1576 Edition | Book 3 | Page 170 
for worde, quo sit (as my author sayth) vt vix intelligatur Latina litera, quum nobilitate magis Græca, quam positione construitur Latina. He wrote also a booke De corpore & sanguine Domini, which was afterward condemned by the Pope In Concilio Vercellensi.
MarginaliaThe booke of Ioãnes Scotus called xxxThe same Iohannes Scotus moreouer compiled a booke of his owne, geuing it a Greeke title, xxx, that is, De naturæ diuisione. In which booke (as sayth my foresayd author) is cōtained the resolution of many profitable questions (but so) that he is thought to follow the Greeke Church, MarginaliaIoannes Scotus addicted more to the Greeke church then the Latine.rather then the Latine, and for the same was coūted of some to be an hereticke: because in that booke some thynges there be, whiche in all pointes accorde not with the Romish religion. Wherefore the Pope, writyng to the sayd kyng Charles of this Scotus, complayneth, as in his owne wordes here followeth:
[Back to Top]MarginaliaIoan. Scotus accused of the pope for an heretike.Relatum est Apostolatui nostro, quod opus Dionysij Areopagitæ quod de diuinis nominibus, & de cælestibus ordinibus Græco descripsit eloquio, quidam vir Ioannes (genere Scotus) nuper transtulit in Latinum. Quod, iuxta morem Ecclesiæ, nobis mitti, & nostro iudicio debuit approbari: præsertim quum idem Ioannes (licet multæ scientiæ esse prædicetur) olim non sane sapere in quibusdam frequenti rumore dicatur. &c. That is: Relation hath bene made vnto our Apostleshyp, that a certaine man called Ioannes a Scottish man, hath translated the booke of Dionysius the Areopagite: of the names of God, and of the heauenly orders, from Greeke into Latin. Whiche booke, accordyng to the custome of the Church, ought first to haue bene sent to vs, and to haue bene approued by our iudgement: namely seyng the sayde Iohn (albeit he be sayd to be a man of great learnyng and science) in tyme past hath bene noted by common rumor, to haue bene a man, not of vpright or sound doctrine, in certaine pointes. &c. For this cause the said Scotus, beyng constrayned to remoue from Fraunce, came into England, allured (as some testifie) by the letters of Alured, or Alfrede, of whom he was with great fauour entertayned, and conuersaunt a great space about the kyng: MarginaliaIoan Scotus slayne by his owne scholerstill at length (whether before or after the death of the kyng it is vncertaine) he went to Malmesbery, where he taught certaine scholers a few yeares, by the whiche scholars at last most impiously he was murthered and slayne with their penkniues and so dyed, as stories say, a Martyr, MarginaliaIoan Scotus a Martyr.buryed at the sayd monastery of Malmesbury with this Epitaphe.
[Back to Top]Clauditur in tumulo sanctus sophista Ioannes
Qui ditatus erat iam viuens dogmate miro.
Martyrio tandem Christi conscendere regnum
Qui meruit, regnans secli per secula cuncta.
Kyng Alfrede hauyng these helpes of learned men about him, & no lesse learned also himselfe, past ouer his time, not onely to great vtilitie and profit of his subiectes, but also to a rare & profitable example of other Christen kynges and Princes, for them to follow. This foresaid Alfrede had by his wife called MarginaliaThis Ethelwitha builded first the house of Nunes at Winchester.Ethelwitha, two sonnes: MarginaliaThe children of kyng Alfrede.Edward and Ethelward, and three daughters: Elflena, Ethelgora, and Ethelguida: Quas omnes liberalibus fecit artibus erudiri. That is. Whom he set all to their bookes and study of liberall Artes: as my story testifieth. MarginaliaAll his daughters learned.First Edward his eldest sonne succeded hym in the kyngdome. The second sonne Ethelward dyed before his father. Ethelgora hys middle daughter was made a Nunne. The other. ij. were maried, the one in Marceland, the other to the earle of Flaunders.
CloseFor the death of Alfred, Foxe used as his main source John Brompton's 'Chronicle' (p. 818) and Roger Howden (p. 41; 50), supplemented (perhaps) by Matthew Paris' Flores (1, pp. 446; 477).
CloseThe final epitaphs to the king were 'left in auncient writing' as part of Foxe's (perhaps unconscious) strategy of laying claims to truth by presenting the reader with the evidence in its most 'raw', and therefore 'pristine' state. The source for the first epitaph, with its interesting stoic overtones, was taken from the Parker manuscript of the Life of Asser. Foxe's citation differs somewhat from that in the printed edition, though it must have come from the same manuscript, suggesting he had not advance sight of any transcript copy of that publication. It is not to be found elsewhere. The second epitaph, Foxe had found in Henry of Huntington's Chronicle ((T. Arnold, ed. Henry of Huntingdon. Henrici Huntendunensis Historia Anglorum, the History of the English, by Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, from B. C. 55 to A. D. 1154 [London: Rolls Series, 1879], book 5, ch. 13). It had also appeared in the 'Polychronicon' (book 6, ch. 3) but Foxe clearly took it from Huntingdon. It had originated in Asser's 'Life', and the Parker/Joscelyn publication of the latter in 1574 noted the cross-reference to Huntingdon (p. 35).
