After these sentences beyng thus pronounced, they whiche were condemned to be burned with the coffin of the dead Lady, and her picture vpon thee same, were committed to the secular magistrate, and their executioners, whiche were commaunded to do their endeuour. Then were they all incontinent taken, and euery one set vpon an asse, their faces turned backeward, with a great garison of armed souldiours, vnto the place of punishment, whiche was without the gate of the towne called Del Campo.

MarginaliaXiiij. Martyrs in Spayne, burned. When they were come to the place, there were 14. stakes set vp of equall distance one from an other, wherunto euery one seuerally beyng fastened, accordyng to the fashion of Spayne, they were all firste strangled, and then burned and turned to ashes saue onely Antonie Huezuelo, Who for so much as he had both within and without the prison, vehementlye detested the popes spiritualtie, therfore he was burned alyue, and hys mouth stopped from speakyng. And thus these faythfull Christians, for the veritie and pure word of God, were led to death, as sheepe to the shambles: who not onely most christianly did comforte one an other, but also dyd so exhorte all thē there present, that all men merueiled greatly, both to heare their singular constancie, and to see their quiet and peaceable end.

It is reported that besides these aforesayd, there remayned yet behynd xxxvij. other prisoners, at the sayd towne of Valledolid, reserued to an other Tra

gedie and spectacle of that bloudy Inquisition. Ex quinta parte Martyr. Gallice Impressé. pag. 474.

¶ Furthermore, wheras the story of the sayde Inquisition beyng set out in the Frenche tongue doth reckon the number of the martyrs aboue mentioned, to be thyrty: and yet in particular declaratiō of them, doth name no more but xxviii. here is therfore to be noted, that eyther this number lacked ij. of thyrty: or els that ij of the sayd companie were returned backe without iudgement, into the prison agayne.

¶ And thus much for this present, touchyng the procedyng of the Church of Spaine, in their Inquisition agaynst the Lutherans, that is, agaynst the true and faythfull seruauntes of Iesus Christ. Albeit there be other countreys also besides Spayne, subiecte vnto the same Inquisition, as Neaples, & Sicilie: in which kyngdome of Sicilie, I heare it credibly reported, that euery thyrd yeare are brought forth to iudgement and execution, a certein number after the like sort of Christian Martyrs, some tymes xij. some tymes vi. some tymes more, & some tymes lesse. Amongest whom MarginaliaA Christian Martyr burned in Sicilie. there was one, much about the same yeare aboue mentioned. an. 1559. who cōmyng from Geneua, vnto Sicilie, vpon zeale to doe good, was at last layd hande of, and beyng condemned the same tyme, to the fire, as he should take his death, was offered there of þ^e hangman to be strangled, hauing the corde ready about his necke: but hee notwithstandyng, refused the same, and sayd that he would, feele the fire: and so endured he, singyng with all his myght vnto the Lord, till he was beriued both of speach and life, in the middest of the flame: such was the admirable constancie and fortitude of that valiant souldiour of Christe, as is witnessed to me by him, which beyng there present the same tyme, did both then see that whiche he doth testifie, and also doth now testifie that he then saw.

¶ Now it remayneth further, accordyng to my promise, in lyke order of a compendious Table, to comprehend also such Martyrs, as suffered for the veritie and true testimonie of the Gospell, in the places and countreys of Italie: which Table consequently here next ensueth to be declared.

¶ A Table of such Martyrs as suffred for testimonie of the Gospell in Italy.  

Commentary     Close

Italian martyrs

Foxe's knowledge of protestant martyrs from the Italian peninsula was as patchy as that for the Spanish peninsula. He indicated as much in the prelude to his table, where he admitted that his information for the kingdom of Naples and Sicily - then part of the patrimony of the Spanish Habsburgs - was almost completely deficient. He cites just one example of an unnamed Genevan who went to Sicily as a protestant missionary, only to end up being prosecuted and burned by the Inquisition, presumably at Palermo. The individual concerned here was probably Jacopo Bonello ('Jacobus Bovellus') whom he mentions later in the context of the Calabrian Waldensian repression. He does not seem to have made the connection.

