SOURCE: Fichte, Joerg O. “Foxe's Acts and Monuments: The Spirit's Triumph over the Flesh.” In The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature, edited by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, pp. 167-79. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999.

[In the following essay, Fichte examines the willingness and ability of Protestant martyrs to allow the spirit and the mind to overcome the body, as told in Foxe's record.]

Once Foxe's account of the history of the true Church reached the stage of the Marian persecutions, it grew and swelled, being amplified in each successive edition of the work, as more and more documents came to light. The grisly total of the people executed within four years came to nearly three hundred, the vast majority of them being burned at the stake, with a few others dying in prison of either maltreatment or starvation. It was the greatest number of men, women and children persecuted and killed for their religious belief in British history, unequalled by the occasional heresy victims during the reign of Henry VIII or the recusants (mostly Jesuit priests) executed for treason during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Although the complete title of the first English edition (1563) of Foxe's book was Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great persecutions & horrible troubles, that haue bene wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, speciallye in this Realme of England and Scotlande, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande, unto the tyme nowe present, the emphasis was on ‘the tyme nowe present’, to be precise, on the years 1555 through 1558: the burnings started on 4 February 1555 and ended on 10 November 1558, about one week prior to the death of Queen Mary.

Undertaking to write a history of persecutions practised by the representatives of the Roman Church in England, Foxe encountered various difficulties, which extended from the very elementary task of gathering, assembling and editing the material passed on to him by Grindal in Strasbourg to conceiving of a form in which to present this material that was to become the Protestant History of the Church in England. Modern scholarship, starting with J. F. Mozley and William Haller, has not only reestablished Foxe's reputation as a reliable, though partisan historian, challenged by Maitland and others in the nineteenth century,¹ but has also identified the models (Eusebius, Augustine, Bale and Flacius Illyricus) on which Foxe based his grand design, Bale's Image of Both Churches being foremost among these.² This grand design, tracing the history of the Church as ‘the age-long contention of Christ and Antichrist, of the Church and the world, and of the two Churches within the Church’, culminated in the present, when the true Church faced persecutions rivalling or surpassing those endured by the members of the Primitive Church.³ With the beginning of the year 1555, the general history of the Church turned into a glorious martyrology chronicling the fate of the nearly three hundred English Protestant martyrs who sealed their faith with their death. At that moment in time new models were needed to convey Foxe's message because traditional Catholic hagiography did not lend itself to demonstrating the faith of the Protestant witnesses. In the preface ‘Ad doctum lectorem’ Foxe inveighed against the Legenda Aurea, the most popular collection of saints’ lives, because of its lies, especially the fictitious histories and miracles, and he extended this condemnation to the ‘Vitis Patrum, aut Festivali, aut Dormisecure, cæterisque papisticis istis τοι̑ς τω̑ν λἠρων λἠροις’.⁴ Against these he adduced the Protestant martyrs: ‘Nunc verò martyrum horum non à nobis ficta, sed inflicta à vobis …’.⁵ Having asserted the truthfulness of their lives, he proceeded to distinguish the true from the false martyrs: ‘Si non pæna, sed causa martyrem faciat, cur non unum Cranmerum sexcentis Becketis Cantuariensibus non conferam, sed prætulerim?’⁶ Beckett and those like him were just pseudomartyrs who died for the wrong cause.

In view of this outright condemnation of the traditional Catholic hagiography, it appears as if the lives of the saints and martyrs were no fitting mould for the new Protestant witnesses. This impression, however, is incorrect, since Foxe did not reject the entire pantheon of Catholic martyrs. Rather, he insisted on the veracity of the accounts of their lives, which seemed to be assured for those martyrs who died during the early persecutions of the Primitive Church. In the preface ‘To the True and Faithful Congregation of Christ's Universal Church’ he stated:

Now then if martyrs are to be compared with martyrs, I see no cause why the martyrs of our time deserve any less commendation than the others in the primitive church; which assuredly are inferior unto them in no point of praise, whether we view the number of them that suffered, or greatness of their torments, or their constancy in dying, or also consider the fruit that they brought, to the amendment of posterity, and increase of the gospel.⁷

