John Fisher
Bishop of Rochester and chancellor of Cambridge, the only English bishop to refuse Henry VIII's divorce.
- Early modern era
- United Kingdom
- Feast day June 22
- 1469 – 1535
- Bishop
- Martyr
- Theologian
Listen to the life 0:42
A humanist and friend of Erasmus, whom he brought to Cambridge, John Fisher was for thirty years bishop of the poorest diocese in England, which he refused to exchange for a better. When Henry VIII sought to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Fisher was alone in the whole English episcopate in opposing it publicly, and then in refusing the oath of supremacy that made the king head of the Church. Confined in the Tower for fourteen months, he came out emaciated to be beheaded on 22 June 1535, two weeks before Thomas More. The pope had just made him a cardinal; Henry swore the hat would find no head to sit on.
