Part of the pictorial amplification of the 1570 edition of the Acts and Monuments, with its heightened animus against the pope, was the sequence of twelve woodcuts entitled 'The proud primacy of popes painted out in tables'. This polemical addition, like the huge ten Persecutions woodcut at the beginning of the book with which it was linked, textually and iconographically, was added at the end of volume one as part of a last-minute declaratory response to the 1570 papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth, causing considerable hiatus to the formatting of the book. Like the enormous prefatory 'Table', 'the proud primacy of popes' drew on traditional as well as Reformation iconography. Of these twelve woodcuts one was a repeat. This was the Canossa scene considered above, which was an obvious odd man out in the series, being smaller than the rest. It seems likely that whoever designed the others in this series drew on existing exemplars, and there were plenty of sources, pre- as well as post-Reformation. Here, as in the Ten Persecutions picture, the illustrators drew on a range of precedents, and in both instances it is clear that continental sources were a model. An important text was Cranach's Passional Christi und Antichristi of 1521, with its paired contrasting images of the life of Christ and Antichrist, demonstrating the antithesis between Christ's simplicity and papal pomp. The influence of Cranach's images is clear in the fourth and twelfth of the Foxe series, showing the emperor kissing the pope's feet, and the pope being pope 'carried on men's shoulders' in a canopied litter -- itself an image of neutral content that had acquired contentious meaning. The opening woodcut for this section depicts an emperor watching scenes of savage persecution. It may have been designed to illustrate persecutions of the early Christians. It certainly bears a marked resemblance in style and composition to the woodcut of the ten persecutions of the early church. Perhaps it was even a prototype for that larger woodcut, put to use in this section. Like the huge prefatory woodcut this illustration shows the designer borrowing from Dürer's Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand.in its presentation of the terrible eye-boring, and in the figure of the emperor on the left. These resemblances suggest that work on the two pictorial additions were carried out in tandem. There is a peculiar dislocation between the the seated emperor and the tortures over which he presides, that seems to call for explanation. The figure of the enthroned emperor on the left is incongruous on several counts. He and his courtiers are huddled into a very small space; they also appear out of proportion with the other figures in the woodcut; they are almost twice the size of the torturers. It is also noteworthy that the seated ruler and his courtiers, unlike the other figures in the woodcut, bear marked similarities in style to depictions in other woodcuts in this section of the Emperor Constantine. It is therefore possible that the figure of the emperor and his courtiers were actually part of a larger picture carved on a separate block, which was then joined to the original woodcut to make a more suitable picture for this section. CUL copy: this is the first use in the volume of a heavy, thick royal blue for clothing. There is considerable detail provided in the colouring in of this picture, such as in the wounds inflicted. See, for example, the wounds of the man being savaged by lions in the background. It appears likely that a different painter worked on this section, the Proud Primacy, from the rest of the volume; some of the stock of colours and techniques employed are different. WREN copy: the clothes in this copy are not as detailed as in the CUL copy but this could be due to damage. The blood flecks added to this copy are cruder. The curtains are in green.