Chapter 4 - “Gathered again from the ash”

Summary

A cornerstone text of England’s Reformation, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments is deeply concerned with constructs of cultural memory and the use of that memory to steel the resolve of English Protestants to continue the hard work of reforming the church. First published in 1563 and borrowing from hagiographical traditions, Acts and Monuments attempts to legitimize the English Reformation by placing it in the continuum of early Christian persecutions and martyrdoms, and by further vilifying Catholics at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign following the Marian counter-Reformation. This chapter situates Foxe’s work in the context of cultural memorialization and traumatic historiography – that is, the construction and reiteration of cultural trauma through historic documentation/commemoration.