Martyrs and Martyrdom in England, c.1400-1700

ALEC RYRIE is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University.

• Over Their Dead Bodies: Concepts of Martyrdom in Late Medieval and Early Modern England - Thomas S. FreemanImitatio Christi with a Vengeance: The Politicization of Martyrdom in Early Modern England - Thomas S. Freeman`Thus May a Man be a Martyr': The Notion, Language and Experiences of Martyrdom in Late Medieval England - Danna PiroyanskyWhich is Wyche? Lollardy and Sanctity in Lancastrian London - Saints and Martyrs in Tyndale and More - Brad GregoryBecket's Bones Burnt! Cardinal Pole and the Invention and Dissemination of an Atrocity - Thomas Mayer`A Saynt in the Devyls Name': Heroes and Villains in the Martyrdom of Robert Barnes - Alec RyrieMartyrs and Anti-martyrs and Mary Tudor's Church - William WizemanRobert Persons's Comfortable History of England - Victor Houliston`Charles the First and Christ the Second': The Creation of a Political Martyr - Andrew LaceyThe Martyrdom of Sir Henry Vane the Younger: From Apocalyptic Witness to Heroic Whig - John Coffey

Adds to existing scholarship as its authors collectively study the early-modern narrowing of martyrdom's definition to mean specifically violent deaths for religion, the various polemical and controversial conflicts in which martyrological writing participated, and the extension of martyrdom's crown to political martyrs over the course of the seventeenth century. [...] This volume has a high degree of consistency and coherence (not always the case with essay collections).The contributors' emphases on the polemical, generic, political, and doctrinal aspects of the making of martyrs should be a welcome addition to early-modern scholarship.