ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Foxes uneasy combination of discovery and transparent manifestation: of martyrdom conceived as the discovery of the truth of a given martyrs intentional cause. Mmartyria conceived as confirmation via transparent witness. It also attempts to take seriously Harpsfields critique, and to consider, more broadly, the ways in which number, chronology, and the encyclopedic ambitions of the Actes and Monuments interact with notions of invention and discovery. different numerical inventions collude with numerology to produce a conflation of discovery and invention; and a commitment to, if not faith. In very specific type of historical and even ontological pattern, one that is immanently and immediately knowable and present in texts. That is, unlike the numerological temptations that this chapter has already addressed, chronological numbers promise to manifest sameness without resorting to a necessarily self-undermining or absent meaning. The notion that one would uncover a secreted meaning in the simple march of time is belied by our earlier discussion of numerology.
