In April, 1579, the daily routine of the town of Guatulco, Mexico was dramatically interrupted when Francis Drake sailed into port. The privateer detained several of Guatulco's leading citizens aboard his ship as hostages while his crew secured supplies of wood and fresh water. One of the captives, Simon de Miranda, the priest of the town, later testified to the Inquisition that each day

the said Francis Drake had a large book brought to him and read it for some time. He said it was to them what the Bible was to us. It contained many illuminated pictures of the Lutherans who had been burned in Spain. He spoke much of evil of the Supreme Pontiff. He also said "How can it be tolerated that a prince or monarch is to kiss the foot of the Pope?" This is a swindle, and St Peter did not do thus. He also expressed his abomination of the Pope in other words of great audacity.[1]

The port's factor, Gomez Rengifo, testified that every day Drake had a large book placed on a table, read from it and then prayed with nine members of his crew and recited the Psalms. The veneration paid to this book aroused Rengifo's curiosity and he had the temerity to question Drake about it. Drake showed his involuntary guest pictures in the book of Protestants being burned and then, according to the Inquisition's summary of Rengifo's testimony,

Turning over the pages of the book he showed [the] witness, further on, another picture which he said "figured the astounding [arrogance] of the Supreme Pontiff." Conjecturing from what the witness understood and from his [i.e., Drake's] tone and mien, it seemed to him that Francis Drake did not think rightly about this.[2]

From these descriptions, it is clear that the book which the most celebrated Elizabethan mariner held in such reverence, and from which he drew historical examples of papal iniquity, was the Acts and Monuments . [3] And while Drake's captives may not have found their encounter with Foxe's book particularly instructive or edifying, it should be more reveling to modern scholars as it indicates an important lacuna in scholarship on the Acts and Monuments. While there has been increasing, and long overdue, attention paid to analyzing Foxe's research and historical methodology, these studies have focused exclusively on Foxe's treatment of the Lollards and of post-Reformation English history.[4] Yet a significant portion of every edition of the Acts and Monuments published in Foxe's lifetime was devoted to the Church before Wiclif and to Continental as well as English history. And, as Drake's conversations with the citizens of Guatulco suggest, Foxe's readers were interested in these sections of his work as well as those parts of it dealing with subjects chronologically and geographically closer to home.

The reason for the focus of historical study on the sections of the Acts and Monuments devoted to the English Reformation is obvious; it is in these areas alone, from Wiclif to Mary, that Foxe is an independent source, presenting the historian with material not to be found elsewhere. But a study of the pre-Wiclifite and Continental history in the Acts and Monuments has the potential to cast a great deal of light on Foxe's research and accuracy. Such a study also offers the opportunity to identify and examine some of the major themes which run through the Acts and Monuments in a larger context than the history of the English Church.

An examination and analysis of all the pre-Wiclifite history in the Acts and Monuments is far too large a project to undertake here. But an examination of the material on papal history in Foxe's book would be possible and still cover the chronological range and much of the variety of sources used in the Acts and Monuments. At the same time, the ideological and polemical importance of the subject, and the consequently strong temptation to falsify or distort the historical record, make it an excellent touchstone for Foxe's accuracy. And the importance of the history of the papacy to Foxe's readers entailed citation and repetition of his text which affords an opportunity to trace some of the possible influences the Acts and Monuments had on English religious and cultural life. Finally, consideration of papal history in the Acts and Monuments would help to correct an Anglocentric bias inherent in studies that focus on Foxe's account of Lollardy and the English Reformation.

An important aspect of Foxe's work that has been largely swamped in the wake of William Haller's influential theory that the Acts and Monuments presented England as an elect nation is Foxe's reliance on European scholarship and the incorporation of this continental erudition into his magnum opus. It is, for example, ironic that the patriotic, not to say chauvinist, Thomas Rogers, related a story of Alexander III forcing the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to lie prostrate before him and kiss his feet, citing the Acts and Monuments as his source, as part of an effort to rally the English against the threat of foreign invasion. [5] For the story of the emperor's fictitious humiliation, used to support Rogers's xenophobic argument, had a long foreign provenance. It was created by the Venetians, who, as Alexander Ill's allies, claimed to have defeated Barbarossa. It was also depicted in a mural in the Palazzo Publico in Siena as part of an effort to glorify the city by celebrating the triumph of (at the time the mural was painted) the only Sienese pope. The story was related, with embellishments such as the pope treading on the neck of the prostrate emperor, by German humanists, most notably Johannes Nauclerus, encouraged or supported by Maximilian I, to garner support for that emperor's anti-papal policies with an account of papal arrogance. The story was taken up by Luther and Lutheran writers such as Caspar Hedio and Robert Barnes, as a classic example of papal usurpation of legitimate secular authority.[6] John Bale drew the story from Barnes's Vitae Romanorum pontificum and Foxe repeated Bale's account exactly.[7] And from the Acts and Monuments it was read by Drake and cited by Rogers.

The provenance of much of Foxe's material on papal history is as rich as this. But it can be difficult to establish it accurately. Foxe was quite capable of reprinting a substantial portion of a work without supplying any indication of where it came from or even the fact that the words were not his own.[8] More importantly, what appear to be Foxe's opinions or commentary can simply be passages transcribed from other authors and reprinted without acknowledgement. Thus, after mentioning that some scholars believed that the Guelphs and Ghibellines originated in the wars of Frederick II with the papacy, Foxe wrote that 'I rather cleave to the opinion of Nauclerus, Hermanus, Antonius [i.e., Antoninus] Florentinus, and other writers which say that these Guelphes and Gibellines tooke theyr begynning of Conradus.3.' This appears to be Foxe's considered judgement after reading these authors but in fact this is simply a word-for-word translation of another author's opinion.[9] Similarly, the following statement appears in the Acts and Monuments after Foxe described the antipope John XXIII's refusal to release the Czech reformer Jan Hus: 'In myne opinion, forasmuche as Pope John feared that which in dede did after folowe, that he should be deprived of his dignitie, he thought to wyn the favour of these Herodian Cardinalles and byshops, by betraying the good man unto them.' The unwary reader might well conclude that this was Foxe's parenthetical judgement inserted into the narrative, but once again Foxe was only reprinting what his source had already said.[10]

Confusingly, Foxe also often listed sources for his accounts that he had not read or at least had not consulted for the information for which he cited them. Thus Foxe listed Giovanni Stella, Peter the Prae-monstratensian, Johannes Nauclerus, Antoninus, Robert Barnes and John Bale as his sources for his account of the pontificate of Sylvester II.[11] Yet this account was, in fact, derived completely from works by Matthias Flacius (whom Foxe did not even cite for this material) and John Bale; all of the other writers were cited by either Flacius or Bale.[12] In another case, Foxe cited Thomas Gascoigne's theological dictionary as his source even though he had admitted elsewhere in the Acts and Monuments that 'I have not it in my handes at present'. and referred the reader to his real source, John Bale.[13] As a result, one can go seriously astray by reading Foxe's citations and concluding that these were actually his sources.[14] A real understanding of the Acts and Monuments is not possible without a thorough investigation of what Foxe's sources actually were, and once this has been done, a systematic comparison of Foxe's text with the texts of his sources.

There was little papal history in the two Latin martyrologies Foxe wrote in the 1550s; apart from brief references to Urban III and Gregory VIII and their concern about the recovery of the Holy Land from the Moslems, a letter from Gregory XI to Richard II and a letter from Wiclif to Urban VI are the only items dealing with individual pontiffs in these volumes.[15] Nevertheless, it was in the period between the publication of his two Latin martyrologies (i.e., between 1555 and 1559) that Foxe's interest in papal history began to manifest itself. In a play, Christus Triumphans, which he wrote in 1556, Foxe identified the papacy as the Antichrist and described it corrupting the church, persecuting the faithful and usurping the authority of secular rulers through the Middle Ages.[16] In the Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum, his first martyrology, Foxe had already denied the Petrine succession and attacked papal 'tyranny' over the church and its doctrines.[17] In a tract, the Ad inclytos ac praepotentes Angliae proceres supplicatio, published in 1557, Foxe went far beyond this, not only denying papal primacy and the Petrine succession, but also denouncing the cruelty and moral depravity of the popes through the ages. In a foretaste of his later treatment of papal history, Foxe claimed that the popes aspired to complete domination of both church and state and had tried to achieve this by inciting wars and massacres. The popes also corrupted the church with superstitious ceremonies and doctrines and ferociously persecuted those who did not conform to these satanic inventions.[18]

