Non-Utopian Euthanasia: An Italian Report, c. 1554

René Graziani

doi:10.2307/2859041

Non-Utopian Euthanasia: An Italian Report, c. 1554

Renaissance Quarterly ◽

10.2307/2859041 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 22 (4) ◽

pp. 329-333 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

René Graziani

Keyword(s):

Actual Practice ◽

Thomas More ◽

Sir Thomas More ◽

The Subject ◽

New Evidence

The Utopian custom of euthanasia used, quite rightly, to be discussed in terms of classical sources and generally turned on whether Sir Thomas More advocated it personally or not. The fruitfulness of such discussion has its limits, and I find that More scholars have largely dropped the subject. Some new evidence has come to light, however, which raises the question whether More's apparently speculative projection had not in fact some basis in actual practice. An Italian diplomat who visited England during the reign of Mary in 1554, that is twenty-eight years after Utopia was published, stated unequivocally that euthanasia (he does not use the term, of course) was customary among some people in England. He thought it a primitive survival.I have found two main sources for the text of the report: (1) the various copies of an anonymous manuscript usually called ‘Ritratti del Regno d'lnghilterra’ (2) a book by the Ferrarese diplomat Giulio Raviglio Rosso, I Successi d'lnghilterra dopo la morte di Odoardo sestofno al giunta in quel Regno del Sereniss.

Download Full-text

Sir Thomas More, Utopia, and the Representation of Henry VIII, 1529-1533

Renaissance and Reformation ◽

10.33137/rr.v32i4.11591 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 59-72

Author(s):

J. Christopher Warner

Keyword(s):

Henry Viii ◽

Thomas More ◽

Open Debate ◽

Sir Thomas More ◽

The Subject ◽

Lord Chancellor

This essay examines Sir Thomas More's Utopia in the context of Henry VIII's divorce crisis. During this period tracts from the royal press publicized an image of Henry VIII as a disinterested philosopher-king who welcomed open debate and advice at his court. Reading Morus and Hythlodaeus's dialogue on the subject of court counsel in light of this campaign helps us to perceive the manner in which More's appointment as lord chancellor served the purposes of the king's propaganda.

Download Full-text

Simon Fish, William Tyndale, and Sir Thomas More's ‘Lutheran Conspiracy’

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History ◽

10.1017/s0022046900055792 ◽

1972 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 125-136 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Steven W. Haas

Keyword(s):

English Reformation ◽

Thomas More ◽

Sir Thomas More ◽

The Subject ◽

The Church ◽

Tremendous Impact

As Sir Thomas More reflected upon the religious atmosphere during the first months of 1528, he could not conceal his dismay that the situation was steadily deteriorating. Indeed, he thought the popular orthodoxy so weak that any ‘senseless clown’ could gain wide support for an attack on the Church. Within the year, Simon Fish's Supplication of the Beggars had made More a prophet, forcing the busy new chancellor of England to reply to Fish with The Supplycacyon of soulys. Historians have hesitated to label Fish senseless or a clown, for the tremendous impact of his short tract upon Henry vm and the English Reformation is generally recognised. While it is manifest that the Supplication was a rabble-rousing piece of anti-clericalism, perhaps another measure should be taken of Fish before closing off the subject of his significance from discussion. Specifically, if evidence should place Fish and his writings within that group identified with William Tyndale, more credence would be lent to chancellor More's repeated assertions that a number of ‘evangelicall brethren’ existed to propagate Tyndale's beliefs.

Download Full-text

Notes on Elizabethan Prose

PMLA ◽

10.2307/456205 ◽

1889 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 41-61

Author(s):

James M. Garnett

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Fifteenth Century ◽

Point Of View ◽

Inductive Method ◽

Henry Viii ◽

Thomas More ◽

English Prose ◽

Sir Thomas More ◽

The Subject ◽

Subject Making

The progress of English prose is a subject of great interest, and one that has not as yet been thoroughly treated from the historical point of view. Here, as elsewhere in literary, as well as scientific subjects, the inductive method must be employed, and by selection and comparison the advance made from century to century may be indicated. Any treatment of the subject making the smallest pretension to fullness should begin at least as early as the second half of the fourteenth century, with the prose of Wyclif and his contemporaries, after the native and foreign elements of the language had become so blended into one that what was once foreign was no longer felt to be so. The progress should be traced through the fifteenth century, marked by the names of Mandeville—whose so-called ‘Travels’ has at last found its true historical position,—Pecock, Malory and Caxton, to the first half of the sixteenth century, when prose-writers become more numerous, and the language becomes more flexible and better suited to the purposes of prose, as seen in the writings of Sir Thomas More and his controversial opponent, William Tyndale, Sir Thomas Elyot, whose “Boke called the Governour” is a real land-mark of English prose, Bishop Hugh Latimer, the most forcible and witty preacher of his time, and Roger Ascham, who connects the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, and who deliberately uses English for his works, although it would have been “more easier” for him to write in Latin.

Download Full-text