Читать книгу Utopia - Sir Thomas More, Thomas More, William Roper - Страница 11

As More worked on Utopia, he was himself facing the question of

Hans Holbein's Sir Thomas More (1527), Frick Collection

whether to get more closely involved with political life by becoming a royal official. From a young age, More had moved in circles of privilege and influence and seemed destined to hold high office. But he was also a person of deep spiritual yearning. At the beginning of his legal career in the early years of the sixteenth century, More undertook intense theological study. One result was his lectures on St Augustine. He also attached himself to the Charterhouse, a Carthusian monastery just outside London's city walls, where he followed a regimen of prayer and fasting.

An important part of More's later image is that during these years he was hankering after the life of a scholar‐monk, but was being sought out as an official by the king. It was said he was reluctant to agree to royal service, wanting to serve God and not the worldly intrigues of the court. His friend, the great Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus, claimed that More had to be ‘dragged’ to court.

It is true that More disliked the pomp and ostentation of court culture. But on his return from Bruges he was a regular visitor to court, always making sure to pay his respects to the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Wolsey. It is possible that the perception of More as a reluctant courtier is part of the busy legend‐making pursued by himself and by his friends and early biographers. In all likelihood, More was simply seeking the middle way that his fictional alter ego in Utopia recommended: to be an intellectually independent but practical courtier who, despite the compromises of political life, sought at least to do some good and to reduce harm. Thus, in 1518, More became a member of the King's Council and soon became the king's secretary. He acted as a go‐between between Henry and Wolsey, who, until his fall in 1529, would be England's most powerful official.