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John Fisher and Thomas More are two martyrs from the reign of King Henry VIII (1509-1547) during the assertion of royal control over the Church in England. Fisher (1469-1535) was both a humanistic scholar and a bishop, educated at Cambridge and vice-chancellor of the University as well as Bishop of Rochester (1501). He endowed the university with scholarships in Greek and Hebrew with Erasmus as a professor of divinity and Greek. He recognized the need for reform in the Church hierarchy but refused radical actions such as those by Luther. Donald Attwater states Fisher preferred prayer, austerity of life, and example, before controversy. Fisher upheld the validity of Catherine of Aragon’s marriage to Henry VIII and rejected Henry’s claim to be head of the Church in England. He refused to accept the Act of Succession since it was a repudiation of the pope. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534, during which time Pope Paul III named him a cardinal. He was tried for treason because he rejected the king’s supremacy over the church. On 22 June 1535, the frail 66-year-old Fisher was beheaded on Tower Hill, his body tossed into the Thames River and his head placed on a spike over London Bridge. His friend and contemporary Thomas More said that there was no one in the kingdom who could match him in wisdom, learning, and virtue. Thomas More (1478-1535) spent two years at Oxford University and was then admitted as a student in Lincoln’s Inn, thereafter, called to the bar in 1501, and entered Parliament in 1504. Donald Attwater writes that More was a humanist and a reformer, a gentleman of great learning, both in law, art, and divinity, a wit as gay as it was serious. Henry VIII appointed More as Lord Chancellor where, Attwater concludes, as a judge he was acclaimed for his fairness, incorruptibility, and dispatch. Although a layman, he was a sound theologian and a defender of traditional Catholicism, rejecting the controversies associated with Luther. He had no illusions about the king’s character. More believed the king’s marriage to Catherine was valid and, because of his status as a public figure, he resigned his chancellorship and retired to private life. Along with Fisher, he refused to take an oath repudiating papal authority and was sent to the Tower in 1534. Nine days after Fisher’s execution, Thomas More was tried for treason at Westminster Hall for denying the king’s authority over the Church. He was executed by beheading on 6 July, stating he died the king’s good servant but God’s first. Donald Attwater states, it is arguable that he was a fitting candidate for canonization by the integrity of his God-centred life no less than by his death. His headless body was buried in the Tower in an unmarked grave and his head placed on a spike over London Bridge, later rescued by a daughter and likely preserved in her family’s vault at St. Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury. Both Fisher and More were canonized by Pope Pius XI in May 1935. More is the subject of the 1960 play and film by Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons. Historian E. E. Reynolds published biographies on both More and Fisher in the 1960s which provide detailed accounts of their heroic lives and martyrdoms in what was often a cruel and vicious era. References: • Attwater and John, Penguin Dictionary of Saints Article Links: • James C Hamilton,Vatican City: A Philatelic Historical Journey – Part 5: Missionaries and Martyrs: Vatican Notes, Vol. 67, No. 367 pp. 8-11 (2016) | ||||||||
