John Ogilvie (saint)

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.

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

Ogilvie was born into the Scottish nobility of rural Banffshire and brought up as a Presbyterian, but sent to Catholic Europe for his education. His curiosity was piqued by witnessing public debates between Catholic and Calvinist scholars and he decided to convert to Catholicism. He first took up studies with the Benedictines in Regensburg and then switched to the Society of Jesus in the Czech lands. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest and was sent back to Scotland in 1613, where, disguised as a military officer, he served the secret and underground Catholic community, first in the Highlands and Islands, then in Edinburgh, and lastly in and around Glasgow.

Arrested by Church of Scotland Archbishop of St Andrews John Spottiswoode after less than a year, Ogilvie was tried for high treason, found guilty, and sentenced to death by hanging. In a deeply ironic parallel to the religious persecution of Presbyterian Covenanters, also by Scottish Episcopalians, during the later events known as The Killing Time, Ogilvie's "high treason" involved merely refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy and renounce the independence of the Church from control by the State. Despite repeated offers of a full pardon, a high position within the Established Church, and the hand in marriage of the Archbishop's daughter, Ogilvie refused and was hanged at Glasgow Cross on 10 March 1615. For his work in service to persecuted Scottish Catholics, and in being hanged as a martyr for his faith, Ogilvie was canonized by Pope Paul VI on 17 October 1976 as the first post-Reformation Scottish saint.

Early life

John was the eldest son of Walter Ogilvie, a respected Calvinist member of the Scottish nobility and Laird of Drumnakeith, in what was then a Doric- and Scottish Gaelic-speaking district of 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. Under the legislation passed by the Scottish Reformation Parliament in 1560 it was illegal to preach, proselytise for, or otherwise endorse Catholicism.

Priestly ministry

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. Ogilvie returned to Scotland, accompanied by fellow underground priests Father Moffat of Halyburton and Friar Campbell of Sinclair, in November 1613. Ogilvie adopted the disguise of a military officer and horse trader named John Watson. After landing in Scotland, the three missionaries immediately separated. Ogilvie first spent six weeks preaching in secret and offering the Tridentine Mass in the Highlands and Islands.

After six weeks in the North, Ogilvie arrived in Edinburgh, where he resided for nearly a year in the home of William Sinclair. One eyewitness later recalled, "I know of a considerable number of persons whom he converted from heresy to the obedience of the Catholic Faith during the short time he spent in Scotland outside of prison. Among them were his fellow captives, and two or three barons in Renfrew, and some other gentlemen. He also visited the prisons at great risk to his life, in order to give religious consolations to the afflicted Catholics."

Beginning in August 1614, Ogilvie began making pastoral visit to Glasgow, where he was later found to have received into the Catholic Church, "sundrie young men", and many individuals, "of the better sort."

Arrest and imprisonment

John Spottiswoode, Church of Scotland Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland, as depicted by Anglo-Czech engraver Wenzel Hollar.

On 14 October 1614, Ogilvie was, by his own admission, "betrayed by one of those whom I was to have reconciled to the Church", and arrested in Glasgow under the orders of Anglo-Catholic Archbishop John Spottiswood.

In a written report to King James, Spottiswoode wrote, "Most Sacred and Gracious Sovereign, It has pleased God to cast into my hands a Jesuit that calls himself Ogilvie. He came to this city and said some Masses, at which we have tried eight of our burgesses to being present. He was busy in preventing some others that went too far with him, for some of them presumed to stop my servants in his apprehension. Himself will answer nothing that serves for discovering his traffic in the country, that appears to be great."

According to Ogilvie, however, the Archbishop was inaccurately informed following his arrest, "that those whom he had sent to me had been killed, that a general slaughter was taking place, and that the city was up in arms." After assembling "the lairds and barons who happened to be at that time in the city", the Archbishop arrived on the scene intending to restore order, but instead found that the arrest has proceeded without incident. He then asked where Ogilvie was then being kept and proceeded there with his whole company.

When he arrived at the magistrate's house, Spottiswoode first summoned Ogilvie to approach, then struck the Jesuit a blow, and said, "You were an over-insolent fellow, to say your Masses in a Reformed city."

Ogilvie replied, "You do not act like a bishop, but like an executioner in striking me." He later recalled, "Then, as though the signal had been given them, they showed their blows from all sides upon me, the hair is plucked from my beard, my face is torn with their nails, until Count Fleming, by his authority and by main force, restrains those who were striking me." After first being stripped, Ogilvie was committed to the Glasgow Tolbooth.

The following morning, Ogilvie was led out of the Tollbooth and brought to the Archbishop's palace for interrogation. Despite being fully aware of the consequences, Ogilvie aggravated his position, not only by refusing to name anyone who had attended his Masses or received the sacraments from him, but also by firmly rejecting the royal supremacy of King James VI over the Church within his dominions. He explained, "Neither King nor false pastor have any power over sacred things, and could not confer upon others that which they do not possess themselves. I have received Christ's priesthood from his lawful Vicar, who alone has power in sacred things."

When his interrogators brought up the Gunpowder Plot, Ogilvie, "repelled the calumny, and showed that the Jesuits were acknowledged to be entirely free from blame with regard to it, and reminded them of the numerous conspiracies in which they themselves had been engaged against the King in former years, a retort which reduced them to silence."

