Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T21:45:06.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thomas More and the New World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Alfred A. Cave
Get access

Extract

Despite the extensive critical attention that has been lavished upon Sir Thomas More's Utopia, the influence of the early historical narratives of the discovery and conquest of America on the shaping of his fictional commonwealth remains problematic. Proctor Fenn Sherwin, writing in 1917, declared that “it should go without saying” that “the yet novel discoveries of unknown and unguessed of peoples in America and the tales of Spanish explorers” were a “considerable inspiration” to More. But Sherwin admitted that, apart from a few references to Amerigo Vespucci's Four Voyages, he could find no echo of their writings in the text of Utopia. Subsequent research on the rich literary allusions in More's published works and unpublished correspondence has provided some fascinating insights into his remarkable erudition and complex character. It has also prompted extensive debate about the relative importance of various classical and medieval sources in inspiring More's celebrated but enigmatic fictional account of an imaginary commonwealth. But no new evidence demonstrating that More was in fact steeped in the early literature on the New World has been produced. Claims that he read Columbus and Peter Martyr as well as Vespucci remain unsubstantiated.

Some commentators have been untroubled by that lack of evidence. H. L. Donner assumed that More was familiar with Peter Martyr's Decades of the New World and from that source learned that the Indians of the West Indies “had an intuitive knowledge of the most essential moral and philosophical truths.” Donner concluded that More modelled Utopian “morality and religion” in large measure on Peter Martyr's description of the West Indians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Summer 1991 , pp. 209 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Sherwin, Proctor Fenn, “Some Sources of More's Utopia,” Bulletin of the University of New Mexico 88 (1917): 167–68Google Scholar.

2 The most comprehensive guide to the sources of Utopia is provided in the critical essays and annotations in Surtz, Edward and Hexter's, J. H. contribution to The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 14 vols. (New Haven, 1965), 4Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Complete Works). For a recent effort to relate Utopia to the early European literature on the New World, see Strosetzki, Christoph, “L'Utopie de Thomas More: une résponse au débat sur le Nouveau Monde?” Moreana 27, nos. 101–02 (May 1990): 5–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Donner, H. W., Introduction to Utopia (London, 1945), p. 28Google Scholar.

4 Morgan, Arthur E., Nowhere was Somewhere: How History Makes Utopias and How Utopias Make History (Chapel Hill, 1946)Google Scholar.

5 Zavala, Silvio, “Vasco Ouiroga and Thomas More,” in Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More, ed. Sylvester, R. S. and Marc'hadour, G. P. (Hamden, Conn., 1977), p. 304Google Scholar.

6 Slavin, Arthur J., “The American Principle from More to Locke,” in First Images of America, ed. Chiappelli, Fredi, et al., 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1976), 1: 146Google Scholar.

7 Marius, Richard, Thomas More: A Biography (New York, 1985), p. 36Google Scholar.

8 Fox, Alistair, Thomas More: History and Providence (New Haven, 1982), p. 53Google Scholar.

9 Hexter, J. H., More's Utopia: The Biography of an Idea (Princeton, 1952)Google Scholar; Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Renaissance (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar; Logan, George M., The Meaning of More's Utopia (Princeton, 1982)Google Scholar.

10 Eliot, John H., “Renaissance Europe and America: A Blunted Impact?” in First Images, 1: 11Google Scholar.

11 Slavin, , “The American Principle,” p. 139Google Scholar.

12 Eliot, J. H., The Old World and the New (Cambridge, 1970), p. 27Google Scholar.

13 Jones, Howard Mumford, O Strange New World; American Culture: The Formative Years (New York, 1964), p. 36Google Scholar.

14 Surtz, Edward L., The Praise of Pleasure: Philosophy, Education and Communism in More's Utopia (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 23–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Complete Works, 4: 50, 303Google Scholar; Waldseemüller, Martin, Cosmographiae Introductio, trans. Fisher, Joseph and von Weiser, Franz (Ann Arbor, 1966), p. 150Google Scholar. This useful volume contains not only a facsimile of the 1507 publication with the Vespucci letters More used, but also an excellent English translation. On Ihe controversies surrounding Vespucci's claims, see Roukema, Edzer, “The Mythical ‘First Voyage’ of the Soderini Letter,” Imago Mundi 16 (1962): 70–75Google Scholar; Caraci, Giuseppi, “The Vespuccian Problems: What Point Have They Reached?” Imago Mundi 28 (1964): 12–23Google Scholar; Morison, Samuel Eliot, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages (New York, 1974), pp. 272–312Google Scholar. Despite its bias in favor of its subject, Arciniegas, German, Amerigo and the New World (New York, 1955)Google Scholar, remains the most useful biography.

