227. 41 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-IT, cf.. 102, 5, ad. 3., II-II, 154, 2.


far above the capacity and reach of man's wit [I, cap. xiv], dispersed throughout all the world [I, cap. xliii], not in bigness [I, cap. lxxvi] but in virtue and power [II, cap. xxii]. To Him alone they attribute the beginnings, the inereasings, the proceedings, the changes, and the ends of all things [II, cap. xv-XXii].42

The Utopians had achieved by reason alone a clearer conception of Being and its attributes than the Greeks had. Using the statements of Scripture as hypotheses, the Scholastics constructed proofs of these Divine attributes. The Utopians, without revelation to suggest goals for the flights of reason, have surpassed the Greeks and equalled the Schoolmen. In its 1760 years of continuous development, Utopian philosophy has reached a point which,43 as a matter of actual recorded history, Western philosophy never achieved without the suggestions of Hebraic and Christian belief. Thus the ideal republic of Utopia is "Nowhere" in two dimensions: Nowhere in space and, more important still, Nowhere in time.

The Utopians consider Christianity an obvious supplement to their own thinking and are thus much readier to accept it than the historical gentile.

But after they heard us speak of the name of Christ, of His doctrine, laws, miracles, and of the no less wonderful constancy of so many martyrs, whose blood willingly shed brought a great number of nations throughout all parts of the world into their sect, you will not believe with how glad minds they agreed.

More is aware of the theological implications of this acceptance and, in a seemingly off-hand phrase, at once preserves the concept of faith as a gift and also protects it from the charge of being a blind assent. He refuses to decide " whether it were by the secret inspiration of God, or else for that they thought it next unto that opinion which among them is counted the chiefest " that the Utopians accepted Christianity.44

Medieval speculation on the problem of the salvation of the heathen also determined the presentation of the alternative ex- planations of the Utopians' ready acceptance of Christianity. The Schoolmen, as well as the earlier Fathers, were preoccupied with the eventual fate of those good pagans who died before the Church

42 Utopia, pp. 266-67. *8 Ibid., p. 132. " Ibid., pp. 268-69.

112 Medievalism of More's "Utopia"

could reach them. On the one hand, the Fathers always taught that an act of faith and the remission of original sin through baptism were necessary for salvation. On the other hand, the Fathers also taught that " God wills the salvation of all men, and that no adult is damned but by his own fault." 4 Hugh of St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux argued that the minimum of belief necessary for salvation was an explicit belief in God's existence and in His providence, which the Utopians certainly had, and an implicit belief in some mediator between God and man.40 Aquinas advanced what came to be accepted as the classic solution of the problem in the De Veritate. There he argued that, although it is not in our power to know by ourselves alone those things which are proper to faith, yet " if we do as much as in our power lies, that is to say, if we follow the directions of natural reason, God will not permit us to go without what is necessary to us." 47

Further, he thought that it must be held as most certain, " cer- tissime est tenendum," that if anyone followed the dictates of natural reason in seeking good and avoiding evil, God would " either reveal to them by internal inspiration those things which must be believed or send them some preacher of the faith as he sent Peter to Cornelius." 48 Hythloday can thus be called a prophet to the Utopians, and the Rev. Rowland Phillips, Canon of St. Paul's, who was most anxious to go to Utopia to "further and increase" the religion "which is already there begun," may be considered their apostle.49 More, like Langland, however, is concerned with the adequacy of the knowledge of the natural law and not with the possible appearance of an apostle.

Ac trewth that trespassed neuere ne transuersed a3eines his lawe, But lyueth as his lawe techeth and leueth there be no bettere,

4- T. P. Dunning, " Langland and the Salvation of the Heathen," Medium Aevum, XII (1943), 47.

4"Ibid., p. 48; cf. Hugh of St. Victor, De Sacramentis, MPL 176, cols. 339 ff. Bernard, Tractatus de Baptismo, MPL 182, cols. 1038 ff.

'7 Aquinas, De Veritate, cf. XIV, a. xi, ad. 2m. (incorrectly cited in Dunning).

