Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation

(1534)

To express some of his inner thoughts while awaiting his execution in 1535 for refusing to betray his faith, Thomas More created this fictional dialogue between a 16th century Hungarian, Vincent, and Anthony, his dying uncle.

This is a reflection on worldly power, the transience of pleasure, and the redemptive power of Jesus Christ. It is cast in the form of a fictional dialogue, supposedly taking place in Hungary during the Ottoman conquests. While it is a work of spiritual reflection, the treatment of themes of worldly power by a Christian humanist who had also been a leading statesman means that the book is also counted as a work of political thought.

This edition of the Dialogue of Comfort has been transcribed from the 1557 version as it appears in Everyman's Library. The Everyman edition is heartily recommended to readers who would like to taste the dialogue in its original form.

The first plan was to change only the spelling. It soon became evident that the punctuation would have to be changed to follow present usage. The longest sentences were then broken up into two or three, and certain others were rearranged into a word order more like that of today. Nothing was omitted, however, and nothing was added except relative pronouns, parts of "to be," and other such neutral connectives. Finally, obsolete words were changed to more familiar equivalents except when they were entirely clear and too good to lose. Thus "wot" became "know" but "gigglot" and "galp up the ghost" were retained. Words that have come to have a quite different meaning for us, such as "fond" and "lust" were replaced by less ambiguous ones--wherever possible, by ones that More himself used elsewhere.

The text has not been cut or expanded, re-interpreted or edited. Any transcription seems to involve some interpretation, conscious or otherwise, but an effort has been made to keep it to a minimum. Passages that seemed to make no sense have therefore been left unaltered. If other readers find solutions for them their suggestions will be welcomed.

This is not in any sense a scholarly piece of work. That would require a very different method, as well as a far more thorough knowledge of sixteenth-century English. It would be a most commendable undertaking, but it might result in an edition for the learned. This one is for everyone who has the two essentials, faith and intelligence, presupposed by Anthony in Chapter II.

MONICA STEVENS

Middlebury, Vermont.

Feast of St. Benedict.