Humanism, Reform, and the Reformation

Humanism, Reform, and the Reformation: The Career of Bishop John Fisher, edited by Brendan Bradshaw and Eamon Duffy, 225 pages

St John Fisher was the Bishop of Rochester from 1504 until his death in 1535, and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge during the same period.  Renowned as a humanist and patron of scholars, friends with Erasmus of Rotterdam, Johann Maier von Eck, and St Thomas More, Fisher stubbornly refused to recognize Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church of England, and was executed on the same day as More.

This book, a compilation of papers presented at a Cambridge symposium in 1985, examines the various facets of Fisher's multifaceted life, including his impact on the University, his pastoral style as bishop, his apologetical work against Luther, and his resistance to royal absolutism.  The figure revealed escapes easy categorization - neither a progressive nor a reactionary, with one foot in the humanist world of letters and the other in the scholastic world of ideas.  Above all, it reveals Fisher to have been thoroughly human, as all saints are.