Although Foxe cited only two examples, St Lawrence and St Polycarp, in the Marian part, with whom he compared Lawrence Saunders and John Hooper, he generally made use of the traditional acta martyrum, modifying their form to suit his purpose of writing a Protestant hagiography.⁸

In reference to this conference the concepts ‘greatness of their torments’ and ‘constancy in dying’ are the relevant issues, since they touch on both man's physical and spiritual nature. I take ‘physical’ to mean the corporeal nature of man comprising his body and his flesh, and ‘spiritual’ to refer to man's mind and soul. The old dichotomies of body and soul, spirit and flesh, and mind and matter are subsumed under these larger categories, which Foxe often calls spirit and flesh, when referring to man's corporeal and spiritual nature. Flesh is rarely the sinful element in man, fighting against his soul or spirit, nor does it refer to man's otherness and separation from God as opposed to man's right relationship with God as in St Paul.⁹ Conceived of as opposition, flesh and spirit simply mean contrary impulses within man that are not to be identified with actual parts of his anatomy.¹⁰

Although Foxe tends to emphasize the ease with which the Protestant martyrs overcame their fear of bodily harm—only very few recanted under duress¹¹—we are given occasional glimpses of the inner conflict people experienced on their way to the stake. Rawlins White is a case in point, although his temptation was more subtle than the traditional fight of the spirit and the flesh: he was not moved from his purpose by any fear of pain or torment; rather he was momentarily distracted by the sight of his wife and children, lamenting his impending death.

But he soon after, as though he had misliked the infirmity of his flesh, began to be as it were altogether angry with himself; insomuch that in striking his breast with his hand he used these words: ‘Ah flesh! stayest thou me so? wouldest thou fain prevail? Well, I tell thee, do what thou canst, thou shalt not, by God's grace, have the victory.’¹²

In order to conquer the impulse of his flesh, White kneeled down, kissed the ground and reminded himself that his flesh was just earth and dust, to which it now had to return. Having thus gained the upper hand over his body, he went cheerfully to the stake. Still, he did not trust himself, and thus he turned to the reporter of this account and told him: ‘I feel a great fighting between the flesh and the spirit, and the flesh would very fain have his swinge; and therefore I pray you, when you see me any thing tempted, hold your finger up to me, and I trust I shall remember myself.’¹³ This reminder was not needed, however; White died bravely and appeared to be rejuvenated in the process of dying, so ‘that he seemed to be altogether angelical’.¹⁴ The physical changes in White's nature are a matter of appearance, that is, they are recorded by the reporter as he perceived them. Although a matter of individual perception, they serve an ulterior purpose: they illustrate the triumph of the spirit over the body, a body that already approaches the perfect state of the saintly bodies in paradise. Thus, White's successful subjection of his flesh rebelling against his spirit carries with it the promise of heavenly reward for those who die as martyrs to their faith.¹⁵

The primacy of the spirit over the flesh is expressed nowhere better than in the story of Thomas Whittle, a repentant recanter who could find no comfort in the deliverance of his body because he was sorely troubled by his conscience. Thus, he revoked his recantation in order to save his immortal soul. In a letter to his fellow Protestants Filles and Cutbert, he stated the relation between body and soul with great precision:

Welfare to the soul, is repentance of sin, faithful affiance in Christ Jesus, and a godly life. Welfare to the body, is the health of the same, with all necessary things for this body-life. The soul of man is immortal, and therefore ought to be well kept, lest immortality to joy should turn to immortality of sorrow. As for the body, be it never so well kept and much made of, yet shortly by nature will it perish and decay: but those that are ingrafted and incorporated into Christ by true faith, feeling the motion of God's Holy Spirit as a pledge of their election and inheritance, exciting and stirring them not only to seek heavenly things, but also to hate vice, and embrace virtue, will not only do these things, but also, if need require, will gladly take up their cross and follow their Captain, their King, and their Saviour Jesus Christ … against that false and antichristian doctrine and religion now used …¹⁶

Incorporation into Christ, that is, partaking of Christ's holy body, must be the goal of the elect, even if this means the destruction of the earthly body by those who have forsaken Christ's words recorded in the Gospel. Their enticements are ‘the enticements of the world and the flesh, which lead to damnation’.¹⁷ Thus, flesh is here associated with the False (Catholic) and spirit with the True (Protestant) Church, as flesh was once associated with the pagans and spirit with the martyrs of the Primitive Church.

