Given up for all

St Thomas More (1478–1535), whose feast day we mark today, was a martyr of the English Reformation. He is the patron saint of lawyers, statesmen and politicians. His memory was powerfully brought to life for a modern audience in the celebrated 1960s film A Man for All Seasons, in which he was portrayed by Paul Scofield.

A short time before his death in 1535, while imprisoned in the Tower of London, More completed a brief Treatise on the Eucharist. In it he writes according to this source:

But then do such folk receive Him only Sacramentally, and not Virtually, that is to wit, they receive His very Blessed Body into theirs under the Sacramental Sign, but they receive not the thing of the Sacrament, that is to wit, the Virtue and the Effects thereof, that is to say, the Grace by which they should be lively members incorporate in Christ's Holy Mystical Body: but instead of that live Grace, they receive their Judgment and their Damnation.

The above is derived from Theworkes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, sometyme Lorde Chauncellour of England,wrytten by him in the Englysh tonge.

In declaring him as a patron saint of politicians among others, in 2000, PopeSaint John Paul II said:

It can be said that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience which is “the witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate the depths of man’s soul” (Encyclical Letter VeritatisSplendor, 58), even if, in his actions against heretics, he reflected the limits of the culture of his time.

More’s final words, spoken at the scaffold on Tower Hill on 6 July 1535, were reported to be:

I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first.

---

Saint John Fisher also remembered today on this Feast was a martyr of the English Reformation. He was virtually the only English bishop who refused to conform to Henry VIII’s new ecclesiastical settlement. His work De Veritate Corporis et Sanguinis Christi in Eucharistia (1527) — On the Truth of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist — reaffirmed the traditional teaching of the Church, rooted in Scripture and the Fathers, on the Real Presence and on the Mass as a true sacrifice, not merely a commemorative meal.

Although the Eucharist was not the central issue in the earliest stages of the English Reformation, it became increasingly important in the decades that followed, alongside questions of the priesthood and the validity of holy orders. The Church of England retained elements of Catholic language and liturgical form, but formally rejected transubstantiation and the sacrificial character of the Mass in the Thirty‑Nine Articles. These Articles, in various forms, remain part of the doctrinal standards required of clergy in some parts of the Anglican Communion today.

It is worth reflecting on what Saint Thomas More might make of his beloved kingdom today. While his historical context was very different, one might still ask how his unwavering commitment to conscience, truth and the unity of faith would speak into the moral and social divisions of our own time. With so many polarising and divisive attempts to disrupt British society which had become known for greater tolerance, inclusion and moderation compared to former times, would More be to the fore in calling out the corruption of religion by racists parading crosses through the streets of London and elsewhere?

More was certainly no proto‑socialist. As Lord Chancellor of England, he upheld a hierarchical society, monarchy and the rule of law, and he himself was a man of considerable means. Yet in his 1516 work Utopia, he used an imagined society to explore and critique economic inequality and the effects of private property. In doing so, he touched on themes that would later be developed more fully within Catholic Social Teaching, particularly in the modern era.

The political and social context of sixteenth‑century England is clearly different from our own — yet in some respects, the underlying questions of conscience, authority and truth remain strikingly familiar.  As the United Kingdom prepares for a new Prime Minister, it is fitting to remember and invoke the intercession of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, who both gave their lives in 1535. Like his fellow martyr, Fisher chose obedience to God and fidelity to conscience over political — and even ecclesial — pressure.