Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

John Fisher was a bishop. Thomas More was a lawyer, a husband, a father, and one of the most powerful men in England. They didn't know each other well. But in 1535, they died for the same thing.

King Henry VIII wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon declared null, and he wanted the Church in England to answer to him, not Rome. Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy. Everyone was expected to swear an oath accepting it. Most people did. Fisher and More wouldn't.

Neither man made a scene about it. More in particular played it careful, staying silent for as long as the law allowed. Silence, he figured, wasn't consent. But Henry's government wasn't satisfied. Both men were locked in the Tower of London and pressured to submit. They refused the required oath. That was enough.

Fisher was beheaded on June 22, 1535. More followed on July 6. More's reported last words were something like: he died 'the king's good servant, but God's first.'

Pius XI canonized them together in 1935, four hundred years after their deaths. They're an odd pair to share a feast, honestly. A bishop and a royal chancellor. A celibate churchman and a man who loved his family deeply. What they had in common was simpler than their differences: they both knew what they believed, and they wouldn't sign their names to a lie.