John Foxe's Book of Martyrs

All search is case-insensitive for the text being searched for.

Boolean Search

Logical Operators: AND, OR, NOT (capitals essential)
a AND b finds pages containing both a and b.
a OR b finds pages containing either a or b, or both.
Examples:
bell finds 128 pages
bampton finds 7 pages
bell OR bampton finds 133 pages
bell AND bampton finds 2 pages
Note here that the number found with a OR b equals the number with a
plus the number with b, minus the number with a AND b.
In our example, 133 = 128 + 7 - 2.

Multiple Boolean Operators

a and not b (implemented as a NOT b) finds pages which contain a but
not b.
bell NOT bampton finds 126 pages, ie the 128 containing bell minus the
2 which contain bell AND bampton.
bampton NOT bell finds 5 pages, ie the 7 containing bampton minus the
2 which contain bell AND bampton.

Phrase Search

To search for a phrase, enclose the phrase in double quotes, eg:
"Bishop of Rome".
To cover variants of spelling you could use eg:
"Bishop of Rome" OR "Byshop of Rome".

Proximity Search

To search for words within a certain distance of one another, put all the words inside double quotes and add a tilde ('~') followed by a number representing the maximum distance (in words) which the terms are allowed to be from each other. Eg:
"oxford cambridge"~3 finds pages containing eg:
Oxford and Cambridge.
Cambridge men to Oxford.

Wildcard Search

A non-initial question mark ? in a string of characters will match any
single character.
engl?she finds englishe or englyshe.

A non-initial asterisk * in a string of characters will match zero or more
characters.
a*nswered finds answered, or aunswered.
linc* finds eg Lincoln, Lincolne or Lincolniense.

Fuzzy Search

If you add a tilde ('~') to the end of a search term, the Levenshtein or Edit Distance algorithm returns a cluster of terms similar to the search term.
Kenninghall~ finds Kenyngall.

Don't be put off by the presence of various irrelevant suggestions! Experiment is the order of the day here.

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Copying and Pasting Search Criteria

Since much effort can be expended in constructing a set of search criteria to achieve a desired end, we recommend copying and pasting elements to and from the search field.
You could create, say, search1.txt in a simple text editor such as Notepad.
Open search1.txt before (or after) you launch the Variorum Edition. Then you can swap between the two applications, using highlighting and Ctrl + c to copy to the clipboard, and Ctrl + v to paste into the destination. This technique can also of course be used to extract a search term from any of the Foxe texts.

Foxe's printing conventions

Users should also be aware that Foxe’s printer had conventions that are different from those used by modern printers. These sometimes make searching for particular text strings more complex. The following are the main points to be aware of :

Foxe made extensive use of macrons (e.g. ‘Londo?’) and accentuation in Latin. These are reproduced in this edition exactly as they occur in the original. However, the search engine does not currently retrieve character strings with macrons in them and it will only retrieve the Latin accentuation if it has been searched for.
The characters 'v' and 'u' represent both letters, with 'v' used at the beginning of words and 'u' within words: e.g. University = Vniuersity. The transcription preserves the characters as they appear in the original.
In addition ‘i’ normally represents a modern ‘j’ ; ‘i’ and ‘y’ can be interchangeable and occasionally an additional ‘h’ is introduced (e.g. ‘Ierome’ or even ‘Hierom/Hierome’ for Jerome ; ‘Ierusalem/Hierusalem for Jerusalem). Again, the transcription preserves the characters exactly as they appear in the original.
‘aun’ is often a variant of ‘an’ (e.g. ‘aunswer’ ; ‘daunger’ ; ‘Launcelot’, etc).
Foxe’s text often uses abbreviations that were common in the sixteenth century, but not so common today (e.g. ‘Cant.’ [‘Canterbury’]) and these have not been expanded in the text.
Foxe’s printer occasionally uses the sharf ‘s’ or ‘sz’ ligature ; this is reproduced in the edition exactly as in the original.

Printing Search Results

A Print icon at the top of the screen allows you to print out what is in the current document window. Thus you can easily print, say, the Hit List for any set of search criteria, or the contents of a particular document. Often, of course, you will be able to make use of the printing facilities of your word processor into which you can copy and paste small portions of documents, and perhaps details of the search criteria used to find them.

Search the Text

Guide to searching

Foxe's printing conventions

Printing Search Results