In 1560, shortly after Foxe's return from exile, an anti-papal tract entitled A solemne contestation of divers popes, was published. The author of this work (a collection of direct quotations from works of canon law, papal bulls and letters as well as ecclesiastical histories and chronicles, arranged into a first person oration in which the 'Papacy' presented extreme claims of jurisdiction over spiritual and secular affairs and boasted of its wealth and power) was anonymous, but it was very probably John Foxe.[19] This was Foxe's most detailed treatment of papal history to date and the wealth of sources incorporated in the tract demonstrates the depth of his interest in papal history and the research he had already begun on it during his exile. The Solemne contestation may also have affirmed for Foxe the interest and topicality of papal history in the confessional debates of the decade following Elizabeth's accession; there is evidence that Jewel and his opponents consulted the Solemne contestation in their controversies.[20]

Three years later, the first edition of the Acts and Monuments was published. For purposes of this discussion, this edition can be considered to be divided into two parts: a first book of about 100 pages, dealing with episodes of church history before Wiclif and the remainder of the volume dealing with church history from Wiclif until the death of Mary Tudor. The bulk of the first edition, beginning with Wiclif, is an elaboration of the Rerum, covering the same span of time, but adding a great deal of new material to the narrative. The episodes of papal history in the post-Wiclif section of the first edition are, up to Pius II, largely incidental to the main narrative; the popes appear in it in connection with the persecution of the Lollards and Hussites. With Pius II a series of brief papal biographies begins which runs through JuliusIII and which focuses on the vices and foibles of the Renaissance popes.

The material on papal history in the Rerum (drawn largely from two sources, the Fasciculi Zizaniorum, a collection of Lollard 'tares' compiled by the Carmelites and Thomas Walsingham's Historia Anglicana) had been reprinted from Foxe's Commentarii and was in turn incorporated into the 1563 edition. Most of the material on papal history that was added to this section of the first edition came from John Bale's Scriptorum illustrium maioris Britanniae.[21] Another important source for the papal history in this section was the Catalogus testium veritatis of the Lutheran scholar, Matthias Flacius; some data on Gregory XII and John XXIII was taken from the great collection of Jan Hus' writings compiled under Flacius's auspices.[22] In fact, Lutheran scholars were well represented with Foxe drawing on chronicles edited by Caspar Hedio, Christian Masseus and Caspar Peucer.[23] There was also a great deal of material from the collection of documents, the Fasciculus rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum, amassed by the Catholic humanist, Ortwin Gratius: in particular Pius II's Commentaries on the Council of Basle which was reprinted in its entirety by Gratius and in the first edition of the Acts and Monuments.[24] The history of the Hussite wars written by Gratius's friend, the Catholic controversialist Johannes Cochlaeus, was also consulted.[25] In contrast to the second edition of the Acts and Monuments, Foxe made little use of English chronicles in the first edition; in this section of the book the only exception to this was the addition of Walsingham's description of the election and coronation of Martin V.[26] And while the first edition of the Acts and Monuments differed from Foxe's Latin martyrologies in its use use of archival sources, none of this archival material, with one exception, a commission from Paul IV sanctioning the execution of Archbishop Cranmer which Foxe reprinted from Bishop Bonner's register, pertained to papal history.[27]

The first book was the last section of the 1563 edition to be written, in fact, its composition appears to have been completed only just in time for publication.[28] This first book deals with events in church history before Wiclif focusing largely on the corruption of the church by the papacy and papal conflicts with various secular rulers. The book begins with an introduction tracing the domination of the papacy by Antichrist from when, about the year 600, the popes began to claim the title of universal bishop until the pontificate of Gregory VII. A detailed account of this pontificate follows, along with an excursus on the Waldensians and brief accounts of Gregory's successors through Eugene III. Next come detailed accounts of Frederick Barbarossa's battles with the papacy, Thomas Becket's turbulent career and Innocent Ill's struggle with John. An account of other events in Innocent's pontificate, a disgression on the founding of the mendicant orders and a prophecy of Hildegard of Bingen, a series of episodes in Anglo-papal history drawn from Matthew Paris and an account of Frederick II conclude the first book.

It seems that a decision was made sometime in 1562 (the first edition of the Acts and Monuments was published in March, 1563) to extend the scope of the Foxe's work and to balance the account of the Reformation with an account of the medieval church, especially the medieval papacy. (It is interesting that 1562 also saw the publication of the first editions of John Jewel's Apology. His direct attacks on fundamental doctrines the Catholic church inevitably entailed discussion of the medieval church and the simultaneous extension of the 1563 edition raises the intriguing possibility that there was some coordination between the publication of the two works). The overwhelming majority of this material was drawn from John Bale's Catalogus.[29] Another important source was Flacius's Catalogus testium veritatis, which Foxe drew on extensively for the struggles of Henry IV, Henry V, Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II with the papacy.[30] Matthew Paris's Chronica majora was also the source for quite a bit of material in the first book of the 1563 edition.[31] The Quadrilogus, a hagiographical work consisting of four lives of Thomas Becket, was the Foxe's source for Alexander III letters and dealings with the controversial primate.[32] Other English historical works, William of Malmesbury's De gestis pontificum, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Roger Howden's Chronica and William Caxton's Chronicles of England, were the sources for individual items of papal history.[33] Foxe reprinted incidents of contemporary resistance to Gregory VII's imposition of clerical celibacy from Lambert of Hirsfeld's chronicle and details of Gregory's pontificate and that of Urban II from Platina's papal biographies.[34]

Most of what Foxe wrote about papal history in the 1563 edition would be incorporated in the second edition of the Acts and Monuments, published in 1570. And although a great deal of material on the papacy would be added to the 1570 edition, some of the basic patterns of Foxe's research in papal history were already clearly delineated in the 1563 edition. One major characteristic of this research was Foxe's marked tendency to rely on a few key sources for most of his papal history. Apart from some sources which were extensively reprinted but only for limited topics (Gratius's Fasciculus on councils, the Quadrilogus on Becket and the Hus monumenta), most of the papal history in the 1563 edition came from four sources: Bale's Catalogus, Flacius's Catalogus testium veritatis, Matthew Paris's Chronica majora and Thomas Walsingham's Historia Anglicana. Foxe's use of these four sources would be expanded in the 1570 edition and, with the addition of the Magdeburg Centuries, these would be his most important sources for papal history.

Nowhere is the reliance on a few key sources clearer than in Foxe's account of the popes of the primitive church, from St Peter through the martyrdom of Marcellinus in the Great Persecution. All of this material was added in the 1570 edition and almost all of it came from the Magdeburg Centuries.[35] But it should always be borne in mind that because Foxe copied large extracts from a single work, this does not mean that he did not also consult other sources on the same events - in many cases, the same sources his major source had cited.[36] He also freely added material from other sources into his narrative when it suited his purposes.[37] The point is worth emphasizing because all too often Foxe is dismissed as an energetic, yet undiscriminating, compiler of source material. [38] He certainly was industrious in compiling material, but, as his constant additions to and deletions from the texts he was reprinting demonstrate, Foxe carefully shaped the sources he amassed to his own ends.

The pontificate of Gregory I was an important one for Foxe in several respects (e.g., the mission to England, Gregory's refusal to style himself universal bishop) and Foxe drew on a variety of sources for his pontificate.[39] But with the exception of a letter of Pope Sergius I (which really was part of Foxe's account of Bede), all the papal history up until the pontificate of Formosus in the 1570 edition was taken exclusively from Bale's Catalogus.[40] Similarly, apart from two brief excerpts from Sigebert of Gembloux's chronicle, a pair of terse references from Marianus Scotus and Martinus Polanus, two anecdote from Flacius's Catalogus testium veritatis and a story from William of Malmesbury 's De gestis pontificum, all of the papal history from the pontificate of Formosus (891-6) through the pontificate of Alexander II (1061-73) is taken from the Catalogus.[41]

With the pontificate of Gregory VII, Foxe for the first time moved away from his almost complete reliance on Bale's Catalogus. One episode, a fictitious account of Gregory's deathbed repentance of his evil deeds, was taken from Bale and some material was taken from the German chronicler Lambert of Hirsfeld. Apart from this, the entire, lengthy account of Gregory VII was taken from Platina and Matthias Flacius.[42] This extensive use of Platina was very unusual for Foxe, but the use of Flacius as a source, particularly on the conflicts between the papacy and the Holy Roman emperors, would continue. Foxe's accounts of the alliance of Paschal II and the future emperor Henry V against Emperor Henry IV and of Frederick Barbarossa's struggles with the papacy were drawn largely from the Catalogus testium veritatis.[43] After Gregory VII, however, Foxe returned to relying on Bale's Catalogus; except for the material taken from Flacius, and material from some English sources (William of Malmesbury, Howden, St Anselm's letters and the chronicle attributed to John of Brompton) on the investiture controversy in England, the papal history in the 1570 edition through the pontificate of Lucius III (1181-5) was drawn almost exclusively from Bale.[44]

