Non-Utopian Euthanasia: An Italian Report, c. 1554

Abstract

The Utopian custom of euthanasia used, quite rightly, to be discussed in terms of classical sources and generally turned on whether Sir Thomas More advocated it personally or not. The fruitfulness of such discussion has its limits, and I find that More scholars have largely dropped the subject. Some new evidence has come to light, however, which raises the question whether More's apparently speculative projection had not in fact some basis in actual practice. An Italian diplomat who visited England during the reign of Mary in 1554, that is twenty-eight years after Utopia was published, stated unequivocally that euthanasia (he does not use the term, of course) was customary among some people in England. He thought it a primitive survival.I have found two main sources for the text of the report: (1) the various copies of an anonymous manuscript usually called ‘Ritratti del Regno d'lnghilterra’ (2) a book by the Ferrarese diplomat Giulio Raviglio Rosso, I Successi d'lnghilterra dopo la morte di Odoardo sestofno al giunta in quel Regno del Sereniss.

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