Any consideration of John Foxe the Martyrologist (1517-1587) as a Tudor literary figure must have regard for his Latin writing. While it is true that he is best remembered for the four great editions in his lifetime of the Acts and Monuments in 1563, 1570, 1576 and 1583, he was primarily a Latin writer, educated in the best humanist tradition in the Greek and Roman authors of the Classical period, had command of Latin, Greek and Hebrew and was additionally very well versed in both the biblical texts and the copious writings of the early church fathers.[1] His Latin texts show clear stylistic influences of Cicero and Caesar, with quotations from Greek and Roman writers such as Homer, Horace, Ovid, Plautus, Terence and Virgil. As for more recent Latin writers, he was evidently familiar with the Adagia of Erasmus (see below) and his history seems to have drawn on the Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil,[2] the De Gestis Concilii Basiliensis Commentariorum of the humanist writer Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini and the Ecclesiastica Historia of Matthias Flacius Illyricus, each of whom he cites frequently.

The seventeenth-century church historians Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) and Jeremy Collier (1650-1726) praised the Latin letter that John Foxe wrote to Queen Elizabeth pleading for two Dutch Anabaptists, who had been pronounced heretics in 1581, not to be burnt. Fuller suggested that the letter proved that Foxe was a Latin scholar, in that it showed 'his fluent and familiar language' in spite of charges made to the contrary in which he was apparently referred to as 'John Lack-latine'.[3] Collier said that it was 'written in a very handsome Christian strain'.[4] It is because his most famous work was written in English that his reputation as a Latinist in his day ultimately came to be forgotten and unappreciated. Apart from a few general remarks made by the nineteenth century Victorian editor of the Acts and Monuments, Josiah Pratt,[5] and by James Mozley,[6] Foxe's modern biographer, together with some unflattering comments in the twentieth century by John Hazel Smith,[7] his Latinity has been ignored by scholars. Yet aside from the Acts and Monuments (produced in the vernacular in four massive editions during Foxe's lifetime) - whose Latin antecedents, the Commentarii (1554) and the Rerum (1559) have received virtually no textual analysis - only the De Non Plectendis Adulteris (1548), the De Censura (1551), the Eicasmi (1587) and his two Latin plays, Titus et Gesippus (1544) and Christus Triumphans (1556) have received any attention from scholars. The attention that all but the last two works have received, however, has almost exclusively been devoted to historical and theological discussion.[8] Yet this neglect hinders us from understanding a scholar whose works were written almost entirely in Latin.

We know precious little about Foxe's early education.[9] His father died when John was very young and his mother married Richard Melton, a yeoman from the nearby village of Coningsby. We cannot be sure whether Foxe's early schooldays were spent in Coningsby or Boston, but there are references as early as 1506 to a school in Boston whose schoolmaster was maintained by the guild of St. Mary the Virgin.

A decisive change in Foxe's career prospects came from John Hawarden (Harding), a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, who became rector of Coningsby in 1533. He secured a place for Foxe at Brasenose and thus lifted him from being a yeoman's son in a small English village into one of England's oldest university.[10] If it had not been for Harwarden he would probably have lived out his life as an English farmer and the Acts and Monuments might never have been written. Foxe only spent a year at Brasenose: the problem seems to have been that there was no scholarship for a boy from Lincolnshire and apparently he went to the Magdalen college school,[11] where he may have polished up his knowledge of Latin. Subsequently he was admitted into Magdalen College.

If Foxe did indeed attend Magdalen College School, he would probably have studied under Richard Sherrey, who was headmaster of the school from 1534 to 1541. According to Stanier, Sherrey was a 'competent teacher' and wrote a volume entitled A treatise of Schemes and Tropes, gathered out of the best Grammarians and Orators, amongst other works in grammar and rhetoric.[12] Among the authors and works which were already studied at Magdalen (if we look at the model ordained by Wolsey for Ipswich - which would seem to have been very similar to that at Magdalen as demonstrated by Stanier) following a thorough grounding in grammar in the junior forms, were sentences from Cicero's De Moribus and Cato's Moralia, Aesop and Terence in the Third Form, Virgil in the Fourth, selections from Cicero's Letters in the Fifth, extracts from Sallust and Caesar in the Sixth, Horace's Epistles or Ovid's Metamorphoses or Fasti in the Seventh and more advanced grammar and a set book in the Eighth Form.[13] Some Greek was being taught soon after Sherrey's arrival, although it would appear that the teaching of Greek was not a regular part of the curriculum until 1569.

