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Martyrologists without Boundaries: The Collaboration of John Foxe and Heinrich Pantaleon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2018

THOMAS S. FREEMAN  and
DAVID SCOTT GEHRING
THOMAS S. FREEMAN
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ; e-mail: tfreeman@essex.ac.uk
DAVID SCOTT GEHRING
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD; e-mail: david.gehring@nottingham.ac.uk
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Abstract

Amid the great Protestant martyrologies of the mid-sixteenth century, Heinrich Pantaleon's Martyrvm historia (1563) has been comparatively overlooked. This article argues that Pantaleon's martyrology acted as a capstone to the narrative framework of Protestant suffering and resistance. Pantaleon's command of vernacular languages gave him access to a wider range of material than other martyrologists, material which his Latin text made accessible to learned readers across Europe. This article also examines the collaboration between Pantaleon and John Foxe, which directly inspired Pantaleon's martyrology and enabled Foxe to give a cohesive, trans-European account of Protestant martyrs in his Acts and monuments.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 746 - 767
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

At the end of his life, John Bunyan quoted a letter written from prison by ‘that godly man, Pomponius Algerius, an Italian martyr’.Footnote 1 The fact that a lay preacher in Bedford, without any formal education, knew of a letter written by an obscure Italian martyr over 130 years earlier is due to two authors. One of these, John Foxe, in whose Acts and monuments Bunyan read the letter, is well-known today among scholars.Footnote 2 The other, Heinrich Pantaleon, is a more obscure figure.Footnote 3 Yet his martyrology, the Martyrvm historia, was not only Foxe's source for Pomponio and his letter, it was also the source for much of Foxe's narrative of Protestant martyrs in Germany, Italy and, to a lesser extent, France. (Although the work of the great French martyrologist, Jean Crespin, is mentioned below as it relates to Foxe's use of Pantaleon, Foxe's wider use of Crespin is too extensive to discuss fully here.) As with other martyrologies, the example of Bunyan and Pomponio suggests that the works of Foxe and Pantaleon, which were linked on several levels, helped to create a history of the ‘True Church’ and its martyrs cherished by Protestants across much of western Europe for centuries.

Protestants began to commemorate their martyrs in the 1520s and, for the next three decades, continued with small but often widely circulated works glorifying contemporary martyrs and, sometimes, extolling ‘proto-Protestant’ martyrs of the Middle Ages.Footnote 4 In 1552 this situation began to change with the publication of the first volume of Ludwig Rabus’ martyrology.Footnote 5 This volume collected the stories of martyrs from the Early Church, but, starting with the second of what would become eight volumes, Rabus concentrated on Lutheran martyrs in German-speaking Europe.Footnote 6 Other Protestant martyrologies, focusing on the martyrs of a specific country or region, appeared throughout the 1550s. These included the initial editions of what would become the massive martyrologies of Jean Crespin and John Foxe, as well as Adriaan van Haemstede's volume on the persecution of Protestants in the Low Countries.Footnote 7

These works were not isolated, for other Protestant martyrological texts were printed at the time.Footnote 8 Nevertheless, certain common features of the martyrologies by Rabus, Crespin, Foxe and Haemstede, taken together, separate them from these other Protestant martyrologies, including Pantaleon's. One feature is that the martyrologies of Rabus, Crespin, Foxe and Haemstede were written in their authors’ vernaculars. Admittedly, a Latin edition of Crespin's martyrology was printed, and Foxe, while in exile, wrote two Latin martyrologies.Footnote 9 Nevertheless, all the other editions of Crespin's martyrology were in French; and, after Foxe returned to England, his martyrologies were printed exclusively in English. The first volume of Rabus’ martyrology was a translation into German of his original Latin volume, but the remaining seven volumes of his martyrology appeared only in German, and a second edition of Rabus’ complete martyrology was published solely in German.Footnote 10 Haemstede's martyrology was only printed in Dutch. The printing of these martyrologies in vernacular languages meant that each became primarily associated with a particular country or region: France, England, Lutheran Germany, the Netherlands. Each of the four martyrologies also included significant amounts of original material, whether official documents, letters, shorter works or material drawn from oral sources and eyewitness accounts. This material (much of it local) made these works valuable, even indispensable, sources for national or regional history.

This consequence has had significant effects on the study of the great sixteenth-century Protestant martyrologies. These works have been studied individually, not collectively.Footnote 11 At the same time, very little work examines the textual interchanges across these martyrologies.Footnote 12 The modern orientation towards the history of national Churches was not shared by the martyrologists or their contemporaries, but contributed to a general neglect of Pantaleon's Martyrvm historia. Footnote 13 Additional factors include the fact that Pantaleon wrote in Latin, and, except for some material on Italian evangelical martyrs, little in his martyrology had not already been printed elsewhere. And yet, Pantaleon's perspective was truly international. Although the Martyrvm historia seems derivative and thus less interesting or significant than more famous martyrologies, the importance of its role in disseminating information across Protestant Europe cannot be denied.

Oporinus and Foxe's Latin martyrologies

Rabus, Crespin and Haemstede were concerned with godly martyrs throughout Europe, but Foxe was the most internationally minded of these major authors. He had a strong interest in the Reformation and Protestant martyrs across western Europe, nurtured by his mentor John Bale. Bale's deserved reputation as a bare-knuckled polemicist should not obscure the fact that he was an internationally respected scholar with ties to the Lutheran scholar, Matthias Flacius, and to the Magdeburg Centuriators.Footnote 14 The desire of Flacius and his colleagues to integrate Bale and Foxe into their larger historical projects probably led the two Englishmen, during their exile, to settle in Basle and work as proof-readers for the great Protestant printer Johannes Oporinus.Footnote 15 And eventually Oporinus would bring Foxe and Pantaleon together for a project that became, in many respects, a joint martyrology.

Although Foxe's first martyrology, the Commentarii, had been written in England, it was printed in Strasbourg in 1554.Footnote 16 It contained little coverage of martyrs outside Britain beyond accounts of two popular preachers, Thomas Conecte, a French Carmelite, and Girolamo Savanorola, the firebrand friar of Florence, who were burned in 1434 and 1498 respectively for their denunciations of particular pontiffs.Footnote 17 At the end of the Commentarii, Foxe declared his intention to write a continuation of this history as soon as he could, and that this second work would extend to the time of Luther.Footnote 18

By late 1558 Foxe had proceeded quite far with his continuation of the Commentarii, which would be published the following year as the Rervm. Like many of Foxe's works printed during his exile, it was to be published by Oporinus. It also appears, from his correspondence, that Foxe intended this volume to include reformers and martyrdoms on the European mainland. On 13 May 1559, less than five months before this second martyrology's publication, Foxe wrote a letter from Basle to Heinrich Bullinger asking for accounts from Bernardino Ochino and other Italians in Zurich regarding the persecution of reformers in Italy.Footnote 19 He also asked Bullinger to send him a narrative of the history of the Reformation in Zurich: ‘For although I am more immediately concerned with British history, yet I shall not pass over the sacred history of other nations, should it come in my way.’Footnote 20 A month later, and still from Basle, Foxe pressed Bullinger for material on Zwingli, assuring him that the material would be published in England, if not in Germany.Footnote 21 By this point Foxe and Oporinus had probably decided that there would be a second part to Foxe's second martyrology, and that this second part would be printed in England, presumably after Foxe returned there. Writing to Bullinger from Basle as late as 2 August 1559, Foxe asked again for information about Zwingli and promised that he would print an account in England if not in Basle.Footnote 22 Even on the eve of his departure from Basle at the end of September 1559, Foxe was gathering material on the martyrs of the mainland.Footnote 23

While the haste to produce the Rervm – due to Foxe's desire to return to England after the sudden death of Mary i – meant that, apart from brief biographies of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, the volume contained only material on English and Scottish martyrs, the intention to write a complete history of the mainland martyrs had not been abandoned. A second part to the Rervm was explicitly promised in the book's text, where Foxe praised Martin Luther but regretted that an account of his life ‘would be too long for weaving into my narrative here unless it follows in the next instalment of this history, [which is] presently on the English and the Scots. Truly afterwards, [if the account were not so long,] I would have decided to report on the German people, Luther among them, in their turn’.Footnote 24 Although Foxe eventually compiled a life of Luther for the Acts and monuments, he would not be the author of a second part to the Rervm.

