John Foxe AND HIS TURBULENT TIMES

Conclusion of Turbulent Years

A citizen of nearby Coventry, Agnes told Foxe about a widow named Smith (or Smythe) who had taught her children the Ten Commandments and Jesus' model prayer, often called the Lord's Prayer.  Instead of teaching her children in Latin, though, she taught them in English. For this "crime" she was burned at the stake, along with six men who were similarly charged.  Because this gross injustice angered the people, the local bishop spread the word that the victims were burned for the "greater crime" of eating meat on Fridays and other fast days.

How had the martyrs become familiar with portions of the Bible in English?  Some 150 years earlier, despite church opposition, the Bible had been translated from Latin to English by John Wycliffe, who also trained itinerant preachers known as Lollards.  These carried handwritten portions of the Scripture, which they read to the people. As a result, Parliament tried to stop that activity. In 1401, It passed a statute giving bishops the power to imprison and torture heretic and burn them at the stake. 

Fearing arrest, Foxe moved with his family to London, where he later took a stand for the Protestant cause. There he translated tracts from German Reformers into English and translated other tracts written in Latin  as well. He also wrote some tracts of his own.

Additionally, Foxe began to compile a history of the Lollards in England, completing it in 1554.  The work was published in Strasbourg, today a city in France, as a  small Latin volume of 212 leaves. In effect, this was the first of his Acts and Monuments of the Church.  Fiver years later, enlarged the volume to over 750 folio pages. 

Next time: John Foxe AND HIS TURBULENT TIMES -The Deadly Fruits of Intolerance

From the Awake! magazine