The pontificate of Urban III (1185-7) is not normally considered a milestone, but it marked another shift in the sources Foxe consulted. Although Foxe still drew on Bale's Catalogus, it was heavily supplemented with extracts from three English chronicles, Gervase of Canterbury's, Howden's and a chonicle included in the collection allegedly compiled by Walter of Coventry.[45] Again, Foxe used these sources to elaborate themes of particular interest to him. Howden's chronicle and 'Walter of Coventry's' chronicle supplied striking examples of imperial conflict with the papacy. And Gervase of Canterbury's narrow focus on the ecclesiastical politics of Canterbury provided examples of schisms among the clergy and papal venality. Foxe also replaced the relatively brief account of Frederick II which had been in the 1563 edition, with copious extracts (actually not far short of a complete reprinting) of Nicholas Cisner's panegyric on the last Hohenstaufen emperor.[46]

For those popes of the thirteenth century that Foxe discussed (he virtually ignored the popes of the last three decades of the century) relatively little information was taken from Bale's Catalogus. Almost all that Foxe related about them came from Matthew Paris's Chronica majora, a source which Foxe quarried extensively for papal 'oppression' of the English church and of the rulers of Europe.[47] For the immediate precursors of the Avignonese popes (Celestine V, Boniface VIII and Benedict XI) and the Avignonese popes themselves, Foxe had two major sources: Bale's Catalogus and Thomas Walsingham's Historia Anglicana.[48] Other English chroniclers, Nicholas Trivet, Walter of Guisborough and Robert of Avesbury were also used.[49] Foxe relied on Continental historians; once again, Flacius's Catalogus testium veritatis was pressed into service, while the Protestant Hieronymous Massarius and the humanist Sabellicus were consulted.[50] And Foxe obtained copies of documents from the French royal archives for his narrative of Philip IV and the downfall of Boniface VIII.[51]

The Great Schism and the Council of Basle saw little use of Bale's Catalogus; instead Foxe relied on Walsingham for both English and Continental history.[52] A number of important humanist, conciliarist authors, Dietrich of Niem, Pius II and Ortwin Gratius, were used by Foxe.[53] Interestingly, Foxe drew heavily on Lutheran authors for this important era of papal history: Caspar Hedio's continuation of Burchard of Ursberg's chronicle, Caspar Peucer's editon of Carion's chronicle and the collection of Jan Hus' writings which was initiated and sponsored by Matthias Flacius.[54] In a rare use of a militantly Catholic author, Foxe drew on Johann Cochleus for papal history as it concerned the Hussites.[55] And Foxe used archival sources to illuminate aspects of papal history in the period.[56] Use of Bale's Catalogus resumed as Foxe turned to the Renaissance papacy, in fact, Bale was a source for all of the pontiffs from Nicholas V to Clement VII.[57] Ortwin Gratius's Fasciculus was the source for important documents describing German grievances at the onset of the Reformation and papal attempts to deal with them.[58] Apart from these sources, Foxe consulted Lutheran authors (Flacius, Hedio, Christian Masseus, Johann Sleidan and Luther himself) for both the vices of individual popes and Luther's challenge to the papacy.[59] There was also a miscellaneous collection of sources (an anonymous English Chronicle, two devotional works, Pius II's Historia Bohemica, Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia, Paolo Giovio's history of the Turks, Edward Hall's chronicle) each of which was used as the source for a particular facet of a pope's career.[60] Foxe also printed Leo X's bull 'Exsurge Domini' a copy of which he probably obtained from a diocesan register and he reproduced a printed copy of Clement VII's sentence affirming the validity of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Foxe had relatively little to say about the popes from Paul III on, who spearheaded the Catholic Reformation. Bale went out in a blaze of calumny as the source for stories accusing Julius III of sodomy, nepotism, gluttony and blasphemy.[61] Foxe's interest in conciallarism led him to draw on Sleidan's Commentaries and on a 'libellus' printed at Henry VIII's behest for an account of Paul Ill's attempts to summon a general council to reform the church.[62] Otherwise, all Foxe noted about the popes after Clement VII was their direct involvement in various persecutions and all of these episodes were drawn from Heinrich Panaleon's martyrology.[63]

Papal history ends in the Acts and Monuments with the brief account of Pius IV. Foxe, however, also introduced two excurses in the 1570 edition both of which contained a significant amount of papal history. The first, entitled 'The Proud Primacy of Popes' appeared at the end of the first volume, just before the reign of Henry VIII, along with a reprinting of The solemne contestation of diverse popes. Most of the 'Proud Primacy,' an account of the papal 'usurpation' of ecclesiastical and secular authority, repeated material already related in the preceding text, although a short section on the papacy from Boniface III to Gregory V bears a close resemblance to a similar survey in William Tyndale's Practice of Prelates.[64] The second excursus was a long attack on the doctrines (transubstantiation, communion in one kind, enforced clerical celibacy and auricular confession) maintained in the Six Articles. Foxe mustered theological and historical arguments against these doctrines and many of these concerned individual popes or the papacy. But almost all of the historical material again repeated what had already been said earlier in the Acts and Monuments. A significant exception to this was an account of Berengar of Tours, including the persecution he suffered from various pontiffs, for his teachings on the Eucharist. From an edition of the Acta conciliorum, Foxe obtained a chronological framework for Berengar's career and an account of his recantation at a council held in Rome by Gregory VII in 1079. From William of Malmesbury's De gestis regum Anglorum Foxe obtained a narrative of Berengar's trial by Cardinal Hildebrand, the future Gregory VII, in the synod of Tours (1054) as well as details about Berengar's supporters and his retirement into obscurity. And from Heinrich Bullinger's De origine erroris, Foxe drew accounts of Berengar's condemnation by Leo IX at the council of Vercelli (1050) and his condemnation by Nicholas II at a council in Rome in 1054.[65]

All of the papal history in the 1570 edition was reprinted in the third edition of the Acts and Monuments, published in 1576, without any change whatsoever. For practical purposes, this is also true of the fourth edition, published in 1583 and the last edition of the Acts and Monuments, printed in Foxe's lifetime. There were, however, two relatively minor additions to the material on papal history which were made to the 1583 edition. A letter from the papal legate in Germany to Eugene IV, urging the pope not to dissolve the Council of Basle, which had been printed in the 1563 edition and deleted from the 1570 and 1576 editions was reintroduced into the 1583 edition.[66] in the 1583 edition, Foxe also added a statement, derived from Bale's Catalogus, that Urban IV established the feast of Corpus Christi.[67]

From the preceding description of the sources on which the papal history in the Acts and Monuments was based, Foxe's profound indebtedness to Bale's Catalogus should be readily apparent. In fact, Bale's Catalogus was not only written while Foxe and Bale were sharing the same house, during the Marian exile, but it was written at the time when, as we have seen, Foxe's interest in papal history was commencing. On one level a biographical encyclopedia, consciously imitating the great works of Trithemius and Conrad Gesner, Bale's Catalogus went far beyond these models to present a new interpretation of church history. Interspersed among the biographical entries were historical appendices detailing the deeds of God's faithful elect and those agents of Satan who corrupted the true church and persecuted its members. A special set of appendices traced the rise of the Antichrist through a series of papal biographies. In 1558, a year after the Catalogus was published, the papal biographies were printed separately as the Acta Romanorum pontificum.[68] It is a striking indication of the esteem in which Foxe regarded Bale, that he appears to have consulted both of these works, despite the fact that one was very largely a reprinting of material in the other.[69]

Foxe's reliance on Bale for papal history is a striking example of a rather neglected aspect of the relationship between Bale and Foxe. There has been quite a bit of analysis of Bale's influence on Foxe's apocalyptic thought and of the way in which his martyrological writings provided models for Foxe.[70] What has been largely overlooked has been the extent to which Foxe built on Bale's research and incorporated it into the Acts and Monuments. Yet as we have seen, Foxe's direct borrowing from Bale's printed works was considerable. And furthermore, the importance of Bale's research to the Acts and Monuments hardly ends there. Bale's references also guided Foxe to manuscript and print sources which Bale had already used; frequently we see Foxe independently consulting these sources on exactly the issues for which Bale had cited them.[71] Perhaps most importantly of all, a number of the manuscripts which Bale had collected, and often discovered, came into Foxe's possession.[72] The Acts and Monuments is, among other things, one of the culminations of the antiquarian researches of John Leland and Bale.