Foxe arrived back in England sometime in October 1559, and in November he had already printed a letter of Nicholas Ridley's.Footnote 25 A striking feature of the work was Foxe's declaration that this was but a foretaste of ‘other Volumes … which we ar about, touching the full Historie, processe, and examinations, of all our blessed brethren, lately persecuted for rightuosnes sake’.Footnote 26 In other words, almost immediately upon reaching England, Foxe had begun researching and planning the first edition of what became the Acts and monuments. Having fixed his eyes on that particular prize, Foxe seems to have devoted little thought and less effort to a second part to the Rervm.

Nevertheless, before Ridley's A frendly farewel was printed, developments in Geneva demonstrated that Foxe was still mindful of a broad European readership for his works. In the Rervm’s introduction, Foxe stated that two editions of the work were planned, one printed in Latin at Basle (the current volume), the other to be printed at Geneva in French.Footnote 27 On 16 October 1559, the printer Nicholas Barbier asked the Genevan Consistory for a licence lasting four years, during which he would have a monopoly on printing the ‘Historia ecclesiastica Johannis Foxi’. On the same day, however, Jean Crespin asked the Consistory for a licence for a new and larger edition of his Livre des martyrs, which would include martyrs from England and other regions.Footnote 28 The Consistory granted licences to both printers, and although nothing more was heard of Barbier's translation of the Rervm, Crespin incorporated a great deal of the Rervm into his only Latin martyrology, printed in 1560. J.-F. Gilmont has estimated that 85 per cent of Crespin's next French martyrology, printed in 1561, consisted of passages translated from the Rervm.Footnote 29

Heinrich Pantaleon and the Martyrvm historia

After returning to England, Foxe spent two years gathering sources for his martyrology, and another eighteen months after that helping to get these materials printed.Footnote 30 Whatever promises Foxe had made to Oporinus, they were among the sacrifices of time, energy and commitments that Foxe immolated on the altar of his Acts and monuments. Oporinus, however, wanted the second part of the Rervm completed. On 1 September 1562 he wrote to Foxe from Frankfurt on the eve of the book fair, responding to a letter that Foxe had just sent to him along with a printed copy of a ‘little book on the tyranny of the popes’, which Foxe had written anonymously.Footnote 31 Oporinus admitted that he had not yet had time to read the work thoroughly, but he assured Foxe that, from what he had hastily scanned, it would add further lustre to Foxe's reputation. The work Foxe sent to Oporinus must have been A solemne contestation of diuers popes, which Foxe had published in autumn 1560.Footnote 32 Foxe probably sent this work to Oporinus, almost two years after publication, as a token gift or peace offering because he was concerned that his lack of progress on the Rervm’s pars secunda would disappoint his former employer. In fact, at the end of Oporinus' letter, he bluntly stated to Foxe that ‘I beg in earnest that you consider reviewing your other martyrs’; put simply, he was asking whether Foxe had any serious intention of writing the second volume of the Rervm.Footnote 33 Foxe probably told Oporinus subsequently that he could not or would not do it, so Oporinus recruited another Protestant scholar, Heinrich Pantaleon, who lived in Basle.

A remarkable polymath, Pantaleon was a successful physician and had successively held chairs in dialectic, physics and medicine at the University of Basle. Also, he held a licentiate in theology after having been ordained a deacon.Footnote 34 Previously, at the age of twenty-four, he had written a Latin comedy, Philargyrus, dealing with the conversion of Zaccheus and dramatising justification by faith.Footnote 35 His reputation as a historical writer was established in 1550 by his Chronographia Christianae Ecclesiae, a learned reference work presenting the history of the Church in parallel tables. Pantaleon further raised his profile in 1556 with a translation of Johann Sleidan's celebrated Commentaries from Latin into German; while Sleidan denounced the translation – first on political and subsequently on stylistic grounds – it was a considerable commercial success.Footnote 36

Oporinus, by entrusting the Rervm’s continuation to Pantaleon, relied on an internationally recognised scholar, but Pantaleon also possessed the advantage of having been a friend of Bale and Foxe during their exile (though it is unclear when these men first met). Pantaleon had written a poem praising Bale for his piety and learning, and Bale used the poem as a preface to his great biographical dictionary of English authors.Footnote 37 Pantaleon further claimed that Bale had encouraged him to write historical works, and described Bale and Foxe as ‘my absolute friends’.Footnote 38

Oporinus’ letter to Foxe, asking if he intended to work on the Rervm’s second part, was written just over five months before Pantaleon's martyrology was printed. At the time, Pantaleon must have been preparing the volume, presumably with Oporinus’ encouragement. Nevertheless, despite Foxe's refusal to write it, efforts were made, probably at Oporinus’ behest, to associate Pantaleon's martyrology with Foxe's Rervm. In fact, the subtitle of Pantaleon's work announced that it was the second part of a two-volume martyrology: ‘While, in the first part, the martyrs of England and Scotland at least were recorded by John Foxe, Englishman, some years ago.’Footnote 39 In the dedication of his Martyrvm historia, Pantaleon noted that a second part of the Rervm, covering the martyrs outside England and Scotland, had been Foxe's plan from the outset, and that the volume was only completed by someone else ‘since truly we had waited, in vain, for several years’ for Foxe to finish it.Footnote 40

It seems likely that, if Foxe had been willing to write the second volume, Pantaleon would have handed over his notes, or they would have co-authored the work. In either case, an important, but not solitary, indication of the remarkable degree of cooperation between Foxe and Pantaleon is that the first edition of the Acts and monuments and Pantaleon's Martyrvm historia were printed simultaneously. It took a few months to print Pantaleon's folio of 361 pages and eighteen months to print the first edition of the Acts and monuments, the colophon of which reads ‘Anno. 1563 the .20. of March’. Pantaleon's dedication to the Martyrvm historia, by comparison, was dated ‘13 calend[is] April[is] Anno reparatae salutis 1563’: 20 March according to the Roman calendar.Footnote 41 This common date cannot have been a coincidence. Oporinus wanted Pantaleon's work ready for the spring Frankfurt book fair starting on 28 March. Pantaleon's volume appears to have been ahead of schedule and could have been published in plenty of time for the spring fair (rather than cut it so close), since the last section goes on to describe events as late as February 1563.Footnote 42 Yet, it seems certain that Oporinus wanted the martyrologies of Foxe and Pantaleon to appear simultaneously, as doing so would link Foxe to the Martyrvm historia and, with luck, increase sales for both the Rervm’s pars prima and pars secunda.

Scholars are unlikely to find a smoking gun here, but the evidence suggests the following. Printing commenced on the first edition of the Acts and monuments around September 1561. At some point, probably in 1562, Foxe agreed to publish his work in tandem with Pantaleon's. As the printing of Foxe's much larger work dragged on, Oporinus may have advised Foxe and John Day, Foxe's publisher, that Pantaleon's work had to be printed and ready for the Frankfurt fair that spring. In response, Foxe and Day may have said that they would be finished that winter, which timing would explain an agreed date of 20 March, the last day of winter in 1563. Working in haste to meet this deadline, Day finally had the work completed in time.Footnote 43 If Foxe seems to have been remarkably accommodating here, one should recall that Foxe owed Oporinus a good turn since he had failed to complete a promised project for the printer who had employed him during his lean years of exile. Moreover, Oporinus was not alone in wanting to see Foxe's martyrology published as quickly as possible, for it was in Day's interest to finish the job, and pressure was probably also coming from William Cecil and others.

