FISHER, JOHN, ST.

Cardinal bishop of Rochester, England, humanist and martyr; b. Beverley, Yorkshire, 1469; executed, London, July 22, 1535. He was the son of a merchant, was educated at the Minster school, and, about 1482, entered Michaelhouse, which was later absorbed into Trinity College, Cambridge. He earned his B.A. degree in 1488 and his M.A. in 1491, when he became a fellow of Michael-house and was ordained. Three years later he was elected proctor, then master of Michaelhouse, and president of Queens College in 1505.

Episcopal Career. In 1504 he became bishop of Rochester. His official affiliation with the university brought him to the notice of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. He became her confessor and consultant in the use of her wealth. Out of this association were created the readerships of divinity at Oxford and Cambridge (1503) and the foundations of Christ's College (1505) and St. John's College (1511), Cambridge. In 1501 he earned his D.D. degree and was elected vice chancellor of the University and chancellor three years later. It was his unique distinction to receive a lifetime appointment to this office in 1514. To raise the standard of preaching, he obtained a papal bull granting the university the right to appoint 12 priests to preach anywhere in the country. At the death of Lady Margaret in 1509 he was concerned about the foundation of St. John's, since she had not completed her testamentary provisions. Fisher assigned to the College lands she had given him. It is to Lady Margaret that we owe the sermons preached at her request on the penitential Psalms; these were published in 1509 and reprinted seven times before Fisher's death. Commemorative sermons on Henry VII and on Lady Margaret were published in that year also.

In 1511 Fisher encouraged erasmus to come to Cambridge to teach Greek. Upon the publication of the latter's Greek New Testament, Fisher was persuaded to learn the language and received his first lessons from Erasmus in 1516. Their friendship led Erasmus to write: "He is the one man at this time who is incomparable for uprightness of life, for learning, and for greatness of soul."

The coming of Lutheranism drew Fisher into controversy. He wrote eight books against various heresies. Since these were in Latin, they are seldom considered in estimates of his fame, but in his own time they gave him a leading position among European theologians. Two anti-Lutheran sermons have survived. The first was preached at a burning of heretical books at St. Paul's Cross on May 12, 1521; the second at the abjuration of Robert Barnes on Feb. 11, 1526.

Conflict with Henry VIII. In June 1527 wolsey first put to Fisher the problem posed by Henry VIII's adaptable conscience. Had the pope exceeded his powers in granting a dispensation for the marriage of Henry with Catherine, his brother's widow? Fisher promised to study the question. In September he declared his judgment in favor of the marriage; and in his defense of Catherine at the Legatine Court, May 1529, he incurred the king's resentment. He increased the royal displeasure by leading the opposition in the House of Lords to bills passed by the Commons as remedies for their grievance against the clergy. Two years later, in convocation, he spoke against accepting the king as supreme head of the Church of England.

This continued opposition fixed Henry's determination to silence the aged bishop. The first move was to implicate him in the affair of Elizabeth barton, the nun of Kent. His name was included in a bill of attainder (January 1534) on the grounds that he had not reported her "revelations" to the king. He was fined £300. By then his feeble health confined him to his diocese of Rochester. He left it for the last time when summoned to appear at Lambeth on April 13, 1534, to take the oath to the new Act of Succession. Both he and Sir Thomas more spurned the oath. They were prepared to accept the line of succession as coming within the province of Parliament, but the Act, as formulated, presumed the legality of the divorce and implied a repudiation of the pope's authority.

Imprisonment and Execution. After a grant of time for reconsideration, Fisher and More again refused the oath and were sent to the Tower on April 17, 1534. There

Fisher remained without trial until June of the next year. He was cared for by his brother, Robert, who had long been his steward as well as a member of parliament for Rochester, and whose death early in 1535 spared him the details of John's trial. While a prisoner, Fisher wrote for his half sister Elizabeth, a Dominican nun, his Spiritual Consolation and Ways to Perfect Religion.

At the end of 1534 a new Act of Treason was passed, condemning those who maliciously refused to the king any of his titles, including that of supreme head of the English Church. In the same Parliament, Fisher and More were both attaindered under the Act of Succession for refusing the oath and condemned to life imprisonment and loss of goods. At several interrogations in the Tower the questions regarding the acceptance of the king as supreme head were met with silence. Fisher, however, was tricked into making a denial by Richard Rich, the attorney general, who on May 7, 1535, pretended that the king wanted Fisher's opinion as a matter of conscience and that the answer would not be used in evidence against him. As a priest, Fisher could not refuse to answer and he stated that "the king was not, nor could not be, by the law of God, Supreme Head." Henry was further angered when he heard that the new pope, Paul III, created Fisher a cardinal priest of the title of St. Vitalis. Fisher was brought to trial on June 17, 1535, and charged with high treason. He admitted the words he had spoken to Rich, but claimed that it was a privileged occasion and that he had not spoken in malice. This plea was ignored and he was condemned to death, the execution to occur on June 22. His body, after lying naked on the scaffold all day, was given a rough burial in the churchyard of All Hallows near the Tower, and his head was displayed on London Bridge. As his place of burial attracted many who venerated him, his body was reburied in the Tower church of St. Peter-ad-Vincula near that of his fellow martyr, St. Thomas More. Cardinal John Fisher was beatified on Dec. 9, 1886, and canonized on May 19, 1935.

Feast: July 9.

Bibliography: English Works of John Fisher, ed. j. e. b. mayor (Early English Text Society, extra series 27; 1876); Sacri sacerdotii defensio contra Lutherum (1525), ed. h. k. schmeink (Corpus Catholicorum 9; Münster 1925); Defense of the Priesthood, tr. p. e. hallett (London 1935). r. bayne, ed., Life of Fisher (Early English Text Society, extra series 117; 1921). p. hughes, Earliest English Life of Saint John Fisher (London 1935). e. p. bellabriga, De doctrina beati Joannis Fisher in operibus adversus Lutherum conscriptis (Rome 1935). f. van ortroy, ed., "Vie du bienheureux martryr Jean Fisher, cardinal, Évéque de Rochester (1535)," Analect Bollandiana 10 (1891) 121–365; 12 (1893) 97–287. t. e. bridgett, Life of Blessed John Fisher (London 1902). e. e. reynolds, Saint John Fisher (New York 1956). p. hughes, The Reformation in England, 3 v. (London 1950–54) v.1. a. humbert, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al. (Paris 1903–50) 5:2555–61. a. butler, The Lives of the Saints, rev. ed. h. thurston and d. attwater (New York 1956) 3:45–49. j. gillow, A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time, repr. (New York 1961) 2:262–270. The Dictionary of the National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900, repr. (London 1938) 7:58–63.

[e. e. reynolds]