As the articles states,”More presided over the execution of six Protestants for heresy,” as he approved of burning heretics on principle, though this was not really central to his job as Lord Chancellor. An yet some Catholics accuse More of being a heretic himself .
And while he is seen as opposing government control of the church, what Rome favored was the church essentially being or controlling the government.
One (eloquent) critic, who expresses the contrast btwn Utopia and the later mind of More, writes,
Most absurdly, because of Robert Bolt’s screenplay, this barrister of Catholic repression is widely envisioned as modernity’s diapason: the clear, strong note of individual conscience, the note of the self, sounding against the authoritarian intolerance of the Early Modern state. Thomas More died in defense of an authoritarian intolerance much more powerful than a mere king’s, however, for he died believing in God and in the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. As Lord Chancellor, he had imprisoned and interrogated Lutherans, sometimes in his own house, and sent six reformers to be burned at the stake, and he had not done this just so that he might die for slender modern scruple, for anything as naked as the naked self. This drained, contemporary view of More, which admires not what he believed but how he believed-his “certainty,” only-is thinly secular, and represents nothing more than the retired religious yearning of a nonreligious age. . - http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/wood.htm
As for how many died under the Roman sanctioned or promoted Inquisitions, there are certainly inflated numbers, as well as attempts to minimize them, and to explain it away as being part of the times.
But while the historical context should be understood as regards the degree of guilt, such things as papal advocation of torture of suspected heretics, which was more strictly defined, and even of witnesses, and using such and even killing to deal with theological dissents cannot be excused any more than burning witches could or any declension can be today by invoking the culture.
For we are not be conformed to this world, but to Christ by the Scriptures, which do not sanction the church ruling over those without and taking up the sword of men to subduing souls because of theological dissent.
While the Church can and should influence the State to enact laws that reflect Biblical morality, and punish acts of violation thereof, and to overall reflect a general ethos (as every State will), yet it should not need to be involved in policing the church, nor is the Church to use the State to punish members because of theological dissent from her, much less after some of the manners employed under the Inquisitions.
History usually takes a beating under the hands of a screen play.
Excellent point.