John Fisher

• 1. Introduction

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  John Fisher kept a human skull on the altar during Mass and placed it beside his plate at every meal. For a bishop who moved among Tudor kings, this was an unusual practice. Fisher died on Tower Hill on the 22nd of June 1535. Henry VIII had him beheaded for refusing to acknowledge the King as Supreme Head of the Church of England. In the whole thousand-year history of the cardinalate, Fisher is the only Cardinal of the Catholic Church ever to have suffered martyrdom. He was born around 1469 in Beverley, Yorkshire, the son of Robert Fisher, a prosperous mercer. How did a merchant's son who spent decades rebuilding one of England's universities come to the scaffold? And why, when offered every opportunity to submit, did he refuse?

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• 2. Cambridge Transformed

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  In 1482, Fisher's mother assented to his admission to the University of Cambridge when he was only twelve or thirteen. He studied at Michaelhouse under William Melton, a theologian open to the new currents of Renaissance scholarship. By 1487 he had his Bachelor of Arts degree. In 1491 he completed his Master of Arts and was elected a fellow of his college. That same year he obtained a papal dispensation allowing him to be ordained below the canonical age. On the 17th of December 1491, he was ordained into the priesthood.

  His appointment as chaplain and confessor to Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, transformed what Fisher could accomplish at Cambridge. Lady Margaret was the mother of King Henry VII, and she had both the wealth and the inclination to invest it in education. Under Fisher's direction, she founded Christ's College and St John's College at Cambridge. She also established a Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity at both Cambridge and Oxford. Fisher became the first holder of the Cambridge chair. From 1505 to 1508 he served as President of Queens' College.

  In an oration before Henry VII in 1506, Fisher described what he had found at Cambridge. Learning had "begun to decline," he said. Constant litigation with the town and plagues that had swept away many leading scholars had reduced the university to near-despair. His response was to attract leading European scholars to Cambridge and to promote Greek and Hebrew study alongside Classical Latin. He required pastoral commitment from the fellows he endowed. He brought Erasmus to Cambridge. Erasmus later credited Fisher's protection for allowing Greek study to proceed without the hostility it encountered at Oxford.

  On the 5th of July 1501, Fisher received his doctorate of sacred theology. Ten days later he was elected Vice-Chancellor. In 1504 the university elected him chancellor; after a decade of annual re-elections, he received the appointment for life. That same year, a papal bull dated the 14th of October appointed him Bishop of Rochester at the personal insistence of Henry VII. Rochester was the poorest diocese in England and was typically seen as a stepping-stone to a more prominent see. Fisher also acted at this time as tutor to the future Henry VIII. He chose to remain at Rochester for thirty-one years.

  Erasmus left his broader assessment in writing. He called Fisher "the one man at this time who is incomparable for uprightness of life, for learning and for greatness of soul."

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• 3. First Among Critics

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  On about the 11th of February 1526, Fisher stood at St Paul's Cross to preach against Martin Luther. St Paul's Cross was the open-air pulpit outside St Paul's Cathedral in London. The occasion was staged with deliberate drama. Some Lutherans would publicly renounce their beliefs that day. Confiscated Lutheran books would be burned in the open air.

  He had been named, without convincing proof, as the true author of Henry VIII's treatise against Luther published in 1521. Its title was "Assertio septem sacramentorum," the Defence of the Seven Sacraments. That text earned Henry the papal title "Fidei Defensor," Defender of the Faith. In 1523, Fisher published "Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio," his own rebuttal of Luther's "Assertio Omnium Articulor." The work ran to two hundred thousand words. Luther did not respond. Scholars would later name Fisher "the first theologian to diagnose justification through faith alone as the founding dogma of the Protestant Reformation."

  In the printed preface to his 1526 sermon, Fisher made a private offer. He would meet secretly with any Lutheran, he wrote, to "hear the bottom of his mind." He was confident the meeting would resolve the matter. "Either he shall make me a Lutheran," he wrote, "or else I shall induce him to be a Catholic." No Lutheran appears to have accepted.

  In 1529, Fisher was summoned to deal with Thomas Hitton, a follower of William Tyndale arrested for suspected heresy. Fisher was asked to confirm that Hitton's statements to Archbishop William Warham were accurately recorded, and to persuade Hitton to recant. Hitton refused. He was handed to the secular authorities and executed at the stake. William Tyndale, then living overseas, claimed that the archbishops had tortured Hitton. The Protestant historian John Foxe, known for diligence in pursuing such claims, did not make that claim.

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• 4. The Queen's Champion

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  When Henry VIII moved to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Fisher became the Queen's most prominent defender. He appeared in the legates' court on her behalf and startled the audience with the directness of his language. He compared himself to St John the Baptist, declaring that, like that saint, he was prepared to die for the indissolubility of marriage. Henry grew so enraged that he composed a long Latin address to the legates in direct answer to the bishop's speech. Fisher's copy of that address still exists, with his manuscript annotations in the margin. Those notes show how little he feared the King's anger. Henry never forgave him.

  The confrontation with Henry shifted to Parliament in November 1529. The parliament Henry had convened, known as the Long Parliament, began encroaching on the Catholic Church's prerogatives. Fisher, sitting in the House of Lords, warned Parliament directly. Such acts, he told them, could end only in the complete destruction of the Catholic Church in England. The Commons, apparently at Henry's prompting, complained to the King that Fisher had disparaged Parliament. Henry summoned Fisher, declared himself satisfied by the explanation, and left it to the Commons to find the explanation inadequate. He appeared as a magnanimous sovereign rather than as Fisher's enemy.