If Bale's scholarship was one of the chief pillars on which Foxe's interpretation of papal history rested, the research of the Lutheran scholar Matthias Flacius was another. We have already seen Foxe's almost total reliance on the Magdeburg Centuries for the history of the pre-Constantinian papacy; the Centuries were a project that Flacius had planned and initiated, although he did not actually compose or edit them.[73] Foxe also drew some papal history from the edition of the writings of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague compiled under Flacius's auspices and published in 1558.[74] Bu Flacius's greatest influence on the Acts and Monuments came through his book, the Catalogus testium veritatis, a collection of accounts of those who opposed or criticized the papacy in the centuries before Luther. As was the case with Bale's Catalogus, Flacius's book seems to have shaped Foxe's vieiw of papal history during the formative years of Foxe's exile. Foxe certainly had access to the Catalogus testium veritatis during this time; it was first printed in 1556 by the Basle printer Johannes Oporinus, in whose print-shop Foxe worked as a proofreader and editor. In his Ad inclytos . . . Angliae proceres Foxe drew upon Flacius's book (without acknowledgement) for precedents from the early church which could be used to challenge papal primacy over other bishops.[75] The Catalogus testium veritatis was also cited in the Solemne contestation with unusual precision; Foxe specified the exact folio in Flacius's book.[76]

Three years after the publication of the Solemne contestation, Foxe's use of the Catalogus testium veritatis in the 1563 edition of his magnum opus was pervasive and unmistakable. Apart from occasional anecdotes of curial corruption and papal turpitude, Flacius's greatest contribution to the papal history in the Acts and Monuments was as Foxe's most important source for papal conflict with secular rulers. Aside from the information he supplied on individual pontiffs and their adversaries, an indication of how profoundly Flacius influenced Foxe's thought in this area can be gleaned from the opening section of the 1570 edition, where Foxe contrasts the Roman church with the apostolic church. Large parts of this argument, particularly the historical examples, were excerpted from Flacius's book, including a list of papal 'sleightes to get money', limitations on papal jurisdiction by the sixth council of Carthage and by various kings of France, proofs of imperial control of papal elections before the eleventh century, the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, decrees of Charlemagne regulating the church, legislation by French monarchs to reserve taxation of the French clergy to themselves and early church councils claiming supremacy over the pope.[77] It is also possible that Flacius may have supplied Foxe with documents. Foxe printed a series of documents relating to the controversy between Philip IV and Boniface VIII which he claimed came from the 'French kinges recordes.'[78] Flacius printed an exchange between Boniface and Philip; the originals of both letters were in the French royal archives.[79]

At the same time, Flacius also described Philip's condemnation of Boniface as a heretic and appeal to a general council and claimed that his information was derived from manuscripts in his possession. Strikingly, the condemnation and the appeal were in the French royal archives and were printed by Foxe.[80] None of this is conclusive but it does suggest that Flacius had copies of at least some of archival records on Philip and Boniface and he is certainly a more plausible source than most in explaining how Foxe was able to copy French government records.

Flacius's Catalogus, like Bale's Catalogus, was an indispensable repository of information for Foxe because it was based on the researsch of several generations of scholars. In fact, Protestant historical writing followed very similar trajectories in both Germany and England. In each case, a Protestant scholar (Flacius and Bale respectively) synthesized existing historical and antiquarian scholarship into encyclopedic works. In each case, the findings of these works of synthesis were in turn incorporated into the two great Protestant historical worksproduced in the succeeding decade, the Acts and Monuments and the Magdeburg Centuries. And these two great historical works were directly inspired and to a great extent initiated by Bale and Flacius.

Even before the Reformation, German humanists had developed an anti-papal interpretation of history. They were inspired by a number of disparate motives: the desire to assert and maintain a German cultural identity against what was perceived as papal and Italian condescension, resentment at curial exploitation of German ecclesiastical revenues, and the perception that the papacy was a major obstacle to ecclesiastical reform. All of the motives converged into the idealization and glorification of the Emperor both as a symbol of German identity and as the potential champion of reform of the German church.[81] (it should also be added that Maximilian I was the patron of a number of scholars and historians, including Johannes Nauclerus, whose universal chronicle, a major source for Flacius and Bale, was written at Maximilian's behest).[82]

On the basis of these convictions, a number of German humanists began a search for sources which supported their interpretation of history; often with considerable success. The result was a revision of key aspects of German history. Before 1500, for example, the works which were available about the Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Controversy, notably the biography of Gregory VII in Platina's papal lives and Gregory's writings, including the Dictatus Papae, which were preserved in the collections of canon law, were generally pro-papal. Early sixteenth century historical works such as Johannes Trithemius's Chronicon Hirsaugiense (1501) and Johannes Nauclerus's chronicle, did little to alter this. But as the century progressed, a number of pro-imperial sources were traced, discovered and printed. In 1508 Jacob Wimpfelingpublished the Carmen de bello saxonico, which eulogized Henry IV, from a manuscript he discovered in the library of Speyer Cathedral. Ten years later Johannes Aventinus discovered and published the even more laudatory Vita Henrici IV, a work which compared the embattled emperor to Christ. Also included in this volume was an appendix of Henry IV's official letters, justifying his opposition to Gregory VII, which were also discovered by Aventinus. In 1513, Sigebert of Gembloux's chronicle, which was markedly favorable to Henry IV, was published. And Ulrich von Hutten discovered, in the monastery of Fulda, one of the most important of the pro-imperial tracts written during the Investiture Con-troversey, the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda, which he promptly published.[83] But the capstone came with the publication of the letters of Cardinal Benno, a contemporary opponent of the pontiff, in Ortwin Gratius's Fasciculus. All of these discoveries were described and summarized, and in the case of Benno's letters, printed verbatim, in Flacius's Catalogus, thereby entering the Protestant canon. By the time the first confessional polemics of the Reformation were written, new versions of imperial and papal history had been created by the German humanists; one sign of their success was the creation and dissemination of the widely believed and completely spurious legend of Alexander III treading on Frederick Barbarossa's neck.[84]

Although the German humanists created a version of history that was ultimately very useful to the Protestants, their own views of the papacy were fundamentally different from those of the Protestants. While many of the most eminent German humanists were capable of savage attacks on individual pontiffs there was no criticism of the institution itself.[85] As one scholar has observed of the German humanists: 'their frequent and sometimes highly strident criticisms of the papacy were geared, more often than not, to restoring that office to what they believed to be its pristine sanctity and integrity before it had become corrupted by its holders in their day'. The same scholar went on to maintain that 'the broadly shared sentiment of German humanists ... was one of harshly criticizing particular papal practices while reaffirming a fundamental loyalty to the papal monarchy in particular.'[86]

Just how far the convictions of the humanists could diverge from those of the Protestants who made use of their material is made clear by the example of Ortwin Gratius. Although he is now remembered as the object of Ulrich von Hutten's invective during the Reuchlin controversy, Gratius also compiled a collection of documents on church history, the Fasciculus rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum, which became a cornerstone for the Protestant interpretation of history. Among the items which Foxe alone reprinted from Gratius's Fasciculus were the condemnation of Wiclif at the Council of Constance, Pius II's commentaries on the Council of Basle and Hadrian VI's negotians with the German nobles in 1522.[87] Gratius was also one of the most important creators of what would become a major part of the Protestant heritage; the collection of Waldensian documents (or what Gratius identified as Waldensian documents) in his Fasciculus was reprinted (with some abridgement) in Flacius's Catalogus and Flacius's version was reprinted (with considerable abridgement and some reorganization of the contents) in the Magdeburg Centuries and (with further alteration of the contents) in the Acts and Monuments.[88] Testimony to the significance that the Waldensian documents held for Protestants came from no less a figure than Nicholas Ridley who read Gratius's book in prison and recommended it to a friend, particularly praising the writings of the Waldensians,

men of much more learning, godliness, soberness, and understanding in Gods word, than I would have thought them to have been in that time, before I did read their works. If such things had been set forth in our English tongue heretofore, I suppose surely great good might have come to Christ's church thereby.[89]

