A Library in Three Volumes: Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' in the Writings of John Bunyan

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 5; p. 47
• Main Author: Freeman, Thomas S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.10.1994
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Bunyan, John (1628-88); English literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

[...]a contemporary who visited Bunyan in Bedford Gaol described his library there as consisting 'only of two books, a Bible and tiie Book of Martyrs'.1 Considering that Bunyan wrote many of his works, including the two on which his fame rests, The Pilgrim 's Progress and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, while incarcerated, one would imagine that a great deal of research would have been devoted to describing and analyzing Bunyan's use of John Foxe's massive ecclesiastical history, the Acts and Monuments, more commonly known as the 'Book of Martyrs'. [...]although Foxe' s influence on certain passages of Pilgrim 's Progress - particularly the martyrdom of Faithful and the giants Pope and Pagan - has been commented on, and a number of direct references to the Acts and Monuments that Bunyan made in his writings have been noted, there has been surprisingly little detailed discussion of Bunyan's specific borrowings from Foxe.2 One major reason for this comparative neglect is the forbidding size of the Acts and Monuments; according to one recent estimate, it is two and a half times as long as the Bible. A fundamental reason for Bunyan' s reading the Acts and Monuments was that he esteemed Foxe's martyrs as the spiritual forebears of the separatists of his own day - early possessors of the same religious truths, yet at the same time more virtuous and more heroic than their latter-day counterparts, models botit to be assimilated and to be emulated: 'Did we but look back to the Puritans, but specially to those that but a little before them, suffered for the word of God, in the Marian days, we should see another life than is now among men, another manner of conversation than is now among confessors' .4 Significantly, Christian is identified in Pilgrim 's Progress as the direct descendant of a long line of martyrs lauded in the Acts and Monuments.5 Foxe's martyrs were especially apposite models for encouraging and sustaining nonconforming readers who had to endure the repressive religious policies of Restoration England. [...]Bunyan described the deaths of the Henrician martyr James Bainham (who defiantly compared the fire which consumed him to a bed of roses), and of the Marian martyr Thomas Hawkes (who clapped his hands over his head during his execution as a sign that he could tolerate the pain of being burned alive), in order to demonstrate God's ability to make torment endurable for his servants.6 In the same work, Bunyan also drew on Foxe ' s account of the agonizing martyrdom of Richard Atkins, burned slowly in Rome in 1 58 1 , to demonstrate that the godly might be called upon to suffer extraordinary pains, even in the modern era.7 From the rich harvest of early Christian martyrdoms described by Foxe, Bunyan gleaned several episodes to remind his readers that many people had found the joys of salvation worth the bitterest physical torment and to exhort his readers to 'Keep thine Eye upon the Prize'.8 In the same vein, Bunyan also reprinted a substantial portion of Foxe' s transcript of the letter of Pomponius Algerius - a student at Padua, who had been accused of heresy by Paul IV and ultimately executed - as testimony of how persecution and suffering could be transformed by God into a state of blessing.9 The nonconformist churches, however, were not, any more than any church has ever been, composed entirely of martyrs and one of the challenges nonconformist pastors faced was that of maintaining the cohesion of their congregations in the face of desertions and recantations, and of alleviating the guilt and despair felt by those who had foresworn their beliefs under coercion. [...]there are strong indications that Bunyan obtained more than occasional inspiration from Foxe and that the Acts and Monuments also supplied him with an interpretation of the entire history of the Church.