48 Ibid., A. xi, ad. lm. Aquinas has " per internam inspirationem," Utopia, " recretius inspirante Deo " which would lend some color to the possibility that More carries some traces of what E. Gilson has called "l'Augustianisme avicenissant."

4" Cf. Utopia, p. 7.


And if there weren he wolde amende and in such wille deyeth, Ne wolde neuere trewe god but treuth were allowed . . .0

More's quick summary of years of speculation in a seemingly off- hand remark illustrates the difficulty of identifying the sources of his thought. Working with or without books before him, he con- centrated on the principle, overlooked the details, and elaborated the argument to suit his needs.

Throughout his discussion of questions which the Scholastics would have considered proper to natural theology, More is careful to maintain that the Utopians are limited to merely probable conclusions. Without revelation they may only think or believe certain theological propositions are true, but they cannot be certain. Therefore the decree of King Utopus, "that it should be lawful for every man to favor and follow what religion he would, and that he might do the best he could to bring others to his opinion," is a logical consequence of the degree of certitude available in theological matters. Utopus made this decree because he did not dare to

define and determine . .. unadvisedly [temere]; as doubting whether God, desiring manifold and diverse sorts of honour, would inspire sundry men with sundry kinds of religion. And this surely he thought a very unmeet and foolish thing, and a point of arrogant presumption, to compell all other by violence and threatening to agree to the same that thou believest to be true.51

Obviously this was neither the attitude of More, who died the "King's good servant but God's first," nor of Catholic Europe, which then professed its faith in the One True Church and silenced the unbeliever at home and abroad.

In religious matters the complete rational man, King Utopus, "gave to every man free liberty and choice to believe what he would " with but two reservations. He charged all men to refrain from entertaining " so vile and base an opinion of the dignity of man's nature, as to think that the souls do die and perish with the body; or that the world runs at all adventures, governed by no divine providence." 52 These principles were considered either

50 Piers Plowman, B xii, 284-88. "5 Utopia, p. 272. 52 Ibid., p. 274.


immediately apparent or certainly demonstrable, and they could not be denied except through ill will. Further, these two principles are the logical basis of the just state, and to deny them is to deny the very assumptions upon which Utopia was founded.

The Utopians and More reached their conception of the ideal state by following the same order of investigation as Aristotle and Aquinas. They first define the final end of man and from this argue to the purpose of the ideal state. Aquinas, in his commentary on the opening of Book VII of the Politics, argues that the rationale of any civil order is determined by the end it is to im- plement. Since the end of the ideal state is the ensuring of the achievement of the highest end of man, it follows that the final end of man must first be known before the form of the ideal society can be ascertained.53 For Aquinas, More, and the Utopians, the solution of the ethical problem of what constitutes the good life must therefore precede the solution of the political problem, what constitutes the best form of society.54 It is precisely in " that part of philosophy which treats of manners and virtues," ethics, that the reasons and opinions of the Utopians most agree with those of the sixteenth-century Europeans. The Utopians reason of virtue and pleasure, the problems of ethics and morality, " but the chief and principal question is in what thing, be it one or more, the felicity of man consists." 55

Yet the Utopians do not conduct their investigation of what constitutes the felicity of man entirely within the limits of ethics as a practical science.

For they never dispute of felicity or blessedness, but they join to the reasons of philosophy certain principles taken out of religion, without the which to the investigation of true felicity, they think reason of itself weak and imperfect.

There are two principles which must be imported from natural theology into the discussions of ethics. They are " that the soul is immortal," and "that to our virtues and good deeds rewards be appointed after this life and to our evil deeds punishments." 56 These are the same two principles which men were required to

"I Cf. Aquinas, Comm. in Pol., Book VII, Lectio 1; op. cit., XXI, 633. "I Aristotle, Politics, 1323a 14-19. 66 Utopia, p. 187. 6Ibid., p. 188.


believe by edict of King Utopus: that the soul lives on after death and that divine providence orders the world morally as well as physically. The Utopians believed that these principles were necessary not only to demonstrate man's end but also to secure order in the state. Remove these fundamental beliefs and " then without any delay they pronounce no man to be so foolish, which would not do all his diligence and endeavor to obtain pleasure by right or wrong." 57

To define the happiness which is the end of man, More adapts Book IX of Plato's Republic as an illustration of the best argu- mentation available to natural reason on this particular problem. For the Utopians, as for Plato, the end of man and the principle for evaluating whether or not an action is conducive to that end is pleasure.

