Thomas More and the Mulberry Tree: Genus Morus - Part I

St. T.M. and his friends enjoyed puns on More's surname.  And the name certainly lent itself to this form of play.

As Peter Ackroyd wrote in his elegant and affectionate biography of the saint:

"[T]he origins of More's surname cannot be so easily discovered.  If such names derive from some sense of place, then the great moors or marshes around London might find an echo here.  It is also a name on which a number of puns were constructed.  'More' could be the 'Moor' or black Ethiop and Desiderius Erasmus, the Dutch humanist who became his close companion, sometimes called him 'Niger'.  On More's family arms, there was the head of a 'blackamoor', and the same device appeared upon his seal when he was under-treasurer of England.  On his crest, too, were 'moorcocks', 'Morus' was also the Latin term for the mulberry tree, and Thomas More would plant one of these 'wise' trees in his garden at Chelsea.  He was aware of the power of names, therefore, to create or evoke their own set of circumstances.  'Morus' is fool and 'Mors' is death.  Erasmus's title for his most celebrated work Moriae encomium -- 'In Praise of Folly' -- was designed also to praise More, in whose house the book was written. More himself invented puns about his surname -- Memento Mori aeris (Remember More's money) might become Memento morieris (The remembrance of death)."

Incidentally, the reason the mulberry is called "wise" is because it is the last tree to bloom in the spring.  It waits until all risk of frost is past.  "Moror" is Latin for "to delay" which probably accounts for why "Morus" also means "fool".  This double meaning of "morus" is interesting because of the concepts of "wise fool" and "holy fool" -- which some would likely apply to St. T.M.

Source of quoted material:  Ackroyd, Peter, The Life of Thomas More (Doubleday, 1998), pp. 7-8.)

Image:   Detail of black mulberry.  Photograph by Meneerke bloem. From Wikimedia Commons.  Click for license.