Department of English and American Studies Foxe's Account of John Hus's Persecution in Book of Martyrs 2009

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Lenka Svorová Foxe's Account of John Hus's Persecution in Book of Martyrs Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph. D. 2009 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources litsted in the bibliography. 2 Acknowledgments: I owe thanks to Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph. D. for his encouragement and advice with the topic chosen and my husband for his patience, help and kind support. 3 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 5 1 JOHN FOXE 7 1.1 JOHN FOXE´S BIOGRAPHY 7 1.2 FOXE´S RELIABILITY AS A HISTORIAN 11 2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 14 2.1 REFORMATION IN EUROPE 14 2.2 REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 16 2.3 THE PRE-REFORMATION VOICES 19 2.4 JOHN WYCLIFFE AND THE LOLLARDS 20 3 FOXE´S REASONS FOR WRITING ABOUT JAN HUS 21 3.1 JAN HUS AND THE CZECH REFORM 21 3.2 JAN HUS´S PLACE IN THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH 24 3.3 HUS´S WORK 26 3.4 JOHN FOXE´S IDEA OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH 26 4 THE BOOK OF MARTYRS AND ITS SOURCES 29 4.1 FOUR EDITIONS OF THE BOOK OF MARTYRS 36 4.2 FOXE’S ALLEGED SOURCES FOR BOOK OF MARTYRS 39 4.3 PETER OF MLADONOVIC 41 4.4 RELATIO DE M. JOANNIS HUS CAUSA IN CONCILIO CONSTANCIENSI ACTA 45 5 OWN FINDINGS CONCERNING FOXE´S EDITIONS AND THEIR SOURCES 46 5.1 COMPARISON OF 1563 AND 1586 EDITIONS 46 5.2 COMPARISON OF FOXE AND MLADONOVIC 50 5.3 AGRICOLA AND COCHLAEUS 52 5.4 FLACIUS AND LUTHER 54 6 CONCLUSION 60 7 SOURCES 62 8 BIBLIOGRAPHY 63 RESUMÉ 67 RESUMÉ 68 4 INTRODUCTION The thesis is focused on John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and his writing on Jan Hus. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Dayes or the Book of Martyrs, as the book was soon known, had a huge impact on its readers. There were four editions of the book published during his life. The book became greatly widespread and during the Elizabethan settlement also an obligatory component of every cathedral church and clergy house. Foxe’s work influenced many generations and became a part of the English culture. It helped to establish the Church of England and the English national identity. Especially because of the criticism in the centuries after Foxe´s death, his credibility as a historian was blemished. In the second half of the twentieth century the debate on John Foxe’s work was reopened and led, in many respects, to his rehabilitation. Still, however, the negative attitude towards Foxe is quite common among scholars, especially historians. Nowadays, many scholars have been working to find the correct place of John Foxe in the English history and literature. Especially since 1990s there has been a boom of the studies on Foxe. There is a project focused on Foxe’s work under the Humanities Research Institute at University of Sheffield called Variorum Edition Online. Thanks to its researchers, the four editions of the Book of Martyrs have now been available online and have still been analysed by the group of scholars. Nevertheless, there are still some areas not enough explored, such as the Foxe´s writing on Jan Hus. 5 The thesis is going to deal with Foxe’s work, his life and possible reasons for writing this martyrology, and also his credibility as a historian. I am going to focus on the assessed sources of his martyrologies and also do my own research. 6 1 JOHN FOXE 1.1 John Foxe´s biography John Foxe was born in 1516 in Boston, Linconshire. He studied in Oxford, where he became deeply influenced by protestant ideas, spending time with other Protestants. In 1538 he became a fellow of Magdalen College with fellowship lasting for seven years. Five years later, he became the Master of Arts and a College Lecturer there. His strict protestant views caused him many problems, especially in the predominantly catholic academic environment, and in 1545, the year he was supposed to take his clerical vows of celibacy, he preferred to resign on his fellowship (in a private letter likening celibacy to castration). Two years later he married Agnes Randall, the future mother of their six children. He moved to London where he worked as a tutor. In London he got to know the Duchess of Richmond, a supporter of the Protestants who offered him lodging at her Mountjoy House. It was there where he got to know John Bale, the man of a profound influence on Foxe and his future work. Foxe was ordained a deacon of the Church of England in 1550. With the accession of Mary I. to the throne in 1553, the Protestants started leaving the country, even though some of them stayed not to be claimed cowardly deserters, anyway about a