But if Gratius had written about Peter Waldo and his followers, it was to bury them, not to praise them. In introductions to the documents he printed, Gratius vehemently denounced Peter Waldo, Jan Hus, John of Wesel and especially Wiclif, who was castigated as 'fodder for the fires of hell' [pabulum gehennae ignis] and compared to Cerberus rabidly foaming at the mouth.[90] Gratius was an ardent conciliarist who saw a general council as the only hope for reforming a thoroughly corrupt church. Gratius compiled the documents in the Fasciculus to support the call for a general council by documenting ecclesiastical abuses, tracing the rise of heresies (a result of ecclesiastical corruption which only councils could effectively combat) and by presenting the precedents for maintaining the supremacy of general councils over the pope.[91] And although his Fasciculus was used as a reservoir of sources by major Protestant historical writers, Gratius remained resolutely Catholic as the Reformation progressed. He attacked Luther in print, numbered Johannes Cochleus and Friedrich Nausea among his friends and served as spiritual advisor for a Benedictine convent through the 1520s. As editor (and de facto director) of the Quentell publishing house, Gratius shepherded anti-Protestant works through the press, notably John Fisher's De veritate et sanguinis Christi in Eucharistia, to which Gratius contributed a preface extolling the bishop of Rochester's piety and erudition.[92] That an admirer of the great Catholic martyr should have written a work which which was enthusiastically recommended by one of the pre-eminent Protestant martyrs is a demonstration of the complex relationship between the Protestant historical writers and the scholarship of their predecessors. It is also a demonstration of the readiness of Protestant scholars to subvert the purposes and disregard the arguments of the authorities from whom they drew their material. It is striking that while Flacius and Foxe both lifted their extracts of authorities criticizing the Donation of Constantine from Gratius's book, they both failed to print, or even mention, Gratius's defiant endorsement of the Donation's authenticity.[93]

But while the motivations of the German humanists in discovering.; collecting and printing anti-papal material differed from those of the Protestants, they nevertheless created a sizable body of texts that would greatly influence Protestant historical writing. The most dramatic example of this was Luther's declaration, in a letter of 1520, that he came to the conviction that the papacy was the Antichrist after reading Ulrich von Hutten's edition of Valla's declamation against the Donation of Constantine.[94] And Luther also seems to have been inspired by the example of the humanists to collect and publish documents which supported his interpretation of church history; in one case, he reprinted two letters of Hadrian VI which had been published in Gratius's Fasciculus.[95] And in his preface to Robert Barnes's collection of papal biographies, Luther urged the publication of more sources on papal history as a necessary warning to posterity.[96] His followers took him at his word and continued to add to the store of published anti-papal sources. A particularly important example of this was the new edition of the chronicle compiled by the prior of the Premonstratensian monastery of Ursberg in the reign of Frederick II and published in 1537 by Caspar Hedio. This markedly anti-papal chronicle had already been printed in 1515 from the only surviving manuscript of the complete work. Hedio added an important continuation of the chronicle, which he composed himself, taking the chronicle down to his own time.[97] Bale and Flacius, and then their successors, Foxe and the Magdeburg Centuriators, wrote great works of historical synthesis which were made possible by several generations of antiquarian labor by these humanist and Lutheran scholars.

Foxe was certainly heavily indebted to Lutheran scholarship. Hedio's edition and continuation of the Ursberg chronicle and Caspar Peucer's edition of Carion's chronicle were important sources for Foxe, while he also made use of the works of Sleidan and Christian Masseus.[98] Apart from some material from Matthew Paris's Chronica majora, all of Foxe's lengthy account of Frederick II was drawn from a panegyric written by the Lutheran lawyer Nicholas Cisner.[99] The edition of Hus's writings compiled and edited by the Lutherans was Foxe's chief source for everything to do with the Bohemian heresiarch, while the Magdeburg Centuries were his indispensable source for the early church. Merely enumerating the material on papal history Foxe derived from Flacius's Catalogus testium veritatis has conveyed some idea of how extensively Foxe relied on this work, but it represents only a fraction of what Foxe reprinted from Flacius. And it should not be forgotten that the great Protestant historical works to which Foxe was most indebted, Bale's Catalogus, Flacius's Catalogus testium veritatis and the Magdeburg Centuries, were themselves based on a wide range of Lutheran writers whose works in turn were based on those of the German humanists and the sources they discovered. When Foxe quoted Bale, Flacius or the Centuriators he was often quoting, at one remove, these earlier sources. As a result, English readers of the Acts and Monuments , would often, unknowingly, find themselves studying the texts of German humanists and Lutheran scholars and, inevitably, seeing the great sweep of church history through through the prism of their biases, preconceptions and ideals.[100]

The Lutheran scholars, and their humanist predecessors, supplied Foxe with almost all of his material on the conflicts between the papacy and the empire, much of his material on the Great Schism and the conciliar movement, much of his material on the relations between the papacy and the kings of France and almost all of his information on the pre-Constantinian papacy. Without their work, Foxe would not only have been deprived of his sources for a major part of papal history, including many of the most egregious examples of papal 'tyranny', he would have been bereft of much of the history of the pre-Reformation church. Recent scholarship has tended to emphasize the progressive waning of Lutheran theological influence on the English Reformation.[101] Yet through their contributions to the historical content and the interpretation of history in Foxe's great work, the Lutheran historical writers exerted an influence on English Protestantism which was persistent and extended beyond the confines of theology.

Foxe's extensive use of Lutheran sources points to a neglected aspect of his research. While some (not enough) attention has been paid to Foxe's obtaining of sources in England, none has been paid to his acquisition of works published on the Continent. Foxe undoubtedly obtained some of these works during his exile. Of his sources for papal history, undoubtedly acquired a copy of Gratius's Fasciculus between 1554 and 1559.[102] Foxe also secured a copy of the Lutheran edition of Hus's writings within a year of its publication in 1558.[103] Piatina's Lives of the Popes was cited in the Solemne contestation, which means that Foxe owned it in 1560, and makes it likely that he also acquired it during his exile.[104] Foxe may well have also obtained books which were printed at Oporinus's printshop while he worked there, among them the 1556 edition of Flacius's Catalogus and the editions of the chronicles of Marinus Scotus and Martinus Polanus, both published by Oporinus in 1559.[105]

By the time that the first edition of the Acts and Monuments was published, Foxe had also procured (restricting myself to sources used for aspects of papal history) Peucer's edition of Carion's chronicle, Hedio's edition of the Ursberg chronicle, Christian Masseus's chronicle, Lambert of Hirsfeld's chronicle, Johannes Cochleus's Historiae Hussitorum and a collected edition of Pius II's writings.[106] Some or all of these works may have been acquired by Foxe during his exile; but any case, Foxe clearly made a point of obtaining a number of continental histories even for an edition of the Acts and Monuments with a more limited treatment of history outside of the British Isles than any of its successors. During the period between the publication of the first and second editions of his magnum opus, Foxe consulted a number of other continental works for data on papal history. More impressive than the quantity of these works, was the systematic way in which Foxe acquired them, apparently deliberately seeking out foreign books which would fill in specific gaps in his knowledge. For example, in the first edition of the Acts and Monuments, Foxe's only sources for Frederick II's conflicts with the papacy were Bale's Catalogus and Matthew Paris's Chronica majora.[107] In the second edition, however, Foxe printed a long, detailed account of Frederick II comprised of extracts from Paris, the letters of Pier della Vigna and Nicolas Cisner's panegyric.[108] Both Vigna's letters and Cisner's oration were printed in Basle in 1566; Foxe's ability to acquire these books in time to incorporate them into a work printed in 1570, suggests that Foxe had overseas contacts who helped gather relevant books for him. Oporinus, who still communicated with Foxe after the latter's return to England, may well have been one of these contacts.[109]

Foxe's conscientious efforts to procure specific foreign books can also be seen in his use of Dietrich of Niem's De schismate. This work, an eyewitness account of the origins of the Great Schism and the horrors of the court of Urban VI, was described in Flacius's Catalogus and was mentioned in Bale's Catalogus, although Bale almost certainly never read it.[110] If Bale did not have this book during his exile, then neither did Foxe. And in the Solemne contestation, Foxe referred to Dietrich's work but gave the Catalogus testium veritatis as his source.[111] But by the time he was writing the second edition of the Acts and Monuments, Foxe had obtained this work whose description by Flacius had already caught his attention.[112] And in the Catalogus, Bale mentioned a devotional work about a Dominican named Alan de Rupe which contained a 'blasphemous' story about the Virgin Mary. (Apparently Bale derived this information from Trithemius). It is perhaps a coincidence that Foxe, who described his incredulous reaction to reading Bale's version of de Rupe's story, obtained a copy of this little known work and was thus able to confirm Bale's account, but it looks suspiciously like Foxe's interest in the matter was piqued by Bale and this led him to have a copy of the relevant incunabulum found and sent to him.[113] This directed research, the searching for sources to make specific points or illustrate specific topics, is another reminder of how carefully composed and premeditated Foxe's account of papal history, indeed the entire Acts and Monuments, was.

