| Admin_History | John Ogilvie, the son of a wealthy laird, was born into a Calvinist family at Drum-na-Keith near Keith in Banffshire, Scotland c1579. Although no record survives of his birth, it is known that he was 20 when he entered the Society of Jesus in 1599. He 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 the University of Olomouc and Brno in the present day Czech Republic. In 1596, aged seventeen, he was received into the Catholic Church at Louvain, Belgium. He joined the Society of Jesus 5 November 1599 at Brunn (Brno) and for the next 10 years lived in what is now Austria and Czech Republic, studying Theology and Philosophy and teaching in the Jesuit college in Vienna. In 1610 he was transferred to the French Province and ordained priest in Paris in 1611. After ordination he served in Rouen in Normandy where he made repeated entreaties to be sent to Scotland to minister to the few remaining Catholics in the Glasgow area, since it had become illegal to preach, proselytise for, or otherwise endorse Catholicism in 1550. In 1613 the Jesuit General, Claudio Aquaviva, consented to Ogilvie's desire to work in Scotland, and in autumn of that year he set off.
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, celebrating Mass clandestinely in private homes.
In 1614, he was betrayed and arrested in Glasgow and jailed in Paisley. He was tortured in an attempt to make him divulge the identities of other Catholics although he did not relent. Consequently he was convicted of high treason for refusing to accept the King's spiritual jurisdiction. On 10 March 1615, aged thirty-six years, he was executed at Glasgow Cross.
As a martyr of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation he was beatified in 1929 and canonised in 1976. He is the only post-Reformation saint from Scotland. His feast day is celebrated on 10 March. |