Product Code Database
John Foxe (1516/1517 – 18 April 1587)"The patent of arms granted in 1590 to the family of John Foxe, and first printed by Maitland from a copy of 1692 in the college of arms, gives his birth year as 1516, and the date may have been supplied by his Samuel Foxe. But Samuel is very inaccurate in such matters; his diary misdates important happenings in his own life; and his Simeon Fox's statement is too precise to be disregarded." Mozley, 12. was an English , Theology, and historian, notable for his martyrology Foxe's Book of Martyrs, telling of Christianity martyrs throughout Western history, but particularly the sufferings of English Protestantism and proto-Protestants from the 14th century and in the reign of Mary I. The book was widely owned and read by English Puritans and helped to mould British opinion on the Catholic Church for several centuries.William Haller, Foxe's First Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963) argues that Actes and Monuments is a complex book, portraying the English church as a body of elect, whose history of suffering and dedication to the faith echo the history of Israel in the Old Testament.
Foxe took his bachelor's degree on 17 July 1537, his master's degree in July 1543, and was lecturer in logic in 1539–1540.Foxe wrote several Latin plays on biblical subjects, of which the best, De Christo triumphante or Christus triumphans, an allegorical verse drama on the history of the church, was printed in London in 1551 and by Oporinus in Basel in March 1556. It was performed at Cambridge and probably Oxford in the 1560s. The play was translated into French in 1562 and English in 1579. The latter translation was produced by Richard Day, son of the printer, John Day or Daye, who published Foxe's Actes and Monuments. Foxe's earliest extant literary creation is Titus et Gesippus (written in 1544), a Latin comedy based on Boccaccio. A series of letters in Foxe's handwriting dated to 1544–45, shows Foxe to be "a man of friendly disposition and warm sympathies, deeply religious, an ardent student, zealous in making acquaintance with scholars."Mozley, p. 18. By the time he was twenty-five, he had read the Latin and Greek fathers, the schoolmen, the canon law, and had "acquired no mean skill in the Hebrew language."Mozley, p. 20.
After being forced to abandon what might have been a promising academic career, Foxe experienced a period of dire need. Hugh Latimer invited Foxe to live with him, but Foxe eventually became a tutor in the household of Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford-on-Avon. Before leaving the Lucys, Foxe married Agnes Randall on 3 February 1547.Thomas S. Freeman, "Foxe, John", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). The reasons for Foxe's departure from the Lucys are unknown. According to a short remembrance written by in 1611 and appended to the 1641 Actes and Monuments, Foxe stayed with the Randalls in Coventry before returning to his parents in Coningsby. They had six children.John H. King, ed., Foxe's Book of Martyrs: Select Narratives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. xvii.
Foxe was ordained deacon by Nicholas Ridley on 24 June 1550. His circle of friends, associates, and supporters came to include John Hooper, William Turner, John Rogers, William Cecil, and most importantly John Bale, who was to become a close friend and "certainly encouraged, very probably guided, Foxe in the composition of his first martyrology." From 1548 to 1551, Foxe brought out one tract opposing the death penalty for adultery and another supporting ecclesiastical excommunication of those who he thought "veiled ambition under the cloak of Protestantism." He also worked unsuccessfully to prevent two burnings for religion that occurred during the reign of Edward VI.Mozley, pp. 31–36.
In the autumn of 1554, Foxe moved to Frankfurt, where he served as a preacher for the English church ministering to refugees in the city. There he was unwillingly drawn into a bitter theological controversy. One faction favoured the church polity and liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, while the other advocated the Reformed models promoted by John Calvin's Genevan church. The latter group, led by John Knox, was supported by Foxe; the former was led by Richard Cox. Eventually Knox, who seems to have acted with more magnanimity, was expelled, and in the autumn of 1555, Foxe and about twenty others also left Frankfurt.Mozley, pp. 44–46. The prayer book faction reported Knox as having written treason against the Emperor, and they also persuaded the city magistrates to enforce the Prayer Book service on the English church. Although Foxe clearly favoured Knox, he was irenic by temperament and expressed his disgust at "the violence of the warring factions".Mozley, 46.
