An imagined gathering
1516 · London, England
More shares the manuscript of Utopia with Erasmus, Machiavelli, and Copernicus and tests its argument against their objections.
More has just finished the little book he calls Utopia, and Erasmus, who encouraged him to write it, has come to London to read it in manuscript. Machiavelli is in England on business and has been drawn into the circle by his reputation; Copernicus is on a rare visit north and is more interested in the book's astronomy than its politics.
More reads aloud the passage in which the traveller Hythloday describes an island without private property, and the argument that follows is friendly but sharp. Machiavelli asks who would defend such a place; Erasmus asks whether it is a model or a joke; Copernicus asks what sun it orbits. Over rice in broth, roast pheasant, and biscuits with sweet wine, none of them can agree, which is exactly what More intended.
Host: Thomas More
Desiderius Erasmus — More's closest friend and the book's first enthusiastic reader.
Niccolò Machiavelli — In England on business, skeptical of commonwealths without arms.
Nicolaus Copernicus — A visitor whose own book is still years from publication.
First course
a period dish
a period dish
Dessert
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Thomas More
More's imagined commonwealth, where property is held in common and institutions are ordered by reason rather than greed.
Desiderius Erasmus
The humanist program of returning to original texts and languages, and the tools of editing and translation it produced.
Desiderius Erasmus
The new technology that let scholars like Erasmus reach a whole continent, and that made the Reformation possible.
Nicolaus Copernicus
The claim that the Sun, not the Earth, sits at the center of the planetary system — and the slow, contested work of making it fit observation.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.