Another list of texts from this early sixteenth-century period is supplied by Nicholas Orme, who notes that, following the disappearance of the reading texts of the late Middle Ages, the texts introduced in the new humanist curriculum of the 1520s and 1530s included 'Cicero's Epistles, Horace's poems, Lucian's Dialogues in Latin, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Sallust's works, the plays of Terence and Virgil's Eclogues and Aeneid.'[14]

Simeon claimed that his father had great application and 'his attainments in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, logic, and general knowledge', were such as to justify the expectations of those friends who had sent him to the University. Simeon also added that 'by the time he was twenty-five years old he had read through the Greek and Latin fathers, the schoolmen, the decrees and the canon law, and "acquired no mean skill in the Hebrew language".'[15] Simeon may well have exaggerated his father's gifts and attainments but we do know that Foxe's academic career for a time moved smoothly and steadily upwards.

Mozley notes that Foxe became a full fellow of Magdalen College in 1539, and held his fellowship for about seven years, during which time he lectured in the college in logic from 1539-1540, gaining his MA in 1543. When he finally left the college it was for religious not academic reasons. Signs of his skill as a classicist come from his early correspondence and the play Titus & Gesippus (see below for the play). Furthemore, Foxe was able to obtain two posts as a tutor, the second of which was to the Howards, the premier aristocratic family in the kingdom.

Tudor humanism has been re-examined recently in a volume edited by Jonathan Woolfson, with a chapter by John King specifically dealing with Foxe in this respect.[16] King comments that Foxe 'devoted his 'scholarly career to Latin scholarship until he reluctantly turned to the vernacular in the Book of Martyrs'. This 'reluctance' is demonstrated in the Latin dedication in what is more correctly called The Acts and Monuments to the learned reader (ad doctum lectorem) which warrants some examination (see the next section on Style).

The Latin writings of John Foxe fall into a number of genres and these works are probably best considered within those genres rather than in a chronological sequence. The genres may be categorised as works on ecclesiastical discipline, church history, polemical works, books of commonplaces and grammar, Latin plays and verse composition, sermons and biblical commentaries.

The works on ecclesiastical discipline were produced early in his career and comprise De non plectendis morte adulteris (1548, reissued in 1549 as De lapsis in ecclesiam recipiendis) and De Censura sive Excommunicatione ecclesiastica (1551). These two works have received some attention from Jane Facey and Catherine Davies, although this examination was confined entirely to their content, with no regard for Foxe's Latin. Indeed there has been no transcription or translation published (other than Pratt's transcription of the De non plectendis in the lengthy introduction to his Victorian edition of the Acts and Monuments.) Perhaps here could be added the fact that many years later in 1571 Foxe was called upon to edit the Reformatio Legum ecclesiasticarum, which was a set of laws drawn up in Edward VI's reign under the chairmanship of Thomas Cranmer but which was never ratified. However Queen Elizabeth opposed the project and the old canon law remained unaltered. Nevertheless, it does illustrate Foxe's wider interest in mediaeval and post-mediaeval Latin

Foxe's main work is of course the last mentioned, better known as the 'Book of Martyrs', published in four editions during his lifetime in English (though with many documents and citations in both Latin and Greek, some of which are quite substantial). However, it should be remembered that there were two Latin precursors to this major work, usually designated as the Commentarii of 1554 and the Rerum of 1559. The Rerum in particular was a very substantial Latin work of ecclesiastical history, which was an enormous expansion of the 1554 work (which it incorporated almost word for word in the first of six books). Even though the Rerum was subsequently translated and greatly expanded to form the 1563 first English edition of the Acts and Monuments, it was conceived by Foxe as his magnum opus to date and of course was composed in Latin for the benefit of the scholars throughout Christendom, as was to be expected from the pen of a Tudor divine. It should be noted also that Foxe was being encouraged by Grindal to translate into Latin documents which Grindal was receiving for his English account of the Marian persecution - in the event it was Foxe's Latin work only which reached the printer in August 1559. After Mary's death at the end of 1558 and an early return to England, Grindal had written to Foxe to suggest delaying the Rerum while they gathered more information on the Marian persecutions, but in the end the first English version of 1563 was delegated to Foxe by Grindal, who was very involved in other church matters by the time the martyrologist returned to England late in 1559.

