June 22 -- Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More

I wager that most of us have some passing familiarity with the story of Thomas More. He was the brilliant humanist who wrote Utopia and served Henry VIII as Chancellor. If you have seen Paul Scofield's Oscar-winning portrayal of him in A Man for All Seasons, you probably recall that he attempted to protect his life on a legal scruple -- if he said nothing about the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn, he could not be convicted of treason. Crime must be a definite act, and as silence is legally construed to imply consent, there could be no legal grounds for conviction. It was a clever argument, but it did not satisfy King Henry VIII, who demanded definite acts of assent about the marriage (and everything else he undertook).

John Fisher, who served Henry's mother as chaplain and also was chancellor of both Oxford and Cambridge before becoming bishop of Rochester, landed in the same stew. He, however, did not pin his safety to silence, but rather argued forcefully against the marriage. He had been offered more prestigious bishoprics during his career, but was contented with the diocese of Rochester. Similarly, when deciding between the correct path (morally, legally, and probably in the interests of peace and national security) and the expedient path, he chose the correct one. For his troubles, he was thrown into the Tower, where he weakened gradually. The Pope appointed him cardinal while he was in prison, but the King declared there would be no head to put the red cap on by the time it arrived in London. That head, severed after he was carried to the scaffold (though he walked up under his own steam), was placed on a spike at Traitors' Gate for two weeks. The occasion of its removal was the arrival of the freshly severed head of Thomas More, which stayed a month. The man who was instructed to throw it in the Thames preferred to accept a bribe from More's daughter Margaret Roper.

Both saints, celebrated on the same day, are depicted in The Tudors, though I have not seen it all through. They are also depicted in Anne of a Thousand Days, though I haven't seen that either.