Born in Beverley, 1459; instructed by a priest; entered of Michael House, Cambridge; almoner and confessor to the Countess of Richmond, 1502; First Margaret’s Professor 1503; Chancellor of Cambridge University, bishop of Rochester, 1504; superintends the foundation of Christ’s College, 1505; opens John’s College, 1516; appears as counsel for Queen Catharine, 1529; his life attacked by poison; and by shot, 1530; approves King’s supremacy in Convocation, 1531; adjudged guilty of misprison of treason, refuses the oath, April 26 is committed to the tower, 1534; May 21, created Cardinal; June 22, executed, 1535. A collected edition of his works was published in Würtzburg in 1595.
John Fisher, you shall be led to the place from whence you came, and from thence again shall be drawn through the city to the place of execution at Tyburn, where your body shall be hanged by the neck; half alive you shall be cut down and thrown to the ground, your bowels to be taken out of your body before you, being still alive, your head to be smitten off, and your body to be divided into four quarters, and afterwards your head and quarters to be set up wheresoever the king shall appoint. And God have mercy upon your soul!
In this realm no one man in wisdom, learning, and long approved vertue together, mete to be matched and compared with him.
Such a man for all purposes that the King of England had not the like of him in his realm; neither was he to be matched throughout Christendom.
If an ambassador had to be sent from earth to heaven there could not among all the bishops and clergy be found so fit a man as John Fisher; for what other man have you at present, nor for many years past, who can be compared with him in sanctity, in learning, in zeal and careful diligence in the office and various duties of a bishop? Above all other nations we may justly rejoice in having such a man; and if all the parts of Christendom were searched there could not be found one man that in all things did accomplish the parts and the degrees of a bishop equal to John Fisher.
In stature Dr. Fisher was tall and comely, exceeding the middle sort of men; for he was to the quantity of six feet in height; and being very slender and lean, was nevertheless upright and well formed, straight-backed, big jaws, and strongly sinewed; his hair by nature black, though in his latter days, through age and imprisonment, turned to white; his eyes large and round, neither full black nor full gray, but of a mixt color between both; his forehead smooth and large; his nose of a good and even proportion; somewhat wide mouth and big-jawed, as one ordained by nature to utter much speech, wherein was, notwithstanding, a certain comeliness; his skin somewhat tawny, mixed with many blue veins; his face, hands, etc., all his body, so bare of flesh as is almost incredible, which came by the great abstinence and penance he used upon himself for many years, even from his youth. In speech he was mild, temperate, and kindly.
He was a prelate remarkable for his private virtues, for his learning, and for a zealous discharge of the duties of his pastoral function. At a time when the lower order of the clergy were distinguished by their ignorance and debauchery, and the higher by a more refined luxury, and a turn for political intrigue, this bishop’s conduct displayed the pure simplicity of a primitive Christian, and rigid morality of a Roman Stoic; plain, patient, and sincere, humble but courageous, mild though determined, his character has defied that oblivion, which commonly obscures the favourers of an exploded cause, and in the midst of our proud veneration for the Protestant Martyrs of the 16th century, we regret that he suffered for the contrary doctrine, and feel that the name of this good Catholic would have been a valuable addition to the glorious catalogue.
Fisher was a worthy, but not a strong-minded man, and his literary works are of small value, and are now never, by any accident, consulted.
He neither flung away his life madly, nor preserved it basely. He was a martyr, if not to the truth that is recorded in the authentic book of Heaven, yet to that copy of it which he thought authentic, which was written on his heart in the antique characters of authoritative age. Those who think him right, justly hold him a martyr to the Faith; and we who think him mistaken, must still allow him to have been the martyr of Honesty.
A Yorkshire lad, born in the town of Beverley, though he went to Cambridge early, had not lost his northern grit and twang. His tones were rough, his phrases curt. What other men hardly dared to hint, Fisher would throw into the simplest words. He called a lie a lie, a knave a knave, not caring who might take offence. This roughness of his speech, combined with his repute for piety and learning, took the world by storm. A thorough scholar, armed at every point, he feared no combat, and his nature was unyielding as a rock.
If bonus textuarius is indeed bonus theologus, Bishop Fisher may rank high among divines. He is at home in every part of scripture, no less than among the fathers. If the matter of his teaching is now for the most part trite, the form is always individual and life-like. Much of it is in the best sense catholic, and might be illustrated by parallel passages from Luther and our own reformers.
Dr. Fisher was not what the world might call a “great personage,” but he was that which no sectarian prejudice, no sentiment that acknowledges virtue can deny—a good and holy Christian and a just man. He had very few equals on the long roll of English prelates; he used no weapons to enforce his convictions but those supplied from the armory of prayer and kindly counsel.
Fisher shared with the composers of the English liturgy a peculiarity which greatly contributed to the richness and variety of their diction—that coupling of the Saxon word with its classical synonym, which has become familiar to our ears through the Prayer Book. Fisher’s prose style may, indeed, be considered as a corner-stone in the foundation of the best type of English pulpit eloquence—simple almost to an extreme, but yet instinct with earnestness and feeling, and at the same time with the balance that comes from careful scholarship and fastidious taste.
He has already discovered, and deliberately experiments for, rhetorical effect with the peculiar resources provided by the double dictionary—Teutonic and Romance—of English, as well as by the more general devices of cadence, parallelism, and the usual figures of speech.