The tracts Ad Inclytos ac Praepotentes Angliae Proceres of 1557 and Germaniae ad Angliam gratulatio of 1559, while not strictly polemical works contain a certain degree of polemical writing, so may be considered with Foxe's three main polemical works, which are Contra Hieronymum Osorium (1577), Papa Confutatus (1580) and De Christo gratis iustificante (1583). The Contra Osorium was his completion of a tract started by the celebrated Tudor Latin writer, Walter Haddon,[17] in answer to a reply by the Portuguese bishop, Jerome Osorio, to Haddon's first answer to the bishop's 1563 tract advising Queen Elizabeth to return to the Roman church. Haddon had only written a sixth of the text before his death in 1572, and it is a measure of Foxe's standing as a Latinist that he was asked to complete the work (see the discussion of Foxe's Latin style below).

The grammar text book and the books of commonplaces produced by Foxe underline the martyrologist's interest in language per se and his competence in Latin. They also remind us of his own education and his wish to contribute to that process. No doubt they were influenced by his own teaching experience both in his Oxford days and subsequently as a tutor, first to the Lucy family and later to the Howard family. Unfortunately, only one page of the Latin grammar survives,[18] but the Locorum Communium Tituli of 1557, with perhaps an appendix entitled De Predicamentis Tabulae dating from the same year, the Syllogisticon, a series of educated 'soundbytes' in Latin which was published between 1560 and 1564 and the enormous Pandectae Locorum Communium of 1572 do all survive in printed form. The last mentioned has been examined in some detail by John Rechtien, who reminds us in his article that these commonplace books 'served the purpose of giving the orator and writer … something readily available to say on the subjects he might be called upon to treat.'[19] In showing that Foxe's volume is an example of the adaptation of the manuscript to printed book, he goes on to say that the commonplace book 'governed the content and organisation of theological thought.' Foxe's book of commonplaces is unusual in that it contains over 2,000 pages which are blank but intended for the student to complete his own selection of appropriate material arranged under the printed table of comments which Foxe had included.

Another genre is to be found in a series of letters written in Latin from Oxford between about 1544 and 1545, when Foxe resigned his fellowship. This early Latin correspondence includes the letters from Foxe to the President and Fellows of Magdalen concerning his persecutors in 1545, and other correspondence with Sharpe, Gardiner, Hawarden, Nowell, Bennett, Pynfold and Cheke, all dating to his time at Magdalen and contained in Lansdowne 388. In addition there is a large volume of Latin correspondence in the Harleian Mss. and these have all been tabulated at the end of this introduction.

Next there is Foxe's Latin verse. This consists of two Latin plays and a series of poems, the latter being incorporated in some of the versions, both Latin and English, of the Acts and Monuments. The plays are the 1544 Titus et Gesippus, a 'romantic comedy with important Terentian additions … an epitome of English Renaissance comedy',[20] written while he was still at Magdalen and the 1556 Christus Triumphans, an apocalyptic comedy, published while Foxe was in exile in Basel, although it is quite possible that he had composed this or a similar work in draft in his Oxford days. The Titus et Gesippus survives as a Tudor text only in manuscript.[21] John King in his contribution to these introductory essays,[22] notes that in the Book of Martyrs, although Foxe removed most of the Latin text remaining in the 1563 edition with an English translation (apart from certain official documents and introductory material), 'his retention of untranslated verse in the reprints constitutes a reminder of the humanistic tradition out of which the Book of Martyrs emerges.' These verses come from the pens of a wide range of Tudor scholars, including Laurence Humphrey and John Parkhurst, but there are some verses which would seem to have been composed by Foxe himself, including one on Queen Mary’s Wedding to Philip of Spain.[23] Foxe’s own verse composition will be forming part of my PhD dissertion which is in progress.