[Back to Top]FAmosus, Bellicosus: Victoriosus: Vidurarum, pupillorū, & orphanorum pauperūq̀ prouisor studiosus, Poetarū Saxonicorum peritissimus: Suæ genti Charissimus: Affabilis omnibus: Liberalissimus: Prudentia, fortitudine, temperantia, Iustitia præditus: in infirmitate, qua continue laborabat pacientissimus: In exequendis iudicijs indagator discretissimus: In seruicio Dei vigilātissimus & deuotissimus: Anglosaxonum Rex: Alfredus, pijssimi Ethelulfi filius. 29. annis sexq̀ mensibus regni sui peractis mortme obijt. Indict. 4. Qiunto Kalena. Nouemb. feria quarta: & Wintoniæ in nouo monasterio sepultus immortalitatis stolam, & ressurrectionis gloriam eum iustis expectat, &c.
[Back to Top]Moreouer in the history of Henricus Huntingtonensis these verses I finde written in the commendation of the same Alfrede: made (as I suppose & as by his wordes appeareth) by the sayd author, wherof I thought not to defraude the reader: the wordes wherof here follow:
Nobilitas innata tibi probitatis honorem,
Armipotens Alfrede dedit, probitasq̀ laborem.
Perpetuumq̀ labor nomen, cui mixta dolori
Gaudia semper erant, Spes semper mixta timori.
Si modò victor eras, ad crastina bella pauebas:
Si modò victus eras, ad crastina bella parabas.
Cui vestes sudore iugi, cui sica cruore,
Tincta iugi, quantum sit onus regnare probarunt.
Non fuit immensi quisquam per climata mundi,
Cui tot in aduersis nil respirare liceret.
Nec tamen aut ferro contritus ponere ferrum,
Aut gladio potuit, vitæ finisse dolores.
Iam post transactos vitæ regniq̀ labores,
Christus ei sit vera quies, sceptrumq̀ perhenne.
MarginaliaEtheredus
Pleimundus,
Athelmus
Vlfelmus
Odo, Archb.
of Caunterbury.In the story of this Alfred, a litle aboue, mention was made of Pleimundus scholemaster to the sayd Alfrede, and also Byshop of Caunterbury, suceedyng Etheredus, there Byshop before him. Which Pleimūdus gouerned that sea, the number of. xxxiiij. yeares. After Pleimūdus succeeded Athelmus, and sat. xij. yeares. After him came Vlfelmus. xiij. yeares. Then followed Odo a Dane borne, in the sayd sea of Caūterbury, and gouerned the same. xx. yeares, being in great fauour with kyng Athelstane, kyng Edmund, and Edwine, as in processe hereafter (Christ willyng) as place and order doth require, shall more at large be expressed.
CloseThe purpose of this passage, articulated first by Foxe in the 1570 edition and headed 'sedition among popes' is not difficult to discern. Through the murky and brutal politics of the ninth and tenth-century papacy ('these monstruous matters of Rome'), Foxe sought to provide a historically incontrovertible case against the 'character indelebilis' or 'indelible mark' of priestly ordination, in the case of the papacy sometimes elevated by high Papal theorists of the central Middle Ages into a charism of infallibility, reinforced by the unbroken succession to the see of St Peter (Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility 1150-1350 [Leiden, 1972]). Already in the 1563 edition (1563, p. 1) Foxe had singled out the exceptional and extraordinary nature of what occurred in the pontificate of Pope Stephen VI, who (in the so-called 'Cadaver Synod') declared all the actions of his predecessor, Pope Formosus I to be null and void, including the priests which he ordained. In the 1570 edition, he followed the papal succession as laid out in Bale's Catalogus (pp. 119-122) but (in the case of Formosus and Stephen VI) supplemented it with material from the 'Chronologia' of Sigbert of Gembloux (Sibebertus Gemblacensis, Chronicon sive Chronologia) which was a widely-known and cited source for the history of the central Middle Ages, and which had been first published in Paris in 1513. Foxe may have known it, however, from the edition published in 1566 (Germanicarum rerum quatuor celebriores vetustioresque chronographi […] [Frankfurt, 1566]). He appears also to have confirmed the information by consulting Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon (J. R. Lumby, ed. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis: together with the English translations of John Trevisa and of an unknown writer of the fifteenth century [London: Rolls Series, 1879]. For further information on Foxe's treatment of the history of the papacy, see the important prefatory essay to this edition by Thomas S. Freeman, ['"St Peter Did not Do Thus": Papal History in the Acts and Monuments'].
[Back to Top]Matthew Phillpott and Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield