First published in English in 1563, the Actes and Monuments, popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, is a work of Protestant history and martyrology by John Foxe. Probably the best-known text in the very ample library of anti-Catholic literature, it includes a polemical account of the sufferings of Protestants under the Catholic Church, with particular emphasis on England and Scotland. The book was highly influential in those countries, and it helped to shape the lasting popular notions of anti-Catholicism. The book underwent four editions in Foxe’s lifetime and a number of later editions and abridgements, including some that specifically reduced the text to a Book of Martyrs. The book was produced and illustrated with over sixty distinctive woodcut impressions and was to that time the largest publishing project ever undertaken in England. This book is still in print today.
John Milner (1795), no friend to Foxe, claimed that the book was at the center of efforts to “inflame hatred” against Catholics in the eighteenth century.
“We find the lying Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, with large wooden prints of men and women, encompassed with faggots and flames in every leaf of them, chained to the desks of many county churches, whilst abridgements of this inflammatory work are annually issued from the London press under the title of The Book of Martyrs.”[1]
[1] Milner, John, History Civil and Ecclesiastical and Survey of Antiquities of Winchester (1795), cited in Warren Wooden, John Foxe (Twayne, 1983), p.106.