Consequently, the control of the mind over the body became an essential part of any martyr's struggle and the focus of the martyrologist's concern. Thus, the acta martyrum, chronicling the trials of the early martyrs, necessarily produced certain patterns on which these lives were modelled. A typical life would feature the following events, which still formed the matrix of Foxe's Protestant acts, although the antagonists were now the representatives of the Catholic Church and the populace took no active part in the persecutions.

The story began with the arrest of the protagonist, who because of his activities had aroused the suspicions of the Roman authorities. He was hailed before the governor, interrogated and given the opportunity to recant. Upon his refusal the protagonist was imprisoned, where he was visited by members of his family and repeatedly entreated to renounce his allegiance to Christ. At this time or later the prospective martyrs received prophetic dreams foretelling the nature of their martyrdom. Then the protagonist, now a confessor, was once more brought before the governor. Another interrogation began that normally turned into a lengthy disputation on the existence of and belief in Christ. The frustrated authorities now threatened the unrepentant accused with torture and often applied it, very much to the delight of the assembled crowd, which finally demanded the execution of the Christian hero stubbornly clinging to his faith. The manner of execution varied, burning and death in the amphitheatre being the most common forms. The process was often accompanied by miracles like providential weather conditions, voices speaking from heaven, strange apparitions, and the survival of the martyr intact. Whatever form of execution was decreed, the performance turned into a drama displaying not only the protagonist's superhuman courage but also demonstrating God's miraculous intervention on behalf of his steadfast witness.¹⁸ The spectacular, theatrical aspects of the performance with the martyr acting out his destiny and death were focused upon. He occupied the centre stage, where he became a glorious example of human fortitude sustained by divine power. By his death he achieved eternal life and joined the ranks of God's saints. Pain, torment, and physical agony inflicted upon the martyr were perceived by the bystanders only; the martyr himself did not experience them. His belief made him insensible to the physicality of his being and therefore to pain—this at least was the message the martyrologist wanted to convey, who converted the object of his admiration into an incorporeal being touched by the divine spirit. Despite the cruelty of the tortures graphically described, we do not get a sense of real suffering because the martyr was sustained by his belief in God and by God's grace that transformed the martyr himself into a vehicle of grace. The intended destruction of the body, often effected through baptism by fire, refined the martyrs to spiritual essence and thus elevated them to the status of saintly perfection. All impurities were burned away, often leaving an intact body on earth and a disembodied soul in heaven.

Foxe was obviously familiar with this basic pattern, which he reduced to a three-act drama: initial conflict with the Catholic Church and apprehension by the authorities, followed by a lengthy interrogation and the martyr's asseveration of his faith based on the Bible, and finally his condemnation and death as an example of Christian fortitude.¹⁹ His treatment of the early martyrs of the Primitive Church in Book I and his comparison of the respective martyrdom of John Hooper and St Polycarp illustrate Foxe's familiarity with the traditional model set forth in the acta martyrum. Both were bishops, ‘in teaching, alike diligent … ; in zeal fervent, in life unspotted, in manners and conversation inculpable’;²⁰ both were put to the fire (‘though Polycarp, being set in the flame … was kept by miracle from the torment of the fire’);²¹ and both showed patience and constancy at the time of their suffering. They even refused to be tied to the stake. Yet there was a difference: ‘In this the martyrdom of master Hooper may seem in suffering to go before, though in time it followed the martyrdom of Polycarp, for that he was both longer in prison, and there also so cruelly handled by the malice of his keepers, as I think none of the old martyrs ever suffered the like.’²² Moreover, Polycarp's executioners ‘ministered to him a quick despatch, moved belike by some compassion not to have him stand in the torment; whereas the tormentors of master Hooper suffered him, without all compassion, to stand three quarters of an hour in the fire.’²³

