john foxe's henry viii as justitia

John Foxe's Henry VIII As JustitiaAuthor(s): Elizabeth H. HagemanSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1979), pp. 35-43Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539684 .Accessed: 18/06/2014 02:16

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Sixteenth Century Journal X, 1 (1979)

John Foxe's Henry VIII as Justitia

Elizabeth H. Hageman* University of New Hampshire

IN 1570, shortly after the papal bull excommunicating Queen Elizabeth was issued, John Foxe published the second, revised edition of Actes and Monu- ments. The new edition, retitled The Ecclesiasticall History, Contaynyng the Actes and Monumentes of thynges passed in every kynges tyme in this Realme, especially in the Church of England. . . , is almost twice as long as his first edition of 1563. Although many Latin documents from the 1563 volume are omitted from the 1570 text, additional data from episcopal registers, royal archives, and records of parliament add authority to Foxe's account of events in England. Foxe further enlarges the scope of the 1570 edition by including more information about continental martyrs and by extending his story of the struggle between the true church and its enemies back to the time of the apostles. He adds a note of urgency to his history by bringing the account of the persecutions of continental Protestants up to 1570. His argument that the Church of England is not a new kind of Christianity but a return to the principles of the early church is reinforced by his beginning with forty-eight pages contrasting the primitive church with its modern Roman successor. And yet Foxe emphasizes the importance of the English church as a new beginning in Christian history by dividing his new edition into two volumes of unequal length. The first volume, the shorter of the two, treats the story of the Christian church "from the primitive tyme till the reigne of K. Henry viii;" and the second covers the years "from the tyme of K. Henry the viii to Queene Elizabeth our gratious Lady now reyngyng."1

*An early version of this paper was delivered at the Central Renaissance Confer- ence in Iowa City, Iowa, on March 26, 1976.

' J. F. Mozley, John Foxe and His Book (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and New York: Macmillan, 1940), pp. 118-151, traces the history of Actes and Monuments from a small octavo volume written in Latin and published in Strassburg in 1554 through the last edition printed in Foxe's lifetime, the 1583 text. Although the scope of Foxe's work expanded in each edition (1559, also in Latin; 1563, in English) up to 1570, only minor changes were made in either 1576 or 1583. For Foxe's apocalyptic view of history, see William Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (Lon- don: Cape, 1963), passim, and V. Norskov Olsen, John Foxe and the Elizabethan Church (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 2044. All of my quotations are from the 1570 text. Here, as elsewhere, I have maintained sixteenth-century spellings, but I have observed modern practice in transcribing "u" and "v," "i" and "j."


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36 77Te Sixteenth Centurv Journal

The significance of Henry's reign is reinforced by Foxe's insertion of two large illustrations: a woodcut of Henry in council at the beginning of volume two2 and the emblematic picture reproduced here as Figure 1. The first picture, engraved by Jacob Faber, is reproduced from one of Foxe's sources, Edward Halle's Union of the Two Noble and Illustrate Famelies of Lancastre and York (printed in London by Richard Grafton in 1548). The second, by an unknown engraver, represents an enthroned Henry holding a sword in his right hand and a book in his left while he tramples upon Pope Clement VII. To Henry's right are several upright, confident Protestants, including Cromwell and Cranmer; and all around one may see, as the gloss says, "The lamentable wepying & howling of all the religious route for the fall of their god the Pope." In both the 1570 and the 1576 editions of the History the woodcut appears just after Foxe's account of the events surrounding the 1534 Act of Succession and above a copy of Henry's "Proclamation for the abolishing of the usurped power of the Pope." In the 1583 edition this woodcut replaces the engraving of Henry in council at the beginning of volume two.

An examination of its iconography will show that this woodcut is an important visual representation of a principal theme of Foxe's History, for it presents the reformist belief in the moral power of the true English church over the papal Antichrist. The historical event it portrays - the issuing of the "Proclamation" - is, in Foxe's view, significant not only for England, but for all humankind. Henry's action, the legend below the picture asserts, fulfills "An olde prophecie of the fall of the Pope:" "Papa cit6 moritur, Caesar regnabit ubique, Et subito vani cessabunt gaudia cleri" ("The pope will soon die; Caesar will reign everywhere; and soon the joys of the vain clergy will end"). And Henry, the Defender of the Church, is an embodiment not only of proper kingship but of Justitia itself.

