Christian Heroes - SS. John Fisher & Thomas More - July 9 Feast

Here is the text from the pre-1955 St. Andrew Missal, introducing the July 9 Feast Day Mass of SS. John Fisher & Thomas More:

Among the Christian heroes who fought resolutely against heresy and laid down their lives rather than adhere to the schism in England, a place of honor is due to Cardinal John Fisher and to the Chancellor Thomas More.

John Fisher, born at Beverley in 1469, chancellor of the academy of Cambridge, later for 33 years bishop of Rochester, refuted in many books the protestant errors (Brev.)

Thomas More, born in London in 1478, a layman, married and the father of a family, learned jurist and scholar, was made High Chancellor of England by Henry VIII.

Both were imprisoned in the Tower of London by order of the king because they were opposed to his illegitimate union with Anna Boleyn and because they refused him the usurpated title of supreme head of the Church of England in matters spiritual as well as temporal.

John Fisher, created cardinal by Pope Paul III, ascended the scaffold on the 22th of June 1535 and was beheaded after reading this sentence of the Gospel:  "This is eternal life that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou has sent." (All.)

Thomas More was beheaded in his turn on the 6th July 1535 for having resisted, after the example of the great doctor of the law Eleazar (Ep.) all solicitations on the part of his own family and which he deemed contrary to his conscience and to the rights of God, of Christ and the Church (Gosp.)

Source of Text:  Dom Gaspar Levebre, O.S.B., The Saint Andrew Daily Missal, republished by St. Bonaventure Publications (1999), p. 1846 (St. Bonaventure Internet site:  www.libers.com)
Image:  Commemorative plaque at Tower Hill, from Wikimedia Commons