The Execution of John Fisher Viewed through Italian Eyes: A Letter of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga

Abstract

News of the beheading of Cardinal John Fisher on June 22, 1535, broke dramatically on a Europe already struggling with momentous religious change.' A little more than a month later Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga wrote to his brother Federico II, Duke of Mantua, about the execution of the English prelate. This letter has not been previously published.2 The letter reveals the understanding of the execution by one who was a leader of the imperial faction in the College of Cardinals. It shows that details of the execution were not altogether clear and that there were already different accounts of the execution itself. Thus, the letter indicates the character of the information about the execution that was available to the papal court and how at least one cardinal at the court responded. The writer of the letter, Ercole Gonzaga (1505-1563), was the second son of Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d'Este.3 He had been reared in the opulent Renaissance court of Mantua. His early education came from the humanist and philosophical circle of which his parents were patrons. Pietro Pomponazzi instructed him in philosophy at the University of Bologna. He learned Greek and Latin and even studied some Hebrew. Isabella d'Este,who harbored great hopes for the ecclesiastical career of her son, ensured that he received the cardinal's hat in 1527 at the age of twenty-two. Cardinal Gonzaga moved firmly into the imperial camp in the College of Cardinals after 1530 in keeping with his brother's foreign policy. For many years he resided in his diocese and carried out a reform of his clergy and the laity in the manner of his colleague, Gian Matteo Giberti of Verona. At the end of his life Gonzaga presided over the concluding sessions of the Council of Trent as papal legate from 1561 until his death in March of 1563. Between 1528 and 1537 he resided at the papal court, where he acted essentially as the chief Mantuan agent in Rome. He was present at the consistory on July 26,1535, when the pope announced the death of Fisher to the assembled cardinals. The transcription presented here is from one of two identical accounts sent by Cardinal Gonzaga soon after the news of Fisher's death reached Rome. It is of the letter that he sent to the Duke Federico of Mantua dated July 31,1535, found in the Archivio di Stato di Mantova.4 The same account is contained in a letter sent to the Gonzaga ambassador in Venice, Giovanni Agnello, dated July 27.5 Cardinal Gonzaga's account of the imprisonment and execution of Fisher is based largely on a letter of the papal nuncio in France, Rodolfo Pio da Carpi.? The nuncio wrote with news of the death as he had learned it from the Admiral of France, the Sieur de Brion, Philippe Chabot,7 and the English ambassador to France, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk.8 A version of the nuncio's account is found in his letter to the papal secretary, Ambrogio Recalcatis.9 The most complete information on Fisher's imprisonment and the substance of his interrogations comes from an anonymous biography written a generation after his death.'o Further, nearly all of the descriptions of the imprisonment, trial, and execution contained in the earliest life of Fisher are based upon an eyewitness description by William Rastell, the nephew of Thomas More. Gonzaga's letter, while conveying much of the information available in these other accounts, differs from them in notable ways. Indeed, Gonzaga's letter contains a number of details which, while perhaps not strictly accurate, may authentically reflect the way in which Fisher's brother cardinals received the news. Moreover, Gonzaga described the interrogations and the execution in a terse and unadorned narrative style that heightened the drama. First, Gonzaga emphasized Fisher's fidelity to the of Peter in a way that is more explicit than in the letter of the nuncio. Gonzaga includes a statement of loyalty to the pope by Fisher in his interview with Thomas Cromwell: .. . there is no other head of the Church than Saint Peter and his successors Such a statement is lacking from the letter by Pio da Carpi. …