Posted by guillermo maynez
on 11/6/2012, 13:39:29, in reply to "Re: Wolf Hall"
189.140.209.147
When I was a kid (13-14)I had to spend a couple of weeks at the house of some elderly and spinster aunts in the town of Irapuato, in Central Mexico, the heartland of radical Catholic resistance in the Cristero Wars of the 1930's. They had a decent library, including several volumes of illustrated, comics-style "Lives of Saints", of which I read some stories. One that stayed in my mind was that of Saint Thomas More. He was portrayed as a stalwart in the defense of the Faith against the debauched, corrupt, and perverted Henry VIII who, in his illegitimate carnal lust for a whore (they, of course, didn't use that word), forced a lot of people into sin, and so basically condemned the English nation to Hell. All for Anne Boleyn's (scarce, according to Mantel) flesh. They, also of course, didn't mention Henry's misogyny, since the law allowed the coronation of a female heir, in this case Mary, Catherine's daughter.
According to this story, Thomas was an excellent husband and father, and I remember very well a vignette where he is teaching Classical Greek to his daughter, surely Meg. So firm a defender of the Faith was he, that he preferred to be decapitated before accepting to be an accomplice in Henry's diabolical designs. All this I read in the middle of the religious crisis that took me away from religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.
Turns out that, far from being a saint, Thomas More, according to "Wolf Hall" (and, I suspect, reality) was an extremely selfish and arrogant man, with a Messianic touch, a family dictator, a torturer and fanatic. It chilled me to the bone when, almost at the end of the novel, Cromwell and others are questioning him about his previous orders to torture people for being "heretics", and the answer he gives, claiming to be right in torture when it is done for Divine Law, instead of the earthly law that makes Henry's people condemn him. A terrifying justification of torture and bigotry!!
More in the novel itself later.
--Previous Message--
: I still have a couple of hundred pages to go, but by all
: means, start the discussion. (Spoilers don't really
: matter when a novels stays this true to history. I
: know how it comes out.) :^)
:
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: I'm a hundred pages from finishing it. I'm loving it.
: I
: will be travelling the next two weeks, with little
: time to read, but I definitely want to read
: "Bring up the Bodies" this year. I hope to
: post comments on "Wolf Hall" next Monday at
: the latest, so if you want, go ahead with yours.
:
: --Previous Message--
: It's been awfully quiet around here lately. I finished
: Wolf Hall several days ago. Anyone else?
:
: B&N had the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, at 40% off,
: so I went ahead and bought it today. Is anyone
: interesting in reading it together this month too?
:
:
:
:
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