Hypocrisy Of Tudor England Depicted In More's Utopia

Thomas More’s novel, Utopia (1516), satirically criticises the virtues of Tudor England through provoking discussion while entertaining the readers and presenting solutions to those through the fabricated idea of Utopia. More’s study of Catholicism and his own faith allows him to construct a literary utopian land, a superior mirror image of Tudor England. More exposes the issues of the injustice of the legal system, private property eroding morality and hypocrisy of the Catholic rule during the sixteenth century to suggest improved possibilities to the readers. Through the structure of the novel, Utopia is exemplified by the portrayal through Raphael in which More hides behind to voice his opinions to his contemporary audience whom he hopes

Tudor England was undergoing a change in religion and reformation of the Church. Furthermore, at the time, knowledge of the priests lack of education was heavily criticised and the Church was known for not following the true commandments stated in the Bible. More criticised the lack of knowledge and the events leading to the reformation of the Protestant church in Utopia through his own study of Catholicism. More describes through Raphael how “They’ve merely enabled people to sin with a clear conscience” showing the poor leadership of Tudor England going against their own morals when Raphael says “We’ll never get human behaviour in line with Christian ethics,… so let’s adapt Christian ethics to human behaviour”. Raphael shows us the hypocrisy ironically in the leader’s words as he shows how the leaders of Tudor England are disregarding their own religion in an attempt to criticise the Catholic Church. More goes on to describe the lack of work by the priests through Raphael stating “then there are the priests, and members of so-called religious orders-how much work do they do”. More contrasts this with Utopian’s priests through Raphael’s description of the Utopian Church “responsible for the education of children and adolescents… children are given the right idea about things”. More shows us that he tries to get his contemporary readers to question the authority of even their leaders who are said to be held in high respect through raising the questioning the productivity of their work. Furthermore, Thomas More exemplifies this issue even more stating that “priests are exceptionally pious, which means that there are very few of them” showing that there is no need for too many priests. Ironically, More, who did not tolerate other religions, created Utopia’s religious approach with a high