In this point they seem almost too much given and enclined to the opinion of them which defend pleasure; wherein they determine either all or the chiefest parts of man's felicity to rest.58

More was aware that most of his contemporaries would instinctively recoil from this opinion as proper to Epicureanism as it was then understood. More, therefore, went to to show that pleasure, when properly defined, can be the norm of morality and the end of man.

But now, sir, they think not felicity to rest in all pleasure, but only in that pleasure that is good and honest; and that, hereto, as to perfect blessedness, our nature is allured and drawn even of virtue.

True pleasure thus depends on a recognition of a hierachy in the human faculties.

Pleasure they call every motion and state of the body and mind, wherein man had a natural delectation. Appetite they join to nature, and that not without good cause. For like as not only the senses, but also right reason covets whatever is naturally pleasant, so that it may be gotten without wrong or injury, not letting or debarring a greater pleasure, nor causing painful labor . . .r9

True pleasure is, therefore, also natural and prefers the higher good to the lower. Thus the Utopian, like Plato's " man of understanding," will regulate

57Ibid., p. 189. 58 Ibid., p. 188. 59 Ibid., p. 194.


his bodily habit and training, and so far will he be from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasures, that he will regard even health as quite a secondary matter; his first object will be not that he may be fair or strong or well, unless he is likely thereby to gain temperance, but he will always desire so to attemper the body as to preserve the harmony of the soul.60

The soul, following the principles established by reasoni, leads a natural life which is also a virtuous life;

for they define virtue to be a life ordered according to nature; and that we be hereunto ordained by God; and that He doth follow the course of nature, which in desiring and refusing things is ruled by reason." Thus the Utopians can conclude that "even very nature prescribes to us a joyful life, that is to say, pleasure, as the end of all our operations.6'

The Utopians think the greatest of these pleasures " comes from the exercise of virtue, and conscience of good life." AMore states, however, that this view of felicity need be accepted only under one condition: " unless any godlier be inspired into man from heaven." 62

Mfore does not discuss whether the Utopians " believe well or not," for he has only undertaken "to show and declare their laws and ordinances, and not to defend them." Yet the illogic of ascetic practices in Utopia is his way of indicating the inadequacies of this view. The only logical attitude for anyone who has accepted natural pleasure as the end of man is to consider any neglect of bodily beauty, fasting, and other customs which "do injury to health, and reject the other pleasant motions of nature " as points of extreme madness, and a "token of man's being cruelly minded towards himself and unkind toward nature." 63 In a long paren- thetical clause More indicates that aseetical practices, after the promulgation of Christian revelation, would not be reprehensible but even meritorious. Man might neglect natural pleasures " whiles he doth with a fervent zeal procure the wealth of other benefits, or the common profit, for the which pleasures forborn he is in hope of a greater pleasure of God." 64 The acceptance of fasts

60 Plato, Republic, 591 C-D. 61 Utopia, pp. 190 and 192. 62 Ibid., pp. 207 and 211. "3Ibid., p. 210.

64 Loc. cit. Cf. entire discussion in Edward L. Surtz' "Epicurus in Utopia," English Literary History, XVI (1949), 89-103; and also by the

P. Albert I)uhamel 117

and prayers, scourgings and hair shirts as virtuous practices would require a complete revision of the conception of felicity enter- tained by the Utopians to one wherein the beatitude of spiritual union with God was the goal of life.65

In defining the end of man by importing two principles from natural theology, More was imitating Aristotle's procedure in the Politics. Where More adapted the ethics of Plato to solve his problem, Aristotle borrowed from his own Ethics.

