Oh, how unfortunate that mediocre man is,
At mercy and disfavor of the ruler!
Between the grin we want,
For he carries sweetness from the graces of the rulers,
And the demolition they cook is more
Thrills and tremors than women know
Or they bring war; and erstwhile a man falls,
It's raining like Lucifer to never know again.
Never hope.
— William Shakespeare
("The celebrated past of King Henry VIII's Life")[1]
In June 1532, showing the courage which unfortunately lacked the remainder of the bishops of England, John Fisher gave a public sermon against the king's plans to divorce Catherine Aragonska. In January of the following year, the king secretly entered into a form of matrimony with the pregnant Anna Boleyn. 2 months later, Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury. Fisher was arrested a week later. It seems that King and Cranmer wanted Fisher out of the way so that he could not talk out publically against giving the king a divorce that Cranmer announced in May, or early June during the coronation of Anna Boleyn, which was then in the sixth month. Bishop Fisher was released 2 weeks after the coronation, without pressing charges against him.
In March 1534, John Fisher was accused, along with Thomas Morus and others, of allegedly sharing in the alleged betrayal of Elizabeth Barton, known as the Saint Virgin of Kent. She claimed to have received a imagination of a place in hell reserved for Henry if he divorced Catherine and married Anna Boleyn. In the absence of procedural formalities, the parliament found Fisher and others guilty of the charges. Fisher's punishment was to confiscate all of his own assets and imprisonment according to the king's preference. He was later pardoned after paying a fine of £300. mediocre unfortunate “Holy Virgin” was not so lucky. In April, she was hanged for treason along with 5 of her associates, 4 of whom were priests. Her head was then cut off and placed on a stake on the London Bridge as a informing to others who might be tempted to question the King's actions. A year later, the heads of John Fisher and Thomas Morus will meet the same gruesome fate. According to Richard Rex, "the execution of the Holy Virgin and her companions was 1 of the many ways according to which the prudent usage of judicial terror... was utilized to guarantee compliance with the English Reformation"[2].
In the same period that Morus and Fisher were arrested for their alleged connection to the Holy Virgin, Parliament passed the First Succession Act (First Succession Act). The law required all called upon to take a succession oath to admit that all kid from Henry and Anna's matrimony would be the rightful heir to the throne. Opposition was to be considered an act of treason and a death sentence[3]. Jan Fisher refused to take the oath and was 26 IV 1534 imprisoned in the London Fortress. 2 weeks earlier, Thomas Morus besides refused to take an oath.
It was from his prison cell in Tower Morus that he saw the Abbot of London Carthusia and 3 another monks passing under his window on their way to meet a martyr's death. They walked singing praise from the Lord. Like Morus and Fisher, they refused to swear. “These blessed fathers, so cheerful now, go to their death as the groom to his wedding!” cried Morus to his daughter.[4].
When news of the gruesome and heroic death of these holy monks reached their ears, John Fisher and Thomas Morus must have been dreary about what awaits them if they inactive refuse to conform to the king's fresh tyranny. What did Morus gotta think and feel erstwhile Margaret, his beloved daughter, visited him, who was pregnant, carrying his grandson under her heart? How could his parent’s heart not break erstwhile he looked at her? “It can be called the almost holy patron of household life,” wrote Christopher Hollis. “We have so many and so vivid images of his [family] life, from which he was mostly happy. So it was no different in terms of the kind, than that which is offered to all average man and woman, and this fact increases the horror and splendor of his last moments. He went out, facing his end, out of a life like ours”[5].
Comparing the imprisonment and torment of Morus with what John Fisher experienced, we see a clear difference between secular and priestly states. Morus has a loving wife and children for whom he is liable and who depend on him. Fisher, on the another hand, vowed celibacy; acting in persona Christi He chose the Bride of Christ (the Church) as his wife. Morus so has a greater justification for interior tear. We can realize the temptation to avoid a clear answer erstwhile it comes to his conscience to come to the aid of his family. So we must praise him and worship him all the more for resisting him. The priest, however, is not in this awkward situation. He has the Church as his Bride and is called to quit his life for her. This deficiency of interior teardrop is 1 of the strongest arguments for priestly celibacy. This is so tragic, and at the same time constitutes an accusation of the weakness and cowardice of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that John Fisher was the only English bishop to argue the king. It so serves in its times and ours as a strong symbol of the self-sacrificing work of the bishops of the Church of all ages to defy the spirit of the world, the spirit of the epoch, and to stay faithful to the Body of Christ, serving the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of time.
Bishop John Fisher, aged and sick, was so weak on the day of his execution that he had to be carried from his cell. As for the execution itself, we have an eyewitness to his last words spoken from the cabinet: – Christian people “Fisher said to the crowd gathered on Tower Hill— I came here to die for the religion of Christ's Catholic Church[6].