Finally, turning to his sermons and biblical commentaries, we have De Christo Crucifixo (1571), a Latin version of a sermon which Foxe preached at Paul's Cross the previous year and De Oliva Evangelica concio which was published together with an English translation, Sermon preached at the christening of a certain Jew, in 1578. His last work, Eicasmi seu mediatationes in sacram Apocalypsin, is a large commentary on the first seventeen chapters of the Book of Revelation which was published in its unfinished state posthumously by his son Samuel in 1587.

General stylistic points to be noted about Foxe's Latin include his love of well formed Latin periods and this is nowhere better illustrated than in his introduction to the ad doctum lectorem ('to the learned reader') at the start of the 1563 edition of the Acts and Monuments:

Cogitanti mihi,[24] uersantique mecum in animo quam periculosae res aleae sit,[25] emittere nunc aliquid in publicum, quod in manus oculosque multorum subeat, his praesertim tam exulceratis moribus temporibusque, ubi tot hominum dissidiis, tot studiis partium, tot morosis capitibus, tam rigidis censuris, et Criticorum sannis feruent fere omnia, ut difficillimum sit quicquam tam circumspecte scribere, quod non in aliquam calumniandi materiam rapiatur: perbeati profecto foelicesque uidentur ii, quibus eum uitae cursum tenere[26] liceat, ut in otio uiuentes[27] cum dignitate, sic alienis frui queant laboribus, uelut in theatro ociosi sedentes spectatores, ut nullum interim ipsis uel ex actione taedium, uel ex labore periculum metuendum sit.

When I think and turn over in my mind how dangerous and hazardous a thing it is to issue to the public something which may come to the hands and eyes of many men, especially with morals and times so decadent, when almost everything is boiling over with so many disagreements of men, so many interests of factions, so many ill-spirited individuals, such rigid censures and mockeries of critics, that it is very difficult to write anything so circumspectly that it be not seized upon as some grounds for misrepresentation. Assuredly those men seem very blessed and fortunate who are allowed to maintain such a course of life that, living in leisure with dignity, they may so be able to enjoy other peoples' labours, as though sitting as idle spectators in the theatre, that no weariness is to be feared by them as a product of action or danger as a product of labour.

In addition to the obvious rehetorical devices employed here, such as repetition, alliteration, assonance and balanced clauses, this passage is distinctly Ciceronian, as a comparison with the opening of his De Oratore[28] will show. This is a lengthy period in which Foxe is striving to demonstrate his skill at producing a 'studied' or 'elaborate' rather than 'rhetorical' opening sentence. The first two words would immediately remind the reader of the first two words of Cicero's De Oratore. The first four lines starting with cogitanti mihi are then picked up by three complementary lines introduced by perbeati … uidentur ii. The clauses are locked together in a succession of subordinations: tam exulceratis … ut difficillimum, tam circumspecte … ut in otio, sic … ut nullum. This is a very effective piece of writing and would no doubt strike an immediate chord in the mind of the doctus lector, who would of course recognise the Ciceronian and Horatian allusions.

Some of the early passages in the 1563 Acts and Monuments are quite lurid and sensationalist: for example, the references to the long darkness England has experienced in the section on Wycliffe, translated from the Latin of the Rerum into the 1563 edition and which very often do not appear in the later editions.[29] Again, in the section dealing with the martyrdom of William Hunter, there is a passage in the Latin of the Rerum which documents Hunter's parents approving of his being a martyr and making a comparison with the Maccabees.[30] Generally, as the oral accounts and documentation come into Foxe's hands, the long set pieces of rhetoric in the early editions of the Acts and Monuments tend to be reduced: the passage on Hunter cited above is an example of how this works.