We maintain, and have said in the Ethics, if the arguments there adduced are of any value, that happiness is the realization and perfect exercise of virtue, and this not conditional, but absolute.68

Aristotle's conclusion is surprisingly similar to that of the Utopians, though their dialectical processes in reaching the conclusion have been different. More now moves ahead with Aristotle.

Since the end of individuals and of states is the same, the end of the best man and of the best constitution must also be the same; it is therefore evident that there ought to exist in both of t1em the virtues of leisure; for peace, as has been often repeated, is the end of war, and leisure of toil.,,

More's conception of the purpose of the Utopian society is stated in terms very close to Aristotle's:

In the institution of that weal public this end is only and chiefly pre- tended and minded that what time may possibly be spared from the necessary occupations and affairs of the commonwealth, all that the citizens should withdraw from the bodily service to the free liberty of the mind and garnishing of the same. For herein they suppose the felicity of this life to consist.68

Nothing is so frequently stressed throughout Utopica as the obli- gations of the state to provide the leisure necessary for intellectual development. The chief functions of the Syphograunts are to in- sure that no one "sit idle and yet that no one work continually

same author, " Defense of Pleasure in More's Utopia," Studies in Philology, XLVI (1949), 99-112.

65 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 44, i. c. Il Aristotle, Politics, 1332a 9-10.. Cf. Aquinas, Comtn. in Pol., Book VII,

Lectio X, op. cit., XXI, 670. 87 Aristotle, Politics, 1334a 11-16. Cf. Aquinas, Comm. in Pol., Book

VII, Lectio XI, op. cit., XXI, 679, who adds very significantly that a virtuous life frees man from attachment to external things.

I8 Utopia, p. 152.

118 Medievalism of More's " Utopia "

like laboring and toiling beasts." " Production quotas are determined to provide sufficiency and not superfluity.70 The resulting freedom of the citizens is to be devoted to some good science. The scheme of values in this ideal state is therefore based on the principle of whether or not a certain practice promotes or curtails the citizens' leisure.

The abolition of private property is not a major point in the logical structure of Utopia but an obvious inference from basic principle. The Utopians believe that private ownership is the basis of avarice and the desire for superfluity of goods, which disquiet the mind and destroy private and public peace. Remove the right of private ownership, which is not a natural right according to the Utopians, provide man with a sufficiency, and the entire society is liberated from unnecessary toil and freed to pursue the pleasures of the mind.7' Again this is not More's real attitude but a logical consequence of the principles to which he has committed his ideal society. It should be pointed out, however, that most of the Church Fathers, and some of the later Scholastics, would have agreed with More that communal ownership of goods was superior to private ownership, and that, in the words of St. Ambrose, "things were made by the creator to be held in common and private ownership is contrary to nature." 72 For St. Chrysostom, the more perfect the nature of the individual, the less the need for those " chilling words 'mine' and ' thine.'"" 73 Duns Scotus was even of the opinion that one of the consequences of the Fall of Man was the abrogation of the precept of the natural law forbidding the private ownership of goods. Alexander of: Hales and St. Bonaventure believed that in a state of innocence all things would have been held in common and nothing would have been restrained within the

69 Ibid., p. 141. 70 Ibid., pp. 143 and 146. 71 Here More parts company with Aquinas on the much vexed question

of whether or not private property was defensible according to natural law. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theol., I, 21, a. 1, ad. 3 and Heinrich A.. Rommen, The Natural Law (St. Louis, 1947), p. 233, who maintains that the right of private property is not one of the immediately apparent dictates of the natural law.

72 William J. MacDonald, " Communism in Eden? ", ANew Scholasticism, XX (1946), 101.

7a Ibid., p. 114.


limits of private ownership.74 In the Dialogue of Comfort More argues very strongly against the common ownership of property because of the present historical state of man, fallen and redeemed but still unable to control his passions through his reason. The Utopian commonwealth must wait, for its realization, upon the perfect rationalist or the perfect Christian, the man without pride.75 The Utopian attitudes towards war, treaties, the use of mercenaries, and the treatment of natural slaves are also immediate inferences from the Utopian conception of the state as a means of guaranteeing the leisure which is the natural end of man.

