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Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

Sarah Perry on, [47] 33

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A Light to Live by

Sarah Perry on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

On the cover was a drawing of a slender wrist held by a gloved hand; beneath the wrist was a candle held close. I began to read a story familiar to me: the account given in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs of the torture of the Protestant Rose Allen. I remember how bright and still it was, and how relieved I felt that no one passing by wondered what we were doing, and drew near enough to hear the child reading how the young Rose, bringing a jug of water to her mother, was found by an interrogator in her own home; how he took her candle and moved it back and forth across her hand in the form of a cross until the tendons audibly cracked; and how later she thanked God she’d kept her temper, and not brought the jug down on her tormentor’s head.

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