Moving to Basel, Foxe worked with his fellow countrymen John Bale and Lawrence Humphrey at the drudgery of proofreading. (Educated Englishmen were noted for their learning, industry and honesty and "would also be the last persons to quarrel with their bread and butter." No knowledge of German or French was required because the English tended to socialise with one another and could communicate with scholars in Latin.)Mozley, pp. 50–51 and 57. Foxe laboured over the proofreading of Thomas Cranmer's second book on the Eucharist in the printing house of Johann Herbst (or Oporinus), a book he thought "crabbed and obscure" (Mozley, p. 46) and which proved too controversial to be printed. (Mozley, p. 56) Foxe also served as an assistant to Hieronymus Froben in the production of a Latin edition of St. John Chrysostom's works. Foxe also completed and had printed a religious drama, Christus Triumphans (1556), in Latin verse. Yet despite receiving occasional financial contributions from English merchants on the continent, Foxe seems to have lived very close to the margin and been "wretchedly poor."Mozley, p. 51.
When Foxe received reports from England about the ongoing religious persecution there, he wrote a pamphlet urging the English nobility to use their influence with the queen to halt it. Foxe feared that the appeal would be useless, and his fears proved correct.The pamphlet, Ad inclytos ad praepotentes Angliae proceres … supplicatio (1557) was issued from the press of Oporinus. When Knox attacked Mary Stuart in his now famous The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, Foxe apparently criticized Knox's "rude vehemency" although their friendship seems to have remained unimpaired.Mozley, p. 58.
Foxe was ordained a priest by his friend Edmund Grindal, now Bishop of London, but he "was something of a puritan, and like many of the exiles, had scruples about wearing the clerical vestments laid down in the queen's injunctions of 1559." Many of his friends eventually conformed, but Foxe was "more stubborn or single-minded." Some tried to find him preferments in the new regime, but it "was not easy to help a man of so singularly unworldly a nature, who scorned to use his powerful friendships to advance himself."Mozley, p. 63.
As word of the contemporary English persecution made its way to the continent, Foxe began to collect materials to continue his story to the present. He published the first true Latin edition of his famous book at Basel in August 1559.Mozley, 118–123.Fox J (1559) Rerum in ecclesia gestarum … pars prima, in qua primum de rebus per Angliam et Scotiam gestis atque in primis de horrenda sub Maria nuper regina persecutione narratio continetur, at google books at 08 August 2018. Or for free download from the Bavarian State Library. Of course, it was difficult to write contemporary English history while living (as he later said) "in the far parts of Germany, where few friends, no conference, and small information could be had."Mozley, 124. But Foxe, who had left England poor and unknown, returned only poor. He had gained "a substantial reputation" through his Latin work.
Intending to strengthen his book against his critics, and being flooded by new material brought to light by the publication of the first edition,"Personal testimonies poured in on Foxe without solicitation as people sought to exonerate themselves and accuse or eulogize others." Freeman, ODNB. Foxe put together a second edition in 1570 and where the charges of his critics had been reasonably accurate, Foxe removed the offending passages. Where he could rebut the charges, "he mounted a vigorous counter-attack, seeking to crush his opponent under piles of documents."Freeman, ODNB: "In short, Foxe reacted to Harpsfield's challenge like the commander of a besieged city, abandoning what could not be defended and fortifying what could. Harpsfield drove Foxe to more intensive and extensive research and made his martyrology a more impressive, although not necessarily more accurate, work of scholarship." Even though he deleted material that had been included in the first edition, the second edition was nearly double the size of the first, "two gigantic folio volumes, with 2300 very large pages" of double-columned text.Mozley, p. 141.