Great as Foxe's reliance on continental historical and religious works was for the papal history in the Acts and Monuments, he also relied greatly on English chronicles, and occasionally on English archival sources, for his accounts of the pontiffs. But for the most part, Foxe did not utilize such sources until he was writing the second edition of his work (the use of Matthew Paris in the 1563 edition is the major exception to this). When he began to rely on these sources, however, Foxe relied on them heavily. Matthew Paris was Foxe's chief source for events of the first half of the thirteenth-century, particularly papal financial relations with England and Thomas Walsingham was his most important source for the last half of the fourteenth century and the first two decades of the fifteenth century. The parochialism of Gervase of Canterbury limited his usefulness to Foxe, but his chronicle was extensively quarried by Foxe for details of ecclesiastical politics concerning the see of Canterbury. Other chroniclers, such as Robert of Avesbury and Walter of Guisborough, were relied on for specific episodes of papal history. Unlike Bale, Flacius or the Centuriators none of these chronicles can be said to have provided Foxe with a theoretical framework to aid in interpreting papal history. Instead these chronicles provided layers of detail, a sort of argumentative armor, which made Foxe's interpretation of history seemingly impervious to challenge.

What made these chronicles, particularly those of Paris and Walsingham, reservoirs of data useful to the Protestants was a certain anti-clerical and anti-papal bias running through them. .In the case of Walsingham, the anti-papalism stemmed partly from his chauvinistic support of the English cause in the Hundred Years War (the Avignonese papacy supported the French) and partly from a genuine disgust at the participants in the Great Schism.[114] In most cases, especially that of Matthew Paris, the anti-papalism was a result of resentment at the increasing financial levies the Curia made on the English church. Richard Vaughan has characterized Matthew Paris's attitude: 'All methods of raising money on behalf of the pope are considered extortionate, and almost all forms of papal interference in England are condemned as obnoxious and oppressive.'[115] As a result, Paris's great chronicle is peppered with fulminations against papal iniquity; a papal letter, for example, authorizing the bishop of Hereford to borrow money from certain monasteries, elicited a verbal blast worthy of John Bale: 'Alas! For shame and grief! These and other detestable things emanated at this time from the sulphurous fountain of the Roman church.'[116] Nor was Paris alone in this resentment; Foxe's translation of a complaint made in Parliament in 1351, that papal reservations and annates were 'a more consumption to the realm, then all the kinges warres' was quite accurate.[117]

Despite their anti-papalism, these chroniclers cannot be regarded as proto-Protestants. Like the German humanists, they may have seen individual popes, and even the entire Curia, as corrupt, but they did not see the papacy itself as a corrupt institution nor did they have theoretical or theological objections to papal authority. Nevertheless, their grievances gave credibility to Protestant claims of papal corruption and to Protestant claims that this corruption had been perceived and resisted before Luther. Their grievances may also, as will be discussed below, have helped shape Protestant views of the nature of that corruption. Medieval anti-clericalism, and the anti-papalism which formed a large part of it, may not have caused the Reformation but they helped sustain it by contributing to an interpretation of history which justified Protestant rejection of the authority of Rome.

How did Foxe obtain these English chronicles, almost all of which were unprinted at the time the second edition of the Acts and Monuments was written? The idea that Foxe personally tracked down these sources and collected them can be safely dismissed. In the seven years between the publication of the first and second editions of his great book, Foxe substantially rewrote the first edition, and added masses of new material to it. He was also active as a preacher in London and, in fact, there is no sign of his having left the metropolis for any extended time during this period. These manuscripts must have been gathered by others and loaned or given to Foxe. By far and away the most important of these benefactors was Matthew Parker, the archbishop of Canterbury. A great collector manuscripts, Parker also dedicated himself to bringing those sources which served the interests of the Elizabethan church into print.[118] By supplying Foxe with manuscripts, Parker was able to achieve his cherished goal of disseminating the material in them to a wider audience than his printed editions would reach.

Unfortunately, it is far beyond the scope of this introduction to do justice to Matthew Parker's contributions to the Acts and Monuments; only those manuscripts, a fraction of the total, which were sources for the papal history presented in the Acts and Monuments can be considered here. Nevertheless, it is still an impressive list. In 1571, Parker printed an edition of Matthew Paris's Chronica majora and in preparation for this, he had collected all the manuscripts of the Chronica majora then known to exist.[119] Foxe would have had to have obtained his manuscript copy the Chronica majora from Parker.[120] Foxe flatly stated that he obtained that portion of Thomas Walsingham's great chronicle now printed as the Chronicon Angliae 'ex accomodato D. Math. Archiepis. Cant.'[121] Although Foxe only cited it once in connection with papal history, he used the chronicle attributed to John of Brompton, abbot of Jervaulx, extensively and the sole manuscript of this work was also owned by Parker who donated it to Corpus Christi College.[122] One of the three surviving manuscripts of Gervase of Canterbury's chronicle was owned by Matthew Parker; it is very likely that Foxe also obtained this manuscript from the primate.[123] A good circumstantial case can be made for Foxe's having consulted Arundel MS 7 (in the Royal College of Arms), which was one of the texts used by Parker for his edition of Walsingham's great chronicle.[124] And while Foxe owned an incomplete manuscript of Walter of Guisborough's chronicle, Parker owned at least one complete copy of the work and may have loaned it to Foxe.[125]

The provenance of another manuscript Foxe consulted on papal history is particularly revealing of the role Parker played in the acquisition of manuscript sources for the Acts and Monuments. In the second edition of his book, Foxe mentioned, but did not print, a letter from Edward III to Benedict XII and referred the reader to the 'story of Robertus Avesbur. remaining in the library of J. Stevenson of London' for the text of the letter.[126] Of the three surviving manuscripts of Avesbury's chronicle, one, Bodleian Library Douce MS 128, passed through the hands of John Stephenson (and apparently Foxe), then subsequently belonged to Parker and afterwards came into the possession of William Lambarde, the famous antiquary and legal scholar.[127] In collecting his manuscripts, Parker created a network of other collectors and scholars who shared sources and the fruits of their research with each other; a network of which Foxe had become part.

The considerable contributions of some of these other scholars to Foxe's work, such as William Gary, Laurence Nowell and John Stow, lie outside the scope of this paper. Most of William Lambarde's contributions to the Acts and Monuments are also outside the scope of this paper, but one of the items Foxe reprinted from Lambarde's Archaionomia was the letter Pope Eleutherius supposedly wrote to King Lucius as part of what was alleged to be the first conversion of the English.[128] Since the Achaionomia was printed by John Day, who was the printer of the Acts and Monuments, in 1568, Foxe's printing of this letter does not necessarily entail his having had much knowledge of Lambarde or his book. But Foxe sent a copy of the Archaionomia, just after his publication, to William Bradbridge, the future bishop of Exeter and, at the time, the dean of Salisbury. In the flyleaf of the book, Foxe testified to his frienship with Lambarde and his interest in the Archaionomia:

lest you recieve nothing new from London, I send you this most distinguished little Saxon-Latin work, just off the press, and (as they say) out of the still warm skin, which was just written by William Lambarde, that man endowed with many and outstanding gifts, the same one who delivered your latest letters to me; a man who, in my opinion, is worthy to be received not only into yourfriendship but into your library as well.[129]

Important materials for both the papal history in the Acts and Monuments and for the work as whole were supplied to Foxe by William Bowyer, the Keeper of the Tower Records and the owner of a valuable collection of manuscripts, most notably the Lindisfarne Gospels. Foxe's borrowings from Bowyer are noted throughout the Acts and Monuments but of concern to this paper are extracts from the Parliament Rolls, which were in Bowyer's custody, concerning relations between the papacy andthe English church during the reigns of Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV.[130]

