Teaching from John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs allows students to examine different types of conversion in the same text. Teaching Jewish-to-Christian conversion helps broaden the understanding of the religious and theological conflicts that characterize the Protestant Reformation.  

Regarding Foxe’s treatment of Jews, Sharon Achinstein writes, “Contradictory and complex, Foxe's writings on Jews show how a powerful English writer conceived of the place of Jews in a newly self-conscious, Protestant English national identity amidst conflicting currents of theology, race, and politics.”

Tales of violence and cruelty as conversion rhetoric

Because it is a recurring trope in Book of Martyrs, I assign readings of stories about killing children and infants from the text. (It is important to note that both Catholics and Jews kill children in the book.)

The depictions are gruesome and should be handled with care: I alert students that we will discuss human torture and murder and remind students that Foxe is describing what happened to real people. We look at the story of Catherine Cauches and her two daughters, killed for their Protestant beliefs:  

The time then being come, when these three good seruauntes and holy Sayntes of GOD, the Innocent mother with her two daughters shoulde suffer, in the place where they should consummate theyr Martyrdome, were three stakes set vp. At the middle post was the mother, the eldest daughter on the right hande, the youngest on the other. They were first strangled, but the Rope brake before they were dead, and so the poore women fell in the fire. Perrotine, who was then great with childe, did fall on her side, where happened a ruefull sight, not onely to the eyes of all that there stood, but also to the eares of all true harted christians, that shall read this historye: For as the belly of the woman brast a sonder by vehemency of the flame, the Infant being a fayre man childe, fel into the fire, and eftsoones being taken out of the fire by one W. House, was layd vpon the grasse.

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Then was the child had to the Prouost, and from him to the Bayliffe, who gaue censure, that it should be caryed backe agayne and cast into the fire. And so the infant Ba∣ptised in his own bloud, to fill vp the number of Gods innocent Sayntes, was both borne, and dyed a Martyr, lea∣uing behinde to the world, which it neuer saw, a spectacle wherein the whole world may see the Herodian cruelty of this gracelesse generation of catholicke Tormentors.

This episode is compared with an account of Jews in medieval England. It contains well-worn antisemitic tropes, including Jews as Christ-killers and accounts of Jews sacrificing Christian children:  

About which time, the wicked Iewes at Lincolne had cruelly crucified, whipped, & tormented a certaine child named Hugo of 9. yeres of age. An. 1255. in the month of August. Ex Gualt. Gisburn. At length the childe being sought & found by ye mother, being cast in a pit. 32. of those abhominable Iewes were put to executiō. wherof Mathew Paris. reciteth a long storie. The same or like fact was also intended by ye like Iewes at Norwich 20. yeres before vpon a certaine childe, whom they had first circumcised, & deteined a whole yere in custodie, intending to crucifie him, for the which the Iewes were sent vp to the tower of Lōdon, of whom 18. were hanged, & the rest remained long in prison. … Of these Iewes moreouer king Henry the same yere 1255. exacted to be geuen vnto him 8000. markes in paine of hanging. Who being much agreued therwith, & complayning that the king went about their destruction, desired leaue to be geuen thē of the king, that they might depart the realm, neuer to returne agayne. But the king committed the doing of that matter vnto Earle Richard his brother, to enforce them to pay ye mony whether they would or no. Moreouer of the same Iewes mention is made in the story intituled Eulogiū. Of the Iewes in Northhampton, who had amōg thēselues prepared wilde fire, to burn the city of Londō. For the which diuers of thē were takē, & burned in the time of Lent, in the said city of Northhamptō, which was 2. yeres before, about the yere of our Lord. 1253. Ex Eulogio. And for so much as mention here is made of the Iewes, I cannot omit what some English storyes write of a certaine Iew: who not long after this time about the yeare of our Lord. 1257. fell into a priuy at Tuekesbury vpon a Sabboth day which for the great reuerence he had to his holy Sabboth, would not suffer himselfe to be plucked out. And so Lord Richarde Earle of Glocester, hearing thereof, would not suffer him to be drawne out on sonday for reuerence of the holy day. And thus the wretched superstitious Iew remaining there till Monday, was found dead in the dong.

For Foxe, Jews were no less a threat to Christianity in medieval England than Roman Catholics are a threat in the 16^th century.  