The woodcut showing Hooper, muscular, erect and relaxed like a true Christian athlete, standing unperturbed in the fire belies the story told of him by Foxe. Although all the preparations were taken for a quick dispatch (a pound of gunpowder had been placed under each arm) and the victim had prepared himself spiritually and mentally for his death, circumstances like a badly made fire of green fagots and the wind blowing from the wrong direction prolonged Hooper's agony. And agony it must have been, as Foxe's vivid description presents it. After the first fire had only touched Hooper, a second fire was made, this time with dry fagots, ‘that burned at the nether parts, but had small power above’.²⁴ Thus tormented, Hooper implored Christ to have mercy on him and shouted: ‘For God's love, good people, let me have more fire!’²⁵

The third fire was kindled within a while after, which was more extreme than the other two: and then the bladders of gunpowder brake, which did him small good, they were so placed, and the wind had such power. In the which fire he prayed with somewhat a loud voice, ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me; Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!’ And these were the last words he was heard to utter. But when he was black in the mouth, and his tongue swollen, that he could not speak, yet his lips went till they were shrunk to the gums: and he knocked his breast with his hands, until one of his arms fell off, and then knocked still with the other, what time the fat, water, and blood dropped out at his fingers' ends, until by renewing of the fire his strength was gone, and his hand did cleave fast, in knocking, to the iron upon his breast. So immediately, bowing forwards, he yielded up his sprit.²⁶

Admittedly, this is one of the most gruesome descriptions contained in the Acts and Monuments, the unspeakable horror of which almost negates Foxe's intention to transcend Hooper's physical death by having him perform symbolic Christlike gestures. Hooper modelled his behaviour on Christ, whose passion served as prototype for all of Foxe's acts. Although plagued by self-doubts as Christ at Gethsemane—‘suspecting the frailty and weakness of the flesh, but having assured confidence in God's strength’²⁷—he approached the stake of his own accord, embracing and kissing two bundles of reeds, and asking God to forgive his executioner. He bore the horrible torments patiently as a lamb, never wavering nor faltering until he died after having stood three quarters of an hour in the fire. He died in imitation of and in Christ as did the early martyrs of the Primitive Church but he was not accorded the miraculous intervention which made their death appear easy and blissful. Of Polycarp we read that his body was surrounded by flames in the shape of a vault. ‘And he was within it not as burning flesh but rather as bread being baked, or like gold and silver being purified in a smelting-furnace.’²⁸ Polycarps's death is couched in metaphors and thus loses its horror. There was even a fragrance like incense issuing from the body, which survived intact and was later on cremated, as was the custom. The remains were buried in a spot that was to become a memorial site, where the commemoration of the saint was to strengthen the resolution of future martyrs.

Hooper's body was mutilated, scorched and ripped asunder (his very bowels fell out after his abdominal parts had been burned away) and he was denied a Christian burial. Unlike the fragmentized body of the Catholic saint that was venerated as a container of divine presence, the body of the heretic Hooper was annihilated by the authorities. Foxe described this process of extirpation in all of its gruesome details because he wanted to indict the ‘persecutors of God's truth, commonly called papists’,²⁹ whom he admonished in one of his prefaces:

… see and behold, I beseech you, here in this story the pitiful slaughter of your butchery! Behold your own handy work! consider the number, almost out of number, of so many silly and simple lambs of Christ, whose blood you have sought and sucked; whose lives you have vexed; whose bodies you have slain, racked and tormented … without mercy, without measure, without all sense of humanity!³⁰