William Haller believes that the woodcut is a presentation scene of Cranmer giving the 1535 Bible to Henry.3 If his identification is correct, the picture is a Renaissance variant of the medieval visual topos of an author or translator offering his book to a patron. The iconography of the presentation scene was indeed well known to Foxe's sixteenth-century audience, for it appears on the frontispieces and title-pages of many Renaissance books. For example, on the title-page of John Bale's Illustrium Majoris Britanniae Scrip- torum (London, 1548) the kneeling author presents his book to an enthroned Edward VI, who holds the scepter of office in his right hand and accepts the book with his left.

2Reproduced in Arthur M. Hind, The Tudor Period, Part I of Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge: The University Press, 1952), Plate 8.

3Haller, p. 173. Although I disagree with Haller's identification of the event represented in the woodcut, I believe he is right in thinking that the picture marks a turning point in Foxe's History.



John,; Foxe's Henry VIII as Justitia 37

the cPopefuppreffed by kHenry the eight.

Artist unknown. From John Foxe, Ecclesiasticall History (London: 1570). p. 1201. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington. D.C.



38 The Sixteenth Century Journal

But Foxe's engraving differs from the typical presentation scene in that the composition of the picture focuses attention on the monarch and his book, and on the defeated pope, leaving Cranmer as only a secondary figure. Furthermore, Haller's suggestion that the presentation book is the Bible is belied by the label "1534" - the year before the Coverdale Bible was printed. And Bishop Fisher, pictured just below Cranmer, was executed on June 22, 1535, some three and one half months before the Bible was issued. My suggestion, then, is that Foxe's illustration shows Henry issuing his anti-papal "Proclamation," imaged in the book. Although the publication of the English Bible is an important event in the triumph of English Protestantism, surely the 1534 Act of Succession is the single most significant event by which Clement was, in the words of the motto over the picture, "suppressed by K. Henry the eight."

Given the obvious power of Henry's book in this emblematic picture, it may seem strange that he also holds a sword, but the sword and the book taken together characterize Henry as the new Caesar which the Latin lines below the woodcut proclaim him to be. The iconography of Foxe's illustration of Henry is clearly derived from Hans Holbein's woodcut for the title- page of Coverdale's Bible (Figure 2) and from the engraving done by a fol- lower of Holbein for the frontispiece of Cranmer's 1548 Catechism (Figure 3).4 Roy Strong has noted that "On the Bible frontispiece Holbein creates an image which was to be a definitive one for the Tudor and Stuart Kings. . . a variant iconographically of the classic renaissance emblematic device Ex utroque Caesar, the emperor bearing the sword and book, allusions to the duality of his triumphs in peace as well as war."5 Indeed, the iconography of

A cruder version of Figure 3, labeled "King Edward delivering the Bible to the Prelates," appears at the beginning of Foxe's account of Edward's reign in the 1570 and subsequent editions of the History. It replaces an engraved initial E at the beginning of the account in the 1563 text. In that engraving Edward holds an upright sword in his right hand and, with his left hand, hands a piece of paper to a figure kneeling at his left.

5Holbein and Henry VIII (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 14. Strong also reproduces an engraving by Crispin van de Passe in which Queen Elizabeth stands next to a table on which a sword labeled Justitia lies upon a book labeled Verbum Dei. See also the frontispiece of Remigio Nannini's Civill Considerations (London, 1601); page one of George Carleton's Thankfull Remembrance, 3. ed. (London, 1627), reproduced in Arthur M. Hind, The Reign of James I, Part II of Engraving in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge: The University Press, 1955), Plate 182; and the title-page of the Great Bible of 1559, reproduced as the frontispiece of James Strachan, Early Bible Illustrations: A Short Study Based on Some Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century Printed Texts (Cambridge: The University Press, 1957).

The reformist theme of the power of the Word of God is prominent in each of these engravings and also in a woodcut presenting "A lively picture describing the weight and substaunce of Gods most blessed word agaynst the doctrines and vanities of mans traditions," inserted at the conclusion of the first volume of the 1583 edition of Foxe's History. There Justitia holds an upright sword in her right hand and a balance in her left. On the right side of the balance a single book labeled Verbum Dei outweighs several books of papal decrees in the left side of the balance. On the right side of Justice Christ gestures toward his book while on the left bishops and monks pour gold and jewelry into their side of the balance.



