Book of Martyrs / Containing an Account of the Sufferings and Death of the Protestants in the Reign of Queen Mary the First.

Title

Book of Martyrs / Containing an Account of the Sufferings and Death of the Protestants in the Reign of Queen Mary the First.

Description

Account of the suffering and death of Protestants during the reign of Queen Mary the First on 713 pages. With title page and a list on 2 pages with the names of the persons who suffered persecution and death during the reign of Queen Mary I. Illustrated with 29 continuous engraved plates. Page 105 and 141 tear restored. Partially signs of use.

c. 1741

Artist

Foxe (1517-1587)

John Foxe (1517- 1587 ) was an English writer. Foxe studied at Brasenose College, Oxford University. After the accession to the throne (1553) of Queen Mary I Tudor, he fled to the continent. There he met the most important reformers of the time and became a convinced follower of John Calvin. With the accession of Queen Elizabeth I (1558), he was able to return to England, where he became Canon of Salisbury through Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, on January 25, 1560. The English edition of his Acts and Monuments, better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, was published in 1563, in which Foxe praised the heroism of the Protestant victims during Mary's reign. He celebrated Anne Boleyn, for example, as a martyr of the English Protestants.

Historical Description

Mary I. (1516- 1558) London, was Queen of England and Ireland from 1553 until her death and the fourth monarch of the House of Tudor. For the first time in English history, a woman exercised the unrestricted rights of a sovereign. She was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Mary's reign was characterized by great confessional tensions, as she attempted to re-establish Catholicism as the state religion. Almost three hundred Protestants were executed during her reign. Posterity therefore referred to her as "the Catholic" or "Bloody Mary", depending on your point of view. Mary's Protestant half-sister and successor Elizabeth I reversed Mary's religious policy measures. Mary had always rejected her father's decision to split the English Church from the Roman Catholic Church. As queen, she therefore devoted herself primarily to religious policy.Mary was convinced that the population had only been seduced into Protestantism by a few. In 1555, the heresy laws from the 14th century were therefore reintroduced. The first Protestants were convicted of heresy and burned at the stake. Some of the Protestant bishops who had not fled abroad met their end at the stake, most notably the married priest John Rogers, the Bishop of Gloucester John Hooper, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. However, it soon became clear that the burning of its leaders alone would not be enough to eradicate Protestantism. The persecutions spread to the common people. Bonner in particular quickly made a name for himself among the Protestants as a heretic hunter, as he wanted to know the names of those who were inattentive during mass, did not take part in processions or broke the dietary laws of Lent. While the bishops were responsible for interrogating the accused, the arrests and ultimately the burnings Of the approximately 290 victims, 113 were burned in London alone. In total, almost 300 people died at the stake. However, the deterrence intended by the public burnings did not materialize. Instead, the population became increasingly sympathetic to the Protestant martyrs, whose persecution continued for over three years. Inside and outside England, the number of Mary's opponents grew, particularly through the writings and printed matter of Protestant exiles.were carried out by the local secular authorities, who performed their duties with varying degrees of diligence.