Abstaining from vain confabulations

8 November 2025, New York

If one of the most arresting contemporary buildings in New York – a skyscraper opened last month that occupies a whole city block bounded by Madison Avenue, 47th Street, Park Avenue, and 48th Street – is the new JPMorgan Chase global headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, one of New York’s most arresting historic buildings shares a name and lineage with it. The Morgan Library and Museum in Maddison Avenue (just a short walk from my apartment) was incorporated as an institution a century ago in 1924, and is one of North America’s most distinguished repositories of fine books and manuscripts. It was created by Pierpoint Morgan to house his personal connection, the same John Pierpoint Morgan who was the founder of J.P. Morgan and Co., the predecessor of JPMorgan Chase. Gloriously, this most beautiful historic building and its collection is open to the public; even more gloriously it is privately owned and run and so is not subject to restriction caused by the current federal shut-down. And on Friday I visited it. 

One of several exhibitions the Library currently has on show is entitled ‘Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life’. It runs until 4th January 2026, and it is well worth a visit. Although a relatively small show, set out over three rooms on the Library’s second floor, the exhibition is packed with fascinating psalters, illuminations, illustrations and historic documents that chart the impact of the Jewish Psalter on life, worship and daily life in the mediaeval world.

Many of the psalters on display are brightly illuminated, and jewel-like, but at the far end of the third room is a relatively plain Book of Hours printed in black and red ink, dating from 1530 and originating in Paris. This, for me, despite its plainness, was the stand-out item in the exhibition. 

As I approached it I couldn’t – slightly frustratingly – quite get close enough to see what it was. A man, immobile, was hogging the space just in front of the glass case and seemed for ages to be transfixed by it. Suddenly aware of my presence he turned and apologised, and I saw he had tears in his eyes. “It’s very moving, isn’t it?” he said, shifting to allow me to draw close. And it is. 

It is, as I say, a sixteenth century printed Book of Hours, presumably in its day just one of many produced by some random Parisian printer – but this one was the personal prayer book of Sir Thomas More,  Chancellor of England (the ‘Man for All Seasons’ in Robert Bolt’s wonderful play about him), and it was the same prayer book that he had with him when sent to the Tower of London on charges of High Treason, and that he had with him when executed at Tower Hill on the 6th July 1535. In the margins More has written annotations and notes for his final book, The Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, published posthumously – and in one place a prayer. How powerful to see the words of the prayer of a saint (he was canonised by Pius XI in 1935 and proclaimed the patron saint of statesmen and politicians by John Paul II in 2000) written in his own hand, and to be able to imagine him holding this book on the day of his death. 

I grew up with a romanticised view of More, informed by schoolboy reading of Bolt’s play and later by avid viewing of the film of the same play starring Charlton Heston as More and John Gielgud as Cardinal Wolsey. More, in my mind, was very much a one-dimensional hero and martyr of conscience who stood up to Henry VIII and paid the ultimate price. In my reading since then, revisionist historians have done much to reposition More, to reappraise him and to present him to me as a character less saintly and more actively mired in the politics of the Henrician court and in the persecution of heretics than previous generations – and certainly Bolt – wanted to believe. But something in me wants to cleave to my former view of him and wants to believe the best of him.  His prayer, penned in his own hand in this book, encourages me in my fantasy, and for a moment on Friday morning, I felt I had briefly drawn very close to holiness. The prayer goes like this: 

Give me Thy grace, good Lord:

To set the world at naught;

To set my mind fast upon Thee,

And not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths;

To be content to be solitary, 

Not to long for worldly company;

Little and little utterly to cast off the world,

And rid my mind of all the business thereof;

Not to long to hear of any worldly things,

But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant; 

Gladly to be thinking of God,

Piteously to call for His help;

To lean unto the comfort of God,

Busily to labour to love Him;

To know mine own vility and wretchedness, 

To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God;

To bewail my sins past,

For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity;

Gladly to bear my purgatory here,

To be joyful of tribulations; 

To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,

To bear the cross with Christ;

To have the last thing in remembrance,

To have ever afore mine eye my death, that is ever at hand;

To make death no stranger to me, 

To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell;

To pray for pardon before the judge come,

To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me;

For His benefits incessantly to give Him thanks,

To buy the time again that I before have lost; 

To abstain from vain confabulations,

To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness;

Recreations not necessary, to cut off,

Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all,

to set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ; 

To think my most enemies my best friends,

For the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all upon one heap.