Saint Thomas More

Born in London in 1478, Thomas More became one of the leading English thinkers of the Renaissance. He was trained in law, built a successful public career, and earned a reputation for learning, wit, and friendship with other scholars, including Erasmus.

More wrote Utopia in 1516, the book that made him famous far beyond England. In it, he imagined an ideal society and used that fictional world to ask hard questions about justice, power, wealth, and human nature. The book helped secure his place as one of the most important writers and political thinkers of his age.

He later served King Henry VIII and rose to become lord chancellor, but he refused to accept the king's break with Rome and the claim of royal supremacy over the Church. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, he was executed in 1535. Centuries later he was canonized as a saint, and he remains admired as both a major author and a symbol of conscience under pressure.