Reformation era (16th century)
Feast: June 22
The only English bishop who refused to approve Henry VIII's divorce — and the pope made him a cardinal while he sat in the Tower awaiting execution.
Of all the bishops in England, John Fisher was the only one who said no. When Henry VIII demanded that the English hierarchy annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Fisher stood up in convocation and declared he would die for the marriage's validity, 'even as John the Baptist died.' It was not a metaphor. Fisher was a scholar and humanist who had built Cambridge into a serious university, inviting Erasmus to teach there and founding two colleges. He was small, thin, and so ascetic that he kept a skull on his desk during meals. None of that gentleness made him a pushover. He defended Catherine at her trial, wrote treatises against Luther, and refused to sign the Act of Supremacy. Henry threw him in the Tower of London, where he languished for over a year. When Pope Paul III tried to save him by naming him cardinal, Henry reportedly said Fisher would have no head to put the red hat on. He was beheaded on June 22, 1535, two weeks before Thomas More. On the scaffold, emaciated and barely able to stand, he called out that he was dying for the faith of Christ's holy Catholic Church.