The edition was well received by the English church, and the upper house of the convocation of Canterbury meeting in 1571, ordered that a copy of the Bishop's Bible and "that full history entitled Monuments of Martyrs" be installed in every cathedral church and that church officials place copies in their houses for the use of servants and visitors. The decision was of certain benefit to Foxe's printer Day because he had taken great financial risks printing such a mammoth work.Mozley, p. 147.
Foxe's material is more accurate when he deals with his own period, although it is selectively presented, and the book is not an impartial account. Sometimes Foxe copied documents verbatim; sometimes he adapted them to his own use. Foxe's method of using his sources "proclaims the honest man, the sincere seeker after truth."Mozley, 168. "What the intent and custom is of the papists to do, I cannot tell: for mine own I will say, although many other vices I have, yet from this one I have always of nature abhorred, wittingly to deceive any man or child, so near as I could, much less the church of God, whom I with all my heart do reverence, and with fear obey." A&M, 3, p. 393.
Foxe often treated his material casually, and any reader "must be prepared to meet plenty of small errors and inconsistencies."Mozley, p. 155. Furthermore, Foxe did not hold to later notions of neutrality or objectivity. He made unambiguous side glosses on his text, such as "Mark the apish pageants of these popelings" and "This answer smelleth of forging and crafty packing",Mozley, p. 157. as Foxe's age was one of strong language as well as of cruel deeds.Mozley, 158. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica went so far as to accuse Foxe of "wilful falsification of evidence." Nevertheless, Foxe is "factually detailed and preserves much firsthand material on the English Reformation unobtainable elsewhere."2009 Encyclopædia Britannica. According to J. F. Mozley, Foxe presented "lifelike and vivid pictures of the manners and feelings of the day, full of details that could never have been invented by a forger."Mozley, p. 168.
In some cases, Foxe's reports were denied with incredulity by Catholic commentators: for example, Foxe claimed that seven people were burnt for teaching their children the Pater Noster, Nicene Creed and Ten Commandments in English. Contemporary Jesuit Robert Persons wrote "Who will believe this monstrous tale ... fiction that we (Catholics) hold reading of scriptures in English ... as heresy?"
By 1565, Foxe had been caught up in the vestments controversy led at that time by his associate Crowley. Foxe's name was on a list of "godly preachers which have utterly forsaken Antichrist and all his Romish rags" that was presented to Lord Robert Dudley some time between 1561 and 1564.Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library, "Papers of state", 2.701. He was also one of the twenty clergymen who on 20 March 1565 petitioned to be allowed to choose not to wear vestments; but unlike many of the others, Foxe did not have a London benefice to lose when Archbishop Parker enforced conformity. Rather, when Crowley lost his position at St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Foxe may have preached in his stead.Mozley, p. 75. Mozley says that the registers show that Foxe was never officially vicar of St. Giles.
At some point before 1569, Foxe left Norfolk's house and moved to his own on Grub Street. Perhaps his move was motivated by his concerns about Norfolk's exceptionally poor judgment in attempting to marry Mary Stuart, which led to his imprisonment in the Tower in 1569 and his condemnation in 1572 following the Ridolfi Plot. Although Foxe had written Norfolk "a remarkably frank letter" about the injudiciousness of his course, after Norfolk's condemnation, he and Alexander Nowell ministered to the prisoner until his execution, which Foxe attended, on 2 June 1572.Mozley, p. 84. Norfolk left Foxe twenty pounds a year.
In 1570, at the request of Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, Foxe preached the Good Friday sermon at Paul's Cross. This lofty exposition of the Protestant doctrine of redemption and attack on the doctrinal errors of the Roman Catholic Church was enlarged and published that year as A Sermon of Christ Crucified.STC 11242. Another sermon Foxe preached seven years later at Paul's Cross resulted in his denunciation to the Queen by the French ambassador on grounds that Foxe had advocated the right of the Huguenots to take arms against their king. Foxe replied that he had been misunderstood: he had argued only that if the French king permitted no foreign power (the Pope) to rule over him, the French Protestants would immediately lay down their arms.Mozley, 93–94.
