On 6 July 1535 Sir Thomas More was beheaded. He is supposed to have said to his executioner that his beard was innocent of any crime and did not deserve the axe and then to have placed the beard so that it would not be harmed.
More died upon his inability to acknowledge King Henry VIII’s first divorce and, more widely, the king’s split from the Catholic Church.
The effect of that split and the wider Catholic / Protestant schism, has dominated many countries’ politics until more recent times and.
In 1960, JFK’s Catholicism was a major factor in the presidential election. By 2020, Joe Biden’s Catholicism rated barely a mention. Meanwhile, in 2000, Pope John Paul II declared More the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.
Coins of the UK have, on the head, the words “FD” or “FID DEF”. It is the Latin abbreviation for “Defender of the Faith”, a title granted by the UK parliament to King Henry VIII and his successors in 1543.
Although that’s not quite the whole tale. Henry had previously been granted the title by the pope in his pre-divorce days more than 30 years before. Why? He wrote a tract attacking Luther and supporting… the sacrament of marriage and the supremacy of the pope! And when Luther returned serve with Against Henry, King of the English, More volleyed with Responsio ad Lutherum.
Five years prior to Henry’s polemic, More’s Utopia had been published. Utopians, he observed, were tolerant in matters religious. For More the author:
They differ in this: that one thinks the god whom he worships is this Supreme Being, and another thinks that his idol is that god; but they all agree in one principle, that whoever is this Supreme Being, He is also that great essence to whose glory and majesty all honours are ascribed by the consent of all nations.
For More the ironist, wit, lawyer and statesmen, the devil dwelt in the detail.
