The first English edition of Acts and Monuments was published by John Day, who invested much time and money on this project, paying for expensive woodcuts portraying terrifying scenes of burnings and torture. The result was a massive volume, containing about 1800 pages. It included the Commentarii rerum and an introductory overview of church history, linking the suffering of the early church martyrs to the present.

In 1563, the Protestant scholar John Foxe published a book with the typically long title Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous days, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great persecutions and horrible troubles that have been wrought and practiced by the Romish prelates, specially in this realm of England and Scotland, from the year of our Lord 1000 unto the time now present; gathered and collected according to the true copies and writings certificatory, as well of the parties themselves that suffered, as also out of the bishops’ registers, which were the doers thereof; by John Foxe. The book, immediately known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, became one of the most influential texts in Europe, remaining recommended reading in England for centuries.

The Author

Born at Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1517, John Foxe lived during turbulent times, witnessing England’s shift from the Roman Catholic Church to an independent state church run by King Henry VIII, then to a fully protestant church under Edward VI, going back to the Church of Rome under Mary I, and finally returning to Protestantism with Elizabeth I.

While some English people resisted change and clung to the safety of the religion they had known, Foxe embraced enthusiastically the teachings of the Protestant Reformation – probably, as it was the case with many young men, while he was in college. His tendencies were noticed by the conservative masters, who pressured him to the point that he called his college “a prison.”

Due to this pressure, and to a statute requiring every university fellow to take vows as Roman Catholic priest, he left his studies in 1545, preferring to face poverty and insecurity than to pursue a stable career against his conscience. He found work as private tutor. Around the same time, he married Agnes Randall, a “woman of some position.” Their marriage was happy. Foxe called Agnes his “faithful comfort.” Apparently, he learned an important lesson for husbands: when it was his wife’s turn to need comfort, if he couldn’t find a remedy, he would, “in assurance of his love … weep for her.”[1]

While tutoring, he met and conversed with many English Reformers. He was especially influenced by the historian John Bale, who became one of his closest friends and introduced him to valuable historical manuscripts.

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