16 Waldseemüller, , Cosmographiae Introductio, p. 98Google Scholar.

17 Complete Works, 4: 151–57Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, citations and quotations from Utopia will be taken from the Yale edition, edited by Edward Surtz and J. A. Hexter, which includes the Latin text. This edition contains superb notations on More's sources. The English translation, however, while generally closer to the Latin text than other versions, is not without problems. See Miller, Clarence H., “The English Translation in the Yale Utopia: Some Corrections,” Moreana 9 (1966): 57–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barker, Arthur E., “Clavis Moreana: The Yale Edition of Thomas More,” Journal of English and Germanic Philosophy 65 (1966): 318–30Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, “More's Utopia,” Past and Present 38 (1967): 153–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Surtz, Edward, in The Praise of Pleasure, pp. 54–59Google Scholar, has suggested other sources for More's description of the Utopian disdain for gold. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, in his First Decade (1511) and Second Decade (1516) described the Indians as indifferent to wealth and contrasted that indifference to the Spaniard's lust for wealth. In the Second Decade, he tells of a cacique who made common utensils out of gold, “for gold has no more value among them than iron among you.” But I am not able to accept Surtz's suggestion, as there is no clear evidence that More was familiar with d'Anghiera's New World writings. It is particularly unlikely that he was influenced by the Second Decade, as it was published only a few weeks before Utopia was sent to the printer. It is more likely that More echoed certain classical writers. As Surtz notes, Plutarch claimed that Lycurgus had banned gold and silver in Sparta in order to remove a prime cause of corruption and crime. Plato in the Republic and the Laws, severely restricted the use of precious metals. Martial relates a humorous tale about the use of a gold chamber pot. Surtz concludes that “because this epigram by Martial is the only source which explicitly mentions the use of gold for purposes of excretion, it is likely to have furnished the suggestion for More's Utopia, especially in view of the fact that it appears in Erasmus' Adages” (Praise of Pleasure, p. 55).

18 Complete Works, 4: 121Google Scholar; Waldseemüller, , Cosmographiae Introductio, p. 98Google Scholar.

19 Complete Works, 4: 161Google Scholar; Waldseemüller, , Cosmographiae Introductio, p. 97Google Scholar.

20 Complete Works, 4: 199–201Google Scholar; Waldseemüller, , Cosmographiae Introductio, pp. 125–26Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., p. 135.

22 Ibid., pp. 92–97. Elsewhere, Vespucci was less modest, and claimed the Indian women used snake venom to enlarge their lovers' penises (see Porter, H. C., The Inconstant Savage [London, 1979], p. 36Google Scholar).

23 Complete Works, 4: 187–91Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., pp. 191–95.

25 Ibid., pp. 195–215; Waldseemüller, , Cosmographiae Introductio, pp. 73–74Google Scholar

26 Complete Works, 4: 217–19; 227–37Google Scholar.

27 Waldseemüller, , Cosmographiae Introductio, p. 97Google Scholar.

28 Complete Works, 4: 237Google Scholar.

29 Waldseemüller, , Cosmographiae Introductio, pp. 137–38Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., pp. 101, 122.

31 Complete Works, 4: 53Google Scholar.

32 The literature on this topic is extensive. A few of the most useful recent studies are: Dudley, Edward and Novak, Maximilian, eds., The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism (Pittsburg, 1972)Google Scholar; Hodgen, Margaret T., Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keen, Benjamin, The Aztec Image in Western Thought (New Brunswick, N.J., 1971)Google Scholar; Hanke, Lewis, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study of Race Prejudice in the Modern World (Bloomington, 1959)Google Scholar; Huddleston, Lee Eldridge, Origins of the American Indians: European Concepts, 1494–1729 (Austin, 1967)Google Scholar; Sheehan, Bernard W., Savageism and Civility: Indians and Englishmen in Colonial Virginia (New York, 1980)Google Scholar.

33 Hodgen, , Early Anthropology, p. 362Google Scholar. See also Rowe, John H., “Ethnography and Ethnology in the Sixteenth Century,” Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 30 (1964): 1–19Google Scholar; Cave, Alfred A., “Richard Hakluyt's Savages: The Influence of 16th Century Travel Narratives on English Indian Policy in North America,” International Social Science Review 60 (1985): 3–24Google Scholar.

34 Bernheimer, Richard, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Dudley, and Novak, , The Wild Man Within, p. 20Google Scholar.

36 Slotkin, Richard, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middletown, Conn., 1973), p. 173Google Scholar.

37 This text is most conveniently consulted in Arber, Edward, ed. The First Three English Books on America (New York, 1970), pp. xxvi–xxxviGoogle Scholar.

