The Three Faces of Anne: The Life, Martyrdom, and Appropriation of Anne Askew Carlie Pendleton 5/18/12 History 381 Word Count: 7,456 Anne Askew is renowned as a Protestant martyr from Henrician England. She has been exalted in Reformation hagiography due to both her stern refusal to recant her beliefs and her fearless death on the pyres of Smithfield. However, this exaltation did not come about as a result of Anne fitting the Protestant mold of womanly obedience and virtue. In reality, while Anne embodied the spirit of the Protestant Reformation, she did so by disobeying holy scripture. This spirit, coupled with the biographical generalities surrounding Anne’s life, made her a perfect vehicle through which both Protestants and Catholics could further their respective religious agendas. By exemplifying certain aspects of Anne’s life as well as her work Examinations in order to foster a Protestant sense of English nationalism, Protestants like John Bale and John Foxe, portrayed her as a model of piety and virtue. In contrast, Catholics such as Robert Parsons used Anne’s scriptural disobedience to condemn her as a flippant blasphemer. However, the real Anne Askew was somewhere in the middle, between the virtuous wife and the heretical whore. Anne Askew was born in Lincolnshire in north England in 1520. The daughter of a knight, Sir William Askew, Anne had a somewhat unusual upbringing in terms of the education afforded her. In addition to Anne, along with her sisters Martha and Jane, being “educated well enough to read and write English,” she benefitted intellectually as well when her two older brothers attended Cambridge. As Lincolnshire was isolated in terms of current events, any informal knowledge imparted to Anne when her brothers were home was much appreciated. This isolation was not a permanent one, as in 1536 Lincolnshire was soon at the center of religious turmoil during the onset of the Pilgrimage of Grace. The Pilgrimage of Grace was a rebellion in the north by religious conservatives incited by Henry VIII’s religious reforms, particularly the dissolution of the monasteries and the abolition of certain feast days. As northern England was characterized by more rural, scattered settlements, a religious and social relationship with the local church and monastery was often the only source of commonality for a community. Thus Henry VIII’s curtailing of these devotional activities affected northern settlements more deeply. Anne’s father William proved to be a loyal Henrician, and as a result, conservative rebels attacked the Askew house and family. Karen Lindsey, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1995), 190. Because of this assault, Anne began to have a serious distaste for Catholicism. Ibid., 191. This newfound distaste was only further enhanced after Anne’s marriage to Thomas Kyme sometime between 1537 and 1538. Her sister Martha had been betrothed to Kyme but died shortly before their wedding. As a result, Anne was “offered as a substitute bride,” apparently much against her will. Thomas Freeman et al., eds., John Foxe’s The Acts and Monuments Online Database, http://www.johnfoxe.org/index.php?realm=text&gototype=modern&edition=1563&pageid=725 (accessed April 16, 2012). Kyme was a religious conservative, and Anne’s deepening religious questioning of the Catholic Church only exacerbated the unhappiness of their marriage. They eventually became estranged due to “her conversion to and proselytizing of the evangelical heresy.” Ibid. Evangelism as a movement in Henrician England called for religious reform but always from within the fold of Catholic Church. It stressed, in general, a more Biblically based faith, a reduction in church materialism, and a return to the structure of the original, Apostolic Church. While evangelism was not Protestantism, it certainly would have fit within Anne’s burgeoning radicalism. Anne and Thomas’ estrangement was in part facilitated by Henry VIII’s progressive reforms of 1538, most notably his decree that there must be an English Bible in every parish church. Lucy Wooding, Henry VIII (London: Routledge, 2009), 183. As a result, literate evangelicals and Protestants, both male and female, were given the opportunity to interpret scripture for themselves and in some cases for their household servants. Ibid., 183. Anne’s knowledge and interpretation of Biblical scripture became almost encyclopedic as she regularly instructed the Kyme household in religious matters. Such instruction not only increased the tension in Anne’s marriage but put her in violation of both the Protestant mold of the obedient wife and the Biblical notion, according to St. Paul in his letters to the Corinthians, that women were not to preach. “1 Corinthians 14:34,” Bible Suite, http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/14-34.htm (accessed January 1, 2013). The religious atmosphere in Henrician England vacillated on a constant basis between liberal evangelism and Catholic conservatism. While Henry VIII had at one time been a fringe member of evangelism, he always remained at heart a devout Catholic. G.W. Bernard, “The Making of Religious Policy 1533-1546: Henry VIII and the Search for the Middle Way.” The Historical Journal 41:2 (June 1998), 343. By 1539, Henry issued the Act of the Six Articles as an affirmation detailing exactly where he stood on doctrinal matters of the Church of England. The Act reinforced traditional Catholicism in the English Church and was seen as a huge recoil from the heavily Protestant influenced Ten Articles of 1536. For example, while The Ten Articles still upheld a real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and that good works were necessary for salvation, it decried the worshipping of images and “efficacy of papal pardon” for remission of sins. “The Ten Articles, 1536,” Luminarium: Encyclopedia Project, http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/tenarticles.htm (accessed January 1, 2013). The first of the Six Articles reaffirmed the belief in transubstantiation and made denial of it grounds for death by burning. The Six Articles also declared that “priests…may not marry, by the law of God,” and that vows of chastity be strictly upheld. Despite Henry’s past penchant for religious vicissitude, the Six Articles “remained Henry’s