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      Written in 1563, Foxe's Acts and Monuments, better known as, Book of Martyrs, details the persecutions of early Christians by pagans and, later, of non-Catholic Christians by Catholic Christians and includes a large number of official documents such as injunctions, articles of accusation, and letters. Book of Martyrs, one of the most widely read and influential books of early American history, also explains the theological arguments of the reformers, both those who chose to remain in the Catholic church and Protestants who left the Catholic Church.. Full of woodcuts, even the illeterate could grasp the hideousness of the various means of torture that were used on Protestant renegades frim the Catholic Church. Some scholars of colonial and early federal American history claim that the popularity of Foxe's book was exceeded in those periods only by the popularity of the Bible. In the mid-nineteenth century William Forbush abridged Fox's much, much longer work (at least 7 volumes), removing most of the theological points addressed by Foxe and leaving the history of persecution. Forbush then "updated" Fox's work by adding chapters on anti-Protestant prosecution which occured after Foxe's death. Taught from this book at early age about the atrocities committed against Protestants by Catholics, many Protestants came to either fear or hate Catholics. Nonetheless, one of the lessons that it teaches is that unrestrained power in the hands of clergy corrupts both the state and the church.

      Educated at Magdalen School and College, Oxford, under Edward VI Foxe acted as tutor to the children of the recently beheaded Earl Of Surrey. Fleeing Queen Mary, Foxe settled first in Frankfort, then Basle, before returning to England in 1539 and entering the ministry. Helped by his old pupil the Duke of Norfolk, Foxe undertook to write an early edition of his martyrology which dealt mainly with Wycliffism. While in Basle in 1559, he expanded this early work to include persecutions beginning with Wyclif and ending with Cranmer. Returning again to England, he once again expanded his martyrology and published it in 1563 under the name Acts and Monuments. A corrected editon was published in 1570. An immediate success, a Convocation of the English church in 1571 ordered that copies of the Book of Martyrs be kept in all cathedrals and in the houses of all church dignitaries for public inspection. Two more editions (1576 and 1583) came out during his life and five (1596, 1610, 1632, 1641, 1684) within the next hundred years.¹

Foxe's Book of Martyrs Forbush's edition of John Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563) begins with several reviewer's comments on Foxe's book.

When one recollects that until the appearance of the Pilgrim's Progress the common people had almost no other reading matter except the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs, we can understand the deep impression that this book produced; and how it served to mold the national character. Those who could read for themselves learned the full details of all the atrocities performed on the Protestant reformers; the illiterate could see the rude illustrations of the various instruments of torture, the rack, the gridiron, the boiling oil, and then the holy ones breathing out their souls amid the flames. Take a people just awakening to a new intellectual and religious life; let several generations of them, from childhood to old age, pore over such a book, and its stories become traditions as individual and almost as potent as songs and customs on a nation's life. --- Douglas Campbell, "The Puritan in Holland, England, and America"

"If we divest the book of its accidental character of feud between churches, it yet stands, in the first years of Elizabeth's reign, a monument that marks the growing strength of a desire for spiritual freedom, defiance of those forms that seek to stifle conscience and fetter thought." --- Henry Morley, "English Writers"

"After the Bible itself, no book so profoundly inflienced early Protestant sentiment as the Book of Martyrs. Even in our own time it is still a living force. It is more than a record of persecution. It is an arsenal of controversy, a storehouse of romance, as well as a source of edification." --- James Miller Dodds, "English Prose"

CHAPTER I: History of Christian Martyrs to the First General Persecutions

      Foxe begins repeating the story of Jesus claiming that Peter will be the rock on which his churhc is built. Foxe writes,"Although one apostle had betrayed Him; although another had denied Him, under the solemn sanction of an oath; and although the rest had forsaken Him, unless we may except "the disciple who was known unto the high-priest"; the history of His resurrection gave a new direction to all their hearts, and, after the mission of the Holy Spirit, imparted new confidence to their minds." Obviously, none of the women who remainded faithful to Christ and who are the first to announce and believe in the Resurrection are counted among Jesus' apostles.

CHAPTER II: The Ten Primitive Persecutions

The First Persecution, Under Nero, A.D. 67
The Second Persecution, Under Domitian, A.D. 81
The Third Persecution, Under Trajan, A.D. 108
The Fourth Persecution, Under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, A.D. 162
The Fifth Persecution, Commencing with Severus, A.D. 192
The Sixth Persecution, Under Maximus, A.D. 235
The Seventh Persecution, Under Decius, A.D. 249
The Eighth Persecution, Under Valerian, A.D. 257
The Ninth Persecution Under Aurelian, A.D. 274
The Tenth Persecution, Under Diocletian, A.D. 303

CHAPTER III

      All of the "persecutions" listed in this chapter are highly localized both in space and in time. In many cases, the "persecution" amounted to a leader and a handful of his followers being executed by the state, at times according to long established laws and at others on trumped up charges that applied only to the particular circumstance. For a large period in this era, in many places the king's word was law and the king could and did put to death both secular and religious authorities for a just cause or for no cause at all, except that the person had somehow offended the king. As such, the word "persecution" applied to many of these cases is highly inappropriate - the victims were not necessarily singled out because they were religious leaders, the religious leaders were not subjected to any restriction that did not apply to non-religious leader, and their "crimes" often had little to do with their espousal of Christian beliefs. Indeed, many of the kings and political leaders who caused the deaths of these "martyrs" were often Christians themselves. Most of the periods of "persecution" were short lived. For the later "persecutions," each "persecution" typically claimed a handful or a dozen or a score of victims. These later "persecutions" certainly did not amount to anything we would consider systematic discrimination against a religious group that is comparable to, say, discrimination against people of color, Jews, or women today.

