500 years of Utopia: How a different story about Europe started in Flanders
Thomas More wrote his seminal novel Utopia 500 years ago during an extensive trip to Flanders, a circumstance explored during Mechelen's Contour art parcours this summer. Curator Nicola Setari tells us about the trip
Bruges landing, May 1515
Utopia is five hundred years old, but the idea of a society based on equality and the abolition of private property is much older. Credit for the invention of the word ‘utopia’ goes to Thomas More, the English humanist and statesman, who introduced it in his book on The Best State of a Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia, written in Latin and first published in Leuven in 1516.
Progressively, from the 16th century to the 19th and 20th century, utopia went from being a playfully serious social critique to a social reality deadly and tragically grave.
On this path, much of its potential was lost and today we see it sadly occupy the language of our result-driven and ultra-pragmatic societies to express negative associations or to refer to unrealizable undertakings.
Given the currently discouraging state of affairs in Europe and considering that the original book was meant as a critique of Europe, is it still possible to give utopia a chance and recuperate its ironic potential for change?
If one takes this question slightly seriously, a starting point could be to celebrate Utopia’s birthday. Inevitably this raises the further question of which day to choose for this celebration? In Belgium there seem to be different opinions. Friends in Leuven say: “...well, of course, it should be the day the book was first published in our city at the end of December 1516”. But no one knows the exact date and, anyway, can we afford to wait till then?
Friends in Antwerp say: “... it has to be the day More arrived in our city, after all the book starts in Antwerp doesn’t it?” Yes, but no one knows exactly when More arrived nor how long he stayed. Friends in Mechelen, where a big party for utopia is being prepared towards the end of the summer, say: “... the birthday should be in the place where he wrote it and many think it was in Mechelen. Besides wasn’t our city the most important in the region at the time that More was visiting?” Yes, but it is also not absolutely certain he wrote the book there.
Leisure time
Given the urgency, I suggest that Utopia’s birthday be the day More landed in Bruges for his long diplomatic mission in Flanders in 1515, which offered him the leisure time to write most of the book. This day is May 18, exactly 500 years ago. What better way is there to celebrate Utopia and bring it back to life, then to tell the story of Utopia’s conception and of its author.
It must have been sunny. When More crossed the English channel his life was on a threshold and European history was at a turning point. Bruges had already begun to lose much of its power because the Zwin channel had just a few years before dried up entirely, but it was still the city an English ambassador would travel to if he needed to meet with his counterparts from the Low Countries. At the time of his landing, More, age 37, was very proficient in Latin and Greek, but had little, if any, diplomatic experience. It probably wasn’t very clear to him what to expect and he certainly did not imagine he would be staying in Flanders for over five months.
This mission on behalf of King Henri VIII was led by Cuthbert Tunstall, a prominent political figure of the time and later the bishop of London.
In Bruges, together with the other envoys from England they met with those of the young Prince Charles who, a few years later, would become Holy Roman Emperor at the death of his grandfather Maximilian I. The goal of the embassy was to settle the disputes that had arisen among merchants trading wool. Margaret of Austria, a famous resident of Mechelen and aunt and tutor of Prince Charles, in 1507 had managed to make a commerce treaty that was much more favorable to the Flemish cloth industry than to the English. Henri VIII did not like to respect his commitments with women, as history later would confirm, so a new balance needed to be found.
While in Bruges, More met his dear friend Erasmus, who was by then already the most famous humanist of their age and had written In Praise of Folly in More’s home in London just a few years earlier. Erasmus must have insisted that as soon as he could get away from his entangled diplomatic mission More should go to Antwerp and Mechelen where he had better chances of satisfying his humanist appetites thanks to his friends Peter Gillis and Jeroen van Busleyden.
By July 21 1515, the negotiations in Bruges had reached a stall and More and the other envoys could leave till further adjournment. Sure enough More followed Erasmus’ instructions and first stayed with Gillis in Antwerp and later with Busleyden in Mechelen, in his magnificent palace, which was filled with art and antiquities.
More was a relatively free man during this time because he had not yet joined the court of Henri VIII. Unlike many other of his contemporaries, he was reluctant to enter into the graces of the sovereign, well-aware of the dangers this could lead to and, most importantly, of the restrictions on his personal freedom this would bring.
