did it not for any duty to him, but onely for peace sake. What should I speake here of my dayly reuenues of my first fruits, annates palles, indulgences, bulles, confessionals, indultes and rescripts, testaments, dispēsatiōs, priuileges, elections, prebends, religious houses, and such like, which come to no small masse of money? In somuch that for one palle to the Archb. of Mentz, which was wont to be geuen for x. thousand.Marginalia 218.Ex lib. Granaminū nationis Germanica. 218. florence, now it is growen to xxvij. thousand florence, whiche I receiued of Iacobus the Archbyshop not long before Basill Councell: Besides theMarginaliaAboue fiftie byshoprickes in Germany. fruites of other Byshoprickes in Germany, cōmyng to the number of fifty, wherby what vantage commeth to my coffers, it may part ly be coniectured.MarginaliaÆneas Syluius. But what should I speake of Germany.Marginalia 219. Sext. Decret. De penis. cap. Felicis in Glosa. Itē. De priuilegijs. [illegible text] 219. when the whole world is my Diocesse, as my Canonistes do say, and all men are bounde to beleue.Marginalia [illegible text] Pope Bonifacius. 8. Ext. De [illegible text] c. Vnam sanctam. 220. except they will imagine (as the Maniches do) two begynnynges, whiche is false and hereticall. For Moses sayth: In the begynnyng God made heauen and earth and not in the begynnynges.Marginalia 221.Ibid. 221. Wherefore as I begon, so I conclude, commaundyng declaryng, and pronouncyng, to stand vpon necessitie of saluation, for euery humane creature to be subiect to me.

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Commentary on the Woodcuts     Close

The image of Justice reaching judgement with a pair of scales was an ancient formula that was readily adapted to Reformation issues. The woodcut depicting Justice demonstrating the weight of 'Verbum Dei' over the book of papal Decretals made its first appearance in the Acts and Monuments in 1576, when it was placed as the closing image of the first half of the work. It had first appeared three years earlier on the last page of Foxe's edition of The Whole Works of Tyndale, Frith and Barnes, printed by Day in 1573. The illustration appears to have been inspired by Foxe himself, who described in 1570 an image of a balance, weighing on one side 'books condemned'; and on the other 'books allowed'. The scales of justice were applied to the contrasting worlds of evangelists whose lived by the word alone, untramelled and themselves not weighted down by the opposing popish apparatus of rosaries and pardons and agnus dei and crosses and croziers. Those who stand thus liberated at Justice's right hand occupy a light and spacious world, thanks to the spiritual freedom they have found. They and their church on the distant hill prove their liberation at the hand of Justice, blindfold, impartial, and impervious to devilish antics: 'Gods holy truth...against manifest idolatry', as Foxe himself put it.