This impassioned indictment of the cruelties inflicted on the hapless Protestant confessors was no simple rhetorical exercise; it was Foxe's cri du coeur, who protested against the inhumanity of the persecutors. The body was real and the pains of those dying in the flames were real. There was never any doubt about this elementary fact, even though Foxe occasionally shifted from a realistic to a symbolic narrative reminiscent of the descriptions found in the acta martyrum in order to stress the sanctification of the elect. Thus, the account of the death of John Rogers, ‘the first proto-martyr of all the blessed company that suffered in queen Mary's time’,³¹ still followed the ancient model more closely than that of John Hooper's agonizing death. Rogers was prepared to seal with his blood what he had preached, undaunted by the charge of heresy laid against him. He said the psalm ‘Miserere’ not as a penitential psalm but ‘as a confirmation of the truth of his beliefs’,³² whereupon the people present rejoiced in his constancy. Then the fire was kindled, ‘and when it [the fire] had taken hold both upon his legs and shoulders, he, as one feeling no smart, washed his hands in the flame, as though it had been in cold water’.³³ We are reminded of St Cecilia, who sat in scalding hot water for a day and a night and did not even sweat, or of St Juliana, who, when put into a vessel of boiling lead, found it cool and pleasant, or of St Dorothy, who, suffering the same fate, ‘felt none disease ne harm, but a precious ointment of balm’.³⁴ The model for the death of this proto-martyr is readily apparent. Foxe still followed the established pattern of the acta martyrum, continued also in the much maligned Legenda Aurea, where the martyrs either survived the torments inflicted upon them unscathed or died blissfully sustained by their unshakable belief in God's providence, by which they were chosen as His elect.

Many of Foxe's shorter entries, that is, mostly the accounts describing the persecution and death of the more humble laymen, artisans, husbandmen and women, who make up the bulk of the condemned, follow the model set by John Rogers's death. The condemned suffer joyfully or show joyful constancy or die with great comfort or sleep in the Lord or yield their lives unto the Lord as in a slumber, to quote some of the phrases most frequently used by Foxe. Often these accounts are nothing more than short notices in the form of obituaries, reporting the names and some scant biographical details together with the articles upon which the accused were condemned for heresy. We are struck by the repetitive nature of these biographies. Gestures, expressions and last words repeat themselves, mostly following the example of Jesus Christ, on whose passion they are modelled, as was the death of the proto-martyr John Rogers. Foxe does not seem to be interested in particulars; rather, he reiterates the final moments in the lives of these martyrs in order to create a Protestant ars moriendi.³⁵ By recourse to analogy as a descriptive technique a uniformity of accounts emerges during the last two years of the Marian persecution, when the mass burnings increased. The focus is clearly on the moment of death, when those condemned as heretics prove by their fortitude and constancy to be God's elect, justifying their state of grace by their heroic death.

Interspersed into these collective accounts of holy dying and of general persecution are occasional individual descriptions, in order to single out special feats of fortitude or of individual heroism. Dirick Carver and George Roper leaped to the stake in the manner of Christian athletes. Rose Allin had her hand seared by Edmund Tyrrel and endured the torture without flinching, as did Thomas Tomkins before her, whose hand was burned off by Bishop Bonner during an interrogation. In both cases Foxe supplied a very graphic description of the sinews bursting in the flames. Still, neither Rose Allin nor Thomas Tomkins showed any sign of pain, both being comforted and sustained by their faith in God. Of Tomkins we read ‘that his spirit was so rapt, that he felt no pain’,³⁶ whereas Allin, being asked how she could abide the painful burning of her hand, said: ‘… at first it was some grief to her, but afterward, the longer she burned, the less she felt, or well near none at all’.³⁷ Obviously, the burning was painful, but the bodily pain was bearable because the spirit of both was strengthened by their belief. They became examples of steadfastness just as Mucius Scaevola with whom they were compared. Yet there was more to it. For Tomkins as well as Allin the burning of the hand was a prelude to their glorious death as Christian martyrs. Their constancy of body exemplified their constancy of mind in contrast to Alice Coberly, who recanted after being burned by touching a fire-hot key, placed in the grass by the prison keeper's wife. ‘Whereupon she, crying out at the sudden burning of hand, “Ah! thou drab,” quoth the other, “thou that canst not abide the burning of the key, how wilt thou be able to abide burning thy whole body?” and so she afterward revoked.’³⁸ As the story of Alice Coberly illustrates, the body was a frail vessel, unless it was sustained by an indomitable spirit, which received its strength from God, who graced his elect with endurance or oblivion to pain.

