FISHER, John St

by John St Fisher

£2,450 · Offered by Sokol Books

Rare first edition of the collected Latin works of St. John Fisher, with translations into Latin of his English sermons. John Fisher (1469 1535), appointed bishop of Rochester by Henry VII, was one of the most distinguished churchmen and humanists of the early sixteenth century and Reformation. A friend of Erasmus s, he introduced the study of Greek and Hebrew to the University of Cambridge, of which he was Chancellor, and was beheaded by Henry VIII for his opposition to the Act of Supremacy. He was a notable preacher and author of the first sermon sequence to be printed in English. Fisher s Latin theological and controversial writings were more widely read on the European continent, in their day, than the predominantly English religious controversial writings of St. Thomas More and were a key influence on the Catholic Counter-Reformation. According to Fr. Surtz, St. John Fisher s writings formed an important bridge between the Church Fathers, the Scholastics, and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. As Chancellor of Cambridge University, Fisher firmly established in English Universities the new learning of the classics, the Scriptures, and the Early Christian Writers in their original languages. Fisher was brought to trial at Westminster (17th of June 1535) on the charge that he did openly declare in English that the king, our sovereign lord, is not supreme head on earth of the Church of England, and was condemned to a traitor's death at Tyburn, a sentence afterwards changed. H

• Binding: Hardcover

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