Saint John Ogilvie

He was the eldest son of Walter Ogilvie of Drum, near Keith. ¹ The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia gives his birth as 1580; the Jesuits and CatholicCulture.org give 1579. ¹²⁹ Franciscan Media says the family was partly Catholic and partly Presbyterian, and that his father raised him a Calvinist and sent him to the continent to be educated. ³ Galway Cathedral says he was twelve when he went. ¹⁰

Abroad he grew interested in the debates then going on between Catholic and Calvinist scholars. Franciscan Media says the arguments confused him and that he turned to Scripture, where two texts struck him: "God wills all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth," and "Come to me all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you." ³ He came to see, it says, that the Catholic Church could hold all kinds of people, and that among them were many martyrs. ³

He was received into the Church at Louvain in 1596, at the age of seventeen, according to Franciscan Media. ³ The encyclopedia names the priest who received him: Cornelius a Lapide, the Jesuit commentator on Scripture. ¹ When the Scots College at Louvain closed for lack of money, he studied with the Benedictines and then at the Jesuit college at Olomouc. ²³¹⁰

The sources do not agree on when he became a Jesuit. The encyclopedia says he entered at seventeen. ¹ The Jesuit curia's page dates his entry to November 5, 1599, at Brno in Moravia, followed by philosophy at Graz and Vienna and theology at Olomouc; Jesuits.org places his novitiate in Vienna. ²⁴

His ordination is dated two ways as well. The curia, Jesuits.org and Franciscan Media put it in Paris in 1610. ²³⁴ The encyclopedia and Galway Cathedral give 1613. ¹¹⁰ CatholicCulture.org gives both: 1613 in its summary, and 1610 in Paris in the profile printed further down the same page. ⁹

Scotland was then too dangerous for a Catholic priest, and it had been illegal there since 1560 to preach or promote the Catholic faith. ²¹⁰ Franciscan Media says that at his ordination he met two Jesuits just back from prison in Scotland who saw little hope for the mission there, and that for the next two and a half years he pleaded to be sent. ³ He worked meanwhile at Rouen, in Normandy. ²¹⁰ The encyclopedia says he went to Scotland at his own request. ¹

He landed at Leith in November 1613, according to the curia, disguised as a horse dealer named John Watson. ² Franciscan Media says he passed as a horse trader or a soldier coming home from the wars. ³ Galway Cathedral adds that he had hoped Catholic nobles would help him because of his family, and that none did. ¹⁰ Franciscan Media says he went back to Paris to consult his superiors, was rebuked for leaving his post, and was sent back. ³

The second attempt went better. He said Mass in private houses and, in the encyclopedia's words, "during nine months reconciled many with the Church in Edinburgh and Glasgow." ¹¹⁰ In October 1614 he went to Glasgow to receive five people into the Church. ² One of them, Adam Boyd, told the Protestant archbishop, John Spottiswood, and helped plan the arrest. ²¹⁰ Ogilvie was seized while waiting in the market square to be taken to the service, and the curia says the archbishop struck him in the face before the others beat him. ²

He was questioned the next day and refused to accept the king's supremacy in religious matters. ² What followed was meant to make him name names. The encyclopedia says his legs were "cruelly crushed" and that he was kept awake for nine nights by being pricked with needles. ¹ The curia describes nine days of sleep deprivation after a hearing at Edinburgh on December 12 before a council appointed by King James. ² Franciscan Media counts eight days and nights, during which he was dragged about, prodded with sharp sticks and had his hair pulled out. ³

He gave up no one. ¹²³ Back in prison in Glasgow he wrote an account of his arrest and imprisonment and got it out page by page through people who came to visit other prisoners. ²¹⁰ Jesuits.org says this "Relatio" was printed in several European cities the year after his death and circulated secretly in England and Scotland. ⁴ The encyclopedia says his patience, courage and good humor under examination won the admiration of his judges, the archbishop among them. ¹

