ABSTRACT
The papacy channels violence outward, targeting Turks and Jews, and also inward, at heretics. Instead of inhibiting violence, in the Christian spirit of loving meekness, the Church exacerbates it, justifying its violence in the name of Christ. For the godly, imitating Christ, sacrificial violence is centripetal; they follow Christ's dictates to "obey and suffer" and surrender any claims of vengeance to God. Castellio understands these acts of violence as persecutory sacrifices, of the sort that were inflicted on the followers of Christ from the earliest days of the church. Foxe's resistance to religious violence was, in Collinson's words, the "sheet anchor" of his ecclesiology. The relationship to sacrificial violence here is paradoxical. It is itself evil, and therefore signals the evil of the papists who employ it. The overtone of sexual violence in Tyrrell's torment of Allin is particular to this story; it is one shape among many that the cruelty of the papists and their lackeys can take.
