Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England (Electronic book text)

Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England provides the first book-length examination of the portrayal of Protestant women martyrs in Tudor martyrology. It explores the work of John Foxe, the most important reformation martyrologist, whose women martyrs often appears as surprisingly disorderly figures. By fully contextualising his work in English Protestant discourse, about the Apocalypse, the Antichrist, the true and false churches, and the rejection of the institution of clerical celibacy, Megan L. Hickerson shows how Foxe's women martyrs resist not just the authority of ecclesiastically and politically powerful men; more significantly, they often defy their husbands by chastising them, disobeying them, and even leaving them altogether. While by marrying his female (and male) martyrs to Christ in his text Foxe mitigates their violation of the ethic of patriarchal marriage, under his pen his heroic women challenge the foundations of social and political order, offering an accessible model of resistance to antichristian rule.