[Back to Top]

For the main table of Italian martyrs, his sources were, as he himself explicitly states, Pantaleon (lib 6), Crespin 'and others'. Of the 'others', the most important source was undoubtedly Celio Secondo Curione (1503-1569). The latter was a distinguished Italian humanist who had cultivated Augustinian views among the evangelical circles of Turin in his youth. Like many of the Italian evangelisti, he found himself under threat of persecution and fled, first to Venice, then Ferrara (1541), briefly to Lucca, and then to Switzerland. He spent some years in Lausanne before finally moving to Basel to be the professor of rhetoric at the university there, where he published extensively. He maintained extensive literary contacts with the Italian evangelisti in the 1550s, when there seemed still much to play for in the evolution of Italian ecclesiastical reform. There is nothing in Foxe which had not already appeared in Heinrich Pantaleone, Martyrum historia (1563) and the Historia rerum in Ecclesia gestarum (1563). For Curione's biography, see the Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, (Rome: Istituto dell Encylopedia Italiana, 1960-), 31, pp. 443-449 and refs. In one further instance, Foxe had also picked up some information relating to the execution of two protestant former monks in Rome from Johann Manlius, Locorum communium collectanea (2 parts, Basel, 1563), a widely-consulted common-place book by protestant humanists.

[Back to Top]

Only at one point does Foxe break from the tabular presentation of information concerning the Italian martyrs to provide more detailed documentation. This was in respect of the story of Pomponio Algieri ('Pomponius Algerius'). He chose to translate the letter that Algieri wrote, reproduced in Pantaleon, fols 329A-332B, and the printers were instructed to offset it with elaborate border woodblocks to emphasise further the status Foxe accorded it (1570, pp. 1070-1072). Algieri had been arrested on suspicion of heresy by the Venetian authorities and imprisoned there in 1555. Crespin provided extensive documentation relating to his trial in the French editions (Crespin [1564], p. 674 et seq; Crespin [1570], fols 366 et seq) but Foxe concentrated uniquely on the material conveniently available to him in Latin from Pantaleon. The reasons that he cites for interrupting his table to furnish this letter are interesting, noting the impact of Plato's 'Phaedo' (the Socratic Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul) upon 'Thebrotus' (it is not clear to whom Foxe is referring here) who was 'so moved and perswaded therewith, that he caste hym selfe down headlong from an high wall, to be rid out of thys present life'. Foxe's commitment to the humanist project of the power of rhetorical persuasion is fully evident here. Pomponio Agieri wrote his letter from what he described, with appropriate irony, as the 'agreeable orchard' ('ex delectabili pomario') of the Leonine prison in Venice, so-called because of its proximity to the bronze lion statue in the piazza San Marco, and renowned for its squalid and cramped conditions. The letter was addressed (apparently) to exiled protestants from the Venetian territories now north of the Alps. Foxe cites it in extenso. As Pantaleon explained, he (and possibly Foxe independently) had received a copy of it from Celio Secondo Curione, the professor of rhetoric at the university of Basel. It is dated 12 August 1555 in Pantaleon, which is misprinted as 12 July in Crespin (Crespin/Benoit, 2, p.276). The letter itself is infused with intense Biblical references, particularly to the Pauline epistles and Gospels.

[Back to Top]

M. Greengrass
University of Sheffield

he was preparyng to take his iourney to his brother Fraunces Encenas in Germanye. Thus he beyng betrayed and taken by his coūtreymē, was brought before the Cardinals, and there committed straight to prison. Afterward he was brought forth to geue testimony of his doctrine, which he in the presence of the Cardinals and in the face of all the Popes retinue, boldly and constantly defended. So that not only the Cardinals, but especially the Spaniardes, beyng therwith offended, cryed out vpon him that he should be burned. The Cardinals, first before þ^e sentence of death should be geuen, came to hym, offeryng if he would take it (after the manner of the Spaniardes) the badge of reconciliation, which hath the name of Sanbenites cloth, made in forme of a mantle, goyng both before hym and behynde hym, wyth signes of the red crosse. But Encenas still constaunt in the profession of truth, denied to receyue any other condition, or badge, but onely the badge of the Lorde: which was to seale the doctrine of hys religion, with the testimony of his bloud. At last, the matter was brought to that issue, that the faythfull seruaunt and witnes of Christ was iudged and condemned to the fire, where he in the sight of the cardinals, and in the face of the Apostolicall sea pretensed, gaue vp his life for testimony of the gospel. Ex Pantal. lib. 6. Ex Crisp. & alijs.

MarginaliaThe imprisonment and escape of Franciscus Encenas. ☞ And for so much as mention hath bene made both in this story and many other before, of Franciscus Encenas, his brother: here is not to be pretermitted, how the said Franciscus being a man of notable learning as euer was any in Spaine beyng in the Emperors Court at Bruxels, offered vnto the Emperour Charles the v. the newe Testament of Christ translated into Spanishe. For the whiche he was cast into pryson, where he remayned in sorowfull captiuitie and calamitie, the space of fiftene