Everything about Saint John Ogilvie totally explained
John Ogilvie (
1579 –
March 10,
1615), was a
Scottish Catholic martyr.
Ogilvie, the son of a wealthy
laird, was born into a respected
Calvinist family near
Keith in
Banffshire,
Scotland and was educated in mainland Europe where he attended a number of Catholic educational establishments, under the
Benedictines at
Regensburg in
Germany and with the
Jesuits at
Olomouc and
Brno in the present day
Czech Republic. In the midst of the religious controversies and turmoil that engulfed the Europe of that era he decided to become a Catholic. In 1596, aged seventeen, he was received into the church at
Louvain,
Belgium. He joined the
Society of Jesus in 1608 and was ordained a
priest in
Paris in 1610. After ordination he made repeated entreaties to be sent back to Scotland to minister to the few remaining Catholics in the
Glasgow area (after the
Scottish Reformation in 1560 it had become illegal to preach, proselytise for or otherwise endorse Catholicism). He returned to Scotland in November 1613 disguised as a soldier, and began to preach in secret, celebrating
mass clandestinely in private homes. However, his ministry was to last less than a year. In 1614, he was betrayed and arrested in
Glasgow and taken to jail in
Paisley. He suffered terrible tortures, including being kept awake for eight days and nine nights, in an attempt to make him divulge the identities of other Catholics. Nonetheless, Ogilvie didn't relent. Consequently, after a biased trial, he was convicted of
high treason for refusing to accept the
King's spiritual jurisdiction. On 10th March 1615, aged 36 years, John Ogilvie was paraded through the streets of Glasgow and hanged at
Glasgow Cross.
His last words were "If there be here any hidden Catholics, let them pray for me but the prayers of heretics I won't have". After he was pushed from the ladder, he threw his concealed
rosary beads out into the crowd. The tale is told that one of his enemies caught them and subsequently became a lifelong devout Catholic. After his execution Ogilvie's followers were rounded up and put in jail. They suffered heavy fines, but none was to receive the death penalty.
As a
martyr of the
Counter-Reformation he was
beatified in
1929 and
canonised in
1976. He is the only post-Reformation saint from
Scotland.
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