A man for all seasons.

The 1966 movie was pretty good.

He is a saint in both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church.

I sang about it on the television

Everyone's seen this play.

Thomas More's stance on what, specifically? He had more than one.

Also, if you want to discuss him and/or this play, type out the letters to his name.

(r2) On what basis was he canonised?

His great singing career

(r4) Thomas More. I apologise for not typing the full name. Explain the choices he had, give some information.

Everyone has not seen this play by the way.

[quote]What do you think of TM's stance?

I've seen better.

[uote]What do you think of TM's stance?

I've seen wider.

(r8) marry me. LMFAO

r5, some believe that his canonization by the RC Church in 1935 was intended as an encouragement to German religious leaders who were already feeling threatened by the Nazi regime, or as a statement to the Nazis about reason over prejudice (More was made the patron saint of lawyers). Or both.

As for the Anglican Church, they did not name More as a saint until 1980. They just love being inclusive, that's all. They sainted John Wesley, too.

another great one is The Lion In Winter--see it if you haven't, and the soundtrack is also great,

John Wesley Shipp? He's saint in my religion, too!

(r11) fascinating. Reason over Prejudice. But i don't understand how this could have affected the nazi regime. can you help to expand this in simple terms?

(r12) the best script. let us have one strand astray. nothing has any business being perfect.

The Sainted Sir Thomas More...

Hilary Mantel (WOLF HALL) portrays TM as quite the dick.

I love R17.

I read Wolf Hall and felt that Thomas More was portrayed as a self-righteous dick. Certainly no saint.

R17 R18 I loved that about Wolf Hall: that it's a revisionist twist on the popular narrative on both Thomases.

Peter Ackroyd has written a fabulous (and more traditionally sympathetic) biography of More. It's well worth reading.

Such a conservative and one-sided movie. Saintly family-loving man of honor Thomas More must cling to his principles, even at the cost of his life, despite the raging will of adulterous and libidinous Henry VIII.

Six Protestants were burned at the stake under More, he had a personal hand in three of them. Not a huge number for the 1500's. Still, burning people alive is not saintly behavior. It's not as if they canonized him by the standards of his day. They made him a saint in 1935.

OP, I don't know what kind of paper you're writing, I presume it's for Summer school. More's defense of the law and the necessity of law for everyone (even the Devil himself) is one of my favorite "stances" in the play.

[italic]William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake! [/italic]

It's one of the clearest and most succinct explanations of why everyone must have the benefit of the law's protection that I've ever read.

I yam vewwy impwessed.

"If you could just see facts without that Moral Squint"

I suppose no one in English history has been so efficiently whitewashed as Thomas More.

The defenders of More's administrative burning of Protestants (when Henry and England were still Catholic) say : there only a few, they were arch-heretics (they led others into heresy), he usually tried to avoid executing heretics personally laboring to convince some to repent, his role was similar to that of a state governor signing off on a death warrant.

All that being said he remains even in the Catholic Church a controversial Saint. The 1930s were a particularly conservative period in Catholic history btw.

He supposedly said about one ( I think a English Lutheran printer or bookseller) "Never was there a man more fit for burning."

Those were rough times.

Shameless iconography of a bigoted shite. More's lies about poor Richard III are one of the primary reasons the unfairly maligned king got such a two deal from history until centuries later when the more nuanced truth began emerging.

The 1966 film, however, is fine, especially Paul Schofield as More. Splendid cast all around, actually. Wendy Hiller, Robert Shaw, Susannah York, and a young John Hurt.