This unparalleled classic recounts the lives, suffering, and triumphant deaths of Christian martyrs through-out history. Beginning with the first martyr, Jesus Christ, this exceptional historical record traces the roots of religious persecution. It focuses on such great men as John Wycliffe, John Huss, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, and many others. Since Foxe also knew persecution, his writings possess a sense of immediacy and insight into suffering that few "objective" church historians can match. This edition has streamlined and reorganized the original Book of Martyrs in order to present Foxe's story crisply. The editor, W. Grinton Berry, was aware of the reader's desire for clarity. He observes that Foxe's "discursiveness" discourages today's reader, "who likes narratives that are clean-cut, swift, full of movement, making straight for the point." Berry's consciousness of modern literary tastes gives the.text its smoothness, as does his conviction that "Foxe's narratives, judged merely on literary grounds, are among the most graphic and the most readable in literature."