St. John Fisher

St. John Fisher was born in 1469 at Beverley in Yorkshire, England, the son of a cloth merchant. Sent young to the University of Cambridge, he spent his whole career in its service, becoming chancellor of the university in 1504 — the same year he was named Bishop of Rochester, England's poorest see, which he refused ever to exchange for a richer one. As confessor to Lady Margaret Beaufort, the king's grandmother, he guided her endowments that founded Christ's College and St. John's College, and he brought Erasmus to Cambridge to teach Greek. He was widely regarded as one of the most learned bishops in Europe and, unusually for his age, a model pastor who actually lived in his diocese, preached, and visited the sick and poor. When Luther's teaching spread, Fisher became its most formidable English opponent, writing major defenses of Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist, the priesthood, and the papacy. The decisive test came with King Henry VIII's effort to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Fisher stood almost alone among the bishops in defending the marriage's validity, openly declaring himself ready to die for its sanctity, and he steadfastly rejected the king's claim to be supreme head of the Church in England. For refusing the Oath of Succession he was imprisoned in the Tower of London in April 1534, where the old bishop endured more than a year of cold and privation. In May 1535 Pope Paul III named him a cardinal — a gesture that enraged the king and sealed his fate. Convicted of treason on the testimony of a perjured witness, he was beheaded on Tower Hill on June 22, 1535, meeting death, witnesses recorded, with serene courage, the Te Deum on his lips. His body was buried at the Tower church of St. Peter ad Vincula, where St. Thomas More, executed two weeks later, was also laid. John Fisher was canonized with Thomas More by Pope Pius XI on May 19, 1935, the only member of the English episcopate to die for the faith under Henry VIII. The two martyrs share the feast of June 22, and Fisher is honored especially as a patron and exemplar for bishops and diocesan clergy: a scholar, ascetic, and shepherd who preferred the truth to his life.