policy towards reform until his death.” “Act of the Six Articles,” Tudor Place, http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Documents/act_six_articles.htm (accessed November 15, 2011). Thus, in 1543, Henry VIII swung in a much more conservative direction. The Act for the Advancement of True Religion was passed prohibiting all women from reading the Bible, in addition to any man below the rank of gentleman. Wooding, 183. But Anne’s constant study had served her well as she no longer required the scriptures in front of her to remember what they said. Unfortunately, Kyme was dismayed that the conservative changes had not dampened his wife’s radical spirit as a Protestant preacher, and in 1545 he expelled her from their home. Freeman et al. In contrast to the perceived humiliation Anne might have suffered as a result of this expulsion, she instead found her first practical use of Biblical scripture: she petitioned the courts in Lincoln for a divorce from her husband. Anne did so by citing the aforementioned Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The passage she used stated that “if a faithful woman have [sic] an unbelieving husband which will not tarry with her[,] she may leave him.” Lindsey, 192. As Anne understood it, she had God’s permission to leave Thomas. He was an adherent to the false faith of popery and in detaching herself she was saving her soul. Unfortunately, the Lincoln courts did not agree, causing Anne to journey to London in order to procure her divorce. While Anne was once again unsuccessful in this task, it was in London that her spiritual journey reached its climax and her legendary persona was born. This persona came about as Anne had “broke[n] the law and defied the rules of her society [by] converting to the heretical Protestant faith…[and] sought a divorce from her Catholic husband and went to London to join other Protestant Reformers and to participate in current debates on controversial questions of belief.” Elaine V. Beilin, ed., The Examinations of Anne Askew (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), xv. While in London, Anne came into contact with some of the most notable English evangelicals of her day, mainly Nicholas Shaxton, Hugh Latimer, and John Lascelles. Freeman et al. The religious and political atmosphere created by Henry’s ban on women and lay gentlemen reading scripture had only heightened the desire for these people to act as their own priest. As a result, “a new breed of lay preachers” known as gospelers had formed in London. Lindsey, 193. Gospelers were people who memorized large portions of the Bible and could preach them at will. They sermonized to whomever they could and they sermonized wherever they could, despite its illegality. Anne’s renowned beauty as well as her intelligence and conviction on biblical matters quickly earned her the name of the Fair Gospeler. These features unfortunately also made her a target of Henry’s conservative rule. Anne Askew was first arrested on suspicion of heresy in March 1545. Although she was released a short time later, Anne personified the Protestant problem that top Catholic-leaning Henrician advisors such as Bishop Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Bonner were trying to stamp out. Upon her release, Anne was ordered to return to her husband, but she soon journeyed back to London to preach. She was arrested again in June 1546 and this time condemned by a quest, or Grand Jury, under the Act of the Six Articles. Specifically condemned for her denial of transubstantiation, Anne was sentenced to be burned at Smithfield. Freeman et al. However, before her death, Anne was illegally tortured on the rack in the Tower of London by Richard Rich and Charles Wriothesley, members of Henry VIII’s Privy Council, in the hopes of connecting her to the ladies of Queen Katherine Parr’s circle. Ibid. Parr, who after Henry VIII’s death published the heavily Protestant Lamentation of a Sinner, was threatening the more conservative members of Henry’s administration with her support and patronage of evangelical church reforms. Even more threatening was the idea that the queen’s beliefs could influence Henry’s religious policy, which would equal the loss of favor for men like Rich and Wriothesley. If Parr’s ladies were tied to a woman who, for example, preached the denial of transubstantiation, the queen herself would be implicated in heresy and executed. As a result, Anne was the first woman on record to be tortured in the Tower. In addition to being barbaric, her torture was illegal on two fronts: torture was only to be used in the procurement of a confession, which Anne had already given, and women were not to be tortured under the law. Lindsey., 196. Despite what must have been enormous suffering on Anne’s part, she gave no names. Badly crippled from her time on the rack, Anne had to be carried on a chair and chained to her pyre at Smithfield. She was executed on July 26, 1546, with three Protestant men, including her friend John Lascelles. Freeman et al. At first glance, Anne’s story seems to be a simple tale of Protestant martyrdom during the latter years of Henry VIII’s reign. The historical record of Anne Askew is known as the Examinations, which chronicle her arrest, imprisonment, and torture in the Tower. Most importantly, the Examinations serve as Anne’s profession of her personal beliefs. The Examinations are divided into two parts, the First chronicling her first arrest in March 1545, and the Latter recording her arrest of June 1546. As Beilin writes, Anne in this record “represents herself as the worthy opponent of church, city, and state” in her quick wit and sharp responses to her interrogators. Beilin, xv. For example, in the Latter Examination, Anne was questioned multiple times as to her beliefs on transubstantiation by Bishop Gardiner and other members of the king’s Privy Council. Anne’s response that she “receive[s] the bread in remembrance of Christ’s death, and with thanksgiving” was unabashedly calm. She further expressed her frustration at the Bishop’s repetitive inquiries and demands for a straight answer, replying that she “would not sing a new song to the Lord in a strange land.” Anne Askew, The Examinations of Anne Askew, ed. John Bale, in Select Works of John Bale, ed. Rev. Henry Christmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 199. In other words, Anne “[would] not make her beliefs fit the tune of the questioner's song, a song of categories, labels, and schools” in an effort to simplify her faith so her examiners could understand it. Thomas Betteridge, “Anne Askewe, John Bale, and Protestant History.