John Ogilvie

John Ogilvie was born in Banffshire, Scotland, about 1580, the eldest son of a Calvinist laird, and was brought up in the reformed faith. Sent to the Continent for his education as a boy, he was received into the Catholic Church at Louvain in 1596. The Jesuit scholar Cornelius a Lapide, who had instructed him, wrote of him after his death:

Such a man was our Brother Ogilvie, a martyr recently in Scotland, formerly a convert of mine at Louvain (Catechumenus Meus), who… amazed the Calvinists by his steadfastness under torture, and by the alertness of his replies, so that all who assailed him were completely put to silence.Cornelius a Lapide, S.J., in Daniel Conway, The Venerable John Ogilvie, S.J.

Ogilvie entered the Society of Jesus, was ordained a priest at Paris in 1613, and returned in secret to Scotland — under the assumed name Watson — to serve Catholics who still kept the old faith. In October 1614 he was seized at Glasgow. He wrote his own account of what followed:

I was betrayed… by one of those whom I was to have reconciled with the Church.John Ogilvie, in William Forbes-Leith, Narratives of Scottish Catholics under Mary Stuart and James VI (1889)

His captors tried to break him by keeping him from sleep:

For eight days and nine whole nights… they forced me to keep awake with styles, pins, needles, and pinchings… the watching so weakened me that I scarce knew what I said and what I did, or in what place I was, and very often I knew not in what city I was.John Ogilvie, in Forbes-Leith, Narratives of Scottish Catholics (1889)

At his trial he did not bend. Threatened with the torture of the boot, he answered:

Try your worst, on with your boots; with God as my guide, I will show you that in this cause I care no more for my legs than you for your leggings.John Ogilvie, in Forbes-Leith, Narratives of Scottish Catholics (1889)

Condemned, he forced his accusers to admit he was to die for his religion alone:

On the head of religion alone I am condemned… pour out even a hundred lives. Snatch away that one which I have from me, and make no delay about it; but my religion you will never snatch away from me.John Ogilvie, in Forbes-Leith, Narratives of Scottish Catholics (1889)

Asked on the scaffold whether he feared death, he answered:

I fear death… as much as you do your dinner.John Ogilvie, in Forbes-Leith, Narratives of Scottish Catholics (1889)

John Ogilvie was hanged at Glasgow Cross on 10 March 1615. He was canonized in 1976 — the only Scottish saint canonized since the Reformation.