By: A.B. Timothy
Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, Of the Best State of a Commonwealth
This first section begins with a great deal of people being introduced to the reader. King Henry VIII sent our author, Thomas More, to Flanders to be ambassador to Prince Charles. More was a companion to Cuthbert Tonstal, a recently named Master of the Rolls. It is clear that More holds Tonstal in very high esteem, as he says anything he would say about him would be like the proverb, “Show the sun with a lantern.” Almost a “you had to meet him” commendation. According to the introduction from the copy I have, Tonstal was a rising churchman, chancellor to the Archbishop of Canterbury (1515), later he was made Archdeacon of Chester before finally being made Master of the Rolls in 1516. Certainly, this is a man of great accomplishment. Next, we meet the Margrave of Bruges, who led the men appointed by Prince Charles to meet with More at Bruges. Even though he was not the leader, George Temse, Provost of Casselsee, “was esteemed wisest, and…spoke for the rest….” (More) He was also a man of law, much like More himself was, having studied law in London after leaving Oxford. After their meeting, the men left, back to Brussels to find out what the Prince wanted. More went to Antwerp and met with several visitors, among whom was Peter Giles, a man whom More cannot speak highly enough of. Such goodly was his company that it “lessened any longings to go back to [his] country and to [his] wife and children….”(See footnote 1) (This Peter fellow must have been quite the conversationalist.)
It was this Giles fellow who would introduce More to the roving Portuguese Philosopher called Raphael Hythloday, the very same spoken of in the title of this section. This man had traveled far and wide with an explorer of renown who is called Americus Vesputius in these pages, but we know better as Amerigo Vespucci, the explorer after whom the American Continents get their names. Having accompanied this great man on three of Vespucci’s four voyages, Hythloday chose, along with 23 other men, to remain ashore at the farthest place Vespucci would explore. However, Hythloday did not wish to die there, in some far off unknown corner of the world, and therefore set out with 5 men. They traveled through many countries before, by God’s grace, finding Portuguese ships to carry the philosopher home that he might return to his native country.
Note: Raphael Hythloday’s name means “knowing in trifles”. He is a fictional character, through whom Thomas More told the tale of his Utopia.
This philosopher is learned in Latin and Greek and has applied himself more to Greek because of his love of philosophy. More claims the Romans left no value in Philosophy, save Seneca and Cicero. I don’t know that I agree, but this belief, coming from More, makes sense given that the Renaissance was focused on a revival of Greek culture and philosophy, not Roman.
For the next few pages, Hythloday regales us with the story of his adventure. They travelled, furnished by some unnamed lord of some unnamed county, south, over the equator and down into another land. More uses a desert landscape as a sort of liminal transition place between civilized hubs. Perhaps the fantastical things seen by Hythloday as he continued south could be chalked up to heat stroke. There in the south, they found “nations, towns, and cities, that had not only mutual commerce among themselves and with their neighbors, but traded, both by sea and land, to very remote countries.” (More) At first, all they found were small, flat, perhaps fishing-style vessels, but then they found ships quite large and familiar to their cohort. Hythloday was welcomed quickly and warmly, for he taught these sailors, who already knew of Astronomy and navigation, the use of the “needle”, of which they were ignorant.
Note: The “needle” here is talking about a magnetic compass.
More and Giles asked Hythloday about the institutions and more noble things of the cities, but did not ask about monsters.
Conclusion
I have read and notated above 6 pages of the story proper. My E-Reader says I am about 8% of the way through the story as a whole, but that is only because I read the introduction yesterday, which I used for reference here today, but did not notate in its entirety. These six pages were a good introduction to the story and the device by which More intends to tell it at length. They are also about ten percent of the entire first-named section, “Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, Of the Best State of a Commonwealth.” I will likely read and notate the rest of this section and the book as a whole. I will see you all tomorrow with the next section.
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