Using only reason and the methods of a medieval rationalism, More attempted to demonstrate the failings of contemporary Chris- tian society which was the product of those same forces. More would never have been at home in the Utopian world of universal grays and humorless men vaguely reminiscent of the lands visited by Lemuel Gulliver. More and Swift fought the same enemy, for both believed that

the respect of every man's private commodity, or else the authority of our saviour Christ . . . would have brought all the world long ago into the laws of this weal public, if it were not that one and only beast, the prince and mother of all mischief, pride, doth withstand it.76

It is impossible in this short space to do more than suggest how many of the social, domestic, and liturgical customs of Utopia could also have been arrived at by an extension of this Scholastic Method in a very practical way. For Thomas More, the ideal daily life of a Christian community, living according to the counsels of revelation as well as the dictates of reason, might well have been found in the Regula Monachorum of St. Benedict or the Carthusian Consuetudines of Guigo under which More himself lived for some four years in the London Charterhouse. More at- tributed to his Utopians as many of the details of monastic life as he thought could have been perceived by reason alone. The simple dress of the Utopians, made out of undyed wool, suggests the old Carthusian dress or habit.77 The regulations observed by

T4Ibid., pp. 115 and 116. 76 Cf. Edward L. Surtz, " Thomas More and Communism," PMLA, LXIV

(1949), 549-64. 76 Utopia, pp. 305-6. q Ibid., pp. 150-51; cf. Guigo, Consuetudines, MPL 153, cols. 685-86.


the Utopians while on a journey, their system for founding new communities, their meetings in hall to discuss and vote upon matters of common importance-all reflect the customs of the cloister.78 The reading and controlled conversations during meals are also echoes of monastic practices.79 The atmosphere of the Utopian churches and their restrained use of ornamentation in their liturgy and architecture closely resemble the practices of the Carthusians.80 The careful apportioning of the various crafts, like the monastic "obediences," among the various members of the community, the performance of manual labor by all members of the society, and the practice of ordering each hour of the day, stem directly from the Benedictine Rule.81 More's Utopia is an imaginative diagram of the contemplative life which all rational men should prefer to the active life which was yearly replacing it as an ideal.

The argument for reading Utopia in the context of medieval thought can be further strengthened by considering how different More's method was in the composition of some of his other works. While a prisoner in the Tower, Mlore wrote a Treatise on the Pas- sion in the construction of which he was guided by the methods of the Renaissance grammarian or humanist. More shared in the spirit of Christian humanism which animated the Brethren of the Common Life and the Imitation of Christ, and which was chiefly concerned with the disciplining of tlle will and the emotions. More, like Colet and Erasmus, was intent upon knowing compunc- tion, not as a theoretical virtue, but as an enkindling affection motivating true Christian charity.82 More and Colet approached the Epistles of St. Paul, not, like Abelard, to discover propositions which could be employed as heuristic hypotheses or integrated into a complex dogmatic system, but as men seeking to know the mes- sage of the Epistles and how it could be applied to the improvement of their daily lives. They read the various Epistles as grammarians, to grasp their literal meaning and to assess the force of the various counsels, admonitions, and commandments. Erasmus studied the

78 Utopia, pp. 155, 167; cf. Guigo, op. cit., cols. 651-52. 79 Utopia, pp. 161-65; cf. Guigo, op. cit., cols. 661-62. 80 Utopia, pp. 290, 291, 299; cf. Guigo, op. cit., cols. 705-8, 717-18. 81 Utopia, pp. 139-40; ef. St. Benedict, Reguta Monachorum, MPL 66,

cols. 485-86. 82 Richard Whitford, trs, The Imitation of Christ, ed. E. J. Klein (New

York, 1941), pp. 3-4.

