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St
John Fisher 1494 to 1535
John
Fisher was renowned throughout Europe as a theologian and biblical scholar
at the time of the Reformation in England.
Born in Beverley in Yorkshire in 1494 to a wealthy middle-class
family, he was sent to Cambridge University where he eventually rose to be
Chancellor. He was
revered for his holy way of life and became confessor and advisor to Lady
Margaret Beaufort, King Henry VII’s mother, and inspired her to use her
wealth for founding a new college and in many other bequests.
Erasmus, the famous Dutch scholar, came to Cambridge to work for a
while at his invitation
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In 1504, he was appointed Bishop of Rochester.
It was something of a backwater
but he turned down offers of a more wealthy diocese and chose to stay there for
30 years from a sense of commitment to his people. His academic work continued.
It is generally thought that Fisher did most of the groundwork for Henry
VIII’s ‘A Defence of the Seven Sacraments’, an anti-protestant
treatise for which the Pope gave Henry the title ‘Defender of the Faith’.
But times were changing.
In the late 1520s and ‘30s it suited Henry to allow Protestant ideas
into England to bolster his case against the Pope who was refusing to grant him
a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon , who had failed to produce a
son. John Fisher in conscience opposed the King and was imprisoned in the Tower
of London together with his friend, Thomas More, the King’s ex-Chancellor.
By then, he was 65 years old and terminally ill.
Hoping
it would help the situation, the Pope made him a Cardinal, and his red
cardinal’s hat was dispatched from Rome.
The King was furious. When John Fisher refused
to take the Oath of Supremacy, declaring Henry to be Supreme Head of the Church
in England, he was taken out after
a mock trial and beheaded on Tower Hill. This
was June 22nd, 1535.
A
wit of the time commented: ‘His head was off before his hat was on, so that
the two met not!’
June 22nd is kept as his Feast Day, together with Thomas More.
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