Brussels appears in Utopia’s account of the Low Countries embassy as a place where diplomatic negotiations paused for instructions, then reappears in the historical framing as a destination on Thomas More’s return journey in 1516. Its brief appearances anchor the work’s imagined philosophical encounter in a recognizable world of travel, diplomacy, and scholarly companionship.

Diplomatic Pause in 1515

In May 1515, Thomas More travelled to the Low Countries with Cuthbert Tunstal and other commissioners to negotiate with representatives of Charles V. In the book’s account of the mission, the commissioners met the representatives at Bruges. After several meetings without agreement, the representatives went to Brussels for a few days to learn the prince’s wishes. More, whose business allowed him to leave, went on to Antwerp. Brussels therefore marks a pause in the negotiations rather than the setting of the subsequent meeting with Raphael Hythloday.

The historical framing likewise places Brussels within the sequence of More’s embassy: the commissioners returned there for instructions, before More’s time in Antwerp, where his friendship with Peter Giles and his encounter with Raphael provide the transition from diplomatic fact into the book’s fictional dialogue. The movement between cities connects the work’s political setting to its literary construction without making Brussels the site of the Utopian account itself.

Return in 1516

Brussels also figures in More’s next journey to the Low Countries. In 1516, he went there with Cuthbert Tunstal, and the two were in close companionship with Erasmus. This visit gives the city a second, distinct place in the chronology: first a stop in the course of negotiations, then a setting for More’s association with learned companions.

Narrative Significance

Brussels helps establish the grounded geography behind Utopia. The opening moves among named Low Countries cities and real diplomatic business before the narrative turns, in Antwerp, toward a traveller’s reports of distant societies. The city’s role is limited but precise: it belongs to the embassy’s procedural world of consultation and instruction, while Antwerp becomes the place of encounter and conversation. Its recurrence in the account of 1516 further situates More’s writing amid the travel and intellectual networks that shaped the book’s frame.