Also, it is clear from the many translation revisions which appear in the 1570 edition that the 1563 edition was published in a hurry. We know that Foxe was assisted by a number of others, including one Fabian Withers, whose translations in particular received considerable revision. An example of this is the account of the Council of Basel which occurred during the reign of Henry VI in 1431. Foxe in his inclusion of this account is basically here translating the Latin account of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (a humanist writer who later became Pope Pius II) but the translation work for this, having been assigned to Fabian Withers in 1563, was revised by Foxe himself for the 1570 edition. Foxe approved of the antipapist sentiments of humanists such as Aeneas Silvius (although the latter had a change of views on becoming Pope!) and removed the description of church leaders going round praying to the saints in the plague section in 1570. From this and other passages it is clear that Foxe has total editorial control of the 1570 edition. Thomas Freeman sees this edition as 'the voice of Foxe'[31] and that the reliance on other people, so evident in 1563, is not present in 1570.

The issue of invented speeches, which Warren Wooden draws to our attention in his volume on John Foxe,[32] is an interesting one. The great Athenian historian Thucydides had made this a feature of his account of the Peloponnesian War, when he said:

'Therefore the speeches are given in the language in which, as it seemed to me, the several speakers would express, on the subjects under consideration, the sentiments most befitting the occasion, though at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said.' [33]

Wooden mentions Foxe doing this when he refers to the reply that Richard II should have made to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Courtney, in response to Pope Boniface's request for acts of persecution against heretics,[34] although this particular speech does not appear until the 1570 edition and is in English. Another example is the martyrdom of William Gardiner,[35] which occurs in both the Latin 1559 Rerum and the 1563 Acts and Monuments and all subsequent editions. An illuminating article by Thomas Freeman and Marcello Borges on this subject,[36] points out that the short speech made by Gardiner to João III after his arrest could not have been delivered, as he was in no position to make a speech as he had been severely wounded, so this was clearly an invented speech.[37] The speech is never cut. A second instance is the speech, which occurs only in the Rerum and the 1563 edition of the Acts and Monuments,[38] made on the burning of John Lambert, when Foxe himself addresses Henry VIII. The fact that Harpsfield objected to this probably caused it to be cut thereafter. In summary: the invented speech by Gardiner (Rerum and 1563) is not said to be invented, the invented speech by Richard II (1570 and later editions) is said to be invented and the speech by Foxe to Henry VIII is obviously invented. Patrick Collinson appears to have been mistaken when he says that Foxe does not use invented speeches.[39]

In attempting to evaluate Foxe's Latinity, it may be instructive to draw some parallels with other Tudor Latinists. One obvious writer to examine is Walter Haddon, whose polemical Latin exchanges with the Portuguese bishop Jerome Osorio da Fonseca in 1563 and 1567 were abruptly terminated by his death in 1572 while writing a second response. Both Osorio and Haddon were 'noted Latinists' and it is perhaps significant that Foxe was asked, as 'another fine Latinist',[40] to complete the work. This he duly did, publishing it in 1577 as Contra Hieron. Osorium, eiusque odiosas insectationes pro Euangelicae ueritatis necessaria Defensione, Responsio Apologetica[41] (see table). Actually Foxe was responsible for some five-sixths of the book: Haddon had only completed Book I and Book II as far as fo.70r, the remainder of Book II and the whole of Book III being left to Foxe.

Lawrence V. Ryan, in commenting on Haddon's writings,[42] refers to him as an ' … Anglo-Latin poet and orator … known in our day only to scholars who are well acquainted with the history of English humanism and reform during the sixteenth century'. He goes on to make specific reference to the Lucubrationes, saying that these ' … orations are typical of their kind. Written in imitation of Ciceronian style, they deal with such subjects as the usefulness of learning to the individual and the commonwealth, the importance of studying the works of the ancients, the ideals and problems of the scholarly community, and the excellence of the art of oratory … these efforts of Haddon are representative, rather than distinctive, examples of humanist prose of the sixteenth century'. Ryan then goes on to say that although the Lucubrationes was never reprinted, it was ' … the basis for Haddon's reputation as an eminent Ciceronian among his contemporaries and for a long time after his death'. There is certainly plentiful evidence of Ciceronian influence in Foxe's Latin (see above in the section on Style), as you would expect from one who had received a Tudor grammar school education with its humanist curriculum.

