farfel_n08_026_509

Paintings +
the Mind of
Man

#86 The Book of Martyrs was for more than 200 yrs
one of the most widely read books in England.
Appealing when the memory of the treatment of the
Protestants in Mary Tudor's reign was fresh in the
minds of its readeres it built up an image of the
persecuting papist which not only resulted in the
fierce hatred of the Inquisition + hence Spain in
Elizabethan times but has strongly colored English
thinking on Roman Catholicism to this day.
The book had a long history before reaching
its definitive form in the 2nd English ed. of 1570.
The 2 later ed (1576 + 1583) contained only a few additions.

1st published in Latin on the Continent during
Foxe's exile there (Strass, 1554, 1st part, [illegible] f^0)
complete Latin ed. --> 1559, Basel, [?an?] f^0.
John Daye died in 1584 -- though he published 100's
of books he was memorialized on his tombstone
as the printer of the Book of Martyrs.
1563 - 1 large folio vol. -- coincided c the ending of the
Council of Trent.

1570
1576
1583

2 folio volumes

1596
1610

1350 copies, S.T.C. 11226 f^0
Stanford KC 1596 F6
Vol I. 728 pp. 15 1/4 x 10 1/4 ^4
P. Short, by the assigns of R. Day.

1632 -- 3 vol.
1641

Acts + Monuments began as a book for all Protestants,
but later became a more narrowly sectarian possession
i.e the Puritans.