Foxe's Book of Martyrs - Foxe, John

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Résumé :
Published early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and only five years after the death of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I of England, Foxe's Book of Martyrs was an affirmation of the Protestant Reformation in England during a period of religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Because the English monarch was the temporal head of the Church of England, a change in ruler could change the legal status of religious practice. Adherents of the rejected faith risked persecution by the State, and during the reign of Mary I, non-Catholics were publicly burned at the stake. Foxe's account of these martyrdoms contributed significantly to a nationalistic repudiation of the Roman Catholic Church and asserted a historical justification intended to establish the Church of England as a continuation of the true Christian church rather than a modern innovation. The First Part covered early Christian martyrs, a brief history of the medieval church, including the Inquisitions, and a history of the Wycliffite or Lollard movement. The Second Part of the work dealt with the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, during which the dispute with Rome led to separation of the English Church from papal authority, a new foundation for the Church of England, and the issuance of the Book of Common Prayer. The Third Part treated the reign of Queen Mary and the Marian Persecutions, in part instigated by Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London.

Biographie:
John Foxe foi um puritano protestante, martirologista ingl?s.

Sommaire:
John Foxe was an English Protestant historian, clergyman, and martyrologist best known for Actes and Monuments, the work that became famous as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Born in the early sixteenth century, Foxe lived through the violent religious upheavals of Tudor England, including the Reformation, the reign of Mary I, and the Protestant settlement under Elizabeth I. His writing was shaped by exile, controversy, religious conviction, and the urgent desire to preserve the memory of those who had suffered and died for the Protestant cause.Foxe's great work was first published in English in 1563 and rapidly became one of the most important religious books of early modern England. It combined history, polemic, documentary material, biography, and devotional witness in a sweeping account of Christian persecution from the early church through the Reformation. Its influence extended far beyond scholarship: it shaped Protestant identity, anti-Catholic memory, popular religious imagination, and the way generations of English readers understood martyrdom, conscience, and religious authority.Though modern readers approach Foxe with an awareness of his polemical purpose and confessional commitments, his importance is beyond dispute. Fox's Book of Martyrs remains a major source for the study of Protestant history, Reformation-era religious conflict, English church history, martyrdom literature, and the cultural power of printed religious memory. Foxe died in 1587, but his work continued to circulate for centuries, making him one of the most consequential religious writers of the English Reformation....