Modernité de Thomas More

Jean-Pierre Moreau

doi:10.3366/more.2003.40.1-2.13

Modernité de Thomas More

Moreana ◽

10.3366/more.2003.40.1-2.13 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 40 (Number 153- (1-2) ◽

pp. 193-217

Author(s):

Jean-Pierre Moreau

Keyword(s):

Common Law ◽

Thomas More ◽

Jean Paul ◽

Défense Des Droits

Rien ne saurait mieux illustrer la modernité de Thomas More que la décision de Jean-Paul II, en novembre 2000, d’en faire le Patron des responsables de gouvernement et des hommes politiques. Pour évoquer cette modernité, quatre thèmes ont été retenus, sans souci d’exhaustivité: sa stature morale et l’écho particulier qu’éveille aujourd’hui son héroïsme, l’Utopie, non point comme programme politique mais comme champ d’expérimentation intellectuelle et littéraire, les droits de la conscience individuelle et leur transformation en défense des droits de l’homme, l’Europe en construction actuellement n’est pas totalement étrangère à l’édifice (chrétienté) que More voulait maintenir : principe de subsidiarité, rapports entre droit communautaire/droit canon et droit des Etats membres/Common law etc.

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The Commonwealth of Custom in Thomas More’s Utopia

Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198861430.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 43-75

Author(s):

Stephanie Elsky

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Classical Tradition ◽

Common Law ◽

Political Institution ◽

Thomas More ◽

Remarkable Similarity ◽

English Law

Thomas More sets the stage for fiction as a sphere in which to explore the constitutional promise of custom. This chapter argues that Utopia (1516) shares the same constitutional dispensation as England, since it is predominantly governed by custom rather than law. The chapter uncovers a remarkable similarity between the concept of legal custom in common law and of linguistic and cultural custom in the Renaissance humanist use of proverbs and commonplaces, which are ubiquitous in Utopia. I interpret this intersection of political and literary-linguistic custom as a means by which More ensures the commensurability of his native political institution with the classical tradition he sought to revive. The chapter reveals More’s awareness of the unstable boundaries of the concept of “common” in English law and continental humanism, a conundrum to which early modern writers would return over and again.

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The Use of St. John Chrysostom in Sixteenth-Century Controversy: Christopher St. German and Sir Thomas More in 1533

Harvard Theological Review ◽

10.1017/s001781600002589x ◽

1961 ◽

Vol 54 (1) ◽

pp. 21-27 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

R. J. Schoeck

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Canon Law ◽

Common Law ◽

Thomas Aquinas ◽

Thomas More ◽

John Chrysostom ◽

Apparent Source ◽

Sir Thomas More ◽

The Common ◽

Technical Question

In the important controversy between Sir Thomas More and Christopher St. German during the year 1533 — a controversy whose importance reaches into theological domains and involves also the vexatious conflict between the common law and the Roman canon law in England — we find a citation of St. John Chrysostom used first by St. German and then accepted and repeated by More. The apparent source is Chrysostom's famous commentary on St. Matthew, and this work (translated by Burgundio of Pisa in the later twelfth century) is, as Miss Smalley reminds us, the book “which St. Thomas Aquinas preferred to the whole town of Paris….” Further involved, of course, is the larger problem of the influence of St. John Chrysostom before and during the sixteenth century, as well as the technical question of methods of using commentaries on Scripture and thus the weight of auctoritas among the early Tudor controversialists. While it is only the modest story of one maxim that I wish to call attention to in this brief paper, I think that we shall in addition learn something of the English fortunes of one of the most widely used medieval compendia of commentaries, the Catena Aurea of St. Thomas Aquinas.

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