ABSTRACT
We owe The Examinations o f Anne A skew to an intermediate source - the Protestant bishop John Bale.1 While waiting out the uncertain English political climate in the Protestant outpost of Wesel, Germany, John Bale saw into print Anne Askew’s two compact accounts of her examinations on suspicion of heresy, adding a voluble preface and interspersing his own editorializing commentary upon her brief text. Disseminated in England early in the reign of Edward VI (January 1547),2 Bale’s heavy-handedness with Askew’s account is deliberate. He wants to make sure that his audience gets the point of Askew’s text, the point which he himself sees: that a Protestant martyr can be every bit as good and inspiring as a Catholic martyr — even a match for such a martyr of the early Christian church as Blandina. ‘Prompt was Blandina, and of most lustye corage, in renderynge her lyfe for the lyberte of her faythe. No lesse lyvelye and quyck was Anne Askewe in all her enprysonynges and tormentes.’3 Through such a comparison, Bale portrays Anne Askew as a timeless Protestant saint, universal in significance, ready and willing to do what every good Christian should be prepared to do — suffer to the death for Christ’s sake.