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27:2 (Spring 1997), 271. However, while it is now largely agreed that Anne wrote the Examinations herself, they have been manipulated, appropriated, and, much like Anne, racked in order to fit both the Protestant and Catholic agendas that were gripping England after the death of Henry VIII in 1547. John Bale imposed the first layer of Protestant revisionism on the Examinations in 1548. Freeman et al. A Carmelite Friar turned polemical revisionist, antiquarian, and historian, “Bilious Bale” realized the importance of saints’ lives in creating a national sense of English identity. Protestant saints were necessary in order to exalt the Reformation as a legitimate part of England’s history. Leslie P. Fairfield, John Bale: Mythmaker for the Reformation (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1976), 1. With the relaxation of censorship laws under Edward VI, the timing for publishing Protestant works was ideal, and Anne Askew and her Examinations were perfect candidates for such an undertaking. John N. King, ed., Voices of the English Reformation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 231. For example, in the 1540s, Henry VIII had fostered a very conservative religious atmosphere that was hardly conducive to the publication of Protestant hagiography. While John Bale had been successful at publishing such works while in exile in the German Lands, his works had little impact upon the English people before 1548. Fairfield, 129. For example, in 1544 Bale published a revision of the martyrdom of Sir John Oldcastle from the early fifteenth century. Bale’s characterization of Oldcastle as both a patriot and a model of Protestant virtue, before Protestants even existed, illustrates Bale’s penchant for distorting fact to foster English nationalism. In addition to being both a rebel and a traitor who had “led an abortive coup against Henry V” in January 1414, Oldcastle had also expressed belief in purgatory. Ibid., 126-7. Bale managed to reconcile these contradictory attributes by ascribing any negative characterization of Oldcastle to popish plots and “Romish fabrication,” most notably by cleric Polydore Vergil. Ibid., 126-7. However, while Oldcastle’s distant existence from the present allowed Bale to act with such leeway without much criticism, it also made it difficult for his English audience to connect with Oldcastle on any significant level. Ibid., 129. Protestants were still viewed with much suspicion, and to counteract it, Bale needed the power of an “attractive and contemporary Protestant martyr.” Ibid., 130. Anne Askew fit the bill perfectly. Bale’s rewriting—or in his opinion, correction—of English history was based on his reinterpretation of the Book of Revelation and its subsequent enlistment to explain how England fit into European history. Ibid., 86. Bale argued in The Image of bothe churches that the “Apocalypse could enlighten the specifically English past, [and] could provide an organizing principle for the nation’s whole history.” Ibid., 87. And while it was true that the Henrician Reformation had made such revisions of the past a “national imperative” due to the elimination of Catholic saints, Bale accounting for the Apocalypse through the lens of English history “met a real need as his contemporaries sought to reinterpret their national past in light of the Reformation.” Ibid., 88. Bale marked the date of 597 AD, when the mission of St. Augustine took place, as the start of the influx of “Roman superstition” and the English Church’s exalting of “idolaters, lechers, and traitors” as saints. Ibid., 131-2. Prior to this, Bale considered England’s faith to have been “tolerably pure” and thought that those who had died were still true martyrs. Ibid., 131-2. As those who were once exalted as martyrs for the Roman faith were now declared heretics, new Protestant saints were now in order. Ibid., 132. In Anne Askew’s case, Bale found the perfect vehicle for his “scripturally-based, coherent, and gratifyingly Anglocentric” version of history. Ibid., 88. While there are no detailed accounts of just how Bale got his hands on the Examinations, the work was somehow smuggled out of Anne’s cell vis à vis Bale’s connection with England through German Protestant merchants. Bale wasted no time with the First Examination published in 1546 and the Latter in 1547. However, Bale did not merely publish Anne’s manuscript but inserted both a preface and his own elucidative, “pungent comments” throughout the the text. Ibid., 131. The point of such commentary was to reinforce the new standard of true martyrs: unwavering belief in the plain sense of Biblical scripture. Since Anne’s faith primarily based in scripture, her martyrdom was deemed valid and those who persecuted her were automatically considered “agents of the devil.” Ibid., 132. For example, in Anne’s First Examination, she is questioned regarding her alleged condemnation of the Mass, specifically that she would “rather read five lines in the Bible than to hear five masses in the temple.” She confirms this speech as hers, but adds that she did not say it for the “dispraise of either the epistle or the gospel.” Instead, Anne says she found edification in one and nothing in the other, citing Saint Paul as a source. However, Bale then illuminates what Anne must have meant by quoting a verse from the book of John: “Blessed is he (saith Christ unto John) which readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy.” Bale is essentially elaborating on the heretical nature of the “Latin popish mass” as it does not contain one word of biblical scripture. Askew, 149. This textual clarification, while once again setting a standard for the new Protestant martyrology, also served Bale’s agenda in fostering a new sense of English Protestant nationalism. Even with this new template of Protestant martyrdom, the question still remained of how Bale reconciled Anne’s scriptural