Angels and burning martyrs blowing trumpets John Foxe's Book of Martyrs  








Help


Overview

The main menu is always accessible at the top left of each page. It consists of eight items:

home - website home page.
introduction - history of the project, details of Foxe's works used and textual access map.
transcriptions - access to the text of Books 1 - 12, Editions 1563, 1570, 1576 & 1583.
apparatus - access to critical apparatus: introductory essays, and (for Books 10 - 12) an editorial commentary, textual variants, transpositions and thematic divisions. Also available are detailed information on the woodcuts used within Foxe (image commentary), an abbreviations list and a person glossary.
bibliography - a searchable bibliography of nearly a thousand items.
search - dialogue box for searching the text, including a guide to searching.
edition - information about this online edition, including publication schedule, notes on transcription and textual markup, citation details, and acknowledgements.
help - advice on how to find your way around the collection.

Single Screen view

The link to 'transcriptions' on the main menu on the left takes you to the single screen use of the edition. This enables you :

  • To browse any of the four English editions (1563, 1570, 1576, 1583) of John Foxe’s martyrology. You can browse through the pages in any of the editions by using the 'forward' and 'back' arrow buttons on the black menu bar at the top of each page. You can also go to a specific page by typing the page number in the search box on the black menu bar and then go to the page by clicking the small '>' arrow next to the box.
    (*** please note the information on Foxe's pagination below.)
  • To access the editorial commentaries that provide an interpretative framework to the edition.
  • To print particular pages of the text that interest you.
  • To search the texts, please go to the search page. You will also find help on how to search on that page.
Split-Screen view

Split-screen functionality may be accessed by clicking on the splitscreen icon icon on the black menu bar towards the top right hand corner of the single-screen environment.

The split screens work independently of each other and you can call up any of the four editions into either screen and undertake detailed comparisons of the text. This is particularly valuable in order to follow the evolution of the text indicated in the commentaries. Click on the apparatus icon icon on the menu bar to call up the additional information and commentaries in either of the parallel frames.

In order to save screen space, the marginal glosses have been compressed in the split-screen mode to an active ‘dot’ (purple spot icon) on the screen. The contents of the gloss can be accessed by passing the cursor over the dot. Gloss commentaries, however, are not available in split-screen mode.

To return to single-screen mode, close the split-screen by using the single view icon icon on the split-screen menubar or by closing that particular window of the browser.

You can browse the split screen view in the same way as the single view and also access the editorial commentaries in the same way.

*** Foxe's pagination

When you choose the specific page you wish to consult in one of the editions, please bear in mind that Foxe’s pagination is not entirely consecutive. Foxe’s printer sometimes made errors in his pagination. Consequently, if you search for a page that has not been properly paginated you will be taken to the page carrying the number you have searched for. If it is not the exact page you were hoping to find, please note that every error of pagination is noted on each page in question. You can also use the search engine to locate any page number that has not been found by the browse function.

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Editorial Commentaries

The Variorum Edition provides the following layers of editorial commentary upon the text, which can be accessed by clicking on the relevant icons within the text.

textcom icon Editorial Commentaries :
The text commentary is the fundamental level of commentary. It examines the structure and evolution of Foxe’s text and the evidence upon which he drew for each element of his narrative. The text commentaries are accessed by clicking on the icon textcom icon distributed throughout the text in each edition. For the purposes of text commentaries, the text has been notionally divided by the editors into ‘blocks’ of text, where a ‘block’ equals a coherent element of Foxe’s narrative from the point of view of his sources or the treatment that he adopts. In the ‘Apparatus’ these blocks are separately listed under the link to 'Thematic textual divisions'. You can choose a textual division and go directly to the beginning of that block of text in any of the Foxe editions. You will also find important tables of the additions, deletions and transpositions that Foxe makes to blocks of his text, listed under the links to 'Major textual variants' and 'Textual transpositions'.

catprat icon Editorial Notes provided to previous editions :
Where appropriate and still relevant, editorial notes provided by Foxe’s nineteenth-century editors have been incorporated into this edition. The notes are accessed by clicking on the icon catprat icon distributed throughout the text in each edition. Please note that the Cattley/Pratt commentary in only available for the 1583 edition.
Only those from the following editions have been included:
Cattley, Stephen Reed, ed. The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe: A New and Complete Edition, 8 vol. (London, 1841).
Pratt, Josiah, ed. The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, 4th ed., 8 vol. (London, 1877)

Notes on Individuals Mentioned in the Text :
These notes are available from links that are highlighted on the screen. Please note, however, that only the FIRST mention of an individual in any particular block is highlighted. This is to prevent an over-clumsy and multi-coloured appearance to the text. The user will sometimes need to scroll up the text, possibly referring to the preceding page, to locate the relevant highlight to a note on a particular individual

These notes are also accessible as a Person Glossary via the apparatus link .

Notes on the Marginal Glosses to the Text :
The marginal glosses play a particularly important role in Foxe’s text. They have an important pedagogical function and change quite considerably between one edition and another. A highlighted marginal gloss indicates that there is a note upon its position, significance or the evolution of the marginal glosses at that point in the text. Most of these notes refere to the editions in which the gloss appears.

A separate commentary also exists on the the glosses discussed by 'block' or 'thematic textual division', mentioned above. This commentary can by accessed by clicking on the icon blockglosscom icon that is situated at the beginning of each thematic textual division within the main Foxe text.

