Foxe's Table of martyrs from Spain was introduced for the first time into the 1570 edition. It was clearly an attempt to complement the much richer and more fully developed tables that preceded it of the 'German' and 'French' martyrs. Like them, Foxe sought to impose order upon his disparate material by organising it in tabular form - as he had already done elsewhere in the volume - under 'Persecutors', 'Martyrs' and 'The Causes'. The typographical complexity of these pages continued to impose extraordinary demands on his printers, with double-columned ruled tables, each column broken into three parts on occasion, incorporating headers and catch-words into the table, and including glosses to one side.

Foxe was seeking to situate the events in England within a wider European perspective - his claim here has often been ignored by later commentators. He attempted to bring together into an ambitious organised compilation all that had been discovered about those who had suffered for the faith, at least in respect of the continental protestant martyrological circles in which he situated himself. He also wanted to say something to his contemporaries about the Spanish Habsburg dynastic empire, a point which implicitly underpins the narrative. For Foxe was an important source in creating the Elizabethan 'Black Legend' of Spain (see A. G. Kinder, 'Creation of the Black Legend: literary contributions of Spanish protestant exiles' Mediterranean Studies 6 (1996), 67-78).

Only one Spanish martyr account - that of the Flemish sculptor, working in Sanlucár, known as 'Roque' ['Rochus'] - had appeared in the 1563 edition. That text - evidently a 'filler' to complete the final page of the volume - was (as Foxe states) 'taken oute of a booke of Franciscus Enzinas written to Phillip Melanton' (1563, p. 1041). This is an unambiguous reference to Francisco de Enzinas [=Franciscus Dryander], Historia de statu belgico deque religione hispanica, which Foxe tells us in the subsequent 1570 edition, he had consulted in the Oporinus print-shop, where he used it to furnish his account of the life and martyrdom of Francisco de San Román: 'The storye hereof is at large set forth by Francis Encenas, a notable learned man, who also himself was prisoned ye same time at Bruzels: whose booke written in Latine, I myselfe have sene and read, remaining in the hands of John Oporin at Basill'. The same source had probably also been consulted by Heinrich Pantaleon, and it therefore presumably informs his material on the Spanish martyrs, upon which Foxe also draws.

In the 1570 table of Spanish martyrs, Foxe broke off to furnish, by way of introduction to the auto de fé at Valladolid, a description of the 'execrable Inquisition of Spayne'. Foxe could hardly have resisted making something of the potentially emotive and rich material furnished by the Inquisition. In Foxe's eyes it could hardly be other than the exemplification of catholic cruelty, clerical overlordship and injustice. By 1570, Foxe had already been sensitised to the issue of the Inquisition, perhaps through the 'history' of Francisco de Enzinas (=Dryander), in which the judicial proceedings, rituals and cruelty of the Inquisition had been emphasised, but also through his 'memoirs', which Foxe apparently also knew (e.g. J. de Savignac [ed.] Francisco de Enzinas. Les Mémorables de Francisco de Enzinas [Brussels: Les editions de la Libraire encyclopédique, 1963], pp. 180-3). Foxe's direct source for the passage on the inquisition and the subsequent Valladolid auto de fé (Foxe does not actually use the term) on 21 May 1559 was the French edition of Crespin. He tells us so: 'Ex quinta parte Marti Gallic Impresse pag 474'. This constitutes an initial problem, since Crespin's passage in the French 1564 edition of the martyrology (Crespin [1564]) was in book 7, pp. 904-5; and in the 157 French edition (Crespin [1570]) it was in book 6, fols 536B-538B. This seems to be one of the comparatively rare occasions where Foxe mis-references his text. This may not, however, have been his only source. He also refers to 'the story of the sayde Inquisition being set out in the French tongue'. This can only refer to Reinaldo Gonzales de Montes [Montanus], Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes aliquot detectae, ac palam traductae (Heidelberg, 1567), which enjoyed considerable popularity in the later sixteenth century, including at least one in French (1568), three further Latin, three English, four Dutch and three German editions before the end of the century. Quite why Foxe did not refer directly to the Latin edition is a mystery, although it seems possible that John Day was a considerable promoter of the Montanus text, and may even have been responsible for a good number of these editions himself, including the French translation. In its English translation of 1568, (A discovery & playne declaration of sundry subtill practises of the holy inquisition of Spayne […]) its translator, Vincent Skinner, mentioned that its publication was something of a 'taster' for the new edition of Foxe's martyrology ('as a taste in the meane space, whiles the booke of Martires be finished, wherein thou shalt have a most plentifull and notable History of the like matter and argument' (cited Kinder, p. 114).Foxe was certainly aware of the discrepancies of the sources to note that they tallied different numbers of martyrs from the Valladolid Inquisition, from which he inferred (correctly) that some of the victims had been returned to prison. At all events, the passage serves as a notable example of the proceedings of the Inquisition.