At some point before their works were published, Pantaleon must have sent some of the fruits of his research to Foxe, for a few excerpts from Pantaleon's Martyrvm historia appear in the Acts and monuments of 1563. Two anecdotes of martyrdoms in 1525, of a minister and a peasant, which originated in sermons of the German reformer Oecolampadius, are directly translated from Pantaleon.Footnote 44 An account in Foxe of the near arrest of the Protestant theologian, Simon Grynaeus, was also taken from the Martyrvm historia.Footnote 45 Other instances are more complicated. The narrative of the Bavarian martyr, Jörgen Wagner, for example, could have been drawn from either of the virtually identical accounts of Pantaleon or Crespin.Footnote 46

Although it seems clear that Pantaleon had sent Foxe extracts from his work before it was printed, the timing is less than clear. Since material that Foxe took from Pantaleon was printed less than a quarter of the way through the first edition of the Acts and monuments, one can assume that Pantaleon sent this material to Foxe relatively early in the printing – by autumn 1561. Pantaleon may have sent it to Foxe because Foxe had requested it, or because Pantaleon and Oporinus still held out the hope, soon to be dissipated, that Foxe was working on the Rervm’s pars secunda.

Pantaleon's Martyrvm historia is a collection of materials from an impressive range of other martyrologies and histories. Pantaleon had consulted the martyrologies of Rabus, Haemstede and Crespin, as well as the Rervm and other works, to provide the most geographically comprehensive account of Protestant martyrs then available. Pantaleon exercised editorial oversight by condensing materials and omitting long sections of primary sources, but, with a few exceptions (where he obtained new information on certain Italian martyrs), his work did not contain original or unpublished material. The international and polyglot nature of Pantaleon's martyrology underscores its major advantage over other Protestant martyrologies; for, unlike Rabus, Crespin, Haemstede and Foxe, Pantaleon could read German, French and Dutch.Footnote 47 As a result, while other martyrologists had to work with Latin editions or employ translators, Pantaleon could easily draw on Rabus, Crespin and Haemstede. By bringing material from all the major Protestant martyrologies together, and printing this material in Latin, the lingua franca of the educated, Pantaleon allowed Foxe and others to access accounts originally written in languages that they could not read.

Foxe and the martyrologies of Ludwig Rabus and Adriaan van Haemstede

In the second edition of the Acts and monuments, published in 1570, Foxe added about seventy folios on Protestant martyrs on the European mainland. If this addition seems small (about 3 per cent of the total text), it is worth noting that it was of comparable size, on its own, to Foxe's and Crespin's earliest martyrologies. This addition also came when supplies of paper for the Acts and monuments were running low, and frantic efforts were being made to limit the size of the work.Footnote 48 The fact that Foxe devoted this much paper to non-British Protestant martyrs is one indication of his committed international perspective. Another indication was that Foxe was occasionally able to draw on personal testimony from a network of European contacts. For example, Foxe included an account of François Civaux, a former secretary to the French ambassador in England and convert to Protestantism, who fled to Geneva, became secretary to the Council there, and was ultimately martyred at Dijon in 1558.Footnote 49 Civaux was not mentioned in the Martyrvm historia or in any of Crespin's martyrologies. Rather, Foxe states that his account was taken ‘from the written testimony of the Genevan Council’, suggesting that someone in Geneva had copied the records and sent them to Foxe.Footnote 50 Foxe also reported the execution of an unnamed man in Sicily in 1559. The martyr had, according to Foxe, come to Sicily from Geneva ‘upon zeale to do good’, and Foxe added that his end was ‘wytnessed to me by hym, whiche beyng there present the same tyme, did both then see that whiche he doth testifie, and also doth now testifie that he then saw’.Footnote 51 These snippets of individual testimony provide further evidence of Foxe's desire to gather as much evidence as possible regarding Protestant martyrs regardless of nationality.

Foxe divided the martyrs outside Britain into four groups, each with its own section in his edition of 1570: the German martyrs (including those in Switzerland, the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands), the French (including those in present-day Belgium), the Spanish and the Italians. Foxe drew predominantly on the martyrologies of Pantaleon and Crespin for these accounts, as indicated by his source citations, but these citations need to be approached cautiously. Foxe produced them as a pre-emptive rebuttal against accusations that he had invented these martyrs or the details in their accounts; indeed, at one point he declared that he added a citation for a particular martyrdom ‘lest this so rare and straunge example of crueltie shall seme to lack credite’.Footnote 52 Moreover, Foxe sometimes cited sources that his sources had given as their sources, especially if these original sources were prestigious. For example, Foxe reprinted anecdotes from the 1563 edition of the persecution of godly individuals, anecdotes which had been drawn from Pantaleon and Crespin, who had taken these stories from Oecolampadius sermons; Foxe gave Oecolampadius as the source.Footnote 53

In other cases, Foxe cited Flacius, the Swiss minister Johann Gast, Melanchthon and Sleidan as his sources for material actually taken from Pantaleon.Footnote 54 Ascertaining Foxe's sources, as ever, can be tricky. Foxe's account of the Bavarian martyr, Leonard Keyser, for example, closely matches the account in Crespin's 1560 martyrology, but Foxe cited Luther as his source. Crespin did not mention Luther, but Pantaleon (in his longer version of the Bavarian's execution) had the same citation of Luther as the source for Keyser's martyrdom.Footnote 55 Foxe probably used Crespin but consulted Pantaleon for the latter's citation of Luther here, but there are no set patterns regarding Foxe's citation in his sections on mainland martyrs: sometimes he cited the source that he directly consulted; sometimes he cited the source his source cited; sometimes he cited both; sometimes he cited nothing. Foxe's citations are valuable clues to his sources, but his text must always be compared with the texts that he cited as well as those he used in other places.

Although the important textual interactions between Foxe and Crespin are too complex to discuss comprehensively here, interactions between Foxe and two other authors, Rabus and Haemstede, are worth examination before discussing Pantaleon.Footnote 56 Multiple indications suggest that Foxe, for some of the ‘German’ martyrs, consulted Ludwig Rabus’ martyrology. Foxe's account of the execution of the Lutheran pastor Wolfgang Schuch follows Pantaleon quite closely, but, while Pantaleon cites no source, Foxe cites ‘Ex Ludou. Rabo et Pantal’.Footnote 57 The account in Pantaleon appears to be based on the account of Schuch in Rabus, so Foxe probably located the source behind Pantaleon even though the latter did not cite it.Footnote 58 Foxe's account of Ursula and Maria, two martyrs burned at Delden in 1545, follows Pantaleon's account closely.Footnote 59 Foxe cited Rabus, while Pantaleon supplied no citation but did, in fact, abridge and rearrange the account as it had been printed by Rabus.Footnote 60

In other cases, Foxe's citations of Rabus seem mistaken. Foxe cited Rabus as a source for the martyrdoms in 1549 of a Frenchman named Nicholas and a woman named Mariana (or Marion), the wife of a barber in Mons.Footnote 61 He also cited Rabus as a source for the martyrdom of Pierre Mioce in Tournai in 1545, and Rabus as his sole source for the martyrdoms of François Varlut and Alexandre Dayken in Tournai in 1562.Footnote 62 Yet, no accounts of any of these martyrs exist in either edition of Rabus’ martyrology. Foxe clearly followed Pantaleon (or Crespin) for the accounts of Nicholas and Mariana.Footnote 63 He also seems to have drawn on Pantaleon for the martyrdoms of Mioce, Varlut and Dayken.Footnote 64 On other occasions where Foxe cited Rabus, he simply repeated Pantaleon's citation.Footnote 65 In sum, Foxe most likely consulted a copy of Rabus’ martyrology; but, probably because his German was rudimentary at best, his understanding of what Rabus wrote was limited, and his notes from Rabus may have become mixed up with those from Pantaleon. In any event, Foxe probably only scanned the names and places of martyrs in Rabus' text, probably after finding the martyrs’ accounts in Pantaleon.

