§ 71. HUMANISM IN ENGLAND. 655
thing was that " such relics were the remains of holy men, to be had in reverence, and it was a matter of inferior import whether the right names were attached to them or not." ^
And yet, More resisted certain superstitions, as of the Franciscan monk of Coventry who publicly preached, that " whoever prayed daily through the Psalter to the Blessed Virgin could not be damned." He denied the Augustinian teaching that infants dying without baptism were consigned to eternal punislifnent and he could^wfite to Erasmus, that Hutten's Epistolce obscurorum virorum delighted every one in England and that " under a rude scabbard the work concealed a most excellent blade." ^ His intimacy with Colet and Erasmus led to an attempt on the part of the monks, in 1519, to secure his conversion.
More was beatified byj^eo XHI., 1886, and with St. Edmund, Bishop Fisher and Thomas a Becket is the chief English martyr whom English Catholics cultivate. He died " unwilling to jeopardize his soul to perpetual damnation " and expressing the hope that, " as St. Paul and St. Stephen met in heaven and were friends, so it might be with him and his judges." Gairdner is led to remark that " no man ever met an unjust doom in a more admirable spirit." ^ We may concur in this judgment and yet we will not overlook the fact that More, gentleman as he was in heart, seems to us to have been unrelenting to the men whom he convicted as heretics and, in his writings, piled upon them epithets as drastic as Luther himself used. Aside from this, he is to be accorded praise for his advocacy of the reform in edii; cation and his commendation of Erasmus' Greek Testammit. He wrote a special letter to the Louvain professor, Dorpius, up-
* Gasquet : The Eve of the Beformation, p. 378.
2 Nichols, II. 428. See also Seebohm, pp. 408, 416, 470.
3 Hist, of the Engl. Church in the 16th Cent., etc., p. 160. Among the affecting scenes in the last experiences recorded of men devoted to martyrdom was the scene which occurred on Mora's way to the Tower, reported by More's first biographer, Roper (Lumby's ed., p. liii) . His favorite daughter, Margaret, longing once more to show her affection, pressed through the files of halberdiers and, embracing her father, kissed him and received his blessing. When she was again outside the ranks of the guards, she forced her way through a second time for a father's embrace.
656 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
braiding him for his attack upon the critical studies of Erasmus and upon the revision of the old Latin text as unwarranted.
More's Utopia^ written in Latin and published in 151G with ji preface by Buda3us,tookEui'ope by storm. Itwas also called Nusquama or Nowhere. With Plato's Republic as a precedenj;, tlie author intended to point out wherein European society^ and especially England was at fault. ^ In More's ideal commonwealth, which was set up on an island, treaties were observed and promises kept, and ploughmen, carpenters, wagoners, colliers and other artisans justly shared in the rewards of labor with noblemen, goldsmiths and usurers, who are called the unproductive classes. " The conspiracy of the rich procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth " was not allowed. In Utopia., a proper education was given to every child, the hours of physical labor were reduced to six, the streets were 20 feet wide and the houses backed with gardens and supplied with fresh water. The slaughtering was 3"one outside the towns. All punishment was for the purpose of reform and religion, largely a matter of family. Tlie old religions continued to exist on the island, for Christianity had but recently been introduced, but More, apparently belying his later practice as judge, declared that "no man was punished for his religion." Its priests were of both sexes and "overseers and orderers of worship " rather than sacerdotal functionaries. Not to them but to the heads of families was confession made, the wife prostrate on the ground confessing to her husband, and the children to both parents. The priests were married.
Little did More suspect that, within ten years of the publication of his famous book, texts would be drawn from it to support the Peasants' Revolt in Germany. ^ In it are stated some of the sociological hopes and dreams of this present age. The author was voicing the widespread feeling of his own generation
1 Cambr. Hist. ofEmjl. Lit., p. 20. For an excellent summary of the Utopia, see Seebohm, pp. 346-3(55, and also W. B. Guthrie, in Socialitun before the French Bevol., pp. 54-132, N. Y., 1907. For the Latin edd. and Engl, transl., see Diet. of Natl. Biocjr., p.444. An excellent ed. of Robynson's trsl., 2d ed., 1556, was furnished by Prof. Lumby, Cambr., 1870. The Life of More, by Roper, More's son-in-law and a Protestant, is prefixed. Also Lupton : The Utopia, Oxf ., 1895. A reprint of the Lat. ed., 1518, and the Engl, ed., 1651.