Dates

• Existence: 1478 February 7 - 1535 July 6

Biographical note

A native of London, More studied at Canterbury Hall, Oxford, and read Law at the Inns of Court, being called to the bar in 1501. In 1516, he published Utopia, which gained for him a European reputation as a scholar and humanist. From this time he was more and more in favor with Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, whom in 1529 he succeeded as Lord Chancellor. Soon, however, he found himself unable to support the king on the question of the royal divorce. He resigned the chancellorship and, on refusing to take the oath of supremacy, declaring the king supreme head of the Church in England, was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After fifteen months' incarceration he was beheaded on Tower Hill. In the decree of his canonization in 1935, Pope Pius XI described him as the "Martyr of the Papacy."

(paraphrased from The Book of Saints : A Dictionary of Persons Canonized or Beatified by the Catholic Church. 5th edition. New York: Crowell, 1966.)