For this reason, King James granted Spottiswoode written permission to torture Ogilvie, similarly to Elizabethan era Irish Catholic Martyr Dermot O'Hurley, by using the "hot boots". The judges, however, were unwilling to put Ogilvie to the hot boots, "because it left permanent traces of the cruelty inflicted".

Ogilvie was instead tortured by "eight days and nine whole nights", of sleep deprivation using "styles, needles, and pinchings". After Ogilvie remained unmovable and even stated afterwards to his interrogators, "Try your worst, on with your boots", he was transported with the Archbishop, who needed to return to Glasgow for Christmas Day, to Glasgow Tolbooth. Ogilvie later recalled that in Glasgow he, "was then fastened by both feet to an iron pole; but now I am fastened by only one foot, with a bolt and two iron chains binding the iron, lest I should contract disease from always lying on my back."

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 Church of Scotlands religious monopoly and the State's control over the Church no more than he would acknowledge the authority of an 'old hat'. A further reason was that 1615 was a time of internal battles between Episcopalian and Presbyterian factions over control of the Church of Scotland and the religious persecution of whichever faction had just fallen from power. As was a very common tactic for Presbyterians seeking to discredit Episcopalian clergymen, Spottiswoode, who was a High Church adherent of Laudianism, had repeatedly been accused of Crypto-Catholicism by his enemies in both the Church of Scotland and at Court. Spottiswoode chose accordingly to use Ogilvie's arrest, torture, and trial to prove the falseness of the accusations.

Found guilty, Fr. Ogilvie was sentenced to be hanged at Glasgow Cross on 10 March 1615, aged thirty-six. He was reportedly relieved and, "joyfully invited his friends to his wedding." When an offer was made to help him escape on the night before his execution, Ogilvie, "expressed his extreme gratitude", but explained, "that death for so grand a cause was more acceptable than any life and that he looked forward to it with so sincere a desire as to fear nothing so much as that by any accident he should snatched from it."

Death and burial

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

On the day assigned for his execution, Ogilvie was accompanied to the gallows at Glasgow Cross by Mr Robert Scott, a Church of Scotland minister, who repeatedly sought to convince him to accept a full pardon and high preferment within the Established Church. At the gallows, the minister announced to the crowd, "I promise to Mr Ogilvie life, the Lord Archbishop's daughter, and a very rich prebend, provided he be willing to come over to our side."

In reply, the Protestants in the crowd pleaded with Ogilvie to accept the offer, saying, "Go down, Mr Ogilvie! Go down!" They also promised if he did so to bear witness that, rather being guilty of high treason, he had stood condemned, "a criminal on the head of religion alone."

Ogilvie replied, "Very well! That is plenty. On the head of religion alone am I condemned, and for that would I willingly pour out even a hundred lives. Snatch away that one which you have from me, and make no delay about it; but my religion you will never snatch away from me."

As he climbed the platform, Ogilvie kissed the gallows and began to pray. The minister cried out, "Ogilvie is to die for treason", but the Jesuit only smiled and shook his head.

In reply to the Minister's query whether he was afraid to die, Ogilvie replied, "I fear death, as much as you do your dinner." Baron Johann von Eckersdorff, a Protestant nobleman from the Holy Roman Empire who was then on his grand tour, later recalled, "I happened to be in Glasgow the day Father Ogilvie was led forth to the gallows, and it is impossible for me to describe his lofty bearing in meeting death."

Moments before his hands were tied behind him and he was turned from the ladder and hanged, Ogilvie threw his concealed rosary out into the crowd. An eyewitness later recalled, "A deep groan broke from all the spectators; and then, as if their tongues were loosened, they proclaimed their sentiments freely enough, openly declaring their horror and detestation at the unjust sentence they had just seen executed."

The customary beheading and quartering were omitted owing to undisguised popular sympathy, and Ogilvie's body was hurriedly buried in the Old Burial Ground of Glasgow High Kirk. For precisely the same reason, King James ordered the commutation of all of the remaining condemned Catholic prisoners to perpetual banishment from the realm. The King is also alleged to have expressed regret for Ogilvie's execution. During a subsequent conversation with the Marquess of Huntley, King James attempted to deny his own involvement in Ogilvie's torture and death and instead laid the blame solely at the feet of Archbishop John Spottiswoode.

Veneration

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

According to Baron Eckersdorff, "[Ogilvie's] rosary, thrown haphazard, struck me on the breast in such wise that I could have caught it in the palm of my hand; but there was such a rush of the Catholics to get hold of it that unless I wished to run the risk of being trodden down, I had to cast it from me. Religion was the last thing I was then thinking about; it was not on my mind at all; yet from that moment I had no rest. Those rosary beads had left a wound in my soul; go where I would I had no peace of mind... At last conscience won the day. I became a Catholic."

Another eyewitness recalled, "It is most certain that his martyrdom has been of the greatest advantage to the Catholics of Scotland, for a great number of them have been encouraged by his example to a firmer adherence to the Catholic Faith. I know this by my own experience."

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

Other Scottish Catholic Martyrs

• Hugh Barclay of Ladyland, David Graham, Laird of Fintry, Spanish blanks plot
• John Black (martyr)
• St Blathmac
• Alexander Cameron (priest)
• St Donnán of Eigg
• George Douglas (martyr)
• William Gibson (martyr)
• John Ingram (martyr)
• St Máel Ruba
• Martyrs of Iona
• Patrick Primrose
• 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.