Women were traditionally regarded as such frail vessels and Foxe made it abundantly clear that he shared this view. Over and over again he complemented his female victims on overcoming their supposed weakness and physical inferiority. Of Joan Lashford he said: ‘This godly damosel, feeble and tender of age, yet strong by grace, in this her confession and faith stood so firm, that neither the flattering promises, nor the violent threats of the bishops, could turn her.’³⁹ Cicely Ormes ‘was a very simple woman, but yet zealous in the Lord's cause’,⁴⁰ and Prest's wife (she is not given the distinction of a first name) ‘was as simple a woman to see to, as any man might behold’.⁴¹ Yet, ‘[s]he had a cheerful countenance, so lively, as though she had been prepared for that day of her marriage to meet the Lamb’.⁴² Foxe's admiration for the valour of these women is tinged with paternalistic benevolence. Women are often treated not within their own rights but seen as either adjuncts to their husbands (Mrs Prest) or as fulfilling certain social roles. Still, these women have been called and are numbered among the elect, illustrating ‘that God uses the weakest of human agents in extraordinary ways’.⁴³ Foxe describes the fate of fifty-five women, dying steadfastly for their belief as the men did, their numbers increasing annually as the Marian persecutions went on. In comparison with the records of the trials of men, especially those of the churchmen, the information on most women contained in the Acts and Monuments is scant because the women, with a few notable exceptions, have left no monuments. They live only through their acts, that is, through their martyrdom.

The records of the interrogation, condemnation and execution of seven bishops and seventeen clergymen of non-episcopal rank are by necessity more extensive: by necessity because the authorities were more interested in converting the spiritual leaders of the Protestant Reformation, no matter how long it took to extract the wished-for recantation. Consequently, the proceedings, mostly in the form of elaborate theological debates, constitute the major part of the lives of the churchmen. Obviously, this portion corresponds to the disputes and confrontations between the worldly authorities and the Christian martyrs in the acta martyrum. These theological debates on the articles put before those accused of heresy are at the very centre of the respective reports because they serve the purpose of identifying essential doctrinal differences. Although these are peripheral to this investigation, let me recall briefly that the central issue in almost all heresy trials was the doctrine of transubstantiation.⁴⁴ The number of the sacraments, purgatory, the intercessory power of saints, mass, auricular confession, vestments, images and other ceremonies were of secondary importance in comparison to the question of transubstantiation. Thus, the learned debates carried on between the Protestant divines and Bishop Bonner and the other Catholic clerics were meant to be expositions of essential Protestant doctrinal points and refutations of Catholic articles of faith. Since the Protestants always emerged victoriously from these debates, the frustrated Catholics occasionally resorted to physical violence, in order to suppress their opponents. Yet even under torture like the racking endured by Cutbert Symson the Protestants would persevere and refute the articles laid before them. The records of these proceedings are the true testimony of the Protestant witnesses written down and passed on to the Protestant community. The Protestant martyrs live through the word not through the sanctified body like the Catholic saints,⁴⁵ a fact emphasized by the score of letters appended to the vita of each prominent martyr, which comprise his textual body.⁴⁶ Unlike the corporeal body of the martyrs this textual body is exempted from destruction. As a matter of fact, the martyrs live on as texts, continuing their testimony in written form long after their bodies have been incinerated at the stake. Ironically, by physically destroying the heretics but not suppressing their writings in toto, the Catholic authorities, looking back on a long tradition of veneration of the sanctified body, created a new order of disembodied saints, whose testimony was to become the spiritual body of Protestant doctrine.