The possibility that Foxe drew on Haemstede's martyrology has attracted scholarly attention, although claims that Haemstede's martyrology influenced the scope of Foxe's martyrology have been challenged.Footnote 66 Guido Latré has examined the account of the martyrdom of Bertrand le Blas, a sacramentarian of Tournai executed on 29 December 1555. Latré observes not only that Foxe cited Crespin, Pantaleon and Haemstede as his sources, but also that Foxe used a few terms unique to Haemstede in his account, referring to Tournai as ‘Dornic’ (Haemstede had rendered it as ‘Doornicke’) and stating that le Blas was tortured on the ‘pyneba[n]ke’ (from the Dutch for the rack, ‘pijnbanck’).Footnote 67 Latré is correct in arguing that this use of Dutch terms indicates that Foxe made direct use of Haemstede's martyrology, but the issue is to what extent. As with Rabus, it seems probable that Foxe simply scanned Haemstede, using Pantaleon's text as an aid. Moreover, these borrowings (and the failure to translate ‘pijnbanck’ as rack) suggest Foxe's limited understanding of Haemstede's Dutch.

Foxe elsewhere cited Haemstede in conjunction with other martyrologies. He cited Crespin and Haemstede as his sources for the martyrdom of one Jean l'Anglois in Sens in 1547. Foxe's single sentence account, however, contains nothing not in Crespin's Latin martyrology, except the citation of Haemstede.Footnote 68 Foxe's citation for the martyrdom of Guillaume Neel, in Evreux in 1553, is interestingly worded: ‘Henr. Pantal. Lib. 9. and Crisp. and Adrian [i.e. Haemstede] maketh mention also of one William Neel’.Footnote 69 Foxe stated that all three mention Neel, but he did not state that they were his sources. In fact, the accounts of Neel's martyrdom by Pantaleon, Crespin and Haemstede are so similar that it is impossible to determine whether Foxe used any one or all of them; but, as before, it seems likely that Foxe primarily used Pantaleon (because of the specific reference to book 9), and then noticed the account in the other works.Footnote 70 Foxe has another interesting citation for his account of Arnaud Monier and Jean de Cazes, both burned at Bordeaux in April 1556: ‘This story is testified and to bee found both in the volume of the French martyrs printed by Iohn Crispine lib. 6. and also in the booke of Dutche martyrs written by Adrianus.’Footnote 71 Once more, Foxe was not as specific as one might like when identifying his sources, but the accounts are found in Crespin's 1564 French-language martyrology and in Haemstede.Footnote 72 These two accounts are very similar, though there is no direct evidence that Foxe actually read Haemstede's Dutch account or Crespin's French account. In other places, however, Foxe had clearly drawn solely on the 1564 edition of Crespin for material; there is no case where he did so with Haemstede.Footnote 73

Foxe may have had a more sustained engagement with Haemstede's martyrology in one final case. At the end of his account of the ‘German’ martyrs, Foxe writes: ‘Furthermore, in the Dutch boke of Adrian, diuers others be numbered in the Catalogue of the Germane Martyrs, which likewise suffered in diuers places of the [Low Countries].’Footnote 74 A list of about fifty martyrs follows, almost all from Haemstede and some whose martyrdoms are only recorded in Haemstede.Footnote 75 This list merely provides martyrs’ names, dates of death and locations. Undoubtedly Foxe scanned through Haemstede's work for these names, but that is not the same thing as reading Haemstede's book. In sum, it seems that Foxe drew what he could from Haemstede, either for information exclusive to the Dutch martyrologist, or simply to confirm accounts mentioned by Pantaleon or Crespin, but that was the extent of Foxe's use of his Dutch counterpart's work.

Foxe's sources for the ‘German’ martyrs

Foxe's attempts to draw on Rabus’ German and Haemstede's Dutch texts underscore the importance of Pantaleon's Latin text. Hard as Foxe might strain at his linguistic leash, on his own he could make only limited use of martyrologies written in vernaculars other than English.

How much, then, of Foxe's material on the mainland European martyrs was taken from Pantaleon? Foxe's section on the German martyrs begins with seventeen accounts.Footnote 76 Of these Foxe cited Pantaleon directly for three.Footnote 77 He translated Pantaleon's text and repeated his citations for another three.Footnote 78 Foxe gave no citations for his accounts of martyrs drowned in the Rhine and killed in Dithmarschen, but he provided details found in Pantaleon (but not Crespin).Footnote 79 Similarly, Foxe's account of Peter Spengler contains the martyr's name, which was supplied by Pantaleon but not Crespin.Footnote 80 Foxe cited Rabus for the execution of Hans von Salhausen, a monk in Prague, but the account was more likely derived from Pantaleon or Crespin, or both.Footnote 81 Foxe offered no source for his accounts of Gasper Thauber (martyred at Vienna in 1524) and Jörgen Wagner (at Munich in 1527); these accounts could have been obtained from Pantaleon or Crespin, or both.Footnote 82

Other accounts among these first seventeen are more complicated. Two were unquestionably from Crespin despite Foxe's citation of both Pantaleon and Crespin in the first case.Footnote 83 The account, reprinted from Foxe's first edition without alteration, of the early Lutheran martyrs, Hendrick Vos and Johann van den Esschen, is a mixture of elements from Crespin's account with details only found in Luther's.Footnote 84 The account of the lynching of the Lutheran preacher Heinrich Zütphen in 1524, also reprinted from the first edition of the Acts and monuments, cites and follows closely Luther's narrative.Footnote 85 Foxe cited Sleidan's Commentaries as his source for his account of Johann Heuglin, and the wording of Foxe's account clearly shows that it was copied from John Daus's translation of Sleidan. Daus wrote: ‘The byshop of Constaunce, had a litle before caused one John Huglie [sic], a priest, to be brent at Merspurge, for that he woulde not allowe the bishops of Romes doctrine in all things.’Footnote 86 Foxe's account in the first edition, which was reprinted very similarly in the second, recorded that ‘the bishop of Constance caused a certain priest, named John Howgly to be burned at Merspurge, for that he would not allow the bishop of Romes doctrine in al poyntes’.Footnote 87 Foxe also cited Sleidan as the source for his narrative of the burnings of Peter Fliesteden and Adolf Clarebach at Cologne in 1529. This account was reprinted exactly from Foxe's first edition, and again Daus's translation seems Foxe's most likely source.Footnote 88 In sum, of the seventeen narratives opening Foxe's section on the ‘German’ martyrs, eight definitely derived from Pantaleon, three probably derived from him, and six derived from other authors.

