Thomas More

=== Modern treatment ===
Modern commentators have been divided over More's character and actions.

Some biographers, including Peter Ackroyd, have taken a relatively tolerant<ref group=note name=Ackroyd-ch22a>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8J9uNOydymUC&q=burned+as+there+was+neuer+wretche+I+wene+better+worthy |title=The Life of Thomas More |author=Peter Ackroyd |author-link=Peter Ackroyd |publisher=Chatto & Windus |year=1998 |page=244 |isbn=1-85619-711-5 |quote=(Chapter 22) ... Already, in these early days of English heresy, he was thinking of the fire. It is a measure of his alarm at the erosion of the traditional order that he should, in this letter, compose a defence of scholastic theology—the same scholasticism which in his younger days he had treated with derision. This was no longer a time for questioning, or innovation, or uncertainty, of any kind. He blamed Luther for the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, and maintained that all its havoc and destruction were the direct result of Luther's challenge to the authority of the Church; under the pretext of ‘libertas’ Luther preached ‘licentia’ which had in turn led to rape, sacrilege, bloodshed, fire and ruin. }} (Online citation [https://1000vampirenovels.com/pdf-novels/the-life-of-thomas-more-by-peter-ackroyd-free/47-page here] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180927204114/https://1000vampirenovels.com/pdf-novels/the-life-of-thomas-more-by-peter-ackroyd-free/47-page |date=27 September 2018 }})</ref> or even positive<ref group=note name=JoannePaul2016a >{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KN2qDQAAQBAJ&q=%22thomas+more%22+german+peasants+Revolt&pg=PT140 |title=Thomas More |author=Joanne Paul|publisher=[[John Wiley & Sons]]|year=2016 |isbn=978-0-7456-9220-3|quote=Princes were 'driven by necessity' by the 'importune malice of heretics raising rebellions' to set 'sorer and sorer punishments thereunto' (CTA, 956). In other words, the heretics had started it: 'the Catholic Church did never persecute heretics by any temporal pain or any secular power until the heretics began such violence themself' (CTA, 954). More had in mind violent conflicts on the continent, such as the German Peasants' War (1524–5) and the Münster Rebellion (1532–5).}}{{page needed|date=September 2018}} (CTA=''Confutation of Tyndale's Answer'')</ref> view of More's campaign against Protestantism by placing his actions within the turbulent religious climate of the time and the threat of deadly catastrophes such as the [[German Peasants' War|German Peasants' Revolt]], which More blamed on Luther,<ref group=note>"...civil chaos will surely follow" (691–93). This prediction seemed to come true very quickly, as More noted in his next polemical work, ''A dialogue Concerning Heresies''. There he argued that the Peasants' Revolt in Germany (1525), the Lutheran mercenaries' sack of Rome (1527), and the growing unrest in England all stemmed from Luther's inflammatory teachings and especially the lure of false freedom{{harvnb|Wegemer|1996|p=173|}}</ref> as did many others, such as [[Erasmus]].<ref group=note name=Wegemer2001a>{{cite web| last = Wegemer| first = Gerard| author-link = Gerard Wegemer| title = Thomas More as statesman| publisher = The Center for Thomas More Studies| date = 31 October 2001| access-date = 27 September 2018| url = http://thomasmorestudies.org/docs/More_as_Statesman.pdf| page = 8| quote = In the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany in 1525, More pointed out, 70,000 German peasants were slaughtered – and More, along with Erasmus and many others, considered Luther to be largely responsible for that wildfire.| archive-date = 10 March 2017| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170310165901/http://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/More_as_Statesman.pdf| url-status = dead}}</ref>

Others have been more critical, such as writer Richard Marius, an American scholar of the Reformation, believing that such persecutions were a betrayal of More's earlier humanist convictions, including More's zealous and well-documented advocacy of extermination for Protestants.<ref name="Marius" />{{rp |386–406}} This supposed contraction has been called "schizophrenic."<ref name="rex"/>{{rp|108}} He has been called a "zealous legalist…(with an) itchy finesse of cruelty".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wood |first1=James |title=The Great Dissembler |journal=London Review of Books |date=16 April 1998 |volume=20 |issue=8 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n08/james-wood/the-great-dissembler |language=en |issn=0260-9592}}</ref>

[[Pope John Paul II]] honoured him by making More  [[patron saint]] of statesmen and politicians in October 2000, stating: "It can be said that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience ... even if, in his actions against heretics, he reflected the limits of the culture of his time".<ref name=JP2PatronSaint />

[[Australian High Court]] judge and President of the [[International Commission of Jurists]], Justice [[Michael Kirby (judge)|Michael Kirby]] has noted 
{{Blockquote|More's resignation as Lord Chancellor demonstrates also a recognition of the fact that, so long as he held office, he was obliged to conform to the King's law. It is often the fact that judges and lawyers must perform acts which they do not particularly like. In Utopia, for example, More had written that he believed capital punishment to be immoral, reprehensible and unjustifiable. Yet as Lord Chancellor and as councillor to the King, he certainly participated in sending hundreds of people to their death, a troubling thought. Doubtless he saw himself, as many judges before and since have done, as a mere instrument of the legal power of the State.
|"''Thomas More, Martin Luther and the Judiciary today,''" [https://www.michaelkirby.com.au/images/stories/speeches/1990s/vol40/1997/1444-Thomas_More%2C_Martin_Luther_and_the_Judiciary_Today_%28St_Thomas_More_Society%29.doc|speech to St Thomas More Society], 1997}}