How to be Brave?

I've been thinking about this question a lot lately.

What makes someone turn back toward danger when they can get away?

I asked this question a couple of years ago, as I read Rebecca Donner’s All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days (2021) about Mildred Harnack, the American woman at the center of the German Resistance during World War II. In the early 1940s, after the Nazis had begun their march across Europe, but before the US had entered the war, Harnack left Berlin for her home state of Wisconsin to visit friends and family.

Already deeply embedded in the resistance, Harnack was well aware that her life was in danger. She could have stayed in Wisconsin, safely at home. Instead, Harnack returned to Germany. The Nazis would eventually execute her.

What makes someone risk everything?

I asked this question more recently, while working on the French Revolutionary and feminist Olympe de Gouges. In the summer of 1793, the French Revolution entered its most violent phase, known as the Terror. No one in Paris felt safe. Olympe had left the city and was living close to her daughter-in-law and grandson in Auteuil, on the outskirts of the capital. She had every reason to stay with her family, away from the violence of the capital, so many reasons to want to live. But in July, she returned to Paris to publish a pamphlet calling for free elections. What made her do it? She was arrested soon after and eventually sent to the guillotine.¹

How does someone become so brave?

I wondered this a couple of weeks ago while reading an advanced copy of Joanne Paul’s new biography of Thomas More (here in the UK; here in the US). Thomas More’s Utopia was the second book I read in college. Along with his friend and fellow scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (whose Praise of Folly, dedicated to More, was the first book I read in college), More has been in my life for a long time. Even if you know nothing about Thomas More, Paul’s biography is a treat. More remains a divisive figure, hated by some, loved by others. In Paul’s work, though, he is neither all good nor all bad. He is simply human — an exceptional person yet also a regular one with flaws and foibles, just like the rest of us.

But somehow, somewhere, Thomas More learned how to be brave. When his beloved king, Henry VIII, broke from the Catholic Church in 1534 and put the entire kingdom of England under a loyalty test, More stood his ground.

The Oath of Succession required English subjects to acknowledge Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, and to renounce any allegiance to foreign powers, including the pope. To refuse to swear the oath was to commit treason.

More knew the consequences, but he couldn’t do it — he could not swear the oath. He told Henry VIII that he remained ever loyal to him and to England, but he could not in good conscience renounce his faith, including the supremacy of the pope. More did not require anyone else to abstain from the oath; he encouraged his own family, whom he loved deeply, to swear for their own safety. The oath was simply a collection of words, a string of syllables that, spoken allowed, would have saved his life. But More could not bring himself to utter them. To him, purity of conscience was worth his life. He put moral conviction over the will of a tyrant.

How many of us would choose the same?

Thomas More, by Hans Holbein the Younger, during his time as Henry VIII’s steadfast chancellor. More was found guilty of treason and executed on July 6, 1535. Although, as a commoner and a convicted traitor, More was supposed to be hung, drawn, and quartered, Henry VIII commuted the sentence to beheading.

1. It is not lost on me that both Harnack and Olympe de Gouges were executed by guillotine. Women were executed by guillotine in Nazi Germany because it was considered a more humane than hanging. Revolutionary France considered the guillotine both a humane and democratic instrument of execution. Previously, only nobles were beheaded; commoners died more torturous deaths. The guillotine, in theory, was the great equalizer.