P. Albert I)uhamel 121

texts of scripture and his beloved St. Jerome in the same fashion. The Scholastics refused to consider Erasmus a theologian because his methods were so far different from theirs. Erasmus pointed out that there were other methods of studying theology than those which had ruled the universities since the time of Abelard, and he defended his own methods as descended from the Fathers of the early Church.83 The methods of St. Jerome were an outgrowth of the grammatical method of his own teacher, Donatus. The methods of the classical grammarian were also the basis of the methods of Lorenzo Valla, who first systematized the grammatical method of Renaissance humanism.

More's Treatise on the Passion was based on the Monatesseron of John Gerson, a synthesis of the four Gospel accounts of the passion of Christ. The mood and purpose of the work is to pause "and with entire devotion consider" the events of the passion, searching for the practical significance of the words and actions, so that each man might thereby improve his life.84 More explores the connotations of words, Jewish antiquities and customs, astro- nomical calculations, and even some of the stylistic peculiarities of Aramaic. These are the interests of Valla in his examination of the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine and an application of the methods of studying scripture outlined by Erasmus in his Paraclesis. More traces the significance of the feast of the Un- leavened Bread through the Dies Azymorum of the Greeks, and, with the help of St. Jerome, through the Pascha of the Hebrews to its ultimate meaning of "immolation." 85 He shows how Euse- bius and Chrysostom were correct in their dating of Easter, and how the later Greeks confused their calculations.86 In a manner which would have delighted William Bude, he discusses the value of the coins Judas received for his betrayal of Christ and concludes that they were worth ten shillings.87 Words and their fine shades of meaning also occupy him. What is the significance of the two names given to Peter in Mark 14:27, "And he saith to Peter:

88 Erasmus, Opuscula, pp. 178, 180. 84 Thomas More, The Workes of Sir Thomas More (London, 1557), p.

1270c. S65

Ibid.y p. 1294d. 88 Ibid., p. 1307c-1309f. 87 Ibid., p. 1304b-c.

122 Medievalism of 3More's " Utopia"

Simon sleepest thou? " More thinks that " it was a private check given unto him that he called him not by the name of Peter or Cephas," for the name of " Simon " in Christ's day meant " hear- ing and obedient," and this is the very opposite of what Peter was then doing. Mfore again decides in favor of an ironical interpretation of Christ's words in Mark 4:41, "And he cometh the third time and saith to them: Sleep ye now and take your rest." Only after considering the commentary of St. Augustine on the passage, he concludes that Christ meant the very opposite of what he said, and his decision is based on the vigor of the figurative language.88 Again, More is puzzled by the precise meaning of " until " (donec). Does it mean until Christ's Ascension or is it employed in a completely final sense? 89 He explains the " with desire I have desired" (desiderio desideravi) of the Vulgate by reference to the common stylistic practice of the Hebrew of doubling a word to secure em- phasis.

More's meditations on the Passion are similar to a continuous series of notes of the kind to be found in Erasmus' Novum Instru- mentum. In his note to Acts 17 :34 Erasmus can not forbear resurrecting the entire discussion of the authenticity of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius and the brilliant exposure of their falsity by Lorenzo Valla.90 The note on Matthew 23:2 brings out the famous diatribe against those bishops who neither preach as frequently as they should nor live a Christian life. Erasmus' vehe- mence is not the main concern here, but rather his habit of reading the Bible as a source of practical counsel. His note on Mark 6:9 produces a long discussion of what the Roman sandal and tunic were like, and the description of the clothes of Christ carries us through the works of Horace, Plato, and Pliny the Younger.91 The note on Matthew 16 :18-19, " Thou art Peter and on this rock I shall build my Church," calls up a learned discussion of Greek and Latin particles which would have delighted Browning's grammarian.92 The controversy over Luke 2 :14, "Gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae volunta-

88Ibid., p. 1320d. 89 Ibid., 1322f, 1321g. 9' Erasmus, Opera Omnia, VI, 503. )' Ibid., VI, 117, 172-73.

