Saint Thomas More

Born in London in 1478, Thomas More became one of the leading English thinkers of the Renaissance. He was trained as a lawyer, built a career in public service, and gained lasting literary fame for Utopia, the 1516 work that imagined an ideal society and gave the world a new political word.

More rose high under King Henry VIII and eventually served as lord chancellor. But when Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church, More refused to endorse the king’s religious policy. That decision led to his imprisonment in the Tower of London and his execution in 1535.

He was later canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church, and he remains a striking figure in both religious and literary history: a scholar, public servant, and writer whose ideas and example have been debated for centuries.