# Utopia is printed at Louvain in 1516 as a dated humanist book

Date: 1516

## The fact

In 1516 De optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia was printed at Louvain. It is not a later saint’s halo and not a recovered diary of any English village.

It is one event.

## Context

The Yale-linked Essential More site and Gutenberg’s English independently make Utopia a public file. Do not treat 1516 as the 1529 chancellorship. Louvain’s 1516 colophon remains this instrument; later English is a carrier, not a Chelsea household register.

[Thomas More](/people/thomas-more)’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below. Sharing a field with them is not a reason to drop a documented act, and it is not a reason to assign later consequences done in the name after death.

Conventional years are 1478–1535. Surviving public files are later parliamentary biographies, TNA calendars, HRP Tower pages, the Yale More tradition, and encyclopedias. More did not typeset those later pages. 1935 canonisation is posthumous and is not a Fact.

Named person as heading of the dated public instrument. Later editors, museums, printers, or offices share publication. Complex where later carriers are the surviving public file.

## Evidence and sources

Essential More (Yale tradition) and Gutenberg independently document Utopia as a 1516 print.

Official or archival record: Essential Works of Thomas More — Yale-linked public site (https://essentialmore.org/; Yale University Press / Essential More).

## Significance

Knowledge-access path. High confidence on the 1516 book.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Utopia was printed in 1516. Not established: a unique enclosure-statute coefficient from the tale.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

Established here: a sourced, dated public instrument with a named contribution by Thomas More.

They are not a public rating.

Thomas More did not file a later UNESCO form, a later Loeb colophon, or a later museum label as a personal act. A portrait or conventional bust is not this mechanism. Allegation, reconstruction, and established occurrence stay distinct. A book is not a heresy burning. Keep chancellorship enforcement on 1529–32. Louvain 1516 remains the colophon; later English at Gutenberg is a carrier of that Latin book, not a Chelsea household register. Keep the carrier date of later English distinct from the received historical year stored in the date field. Do not read a later English edition as a recovered autograph of Thomas More.

## People

- Thomas More: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-more

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2130
- https://essentialmore.org/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/tm-utopia-1516