92 Ibid., VI, 88.


tis " (according to the Vulgate) is familiar to everyone. Erasmus decides, on purely grammatical grounds, that the reading should be " Glory to God in the highest and on earth the peace of good will to men " because

it is clear that "good will " does not refer to men but to peace. Further the conjunction " and " is used and the preposition " in " which is not present in the Vulgate of the Latin codices has been added. For the codex which we examined at the College of Constance had that preposition added in an old hand.98

Grammar, in the larger sense of the word, thus came to replace the methods of the Scholastic in the solution of theological problems.

All this learned baggage of the Novum Instrumentum and the Treatise on the Passion is only instrumental. It is only a means of acquiring the true Christian philosophy, the philosophy or humanism of Christ as expressed in the Bible. But this Christian wisdom is described, in the Paraclesis, as so excellent "that it turns all of the wisdom of the world to folly." 94 This may be the reason why the eminent rationalist, the traveler Hythloday, is given a name which in Greek means "nonsense." The real Christian must leave behind him the impious curiosities, the incomplete folly, of an excessively rationalistic Scholasticism, and, employing the science of the Christian humanist, seek that knowledge of Christ which results in His imitation.95 It is this search for the concrete, practical meaning of Scripture which brought about a change in the method of reading Scripture, and the change in the way of living which followed hard upon it.

The style of the Utopia is also similar to that of the medieval Scholastics. Almost any passage, selected at random, reveals the similarity of the vocabulary to the vocabulary of the Schools. It would be unfair to cite any of the argumentative passages of the Utopia already referred to because the subject matter might be advanced as an explanation of the choice of vocabulary. Here. however, is a passage explaining the only condition under which the Utopians go to war:

Nam eam iustissimam belli causam ducunt, quum populus, quispiam eius soli, quo ipse non utitur, sed velut inane ac vacuum possidet, aliis tamen

9"Ibid., VI, 232. 4' Ibid., V, 139-40. `5 Ibid., V, 77.

124 Medievalism of More's "'Utopia"

qui ex naturae praescripto inde nutriri debeant, usum ac possessionem interdicat.96

Descriptive passages are no less intricately organized and they are also without any of Mfore's characteristic use of imaginative language:

Omni prandium coenamque ab aliqua lectione auspicantur, quae ad mores faciat; sed brevi tamen, ne fastidio sit. Ab hac seniores honestos sermones, sed neque tristes ae infacetos ingerunt.97

Several other descriptive passages would show the same tightly packed sequence of detail and colorless language. Narrative passages are also lacking in More's usually vigorous and imaginative language. The famous passage describing the advent of the ambassadors from the Anemolians, who were unaware that the UTto- pianis did not value gold or ornaments, relies upon an accumulation of facts told i:n general terms for its effect:

Itaque ingressi sunt legati tres, cum comitibus centum, omnes vestitu versicolori, pierique serico, legati ipsi (nam domi nobiles erant) amictu aureo, magnis torquibus et inauribus aureis, ad haec anulis aureis in manibus, monilibus insuper appensis in pileo, quae margaritis ac gemmis affulgebant: omnibus postremo rebus ornati, quae apud Utopienses aut seivorum supplicia, aut infamium dedecora, aut puerorum nugamenta fuere.98

More's Latin style was usually more forceful and vigorous, as in the following passage from his little-known Rossei:

96 Utopia, p. 155. " For they count this the most just cause of war, when any people holds a piece of ground void and vacant to no good nor profit- able use, keeping others from the use and possession of it, which notwith- standing by the law of nature ought thereof to be nourished and relieved."

97Ibid., p. 165. "They begin every dinner and supper by reading some- thing that pertains to good manners and virtue. But it is short, because no man should be grieved by it. Hereof the elders take occasion for honest communication, but neither sad nor unpleasant."

S Ibid., pp. 178-79. " So there came in three ambassadors with one hundred servants all apparelled in changeable colors: most of them in silks, the ambassadors themselves (for at home in their own country they were noble men) in cloth of gold, with great chains of gold, with gold hanging at their ears, with gold rings upon their fingers, with broaches and aglets of gold upon their cups, which glistened full of pearls and precious stones, to be short, trimmed and adorned with all those things, which among the Utopians were either the punishment of bondmen, or the reproach of infamous persons, or else trifles for young children to play with."