  In 1530, Fisher joined the bishops of Bath and Ely in appealing to the Holy See against the ongoing encroachments. All three were arrested. Their imprisonment lasted only a few months. By February 1531, Fisher was present at a Convocation meeting that produced two significant results. The clergy were compelled to pay one hundred thousand pounds to purchase the King's pardon. The cause was their recognition of Cardinal Wolsey's authority as papal legate. They were also required to acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church in England. Through Fisher's efforts, the clause "so far as God's law permits" was added to that acknowledgment.

  Richard Roose, the cook accused of poisoning the household porridge, became the focus of a remarkable parliamentary act shortly after the Convocation. Several members of Fisher's household had fallen ill after eating the porridge, and two of them died. Fisher had been fasting that day and was unaffected. Parliament enacted a retroactive law permitting Roose to be executed by being boiled alive, without a public trial. In 1530, a cannonball fired from across the Thames struck Fisher's house and narrowly missed his study. Rumour held that the Boleyn family had ordered the attack.

  Thomas More resigned the chancellorship in May 1532. Fisher preached publicly against the annulment a month later. In March 1533, he was briefly arrested, apparently to prevent him from opposing the annulment that Thomas Cranmer pronounced in May. Fisher was released within a fortnight of Anne Boleyn's coronation on the 1st of June 1533. By September he had turned to more covert action. Through the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, Fisher encouraged the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to invade England. He envisioned the invasion combining with a domestic uprising to depose Henry.

  In March 1534, Parliament passed a special Bill of Attainder against Fisher for alleged complicity with Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent. He was condemned to forfeit his personal estate and to be imprisoned at the King's pleasure. A pardon was eventually granted on payment of a fine of three hundred pounds. The same parliamentary session also passed the First Succession Act, requiring an oath of succession from all those called upon to take it. Under the terms of the Act, refusal was misprision of treason.

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• 5. The Tower and the Trap

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  In the Tower of London, where Fisher arrived on the 26th of April 1534, the conditions were severe. He was allowed food and drink sent by friends, and a servant, but no priest. A long letter he wrote from the Tower to Thomas Cromwell addressed that hardship. The letter was dated the 22nd of December 1534, and it closed with an unusual phrase: "And this our Lord God send you a mery Christmas." Scholars regard that line as the earliest known written use of the phrase "Merry Christmas."

  Fisher had decided, like Thomas More, to rely on silence. The statute under which he was charged condemned only those who spoke maliciously against the King's new title. Fisher believed that silence left him safe. In November 1534 he was attainted of misprision of treason a second time. His goods were forfeited and the See of Rochester was declared vacant. On the 7th of May, a man named Richard Rich came to the Tower with a message. Rich told Fisher that the King wished, in strict secrecy and for his own conscience's sake, to know Fisher's real opinion. Fisher answered: the King was not Supreme Head of the Church of England. Rich used that private exchange as testimony against him at trial. Rich would perjure himself in the same way to secure Thomas More's conviction.

  In May 1535, Pope Paul III created Fisher Cardinal Priest of San Vitale, apparently hoping the appointment would induce Henry to ease Fisher's treatment. The effect was precisely the opposite. Henry forbade the cardinal's hat to be brought into England and declared that he would send the head to Rome instead.

  In June 1535, a commission for Fisher's trial was issued. On the 17th of June he was arraigned in Westminster Hall before a court of seventeen. The court included Thomas Cromwell and the father of Anne Boleyn. Fisher had been stripped of his bishopric by the Act of Attainder and was tried as a commoner, by jury. The sole testimony against him came from Richard Rich. Fisher was found guilty and condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

  A public outcry was building in London. Many saw a parallel between Fisher's fate and that of his patronal saint, St John the Baptist. That saint too had been executed by a king for challenging the validity of a marriage. Henry feared that Fisher might live through the feast day of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, which fell on the 24th of June. He commuted the sentence to beheading and ordered the execution to take place before the 23rd of June.

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• 6. From Scaffold to Saint

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  Fisher's head was set on a pole on London Bridge after his execution. Its ruddy and lifelike appearance drew such public attention that Henry had it thrown into the Thames after a fortnight. The head of Sir Thomas More, executed at Tower Hill on the 6th of July, was placed in its spot. Fisher's body had been stripped and left on the scaffold until evening. It was then carried on pikes and thrown naked into a rough grave in the churchyard of All Hallows-by-the-Tower. There was no funeral prayer. A fortnight after the execution, the body was moved to the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower. It was laid beside that of Thomas More.

  Fisher's death fell on the feast day of Saint Alban, first martyr of Britain. Those who witnessed the execution recorded that he met death with a calm and dignified courage. The treatment of his body reflected particular rancour on Henry's part. The effect on public perception was the opposite of what Henry had intended.

  Pope Leo XIII beatified Fisher, together with Thomas More and fifty-two other English Martyrs, on the 29th of December 1886. In the Decree of Beatification, Fisher was given the greatest prominence. Pope Pius XI canonised Fisher and More on the 19th of May 1935, in response to a petition by English Catholics. Their shared feast day falls on the 22nd of June. In 1980, the Church of England added Fisher to its calendar of Saints and Heroes of the Christian Church. He was listed jointly with Thomas More as Reformation Martyrs of 1535.

  Several portraits of Fisher survive, the most prominent by Hans Holbein the Younger, held in the Royal Collection. His walking-staff is in the possession of the Eyston family of East Hendred, in Oxfordshire. Joseph O'Conor played Fisher in the 1969 film "Anne of the Thousand Days." Geoffrey Lewis took the role in the 1971 miniseries "The Six Wives of Henry VIII." Bosco Hogan appeared as Fisher in "The Tudors," and Richard Durden in the 2015 miniseries "Wolf Hall."

  Fisher is the patron of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester in New York State. Pope John XXIII designated him to that role in 1961.

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