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Thomas More's Use of the Dialogue Form as a Weapon of Religious Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Rainer Pineas
Rainer Pineas*
Affiliation:
Pace College
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Extract

On 7 March 1528, Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London, sent a letter to Thomas More asking him to write against heresy. Tunstall pointed out that heretical literature of both German and English authorship was coming into England in such quantities that, unless good and learned men could be found to confute these heretical books in English, the Catholic faith in England would be in grave danger. He was entrusting More with this task, the bishop concluded, because More was a master of eloquence in English as well as in Latin.

When More decided to carry out Tunstall's commission in dialogue form, he was not satisfying the predilections for the dramatic he had already evinced in his Richard the Thirde and Utopia but was availing himself of a weapon proven potent in the art of religious and secular controversy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 7 , 1960 , pp. 193 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1960

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References

1 In The Correspondence of Thomas More, ed. Elizabeth F. Rogers (Princeton, 1947), pp. 387-388.

2 Opera omnia, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1841), I (Patrologia Latina XXXII).

3 For instance, by Wycliffe.

4 In Werke, ed. Ernst Munch (Leipzig, 1822), 1.

5 Bibliothek älterer Schriftwerke der deutschen Schweiz, ed. J. Baechtold (Frauenfeld, 1878), 11.

6 Ibid.

7 Ed. Edward Arber (London, 1871, English Reprints, No. 28).

8 In Hutten, Werke, II. For a discussion of the authorship of this work, see Ferguson, Wallace, Erasmi opuscula, a supplement to the Opera omnia (The Hague, 1933), p. 38 Google Scholar ff., and Allen's, P. S. edition of Erasmus, Opus epistolarum (Oxford, 1906-1947), II, 419 Google Scholar.

9 Satirische Feldzüge wider die Reformation, ed. Arnold E. Berger (Leipzig, 1933), I.

10 In Nisard, Charles, Les Gladiateursde la républiquedes lettres (Paris, 1860), I, 31–33 Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., pp. 94-95.

12 Werke, II.

13 See Correspondence, p. 457, where a correspondent assumes More's familiarity with the humanist.

14 Opus epistolarum, II, 502, and in various other epistles.

15 To support the argument that the authority of the church is superior to that of the Scriptures, More frequently cites the passage from Augustine's Contra epistolam Manichaei in which Augustine declares that he would not have believed the gospel had he not been moved thereto by the authority of the Catholic church. See The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, ed. Wm. Rastell (London, 1557), pp. 204, 276, 576, hereafter cited as Workes (the contractions are expanded).

16 Ibid., p. 397.

17 Ibid., pp. 105-288.

18 Gairdner, James, Lollardy and the Reformation in England (London, 1908), 1, 511–512 Google Scholar.

19 See, for instance, his Utopia and Dialogue of Comfort.

20 Printed at Cologne, 1525.

21 See Harpsfield, Nicholas, The Life and death of Sr. Thomas More, knight, ed. Hitchcock, Elsie V. (London, 1932), pp. 84–87 Google Scholar.

22 Workes, p. IIII.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., p. 129.

25 Ibid., p. 150.

26 Ibid., p. 111.

27 Ibid., pp. 126-129.

28 Ibid., p. 144.

29 Ibid., p. 145.

30 Ibid., p. 148.

31 Ibid., p. 128.

32 Ibid., p. 142.

33 Ibid., p. 120.

34 Ibid., p. 141.

35 Ibid., p. 145.

36 The Whole workes of W. Tyndall, Iohn Frith and Doct. Barnes, ed. John Daye (London, 1573), P. 330.

37 Workes, p. 174.

38 Ibid., p. 221.

39 Ibid.,p. 203 ff.

40 Ibid., pp. 236-237.

41 Ibid., p. 106.

42 The Whole workes of W. Tynda1l, pp. 318, 330.

43 Ibid.,p. 364.