The use of sources

Annabel Patterson,
Reading Holinshed's
Chronicles (1994)

Over the last month or so I have been reading Annabel Patterson's 1994 book Reading Holinshed's Chronicles.  Here is the first of several thoughts I have on the subjects that she brings up. 

In her chapter on Protocols Patterson discusses the multivocality in Holinshed in some detail.  The marginalia contained notes to sources where relevant although these were far from complete.  Holinshed himself noted that he had ‘rather chosen to shew the diversitie’ of opinion among those sources that he relied upon rather than ‘by over-ruling them…to frame them to agree to [his] liking’ (Patterson, p.35).  Patterson notes that other histories written in the sixteenth century (such as that by Hall, Grafton and More) gave lip service to referencing sources although the re-issue of Fabian’s chronicles in 1559 did contain additional marginalia that noted the original source material.  Perhaps, then the protocol of noting sources in the margins was beginning to take shape as early as the 1550s.  Certainly John Foxe, in his Acts and Monuments, added copious marginalia noting his sources although these were often far from an accurate guide to what he had actually used.  For instance, many if not all his references to the Venerable Bede derived from other sources (prominently John Bale’s recent catalogue of English writers) and not from a copy of Bede at all.  In my researches on Foxe I could find no evidence that he had ever actually read Bede’s ecclesiastical history for himself. 

What is interesting about this marginalia (beyond the fact that it helps us to identify the sources that were used to compile the accounts in Holinshed and Foxe) is the reason for their inclusion.  As stated above, Holinshed had chosen to show the diversity of opinion in his sources.  The printer who had re-issued Fabian claimed a similar reasoning as to show ‘the diversities’ of Fabian’s sources.  Foxe made similar claims.  One of Patterson’s central arguments in her Reading Holinshed’s Chronicles focuses on the role of censorship in the writing of the chronicles.  In relation to the noting of sources, Patterson recognises that these marginalia might, in part, provide protection from censorship or rebuke as the words are clearly labelled as that of another.  However, Patterson is right to argue also that there was more to it than that. 

John Foxe often added marginalia to prove that he was telling the truth.  It was rare that Foxe would change an account taken from an original document.  What he would do instead is twist the meaning of that account by taking it out of context or ignoring other information contained in the source that was less useful to his argument.  He did this under the belief that the old chroniclers had been corrupted by the antichrist and had therefore written only a partially true account themselves.  Foxe therefore saw himself as doing a service by shifting the truth from the false.  So for Foxe sources were referenced to deepen the truth-claims that he was making.  What he wrote was not his own opinion but that of past writers (Catholic monks at that) who could not entirely suppress the truth. 

In Holinshed and Foxe sources were also noted so that the author could challenge their authenticity or even (in some cases) interact with that source.  Patterson has noted the inclusion of ‘I’ in various passages of Holinshed’s chronicles where the author has argued his opinion against that of the original source (Patterson, p. 36-7).  Indeed, Patterson shows that Foxes’ Acts and Monuments were used as a counter-balance to Holinshed and his successors in the accounts of Edward VI and Mary Tudor.  Holinshed intended for a more neutral stance on religion whilst Foxe obviously focused on his protestant revision of the past.  A comparison of Holinshed and Foxe is therefore interesting as opposing histories of their own period. 

In the Acts and Monuments Foxe used a similar strategy when dealing with Polydore Vergil’s history.  Vergil was viewed by Foxe as the most recent in a line of Popish writers whose goal was to distort the truth and destroy evidence that did not support the Roman Catholic position.  Indeed Foxe and others charged Vergil with the destruction of manuscript sources (a charge that was made somewhat ridiculous as it had been a partially protestant act that had destroyed the monastic libraries and thus hundreds of old manuscripts).  In the Acts and Monuments Foxe often noted Polydore Vergil in the margins in comparison to other older sources to show how distorted history had been written by Vergil.  Any error or uncertainty in Vergil was abused to its fullest in Foxe’s revisions.    

All of this suggests that sources were noted in sixteenth century histories (especially near the end of the century) as a means to defend and strengthen truth-claims, to protect against censorship or claims of heresy and treason.   Although sources were noted to allow others to find their base material this was not the priority and only served the purpose of making it more difficult for opposing historians to attack their truth-claims.  The reason for this evolution in historiographical practice I think must derive in part from increased debate and disagreement between historians over the authenticity of past accounts (made more essential due to the opposing sides of the reformation), the increased availability of accounts made possible from the expansion of the printing press as a medium of distribution, and from humanist as opposed to scholastic methods of looking at texts. 