Foxe's section on ‘German’ martyrs then became more schematic because the remaining martyrs were listed in a table of thirty-nine accounts of martyrdom or persecution.Footnote 89 This table makes even clearer Foxe's dependence on Pantaleon. Eight of the accounts include direct citations to Pantaleon, and in four cases Foxe cites him as his sole source.Footnote 90 In another three, Foxe cites both Pantaleon and Rabus as sources which, as before, effectively means that Pantaleon was Foxe's source.Footnote 91 For the last of these eight, that of Bertrand le Blas, Foxe cites Crespin, Pantaleon and Haemstede.Footnote 92

In a further nineteen cases, Foxe simply repeated the source citation and translated the accounts in Pantaleon.Footnote 93 In at least three more cases, the wording between Foxe's and Pantaleon's accounts are so close – at times word-for-word translation – that there is no doubt that Pantaleon was Foxe's source, even though Foxe cited no source.Footnote 94 For the remaining nine accounts, Pantaleon was probably the source (or one of several); the only account for which Pantaleon is an unlikely source is the martyrdom of Michella Craignole, where Foxe cites Crespin alone.Footnote 95 In sum, Foxe derived at least 70 per cent – but more realistically 90 per cent – of the table from Pantaleon, without whose work Foxe's material on the ‘German’ martyrs would have been greatly diminished.

Foxe's use of Pantaleon beyond the ‘German’ martyrs

Foxe's section on French martyrs relied more heavily on Crespin than Pantaleon, but the latter still made a significant contribution by providing material supplementing that provided by Crespin.Footnote 96 Of the eighty-seven accounts, in five Foxe cited Pantaleon alone, although in two of these Foxe's account is one sentence long, and it is impossible to determine whether he drew from Pantaleon or Crespin, or both.Footnote 97 For the martyrdoms of Etienne Pouillot and Denis le Vayr, Crespin's accounts are very close to Pantaleon's, and, in both cases, Foxe could have been drawing on both, though he cited Pantaleon alone.Footnote 98 Foxe also cited Pantaleon as his sole source for the story of a wealthy Parisian merchant persecuted by the Franciscans; this account does not appear in any of Crespin's martyrologies.Footnote 99 In the next story, immediately following the account of the merchant in both Foxe and Pantaleon, Foxe simply translated Pantaleon's account along with his citation; again, Pantaleon was clearly Foxe's source.Footnote 100

In eleven other accounts of French martyrs, Foxe cites both Pantaleon and Crespin. Close examination reveals that Foxe indeed drew on both authors for some of these. For the martyrdom of Sanctin Lyvet (Pantaleon, Crespin and Foxe give his name as ‘Nivet[vs]’), Foxe cited Pantaleon first and Crespin second, but, because the two Latin accounts are nearly identical, Foxe could have drawn on them equally.Footnote 101 For the martyrdom of Etienne Brun, Foxe followed Crespin but added details from Pantaleon emphasising the martyr's miraculous resistance to pain.Footnote 102 Although Foxe cited both martyrologists for the persecution in Paris following a mob's attack on a Protestant congregation in September 1557, he principally used Crespin's 1564 edition, except that he added a paragraph from Pantaleon about the successful intervention of German and Swiss ambassadors on behalf of some of the prisoners.Footnote 103 For other cases where Foxe cited both martyrologists, or gave no source at all, but accounts of the event exist by both Crespin and Pantaleon, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which Foxe used either author. Yet, while Foxe's section on the German martyrs would have been dramatically reduced without the aid of Pantaleon's text, Foxe's account of the French martyrs by comparison would have been left largely intact.

Foxe's table of Spanish martyrs contained one entry from Pantaleon.Footnote 104 In contrast, essentially the entire table of Italian martyrs, apart from Francisco de Enzinas's account of his escape from prison, comes from Pantaleon.Footnote 105 Admittedly, Foxe cites both Pantaleon and Crespin for the martyrdom of Fannino Fanini, and it could have come from either.Footnote 106 The account of Algieri Pomponio de Nola, including his letter, is translated from Pantaleon without attribution.Footnote 107 For three accounts in this section, Foxe repeated both Pantaleon's text and citation.Footnote 108 For the remaining Italian accounts, Foxe cited Pantaleon alone.Footnote 109

Foxe relied on Pantaleon for information on the Italian martyrs because most of this material was first printed in the Martyrvm historia. The accounts of Fanini and Cabianca, however, were first printed in Ludwig Rabus’ martyrology, and the account of the two Augustinians came, according to Pantaleon's attribution, which Foxe repeated, from Manlius’ Locorvm communium collectanea.Footnote 110 Pantaleon stated that the account of Trezio came to him ‘ex Caelio’, that is from Celio Secondo Curione, an Italian humanist scholar who fled to Basle in 1542 and remained there until his death in 1569.Footnote 111 Pantaleon's accounts of Pascale and Bonello, as well as the persecution of Protestants in the kingdom of Naples, came from a letter of Simone Fiorillo, a preacher in Capua who, in 1552 when suspected of heresy, fled to Geneva and later led a Protestant congregation in Chiavenna.Footnote 112 Pantaleon printed Fiorillo's letter describing the persecution of these martyrs; this letter was written to Guglielmo Gratarolo, who taught medicine at the University of Basle alongside Pantaleon.Footnote 113

Pantaleon also printed two other letters, the epistle of Algieri Pomponio and one describing the persecution in Calabria.Footnote 114 Pantaleon did not cite his sources for these letters, but they almost certainly were obtained for him by Italian Protestants in Basle. The accounts of these non-British martyrs, from Pantaleon, Crespin and other authors, remained essentially unchanged in subsequent unabridged editions of the Acts and monuments.

Foxe's editing and inclusion of Pantaleon's material: final thoughts

Foxe was an indefatigable compiler of documents, but he was also an unsleeping editor. He customarily appropriated other sources, often changing them by making extensive additions to and deletions from the texts.Footnote 115 For two reasons, however, Foxe did not need to alter material from Pantaleon as extensively as he did for other sources. First, this material came from a staunchly Protestant author who often pulled his material from other equally Protestant authors; the material came to Foxe effectively filtered several times for doctrinal impurities. Second, Foxe was primarily interested in demonstrating that martyrs existed in many regions, victims not simply of an individual magistrate or prince, but of AntiChrist's false Church. For the martyrs outside Britain, numbers mattered more than details to Foxe, so sometimes he did abridge material, especially official documents and records, when translating from Pantaleon.Footnote 116

Then again, sometimes an account so interested Foxe that he would print it at length. He seems, for example, to have greatly admired a Parisian tailor interrogated by Henry ii and then executed for his faith. Foxe not only rendered the complete account of the martyrdom as it appeared in Pantaleon and Crespin, but he also added opening sentences extolling the tailor and – most unusually – criticising Crespin and others for not writing more about him: ‘Among many other godly martyrs that suffered in France, the story of this poore Taylour is not the least nor worst to be remembred. His name is not yet sought out in the French stories, for lacke of diligence in those writers: more is the pitie.’Footnote 117 These didactic and hortatory impulses occasionally led Foxe to manipulate his accounts by juggling multiple sources for details that he wanted to disseminate but were not in his principal source. For instance, Foxe drew chiefly on Crespin for the martyrdom of Etienne Brun but for the sake of detail added Pantaleon's praise of Brun's ‘miraculous’ stoicism.Footnote 118 As previously noted, Foxe printed Crespin's account of the persecution that followed the discovery of the clandestine Protestant congregation in Paris, but he added Pantaleon's account of Swiss and German intervention on behalf of their French co-religionists.Footnote 119 In a few instances, Foxe cut material from his sources for purposes of moral instruction. He related, for example, almost all of the account of Aymon de la Voye, which he found in Pantaleon and Crespin, but dropped passages in which de la Voye appeared hesitant or uncertain when interrogated.Footnote 120 Overall and for the most part, though, Foxe made relatively few polemically motivated emendations to the material that he took from Pantaleon and Crespin.

