‘Si Compatimur et Conregnabimus’: Thomas More’s Eschatology of the Cross

Abstract

Many readers are familiar with the contradictions of Thomas More, the celebrated humanist who wrote Utopia, but also the man who oversaw the execution of six heretics as Lord Chancellor. This thesis considers a ‘third’ More, imprisoned in the Tower awaiting his trial and execution, during which period he wrote A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. Assaying each of the three books of the Dialogue, my focus is not on this moment in More’s life, but rather on the rhetoric with which he builds towards a grand eschatological vision grounded in Christ’s Incarnation and Passion. In Book I, More is preoccupied with death and the vision of God's coming kingdom, but stripped of his public office and denied access to his family and friends, he desires and imagines Christ's reign in the 'secret solitary place' of the heart. More's interior focus echoes the language of Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae, and also anticipates the “hidden, private self […] experienced as desire” that Debora Shuger finds in the poets and theologians of the later English Reformation. Book II moves from pure interiority towards a more ‘accommodating’ rhetoric; its merry tales lighten the narrative and underscore the value of human friendship while allowing readers to perceive More’s humanity. Such a rehabilitation of human life and friendship also points to Book III, where More’s rhetoric finds its most powerful expression in the image of the incarnate and crucified Christ, which grounds his concept of interior transformation. More is able to meditate on Christ's fears and sufferings to inwardly prepare himself for his own death. Far from seeing that death as self-cancellation, More’s prison writings stress the eternal worth of tribulation as participating in Christ’s sufferings. The image of God’s descent into earthly existence imbues More’s writing with the concrete promise of the spiritual ascent of Christ’s ‘Mystical Body’ through the proper imitation of his faithfulness in tribulation. This literary and theological ennoblement of human suffering, in the Passion, gives More the inward strength to face death defiantly by looking forward to a future where he and his loved ones will “merrily meet” as eternal citizens in God’s coming kingdom.