disobedience, especially in her marital conduct, with the virtue needed to qualify as a saint. One way Bale accomplished this task was simply by connecting her “typologically with the valid martyrs of the early church.” Fairfield., 132. In his preface to the First Examination, Bale focuses on Blandina of the “primitive church,” who like Anne was marked by her “mighty persistence in her verity at this time of mischief.” Askew, 147. Much like Anne, Blandina, a young martyr from second-century Gaul, had been both young and unwavering under torture. Bale equated Anne’s rebuke of Nicolas Shaxton at Smithfield, due to his recantation, to Blandina’s correction of the errors of pagan priests. Shaxton, a former Bishop of Salisbury, was a fellow reformer arrested with Anne, but soon after recanted his beliefs in exchange for being spared the stake. Blandina, on the scaffold before her death, steadfastly maintained the truth of the then illegal Christianity and the falsehood of pagan superstition. Ibid., 12. This juxtaposition of Anne and Blandina helped to establish the historical consciousness of the English Church in addition to legitimizing Anne’s sainthood. Adherents of the Reformation had always maintained that at some point the Catholic Church had, at some point in the past, swayed from the true church of Christ. As a result, the true Christian martyrs of the early church who had suffered under pagan tyranny were the legitimate ones and the later martyrs lauded for their virginity and performance of miracles were false. Thus, in opposition to the previous model of sainthood based on “ascetic virtuosity and wonderworking power,” Bale underscored Anne’s “courage and faith in Christ” rather than her marital shortcomings. Fairfield, 132. This was to be the new basis of Protestant sainthood in England. Bale’s typology is also evident in his explication of how Anne preached the word of God. For example, Anne was angrily lambasted by Lord Chancellor Wriothesley for violating the doctrine of Saint Paul, which “forbade women to speak or to talk the word of God.” She evenly corrects him in that Paul said women “ought not to speak in the congregation” as a means of instructing others in scripture. Anne then proceeds to question Wriothesley on whether or not he had ever seen a woman preach in the pulpit. When he replies no, Anne shrewdly plays herself meek, advising Wriothesley that he “ought to find no fault in poor women.” Askew, 155. Bale uses this situation as an example of Anne’s courteousness in the face of an obviously uneducated man. It was customary, according to Bale, both in the time of Christ and the primitive church for women to be “learned in the scriptures.” Women such as Mary, Christ’s mother, Elizabeth, and Anna imparted the knowledge that Christ had risen from the dead to his disciples, and they were not punished but rather praised for it. The same was true for women in the primitive church such as Hilda, who was commended in English chronicles both for her knowledge of the scriptures and her “open dispute in them against the superstitions of certain bishops.” Ibid., 156. Once again Bale is using Anne to show that a chain of continuity exists for the establishment of Protestant English history. Bale has even sterner commentary regarding Anne’s clever response on transubstantiation in her First Examination. Here Bishop Gardiner and the Mayor of London inquired whether Anne believed if “a mouse eating the host received God” or not after it had been blessed by the priest. Anne says she “made them no answer” but simply smiled instead. Her refusal to speak was undoubtedly much more infuriating to Gardiner and Bonner than any heretical discourse she could have uttered. Bale, however, was incensed at such a blasphemous question and denounced the deception of “Wily Winchester.” He then points out that Winchester (Bishop Gardiner), in his work Detection of the Devil’s Sophistry, had in fact written that a mouse cannot receive the body of Christ; yet afterwards, Gardiner claimed that “Christ’s body may as well dwell in a mouse as in Judas.” Bale made sure to highlight such hypocrisies as these not only to underscore the righteousness of Anne and his cause, but also to denounce the “blasphemous beasts and blind blundering Balaamites” who dared to judge her. Ibid., 154. As such, Bale’s method of inserting his own commentary into the Examinations is arguably harmful to Anne’s original work. For example, while Bale’s comments do provide tremendous insight into the new example of Protestant sainthood, his “additions to Askewe's [sic] testimony implicitly make her words non-authoritative, almost meaningless, without the polemical framework that his glosses provide for them.” Betteridge, 265. Bale’s words give the impression, and not an incorrect one, that he was not just conveying Anne’s story for Anne’s sake. Bale was much more interested in establishing “the grounds for modern accounts of the Henrician martyr.” Ibid., 266. Anne’s responses and silences in fact are stronger without Bale’s “Elucidations,” as they demonstrate the simplistic absoluteness with which she defined the true relationship between “Scripture, believer, and authority.” Ibid., 271. The word of God was either sufficient or it was not. However, such radical simplicity by itself did not frame her in the historical context necessary for Bale’s agenda. There is also arguably a certain amount of interference by Bale in the actual text of the Examinations. While the Examinations are largely a faithful reprint of Anne’s own words, there are two minor points that arouse some suspicion. The first point involves Anne’s use of the phrase “mutuall pertycypacyon” in a letter describing the Eucharist as a ceremony of thanksgiving “whereby Christians were knit to Christ in a communion of love.” While this profession definitely is in keeping with Anne’s beliefs, only one other person at the time used that specific phrase: John Bale. Bale in fact used the words “mutuall pertycypacyon” quite frequently in his own descriptions of the Eucharist, and, while it is quite possible that Anne could have encountered the phrase elsewhere, it is a curious coincidence to say the least. Fairfield, 134. The second question of accuracy stems from conflicting accounts of Anne’s signing of Bishop