38 Complete Works, 4: 53Google Scholar.

39 d'Anghiera, Pietro Matire, The Decades of the Newe Worlde of West India, trans. Eden, Richard [1555] (Ann Arbor, 1966), pp. 8, 17–19, 24, 39Google Scholar. Most of the Decades were published after Utopia was written. There are no clear references to any of the material in the Decades in the text of Utopia, although there have been a few labored efforts to find parallels.

40 Devereux, E. T., “John Rastell's Utopian Voyage,” Moreana 22 (1976): 119–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Complete Works, 4: 416Google Scholar.

42 Arber, , First Three English Books, pp. xx–xxiGoogle Scholar. Parks, George B., in “The Geography of The Interlude of the Four Elements”, Philological Quarterly 17 (July 1938): 251–62Google Scholar, held that Rastell was ill informed about the New World, relied on hearsay, and had probably not read any of the available New World travel narratives. Johnstone Parr, however, disagreed in “More Sources of Rastell's Interlude,” PMLA 110 (March 1945): 45–48Google Scholar, and “Rastell's Geographical Knowledge of America,” Philological Quarterly 27 (July 1948): 229–40Google ScholarPubMed. Parr maintained that Rastell's descriptions of native Americans were derived from Johann Schöner and Peter Martyr. However, Rastell's Indians are far more savage, uncivilized, indeed, bestial, than those sources permit. Rastell's conception of savage life probably was derived from Vespucci's reports. However, Rastell seems to have inter-mixed medieval notions about “Wild Men” with images drawn from Vespucci.

43 More, Thomas, Utopia, trans. Turner, Paul (London, 1965), pp. 69–70Google Scholar. I have chosen Turner's translation (Penguin Books) of this passage because the Yale edition's rendering of the phrase “agrestem turbam” as “the rude and rustic people” does not convey the sense of More's Latin. “Mob” is the preferred translation of “turbam.” As “agrestem” carries a possible connotation of savagery, the Yale Edition's rather bland rendering of this crucial passage is inappropriate.

44 Complete Works, 4: 113, 121–123Google Scholar.

45 Ibid., pp. 181–82. On the significance of the Utopian reading list in the context of early sixteenth-century Christian humanism, see Surtz, , Praise of Pleasure, pp. 135–51Google Scholar.

46 Schoeck, Richard, “More, Plutarch and King Agis: Spartan History and the Meaning of Utopia,” Philological Quarterly 35 (1956): 366–75Google Scholar.

47 In some passages, More implies that the neighbors of the Utopians were savages. In others, he describes other civilized states with enlightened customs. The Macareans, for example, (the “blessed people”) forbad their king to keep in the royal treasury more than “a thousand pounds of gold or its equivalent in silver,” thereby preventing him from levying excessive taxes on his people (Complete Works, 4: 97, 371Google Scholar). The Anchorians (the people “without place”) forced their king to relinquish a neighboring kingdom he had won by war, thereby prompting him to follow a sensible foreign policy. (Complete Works, 4: 89–91Google Scholar; 358–359.) Did More regard those states as the products of Utopian influence, or as independent New World developments? The question is in one sense pointless, as More's purpose was not to provide a consistent New world history, but to make a statement about Old World abuses. The Macareans and the Anchorians offered a salutary contrast to the greedy and rapacious European monarchies of More's day. But the assumption that More regarded the virtues of these American realms as the product of their closeness to the state of nature is without foundation.