Analysing the intertextual relationships between Foxe and his fellow martyrologists reveals Foxe's desire to include Protestant martyrs from other countries and regions in his work. Despite the formidable linguistic difficulties, he had excerpts from Crespin's Actes des martyrs translated. Without Pantaleon's martyrology, Foxe's Acts and monuments would have been a record of Protestant martyrs in England, Scotland and France, with scattered additions from the Low Countries and Spain. Foxe's section on German martyrs would have been drastically reduced, his section on Italian martyrs virtually non-existent. Indeed, Foxe was able to use Pantaleon's work as a ladder from which he could reach the texts of Rabus, Haemstede and others.

Foxe's use of Pantaleon's Martyrvm historia reveals an important dimension of Foxe's ecclesiology and ideas of church history. Notwithstanding the claim that Foxe inspired English nationalism, his personal vision was not of a national Church but of a universal Church, and his unflagging efforts were bent towards seeing that his compatriots could learn about, and draw inspiration from, their co-religionists of the True Church who lived and died on the European mainland.

Yet, without Pantaleon's research, Foxe would not have been able to present English readers with the spectacle of their martyred co-religionists in the Low Countries, the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. The decisions of other martyrologists to publish their works in vernacular languages, instead of Latin, enabled Germans, Frenchmen and so on to read the accounts of their heroes’ suffering, but their decision also had the potential to divide Protestant history among the different languages zones of its members. To a significant extent Pantaleon's work prevented this balkanisation from happening.

As a result, Protestants could look beyond the challenges that they faced in a particular place and moment, and identify as a part of the True Church, which had had members across the world in every age since the time of Christ. This fostered a sense of belonging to a universal brethren, persecuted by the False Church, which helped to maintain some unity despite diverse doctrines, languages and allegiances among European magisterial Protestants. This common identity, provided by shared martyrs and the experience of shared persecution, also helped to engender immediate and lasting hatred between Protestants and Catholics across Europe. In remarkable ways, the martyrologies of Foxe and Pantaleon helped readers to recognise both the local and the international dimensions of the Protestant cause against their adversaries before, during and after the sixteenth century.

Footnotes

Tom Freeman would like to thank the staff at the Rare Books Room at the Cambridge University Library. David Gehring would like to thank the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, for a much-appreciated fellowship there, during which the research for this article was initiated. He would also like to thank audiences in Oxford and London for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Throughout this article, original spellings are maintained while punctuation is modernised.

References

1 Bunyan, John, The house in the forest of Lebanon, in The miscellaneous works of John Bunyan, ed. Midgley, Graham, vii, Oxford 1989, 159–64Google Scholar. Algieri Pomponio de Nola, a student at Padua, was burned for heresy in 1556: Caponetto, Salvatore, La riforma protestante nell'Italia del cinquecento, Turin 1992, 254–5Google Scholar.

2 Bunyan owned a copy of either the 1632 or the 1641 edition of the Acts and monuments and drew upon it heavily throughout his life: Freeman, Thomas S., ‘A library in three volumes: Foxe's “Book of Martyrs” in the writings of John Bunyan’, Bunyan Studies v (1994), 47–57Google Scholar. The letter of ‘Pomponius Algerius’, as Foxe terms him, appears in the second volume at pp. 181–3 of the 1632 and 1641 editions of the Acts and monuments.

3 The standard account of Pantaleon is Bolte, Johann, ‘Pantaleon, Heinrich’, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie xxv (1887), 128–31Google Scholar. Most scholarship has focused on Pantaleon's Prosopographia, a major biographical dictionary of illustrious Germans: Prosopographiae herovm atqve illvstrivm virorvm totivs Germaniae, Basle 1565–6 (VD16, P 228–30); Pantaleon's autobiography is at iii. 560–5. (VD16 is the abbreviation used for the Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts, which is a bibliography for German-speaking lands during the sixteenth century akin to the Revised Short Title Catalogue.) Hans Buscher's Heinrich Pantaleon und sein Heldenbuch, Basle 1946, is a study of the Prosopographia. Matthias Pohlig provides a nuanced description of the Prosopographia in the context of Reformation historical writing, but includes little about Pantaleon's career or other writings: Zwischen Gelehrsamkeit und konfessioneller Identitätsstiftung, Tübingen 2007, 259–69Google Scholar.

4 A useful overview of early Protestant martyrologies is Gregory, Brad, Salvation at stake: Christian martyrdom in early modern Europe, Cambridge, MA 2001, 139–96Google Scholar.

5 Ludwig Rabus, Der Heyligen Außerwöhlten Gottes Zeügen, Bekennern vnd Martyrern … Historien, Strasbourg 1552–8 (VD16, R31, R34, R37, R41, R42, R46, R48, R50).

6 Kolb, Robert, For all the saints: changing perceptions of martyrdom and sainthood in the Lutheran Reformation, Macon, GA 1987, 56–67Google Scholar, 158–64.

7 Jean Crespin, Le Livre des martyrs, Geneva 1554 (USTC 6414), and Actes des martyrs, Geneva 1564 (USTC 60253); John Foxe, Commentarii rervm in ecclesia gestarum, Strasbourg 1554 (VD16, F1948); Adriaan van Haemstede, De gheschiedenisse ende den doodt der vromer martelaren, Emden 1559 (USTC 408045).

8 For other Protestant martyrological works of the mid-1550s and mid-1560s see Gregory, Salvation at stake, 170–1.

9 Jean Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, Geneva 1560 (USTC 450286). After the Commentarii Foxe wrote the larger martyrology, Rervm in ecclesia gestarum … commentarii, Basle 1559 (VD16, F 1956).

10 Kolb, Saints, 56–8, 81–3.

11 Gilmont, J.-F., ‘Les Martyrologes du xvie siecle’, in Menchi, Silvana Seidel (ed.), Ketzerverfolgung im 16. und frühen 17 Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden 1992, 176–89Google Scholar, and Gregory, Salvation at stake, 165–96, provide overviews and comparisons and are the best of the few writings treating Rabus, Crespin, Foxe and Haemstede together.

12 A few exceptions exist. David Watson examines Crespin's sources for English martyrs: ‘Jean Crespin and the first English martyrology of the Reformation’, in Loades, David (ed.), John Foxe and the English Reformation, Aldershot–Brookfield, VT 1997, 192–209Google Scholar. The following works examine Foxe's use or possible use of the martyrologies of Haemstede, Crespin and Rabus: Andrew Pettegree, ‘Haemstede and Foxe’, in Loades, Foxe and the English Reformation, 278–94; Latré, Guido, ‘Was van Haemstede a direct source for Foxe? On le Blas's pijnbanck and other borrowings’, in Loades, David (ed.), John Foxe at home and abroad, Aldershot–Burlington, VT 2004, 151–6Google Scholar; and Mark Greengrass and Thomas S. Freeman, ‘The Acts and monuments and the Protestant continental martyrologies’, in The unabridged Acts and Monuments online/TAMO (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011), <www.johnfoxe.org> (accessed 26 September 2017).

13 There are brief assessments of Pantaleon's importance to Foxe in Evenden, Elizabeth and Freeman, Thomas S., Religion and the book in early modern England: the making of Foxe's ‘Book of Martyrs’, Cambridge 2011, 95–8Google Scholar, 110, and Greengrass and Freeman, ‘Acts and monuments’.

14 Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the book, 73–8.

15 Ibid. 75; Steinmann, Martin, Johannes Oporinus: ein Basler Buchdrucker um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Basle–Stuttgart 1967Google Scholar; Bonjour, Edgard, ‘Oporinus, Johannes’, Neue Deutsche Biographie xix (1999), 555–6Google Scholar.

16 Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the book, 51–2, 55.

17 Foxe, Commentarii, fos 88r–93r, 177r–v. There are brief accounts of French, German and Italian medieval figures who clashed with church authorities at fos 173r–174v, and 175v–176v. John Bale, a former Carmelite, was interested in the martyrdom of Conecte, passing on his information to Foxe.