Bonner’s register during her first examination on March 20, 1545. After interrogating her about her beliefs regarding Mass, Bonner demanded that Anne sign a statement confirming belief in the Real Presence. However, according to Bale, Anne did not only sign the register but attached her own statement that she believed “all maner thynges contained in the faythe of the catholyck churche.” Ibid., 134. Bonner’s account makes no mention of this. Anne’s signature could have been forged in Bonner’s register after her execution in order to label her a relapsed heretic and to “justify her punishment.” In addition, the statement could have been a means to quell the “faction strife” of 1546 by letting Bonner off the hook for letting “a dangerous Protestant agent slip away unrepentant.” Ibid., 134-5. However, it is also unlikely that Bonner would have released Anne, “even considering her family connections,” without some valid statement of her orthodoxy. Ibid., 135. Despite the truth in this matter being “elusive,” Bale’s account of the Examinations, while overreaching at times, appears to be a faithful reproduction. This faithfulness rests not only on the fact that Anne’s account needed “less modification than the Oldcastle material,” but also because Anne was much closer to Bale’s “ideal of the Protestant saint.” In addition, the proximity of time between her prominent life, and Bale’s first publication made a “gross fabrication” difficult. Ibid., 135. Regardless, Bale had set both the standard and the hagiographical archetype for the new Protestant saint. This role was more than gladly perpetuated by John Foxe in the Acts and Monuments, later known as the Book of Martyrs. First coming into contact with Bale in 1548 at the Duchess of Richmond’s house, Foxe received a great deal of influence from Bale in his decision to “develop an elaborate Protestant martyrology.” By this time, Bale had not only returned to England from exile, but he was ready to pass the torch to Foxe in the continuation of the new Protestant hagiography. Ibid., 136. Foxe was more than willing, and in 1563, the first edition of the Acts and Monuments was published. Anne Askew’s Examinations was inserted as one of the accounts of Protestant martyrdom. While largely loyal to Bale’s model of Protestant hagiography, Foxe differs in some of his accounts. Although Foxe assumes Bale’s “authority of the Apocalypse” when it came to the new English church history, his interpretation of it was markedly different. For example, Foxe “felt an abhorrence toward bloodshed” and did not believe in the persecution and execution of heretics, as doing so negated a true church. Ibid., 152. Foxe also disagreed with Bale’s interpretation of the Book of Revelation regarding the millennium. Instead, Foxe concluded that the “thousand years of Satan’s subsequent bondage” had begun in 324 AD and not at the Ascension as Bale claimed. The exact nature of this millennium was at variance with Bale’s belief that the thousand years was a period in which Satan “had been unable to sit in men’s consciences.” This translated to the infliction of terrible injustices, such as clerical celibacy, which, according to Bale, Pope Sylvester II promulgated when he “loosed Satan from the pit” circa 1000 AD. Foxe instead held that the millennium was characterized by Satan’s inability to wreak havoc on the godly, thinking in terms of the safety of the elect. Ibid., 153. It was these diverging conceptions of the millennium that directly informed the respective mentalities of Bale and Foxe when they each published their versions of Anne’s work. Bale’s consciousness was focused more on liberation and Foxe’s more on tolerance. However, though Bale was the more polemical of the two, he was writing during the reigns of Henry, Edward, and Mary, and as such struggled with the idea that a “godly English Church…followed naturally upon the ascension of the godly ruler.” Ibid., 154. Foxe had the benefit of writing and publishing his work under the reign of Elizabeth, making him much more secure with the idea of “supreme headship and biblical Christianity” being synonymous. Ibid., 155. Anne Askew’s depiction and treatment in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments was a faithful reproduction of Bale’s publication in terms of Anne’s actual text. However, despite the fact that Foxe did not include any of Bale’s commentary in his publication, Foxe still interfered with Anne’s account in the Acts. While much more subtle, Foxe’s editorial shaping of Anne to fit his agenda is just as prevalent as Bale’s. For example, Foxe broke Anne’s text into paragraphs in an effort to make it more readable. Bale only used section breaks to insert his commentary, and as this was a time when paragraph breaks were used sparingly, there were only nine used in forty-six pages of text in his 1548 edition. Foxe, on the other hand, paid greater attention to the flow of the text using twenty-nine paragraph breaks in his 1563 edition and sixty-six in his 1570 edition. However, Foxe was not more attentive to the rhythm and flow of the text simply for the superior literary experience it provided. He instead actively shaped the text to emphasize and dramatize certain events to the reader. Thomas Freeman and Sarah Elizabeth Wall, “Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs.’” Renaissance Quarterly 54:2 (Winter 2001), 1176. