Or to put it another way, Hilary Mantel vs Robert Bolt, Protestantism vs Catholicism. When I studied history at my Catholic school, we were left in no doubt that Thomas More was "good" and Thomas Cromwell was "bad", very bad. Not the least of the many merits of Hilary Mantel's extraordinary historical novel Wolf Hall, is that it casts these two men - whose portraits by Holbein can be seen next to each other at the Frick Collection in New York - in a somewhat different light. In Mantel's telling, Cromwell comes across as a man ahead of his time, loyal to a fault, in awe of no-one, doing his best to help those in need and to protect the weak, and filling his house with misfits and the disinherited of this world.
Thomas More, by way of contrast, is depicted as small-minded and something of a bigot, having few if any qualms in sending heretics to the stake - burn, baby, burn! - before he in turn "got it in the neck".
What interests me here is not to belittle More who was of course a great man, if not perhaps a saint. (Incidentally, his Utopia must come very near the top of the world's great books that nobody has ever read, along with Das Kapital and, dare I say it, much of Shakespeare.) No, what interests me is to look back on my schooldays and to reflect on the zeal with which our teachers painted More as a paragon of virtue and Cromwell as the epitome of evil. And what interests me even more is the way we poor boys "took sides" on this and other issues as though our very lives depended on it, as though it were a choice between Liverpool and Everton!
To be continued
Greetings Barnaby
ReplyDeleteMrs maytrees usually bemons the fact that Thomas More's wife Alice was probably the principal saint in his household. I note as a fellow lawyer that it took rather longer for St Thomas to be canonised than most other saints.
Your blog's new layout is great by the way and puts mine to shame...
... and Edmund Campion never made it beyond the "Blessed" stage!
ReplyDeleteI can take no credit for the layout, I'm afraid Jerry. I just followed the instructions on this page: http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/
St Edmund certainly did make it, along with the other 39 martys of England and Wales, in October 1970. It took him thirty five years longer than St Thomas, though.
ReplyDeleteTX Barnaby for the link to the blog update.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous is correct - Edmund Campion athough still Blessed enough in Beaumont days to warrant our all having an exeat day to celebrate, was subsequently canonised a saint.
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ReplyDelete