“The same cause and like quarell”: Eusebius, John Foxe, and the Evolution of Ecclesiastical History

Abstract

In 1563, just five years after Elizabeth ascended to the throne, John Foxe published the first edition of his Acts and Monuments. Part ecclesiastical history, part martyrology, part English chronicle, and entirely Protestant, this enormously popular work had a significant impact upon its age. The dedicatory letter to the Queen in this first edition begins with an elaborate woodcut of the letter C, in which Elizabeth sits enthroned. [See Figure 1.] This C is the beginning of the word “Constantine.” Foxe writes: “Constantine the greate and mightie Emperour, the sonne of Helene an Englyshe woman of this youre Realme and countrie (moste Christian and renowned Pryncesse Queene Elizabeth) … pacified and established the churche of Christ, being long before under persecution almost … 400 years” (1563 Pref. vi). Thus Foxe immediately emphasizes the supposed Englishness of Constantine and builds upon this link between Rome and Britain by implying that, just as Constantine had delivered the Christians from an age of persecution, so had Elizabeth. But there is another parallel that Foxe is interested in establishing, at which he hints as the letter continues. Foxe tells the story of how Constantine once traveled to Caesaria, where he promised to grant Eusebius, the Bishop, whatever he wanted for the good of the church: “The good and godly Byshop … made this petition, onely to obtaine at his maiesties hand under his seale and letters autentique, free leave and license through al the monarchie of Rome … to searche out the names, sufferinges and actes, of all such as suffered in al that time of persecution before, for the testimonie and faith of Christ Jesus” (1563 Pref., vi).

‘The deformed imp of the devil’: John Foxe and the Protestant fashioning of the Catholic enemy

“…The circulation of books and ideas, as well as John Foxe's exile on the continent, enabled him to come into contact with tropes and traditions that unfamiliar to insular England. Foxe's interest in Church history also led him to ponder over the method of Eusebius of Caesarea and to follow in the ecclesiastical historian's footsteps (Minton 2002). The martyrologist's own methodology -his inclusion of primary material, such as the records of ecclesiastical courts, the letters of martyrs or the testimonies which came his way thanks to the clandestine Protestant networksraises the question of Foxe's "style of authorship" (Freeman & Brietz Monta 2013) and advises us to be cautious about the possible limits of the martyrologist's auctoritas.…”

Byzantine tragedy in Restoration England: Joseph Simons's Zeno and Sir William Killigrew's The Imperial Tragedy

“…63 While respectful allusion to Constantine's reign was not a Catholic preserve -in Acts and Monuments a century earlier, John Foxe had compared it to Elizabeth I's -the staging seems designed to evoke Catholic church design and ritual. 65 This may seem a surprising departure for Lee, recently the author of two virulently anti-Catholic plays, The Massacre of Paris (1679) and Caesar Borgia (1679); yet the first of these dramas had been banned, and the second had been almost as controversial. 66 The dedication of Theodosius to Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond, a lifelong Catholic, suggests a degree of backtracking and points towards his ideological flexibility where court patronage was in question.…”