The John Foxe Project - News and Events
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The Project aims to produce a progress report twice-yearly from 2006 through to 2008, which is when it expects to complete the online edition. |
1. Project Progress:-The Project has made encouraging progress in the second year of its funding to complete the online edition. The headlines are |
Block CommentariesThese have now been completed in-house for the majority of Books 8 and 9, with good progress on early Books too. These have demonstrated how rich a close examination of Foxe's use of sources for the period before his own life and experience is concerned. One example among many is the commentary on block 8.233 (The Allegations against the Six Articles) (1583, pp. 1298-1346). As Tom Freeman’s research shows, Foxe drew on a very wide range of sources in a very skilful fashion. For this section alone, he has tracked down Foxe's use of Heinrich Bullinger's De origine erroris libri duo (Zurich, 1568), a collection of medieval works defending the doctrine of transubstantiation, De veritate corporis et sanguinis Domini nostri Iesu Christi, ed. Johann Vlimmer (Louvain, 1561), William of Mamesbury’s De gestis Pontificium Anglorum and his De gestis regum Anglorum, the sermon of Aelfric Grammaticus from A testimonie of antiquitie, ed. Matthew Parker and John Joscelyn (London, 1566?), John Bale's Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae…Catalogus (Basel, 1557), Matthias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1562), Matthew Parker, Epistolae duae D. Volusiani Episcopi Carthaginensis (London, 1569), and various printed medieval charters supplied to him by friends and supporters. In this section, as in others, crucial to Foxe's elaboration of his text was the help he received from Archbishop Matthew Parker and his Latin secretary, John Joscelyn. For the first time, we can delineate in what ways that assistance was invaluable. |
New CollaboratorsWe are delighted that, thanks to the generosity of the British Academy, we have been able to expand our team of contributors to the block commentaries in areas where specialist expertise will be invaluable to us. The following have kindly agreed to participate, and their work will be acknowledged in the final online edition:-
In addition, Dr Margaret Aston, FRS and Dr Elizabeth Evenden have kindly agreed to continue their work on the woodblocks in Books 1-9, following the analytical methods already established in the online edition for Books 10-12. |
Latin/Greek and Biblical citationsJohn Wade has been working on these and has completed the citations for Books 1-4 and Book 9. He is now well through Book 5 and expecting to undertake Book 6 shortly. |
Chasing Up the Names!Foxe was never less than anxious to include the names of anyone and everyone included in his panoramic ecclesiastical history. It was also part of his strategy of providing circumstantial veracity to his account to include the names of locations wherever he could. In Books 1-9, it has proved a Herculean task to trace the just under 7,700 individuals whom he mentions in those pages, and the 1,520 place-names. It is a tribute to the determination and research skills of Dr Joy Lloyd that we have now put faces to names, and places to locations, for the overwhelming majority of these identifications, thus being able to account for those places where Foxe was, in terms of modern scholarship, right, and where he was wrong. His errors, of course, are significant for us since they assist us in working out the souces that Foxe was using. It is a work of detection that has no end to it – but our aim is now to include a genuinely interactive element to the eventual edition so that the editorial work can continue after our own efforts have been brought to fruition. |
A New InterfaceThe new interface, complete with a new website address, was introduced earlier in the year. This enables users to navigate more speedily between the various books of Foxe's account. The launch of the final, and complete, edition – ‘E-Day’ is still scheduled for the end of 2008. |
An Important ConferenceThe first half of 2007 was also highlighted by the very successful conference at Newnham College, Cambridge on 12-14 April 2007 on Censorship, Persecution and Resistance in Marian England. Sponsored by: The Bibliographical Society, and The British Academy John Foxe Project, the conference examined political and religious authority under Mary Tudor and the resistance to it, the role of the printed word in promoting both Catholic and Protestant opinion during this period, and reassessed the legacy of Mary's reign as depicted in both images and printed texts. A selection of published papers, edited by the conference organiser, Dr Liz Evenden, is expected in a printed volume in due course. |
2. Forthcoming Events:John Foxe Project WorkshopMaking History from the Recent Past: Some Tudor Experiences Thursday 10 April 2008 Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield |
3. Reasons to Celebrate:-The signal event in the Foxe publishing calendar this year has been the appearance of Professor John King’s Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early-Modern Print Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Professor King, a member of the British Academy Project Board, places the extraordinary publishing achievements of Foxe and his publisher in the broader context of early-modern print culture. |