Saint John Fisher

Saint John Fisher (1469-1535), English Christian bishop and martyr, born in Beverley, Yorkshire, and educated at the University of Cambridge. He remained at Cambridge, serving first as master of his college, Michaelhouse (later part of Trinity College), from 1497 to 1501; then as vice-chancellor of the university, from 1501 to 1504; and finally with a lifetime appointment as chancellor, beginning in 1504. Meanwhile, as chaplain to Lady Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond and Derby, Fisher became in 1503 the first Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. A year later he was named bishop of Rochester.

Fisher had a great progressive influence, promoting humanism and bringing the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus to Cambridge to teach. As a churchman, however, Fisher strongly opposed and wrote treatises against the Reformation, especially the doctrines of Martin Luther. In 1527 he protested the plan of King Henry VIII of England to divorce Catherine of Aragón, to whom Fisher was confessor. In 1534, when he and the English statesman Sir Thomas More refused to take the oath of the new act of succession, they were imprisoned in the Tower of London. In May 1535, Pope Paul III made Fisher a Cardinal. One month later, the new cardinal was brought to trial, accused of the treasonous act of refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the church. He was beheaded on June 25. Fisher was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1935. His feast day, as well as St. Thomas More's, is June 22.