John Fisher
John Fisher was born at Beverley in Yorkshire, rose at Cambridge to become chancellor of the university, and was made Bishop of Rochester in 1504. He was learned, austere, and a generous patron of scholarship, and he became the chief English theologian against Luther.
At the great burning of Luther’s books at St. Paul’s on May 12, 1521, Fisher preached the sermon.1 He followed it with a long Latin Confutation of Luther’s Assertion (1523) and with treatises on the priesthood and the real presence. In February 1526 he preached again at St. Paul’s when Robert Barnes and several merchants were made to carry faggots in penance.2 Londoners mocked the burnings even as the smoke rose. Fisher had argued that because Luther threw the pope’s decretals into the fire, he would throw in the pope himself. One wit turned the argument around:
We may hence deduce another syllogism, quite as sound: The popes have burnt the New Testament, therefore, if they could, they would burn Christ himself.1 A London criticas reported by Merle d’Aubigné
Fisher was also the boldest English opponent of Henry VIII’s divorce. He refused the oath required by the Act of Succession in 1534, which repudiated the pope’s authority, and was sent to the Tower. When Pope Paul III made him a cardinal in May 1535, Henry is said to have vowed that he would send the head to Rome for the hat. Fisher was beheaded on Tower Hill on June 22, 1535.
He died with courage for the papal supremacy he believed in. The Reformation’s quarrel with him was not over his courage, but over the gospel he spent his life opposing.