Cum his mandatis dimittit consilium, illi igitur abeunt, aliis alio, quo quemque tulit animus: et se per omnia plaustra, vehicula, cymbas, thermas, ganea, tonstrinas, tabernas, lustra, pistrina, latrinas, lupanaria diffundunt: illic observant sedulo, atque in tabellas referant, quicquid aut auriga sordidi, aut servus verniliter, aut portitor improbe, aut parasitus scurri- liter, aut meretrix petulanter, aut leno turpiter, aut balneator spurce, aut cacator obscoene loquutus sit."'

If it is objected that the difference in style between the last passage and the preceding is the result of differences in purpose, we must reply that that is precisely the point. The style of the Utopia is appropriate to its method and purpose, which are logical and medieval. One sentence from the Dialogue of Comfort may be dismissed as not proving much, but it can illustrate how More wrote when he did not deliberately shut himself off from some of his intellectual resources. When More wrote with the full weight of the creative mind, he frequently mounted a metaphorical meaning upon an underlying rational statement. The following sentence summarizes much of the central content of the Utopia in a brilliant metaphor, and, it might be argued, is a good example of a unified, not a " dis-integrated," sensibility.

Some good drugs have they the philosophers of Greece in their shops, for which they may be suffered to dwell among our apothecaries, if their medicines be made not of their own brain, but after the bills made by the great physician God, prescribing the medicines Himself, and correcting the faults of their erroneous receipts. For without this way taken with them, they shall not fail to do as many bold, blind apothecaries do, which

9 Thomas More, " Rossei," in Opera Omnia (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1689), p. 38. "When these things had been decided, he [Luther] dismissed his councilors and they therefore went off, different ones to different places, wherever and by whatever means they were inclined, and they dispersed by every wagon, carriage, even boat throughout the public baths, eating houses, barber shops, taverns, gambling houses, bakeries, privies, and brothels and there they carefully observed and brought back on tablets whatever was said sordidly by any groom, fawningly by any servant, im- properly by any carrier, scurrilously by any parasite, wantonly by any prostitute, vilely by any pimp, filthily by any bath keeper or obscenely by any defecator." A demonstration of the stylistic differences between the Utopia and More's other Latin works would require a much more detailed study but the above sentence is obviously Ciceronian in parataxes and periodicity. Where are these sentences in the Utopia? A sampling of the vocabulary of the Utopia will show its great similarity to that of Aquinas as defined in the Lexicon compiled by DeFerrari.

126 Medievalism of More's ' Utopia"

either for lucre or a foolish pride, give such folk medicines of their own devising, and therewith kill up in corners many such simple folk, as they find so foolish to put their lives in such lewd and inlearned, blind, bayard hands. We shall therefore neither fully receive these philosophers reasons in this matter, nor yet utterly refuse them.100

The last sentence might be paraphrased: we shall therefore neither fully accept the philosophers in political theory, nor utterly reject them, but correct their theories according to the prescriptions of revelation.

In word choice, sentence structure, sentence movement parallel- ing the natural movements of the mind, the Dialogue of Comfort is a brilliant piece of humanistic prose addressed to the whole man. The Utopia is thoroughly Scholastic in its method of construction and largely medieval in its style and content. Utopia comes into true focus when it is viewed as the product of the Scholastic Method, revealing the limitations of that method and of the society for which it was largely responsible. The seeming paradoxes which have worried scholars as they tried to reconcile this or that practice in Utopia with More's own personal life dis- appear when it is realized that Utopia is only a small part of More's beliefs. It is not necessary to call in More's sense of humor, or a reactionary old age, to account for the Utopian toleration of divorce and religious difference. Utopia is all of a piece, marking the end of the Middle Ages and their methods, and the beginning of a Renaissance which was to rely on entirely different methods of investigation and interpretation.

Boston College

100 Thomas More, A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation (London, 1937), p. 131.

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