Heresy

Abstract More’s antipathy to heretics was recorded by him on his epitaph in Chelsea parish church, and has been a persistent source of difficulty for his modern admirers. The belief that wilful persistence in religious error justified a death sentence was a conventional attitude of the age, but More was unusual, for a layman, in the extent of his involvement with the policing of heresy, and he was quick to identify Martin Luther as an existential threat. Contrasts between a ‘humanist More’, who in Utopia apparently advocated religious toleration, and a ‘polemical More’ have been exaggerated. As lord chancellor, More played an active role in combating evangelicals, though he was personally involved with only three burnings for heresy, and allegations that he used torture on suspects are unfounded. More’s vehemence against heresy lies in his view of it as a threat to all social and political order, and to a true Catholic faith which was grounded on consensus among Christians, across space and time. He saw William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament as an example of the intrinsic divisiveness of heresy. More’s emphasis on uniformity and conformity can be uncongenial to post-Enlightenment mentalities, but his views on orthodoxy and heresy were consistent with his own broader outlook.