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Memento Mori
Allan Barton presents images from Thomas More’s Utopia
In 1515, Sir Thomas More left
England as part of an embassy to
the court of the future Emperor
Charles V. For over twenty years the tax
imposed on English exports to the
Spanish Netherlands had increased
annually, and the embassy was sent to
negotiate a new arrangement. More’s
friend Erasmus of Rotterdam, the
Humanist scholar, saw it as an
opportunity for More to mix pleasure
with business. He provided him with
letters of introduction to two fellow
Humanists in the Low Countries, Peter
Gilles and Hieronymus van Busleyden.
Influenced by his encounter with these
men, More began work on Utopia.
Beginning as a series of letters to his new
friends, Utopia was a radical work. It
was an account of a perfect, but fictional
island state – a state unlike the ones in which he and his
friends lived. Utopia was a place where all goods were held in
common, where the state was free from trade issues, and free
from the ambition of princes.
Erasmus was delighted with More’s work, and arranged for
it to be printed in Leuven in 1516. He also sent a copy of
Utopia to his friend the Swiss printer
Johann Froben. He commended the text
to Froben and asked him to print it, if, in
his unbiased opinion, he felt the text was
worthy of the press. In December 1518,
More’s Utopia was printed by Froben on
his press in Basel. The book Froben
produced was perhaps one of the most
beautiful books to come out of any press
in sixteenth-century Europe.
The frontispiece in Froben’s edition
of Utopia is executed with great skill.
The title is presented as a scroll set
against a delicate classical frame, the
frame inhabited with putti and
decorated with garlands of fruit and
leaves. As is indicated by the inscription
‘Hans Holb’, the frontispiece was
designed by an artist who would become
one of the greatest painters of the
Northern Renaissance: the twenty-one-year-old Hans
Holbein the Younger. In 1515 Hans and his elder brother
Ambrosius, both then teenagers, moved to Basel from
Augsburg to find work. During their time in Basel they
undertook a wide range of different work, but the printer
Froben was one of their main employers.
Most of the other engravings in Froben’s Utopia are by
28 ■ newdirections ■ June 2016
Ambrosius rather than Hans, and his
tour de force is the map of the mythical
island state. In Holbein’s visualisation of
Utopia the island state is shown set in the
midst of the ocean, with sailing ships
plying their way through the waters. In
the centre of the country lies the capital,
Amaurotum (‘Mist-town’), which sits on
on the river Anydrus (‘Waterless’). The
river’s source, ‘Fons Anydri’, and mouth,
‘Ostium Anydri’, are labelled. In the
bottom left-hand corner, Hythlodaeus,
the fictional sailor who discovered the
island, points out the geography of the
state to another figure – perhaps More
himself.
As well as being a representation of
More’s creation, the map also has a
deeper representational meaning. Look
carefully and you will notice that the
various elements of the map together form the image of a skull.
This map is a memento mori; if we look on this map, not only
do we take in the geography of Utopia; but we are forced to
consider our mortality as well, and our part in the kingdom of
Christ. Dig a bit deeper, and there is yet another layer of
meaning to this image. It is said that More once had a debtor
who said that after death more would
have little use for the money. He said to
More ‘memento morieris’: ‘remember we
will die’; to which More replied
‘memento mori aeris’: ‘remember More’s
money’. Word play and clever puns
appealed to More and his circle of
friends. This image of the skull
appearing out of his Utopia reminds us
of death; but it also recalls More’s name.
Ambrosius Holbein died shortly
after he produced his map of Utopia, but
his brother Hans would travel to
England in 1526 and become the court
painter to Henry VIII – his
introduction to England was made by
Erasmus and Thomas More. This book
not only recalls the literary and
philosophical genius of Thomas More
and his circle, and the artistic skill of the
Froben and the Holbein brothers; but reminds us what a wellconnected
world it was in which they all lived.
The Revd Dr Allan Barton is Chaplain to the University of
Wales Trinity Saint David at Lampeter, and Curator of the
University Art Collections. St Thomas More is commemorated with
St John Fisher on 22 June (RC) and 6 July (CofE).