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261970 (accessed February 13, 2012). For example, at the end of the Latter Examination, Richard Rich asks Anne about who gave her money for her bail. In Bale’s publication, there is a two-page break of his commentary comparing her to several biblical women. After Bale’s diversion, Anne’s text resumes with the Rich’s question. However, Foxe “presents the questioning…as a continuous episode” and then inserts a paragraph break when Anne begins to describe her torture on the rack. By not burying this horrific incident as Bale did, Foxe’s structure lends the event its “due weight and importance” and evokes a more substantial reaction from the reader. Ibid., 1177. While there are several of these cases throughout Anne’s account in the Book of Martyrs, Foxe’s paragraph breaks in all cases render her text a much more dramatic and rhetorically charged piece. This is due to Foxe’s “skill in manipulating flow and break to create a heightened, soliloquy-like aesthetic.” Ibid., 1178. These manipulations furthered the agenda of legitimizing a Protestant sense of English nationalism through evocative hagiography. Foxe did so by making the story of the English Fair Gospeler suffering at the hands of Catholics for the Protestant faith a more accessible, reader-friendly text. Furthermore, Foxe modifies and perfects his editorial technique within the editions of the Book of Martyrs with his placement of Anne’s story in the Book. For example, in the first edition, published in 1563, Anne’s account is buried in a quagmire of other texts such as the martyrdoms of John Kirby and Roger Clerk, and the recantation of Edward Crome. A 1546 proclamation banning heretical books and Foxe’s own praise of Henry VIII and a list of preachers forced to recant during his reign then followed her text. Ibid., 1186. There is no apparent order, chronological or otherwise, to Foxe’s compilation in this first edition. However, in Foxe’s next edition, published in 1570, Anne’s story is juxtaposed with Foxe’s own criticism of Henry VIII. This criticism stems from a reprinted speech in which Henry “urg[ed] his subjects to be charitable.” Ibid., 1187. Foxe criticizes this hypocritical decree, boldly commenting “what charitie ensued after this exhortation of the kyng to charitie, by the rackyng and burnyng of good Anne Askew.” John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed., Thomas Freeman et al. http://www.johnfoxe.org/index.php?realm=text&gototype=modern&edition=1570&pageid=1413 (accessed April 16, 2012). Foxe then follows this with more criticism of Henry’s advisors, such as Gardiner, and their Catholic misdeeds. Freeman and Wall, 1187. This new arrangement transforms Anne’s account into a “keystone” with which to emphasize Foxe’s main points: “the implacable opposition by evil or, at best, mis-guided councilors to the progress of religious reformation; the monarch's responsibility to carry out those reforms whatever the obstacles, and the disastrous consequences of a failure by the monarch to do so.” These points are indeed a reflection of Foxe’s growing frustration with “Elizabeth's failure to eradicate the vestiges of popery in the English church.” As Foxe would not engage in open criticism of Elizabeth, he instead juxtaposed the moral shortcomings of her father Henry VIII with the righteousness of Anne Askew. Ibid., 1188. Once again, Anne is being used to further Protestant reform, which in Foxe’s opinion had not moved far or fast enough. Aside from the written word, Protestant propaganda was also spread through the use of woodcuts. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was no exception. In Anne Askew’s case, and in the book in general, Foxe’s woodcuts were supplied by a man named John Day. Day came to prominence during the reign of Edward VI and from the outset “employed woodcuts in order to promote books that contained Protestant propaganda.” John N. King, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 169. Predating the publication of the Book of Martyrs, the woodcut first appeared in 1548 in Robert Crowley’s The Confutation of Thirteen Articles. Ibid., 177. The woodcut itself depicts the burning of Anne at Smithfield with John Lascelles and their companions based on Bale’s description in the 1548 edition of the Examinations. Ibid., 169-70. In it, Nicholas Shaxton, Anne’s colleague who recanted, preaches from a “portable pulpit” as Anne and the others are burned and a bolt of lightning crashes down. Ibid., 170. As Day, unlike many of his colleagues, retained ownership of his woodcuts, he was then able to reuse Anne’s in order to “embellish the transcription of her heresy examinations” in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Ibid., 176. Day’s imagery was much more realistic than the “more static imagery” of Protestant martyrs produced on the continent. Creating a distinctive English style of woodcut, Day’s depiction was characterized by the openness of the scene, with a cityscape in the background and a crowd of spectators encircling the area around the pyres. The scene is also accompanied by horses, which were often used as to symbolize religious persecution. Ibid., 177. Coupled with the new style of paragraph breaks and textual flow, Day’s woodcut supplemented Foxe’s subtly evocative methods in manipulating and appropriating Anne’s martyrdom to further his agenda. Of course, not all manipulation of Anne’s story was subtle in nature. Her most vocal critic and detractor, Robert Parsons, was outspoken to say the least about Anne’s identity as a martyr. Parsons was a Jesuit priest who had been forced to flee England due to his Catholic leanings. For example, while he claimed not to be opposed to vernacular readings of the Bible, Parsons insisted that it was necessary to have clerical aid in interpreting the scriptures. John N. King, ed., Voices of the English Reformation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 49. In his work, A Temperate Ward-Word, Parsons criticizes Anne Askew specifically as an example of one who engages in unsupervised, misguided readings of the Bible. Published in 1559, Parsons’ work first criticizes a woman named Joan Bocher or Joan of Kent, who according to Parsons, was not only an avid, independent reader of the scriptures but “dishonest of her body with base fellows.” Bocher also distributed Bibles at Henry VIII’s court and in doing so was a friend of Anne Askew’s. Robert Parsons, A Temperate Ward-Word, in Voices of the English Reformation, ed. John N. King (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 52. Parson’s account of Bocher serves as a model for his treatment of Anne. Parsons attacked Bocher for lack of virtue and religious misconduct which he claims resulted in her death, similar to Anne. In 1603, Parsons published A Treatise of the Three Conversions of England as a response to the Book of Martyrs. He claimed, as did many Catholics, that the Book was full of falsifications and that “Foxe playeth the fox.” In particular, Protestant martyrs replacing Catholic saints angered him. King, ed., 312. Parsons believed that the cause, and not the suffering as Foxe claimed, was what qualified someone to be a