ABSTRACT
In his play Christus Triumphans, a microcosm of Actes and Monuments, Foxe's villains, Pornopolis and Pseudamnus, portray the Reformation history of the true Church as a populist movement that portends the overturning of social and ecclesiastic hierarchies. Foxe's vision of the world turned upside-down is repeatedly evoked in the class transgressions enacted by the godly as they assume their priestly vocations. Foxe's irreverent description of the overturning of the recantation ceremony as 'a ridiculous pageant at Oxford' echoes the 'inversion of values' voiced by the fool, the heretic of the popular stage. Foxe regards social hierarchies with a skepticism inherent in Christian thought and portrays the English Reformation as a popular movement which dissonantly subverts his emplotment of the struggle between the two Churches as a contest between kings and popes. Like Foxe's history, the dramatists often present the court and particularly the godly monarch at the center of Reformation conflict.
