The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution . By Alice Dailey. ReFormations: Medieval and Early Modern. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. xv + 332 pp. $38.00 paper.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution . By Alice Dailey . ReFormations: Medieval and Early Modern. Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press , 2012. xv + 332 pp. $38.00 paper.Book Reviews and NotesMartyrdom "is not a death but a story that gets written about a death" (2). Since St. Stephen, Christians have recognized a variety of individuals as martyrs and circulated their stories as evidence of divine presence and to provide inspiration for believers. To be labeled a martyr, a person's death and story must conform to a set of commonly accepted characteristics, which constitute a kind of script. What happens, Dailey asks, when historical developments prevent a martyrological account from following expected patterns? Reformation England provided just such a case study. Dailey identifies the century from the Marian persecutions of Protestants in the 1550s through the execution of Charles I in 1649 as a period of profound fracturing and renegotiation of martyrdom and martyrology. Scripts had to be changed. By the mid-seventeenth century with the sacralization of Charles I's death, martyrs and martyrologies had transformed into abstractions, "religious metaphor[s], for non-religious conflict," a pattern Dailey maintains exists to this day (245).Medieval Christians understood what made a martyr, informed by Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Legend and English Corpus Christi cycles. These works provided two models of the martyr: the belligerent, provocative, vocal witnesses who defied irrational persecutors, and Christ's example of silent, suffering martyrdom. In this cross-confessional analysis, Dailey examines accounts of Protestant deaths from Foxe's Acts and Monuments , Catholic executions from the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, and Charles I's "martyrdom" as key moments in the evolution of the topoi of martyrology. I wonder why Dailey did not begin her analysis with the Henrician martyrs, weaving Thomas More and others into this story. Regardless, Dailey presents Foxe as successfully blending medieval, Catholic understandings of martyrdom with immediate historical events of to produce recognizable Protestant martyrs. The Catholics did not do nearly as well. Under Mary I, authorities prosecuted Protestants as heretics. Elizabeth I, however, prosecuted Catholics as traitors. By redefining English Catholics as secular criminals rather than religious transgressors, the government effectively limited English Catholics' ability to be viewed as martyrs. "The construction of martyrdom is made possible only through strict narrative repetition," Dailey contends (100). There was no belligerent witnessing. Persecutors were no longer corrupt pagans. They were the very sovereign and government to which English Catholics owed their allegiance. Martyrs were not seen exhibiting traditional martyrological language, performance, and prayers. Catholic deaths no longer fit an easily recognizable script of holy death and witness.English Catholics thus found themselves caught in a "transitional moment." (219). Dailey explores strategies martyrs used to mend the fracture within martyrological discourse, from Edmund Campion to Margaret Clitheroe to Henry Garnet. Catholics refused to be tried; they split martyrological discourse into two branches--polemical and devotional; and they practiced equivocation. She also analyzes apologetic and polemical debates engaged in by both Catholic and Protestant writers such as William Allen, William Cecil, Robert Persons, and Henry Mason. …