John Foxe's Henry VIIH as Justitia 39

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Hans Holbein. From the Coverdale Bible (Zurich?: 1535), tide-page detail. By permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Artist unknown. From Thomas Cranmer~~~~~~~~~oi, Ctcim(odn 58,fots

piece. By permission of O fetheoughton libawy, HarvardtUniversity.




the sword and book as attributes of the just leader is used as late as 1658 by William Faithorne in an engraved portrait of Oliver Cromwell trampling upon the Whore of Babylon and Error in the form of a serpent.6

Strong's example of this Renaissance emblem is from Paolo Giovio's half of Le Sententiose Impresse (Lyons, 1561). In the seventeenth century George Wither includes two variations of the device Ex utroque Caesar in his Collec- tion of Emblemes (London, 1635).7 The first (Figure 4) praises the king whose talents combine those of war and peace; while his sword represents the active life of the leader defending his country, the book represents the humane letters which shape his judgment. The motto above the woodcut reads, "A Princes most ennobling Parts, / Are Skill in Armes, and Love to Arts." The second (Figure 5) is more relevant to our study of Foxe, for its motto reads, "When Law, and Armes, together meet, / The World descends, to kiss their feet." In short, whereas the first emblem reflects the Renaissance idea of the prince who combines the active and the contemplative virtues, the second treats the classical idea of law coupled with strength in the well- governed state.8 Henry's "Proclamation" is, of course, a law - a political and religious one. So when the artist who created the image for Foxe's book presented Henry's triumph over the pope, he used the traditional iconography not simply of a good man, but of a strong, law-giving monarch. In fact, in creating a law that will bring justice, Foxe's Henry fulfills the Justinian principle that "two things are necessary for the king who rules rightly, that is laws and arms, by which he can govern rightly in times of war and peace."9

From Foxe's point of view, of course, Henry's England - and Eliza- beth's - was at war, and a bloody one at that, with the Antichrist. Given the moral dimension of that struggle and also Foxe's apocalyptic view of history, it seems fair to see the age-long struggle Foxe describes as a kind of world- wide psychomachia between virtue and vice. The iconography of this woodcut supports such a view, for the illustrator has pictured Henry as the embodiment of the cardinal virtue Justitia, the virtue that Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,

6 Reproduced in George Somes Layard, Catalogue Raisonne of Engraved British Portraits from Altered Plates (London: Allan, 1927), Plate XII. In 1689 the face of Faithorne's Cromwell was altered to portray William IlI.

'The plates for Wither's emblems, engraved by Cris-in van de Passe, originally appeared in Gabriel Rollenhagen's Nucleus Emblematum Selectissimorum (Cologne, 1611).

8For other studies of the book and sword as attributes of monarchy, see Erwin Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege (Leipzig-Berlin: Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, XVIII, 1930), pp. 37-42; Dora and Erwin Panofsky, Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (New York: Pantheon, 1956), pp. 40-41; and Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "On Transformations of Apolline Ethics," in his Selected Studies (Locust Valley, New York: Augustin, 1965), pp. 399-408. Robert J. Clements, Picta Poesis: Literary and Humanistic Theory in Renaissance Emblem Books (Rome: Editione di Storia e Letterature, 1960), pp. 135-149, discusses emblem writers' use of the theme of the conflicting claims of the life of arms and the life of the pen.

9 Citied by Kantorowicz, p. 404.



John Foxe's Henry VIII as Justitia 41

hwb LawI mdAmwsc3ugabrwmui

The World &fads hieAdfnh*Fc..

Crispin van de Passe. From George Wither, Collection of Emblemes (London: 1635), I, 32. By permission of Houghton library, Harvard University.

A Pnnwccs wmfi wxothu Pants1

.de skiD ix Armes,i md Lowero Arts

Crispin van de Passe. From George Wither, CoUection of Emblemes (London: 1635), IIL, 163. By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.




and the biblical writers agree is most important in a king.1 0 Although Justitia is sometimes presented holding only a sword and more often with a sword and a balance, she is also represented by medieval and Renaissance artists with a sword and a book. Foxe's Henry is like the personifications of Justitia in both Figure 6 and Figure 7, not only in his holding the same two attributes but also in a significant detail not found in either Figure 2 or Figure 3: Henry, like Justitia, tramples his defeated and writhing enemy under his feet.1 1 Whereas Nero embodies tyranny or injustice in Figures 6 and 7, Clement embodies it for Foxe's audience. And Henry, the embodiment of Justice Triumphant, is an emblem for all future Protestant monarchs to emulate.1 2

