On June 22, the Church honors the life and martyrdom of St. Thomas More, the lawyer, author and statesman who lost his life opposing King Henry VIII's plan to subordinate the Church to the English monarchy.
Thomas More was born in 1478, the son of the lawyer and judge John More and his wife Agnes. He received a classical education from the age of 6, and at 13 became the protege of Archbishop John Morton, who also served an important civic role as the lord chancellor. Although Thomas never joined the clergy, he would eventually come to assume the position of lord chancellor himself.
More received a well-rounded college education at Oxford, becoming a "renaissance man" who knew several ancient and modern languages and was well-versed in mathematics, music and literature. His father, however, determined that Thomas should become a lawyer and withdrew his son from Oxford after two years to focus him on that career.
Despite his legal and political orientation, Thomas was confused about his vocation as a young man. He seriously considered joining either the Carthusian monastic order or the Franciscans, and followed a number of ascetic and spiritual practices throughout his life – such as fasting, corporal mortification and a regular rule of prayer – as means of growing in holiness.
In 1504, however, More was elected to parliament. He gave up his monastic ambitions, though not his disciplined spiritual life, and married Jane Colt of Essex. They were happily married for several years and had four children together, though Jane tragically died during childbirth in 1511. Shortly after her death, More married a widow named Alice Middleton, who proved to be a devoted wife and mother.
Two years earlier, in 1509, King Henry VIII had acceded to the throne. For years, the king showed fondness for Thomas, working to further his career as a public servant. Thomas became a part of the king's inner circle, eventually overseeing the English court system as lord chancellor. Thomas even authored a book published in Henry's name, defending Catholic doctrine against Martin Luther.
Thomas' eventual martyrdom would come as a consequence of Henry VIII's own tragic downfall. The king wanted an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, a marriage that Pope Clement VII declared to be valid and indissoluble.
By 1532, Thomas had resigned as lord chancellor, refusing to support the king's efforts to defy the pope and control the Church.
In 1534 Henry VIII declared that every subject of the British crown would have to swear an oath affirming the validity of his new marriage to Anne Boleyn. Refusal of these demands would be regarded as treason against the state.
In April of that year, a royal commission summoned Thomas to force him to take the oath affirming the king's new marriage as valid. While accepting certain portions of the act which pertained to Henry's royal line of succession, he could not accept the king's defiance of papal authority on the marriage question. He was taken from his wife and children and imprisoned in the Tower of London.
For 15 months, his wife and several friends tried to convince him to take the oath and save his life, but Thomas refused. In 1535, while Thomas was in prison, an act of parliament came into effect declaring Henry VIII to be "the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England," once again under penalty of treason. Members of the clergy who would not take the oath began to be executed.
In June of 1535, Thomas was finally indicted and formally tried for the crime of treason in Westminster Hall. He was charged with opposing the king's "Act of Supremacy" in private conversations which he insisted had never occurred. But after his defense failed and he was sentenced to death, he finally spoke out in open opposition to what he had previously opposed through silence and refusal.
He explained that Henry's "Act of Supremacy" was contrary "to the laws of God and His holy Church." On July 7, 1535, the 57-year-old Thomas came before the executioner to be beheaded. "I die the king's good servant," he told the onlookers, "but God's first."
He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 and canonized in 1935 by Pope Piux XI.
— Catholic News Agency