Other noted Tudor Latinists, including Roger Ascham and Sir Thomas Smith, were fulsome in their praise of Haddon's Ciceronian style. It is interesting that while Foxe was asked to edit the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum of 1571 and write its preface, it was Walter Haddon who worked with Sir John Cheke in 'perfecting the Latin'[43] of this volume. It is perhaps worth noting here that while Roger Ascham, Sir John Cheke, Sir Thomas Smith and Dr. Thomas Wilson were leading figures among the Cambridge humanists, Foxe had been an Oxford man, following the likes of Erasmus and More. He had resigned his Fellowship at Magdalen in 1546 and from 1551, following his time as a tutor to the Lucy family at Charlecote in Warwickshire, he made his home in London, where, apart from a brief spell at Reigate in Surrey as a tutor with the Howard family and the years in exile from 1554-1559, he spent the remainder of his days.

There have been very few comments made by later writers on the level of competence shown in Foxe's Latin. Those that have been made have tended to be complimentary, e.g. by George Townsend, who refers to Foxe's 'copious and elegant style of writing Latin, which he cultivated by corresponding in Latin with his friends, frequently sending them his compositons both in prose and verse',[44] Richard Dixon, who says that Foxes was 'one of the first Latinists of the age; his Latin style is fine'[45] and James Mozley, with his observations that 'Foxe was an excellent Larin scholar'[46], although Mozley was not overly kind in the remark he made on the Christus Triumphans, which he describes as having 'no poetic merit',[47] but there have also been some rather uncomplimentary observations made, notably by John Hazel Smith (see below).

Mozley in referring to the decision to print the 1563 much expanded version of Foxe's martyrology in English notes that Foxe enclosed a letter with the copy of the book presented to his old college, Magdalen, apologising for the fact that the text was not in Latin,[48] having a little earlier said that the decision to publish the book in English 'went somewhat against the grain with Foxe, who was a good humanist and thorough master of Latin, and had a prejudice in favour of the learned tongue.'[49] In a later passage Mozley says that with regard to deficiencies in the translations of some of the documents 'it is fair to ascribe it to a helper of Foxe: for Foxe was an excellent Latin scholar.'[50]

John Hazel Smith has produced the only fully transcribed and published Latin text of Foxe to date (with the exception of my recent edition of the Gratulatio[51] of 1559) in his edition of the two Latin comedies, Titus et Gesippus (1545) and Christus Triumphans (1556), together with a parallel English prose translation, an introduction (which concentrates on the source material, the biographical environments for the two plays and an analysis of them as dramatic works, but says very little about the Latin) and reasonably detailed textual notes. He does say in commenting on the various revisions made to the text of Titus et Gesippus (which survives only in a manuscript copy, and apparently an early version at that) that 'Foxe's prosody, deficient even in the best of circumstances, in this play often defies analysis. As it stands, then, it would scarcely be a persuasive demonstration of Foxe's competence to teach Latin.'[52] Unfortunately, Hazel Smith does not elaborate on 'deficient even in the best of circumstances', so we are left without any evidence to back up this criticism of Foxe's Latin, and an implied criticism of his competence as a teacher of Latin.

Hazel Smith goes on to consider the other play, Christus Triumphans, which he notes that most modern critics have either ignored or criticised as 'seriously deficient',[53] citing C. H. Herford, who called it a 'strange and lurid drama … with unnecessary figures, confused in structure, unimaginative in conception, and alternately undignified and pedantic in style',[54] Sidney Lee in his Dictionary of National Biography entry calling it a 'crude and tedious mystery play' and Mozley with his comment: 'the play has no poetic merit', as well as John Stoughton damning with faint praise this 'Latin poem of considerable length, of a very different order of genius from the Diuina Commedia of Dante', … a 'singular composition.'