Women, whose courage and steadfastness in the face of death were praised by Foxe, participated only marginally in this textual body. With the exception of Anne Askew and Lady Jane Grey, who left us a small corpus of writings, women were usually silent, conforming to their traditional social role as silent, chaste and obedient members of society. There are no letters and few records of their examinations that mark them as distinctly textual individuals. This does not mean that women did not participate in the spiritual reorientation brought about by the Reformation. They obviously did because ‘under early Protestantism women gained admittance to a life of prayer and learning on a more equal basis with men’.⁴⁷ Within the Protestant patriarchal family women occupied an important place because they shared together with the head of the family the duty of instructing the children in the precepts of Christian living. In order to do this wives were taught to read the Scriptures in translation. This at least was the case under the reign of Edward VI, when women who did not belong to the nobility, together with lower-class men had been readmitted to the reading of the Bible, from which a statute of 1543 had excluded them.⁴⁸ Being trained in Scripture, the women in Foxe's Acts and Monuments occasionally confounded their Catholic interrogators with their profound knowledge of the Biblical text. Especially Anne Askew, whose (auto)biographical records called The first Examinacyon of Anne Askewe, latelye martyred in Smythfelde, by the wycked synagoge of Antichrist, with the Elucydacyon of Johan Bale and The Lattre Examinacyon of Anne Askewe, latelye martyred in Smythfelde, by the wycked Synagoge of Antichrist, with the Elucydacyon of Johan Bale, published in 1546 and 1547 in Wesel,⁴⁹ may have been an early model for the Protestant saint's life,⁵⁰ challenged the male prerogative to expound Scripture. She was never at a loss for an answer and thus she silenced her opponents with her witty repartees, who by putting her on the rack tried to break her rebellious spirit and make her reveal the names of possible co-conspirators.⁵¹ In contrast to Anne Askew, Elizabeth Young, although as headstrong as Anne, survived the interrogations because Queen Mary's reign was nearing its end. She, too, was an expert in Scripture and used it to refute her opponents. Because of her knowledge she was accused of being a priest's woman, and when she denied this accusation, the bishop's chancellor retorted angrily: ‘Thou hast read a little in the Bible or Testament, and thou thinkest that thou art able to reason with a doctor that hath gone to school thirty years.’⁵²

Both of these women, like many other women in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, demonstrated their knowledge of Scripture, a fact which made them suspect to the authorities. Thus, women participated in the text, but with few exceptions they were not text makers themselves as were the men, especially the churchmen, whose copious letters survived their physical death. Although these martyred women testify to a nascent Anglican spirituality for women—Anne Askew may very well have served as a role model—they were largely excluded from the new textual body constituted by the Acts and Monuments. Unlike the female Catholic saints, who were present through their intercessory power as well as through their sanctified body, their Protestant sisters lacked this presence, although they, too, had the assurance of being a part of Christ's body of saints. Since the Protestants ‘repute not their ashes, chains, and swerds [swords] in the stead of relics’⁵³ but texts only, the male martyrs, converting their bodies into texts, were in a privileged position. Both the men and the women in the Acts and Monuments who sacrificed their mortal body to the health of their immortal soul might be examples of true Christian fortitude, but the men alone lived on through the textual monuments, whereas the women were largely restricted to the factual acts. They did not participate in the evolving spiritual body of Protestant doctrine, which appears to have been a male domain.

Notes

1. J. F. Mozley, John Foxe and his Book (London, 1940), pp. 175-203.

2. William Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London, 1963), pp. 63-70.

3. William Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, p. 137.

4. John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments. With a Life of the Martyrologist, and Vindication of the Work, ed. George Townsend (London, 1841; repr. New York, 1965), I, xi. Although this nineteenth-century edition is based on the 1583 edition, with various additions from earlier editions, and modernized, it has been used because of its easy accessibility. All quotations have been taken from this edition.

5. Ibid., p. xi.

6. Ibid., p. xi.

7. Ibid., p. xxvi.

8. For Foxe's treatment of the early martyrs of the Primitive Church, see John R. Knott, ‘John Foxe and the Joy of Suffering’, Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1996) 722-24.

9. Rm. 8:1-17; Ga. 5:13-26.

10. See also Rosalie Osmond, Mutual Accusation: Seventeenth-Century Body and Soul Dialogues in their Literary and Theological Context (Toronto, 1990), pp. 21-36.

