SOURCE: Fichte, Joerg O. “Foxe's Acts and Monuments: The Spirit's Triumph over the Flesh.” In The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature, edited by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, pp. 167-79. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999.

In the following essay, Fichte examines the willingness and ability of Protestant martyrs to allow the spirit and the mind to overcome the body, as told in Foxe's record.

Once Foxe's account of the history of the true Church reached the stage of the Marian persecutions, it grew and swelled, being amplified in each successive edition of the work, as more and more documents came to light. The grisly total of the people executed within four years came to nearly three hundred, the vast majority of them being burned at the stake, with a few others dying in prison of either maltreatment or starvation. It was the greatest number of men, women...