48 Complete Works, 4: 113Google Scholar.

49 Complete Works, 4: 101–08, 125–45, 239–43Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., pp. 243–45.

51 Ibid., p. 247. Interpretations of More's intentions in portraying Utopian communism have varied. Socialist scholars, following the lead of Karl Kautsky, have portrayed More as an early critic of capitalism, and have claimed him as a forerunner of Karl Marx. Catholic scholars, by contrast, have generally been embarrassed by certain Utopian customs, such as euthanasia, divorce, and common ownership, and have therefore denied that More intended Utopia as a blueprint for social reform in Europe. The most provocative and plausible interpretation of Utopian communism in Catholic scholarship is Fr. Edward Surtz's argument that More drew on the Christian Monastic ideal of the common life to postulate communism as an expression of a moral perfection which he realized “will never exist in the Christian West” (The Praise of Pleasure, p. 181). Surtz acknowledges More's indebtedness to the Christian Humanism of the early sixteenth century, but also emphasizes the medieval roots of his thought. Those scholars who have regarded Utopia as primarily an expression of Renaissance Humanism have tended to regard More's intention in his portrayal of Utopian communism as practical, not visionary. For example, Hexter, , in More's Utopia: The Biography of an Idea, pp. 33–96Google Scholar regards “community of property and goods” as the cornerstone of More's vision of an ideal society. See also Logan, George M., Meaning of More's Utopia, pp. 123–29, 182–85Google Scholar; 208–13, 241–413. The scholarly literature on Utopia is rich and extensive. In addition to Hexter, Logan, and Surtz, the following monographs are of particular value: Ames, Russell, Citizen Thomas More and His Utopia (Princeton, 1949)Google Scholar; Campbell, W. E., More's Utopia and His Social Teaching (London, 1945)Google Scholar; Fleisher, Martin, Radical Reform and Political Persuasion in the Life and Writings of Thomas More (Geneva, 1973)Google Scholar; Johnson, Robin S., More's “Utopia”: Ideal and Illusion (New Haven, 1969)Google Scholar; Kautsky, Karl, Thomas More and His Utopia [1888], trans. Stenning, H. J. (New York, 1959)Google Scholar; Seebohm, Frederick, The Oxford Reformers: Colet, Erasmus, and More (New York, 1914)Google Scholar; Surtz, Edward L., The Praise of Wisdom: A Commentary on the Religious and Moral Problems and Backgrounds of St. Thomas More's Utopia (Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar. An excellent introduction to More criticism is provided in Sylvester, R. S. and Marc'hadour, G. P., eds. Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More (Hamden, Conn, 1977)Google Scholar. The following articles are of particular relevance to the question of More's sources for Utopia: Adams, Robert P., “Designs by More and Erasmus for a New Social Order,” Studies in Philology 42 (1945): 131–45Google Scholar; Allen, Peter R., “Utopia and European Humanism: The Function of the Prefatory Letters and Verses,” Studies in the Renaissance 10 (1963): 91–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dorsch, T. S., “Sir Thomas More and Lucian: An Interpretation of Utopia,” Archiv für das Studium des Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 203 (1966–1967): 345–63Google Scholar; Duhamel, P. Albert, “Medievalism of More's Utopia,” Studies in Philology 52 (1955): 99–126Google Scholar; Fyfe, W. H., “Tacitus' Germania and More's Utopia,” Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd ser., 30 (1936) 2: 57–59Google Scholar; Gordon, Walter M., “The Monastic Achievement and More's Utopian Dream,” Medievalia et Humanistica 9 (1979): 199–214Google Scholar; Raitiere, Martin U., “More's Utopia and The City of God,” Studies in the Renaissance 20 (1973): 144–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rudat, Wolfgang E. H., “Thomas More and Hythloday: Some Speculations on Utopia,” Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 43 (1981): 123–27Google Scholar; Schaeffer, John D., “Socratic Method in More's Utopia,” Moreana, 69 (1981): 5–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schoeck, R. J., “More, Plutarch, and King Agis: Spartan History and the Meaning of Utopia,” Philological Quarterly 5 (1956): 366–75Google Scholar; “‘A Nursery of Correct and Useful Institutions’: On Reading More's Utopia as Dialogue,” Moreana 22 (1969): 19–32Google Scholar; Sylvester, R. S., “Si Hytholodaeo Credimus: Vision and Revision in Thomas More's Utopia,” Soundings 51 (1968): 272–89Google Scholar; Weiner, Andrew P., “Raphael's Eutopia and More's Utopia: Christian Humanism and the Limits of Reason,” Huntington Library Quarterly 39(1975): 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Thomas L., “Aristotle and Utopia,” Renaissance Quarterly 29 (1976): 635–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wooden, Warren W., “Anti-Scholastic Satire in Thomas More's Utopia,” Sixteenth Century Journal 8 (1977): 29–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Complete Works, 4: 123–25Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., pp. 125–45.

54 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, Renaissance Essays (Chicago, 1985), p. 92Google Scholar.

55 Complete Works, 4: 185Google Scholar.

56 Ibid., pp. 217–37.

57 Ibid., p. 221.

58 Ibid., p. 221.

59 Ibid., p. 137.

60 Ibid., pp. 207–09.

61 Avineri, Shlomo, “War and Slavery in More's Utopia,” International Review of Social History 7 (1962): 263, 289CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Chambers, R. W., Thomas More (London, 1935)Google Scholar.

63 Donner, , Introduction to Utopia, p. 63Google Scholar.

64 Avineri, , “War and Slavery,” p. 228Google Scholar.

65 Logan, , Meaning of Utopia, pp. 209–18Google Scholar.

66 The Politics of Aristotle, trans. Barker, Ernest W. (New York, 1958), p. 7Google Scholar.

67 Marius, Richard, Thomas More, p. 154Google Scholar. Donner, , Introduction, pp. 63, 70Google ScholarPubMed, remarks “More's battle in life was always in defence of authority against the anarchy which was threatening….In every detail Utopian life and society is regulated by law.”