Although archival documents were important sources for the Acts and Monuments as a whole, Foxe did not rely on them greatly as sources for the papal history in his book. Apart from the extracts from the Parliament Rolls just discussed and a papal commission which Foxe copied from Bishop Bonner's register, Foxe also obtained a couple of relevant documents from friends and collaborators.[131] A letter from Richard II to Boniface IX, printed in the Acts and Monuments, was apparently found in Durham and sent to Foxe by James Pilkington, the bishop of Durham.[132] Foxe also stated that Martin V's bull ordering the suppression of Wiclif's disciples was copied 'out of a certaine old monumente remaining in the hands of Maister Hakluyt, Student in the Temple."[133] Other indications of the assistance Foxe received in obtaining sources for papal history can be found in his papers which contain a few items-which he chose not to print. There are two letters, clearly copied from an edition or manuscript of Gregory the Great's register, from that pontiff to the joint Merovingian rulers Theodoric and Theodebert and to Queen Brunhilde, requesting their protection for Augustine and his retinue on their journey to England.[134] There is also an translation, considerably emended, of a letter from Martin V to Henry Chichele, the archbishop of Canterbury, exhorting the English to assist in extirpating the Bohemian heretics.[135] Also from Martin V are a series of documents apparently copied from records of Syon monastery for Foxe's benefit and still extant among his papers.[136] Also in Foxe's papers are excerpts from unnamed sources describing incidents of papal struggles with the Hohenstaufen as well as the foundation of various religious orders.[137] None of these copies are in Foxe's handwriting; they are reminders of the labors of numbers of people who uncovered documents and copied them for Foxe, enabling him to amass the vast collection of archival materials contained in the Acts and Monuments.

Among all the different sources which Foxe utilized for the papal history in his book, one type of source is conspicuously absent: works by writers with a viewpoint that was consistently antithetical to the doctrines and beliefs championed in the Acts and Monuments. Foxe's potential sources could be divided into three groups: those that were favorable, those which were conditionally favorable and those which were hostile. The favorable sources were works written or edited by Protestants. It was from these sources exlusively that Foxe derived the themes and interpretative strategies of his papal history. Foxe also often used these sources in the way a chef uses spices, to give a dominant flavor to what he was serving up. Thus, for example, while Foxe's chief source for the Council of Basle was Pius II's commentaries, Foxe interspersed this with more inflammatory material from Caspar Peucer charging Eugene IV with trying to kidnap one of the leaders of the Council and inciting the Dauphin to lead an army against it.[138] Conditionally favorable sources were those by authors who, while not Protestant, held convictions which made their works readily amenable to Foxe's purposes. Among the examples of such sources were the chronicles of Matthew Paris and Thomas Walsingham, whose hostility to the papacy and to papal financial exactions provided an abundance of grist to Foxe's mill or Pius II's Commentaries on the Council of Basle in which the future pontiff's conciliarism had similar results. Although Ortwin Gratius was strongly Catholic, his collection of documents, stripped of his commentary (which Foxe studiously ignored), can also be grouped with the conditionally favorable sources. Foxe drew on these sources for anecdotes, examples and data to support his interpretation of papal history.

Hostile sources for papal history in the Acts and Monuments are few. In fact, at times Foxe went out of his way to avoid even the appearance of having relied on them. While Foxe definitely drew on Bede for his account of Augustine's mission to England and the conversion of the English, he cited a number of other authors (Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, Fabian, Higden and John of Brompton) for this material, which they had, in fact, copied directly or indirectly from Bede.[139] The reason for this circumspection was not disapproval of Bede; elsewhere in his book, Foxe not only praised Bede for his learning but also (perhaps slightly defensively) asserted: 'As tochyng the holynes and integritie of hys [Bede's] lyfe it is not to be doubted: for how could it be, that he should attend to any vicious idlenes, or had any laisure to the same, who in reading and digestyng so many volumes, consumed all hys whole cogitations in writing upon the Scriptures.'[140] Instead the reason Foxe concealed his use of Bede was very probably the fact that the most accesible edition of Bede's history, and the only one in English, was the 1565 translation by the Catholic controversialist Thomas Stapleton, a work intended to support a Catholic interpretation of English ecclesiastical history.[141] Foxe was not, no matter how indirectly, going to refer his readers to such a dangerous work.

One of the rare exceptions to Foxe's eschewing of hostile sources was his use of the Historiae Hussitorum by one of the most fiery Catholic polemicists, Johannes Cochlaeus.[142] But Foxe used this work in a very limited fashion, as a source for the political and diplomatic background to Hus' career and the Hussite wars. Another exception was Platina's Lives of the Popes, which was occasionally used as a source for the Acts and Monuments . Yet although it had been the standard source for papal history throughout Europe, Platina's work was only infrequently used by Foxe. When Foxe did consult Platina it was usually, as had been the case with Cochleus, for political background. Even in the account of Gregory VII, where Foxe relied much more extensively on Platina than he ever would again, Foxe was still restrained in use of this author's work. For Gregory's character, the early years of his pontificate, the religious issues raised in his pontificate and aspects of Henry IV s reign, Foxe relied on Flacius. What Foxe took from Platina was largely a political narrative, focusing on the events leading up to Canossa, Rudolph of Swabia 's installation as a rival claimant to the imperial throne, Henry IV's capture of Rome and some important documents, chiefly Gregory's two excommunications of Henry IV.[143] jn other words, while Platina supplied factual material which helped to explain events, the tone of the account and the interpretation of Gregory's pontificate came from Flacius. Significantly, while much of the detail on the struggle between Henry IV and Rudolph of Swabia came from Platina, the two most dramatic, and heavily moralized, incidents (the deposition of Henry IV and the deathbed repentance of Rudolph) came from Flacius.

Foxe made the reason for his reluctance to rely on Platina clear when he dismissed him as 'a man not unlerned, but yet a shamefull flatterer and bearer with the wycked lyves of the Popes.'[144] This assessment was far from accurate, but while Platina was sharply critical of certain pontiffs (particularly Paul II who had ordered Platina imprisoned), he was sympathetic to the institution of the Papacy and, in the opinion of Eric Cochrane, 'relatively objective.'[145] As a result, Platina often presented an interpretation of facts acutely divergent from that of Protestant scholars. Thus Foxe preferred to repeat Flacius's assertion that Rudolph of Swabia was a puppet of Gregory VII and ignored Platina's more accurate statement that it was the German princes who elected Rudolph and that Gregory maintained a policy of nuetrality between Henry IV and his rival.[146] An object lesson in the dangers of relying on Platina was offered to Foxe in 1566. In that year, Robert Horne, the bishop of Winchester, published a rebuttal of a manuscript written by John Feckenham, the abbot of Westminster. Horne's book contained a detailed historical argument that secular rulers had legitimate jurisdiction over the church and the clergy, a jurisdiction usurped by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The next year, Thomas Stapleton published a lengthy rebuttal of Horne's book, in which he sharply criticized Horne's historical account of the Papacy. This account was based on a few writers, chiefly Platina, and Stapleton was repeatedly able to'slice, dice and de-bone Horne's arguments by showing that Horne was misquoting Platina or citing him out of context.[147] The problem was that Horne had to take these liberties with Platina's text, in order to be able to use it to support the points he wished to make. What the English Protestants badly needed was a history of the Papacy which was not only written with a favorable bias, but was based on sources which could plausibly be made to support the interpretation such a history presented.

One of the major contributions Bale, and Foxe, buiding on his efforts, made to English Protestantism was to supply such histories. Unlike the works of Bale and Foxe, the collection of papal biographies by Robert Barnes, which had been the chief source of papal history for English Protestants had been based almost exclusively on Platina.[148] Bale and Foxe, drawing on a wide range of sources hostile to the papacy, had now created an alternative interpretation of papal history, much of which remained a part of English Protestant historigraphy well into the nineteenth century.

