"The Iconography of the Acts and Monuments" by Margaret Aston and Elizabeth Ingram

CITATION: Aston, Margaret, and Elizabeth Evenden. "The Iconography of the Acts and Monuments." John Foxe and the English Reformation. Ed. David Loades. Brookfield: Scolar Press, 1997. 66-142. Print.
Understanding

• Question: Did the illustrations of Acts and Monuments support or undermine the authority of the text?
• Answer: The images of Acts and Monuments draw authority and legibility directly from Continental iconographic traditions.
• Method: Drawing both on Ingram and Luborksy's Guide to English Illustrated Books 1536-1603 and continental iconography, Aston and Evenden isolate similarities between prints in Acts and Monuments and print or painted icons which Foxe or Day might have encountered.
• Assumptions: First, Aston and Evenden are responding to a tradition that places Foxe and Day in the context of English Calvinist iconophobia. Second, Aston and Evenden establish the method--later questioned by Evenden and Freeman--which follows Foxe's own claims for authenticity from illustrative evidence.
• Sententiae: "Foxe was anxious that his readers should know his material was drawn from authentic church record... Marginal notes in the second edition... reflect the activity of the martyrologist (and his assistants) in the archiepiscopal archive after his return home. This woodcut is part of the authenticating process: picture verifies adjacent text; there is a 'go and see for yourself' challenge to doubters." (71)

Overstanding

• Assessment: This is a less exhaustive bibliography than Evenden's later collaboration. Accordingly, some of Aston & Evenden's connections seem lacking--how did Foxe or Day contact these sources, and why? Such questions are addressed more fully by Evendon & Freeman. And the "so what" for this smaller-scale bibliographical research announces that Foxe drew on Catholic/Continental forms of iconography--a consequence that isn't entirely unpacked by the end.
• Synthesis: As I noted above, this essay provides an important background for Evenden and Freeman, as well as context for King. Like King, Aston and Evenden spell out the broad exchange of icons between Protestant and Catholic eras/areas. Also like King Aston and Evenden comment on the Solomonic quality of Henrician iconography.
• Application: One of the major unresolved questions from this project seems to be the Calvinist iconography created by Foxe and Day, and its consequences for later Laudian controversies. Beside that, it would be interesting to trace the influences of Continental sources in other English prints, especially regarding the cross-channel imports of illustrated tracts.