John Ogilvie (saint)

Saint John Ogilvie SJ
John Ogilvie
Martyr
Born	1580 Drumnakeith, Banffshire, Scotland
Died	10 March 1615(1615-03-10) (aged 34–35) Glasgow Cross, Scotland
Cause of death	Execution by Hanging
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Beatified	22 December 1929, Rome, Vatican City by Pius XI
Canonized	17 October 1976, Rome, Vatican City by Paul Vl
Feast	10 March

John Ogilvie, SJ (1580 – 10 March 1615) was an outlawed Scottish Jesuit priest and martyr during the 1560 - 1829 religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

Ogilvie was born into the Scottish nobility, brought up a Calvinist, and sent to Catholic Europe to further his education. His interest piqued by the popular debates going on between Catholic and Calvinist scholars, he took up studies with the Benedictines, and then with the Jesuits. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest and was sent back to Scotland, where he served the secret and underground Catholic community in and around Glasgow. Arrested by Archbishop John Spottiswoode after less than a year, Ogilvie was hanged, officially for high treason, but in reality for refusing to swear the Oath of Supremacy and renounce the independence of the Church from control by the State, at Glasgow Cross in 1615. For his work in service to persecuted Scottish Catholics, and in being hanged for his faith, Ogilvie was canonized by Pope Paul VI on 17 October 1976 as the first post-Reformation Scottish saint.

Biography

John was the eldest son of Walter Ogilvie, a respected Calvinist member of the Scottish nobility who owned the estate of Drumnakeith in Banffshire. His family was partly Roman Catholic and partly Presbyterian. At the age of twelve he was sent to continental Europe to be educated. He attended a number of Catholic educational establishments, under the Benedictines at Regensburg in Germany and with the Jesuits at Olmutz and Brunn in Moravia.

In the midst of the religious controversies and turmoil that engulfed the Europe of that era, he decided to become a Catholic. In 1597, aged seventeen, he was received into the Catholic Church by Cornelius a Lapide S.J., professor of sacred scripture at Leuven, Belgium. Ogilvie joined the Society of Jesus in 1599 and was ordained a priest at Paris in 1613. After ordination he served in Rouen in Normandy where he made repeated requests to be sent to Scotland to minister to the few remaining Catholics in the Glasgow area. (After the Scottish Reformation in 1560 it had become illegal there to preach, proselytise for, or otherwise endorse Catholicism.)

The Jesuit John Ogilvie, who was publicly hanged and drawn on 10 March 1615 in Glasgow

It was his hope that some Catholic nobles there would aid him, given his lineage. Finding none, he went to London, then back to Paris, and finally returned to Scotland in November 1613 disguised as a horse trader named John Watson. Thereafter he began to preach in secret, offering Mass clandestinely in private homes. This ministry was to last less than a year. In October 1614, Ogilvie was discovered and arrested in Glasgow under the orders of Anglo-Catholic Archbishop John Spottiswood, and was imprisoned.

He was initially treated well, but eventually was tortured by sleep deprivation. This was because, despite being fully aware of the consequences, Ogilvie aggravated his position by firmly rejecting the royal supremacy of King James VI over the Church within his dominions. In a deeply ironic parallel to the religious persecution of the Presbyterian Covenanters during the later events known as The Killing Time, it was for high treason based on his refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy that Fr. Ogilvie was tried. During the trial, Ogilvie criticised the King for 'playing the runagate from God', dishonouring his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and breaking Faith with all his predecessors. Ogilvie also vowed that he would acknowledge the State's religious monopoly and control over the Church no more than he would acknowledge the authority of an 'old hat'. Found guilty, Fr. Ogilvie was hanged at Glasgow Cross on 10 March 1615, aged thirty-six.

The site of Ogilvie's execution, Glasgow Mercat Cross with the Tollbooth in the background, as they appear today.

Ogilvie's last words were: "If there be here any hidden Catholics, let them pray for me but the prayers of heretics I will not have." After he was pushed from the stairs, he threw his concealed rosary out into the crowd. According to legend, one of his enemies caught it and subsequently became a devout, lifelong Catholic. After his execution Ogilvie's followers were rounded up and put in jail. They suffered heavy fines, but none received the death penalty.

The customary beheading and quartering were omitted owing to undisguised popular sympathy, and his body was hurriedly buried in the Old Burial Ground of Glasgow High Kirk. A further reason, according to Thomas Wynne, was that Archbishop Spottiswoode, like many other High Church adherents of Laudianism at the time, had allegedly been accused of Crypto-Catholicism by his enemies in both the Church of Scotland and at Court and chose to use Ogilvie's trial and execution to prove the falseness of the accusations.

Veneration

As a martyr of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation he was declared Venerable in the seventeenth century. Ogilvie was beatified in 1929 and canonised in 1976 on 17 October, becoming the only post-Reformation Scottish saint. His feast day is celebrated on 10 March in the Catholic Church in Scotland. In the rest of the world it is celebrated on 14 October. In Corby, Northamptonshire — an English town with a strong Scottish heritage — a Catholic church registered in March 1980 is dedicated to John Ogilvie. In the Scottish Highlands there is the Parish of Saint John Ogilvie comprising the Churches of Saint Joseph’s in Invergordon and Saint Vincent De Paul’s in Tain. At the service to mark the quadricentenary of his death, he was described as "Scotland's only Catholic martyr".

See also

• George Wishart
• List of Protestant martyrs of the Scottish Reformation
• Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
• List of Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation
• John Black (martyr)
• George Douglas (martyr)
• William Gibson (martyr)
• John Ingram (martyr)
• Patrick Primrose
• Hugh Barclay of Ladyland, David Graham, Laird of Fintry, Spanish blanks plot
• Alexander Cameron (priest)
• Saint John Ogilvie, patron saint archive

Sources

• Barrett, Michael (1913). "Ven. John Ogilvie". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Smith, George Gregory (1885–1900). "Ogilvie, John (1580?-1615)" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co.