Greedy and wild
There is a passage in the first of the two books that compose Utopia, in which the question of whether it is opportune for a man of letters to become a king’s councilor is broadly discussed. To give a sense of the paradoxical situation More was caught in, there is also another memorable passage in Utopia, which is worth quoting.
In Utopia, he solves it with irony and satire, while tracing a radical alternative to the Europe of his time
An English cardinal asks what the main cause is that makes thievery necessary and Raphael Hythloday, Utopia’s fictional navigator and narrator replies: “Your sheep, which are usually so tame and so cheaply fed, begin now, according to report to be so greedy and wild that they devour human beings themselves and devastate and depopulate fields, houses and towns.” This is a very playful and poignant image to criticize the English aristocracy, which was transforming agricultural land in to pasture to increase their profit through the wool trade.
The man writing these words, albeit putting them in the mouth of a fictional character, was the same one fighting for the English wool industry’s interests in Bruges. He must have felt the tension and the moral dilemma quite deeply. In Utopia he solves it with irony and satire, while tracing a radical alternative to the Europe of his time. He did not believe it could be realized entirely, nor did he want it, but he knew it would stand as a lasting provocation and counter-narrative to the one of conquest, conflict and war that was dominating European nations.
Around the time More arrived in Flanders another great humanist, Niccolò Macchiavelli, was trying to give advice to kings with his book The Prince. The book was the expression of the author’s desperate efforts to regain the favors of the Medici family, after having suffered political humiliation in his beloved Florence and having been forced to retire to the countryside. The two eminent representatives of the Italian and English Renaissance never met, nor is there evidence that their works inspired each other’s, but the parallels between their human and literary trajectories have attracted the interest of many scholars. Interestingly, the Machiavellian school of politics is seen as the opposite of the Utopian and perhaps is the one winning the battle in present day Europe. Nevertheless, one should not forget that Machiavelli also had a very refined sense of humor.
More’s intention was to terminate his services to the crown after the embassy to Flanders and in fact upon his return to England at the end of October, he refused a pension offered to him by the king. His fate, though, had already been sealed during his trip and by the end of the following year around the time Utopia was in print, he was so often at court and so frequently asked to entertain and advise the sovereign that he felt like he had become his fool. He was, in fact, writing to his friends that he had to find a way to make himself less likeable to the king. If only he had succeeded earlier on in displeasing Henri VIII, he might have kept his head on his shoulders. This was no longer possible by 6 July of 1535, the day of More’s execution for high treason. His last words were: “I die the king’s good servant, and God’s first”.
Political and religious martyr
With his death he became a political and religious martyr and later a saint of the Catholic Church. During his political career he spent time persecuting and ordering the execution of Protestant reformers, who perceived and described him, understandably, as a monster. The term used nowadays to describe his perception of the reformers is ‘terrorists’. He considered them violent destabilisers of the commonwealth and not just innocent spiritual figures.
How could the author of Utopia get so entangled in real politik and, more importantly, can we still learn something from him today?
More did not embrace the radicalism of the Utopians, the inhabitants of the island of Utopia, on the contrary, his political career was made of many compromises. Even in his famous book, written before he entered court, More, or better his fictional character in Utopia, dialogues with Hythloday enquiring on the costumes of this mysterious population that lives in the new world, and they disagree on a number of important points, including the abolition of private property. This game of contradictions contributes a great deal to making Utopia a literary masterpiece, one that has still today the qualities of a modern piece of art because it is impossible to interpret in just one way. The book and its author constantly fool us as to their intentions and meanings.
More devised Utopia in order to be able to deal with the reality that surrounded him. From the moment he returned from Flanders, his life was a constant effort to improve English society. He accepted to play the king’s fool as long as this did not do violence to his conscience and did not drive him insane, allowing him to push social reform. We don't owe him just a word, or a great idea, we owe him the first defense of freedom of speech in the history of European Parliaments. Together with his friend Erasmus he embraced the idea that a certain degree of folly and satire was absolutely necessary to remain sane, especially in troubled political times. In this they were more modern than many moderns and set an example for men and women of letters, artists and jesters, on the best way to shake the conscience of a dormant Europe, not with the hammer, but with a penetrating line that could produce a smile and more than just one question.
This text was provided by Nicola Setari, Curator of CONTOUR 7: A Moving Image Biennale, Dedicated to Thomas More
29 August to 8 November 2024
Across Mechelen
Painting of Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527
