John Foxe and His World (review)
- John Foxe and His World
Scholarly investigation of what Christopher Highley here calls (p. 187) "the vast collaboratively produced text we now refer to as Foxe's Acts and Monuments" is proceeding apace, fuelled by the tantalizing prospect of a forthcoming fully searchable electronic edition collating the various versions produced in Foxe's lifetime. This volume of essays grows out of an interdisciplinary colloquium held at Ohio State University in spring 1999, and betrays evidence of its conference origins. The editors' claim (p. xvi) that the chapters collectively create "a composite portrait of the world inhabited by John Foxe" is an optimistic one. Rather, they represent a series of thematically linked sketches of the intellectual and religious landscape. Yet the editors are to be congratulated for creating order out of what might have been a mere mélange of Foxe-flavored morsels. The collection is book-ended by fore- and afterwords from the volume's dedicatees, Patrick Collinson and David Loades, who respectively consider the reception history of the Acts and Monuments during and after Foxe's lifetime. In between, fifteen essays are grouped into five thematic clusters: historiographical issues, history of the book, visual culture, Roman Catholicism, women and gender. These are tackled by a mixed team of historians and literary critics, established scholars and graduate students. The interdisciplinarity in general works well, and it is pleasing to report that the essays by Ph.D. candidates easily stand comparison with those of their elders. Inevitably, some pieces are more substantial than others, though all have worthwhile things to say. Highlights in the first sections include Benedict Scott Robinson's discussion of "John Foxe and the Anglo-Saxons," showing how the burgeoning interest in Saxon history raised the alarming possibility that the first truly English church was a papal construction, rather than the pure primitivism of the Britons. It was Foxe's Catholic critic Richard Verstegan who first argued (in 1605) that the [End Page 167] English should look for their origins among the Saxons. Equally illuminating is David Scott Kastan's study of "Little Foxes," the abridgements by Timothy Bright and others which may have been in the form in which most readers actually encountered Foxe's text. In the poet John Taylor's novelty 64mo edition in verse, one of the largest books ever written in English became a tiny fashion accessory, a "fetish of the faith" (p. 128). Several of the essays draw on the volume's generous provision of thirty-nine illustrations to address questions around the visual impact of Foxe's work. Andrew Pettegree provides important contextual assessment, locating the Acts and Monuments in "a narrow window of opportunity" (p. 144) between the English print industry's attainment of sufficient sophistication to take on the project, and the growing influence of Calvinist iconophobia. An attempt to problematize our reading of such "iconophobia" comes in an interestingly speculative piece by Lori Anne Ferrell, examining the geometric figures and "ocular catechism" to be found in William Perkins' Golden Chaine. Ferrell identifies here a new Protestant aesthetic in which Word itself was pictorialized, and admonishes us (p. 179) to be "more open to the aesthetic pleasures afforded by such figurative designs." Among the several essays addressing gender issues, Sarah Wall provides a case-study in rigorous textual criticism, comparing Bale's and Foxe's accounts of the Henrician martyr Anne Askew, and finding (against received wisdom) that far from letting Askew speak for herself, Foxe actively intervened in the narrative for stylistic and theological effect. Readers of this journal may be particularly interested in the three essays dealing with Catholic martyrology. Scott Pilarz examines the letters, poems, paintings, and plays produced in Jesuit circles after the death of Campion, and their role in energizing the English mission. Richard Williams shows how a vogue for illustrated martyrology functioned to inflame foreign "public opinion" against the Elizabethan regime. Christopher Highley analyzes the Theatrum Crudelitatum Haereticorum of Richard Verstegan (a recurrent presence in this volume), and finds an...