On January 18, 1615, he was given questions drawn up by the king himself, which the curia says left him the choice of renouncing his faith or condemning himself. ² He answered that the pope was supreme in religious matters, with the power to excommunicate the king and even to depose him. ² Franciscan Media and Galway Cathedral quote what he told his judges: "In all that concerns the king, I will be slavishly obedient; if any attack his temporal power, I will shed my last drop of blood for him. But in the things of spiritual jurisdiction which a king unjustly seizes I cannot and must not obey." ³¹⁰

He was tried at the Tolbooth in Glasgow on March 10. ² The curia says the charge was high treason, for upholding the pope's spiritual primacy, and not the saying of Mass or the making of converts. ² Galway Cathedral says the conversions were part of the charge. ¹⁰ The jury found him guilty within two hours, and he was sentenced to be hanged and quartered that afternoon. ²

He spent the three hours while the court was at lunch in prayer, then walked to the scaffold holding his rosary. ² Franciscan Media says that on the scaffold he was offered his freedom and a good living if he would give up his faith. ³ He was hanged that day. ¹⁴ The curia says that he did not die at once, and that the executioner pulled on his legs to end it. ² Galway Cathedral repeats a story, which it calls a legend, that he threw his rosary into the crowd and that one of his enemies caught it and became a Catholic. ¹⁰

The quartering was not carried out. The encyclopedia says it was omitted "owing to undisguised popular sympathy." ¹ Where he was buried is disputed. The encyclopedia and CatholicCulture.org say the churchyard of Glasgow Cathedral; the curia says outside the city, in a place kept for criminals; Galway Cathedral says a common grave for felons and plague victims, whose site is now unknown. ¹²⁹¹⁰

He was declared venerable in the seventeenth century, beatified by Pius XI on December 22, 1929, and canonized by Paul VI on October 17, 1976. ¹⁵⁹ Paul VI told the Scottish pilgrims that he was "the Saint whom you, above all others, have the right to call your own," and called him "a great hero of freedom and of faith." ⁵ In the Italian part of the homily, translated here, he said that it is the cause and not the suffering that makes a martyr, and that Ogilvie's cause was the teaching authority of the Church and faith in the Mass. ⁵ He hoped that the saint, far from standing for discord, would help to heal the memory of violence done in the name of religion. ⁵

Franciscan Media calls him the first Scottish saint since 1250. ³ John Paul II, preaching at Bellahouston Park in 1982, asked, "Who has not heard of Saint John Ogilvie, the Jesuit, who - only a few miles from where I now stand - surrendered life itself to witness to the Faith of Christ!" ⁶ Benedict XVI, at the same park in 2010, held him up to the priests of Scotland as "dedicated, selfless and brave." ⁷

None of the sources used for this page names a patronage for Saint John Ogilvie, so none is given here. ^1234910 Paul VI presented him to the Scottish pilgrims as the saint they had the right to call their own, and Benedict XVI offered his example to Scotland's priests. ⁵⁷

Saint John Ogilvie's feast is March 10, the day he was hanged in 1615. ³⁴ Vatican News lists him on that day, the Society of Jesus celebrates it, and CatholicCulture.org gives it as a feast in Scotland and a commemoration in the Roman Martyrology. ⁴⁸⁹ Galway Cathedral's page gives his feast day as October 14 instead, without saying why. ¹⁰

He came to the faith by reading, and by noticing who was in the Church: all sorts of people, Franciscan Media says, and many martyrs among them. ³ The verses that moved him were about God wanting everyone saved and Christ calling the weary. ³ Franciscan Media reads in this an early grasp of what it calls "small-c catholic": "the wide range of believers who embrace Christianity." ³

His mission at home was short and did not go well at first. He went back to Paris and was told off for leaving. ³ When he returned, he was betrayed by one of the people he had come to receive into the Church. ²¹⁰

He drew the line in one place and held it there. He offered the king his obedience in everything that was the king's, and refused him only what he believed belonged to God. ³¹⁰ Paul VI said that the cause, not the pain, is what makes a martyr. ⁵

Under torture he protected the people he had served, and kept his good humor in front of his examiners. ¹ The encyclopedia says that the crowd in Glasgow felt for him enough that the quartering was dropped. ¹