thousand chose to leave England. Foxe was also urged to stay but as his life was in a real danger in England, he and his pregnant wife fled. Most of the religious fugitives headed and settled in Rhineland Europe, and formed English exile communities there. The exiled scholars were financially supported by their patrons in England and sometimes even by the city authorities. Foxe stayed in Strasbourg, France, where his first forerunner of the Acts and Monuments called Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum was written and published in the summer of 1554. The work recorded the accounts of martyrs up to about 1500, with accounts of John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, the Lollards. Another English exile in Strasbourg and a former Foxe´s student at Magdalen college, Edmund Grindal, encouraged Foxe in this writing and provided him with the accounts of the Marian persecutions, which were later incorporated in the second forerunner of the Acts and Monuments: Rerum in ecclesia gestarum, published in Basel five years later. The two forerunners of the Book of Martyrs are also called the first and second Latin martyrology. In autumn 1554, Foxes´ moved to Frankfurt where John ministered for the English protestant refugees and became a supporter of the Calvinistic party of John Knox. The leader of the Protestant Reformation and the founder of the Presbyterian denomination stayed in Frankfurt, too, where he was named a minister for the refugee community. Knox and his followers employed the puritan demands in their life as well as religion. There was an attempt to form a protestant Church of England. Two parties were formed, the supporters of John Knox (Knoxians) versus supporters of Richard Cox (Coxians) who met in Frankfurt. They held separate views on the liturgy depicted in Cranmer´s Common Book of Prayer. The two 8 parties did not come to an agreement and Knox was expelled from Frankfurt, Knoxians left Germany for Switzerland, Foxe heading to Basle. Basle was very generous to the exiles and supported them by enabling them to print their works there. In Basel Foxe worked for publishers Hieronymus Froben and Johannes Oporinus as a proof-reader and editor. Foxe had already met Froben in Frankfurt. The publisher was in contact with various scholars, thinkers, publishers, etc. and Foxe took advantage of these networks later on. In the printing houses he approached and read many manuscripts and writings, such as Mathias Flacius, Jean Crespin or John Sleidan and established other contacts with notable scholars. Froben, a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam, printed Erasmus´s works and books by other humanists, while Oporinus employed protestant exiles and printed their work. Foxe lived in Oporinus’s household where he reunioned with John Bale and other Protestants. Foxe and Bale were also enrolled in the university. In 1557, the two and several other scholars, altogether about ten of them, rented a former convent Klarakloster from the city and moved there. After the early death of Mary I. in 1558, her sister Elizabeth I became the Queen of England and Ireland and the politic as well as religious situation changed again. Elizabeth supported the establishment of an English Protestant Church, hence safe again, Foxe returned to England, but not earlier than in October 1559 because of 9 the lack of money. He was ordained an Anglican priest by his friend, now bishop of London, Edmund Grindal in 1560. The same year Foxe and his family left for Norwitch, where they stayed for two years while Foxe preached in the diocese and collected materials for his martyrology. They returned to London and the first English martyrology was published by John Day on 20th March 1563. Several months later Foxe’s probably best friend, mentor and collaborator – John Bale – died. The first edition of the Acts and Monuments, almost immediately widely known as the Book of Martyrs, was a big success, and three years later Foxe started writing the second edition. Thanks to the critiques of his work, his second edition is much more elaborate. The Book of Martyrs became so famous that it was to be placed in every cathedral church and in all the houses of the church officials. Therefore the book became greatly widespread. Foxe was until his death still busy writing and two more editions of the Acts and Monuments were published during his lifetime. John Foxe was known as a very hard-working, educated and generous person, with a great self-discipline. He was also a big humanist and has been called an early tolerationist, refusing death penalty and cruelty in general. He wrote letters to Elizabeth I. asking for reprieves for the Anabaptists (1575) and Jesuits (1581) condemned to death.

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