John Foxe | Biography

John Foxe is renowned as the compiler of one of the most widely read, popular, and influential works of the Elizabethan Age: Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Times. In 1563 John Day published the first of four editions that appeared in Foxe's lifetime. From the beginning it has been known popularly as Foxe's "Book of Martyrs." It contains scores of highly charged, polemical accounts of the martyrdom of Christians whom Foxe alleges maintained faith with the "true" church of Christ as opposed to the "false" church of Antichrist said to be under the leadership of the pope in Rome. The narratives concerning persecutions during the reign of Mary I, the Catholic queen who ruled England from 1553 until 1558, are charged with the nationalistic fervor that supported the reestablishment of Protestant theological doctrine in the Church of England under Elizabeth I. Foxe's emotionally exciting stories stirred up...
(read more)