Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532. He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, which describes the political system of an imaginary island state. More opposed the Protestant Reformation, directing polemics against the theology of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and William Tyndale. More also opposed Henry VIII's separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and executed. On his execution, he was reported to have said: "I die the King's good servant, and God's first". Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr. Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared him the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.
Thomas More
Author details
- Born:
- March 14, 1478
- Died:
- March 14, 1535
External links
Books by Thomas More
![Daniel Defoe, William Shakespeare, John Gay, Francis Bacon, Piers Ploughman, John Skelton, Wyatt, Thomas Sir, Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, Thomas Nashe, Walter Raleigh, Robert Southwell, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Thomas Campion, Sir Thomas Hoby, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hariot, Ben Johnson, John Webster, Robert Herrick, George Herbert, Crashaw, Richard, John Donne, Vaughan, Henry, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Carew, Edmund Waller, Suckling, John Sir, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Traherne, Abraham Cowley, Thomas Sprat, Stephen Greenblatt, William Congreve, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Anne Finch, Matthew Prior, Montagu, Mary Wortley Lady, Sir Richard Steele, Thomas Gray, William Collins, Christopher Smart, Oliver Goldsmith, James Boswell, George Crabbe, Thomas Hobbes, M. H. Abrams, Thomas Browne, Alexander Pope, Sir Isaac Newton, Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Malory, Edmund Spenser, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Locke, Thomas More, Jonathan Swift, John Milton, James Thomson, Christopher Marlowe, Izaak Walton, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, Samuel Butler, William Caxton, Robert Burton, John Bunyan, John Dryden, John Foxe, Samuel Pepys, Edmund Burke, Sir Philip Sidney, William Cowper: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1 (Paperback, 2000, W W Norton & Co Inc (Np))](https://bookwyrm-social.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/images/covers/8c0e941a-969b-4ed4-8316-029b73c1907d.jpeg)
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1
by Daniel Defoe, William Shakespeare, John Gay, and 71 others
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Francis Bacon, Thomas More, Henry Neville - undifferentiated: Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville (1999, Oxford University Press, USA)
Three Early Modern Utopias: Thomas More: Utopia / Francis Bacon: New Atlantis / Henry Neville
by Francis Bacon, Thomas More, Henry Neville - undifferentiated