Crespin's description (like Montanus') includes the notable presence at the auto de fé of Princess Joanna ('Dame Iane'), widow of the prince of Portugal and sister to Philip II as well as Don Carlos ('Prince Charles'), the king's son and the Comte de Buendia. Crespin (along with Montanus) describes the 'sanbenito' or yellow garment worn by the prisoners and the 'coroza' ('coracas') or paper mitres that they were obliged to wear on their heads. Foxe emphasises (as do Montanus and Crespin) the role of the Spanish clergy in the spectacle - Melchior Cano, the famous Dominican preacher who had been bishop in the Canary Islands, the archbishop of Seville ('Senille'), and the bishops of Palencia ('Valence').and Orense. The names of the martyrs recorded by Foxe reveal with what difficulty he struggled to transliterate the sometimes very different renditions of names in Crespin and Montanus. The official record of the Valladolid auto de fé survives in numerous copies. The comparison with Foxe's account reveals that he includes some individuals as martyrs who, in reality, were relaxed and returned to prison (Pedro Sarmiento, Luís de Rojas and Juan de Ulloa).

Foxe was certainly aware how patchy and incomplete his treatment of protestant prosecution in the Spanish peninsula had been. Even in the case of the Valladolid trial, he mentions at the end of the account that 37 other prisoners in Valladolid were 'reserved to another tragedy and spectacle of that bloody inquisition', the number and phrase coming directly from Crespin's 1564 French edition (Actes des martyrs, p. 906: Actiones et monimenta (1570), p. 1065). How Crespin arrived at the figure of '37' is a mystery. There were 7 further autos de fé in Valladolid through to 1565, where 241 protestants were paraded, of whom 89 were burned, 23 of them in effigy (figures from Kinder, op. cit., p. 114). Foxe's supply of materials on the Spanish peninsula was much more restricted. He used extensively what was available to him in Heinrich Pantaleon (lib. 5), supplementing it with information from Crespin and Montanus, especially on the Valladolid martyrs of 1559. He realised, however, that there was probably much of which he was probably ignorant. He intimated as much: '…divers others haue bene in the sayd countrey of Spayne, whose hartes God had marvellously illuminated and stirrup up, both before and also since the coming in of the Inquisition …. Albeit theyr names are as yet are vnknowne, for that the storyes of that countrey bee not yet come to light, but I trust shortly shall, as partly some intelligence I haue thereof' ([1570], p. 1062; [1583], p. 930). He added for good measure: 'By the vigour and the rigour of thys Inquisition, many good and true servauntes of Jesus Christ have been brought to death, especially in these latter dayes …The names and stories of whom, partlye we will here recite…..The other which be not yet come to our knowledge we will differre, till further intelligence and oportunitie, by the Lordes ayde shall serve hereafter ([1570], p. 1062; [1583], p. 931). Foxe must have been acutely aware that the lack of an organised evangelical community, let alone formed churches in the Spanish peninsula, acted as a crippling weakness in his information flows. That said, the table remained unchanged thereafter for the 1576 and 1583 editions. This was despite the fact that a further edition of his key source, Jean Crespin, had appeared in 1582. He appears to have made no effort to make, or exploit, contacts with the small Spanish protestant exile community in London that would have provided him with valuable information on these matters in the later editions.

M. Greengrass
University of Sheffield