martyr. King, 262. To Parsons, the “willful suffering death in sectaries…is not to be called constancy but rather pertinacity.” Robert Parsons, A Treatise of the Three Conversions of England, in Voices of the English Reformation, ed. John N. King (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 312. Parsons attacked Anne as a dissident who “flout[ed] patriarchal authorities ranging from her husband to statesmen” as a result of her untutored readings of the English Bible. King, ed., 312. For example, Parsons first introduces Anne as the “captain” of the three men, including John Lascelles, who were burned with her at Smithfield. Anne not only condemned herself by reading the scriptures independently, she condemned these three men along as well. Parsons then attacks Anne for leaving her husband and returning to her maiden name in order to “follow the liberty of the new gospel…at her pleasure…to make new gospellers and proselytes of her religion.” Parsons, A Treatise of the Three Conversions of England, 313. As Anne was an obviously unruly woman, Parsons was incensed that Foxe would so “pitifully relate” her story in an effort to instill compassion for her while criticizing Henry VIII. Anne’s illegal placement on the rack was justified as well. Parsons claimed it was necessary to stop Anne from further corrupting Catherine Parr’s ladies with Protestantism and to discover the truth. Ibid., 314. Once again, Anne was abhorrent to Parsons for the same reasons for which she was exalted by Bale and Foxe. While Anne’s bravery at leaving her heretical husband, her defiance of Catholicism by preaching the true word of God, and the fearless death she endured were points of strength in Protestant propaganda, for Parsons she was merely a “young heifer or steer that abideth no yoke.” Anne was not a model of virtue but a whore, “a coy dame…full of wantonness” who left her good husband to “gad up and down the country a gospelling and gossiping.” Ibid., 315. And her “intolerable arrogancy…her nips and quips” to the wise authority that was the king’s council, for Parsons, further cemented her fate to be burned as a heretic, not as a saint. An even harsher Catholic detractor of Anne was the Catholic poet and propagandist Miles Huggarde. Primarily active during the reigns of Mary and Edward, Huggarde was renowned for his intense devotion to Holy Mother Church and was a favorite target of Protestants such as Bale who dubbed him Milo Porcarius or “Hoggish Miles. Huggarde attacked the whole of the Protestant Church and Anne in particular in his 1556 work The Displaying of Protestants. In it, he reverses the model of Bale’s true and false church, defending the Catholic Church on the basis of apostolic succession and ecclesiastical control of doctrine and scripture. King, ed., 74. On the subject on Anne, he chastises her for her “sharp tongue” and her defiance of a royal pardon: “she defied them all, reviling the offerers thereof, with such opprobrious names, that are not worthy rehersall.” Miles Huggarde, The Displaying of the Protestants, Megan L. Hickerson (New York: Palgrave Macamillian, 2005), 84. Huggarde believed that the appropriate disposition for a martyr was one of resignation rather than dissidence, as he conveys when he compares Anne to the martyrdoms of St. Paul and St. Steven. Megan L. Hickerson, Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England (New York: Palgrave Macamillian, 2005), 84. While Huggarde held all martyrs and not just females to this archetype, he did believe that women were especially accountable when it came to upholding the martyrological values of modesty, patience, and charity. The phenomenon of evangelical women and most notably preachers’ wives are inextricably linked to promiscuous behavior stemming from their inability to understand religious truth. This idea of learning leading to sexual incontinence not only leads to the downfall of the woman but also serves to corrupt those around her, namely their helpless husbands. Ibid., 85. Huggarde here is essentially invoking the oxymoronic, medieval conception of the woman who is weak of mind yet can still control the superior man with their wicked sexuality and lust. As a result these gospelling women, and Anne in particular, are not just guilty of breaking God’s law with their religious activity, but are twice as culpable for defying their inborn social roles as well. Anne once again is reviled by her Catholic detractors for defying earthly law and elevated by Protestants for embodying God’s law. For Huggarde, a learned woman was at the same time a sexual predator with “scripture mouthes ready to allure their husbandes to dye in the lordes veritie” not for the sake of new religion but for the sake of obtaining new husbands. Huggarde, 85. Thus Anne and all women like her are nothing more than misguided whores using religion as guise with which to corrupt the world. The true persona and beliefs of Anne Askew are therefore incredibly difficult to determine, as any discourse she gave on them is weighted down in a quagmire of both Protestant propaganda and Catholic criticism. But keeping that in mind, her final confession of faith in the Latter Examination is an excellent summation of where she stood. Per Anne’s own profession, she reaffirms her denial in transubstantiation as she denies the idea that the bread is the “selfsame body” of Christ and holds the ceremony to be a “most necessary remembrance” of Christ’s sacrifice. She interprets the scriptural passage of “Eat; this is my body which shall be broken for you” as being a commemorative act in the absence of Christ’s own presence. Such a profession regarding transubstantiation places Anne in line with a more Zwinglian sort of Protestantism as opposed to Lutheran. While Luther denied transubstantiation, he still professed a belief in a real presence of Christ during the Mass or consubstantiation. Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli interpreted the Mass to be nothing more than a culinary commemoration of Christ’s sacrifice, denying any real or spiritual presence. Anne further professes such a belief in her quoting of Daniel 24 in her Latter Examination: “God will be in nothing that is made with the hands of men.” Anne Askew, The Latter Examination in Voices of the English Reformation, ed. John N. King (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 235. As for the sacrament of thanksgiving with the Eucharist, she claims that she does not deny it as long as it is performed as Christ ordered it to be. However, with the corruption that is the Mass, Anne holds it to be “the most abominable idol that is in the world,” as God for her will not be “eaten with teeth.” Anne once again is clarifying her symbolic position as regards the bread and wine, writing that “after the priest hath spoken the words of consecration, their remaineth bread still.” Ibid., 238. Anne’s statement here is reflective of the Reformation belief that Christianity is a religion of transcendence, not immanence. The Catholic ceremony of Mass is a sensual feast, as a worshipper is inundated with the smell of incense, the sound of bells, the sight of stained glass, and the taste of bread and wine. The purpose of the blessing the Eucharist was to call God down to earth and make him bodily present in the bread and wine. Anne, however, refutes this concept and stands with the Protestant belief of using prayer and scripture to elevate oneself to a state of spiritual transcendence, as God was not spatially and temporally bound. Anne also reiterates that she believes the scriptures are true and that only they and not “unwritten verities” are necessary to rule a church. Anne here is echoing the cry of the Reformation that as ecumenical councils, the decrees of church fathers, ceremony, and papal doctrines are all the works of men, they can err. Therefore sola scriptura or scripture alone is all that it is necessary to understand God’s law and lead a righteous life. In her final words in the Latter Examination, Anne asks God to forgive those who have done violence towards her, and proclaims that in God is her whole delight. She closes with a plea for God to open her persecutor’s “blind hearts” to see the true faith as she has imparted to them. Ibid., 239. This is Anne Askew’s dying legacy, one of forgiveness towards those who have done her harm. Beneath all the Protestant glosses and Catholic denigration, Anne is revealed to be simply a woman of staunch religious conviction. She was not a saint, nor was she a sinner, but a person swept up in the outburst of religious expression that characterized the Reformation in England. She found an identity as a gospeller and a religious reformer outside of being a wife and mother. However, as Anne quickly found out, a woman stepping out of the realm of passivity and into one of activism was not to be tolerated in sixteenth-century society. The legacy of Anne Askew’s life is renowned for the same reasons with which it is now obscured. Both Bale’s and Foxe’s commentary, manipulation, and reorganization of her Examinations portray her as the pinnacle of the Protestant martyr as a result of her suffering, while Parsons’ and Huggarde’s criticism of her conduct condemns her as an impious heretic sexual deviant. But once the agendas are exposed and their layers are peeled back, the real Anne Askew comes to light. And while Anne may not have been the perfect woman and wife by the standards of Protestant virtue, she was the perfect vehicle with which to legitimize Protestantism in England. Bibliography Primary Sources “Act of the Six Articles.” Tudor Place. http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Documents/act_six_articles.htm (accessed November 20, 2011). Askew, Anne. The Examinations of Anne Askew. Edited by John Bale. In Select Works of John Bale, edited by Rev. Henry Christmas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Askew, Anne. The Latter Examination. In Voices of the English Reformation, edited by John N. King. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. “1 Corinthians 14:34.” Bible Suite. http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/14-34.htm (accessed January 1, 2013). Foxe, John. The Acts and Monuments. Edited by Thomas Freeman et al. http://www.johnfoxe.org/index.php?realm=text&gototype=modern&edition=1570&pageid=1413 (accessed April 16, 2012). Huggarde, Miles. The Displaying of the Portestants. In Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England, Megan L. Hickerson. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Parsons, Robert. A Temperate Ward-Word. In Voices of the English Reformation, edited by John N. King. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Parsons, Robert. A Treatise of the Three Conversions of England. In Voices of the English Reformation, edited by John N. King. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. “The Ten Articles, 1536.” Luminarium: Encyclopedia Project. http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/tenarticles.htm (accessed January 1, 2013). Secondary Sources Beilin, Elaine V., ed., The Examinations of Anne Askew. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Bernard, G.W. “The Making of Religious Policy, 1533-1546: Henry VIII and the Search for the Middle Way.” The Historical Journal 41, no. 2 (June 1998). http://www.jstor.org/stable/2640109 (accessed October 15, 2011). Betteridge, Thomas. “Anne Askewe, John Bale, and Protestant History.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27, no. 2 (Spring 1997). Fairfield, Leslie P. John Bale: Mythmaker for the Reformation. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1976. Freeman, Thomas S. and Sarah Elizabeth Wall. “Racking the Body, Shaping the Text: The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs.’” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4 (Winter 2001). http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261970 (accessed February 13, 2012). Freeman, Thomas et al., eds., John Foxe’s The Acts and Monuments Online Database, http://www.johnfoxe.org/index.php?realm=text&gototype=modern&edition=1563&pageid=725 (accessed April 16, 2012). Hickerson, Megan L. Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. King, John N. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Early Modern Print Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. King, John N., ed., Voices of the English Reformation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Lindsey, Karen. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1995. Wooding, Lucy. Henry VIII. London: Routledge, 2009. PAGE 2