Twentieth-century readers who know Frances Yates's work on Elizabeth as Astraea will not be surprised at the idea of a sixteenth-century artist seeing a Tudor monarch as an embodiment of Justitia. In fact, the portrait of Henry is an elaboration of a presentation of Elizabeth as Justice of the beginning of Foxe's dedication of his book to Elizabeth in the 1563 and subsequent editions of Actes and Monuments (Figure 8). There Elizabeth, holding the sword of just monarchy and the orb of office, sits within an initial C that incorporates a writhing pope. As Yates says, Elizabeth "represents the return to Constantinian, imperial Christianity, free from papal shackles, the kind of religion which Foxe regards as alone pure."' 3 As the many Christian martyrs whose stories Foxe's admonitory history presents are exemplary heroes, so is Foxe's Henry VIII a model of virtue for Elizabeth to emulate. In conflating the iconographic motifs discussed above, the illustrator has created an emblem of Henry with two propagandistic functions. It explicates the moral meaning of Henry's "Proclamation," and it reminds Elizabeth of her responsibility to act in the tradition of her famous father.

I 0 Sherman H. Hawkins, "Virtue and Kingship in Shakespeare's Henry IV," English Literary Renaissance 5 (1975), 313-343, outlines the Renaissance insistence on the cardinal virtues, especially Justice, as attributes of the good king.

." See Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art from Early Christian Times to the Thirteenth Century (London: Warburg Institute, 1939), pp. 14-21, for the history of the motif of the virtues triumphant over their enemies.

1 2Near the conclusion of his account of Henry's reign Foxe says he "was so inclinable and forward in all things vertuous and commendable, that the like enterprise of redress of Religion, hath not lightly been seen in any other Prince christned. .. yet to this day, we see but fewe in other realms dare follow the same," p. 1441.

' 3"Queen Elizabeth I as Astraea," in her Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 44.



John Foxe's Henr' VIII as Justitia 43

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r ; _._S._. AO ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0.

IY'rci 7'rrV k r ~

Nicolb di Giovanni. Detail from illumination in a manuscript copy of Greg- ory's IDcietals (1354). By permission of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

Artist unknown. From Convenevoli de Pratis?, Poemata Roberto regi Neapolis dicata, f. 1. By permission of the Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

Artist unknown. From John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: 1563), Sig. Bir. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.



Article Contentsp. [35]p. 36p. 37p. 38p. 39p. 40p. 41p. 42p. 43

Issue Table of ContentsThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1979), pp. 1-128Volume Information [pp. 127-128]Front Matter [pp. 1-2]The Rochepot Affair [pp. 3-19]Hugh Latimer and Witness [pp. 20-34]John Foxe's Henry VIII As Justitia [pp. 35-43]Calvin and Nicodemism: A Reappraisal [pp. 44-69]Was Paracelsus a Disciple of Trithemius? [pp. 70-82]"Fortres of Fathers": An Unpublished Sixteenth-Century Manuscript Relating to Patristic Writing on the Eucharist [pp. 83-88]"Social History of the Reformation" "Sozialgeschichte der Reformation" A Conference at the Deutsches Historisches Institut London, May 25-27, 1978 [pp. 89-92]Review: Some Recent Erasmian Scholarship [pp. 93-96]Book Notices [pp. 97-100]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [p. 101]Review: untitled [p. 102]Review: untitled [pp. 103-104]Review: untitled [p. 104]Review: untitled [p. 105]Review: untitled [pp. 105-106]Review: untitled [pp. 106-107]Review: untitled [p. 107]Review: untitled [p. 108]Review: untitled [pp. 109-110]Review: untitled [p. 110]Review: untitled [pp. 111-112]Review: untitled [pp. 112-113]Review: untitled [pp. 113-114]Review: untitled [pp. 114-115]Review: untitled [p. 116]Review: untitled [pp. 116-117]Review: untitled [p. 118]Review: untitled [pp. 119-120]Review: untitled [pp. 120-121]Review: untitled [p. 122]Review: untitled [pp. 122-123]Review: untitled [pp. 123-124]Review: untitled [pp. 124-125]Review: untitled [p. 126]

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john foxe's henry viii as justitia

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