Notes on Latin and Greek citations in the Text :
Foxe often translates his own Latin and Greek. Where he has not done so, a translation is provided. No sources for Biblical quotations have been provided beyond those given by Foxe himself. Sources for classical and patristic citations have been located, where possible, chiefly by searching for them in the Patrologia Latina and other online reference works.

Notes on Locations :
Places mentioned by Foxe have been located wherever possible. Topographical references are provided by citing the modern Ordnance Survey grid-reference. In the cases of London, Oxford, Cambridge and Colchester, more detailed near-contemporary maps are provided and the places identified on them.

Facsimile Pages :
Facsimile pages of the editions are provided where there are engravings or other features of the page layout that are of particular scholarly interest. These will be provided in the final version of the Variorum Edition.

print icon Printing

There is a print button provided from the single-screen and split-screen environments. It is situated on the black menu bar on the top of each page. If you click on it you will be able to print the transcription of the page in which the cursor is located.

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Study of the texts of the Book of Martyrs

What do you want to do?

How you do it
Choose a book of a particular edition. Use menu item transcriptions.
Choose from the contents table the book and edition you want to look at and click on the link.
Browse through a chosen book. In the black menu bar at the top of the page:
Move back and forth among the pages with the left and right arrows on the menubar.
Or
Type in a page number in the box and go to it by then clicking the little arrow next to the box.
** Please note **
When you choose the specific page you wish to consult in one of the editions, please bear in mind that Foxe’s pagination is not entirely consecutive. Foxe’s printer sometimes made errors in his pagination. In addition, the prefaces are not paginated. Consequently, if you search for a page that has not been properly paginated you will be taken to the page carrying the number you have searched for. This will be the page number that we have assigned to it. So, if you search for page 1 in the 1583 edition, this will take you to the first (unpaginated) page of the preface to that book. If this is not the exact page you were hoping to find, please note that every error of pagination is noted on each page in question and every unpaginated page is also noted as such. You can also use the search engine to locate any page number that has not been found by the browse function.
Search for text in the Book of Martyrs. Use menu item search.
Select the texts you want to search from the drop down box. For example: 'All transcriptions' or just a particular edition.
Study textual variants in Books 10 to12. Use menu item apparatus.
Click 'Textual variants' under the heading for the Materials specific to each book.
Select the textual variant you want to look at in your chosen edition from the table.*
Study a particular theme in Books 10 to 12. Use menu item apparatus.
Click 'Thematic divisions' under the heading for the Materials specific to each book.
Select the thematic division you want to look at in your chosen edition from the table.*
Track the transposition of blocks of text across different Foxe editions of Books 10 to 12.

Use menu item apparatus.
Click 'Textual transpositions' under the heading for the Materials specific to each book.
Select the textual transposition you want to look at in your chosen edition from the table.*

Compare two texts side by side. Use menu item transcriptions.
Click the split screen icon in the top right corner of the black menubar.
For each half-screen, choose the book and edition you want to look at
1. From the main contents table.
Or
2. Via the critical apparatus provided, eg 'Thematic Divisions'.* This can be accessed by clicking theicon on the menubar. **

Footnotes:
* If necessary, first adjust text size in Internet Explorer with View > Text Size.
** To search a document, click in a half-screen and use Edit > Find (on This Page) on Internet Explorer's own menu bar (or press Ctrl + F).


Study of supplementary material

What do you want to do?

How you do it
Read introductory essays about the Book of Martyrs. Use menu item apparatus.
Click 'Introductory essays'.
Study images from the Book of Martyrs. Use menu item apparatus.
Click 'Image commentary'.
Choose any image from the list and click on the link.
**Note that many images offer an enlargement icon which, after a delay, appears when the cursor is moved over the image.
Find out what abbreviations are used in the Variorum Edition. Use menu item apparatus.
Click 'Common Abbreviations'.
Find information on persons mentioned in the Book of Martyrs. Use menu item apparatus.
Click 'Person Glossary'.
Use alphabetical index.
Read editorial commentary for Books 10 to 12. Use menu item apparatus.
Click 'Editorial Commentary'.
Search for text in the commentaries on the Book of Martyrs. Use menu item search.
Select 'All commentaries' or 'Editorial commentary only'.
Consult the bibliography. Use menu item bibliography.
Search by author, title, year, type of publication.
You can browse the selected type(s) of publication by clicking 'search' with search fields left blank.

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Unicode Support

Several sections of text within Foxe's Book of Martyrs are written in ancient polytonic Greek and Anglo-Saxon fonts. In the electronic version of the Variorum Edition, those fonts are represented using Unicode entity references.

Windows 2000 and XP have automatic Unicode support, if you are running Windows 95/98/Me, you need to download a special Unicode font, called Athena Unicode [download font]. The font comes in a zipped format, so you need you unzip it [download WinZip program] and extract it to the C:\WINDOWS\FONTS\ directory. Alan Wood's website on Unicode also provides information on further Unicode fonts you can use. The Variorum Edition is set up to work with the following Unicode fonts: Athena Unicode, Palatino Linotype, Vusillus Old Face, Lucida Sans Unicode and Arial MS Unicode.

In order to test the Unicode setup of your browser, look at the following line of text:

δοκιμαζέτω δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἑαυτὸν

If it displays properly, you have full Unicode support. If you can see question marks or boxes or completely illegible symbols as part of the text, you need to switch on the Unicode functionality of your browser using one of the above methods.

Read further information on displaying Unicode in Windows, Macintosh and Unix operating systems on the Unicode website.

 

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