Yet while Foxe's reliance on favorable and conditionally favorable authors had considerable polemical advantages, there was a price to be paid. One problem was that the biases of these authors led them into inaccuracies or falsehoods which Foxe unknowingly reprinted. (It is an open question as to whether Foxe would have reprinted then if he had known that they were untrue). Matthew Paris, for example, inserted his own denunciations of papal avarice and corruption into a letter from Germanus, the patriarch of Constantinople, to Innocent IV, which Foxe reprinted, additions and all.[149] And while Foxe related a story, citing the Florentine chronicler Antoninus as his source, of Gregory VII repenting his sins and acknowledging his iniquity on his deathbed, Bale and Barnes, from whom Foxe actually took the story, neglected to mention that Antoninus, after recounting this story, stated that he did not believe it was true.[150] More importantly, by ignoring hostile sources, Foxe laid himself open to rebuttal by critics citing sources at least as authoritative as those Foxe had used.[151]

Even when Foxe's aversion to using hostile sources is taken into account, however, the fact remains that the papal history in the Acts and Monuments is based on a wealth of source material. But how accurate and faithful to these sources was Foxe? In some respects, he was quite accurate. As can be seen from the appendices to this article, Foxe's papal history was not invented; he had sources for what he related. As a general rule (a partial exception to this will be discussed shortly), Foxe did not make additions to what he printed; what he quotes is related in his sources. Foxe was notably more scrupulous in dealing with evidence than his mentor John Bale was. For example, Bale claimed that monks from the monastery at Bangor, who opposed Augustine of Canterbury, were slain 'by Augustynes procurement.'[152] Although he was well aware of Bale's charge, Foxe cautiously noted that Henry of Huntington and other writers declared that Augustine was dead at the time of the massacre.[153] Foxe also related that he had read an account of a story that the Virgin Mary entered the cell of a Dominican who founded a confraternity in her honor, kissed him and let him suck at her breasts. Foxe continued: 'This fabulous figment when I read [it] in the centuries of John Bale, I began with me selfe to mistrust the credite therof and had thought not to trouble the reader with such incredible forgeries.' He changed his mind, however, when he obtained a book which related the story.[154] Although Bale had no qualms in relating the story at second hand (he cited Trithemius as his source), Foxe restrained himself until he had confirmed the existence of the story.

Nevertheless, the papal history in the Acts and Monuments was con-ciously distorted in a number of ways. Even an accurate quotation can be misleading when it is taken out of context and Foxe often indulged in this practice. For example, in the Solemne contestation and the Acts and Monuments, Foxe quoted St Boniface to the effect that even if a pope through negligence or wickedness caused the damnation of a multitude of souls, he was still beyond human jurisdiction. Foxe quoted the passage, which was in Gratian, accurately but he ignored the point Boniface was trying to make: that the pope was specially and personally responsible to God for the spiritual welfare of all Christians. Far from flattering the popes, Boniface's words held them to higher moral standards and greater responsibilities than the rest of humanity.[155]

Foxe was often capable of bending, twisting or stretching facts in order to make them conform to his interpretation of papal history. For example, Foxe claimed that the exactions of Cardinal Otho, a legate sent by Honorius III, angered the English

insomuch that the king dreeding the displesures of his commons for the doinges of the Legate, willed him to repair home to Rome again, but yet could not so be rid of him. For he [Otho] receiving new commaundements from the Pope, applyed his harvest still, glening [gleaning] and raking whatsoever he might scrape

Yet Foxe's source for this, Matthew Paris, stated that the pope recalled; Otho many times and that it was only Henry Ill's repeated insistence which caused the pope to relent and let the legate remain in the kingdom.[156] According to Foxe, Clement III levied 70,000 pounds from English Christians and 60,000 pounds from English Jews to finance a crusade, yet Foxe's source, Gervase of Canterbury, stated that it was Henry II who actually levied these taxes and Gervase never mentioned Clement in connection with them.[157] Foxe aiso maintained that the disastrous outcome of Louis IX's crusade was 'all through the orginall cause of the Pope and Odo his legate.' As Foxe's citations indicate, his account of the crusade was derived from Matthew Paris and while Paris blamed the legate for rejecting favorable peace terms when they were offered by the sultan of Egypt, he placed by far and away the greatest blame for the disaster on Robert of Artois, Louis's brother, in passages which Foxe ignored in his zeal to blame the papacy.[158]

In certain cases, Foxe's tendentious preconceptions about the papacy led him to significantly reword a quotation. Foxe reprinted Gervase of Canterbury's account of a quarrel between Sylvester, the abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury, and Theobald, the archbishop of Canterbury. This conflict originated with Sylvester's insistence that he be consecrated in his own abbey and his refusal to receive Theobold's benediction at Canterbury cathedral. According to Gervase: 'Quod cum renueret archiepiscopus, collecta pecunia Silvester romam profectua est, dominique Papae litteras obtinuit ut archiepiscopus praedictum Silvestram in ecclesia sua benediceret, nulla exacta professione.' Foxe translated this as:

Wherunto when the Archbishop in no wise would agree, Silvester makyng a great bagge of money, went to Rome, where he obteined of the Pope, for money (for what can not money do at Rome?) letters that the Archbishop should consecrate the Abbot, in his own church of St Austen, and also not exact of him any profession of canonical subiection.[159]

All Gervase stated was that Sylvester gathered money together and went to Rome; the assumption that the money was used for bribes (and not for the expenses of the trip) was Foxe's and having made it, Foxe hammered it home relentlessly. And when the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, appealed the pope's decision, Gervase wrote that 'Silvester igitur, ad domuinum papam regressus,' which Foxe translated as 'For the which Silvester with a new purse of money was fayne to travaile and trot agayne to Rome.[160] In another instance, Gervase described a latter abbot of St Augustine's returning home after a legal battle in the Curia 'elatus,' Foxe translated this as 'although with an empty purse, yet full of victorie and triumph.[161] Similarly, Foxe described an abbot of St Albans securing confirmation after sending an emissary to Rome 'with a sufficient bagge of money', a detail not mentioned by Foxe's source, Matthew Paris. (In fact, Paris stated that the pope turned the case over to the bishops of Ely and London, who confirmed the election.[162]

Patrick Collinson has observred that Foxe's 'veracity is to be judged by the manner in which he composed his history, a matter not of invention, still less of forgery, but of discrimination, interpretation, and most of all of omission and deliberate exclusion.'[163] Omission and deliberate exclusion certainly were important tools by which Foxe shaped his version of papal history. In his account of the Council of Basle, Pius II stated that a crucial juncture in the Council

The Cardinal of Arles [a leader of the conciliarist faction] had thought about what was going to happen and commanded that a search be made for the many relics of the saints throughout the whole city; so that carried by the hands of priests at the session they should fill the places of absent bishops. This so greatly increased their devotion, that when, according to custom, the Holy Spirit had been invoked, no one restrained his tears.[164]

Foxe altered this passage to make the behavior of these conciliar, and hence godly, churchmen more suitable:

Arelatensis consydered afore, what would come to passe, caused prayers to be made, and after their prayers made unto Almightye God, with tears and lamentacions, that He woulde sende them hys Holye Spirite to ayde and assist them, they were greatlye comforted and encouraged.[165]

Foxe also deleted Pius II 's description of the conciliar prelates marching in procession behind relics of the saints.[166] when Foxe printed a declaration by Henry VI 's Council protesting the admission of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, in his capacity of as papal legate, to England without his having obtained the king's permission, he omitted the latter part of the document in which the Council stated that while it was not ready to receive him as legate, they were perfectly willing to receive him as a cardinal 'sanctissimo domino nostro Papa transmissus. ' Foxe also omitted Beaufort's conciliatory response, in which the Cardinal insisted that he had not intended to do anything contrary to the laws, privileges, liberties and customs of the kingdom. [167] And in reprinting the synod of Brixen's condemnation of Gregory VII, Foxe deleted a clause charging that Gregory was 'haeretici Berengarii antiquum disciplum.'[168] Foxe did not want Gregory, one of the arch-villains of his history to be portrayed as a disciple of one of the proto-Protestant elect, so he made the problem disappear along with the passage.

Thus while Foxe's papal history was based on an impressive array of sources, quoted with reasonable accuracy, it was nevertheless one that was carefully crafted to present precisely and only the interpretation Foxe wished to present. By avoiding the use of sources antithetical to his viewpoint, by quoting sources out of context, by altering the emphases of these sources to fit his own preconceptions and suppressing material which contradicted or undermined his version of events, Foxe manipulated history for his own purposes. G. R. Elton once commented that Foxe's account of the Marian persecution 'did not, ... create a legend; it commemorated a truth.'[169] Whatever the accuracy of that observation, it could be said that the papal history in the Acts and Monuments commemorated a half-truth. Nevertheless, a half-truth, while misleading, is not a lie. Bale and Foxe created an alternative interpretation of papal history which contained a great deal of truth in demonstrating that dissatisfaction with the papacy's demands and dissent from its teachings existed before Luther and that the institutions and dogmas of the Catholic Church had not existed unchanged since the apostolic era but had evolved over the centuries. Yet the impressive range of Foxe's sources should deceive no one into supposing that his papal history, or his history as a whole, was the complete truth, even as Foxe knew it.