18 Ibid. fo. 205r.

19 This letter makes it clear that Foxe had written to Bullinger previously, but exactly when they began their correspondence is unknown.

20 The Zurich letters, ed. Hastings Robinson, Cambridge 1842, i. 26.

21 Ibid. i. 36.

22 Ibid. i. 42.

23 Foxe was still in Basle on 1 September 1559, the date of his dedication of the Rervm, but he had arrived in England by 30 October, when the duke of Norfolk wrote to him, stating that he would meet Foxe shortly in London: BL, ms Harleian 417, fos 115v, 118r.

24 ‘longa hic texenda mihi esset narratio: nisi institutam historiae seriem sequutus, de Anglis in praesentia, et Scotis: post uero de Germanis hominibus, atque inter hos de Luthero, suo ordine referre decreuissem’: Foxe, Rervm, 121.

25 Nicholas Ridley, A frendly farewel which Master Doctor Ridley … did write, ed. John Foxe, London 1559 (RSTC 21051). The title page is dated 10 November 1559.

26 Ibid. unpaginated preface.

27 ‘duo pariter Typographi, alter Basiliensis, qui latine imprimeret, alter Geneuensis, qui Gallicam etiam huius historiae editionem efflagitabat’: Foxe, Rervm, 1.

28 Gilmont, J.-F., Bibliographie des éditions de Jean Crespin, 1550–1572, Verviers 1981Google Scholar, i. 140.

29 Ibid; Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the book, 94–5.

30 John Foxe, Acts and monuments (hereinafter cited as A&M, with date of edition), London 1563 (RSTC 11222), sig. B3v, states that it took eighteen months to print the work.

31 ‘libello de papistarum tyrannide’: ms Harleian 417, fo. 108v.

32 RSTC 20114. Freeman, Thomas S., ‘A solemn contestation of divers popes: a work by John Foxe?’, English Language Notes xxxi (1994), 35–42Google Scholar.

33 ‘de recognoscendis aliquibus martyribus tuis quaeso serio etiam cogita’; ms Harleian 417, fo. 108v.

34 Bolte, ‘Pantaleon’, 129.

35 Creizenach, Wilhelm, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, Halle 1918, ii. 125–6Google Scholar.

36 Kess, Alexandra, Johann Sleidan and the Protestant vision of history, Aldershot–Burlington, VT 2008, 121–2Google Scholar.

37 John Bale, Scriptorvm illustrium maioris Brytanniae … catalogus, Basle 1557 (RSTC 1296 variant), i, sig. β2r.

38 ‘amici mei integerrimi’: Heinrich Pantaleon, Martyrvm historia, Basle 1563 (VD16, P222), fo. 3v, 336.

39 ‘Pars secvnda. Qvvm autem in prima parte Martyres saltem Angliae et Scotiae, a D. Ioanne Foxo Anglo, superioribus annis sint annotatae.’

40 ‘Quum uero per aliquot annos frustra… expectassemus’: Pantaleon, Martyrvm, sig. 3v. ‘We’ presumably signifies Pantaleon, Oporinus and their readers.

41 Date erroneously given in Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the book, 110 n. 23.

42 Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 347–60.

43 Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the book, 113–24.

44 Compare A&M (1563), 431–2, 433–5, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 46–8, 51–4.

45 Compare A&M (1563), 441–2, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 71–2.

46 Foxe, Pantaleon and Crespin identified Wagner as George Carpenter [Georgius Carpentarius]. Compare A&M (1563), 436–7, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 61–3, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 53r–55r.

47 Haemstede's martyrology did not draw on sources in English or French. Similarly, no evidence suggests that Rabus knew French, English or Dutch. Scholars agree that Crespin was not able to read German, and it is highly improbable that he could read English: David Watson, ‘The martyrology of Jean Crespin and the early French evangelical movement’, unpubl. PhD. diss. St Andrews 1997, 136; Kolb, Saints, 82. The question of Foxe's knowledge of German or Dutch is significant as there is evidence that he had some familiarity with the martyrologies of Rabus and Haemstede, but these examples demonstrate a limited knowledge of these languages at best.

48 Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the book, 164–73.

49 A&M (1570) (RSTC 11223), 1058.

50 ‘Ex scripto testimonio Senatus Geneue[n]sis’: ibid.

51 Ibid. 1065.

52 Ibid. 1062.

53 Ibid. 1012–15.

54 Compare A&M (1570), 1019, 1020, 1024–8, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 68, 80–2, 156–7, 174, 178, 206–7, 217, 283, 309.

55 Compare A&M (1570), 1017–18, with Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fo. 55r–v, and Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 63–4.

56 Preliminary observations on the relationship between Foxe and Crespin are in Greengrass and Freeman, ‘Acts and monuments’.

57 Compare A&M (1570), 1015–16, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 54–7.

58 Rabus, Der Heyligen, v, fos 143r–154r.

59 Compare A&M (1570), 1022, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 110.

60 Compare Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 110, with Rabus, Der Heyligen, iii, fos 180v–184r.

61 A&M (1570), 1025–6.

62 Ibid. 1024, 1028.

63 Compare A&M (1570), 1025–6, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 186–8, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 158r–160r; the accounts are virtually identical, but Foxe cited ‘Ex Lud. Rab. Pantal. Et alijs’.

64 Compare A&M (1570), 1023–4, 1028, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 97–100, 357–8.

65 Compare, for example, A&M (1570), 1023, 1027, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 96, 302.

66 Evenden and Freeman, Religion and the book, 56–8.

67 Latré, ‘Haemstede a direct source for Foxe?’, 151–5.

68 Compare A&M (1570), 1034, with Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fo. 161v, and Haemstede, De gheschiedenisse, 179.

69 A&M (1570), 1040.

70 Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 268–80; Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 239r–249v; Haemstede, De gheschiedenisse, 327–39. Neither Pantaleon nor Crespin cited Haemstede. Foxe's account of roughly one hundred words omits documentary extracts that are ‘to bee read more at large, in the ix. Booke of Pantalion and others’: A&M (1570), 1040.

71 A&M (1570), 1047. The 1564 edition was the first edition of Crespin's martyrology to contain a sixth book.

72 Crespin, Actes des martyrs, 832–7; Haemstede, De gheschiedenisse, 410–16. The account is in book vi of Crespin's 1564 edition.

73 Foxe drew solely on Crespin's 1564 edition for the accounts of François Rebezies and Frederic Danville in Paris in 1558. Compare A&M (1570), 1052–5, with Crespin, Actes des martyrs, fos 882r–884v.

74 A&M (1570), 1028.

75 Ibid. 1028–9.

76 Ibid. 1005–18. Foxe divided his material into accounts containing one martyr or, at other times, numerous martyrs, such as the twenty-eight executed at Louvain in 1544: ibid. 1020.

77 George of Halle (A&M [1570], 1010), Wolfgang Schuch (A&M [1570], 1016) and Wendelmoet Claesdockter (A&M [1570], 1018).

78 The martyrdoms of a pastor and a peasant, both of which repeat Pantaleon's citation of Oecolampadius (A&M [1570], 1012, 1014–15; compare Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 46–8, 51–4), and the account of Leonard Keyser, where Foxe repeats Pantaleon's citation of Martin Luther (compare A&M [1570], 1017–18, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 63–4).

79 Compare A&M (1570), 1010, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 37, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fo. 42v.

80 Compare A&M (1570), 1013–14, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 48–51, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 47v–49v.

81 Compare A&M (1570), 1010, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 38, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fo. 43r. Foxe later mentioned this martyr, citing Crespin (A&M [1570], 1029). Foxe probably based his first relation of this martyr on Pantaleon and his second on Crespin, not realising that both referred to the same person.

