THE IMAGE OF THOMAS MORE IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Reading Swift's Gulliver's Travels one comes across this sentence : «I had the honour to have much conversation with Brutus, and was told that his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epami- nondas, Sir Thomas More and himself, were perpetually together : a sextumvirate to which all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh», which was written in 1726 (1). It can be thought very surprising that Saint Thomas More should be included in this very exclusive Pantheon of ancient heroes. Of course, there is nothing wrong about having More in this select club of men who had fought and died for freedom, or, at least, who died because they would not compromise ; but, what is noteworthy is the fact that the Dean of Saint-Patrick's, and a man of the Age of Enlightenment, should be remembering the former Lord Chancellor who had been executed some two centuries earlier for refusing to accept the king's supremacy.

Actually, as one reads works of the eighteenth century, in English and in French, which are not primarily historical or biographical, a number of short texts, or just mentions, crop up (2), which prove that More was still very present in the minds of the readers, though, for many reasons, he was alien to the ideals and principles of the eighteenth century.

Indeed, the Shockwave which the execution of Sir Thomas More had sent through Christendom, through Europe, was still being felt two centuries later. Henry VIII, who had wanted More's death to be seen as a proof of his ruthless determination, had certainly not expected it to make More a hero for ages to come, including a very secular age : the Age of Reason.

We take it for granted that More should have been eventually canonized ; and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church always held him out as an example and he was shown as a Christian hero, but, we should see why More was still held in high esteem and even deemed one of the finest figures in English history, or indeed in the history of mankind, by people who had no reason to do so.

We are using the word «figure» because we are not going to deal with the knowledge learned readers or scholars had of More, his life and his works, nor with the reactions of those who a priori would eulogize More, but with the process which gave More an image compatible with eighteenth-century ideals and