Travis Curtright, Ph.D.
Travis Curtright, Ph.D., is chair of the humanities and liberal studies department at Ave Maria University, where he also serves as professor of humanities and literature, and director of Shakespeare in Performance, a troupe of actors and minor of studies. Professor Curtright completed his education at the University of Dallas, earning his doctorate in literature. He also has professional acting training from the American Shakespeare Center and studied improv at The Second City in Chicago. He founded Shakespeare in Performance in 2012 and instructs students
in voice, movement upon a thrust stage, and especially in Shakespeare’s uses of language and rhetoric. Actors rehearse in a black box theater that was specially designed for their productions, in an environment that encourages both individual growth and ensemble work.
An accomplished scholar in both Shakespeare and More studies, Dr. Curtright has written The Controversial Thomas More: Politics, Polemics, and Prison Writings (forthcoming from the University of Notre Dame Press), Shakespeare’s Dramatic Persons (2017), and The One Thomas More (2012). He is editor of Thomas More: Why Patron of Statesmen? (2015) and, with Stephen Smith, Shakespeare’s Last Plays: Essays in Literature and Politics (2012). Since 2017, he has served as editor-in-chief of Moreana: Thomas More and Renaissance Studies, published by Edinburgh University Press.
The Wisdom Papers is a series of relevant reflections on contemporary conversations from the faculty of Ave Maria University.
EDITOR
Neil Watson
Sarah Chichester
ART DIRECTOR
Balbina O’Brien
MANAGING EDITOR
Susan Gallagher
STAFF ASSISTANT
Katherine Arend
More's Call to Holiness
Travis Curtright, Ph.D.
Holiness is the fullness of Christian life according to the perfection of charity: a living in, with, or for Jesus Christ. The Second Vatican Council teaches that everyone is called to holiness in any state or walk of life. How, though, did Thomas More—as a layman, lawyer, and the king’s good servant—apply his mind and actions, his work and life, to God?
Though the best example of Thomas More’s holiness is his martyrdom, I want us to consider More’s vocational discernment. According to his friend and contemporary, Erasmus, More’s father, John More, nearly disinherited his son because he “seemed to be neglecting his father’s chosen studies,” the field of law. John More pulled his brilliant son from Oxford after just two years there and sent young Thomas to Lincoln’s Inn in 1496 to become a lawyer, creating a rift between the two of them, which lasted until the question of vocation was settled by Thomas More’s marriage in 1505. Before 1505, the younger More’s attraction to a life of letters—and, perhaps worse, to a religious vocation—angered his father, a lawyer himself, a man intent upon the idea that Thomas should emulate him.
E arly modern biographies inform us that while More remained unmarried he “seemed to be in some doubt and deliberation with himself what kind and trade of life he should enter” and practice “all his long life after.” We also learn that More was “inclined to be a priest, or to take some monastic and solitary life,” and that he lived “with the monks of the Charterhouse of London,” but “without any manner of profession or vow.” More’s own great-grandson records the same dilemma but reports More’s interest in becoming a Franciscan friar.
More’s spir itual father, John Colet, theologian and later dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, was also an influence upon young Thomas. Colet stood for the contemplative life, the choice of Mary over Martha. More wrote to Colet for spiritual support in a letter from October of 1504, and so naturally scholars speculate about how Colet may have replied. We don’t have a letter in response, but Colet was a consistent man, who condemned “the world” as “the ways and manner of secular living”; these ways tempt one to live “in devilish pride, in carnal concupiscence, in worldly covetousness, in secular business.” A Christian Neoplatonist, Colet taught how “rapt” Christian souls might ascend in love from “the darksome body” to God alone.
Caught between John More and John Colet, More had to find his own way, but I believe it was Erasmus who rescued him. More was called to the bar in 1501 at the age of 23 and shortly after meeting Erasmus in 1499. During those years, More turned his attention to the subjects and authors Erasmus recommended, and these same ideas and texts prepared More for leading an integrated life of action and contemplation.
In 1499 and for the next 10 years, Erasmus was composing and perfecting his Antibarbari , a treatise against the barbarians, or against those who opposed so-called secular learning. In that treatise, the essence of what we now think of as Christian humanism stems from John 12:32, which Erasmus cites and comments upon:
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, Christ says, “I will draw all unto me.” Here it
seems that he most aptly uses the word traho , "I draw," so that one may understand that all things, whether hostile or heathen or in any other way far removed from him, must be drawn, even if they do follow, even against their will, to the service of Christ.
This same Gospel passage would have fascinated Thomas More, just as it did St. Augustine before him. Why? Augustine explains:
If by “all things” it is men that are to be understood, we can speak of all things that are foreordained to salvation...And of all classes of men, both of every language and every age, and all diversities of talents, and all the professions of lawful and useful arts.
Note that “all professions of lawful and useful arts” are “foreordained to salvation,” as are all ages and men. Everyone, in other words, may strive for holiness or become holy in his or her work.
Indeed , Augustine provided More with a new definition of “the world” in commentary upon the same passage Erasmus singled out. Augustine explains how “the world” need not refer to evil because it “also sometimes stands for the good dispersed throughout the world,” and here Augustine cites Paul’s words, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19).
What else might “reconciling the world” in Christ mean for a lawyer and politician like More? In The City of God, the very text upon which More lectured in 1501, Augustine discusses ways of life that range from contemplation to action, including a combination of these two. The life of action should not be sought for honor but rather because a powerful office provides the means to achieve what is just and helpful to the common good.
All honest offices are tasks and opportunities to do good in the world for yourself and others.
Similarly, leisure exists for investigating truth through a life of contemplation. Augustine writes of balance: “For no one ought to be so leisured as to take no thought in that leisure for the interest of his neighbor, nor so active as to feel no need for the contemplation of God.” Contemplation should be sought out of love for truth, and righteous engagement in the world by a compulsion of love for God manifested by serving others. A mixed way of life allows the contemplation of Mary to guide the work of Martha.
Thus, in the years between 1499 and 1505—after More met Erasmus, and before More married—Erasmus’s influence and Augustine’s
writings helped More reconsider his father’s words and John Colet’s advice. Instead of an active life, as John More urged, or a contemplative one, as John Colet favored, More chose a mixed life, a combination of action and contemplation.
Against that background, we can discover another reason, apart from More’s martyrdom, for why Pope John Paul II named More the patron saint of statesmen and politicians in 2000. In the Vatican’s promulgation, More is a model of how faith and action should go together in an integrated unity of life. The pope emphasized this point in his post-synodal exhortation on the mission of the lay faithful in the Church and in the world. Quoting the Synod Fathers, we read that the laity “must be sanctified in everyday professional and social life.” In order “to respond to their
vocation,” the laity must see “their daily activities as an occasion to join themselves to God, fulfill his will, serve other people and lead them to communion with God in Christ.” Seen in this light, More was not only heroic at his death but also in how he lived—a model for all statesmen and politicians.
