Jan Hus as the Apocalyptic Witness in John Foxe's History

Abstract

In September 1538 John Foxe witnessed the burning of William Cowbridge at Oxford. Foxe considered Cow bridge more mad than heretical and thought him better suited for incarceration at Bedlam than capital punishment at Smithfield. Foxe was profoundly disturbed by the persecution of people on theological grounds and deplored the burning of men and women. History remembers him best for his monumental work - 'Acts and Monuments of these latter and perilous days, touching matters of the church, wherein are comprehended and described the great persecutions and horrible troubles, that have been wrought and practised by the Romish Prelates, specially in this Realm of England and Scotland, from the year of our Lord a thousand, unto the time now present' - commonly referred to as the "Book of Martyrs" wherein he detailed the sufferings of those he considered the faithful of Christ. Jan Hus, a Czech priest executed as a heretic in 1415, plays a major role in Foxe's narrative. That said, John Foxe wrote more than the "Book of Martyrs" . Of particular interest is a book he was working on when death overtook him in 1587. This was a commentary on the Apocalypse of St. John. At the time of death, Foxe had completed his commentary through the first seventeen chapters. As in the 'Acts and Monuments', Hus features prominently. Having considered the "speculations" as well as the Acts and Monuments it seems feasible to argue that Foxe's version of church history, with his keen attentiveness to eschatological time and apocalyptic crisis (as revealed most fully in his final work), is best understood by an evaluation of the place Jan Hus played in that vision. The key biblical text for John Foxe is Revelation 11:3 and the identification of the two witnesses. If Hus is a witness, as Foxe argues, then he represents the interpretive clue to the Apocalypse which Foxe equates with a theological hermeneutic for interpreting history and event. In some sense all of Foxe's ruminations in his commentary have relation to Hus. It is somewhat peculiar that hitherto Hus scholars have paid little analytic attention to John Foxe and his interest in Hus and experts on Foxe have rarely developed the theme.