Although Fisher's last moments were an example of the dignified courage that characterized his life, there was nothing dignified in the way his body was treated after death. most likely at Henry’s command, the headless were torn off from their robes and left on the wardrobe for the remainder of the day. In the evening it was unceremoniously removed into the close church courtyard, where they were thrown – inactive bare – into any grave. There was no ceremony prayer. Fisher's head was impaled on the London Bridge, where it remained for 2 weeks, erstwhile her blushes and seemingly undegradable view attracted much attention.
Now it is time for Thomas Morus to face the executioner's axe.
Three days after John Fisher's martyrdom, Henry ordered preachers to condemn from the pulpit the betrayal of Sir Thomas Morus. Since Morus' trial for treason was not due to begin until a week later, on 1 July, the king's orders meant, if necessary, that the conclusion of the trial had already been predestined and that only 1 verdict would be tolerated. Parallel with a judicial strategy in another secular tyrannys, specified as the demonstration processes of the russian Union under Joseph Stalin, are rather clear.
Entering the cabinet on 6 July 1535. Morus turned to Edmund Walsingham asking him for aid in entering the steps leading to the place of loss. – Please, sir.[7] – joked, keeping his sense of humor to the end – Take me safely up, and as far as going down, I can decision myself[8]. From the sapphire itself just before his head was cut off from his body, he declared to the assembled crowds of Londoners that he died as “a good servant of the king, but above all of God.”
Morus' head was taken to the London Bridge, where there was inactive a bloody severed head of Jan Fisher. It was removed and thrown into the Thames. Morus' head was placed in her place.
Hollis described Morus and Fisher as “the 2 most educated men in England” and their death as a knowledge-based murder, as well as the killing of justice, laughter and holiness[9]. We can only agree in part with this generalising judgment. Whether Morus and Fisher were truly unparalleled in terms of education is possibly a question of discussion, but their death did not kill the cognition that inactive “as if” continued (to quote Belloc)[10], nor the laughter that will reappear noisyly in Shakespeare's comedy, nor the holiness that always opposes tombs erstwhile the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church. Their death, however, killed justice or at least severely weakened it. The king's usurpation of the spiritual rights of the Church, and thus the spiritual freedom of its subjects, initiated the process of secular nationalism, which will lead to the creation of this kind of secularism that turns into secular fundamentalism. erstwhile the state grows out of its shoes, trampling on spiritual freedom, it does not take long for the shoes to become military boots crushing the helpless and the weak and leaving behind piles of countless victims.
The last word about the legacy of John Fisher and Thomas Morus and the last judgement (under God's authority), why we should see them as heroes, is expressed by G. K. Chesterton, a man who himself proves that the execution of Morus and Fisher did not kill knowledge, laughter and holiness. In the essay dedicated to Thomas Morus, he goes to the point of what separates the pride of the king from the humility of the saint:
Henry always wanted to be a justice in his case; against his wives, against his friends, against the head of his Church. But the bond that truly connects Morus with the Roman sovereignty for which he died is the fact that he was always a man with broad views adequate to want a justice who was not alone. (...) There is simply a actual connection between the martyr and the doctrine for which he died: that he died not only defending the Pope, but opposing the kind of man who wants to be Pope”[11].
Joseph Pearce
Source: theimaginativeconservative.org.
Crowd. Jan J. Franczak
This essay is simply a edited passage of Joseph Pearce’s fresh book, religion of Our Fathers: A past of actual England(“The religion of Our Fathers. A past of actual England), published by Ignatius Press.
[1] Crowd. Maciej Słomczyński.
[2] Richard Rex, The Execution of the Holy Maid of Kent, [in:] "Historical Research" No 64, 1991, p. 220.
[3] In formal terms, they were guilty of concealing treason, which at the time was considered as treason, and thus a crime punishable by death.
[4] Philip Caraman (ed.), Saints and Ourselves, The Catholic Book Club, London 1953, pp. 76–77.
[5] Christopher Hollis, St. Thomas More, Burns & Oates, London 1961, p. 31.
[6] Maisie Ward (ed.), The English Way: Studies in English Sanctity form Bede to Newman, Cluny Media Edition, Tacoma, Washington 2016, p. 212.
[7] Z Life of Sir Thomas More Willama Roper (1626) quoted [in:] Hollis, p. 237.
[8] English word lieutenant means both ‘Lieutenant’ and ‘Helper, Assistant’.
[9] Hollis, p. 239.
[10] Hilaire Belloc, Lines to a Don.
[11] Ward (ed.) The English Wayp. 221.
