Abstract

John Foxe wrote his Acts and Monuments in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I. Although this work is a history of the Church from its beginning, it concentrates on the Lollard martyrs and the martyrs under Mary Tudor as she returned the English church to the authority of Rome. ;This dissertation examines the Acts and Monuments in its relationship to the assumptions, purposes, methods, and techniques of humanist historiography. The opposition of Foxe to the temporal pretensions of the papacy is shown to be shared by several Italian humanist historiographers, especially Paolo Sarpi. Foxe's avowed partisanship, his purpose of moving his readers to right action through his persuasive rhetoric, his use of sources, his techniques of biography, his adaptation of the use of set-pieces, his use of sensory detail, his attempts to attribute causation, and his interest in psychology reveal his work to be part of the humanist tradition of historiography as developed by Bruni, Scala, Guicciardini, and Machiavelli as well as by the French humanist historians. ;When Foxe's work is understood in the light of this humanist historiographical tradition, much of the criticism which has been levelled against it is shown to be inappropriate, demanding, as much of it does, that Foxe meet standards of historiography unknown to him or to his contemporaries. Once Foxe is seen to be more than a mere partisan martyrologist, the Acts and Monuments as humanist history reveals a great deal about the values and assumptions which were held by both the intellectuals and common people in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. This humanist history becomes a valuable source for sixteenth-century intellectual and social history