82 Compare A&M (1570), 1010, 1016–17, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 39–40, 61–3, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 42v–43r, 53r–55r. Foxe, as noted above, included Wagner in the edition of 1563.

83 One is the account of the martyrdom of Jean le Clerc at Meaux in 1524, where Foxe cited both Pantaleon and Crespin as sources; the wording of his account differs from Pantaleon (who added further detail to Crespin's account) but matches Crespin's text exactly (compare A&M [1570], 1010, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 43, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fo. 46r–v). The other is the account of Jean Castellane at Lorraine in 1524, where Foxe, citing nobody, again followed Crespin very closely, failing to include details in Pantaleon's longer account (compare A&M [1570], 1010–12, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 40–2, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 44r–46r).

84 Compare A&M (1563), 421–2 and A&M (1570), 1005–6, with Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fo. 43r–v, Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 38–9, and D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Drescher, Karl, Weimar 1923, xxxv. 411–15Google Scholar.

85 Compare A&M (1563), 422–8, and A&M (1570), 1006–10, with D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Drescher, Karl, Weimar 1908, xviii. 224–40Google Scholar. Compare the shorter account in Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 35–8.

86 Johann Sleidan, A famovse cronicle of oure time, called Sleidanes commentaries, trans. John Daus, London 1560 (RSTC 19848), fo. 71r.

87 A&M (1563), 435. Compare A&M (1570), 1016.

88 Compare A&M (1563), 442, and A&M (1570), 1018, with Sleidan, A famovse cronicle, fo. 83r–v. Compare Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 56v–57r, citing no source; Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 66–8, citing Rabus’ second volume.

89 A&M (1570), 1019–29.

90 The accounts of Martin Hoerbloc (A&M [1570], 1022); Adrian, a tailor of Tournai (A&M [1570], 1023); ministers exiled from Locarno (A&M [1570], 1028); and a preacher of Erfurt (A&M [1570], 1029).

91 Ursula and Mona burned at Delden (A&M [1570], 1022); Nicholas of Mons (A&M [1570], 1025–6); and Marion, wife of a barber, executed at Mons (A&M [1570], 1025–6).

92 A&M (1570), 1027–8.

93 The accounts of Johann Pistorius and George Scherrer (compare A&M [1570], 1019, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 44–5, 68); a priest living outside Basel, twenty-eight people executed in Louvain, Perceval van Bellinghem and Giles Tilleman (compare A&M [1570], 1020–1, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 81–2, 96–7, 101–2); Nicholas and Francis Thiessen, Pierre Bruly, an unnamed priest, a priest in Hungary and the expulsion of Hermann von Wied, archbishop of Cologne, from his see (compare A&M [1570], 1022–5, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 80, 84–96, 156–7, 174, 178); Augustine the barber, a woman in Augsburg and two girls at Bamberg (compare A&M [1570], 1025–7, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 188–9, 206, 217); and Hostius (‘otherwise called George’), Johannes Frisius the abbot of Neustadt, 200 ministers from Bohemia and Godefride de Hamelle (compare A&M [1570], 1027–8, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 219–27, 283, 299–302, 309).

94 The accounts of a friar Henry in Tournai (compare A&M [1570], 1020, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 66); Protestants in Ghent (compare A&M [1570], 1022, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 102–3); and those resisting the Augsburg Interim (compare A&M [1570], 1025, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 200).

95 A&M (1570), 1028; compare Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 215.

96 A&M (1570), 1029–60.

97 The martyrdoms of Alexander Canus (Laurent Canu) (compare A&M [1570], 1029, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 76–8, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 62r–64r) and Paris Panier (compare A&M [1570], 1042, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 296, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fo. 269v). Beyond the eighty-seven accounts, lists of French and Belgian martyrs end Foxe's section. These names are taken from Crespin's 1564 martyrology. Compare A&M (1570), 1060, with Crespin, Actes des martyrs, 907–69, 991–1086.

98 A&M (1570), 1034, 1043; Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 173–4, 30[6]–7; Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 139v, 277v–278v.

99 A&M (1570), 1043; Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 217.

100 The story is of a man – ‘the brother of Tamer’ – who recanted, then hanged himself in despair. Foxe stated that the account is ‘Ex Ioan. Manlio in Dictis Phil. Melanct.’; Pantaleon cited ‘Io. Manlius in dictis Phil. Melanchtonis’ (compare A&M [1570], 1043, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 217), i.e. Johannes Manlius, Locorvm communium collectanea, Basle 1562 (VD16, M603), popularly known as ‘De dictis Philippi Melanchthoni’.

101 Compare A&M (1570), 1033–4, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 174–5, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 139v–140v.

102 Compare A&M (1570), 1030, with Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 66v–67v, and Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 82–3.

103 Compare A&M (1570), 1049–50, with Crespin, Actes des martyrs, 872–8, and Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 333.

104 Compare A&M (1570), 1062, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 157–8.

105 Compare A&M (1570), 1066, with Les Memorables de Francisco de Enzinas, trans. Jean de Savignac, Brussels 1963, 293–4. The material on Enzinas is considerable and falls outside the focus of the present article. On Enzinas's historical writing see Kinder, A. Gordon, ‘Spanish Protestants and Foxe's book: sources’, Bibliothèque d'humanisme et Renaissance lx (1998), 107–16Google Scholar, and Pinilla, Ignacio J. García and Nelson, Jonathan L., ‘The textual tradition of the Historia de statu Belgico et religione Hispanica by Francisco de Enzinas (Dryander)’, Humanistica Lovaniensia l (2001), 267–86Google Scholar.

106 Compare A&M (1570), 1066–7, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 200–5, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 162r–166r.

107 Compare A&M (1570), 1070–3, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 329–32.

108 The accounts of Galeazzo Trezio (compare A&M [1570], 1068–9, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 246–9); Francesco Gamba (compare A&M [1570], 1070, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 296–9); and two Augustinians in Rome (compare A&M [1570], 1070, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 265).

109 The accounts of ‘Dominicus de Basana’ (Dominico Cabianca) (compare A&M [1570], 1067–8, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 205–6); ‘Johannes Mollius’ (Giovanni Mollio Buzio) (compare A&M [1570], 1069–70, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 263–5); ‘Johannes Aloysius’ (Aloysius Pascale) and Jacopo Bonello (compare A&M [1570], 1073, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 337); and persecution in Naples and Calabria (compare A&M [1570], 1073–4, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 337–8).

110 Rabus, Der Heyligen, iii, fos 186r–192r; A&M (1570), 1070; Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 265.

111 Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 249.

112 Ibid. 337.

113 Ibid.

114 Ibid. 329–32, 337–8.

115 Freeman, Thomas S. and Monta, Susannah Brietz, ‘The style of authorship in John Foxe's Acts and monuments’, in Hadfield, Andrew (ed.), The Oxford handbook of English prose, Oxford 2013, 522–43Google Scholar.

116 Foxe did precisely the opposite with documents on English martyrs that had not previously been printed. A third reason behind Foxe's citations of Pantaleon and others might have been his desire to direct his readers to more detailed, accessible accounts for the mainland brethren, thus reducing the need to include long documentary extracts. Another factor in 1570, of course, was paper supply.

117 A&M (1570), 1035; compare Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 185–6, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 157r–158r.

118 Compare A&M (1570), 1030, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 82–3, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 66v–67v.

119 Compare A&M (1570), 1049–50, with Crespin, Actes des martyrs, 872–8, and Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 333.

120 Compare A&M (1570), 1030–2, with Pantaleon, Martyrvm, 103–8, and Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fos 82r–85v. Foxe dedicated three folio pages to the account because he found de la Voye's lengthy answers on purgatory and the papacy polemically useful.