Persecutions of the Christians in Persia
Persecutions Under the Arian Heretics
Persecution Under Julian the Apostate
Persecution of the Christians by the Goths and Vandals
The Last Roman "Triumph"

Persecutions from About the Middle of the Fifth, to the Conclusion of the Seventh Century
      Proterius killed by Christain mob who supported his rival to the see of Alexandria in 547
      Arians slaughter orthodox Christians in Spain c. 586
      Beheading of Killien in Wurtzburg, Germany by Gozbert in 689.

Persecutions from the Early Part of the Eighth, to Near the Conclusion of the Tenth Century
      Enumerates and describes the deaths of several dozen Christians scattered throughout Europe during the period

Persecutions in the Eleventh Century
      Enumerates and describes the deaths of several dozen Christians scattered throughout Europe during the period
      Foxe *never* addresses the orthodox Christian persecution of Christian sects it considers heretical - the Manacheans, the Gnostics, the Donatists, etc. Only when the orthodox church become the Catholic church and begins to prosecute Catholic (Wycliftists, Hussites) and non-Catholic (Waldensians) sects that espoused Protestant ideas does Foxe consider the murder of non-orthodox Christians by orthodox, later Catholic, Christians to be persecution.

CHAPTER IV: Papal Persecutions

      Until this chapter, Foxe has been concerned primarily with secular authorities executing Christians and with Christian groups which Foxe considers heretics murdering, often by mob action, orthodox Christians. Now Foxe turns his attention to the Catholic church's persecution of their opponents. For the rest of this work, Foxe will be concerned with the persecution of Protestants and such proto-Protestants as Wycliffe and Hus by the Catholic church and the state.

      "Thus far our history of persecution has been confined principally to the pagan world. We come now to a period when persecution, under the guise of Christianity, committed more enormities than ever disgraced the annals of paganism. Disregarding the maxims and the spirit of the Gospel, the papal Church, arming herself with the power of the sword, vexed the Church of God and wasted it for several centuries, a period most appropriately termed in history, the "dark ages." The kings of the earth, gave their power to the "Beast," and submitted to be trodden on by the miserable vermin that often filled the papal chair, as in the case of Henry, emperor of Germany. The storm of papal persecution first burst upon the Waldenses in France."

Persecution of the Waldenses in France
      Foxe has an interesting, if somewhat erroneous, version of the story of the establish of the Inquisition as a means of dealing with the Waldenses of southern France.

Persecutions of the Albigenses (Crusade against the Cathars in Languedoc)

The Bartholomew Massacre at Paris, etc. (1572)
      Recapitulation of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, France, 1572

From the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, to the French Revolution, in 1789

CHAPTER V: An Account of the Inquisition
      Very brief summary of Emperor Frederic II's laws which instituted the Inq in the Holy Roman Empire c. 1244
      Many examples of Protestants being burned as heretics in Spain c. 1500
      Very little mention of the persecution of the Jews, Moors, conversos, and moriscos in Spain

CHAPTER VI: An Account of the Persecutions in Italy, Under the Papacy

CHAPTER VII: An Account of the Life and Persecutions of John Wickliffe

CHAPTER VIII: An Account of the Persecutions in Bohemia Under the Papacy
      The condemnation and burnings of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, persecution of Zisca

CHAPTER IX: An Account of the Life and Persecutions of Martin Luther

CHAPTER X: General Persecutions in Germany (after Martin Luther)

CHAPTER XI: An Account of the Persecutions in the Netherlands

CHAPTER XII: The Life and Story of the True Servant and Martyr of God, William Tyndale

CHAPTER XIII: An Account of the Life of John Calvin

CHAPTER XIV: An Account of the Persecutions in Great Britain and Ireland, Prior to the Reign of Queen Mary I
      "The followers of Wickliffe, then called Lollards, were become extremely numerous, and the clergy were so vexed to see them increase; whatever power or influence they might have to molest them in an underhand manner, they had no authority by law to put them to death. However, the clergy embraced the favorable opportunity, and prevailed upon the king to suffer a bill to be brought into parliament, by which all Lollards who remained obstinate, should be delivered over to the secular power, and burnt as heretics. This act was the first in Britain for the burning of people for their religious sentiments; it passed in the year 1401, and was soon after put into execution."

CHAPTER XV: An Account of the Persecutions in Scotland During the Reign of King Henry VIII

CHAPTER XVI: Persecutions in England During the Reign of Queen Mary

CHAPTER XVII: Rise and Progress of the Protestant Religion in Ireland; with an Account of the Barbarous Massacre of 1641

CHAPTER XVIII: The Rise, Progress, Persecutions, and Sufferings of the Quakers

CHAPTER XIX: An Account of the Life and Persecutions of John Bunyan

CHAPTER XX: An Account of the Life of John Wesley

CHAPTER XXI: Persecutions of the French Protestants in the South of France, During the Years 1814 and 1820

CHAPTER XXII: The Beginnings of American Foreign Missions

1. "Foxe's Book of Martyrs" by F.F. Urquhart in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume II (1907)
Copyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight
Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
accessed April 8, 2001

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