Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

A frenzied account of the persecution of Protestants in Europe in the 16th century, and one of the most famous pieces of propaganda ever written

There are few more potent books than Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Innumerable English and Scottish Protestant homes had a copy, and in many ways, it is the founding document of a new identity that emerged under Elizabeth I. In vigorous, outraged prose, Foxe dramatized the ＂persecutions and horrible troubles＂ of those who had fallen victim to the Catholics, with lurid details and illustrations intended to whip up the reader’s sense of horror and disgust. Foxe’s extraordinary book is a great work of propaganda, a founding Protestant text and a work of serious scholarship, as well as a mish-mash of half-truths and outrageous assertions.

This selection from Foxe, with a full introduction, notes, and reproductions of key illustrations, will be essential for anyone wishing to understand not only Elizabethan Britain, but also the core ideology that would underpin British anti-Catholicism as well as distance from, suspicion of and distate for continental Europe--an aversion that would last for centuries.

John Foxe (c. 1516-1587) was one of the most important early historians of Britain and the author of Actes and Monuments (traditionally known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs), which appeared in several different editions during and after his lifetime. He was tossed around by the changing nature of the Reformation in England, spending Mary I’s reign in exile. He returned to England once it was clear that Elizabeth I had embraced Protestantism, and continued to work on his gigantic work, begun some years earlier, and now incorporating the persecution of members of the True Church from the Roman Empire to the burning of Protestants under Mary. Its first publication in 1563, as a book of 1,800 pages, was a sensation.

Thomas Freeman (introducer) is a lecturer in History at the University of Essex. He is a leading expert on John Foxe and on the English Reformation more broadly.