The Works and Days of John Fisher

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This is the first published study in English of the ideas and convictions of St. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a major but unduly neglected figure of the English Renaissance and the Reformation and the clerical counterpart of the layman Thomas More. Chancellor of Cambridge University through three crucial decades, he was also the Reformers’ most redoubtable English opponent and a vocal advocate of Catherine of Aragon in the controversy over her marriage to Henry VIII. In his study, the author ascertains Fisher’s position on many key points, provides an analysis of the content, method, and style of Fisher’s individual works, and evaluates the degree of his liberalism and conservatism in relation to the new movements of his day.