However, Hazel Smith does concede that Jean Bienvenu considered it worth translating into French in 1561, Laurence Humphrey asked Foxe if he might produce the play at Magdalen in 1562 (although there is no proof that this actually happened), it was performed at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1562-63, the prose panegyric appended to the play by Foxe was translated by John Daye in 1579 and reprinted several times, there was an edition published in Nuremburg in 1590, a school text edition produced in Cambridge in 1672 and then reissued in 1676 with its editor, possibly Thomas Comber (who was to become the Dean of Durham), praising the play 'for the singular elegance of its style, worthy of scholastic emulation, and for its morality and recommended it as an instrument for teaching pupils to be grammarians, poets, and Christians'. Nevertheless, Hazel Smith considers that the Christus Triumphans is 'seriously flawed' and that the praise heaped on the play by the above writers is explained as follows: 'In political outlook, Humphrey and Bienvenu were obvious partisans of Foxe, and Comber's bias is suggested by his associations with Sidney Sussex, 'nursery of Puritanism' as it has been called and the college of Oliver Cromwell.' But, surely, whether or not these distinguished academics shared the same political views as Foxe, they would not risk their scholarly reputations by heaping praise on work which was of somewhat inferior scholarship?

Despite these comments, Hazel Smith acknowledges that Christus Triumphans has echoes of Horace and references to Plautus, that it makes 'even more effective use of the language of Roman comedy than Titus et Gesippus' and that it has both effective speeches and effective scenes,[55] but when he goes on to excuse himself from commenting on Foxe's borrowing from Classical writers, e.g. Plautus, Terence and Cicero, noting that this would have been done had his text 'been constructed on the great principles of classical editing',[56] he makes it clear that we still have no Latin work of Foxe which has been properly edited as a work of Latin literature. Hazel Smith's real interest in these plays is, understandably in view of his particular specialism, in their place in the development of Renaissance Drama. In any case, the vast majority of Foxe's Latin writing is in prose, which has received very little attention indeed.

For the purposes of this introduction, I propose to examine two Latin texts written by John Foxe during his exile on the continent, namely the Ad Inclytos of 1557 (which was subsequently incorporated in the Rerum of 1559, the immediate Latin precursor to the Acts and Monuments of 1563, and from which the citations of this work derive in this article), and the Gratulatio of 1559. The reason I have selected these texts is that they are complete, yet short, works and were both intended to make a strong case for a particular view being taken by Foxe on a particular theme: the Ad Inclytos was a passionate appeal to the nobility of England to persuade Mary to put an end to the persecution of Protestants which was then at its height; the Gratulatio was a tract expressing thanksgiving from Germany at the accession of Elizabeth, but then moving towards offering her advice on the way forward for the Protestant church.

In the course of the Ad Inclytos, a lengthy rhetorical tract which extends to twenty-two folio pages of the Rerum, Foxe frequently uses phrases which allude to Classical mythology, history and literature, as well as tropes which clearly derive from his familiarity with the works of Erasmus, in particular the Adagia. He also regularly gives citations from the patristic writers and the canons and decrees associated with the various synods.

Amongst the Classical allusions are an ethnic cliché for Classical hostility with the term 'Scythian',[57] the metaphorical use of the Chimaera (a mythical monster with three heads, that of a lion, a goat and a dragon, which continually belched flames),[58] mention of Bellona, sister of Mars and goddess of war,[59] and a reference to Lucius Cassius, a celebrated Roman lawyer from whose name the term "Cassian judges" came to apply to rigid justices.[60] A comparison of the dangers of the current times with those associated with citizenship in Roman times gives Foxe the opportunity of displaying his knowledge of the application of the death penalty in ancient Rome.[61] Mention of individual Classical writers or historical personages include Plato[62] and Nero.[63] Other learned allusions include a proverbial reference to 'Sicilian rubbish',[64] which Foxe would seem to have derived from Erasmus,[65] and a possible reference to Roman inheritance laws.[66]

In the Gratulatio, which is one of the earliest expressions of the hopes of the English Protestants at the accession of Elizabeth, Foxe's writing also abounds in tropes, proverbs, and commonplaces: he takes great delight in Classical allusions and the Gratulatio has examples of all of these. When discussing the former heads of monastic houses being persuaded to take up benefices in the Church, but with little inclination towards Protestantism, he refers to this as being a case of 'an ass's blood in a man's body, indeed what is usually termed an ὄνος λυρίζων ("an ass playing on a lyre").'[67] This usage may well be derived from Erasmus, who in his Adagia refers to Asinus ad lyram ("an ass to the lyre").[68] A proverbial allusion from Aristophanes also finds its way into the Gratulatio with a reference to 'owls to Athens' as a sort of "coals to Newcastle" in the context of the wisdom of the English people being such that further admonishment from Foxe as to their correct behaviour was superfluous.[69]