PhD Thesis: Rectifying the ‘ignoraunce of history’: John Foxe and the Collaborative Reformation of England’s Past

Front Page from the first edition of the
Acts and Monuments (1563) taken
from The Acts and Monuments Online

My intention today is not so-much to promote my own work, but to state where I am coming from in terms of my own academic background.  The most important element of this is my doctoral thesis which focused on the research and writing by John Foxe and his colleagues to re-appropriate English history in a protestant mould.  John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments is the largest evangelical text produced during the sixteenth century reformation in England.  Its main purpose was to promote the reformist agenda at court and to the English population at large. 

Although (from its inception) the Acts and Monuments has been best regarded as a martyrology and memorial for those protestants who were burnt at the stake during the reign of Mary I, it is in actuality an ecclesiastical history which traces the Christian church from its foundations to Foxe’s present day.  It is this element that I studied at the University of Sheffield between 2005 and 2009. 

My thesis focused on Foxe’s attempts to rectifying the ‘ignoraunce of history’ (his words) held by the English people.  In particular, it looked at Foxe’s writing of medieval history from the arrival of the Anglo Saxons through to the thirteenth century.  I attempted (where possible) to track down Foxes’ sources which were sometimes manuscript or printed copies of medieval chronicles, recent publications such as histories, polemics, catalogues, or treatises, or occasionally based upon official documents searched out in archives.  I also tried to trace Foxes’ contacts: names such as John Bale, Matthew Parker, John Day, Edmund Grindal and many more came up time and again and to varying degrees. 

The context in which Foxe wrote brought my attention to the wider international reformation with connections found between Foxe and the Magdeburg Centuriators of Germany (another gigantic ecclesiastical history project from this period) and various continental scholars.  However, the main basis for my work was the identification of source material that Foxe used and the way that he used it – not to tell lies or falsify as some have claimed in the past, but to tell a specific version of the past based upon what is said in his sources (and what Foxe believed was not said in his sources). 

So that is where I am coming from.  A study of how Foxe and others compiled the medieval portion of the Acts and Monuments.  My studies are now shifting towards a wider investigation of sixteenth century scholars and historians but also towards that moment of transformation which occurred during the reign of Mary I.  Exile not only radicalised many scholars from England in the 1550s but it also set English scholarship on a slightly different path – one that showed itself quite clearly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.    

Sixteenth Century Scholars: Aims of this project

Who are the sixteenth century scholars that I intend to study?  What are the limitations of the project?  What is the purpose?  These are all good questions and I don’t yet have a full answer to all of them.  I will, for the most part, limit my researches to scholars in the British Isles (and most likely largely to England).  My main focus is on historians or at least to those scholars who studied and wrote about their past in some way.  In the sixteenth century there was no such thing as a professional historian, even the term antiquarian is loaded and complicated.  So, as a starting point, I will focus on those people with some form of training (usually university) who published significantly about the past.  Another limitation is, of course, that these scholars predominantly studied and published in the sixteenth century – although there may well be some leeway here. 

I will not stick just to the big names - Raphael Holinshed, John Foxe, Polydore Virgil - although they will of course play their role.  I will likely limit the role of playwrights at least at the beginning – William Shakespeare, Anthony Munday, Christopher Marlowe – although they often wrote of history theirs was a very different performance of it.  That is a route that I would like to take once the ‘academic’ historians have received fair attention.   

As far as content is concerned I initially plan to include biographies, short notes about works of history produced in the sixteenth century and a few mini-articles describing the context and background to the writing of history in this period.  These will initially draw out from my PhD research – for this is where my comfort zone begins and the place from which I need to re-equate myself with as it has been two years since I have studied the topic in depth.  However, I have already begun other research in the area and that process will become a significant part of my future posting.

The purpose behind this research is in a large part because I find it interesting but there are more specific goals in mind.  My initial plan is to produce some articles for publication but I also want to aim toward the writing of my first book.  This will not be a re-production of my PhD thesis (which I’ll talk a little more about in my next post) but a wider study of scholars who studied and wrote history in the sixteenth century.  Whether or not this study focuses on histories which relate to the reformation or whether I branch out to political, local, foreign and legal histories is something that I have not yet quite decided.