John Foxe, Actes & monuments of these latter and perillous dayes (London: John Day, 1563)
A popular success during the author鈥檚 lifetime, and the most popular book in English puritan households after the Bible,(known almost immediately and universally as the 'Book of Martyrs') had a colossal impact on English Protestantism for the next two centuries, shaping attitudes to Catholicism. It was originally published in this edition early in the reign of Elizabeth I, after Foxe had spent the years of Mary I鈥檚 Catholic rule on the continent, due to his puritan sympathies. The book is a compendium of ecclesiastical history highlighting the sufferings of those opposed to the Catholic Church and papal power, augmented by 贵辞虫别鈥檚 own research using official registers and eyewitness accounts. Even so this was a highly polemical work, whose objectivity was further compromised by later abridgements after 贵辞虫别鈥檚 death which often reduced the text to a catalogue of Catholic atrocities against god-fearing Protestants.
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