Saints John Fisher and Thomas More

Martyrs

Feast Day

June 22

Life

1469–1535

Canonized

1935

Born

Beverley, Yorkshire (Fisher); London (More)

Saint John Fisher was born at Beverley, Yorkshire, in 1469. A scholar of Cambridge, he became Master of Michaelhouse, then Vice-Chancellor, and chaplain to Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII. With her he founded Christ's College and Saint John's College at Cambridge. Consecrated Bishop of Rochester in 1504, the smallest English see, he refused all advancement, calling Rochester his bride. He was a leading patristic scholar and the principal English opponent of Lutheranism.

Saint Thomas More was born in London on February 7, 1478, son of a judge of the King's Bench. Educated at Oxford and the Inns of Court, he served as Member of Parliament, Speaker of the House of Commons (1523), and from 1529 Lord Chancellor of England, the first layman to hold the office. He authored Utopia (1516) and a number of devotional and apologetic works in English and Latin.

Both opposed King Henry VIII's claim that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was invalid and his subsequent breach with Rome. The Act of Supremacy (1534) declared the king Supreme Head of the Church of England. Both refused the oath required by the Act, Fisher publicly and More through silence based on the legal maxim qui tacet consentire videtur. Both were imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Pope Paul III, hearing of Fisher's imprisonment, created him Cardinal-Priest of San Vitale on May 21, 1535. Henry VIII responded by ordering Fisher's execution. Fisher was beheaded on Tower Hill on June 22, 1535. Thomas More was beheaded on the same site on July 6, 1535, declaring from the scaffold, I die the King's good servant, and God's first.

Pope Leo XIII beatified them on December 29, 1886. Pope Pius XI canonized them at Saint Peter's on May 19, 1935, the four-hundredth anniversary year of their martyrdom. The post-Vatican II Calendar joined their Memorial on June 22, the date of Fisher's death. Pope Saint John Paul II proclaimed Thomas More patron of statesmen and politicians by the apostolic letter E Sancti Thomae Mori on October 31, 2000.