Another example of a Classical allusion comes in the passage in which he discusses Anne Boleyn when he uses a simile comparing the regularity of her charitable giving with the daily brush strokes of the Greek painter Apelles, a Greek painter from Colophon, later from Ephesus, in the fourth century B.C.[70] Once again we find this in the Adagia of Erasmus: Nullam hodie lineam duxi ("I haven't done a stroke today"), referring to someone who has taken a break from studying or artistry. The main source for this is the Elder Pliny who has delightful passage describing a meeting between Apelles and Protogenes of Rhodes acompanied by some amusing artistic rivalry.[71]

Citations from Plutarch and Stobaeus further illustrate the breadth of Foxe's Classical reading. It is tempting to accuse Foxe of academic snobbery in his term Onademus ille Chios ("that famous Onademus of Chios") as the reference in Plutarch to this individual is the only one in Classical literature![72] (In fact, Foxe or his printer misspelled the name, which should be Onomademus.) In this passage Foxe describes how the Chian demagogue Onomademus, after defeating a rival faction in his city, answers his friends who are advising him to expel his opponents.[73]

The Stobaeus citation refers to those performing the duties of magistrates remembering the advice of Agathon about how to rule. This is attributed by Foxe to Agathon and indeed by Stobaeus himself to Agathon,[74] but it is unclear which Agathon he means: the most likely candidate would be the Samian historian who wrote an account of Scythia.[75]

Until recently, all that was known of Foxe's library was the list of books in Lansdowne 819, and this had not been properly transcribed. Tom Freeman and James Carley have been working on this list and are sure that the books definitely belonged to John Foxe, but were probably a selection made from his library by his son Samuel at some point following the death of the martyrologist. The arguments advanced by Freeman and Carley are as follows:

about twelve manuscripts in the list have been positively identified as owned by both John and Samuel Foxe;
no book dates after 1587 (the year of Foxe's death);
the list is in Samuel's handwriting (verified from other documents)[76]

The conclusion reached is that the books listed in Lansdowne 819 are part of Foxe's own library. This document was posted (it was folded and sealed with wax) and it is quite possible that Samuel wrote to his mother or brother on the lines of "This is what I want to keep from my father's library". Why would he post a list of part of his father's library, unless it was that part which he wanted to keep?

The list of books helps us to try to place Foxe within the context of Classical scholarship in his age. For example, included in the list are the ‘complete works’ of Lipsius (1586–1587), one of the foremost Classical scholars in Europe and a champion of Tacitus, although this cannot possibly be the ‘complete works’, as Lipsius continued to write and publish until well after Foxe’s death in 1587, dying himself in 1606.

The importance of the study of John Foxe's Latin writing has, I hope, been amply demonstrated by this short survey. First, not only is it going to deepen our understanding of Foxe himself by analysing his Latin thought process - which after all would be the vehicle for his initial literary composition - but it will throw light upon a much neglected area of the martyrologist's work. Indeed many of Foxe's Latin works have been completely neglected: the Gratulatio is a case in point. Secondly, with regard to the Acts and Monuments itself, it demonstrates Foxe's controlling role as an editor: the careful editing and correcting of some of the Latin passages in the 1570 edition is a case in point. Thirdly, it demonstrates interestingly that in the Acts and Monuments Foxe the rhetorician has to give way to Foxe the (church) historian - but not completely. Fourthly it shows Foxe as an important Latin writer of the period and a good representative of it. Further study needs to be done to establish where he is in the history of Latin drama by an Englishman, whether Foxe and his generation (e.g. Humphrey) are an advance on their predecessors in Latin (or indeed in Greek and Hebrew) and finally whether Foxe's own writing is that of the humanist Latin writer inspired by the Golden (Ciceronian) Age or the later Elizabethan interest in Silver Latin (or a mixture of the two)? Or is it none of these?