Truly a Man for All Seasons: Saint Thomas More

Part One of the Forty Martyrs series

“Sir Thomas More” by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

At the end of the introduction to the “Forty Martyrs of England and Wales” series last week, I said that the first saint we would look at in the new year was Thomas More. Many will be at least somewhat familiar with Sir Thomas More, either from his classic work, Utopia, or the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons. Readers in the U.K. will be considerably more familiar with him than those in the U.S., given his significant role in British history. What may be a surprise to even many Catholics is that Sir Thomas More is also Saint Thomas More.

While this is an understandable ignorance, it definitely needs to be corrected. One reason for this series is that, on the whole, Spanish and Italian saints are far better known than those from Great Britain. In the case of Thomas More, it’s even more astonishing to some that he is a saint, given that he was both a politician and a lawyer. Few in either of those professions today would claim to have much hope of earning a similar distinction.

I should make clear at this point that neither Thomas More nor St. John Fisher (whom we will look at next week) are counted among those the Church designates the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales even though they were martyred at the start of the English Reformation. This is because…