Artists Clergy Monarchs Popes John Fisher (c. 19 October 1469 – 22 June 1535) was an English Catholic bishop, theologian and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

The two martyrs share a common feast day on 22 June in the current General Roman Calendar of the Catholic Church.

Acknowledging Fisher's aptitude for learning, and being financially comfortable, his mother assented to his admission to the University of Cambridge, in 1482, at the age of twelve or thirteen.

Fisher's strategy was to assemble funds and attract to Cambridge leading scholars from Europe, promoting the study not only of Classical Latin and Greek authors, but of Hebrew.

As a preacher, his reputation was so great that he was appointed to preach the funeral oration for King Henry VII and the Lady Margaret, both of whom died in 1509, the texts being extant.

Besides the part he played in the Lady Margaret's foundations, Fisher gave further proof of his zeal for learning by inducing Erasmus to visit Cambridge.

The latter attributes it ("Epistulae" 6:2) to Fisher's protection that the study of Greek was allowed to proceed at Cambridge without the active molestation that it encountered at Oxford.

In 1512 Fisher was nominated as one of the English representatives at the Fifth Council of the Lateran, then sitting, but his journey to Rome was postponed, and finally abandoned.

"[13] Fisher has also been named, though without any convincing proof, as the true author of the royal treatise against Martin Luther entitled "Assertio septem sacramentorum" (Defence of the Seven Sacraments), published in 1521, which won for King Henry VIII the title "Fidei Defensor" (Defender of the Faith).

[18] Henry VIII, upon hearing this, grew so enraged by it that he composed a long Latin address to the legates in answer to the bishop's speech.

This was the occasion when the clergy were forced, at a cost of 100,000 pounds, to purchase the King's pardon for having recognized Cardinal Wolsey's authority as legate of the pope; and at the same time to acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church in England, to which phrase the addition of the clause "so far as God's law permits" was made through Fisher's efforts.

Henry VIII had parliament enact a retroactive bill that allowed the cook, Richard Roose, to be executed by the state by boiling alive for attempted poisoning without a public trial.

In September 1533 communicating secretly through the imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys he encouraged Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to invade England and depose Henry in combination with a domestic uprising.

It seems that the purpose of this arrest was to prevent him from opposing the annulment which Cranmer pronounced in May, or the coronation of Anne Boleyn which followed on 1 June, for Fisher was set at liberty again within a fortnight of the latter event, no charge being made against him.

In the autumn of 1533, various arrests were made in connection with the so-called revelations of the Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, but as Fisher was taken seriously ill in December, proceedings against him were postponed for a time.

However, in March 1534, a special Bill of Attainder against Fisher and others for complicity in the matter of the Maid of Kent was introduced in Parliament and passed.

[12] Several efforts were made to induce him to submit, but without effect, and in November he was attained of misprision of treason a second time, his goods being forfeited as from the previous 1 March, and the See of Rochester being declared vacant as of 2 June following.

Like Thomas More, Bishop Fisher believed that, because the statute condemned only those speaking maliciously against the King's new title, there was safety in silence.

The effect was precisely the reverse:[11] Henry forbade the cardinal's hat to be brought into England, declaring that he would send the head to Rome instead.

[24] The execution had the opposite effect from that which King Henry VIII intended, as it created yet another parallel with that of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, who was also beheaded; his death also happened on the feast day of Saint Alban, the first martyr of Britain.

His body was treated with particular rancour, apparently on Henry's orders, being stripped and left on the scaffold until the evening,[11] when it was taken on pikes and thrown naked into a rough grave in the churchyard of All Hallows' Barking, also known as All Hallows-by-the-Tower.

Fisher's head was stuck upon a pole on London Bridge but its ruddy and lifelike appearance excited so much attention that, after a fortnight, it was thrown into the Thames, its place being taken by that of Sir Thomas More, whose execution, also at Tower Hill, occurred on 6 July.

[2] "Catholic piety conventionally explains the scarlet robes that Cardinals wear as a sign of their readiness to shed their blood for the sake of the Christian gospel.

This is an edifying thought: but as a matter of fact, in the whole millenium-long history of the cardinalate, only one member of the Sacred College has actually ever suffered martyrdom.

(...)A list of John Fisher's writings is found in Joseph Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics (London, s.d.

[29] Several portraits of John Fisher exist, the most prominent being by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection; and a few secondary relics are extant.