Neither saint nor sinner: An analysis of Richard Marius as biographer of Thomas More

Southern Quarterly, Summer 2003 by Bowman, Glen

One cannot blame Marius for being critical of Chambers, for it is expected that historians poke holes in previous scholarship. After all, if there were nothing to revise, there would be no need for revisionists. Marius certainly chose a subject that needed an honest re-examination. Considering that many previous biographers, including Chambers, tiptoed around More's character flaws-as if heroes never make mistakes-Marius's iconoclastic study remains after twenty years refreshingly genuine. Marius's More is not a saintly stiff, but rather a tortured real-world enigma who bled crimson, not holy water. It is not surprising that his biography has been so widely read.

Nevertheless, this depiction of More is centered on the myth that Marius could escape the problems that plagued Chambers. One of the ironies of Marius, at least in his extensive study of More, is that he commits some of the same fallacies that he in print condemns. Over decades he conducted exhaustive research yet based his thesis regarding More's sexuality on flimsy evidence. Although he did not clearly identify his biography as psychohistory, he nevertheless held the questionable assumption that one can isolate psychological motivation precisely. If he did not assume that, he never could have argued his central point that More's identity crisis centered on his choice between marriage and life in the cloister. Moreover, Marius condemned More for the viciousness of his attacks on heresy without setting him in a proper historical context. Perhaps More did not deserve sainthood, but in a sixteenth-century perspective the man was not necessarily evil either. Marius considers Chambers's earlier biography weak because it overly praises the man, yet in doing so he overstates his case, as if two wrongs make a right. If Chambers as biographer is saccharine, then Marius in that same role is bitter. For the discriminating reader of biography, both tastes can be repellent.

In their attempts to assess the life and career of one of the most important figures in early modern England, More's biographers have made their task harder than it has to be. Their subject was neither otherworldly super-saint nor base sinner-he was simply human. More complicated than most, certainly, yet still human. As were and are his biographers. Marius was in some ways just as much a part of his time as we are of ours; and Chambers was of his; and More, of his. Despite this limitation, historians and biographers should aim for fairness as they examine the past, trying to understand it in its own. terms while being aware of their own preconceptions. They will discover, however, that this worthwhile goal of objectivity, while it must be attempted, cannot be achieved. Confronted by this limitation, one day some historian or general biographer will nevertheless write yet another study of More, a book that some myopic reviewers will classify as "definitive." That book might become, like Marius's book, the biography for that era, because it will reflect society's values and assumptions, much the same way that first Erasmus, and then a long line of revisionists-Roper, Harpsfield, Chambers, Marius, and others-reflected theirs. When this happens, another chapter in the history of revisionist biography of Thomas More will have been written.