11. Some of the notable examples were Judge Hales, one Thacker and Richard Denton. Thomas Whittle, Archbishop Cranmer and Thomas Benbridge were repentant recanters, who revoked their recantations and were burned at the stake. John Cheke also recanted and then died of sorrow. Gina Alexander, ‘Bonner and the Marian Persecutions’, History 60 (1975) 374-91, shows, though, that many brought in for questioning were released again after they had been convinced by the authorities that the doctrine and practices they had followed in Edward's reign were false. These, of course, are not included in Foxe's Acts and Monuments.

12. Acts and Monuments, VII, 32.

13. Acts and Monuments, VII, p. 32.

14. Ibid., p. 33.

15. We find a similar description of Latimer, who regains his dignity in the face of death. Cf. Acts and Monuments, VII, 549.

16. Ibid., pp. 729-30.

17. Ibid., p. 730.

18. Cf. Chris Jones, ‘Women, Death, and the Law During the Christian Persecutions’, in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford, 1993), pp. 28-30.

19. Cf. Warren W. Wooden, John Foxe (Boston, 1983), pp. 60-61.

20. Acts and Monuments, VI, 661.

21. Ibid., p. 661.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., p. 662.

24. Ibid., p. 658.

25. Ibid.

26. Acts and Monuments, VI, p. 658.

27. Ibid., p. 657.

28. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, ed. and trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford, 1972), p. 15.

29. Acts and Monuments, I, xii.

30. Acts and Monuments, I, p. xii.

31. Ibid., VI, 612.

32. Lydia Whitehead, ‘A poena et culpa: Penitence, Confidence and the Miserere in Foxe's Actes and Monuments’, Renaissance Studies 4 (1990), 296.

33. Acts and Monuments, VI, 611.

34. The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton, ed. F. S. Ellis (London, 1900), VI, 252-53, III, 49 and VII, 43.

35. Cf. Warren W. Wooden, John Foxe, pp. 44-48.

36. Acts and Monuments, VI, 718.

37. Ibid., VIII, 386.

38. Ibid., 104-105.

39. Acts and Monuments, VII, 749-50.

40. Ibid., VIII, 428.

41. Ibid., p. 503.

42. Ibid.

43. Ellen Macek, ‘The Emergence of a Feminine Spirituality in The Book of Martyrs’, Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988), 68.

44. V. Norskov Olsen, John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church (Berkeley, 1973), p. 135. Cf. also Janel M. Mueller, ‘Pain, Persecution, and the Construction of Selfhood in Foxe's Acts and Monuments’, in Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, ed. Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 169-73.

45. This fact, apparently, was not generally understood, as the following description of John Hullier's death illustrates. Once his flesh had been consumed, his remains were parcelled out like those of a Catholic saint: ‘Of the people, some took what they could get of him, as pieces of bones. One had his heart, the which was distributed so far as it would go; one took the scalp, and looked for the tongue, but it was consumed except the very root.’ Acts and Monuments, VIII, 380.

46. Catharine Randall Coats, (Em)bodying the Word: Textual Resurrections in the Martyrological Narratives of Foxe, Crespin, de Bèze and d'Aubigné (New York, 1992), p. 17. See also Susan Wabuda, ‘Henry Bull, Miles Coverdale, and the Making of Foxe's Book of Martyrs’, in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford, 1993), pp. 249-51.

47. Ellen Macek, ‘The Emergence of a Feminine Spirituality in The Book of Martyrs’, p. 69.

48. Cf. Retha M. Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation (Westport and London, 1983), pp. 79-82.

49. The Examinations of Anne Askew, ed. Elaine V. Beilin (Oxford, 1996).

50. Leslie P. Fairfield, ‘John Bale and the Development of Protestant Hagiography in England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 24 (1973), 159-60.

51. Cf. Elaine V. Beilin, ‘Anne Askew's Self-Portrait’, in Silent but for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works, ed. Margaret Patterson Hannay (Kent, Ohio, 1985), pp. 77-91, 270-72.

52. Acts and Monuments, VIII, 544.

53. Acts and Monuments, I, xxvii.