Renaissance Europe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Renaissance Europe - Essay Example And can this hypothetical scenario ever be materialized. An etymology for this word say a lot about the possibility of such existence, it was originated by Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 - 6 July 1535), and used for the first time in his Latin book "Concerning the highest state of the republic and the new island Utopia" published in 1516. Interestingly his conviction in this state could be inferred from the fact that he conjoined two Greek words 'ou' for NOT and 'topos' for PLACE to form a word that literally means "nowhere." Sir Thomas More or Saint Thomas More as he is also refered to was an English lawyer, author, and statesman. He was highly regarded as a humanist scholar, he was bearer of many important public posts including that of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532 in his illustrious career (Roper, 1626). Another cause clbre for which he is remembered is his refusal to accept King Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church of England. It was his this bold stance that elevated him to the level of great people and his courage and conviction to remain steadfast at the face of adversity earned him the sainthood from the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI in 1935 about four hundred years after his death. Apart from his principled defiance to the authority he is best known for his most famous and controversial book that was published in 1516 in which he for the first time used the word utopia. In this book he tells of a imaginary character Raphael Hythloday who is a traveler, extensive allegory is used to make the story more powerful and appealing; like the first name is ingeniously used to allude to the archangel Raphael, who is the messenger of truth. And surname in Greek means "dispenser of nonsense". The book is about political set up of fictitious place Utopia, it's a place where there is no concept of private ownership and different faiths are practiced freely and inter faith tolerance is firmly in placed. It is an embodiment of perfect destination where everything is desirable politically, culturally, socially, education wise and economically. With specific consideration to exceptional tolernce to varied forms of opinion and diversity. The purpose of presenting this unique and perfect state was to provide some form of imaginative yard stick at least to measure or correlate the certain dynamics of state affairs that eventually are pivotal for smooth functioning of a state. More very intelligently presented religio-political design of the imaginary state as an epitome of perfection and then compared and contrasted the real life affairs of European states with the ideal standards of utopian state. Thus he was able to devise a mechanism whereby the efficacy and inefficacy of a state could be measured on an arbitrary scale. One very interesting development that was observed from his argument in search of perfect state was that though he had maintained complete religious tolerence for every faith he was also adament in establishing the fact that there was no room for atheism in the utopian society. It was the marriage of convenience since he was catholic in faith and being minority in England needed tolerance of faith but his devout Catholicism did not allow h im have anything to do with godless society. The ostensible reason given by him for this eerie prejudism was because an atheist does not accept any superior power he is