Thomas More's ‘Utopia’ and Protestant Polemics

1964 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Pineas

The only references by Reformers to More's Utopia listed in R. W. Gibson's St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography (New Haven, 1961) are two by Tyndale and two by Foxe. Actually Tyndale makes five direct references to Utopia and a large number of indirect references. At least two other Reformers besides the two listed who refer to Utopia are John Frith and William Roy. Each of the direct and indirect references to the Utopia made by Reformers is polemical. The usual point made is that since More has once passed off fiction as truth, he is quite capable of continuing to do so—especially in religious controversy.Tyndale uses More's authorship of the Utopia to attack both More himself and the Catholic Church in general. For instance, he very conveniently dismisses an entire chapter of More's Dialogue by saying that it ‘is as true as his story of Utopia & all his other Poetrie….’ Here the reference serves as shorthand; it saves Tyndale from the necessity of entering into extended argument.

1989 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Walker

On 8 December 1527 two scholars, Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur, carried penitential faggots at St Paul's Cross as a token of abjuration of heresy. With this act both men formally cleansed their souls and brought about their reconciliation with the Church. Far from being the end of a story, however, this ceremony proved to be the beginning of a controversy which has survived until the present day. For Thomas Bilney subsequently renounced his abjuration and became a significant figure in the early Reformation in England, eventually dying at the stake as a relapsed heretic in 1531. And yet, despite the importance attributed to him as a reformer, Bilney is now, as he was then, an ambiguous figure whose relationship with the Catholic Church and precise beliefs have never been conclusively determined. Many writers have claimed Bilney as a champion of their particular causes or have sought to identify his place in the wider movements of the Reformation. For the Protestant John Foxe he was a martyr, albeit a flawed one, for the reformed faith, who refused to the last to be intimidated into a second abjuration. For Sir Thomas More, in somewhat mischievous mood, he was a Catholic saint brought to realise the error of his ways at the stake and reconciled to the Church with almost his last breath.


2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Davies

But of late years a knowledge and love of our very own English martyrs has not permeated the rank-and-file of the Catholic church in this country… the majority of our people neither revere them nor know them.


1978 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm R. Thorp

In his book Two Tudor Conspiracies, D. M. Loades challenged the traditional view among historians that the Wyatt rebellion was influenced by Protestant concerns over the Catholic policies of Mary Tudor. In Loades' account of the event, religion played no prominent part; the conspirators were secular and anti-clerical, but otherwise their religious convictions remain “shadowy.” Loades contends that apart from William Thomas, the well-known Protestant enthusiast, “all had conformed without protest under Edward, and those still alive were to do so again under Elizabeth, but throughout the period of the rebellion and trials which followed it, all protested their loyalty to the Catholic Church.” The real reasons for the revolt, he asserts, were secular and political—namely, fear of foreign domination through the Queen's intended marriage to Philip of Spain.


Author(s):  
Henni Alava

This article develops the notion of polyphonic silence as a means for thinking through the ethical and political ramifications of ethnographically encountering and writing about silenced violent pasts. To do so, it analyses and contrasts the silence surrounding two periods of extreme violence in northern Uganda: 1) the northern Ugandan war (1986–2006), which is contemporarily often shrouded by silence, and 2) the early decades of colonial and missionary expansion, which the Catholic church silences in its commemoration of the death of two Acholi catechists in 1918. Employing the notion of polyphony, the article describes how neither of these silences is a mere absence of narration. Instead, polyphonic silences consist of multiple, at times discordant and contradictory sounds, and cannot be consigned to single-cause explanations such as ‘trauma’ or ‘recovery’. Reflecting on my own experience of writing about and thereby amplifying such silences, I show how writing can serve either to shield or break silence. The choice between these modes of amplification calls for reflection on the temporal distance of silence, of the relations of power amid which silence is woven, and of the researchers’ ethical commitments and normative preconceptions.


2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Essiane Lemos Leal Sena ◽  
Edvania Gomes da Silva ◽  
Maria da Conceição Fonseca-Silva

Este trabalho estuda a designação como processo de identificação social, com base nos pressupostos teóricos da Semântica do Acontecimento. Para tanto, analisam-se as designações que referem o papa Bento XVI, quando este foi eleito pelo conclave da Igreja Católica no final de Abril de 2005. As análises mostraram que as designações, ao funcionarem no presente do acontecimento, recortam um memorável, mobilizando dizeres e sentidos outros e, consequentemente, identificam e referem uma pessoa em um determinado acontecimento, particularizando-o como sujeito.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Acontecimento. Semântica. Temporalidade. ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the designation as a process of a social identification, based in theory of the Semantics of Enunciation. To do so, the designation analyzed are there which relate to the actual Pope Benedicto XVI, on that moment when he was elected by the conclave of the Catholic Church, by the end of April, 2005. The analyses demonstrated that these designation, when functioning in the present the moment of the event, retake another memorable one, mobilizing sayings and other meanings and, in a consequence, identify and relate to a person in a certain event, distinguishing him as the subject.KEYWORDS: Enunciation. Semantics. Time.


1963 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. F. Wiles

‘Into theology Cyprian scarcely ever entered’, wrote W. D. Niven, yet d'Alès's book La Théologie de S. Cyprien covers more than 400 pages without appearing to be dealing with a non-existent subject. The prima facie conflict is not difficult to resolve. A religious leader can no more help talking theology, whether consciously intending to do so or not, than Molière's M. Jourdain could help talking prose. An unconscious theology, indeed, can be every bit as important and as influential as a fully selfconscious one; in fact, its influence is very liable to be the greater, because succeeding generations are less likely to be aware of it and so less likely to submit it to critical scrutiny and review. In no case is this largely-unconscious influence more significant than in the case of Cyprian. All the other outstanding writers of the third-century western Church ended their days in schism. Tertullian, Hippolytus and Novatian were all far greater theologians than Cyprian, but all three broke from the catholic Church in support of the rigorist cause. In spite of this fact, their importance for later theology remains considerable. But that importance is a fully conscious theological one. Where their ideas were accepted and developed, it was because they carried conscious conviction as theological ideas; the fact of who it was who was the father of the ideas did little to commend them.


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