In 1571, Foxe edited an edition of the Old English gospels, in parallel with the Bishops' Bible translation, under the patronage of Matthew Parker, who was interested in Anglo-Saxon and whose chaplain, John Joscelyn was an Anglo-Saxon scholar. Foxe's introduction argues that the vernacular scripture was an ancient custom in England.Mozley, 80–81. "Anglo-Saxon studies were patronized by Archbishop Parker in the hope that they would demonstrate that the Church in England had always been independent of Rome. It was a preoccupation analogous to aspects of French Gallicanism." John Burrow, A History of Histories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, p. 295.
Certainly, Foxe had a hatred of cruelty in advance of his age. When a number of Flanders Anabaptists were taken by Elizabeth's government in 1572 and sentenced to be burnt, Foxe first wrote letters to the Queen and her council asking for their lives and then wrote to the prisoners themselves (having his Latin draft translated into Flemish) pleading with them to abandon what he considered their theological errors. Foxe even visited the Anabaptists in prison. (The attempted intercession was in vain; two were burnt at Smithfield "in great horror with roaring and crying.")Mozley, pp. 86–89.
John Day's son Richard, who knew Foxe well, described him in 1607 as an "excellent man … exceeding laborious in his pen … his learning inferior to none of his age and time; for his integrity of life a bright light to as many as knew him, beheld him, and lived with him" Mozley, 240–41. Foxe's funeral was accompanied "by crowds of mourners".Mozley, p. 240
By the end of the 17th century, however, the work tended to be abbreviated to include only "the most sensational episodes of torture and death", thus giving to Foxe's work "a lurid quality which was certainly far from the author's intention." Because Foxe was used to attack Catholicism and a rising tide of high-church Anglicanism, the book's credibility was challenged in the early 19th century by a number of authors, most importantly, Samuel R. Maitland.Freeman, ODNB. Maitland, Six letters on Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1837). In the words of one Catholic Victorian, after Maitland's critique, "no one with any literary pretensions … ventured to quote Foxe as an authority."D. Trenow, "The Credibility of John Foxe, the 'martyrologist' (1868), quoted in Freeman, ODNB. Further analysis of Maitland's criticism in the 21st century has in the words of David Loades, that Maitland "deserves to be treated with genuine, but limited, respect. His demolition of the martyrologist's history of the Waldenses, and of some of his other medieval reconstructions, was accurate up to a point, but he never addressed those parts of the Acts and Monuments where Foxe was at his strongest, and his general conclusion that the work was nothing but a tissue of fabrications and distortions is not supported by modern analysis."David Loades, "The Maitland Controversy"
It was not until J. F. Mozley published John Foxe and His Book, in 1940, that Foxe's rehabilitation as a historian began, initiating a controversy that has continued to the present. Recent renewed interest in Foxe as a seminal figure in early modern studies created a demand for a new critical edition of the Actes and Monuments: Foxe's Book of Martyrs Variorum Edition.
In the words of Thomas S. Freeman, one of the most important living Foxe scholars, "current scholarship has formed a more complex and nuanced estimate of the accuracy of Acts and Monuments … Perhaps Foxe may be most profitably seen in the same light as a barrister pleading a case for a client he knows to be innocent and whom he is determined to save. Like the hypothetical barrister, Foxe had to deal with the evidence of what actually happened, evidence that he was rarely in a position to forge. But he would not present facts damaging to his client, and he had the skills that enabled him to arrange the evidence so as to make it conform to what he wanted it to say. Like the barrister, Foxe presents crucial evidence and tells one side of a story which must be heard. But he should never be read uncritically, and his partisan objectives should always be kept in mind."Freeman, ODNB.
|
|
