Status and wealth, power and fame: St. Thomas More had them all. As a wise and popular statesman, internationally recognized scholar, and Lord Chancellor of England, More was perhaps the most highly respected Englishman of his day until his conscience required that he lay down his life for his Catholic faith.

A generation ago, the American Catholic novelist John Edward Beahn retold More 's life story as a biographical novel, A Man Born Again: A Novel Based on the Life of St. Thomas More, published in 1954. Making ample use of the rich historical records of sixteenth-century England, Beahn lays out the convoluted political landscape of the period, which set the scene for the disastrous efforts of King Henry VIII to divorce his queen and marry his mistress—while demanding that the Church grant him sanction for his immorality.