THE REAPPEARANCE OF JOHN FOXE'S 'BOOK OF MARTYRS.'

John Foxe began his history of Christian martyrs while a refugee on the Continent from Queen Mary's persecution of evangelical Christians in England and Wales. The massive work which he completed became one of the most influential books ever published in England. Sir Francis Drake took it with him on his voyage of global circumnavigation and when he captured Spaniards off the coast of South America in 1579 he read to them extracts from Foxe showing them the intolerance of their denomination.

No 20th century publisher of whom I am aware has reprinted the 8 volume Josiah Pratt and Townsend edition. In 1841 Stephen Cattley produced one of the last versions of this definitive work. With about 900 pages in each volume it would be a sizeable undertaking for any publisher, but with even Caryl on Job being published it can't be long before these volumes are again made available.

To those who have access to the Internet this is about to change. The four editions of the "Book of Martyrs" published in Foxe's lifetime are about to appear. The texts have been transcribed out of black letters type into modern fonts, but original spellings and formatting have been maintained. In addition there is an immensely detailed guide to every person and place mentioned by Foxe and also 13 introductory essays. The main texts come to ten million words; there are several million more in the scholarly attachments.

The Times announced on September 13 that the project's work has already cost 800,000 pounds, and the second project (scheduled for completion in 2008), if approved, will require 400,000 pounds, making it one of the largest non-science research projects in Britain. The subject was first proposed in 1992 and it has been supported by Professors David Loads, G.R.Elton and Patrick Collinson. It was the latter who allowed his own 1583 edition to be unbound for scanning.

During the 19th century Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" was fiercely criticised as a "tissue of lies and dogma" and then J.F.Mozeley published his "John Foxe and His Book" which put the accuracy of Foxe's work beyond question. Today he is taken as a serious historical source.

Emmanuel College, Cambridge and the British Library have many of the original letters which Foxe quotes, and these are being edited by the Church of England Records Society and are due to be published next year.

Book X of Foxe, of the four editions, covering Queen Mary's early years, can already be found at http://hri.shef.ac.uk/foxe and by next March, Natalie Bennett reports in the Times, all the core of Foxe, covering the Marian persecution, will be available, with its commentary and an 'enormous' bibliography. This will be updated every six months. All the texts should be published by 2008, 16 years after the project began.

GEOFF THOMAS

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