I ask students to identify similarities and differences between these episodes. The killing of children is an important similarity, because it is used as evidence per excellence that Jews and Catholics are inhuman. Students will also notice the essentializing rhetoric.  

Particular to the second passage, it is useful to discuss the juxtaposition of Jews as murderers with the “humorous” account of the Jew who falls into the privy, and the significance of the fact that these appear in the same paragraph. The paragraph’s conclusion enacts a kind of revenge upon the supposed long history of Jews seeking to destroy Christians. We don’t know if this particular Jew participated in any of the cruelties described earlier in the paragraph, but this single Jew is made to bear the guilt of all the other Jews in the paragraph, as well as those who the text explicitly mentions not mentioning in the paragraph.  

And yet, Foxe still believed that Jews could become Christians—in Foxe there is a tension between seeing any individual Jewish person as representative of all Jews, who are always enemies to Christianity, and seeing Jewish individuals as potential Christians. Jews can become Christians, but those are an exception to the rule—and racist systems need “exceptions” in order to deny the existence of systemic racism. In this text, we can see a rhetorical mirror to our present moment: Foxe provides us with an example of the early modern “post-racial” (on President Obama as both exception and example that was used to prove that America was post-racial, see Bonilla-Silva). Foxe is thus messy, but grappling with race, of course, requires sorting through messiness and contradictions.  

Martin Luther, antisemitism, and the inability to convert

Martin Luther’s The Jews and Their Lies is less “messy” with regards to Jewish-to-Christian conversion. In it, the refusal of Jews to convert is racialized (chapter 15):

In short, as has already been said, do not engage much in debate with Jews about the articles of our faith. From their youth, they have been so nurtured with venom and rancour against our Lord that there is no hope until they reach the point where their misery finally makes them pliable and they are forced to confess that the Messiah has come, and that he is our Jesus. Until such a time it is much too early, yes, it is useless to argue with them about how God is triune, how he became man and how Mary is the mother of God. No human reason nor any human heart will ever grant these things, much less the embittered, venomous, blind heart of the Jews. As has already been said, what God cannot reform with such cruel blows, we will be unable to change with words and works. Moses was unable to reform the Pharaoh by means of plagues, miracles, pleas or threats; he had to let him drown in the sea.  

This is one of the tamer passages from Luther—in the most famous passages, from chapter 12, Luther asserts that Jews should be denied safety, their property seized, their sacred texts destroyed, and the ability to practice usury revoked. But in the passage above, I want students to note Luther’s essentializing language and his insistence that Jews are rendered unable to convert—or at least until some far off, unspecified future, and after the further “misery finally makes them pliable.” Luther even goes so far as to suggest that God himself cannot alter them: “God cannot reform [them] with such cruel blows.” Luther believed that 1400 years of oppression should have led Jews to convert to Christianity, and that it is too late to convert them now.  

The Jew of Malta and the early modern perception of Jewish identity

Debates about religious change more broadly and the conversion of Jews more particularly are foundational to Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. The Jewish villain, Barabas, explicitly raises the issue that if all Jews are the same any individual Jew bears a general Jewish guilt:  

Some Jews are wicked, as all Christians are:
But say the tribe that I descended of
Were all in general cast away for sin,      
Shall I be tried by their transgression?  
The man that dealeth righteously shall live:
And which of you can charge me otherwise.  

Ferneze doesn’t answer the question. He responds, “Out wretched Barbaras, / Sham’st though not thus to justify thyself.” His lack of response suggests an unwillingness to answer the question. The question seems to have struck a nerve; it exposes the same racist thinking that lies behind the discourse about Jews that we see in Foxe.  

This passage also bears on larger questions about Marlowe’s depictions of Jews in the play. Is only Barbaras guilty of his villainy, or are all Jews guilty? Does Abigail’s conversion suggest that “Jew” in not a racialized category? Does the fact that the Christians tie conversion to financial incentives undermine the early modern audience’s belief in the sincerity and supremacy of Christians? These questions can spark lively conversations in the classroom.  
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Resources

Achinstein, Sharon. “John Foxe and the Jews.” Renaissance Quarterly 54.1 (2001): 86-120.

Bonilla-Silva, Edwardo. “The Structure of Racism in Color-Blind, 'Post-Racial' America.” The American Behavioral Scientist 59.11 (2015): 1358-1376.