John Fisher

Life and Ministry

John Fisher was born at Beverley, Yorkshire, in AD 1469, educated at Cambridge, ordained priest, and rose to become chancellor of Cambridge University and bishop of Rochester at the same time — the only English bishop ever to hold both posts simultaneously. He served as confessor and adviser to Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, and used her endowments to refound Christ's College and St John's College, Cambridge, as engines of the new Greek and Hebrew learning. He preached the funeral sermons of Henry VII and Lady Margaret. He was the leading English theological writer against Luther in the AD 1520s — the Confutation of Luther's Assertions remained a standard Catholic reference for a generation — and was Catherine of Aragon's principal defender when Henry VIII sought to set her aside.

Circumstances of Death

Fisher refused the Oath of Succession in AD 1534 and was committed to the Tower with More, on 26 April. While in prison, the pope created him cardinal-priest of San Vitale, an honor which Henry VIII took as an affront and which he answered by accelerating Fisher's trial. The aging bishop, weakened by months of confinement and inadequate food, was brought to Westminster Hall on 17 June AD 1535 to answer the same charge of treason for denying the royal supremacy. Convicted on the testimony of Richard Rich (the same witness who would convict More two weeks later), he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; the sentence was commuted to beheading. On 22 June he was carried to Tower Hill, opened the New Testament one last time to a verse he believed God had given him for the occasion — This is eternal life, that they know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent — and was beheaded.

Legacy

Fisher and More died for the same reason within seventeen days of each other in the summer of AD 1535, and the English tradition has paired them since. Fisher's distinction is that he died as a sitting bishop of the English church for the principle that no king is supreme over the church of Christ. As a bishop he stood alone among the English episcopate in his refusal; every other bishop took the oath. His witness is the witness of the diocesan pastor who cannot countenance a layman's lordship over the keys of the kingdom, whatever the cost to himself or to the office. He died a cardinal in nothing but title, never having received the hat — the hat was carried to England behind his coffin.