St John Fisher

Abstract

Written in Latin about 1520, A godlie treatisse remained unpublished for forty years. Manuscript copies were made in Latin and English for circulation among Fisher’s friends. It is from one such Latin copy that the current version is derived. Richard Hall, the biographer of Bishop Fisher, translated it into English for the London publication by John Cawood in 1560. This edition was reissued without change by Cawood’s son Gabriel in 1577 despite Elizabethan proscription of Catholic ‘propaganda’. The first Latin printing was made in Rome about 1565, and another was made, in 1597, in Wurzburg, where the Opera Omnia of Bishop Fisher was printed (though all of his works, despite the title, were not included).

For biographical sketch, see pp. 333–5.