Foxe (Basel, 1559)

Introduction:

Conrad Gessner’s poem describes the death by fire of John Hooper (1495x1500-1555), the Bishop of Gloucester. During the reign of Mary Tudor, the Reformed bishop was charged with heresy in England and burned at the stake in February 1555. Hooper was a long-standing close friend and colleague of the Reformed Church in Zurich. After 1537, when he was already in the service of Sir Thomas Arundell, one of Thomas Cromwell's commissioners for the suppression of religious houses, he was thoroughly impressed by reading the works of Zwingli and Bullinger. After a period of exile in Strasbourg from 1544, he took residence in Zurich between 1547 and 1549, where he studied and worked together with Heinrich Bullinger. The Zurich church served later as a model for his own pastoral work.

Conrad Gessner’s Latin poem is printed at the end of Hooper's biography in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, a book documenting the martyrs of the Protestant Church. The book was published in multiple editions. The first edition (Strasbourg, 1552) appeared before Hooper’s death and therefore did not include his biography or that of other Protestants condemned by Mary Tudor. Hooper’s biography, along with Gessner’s poem, was added in subsequent editions: a later extended Latin edition that Foxe supervised in person at Basel (Basel, 1559) and the four English-language editions that came out in Foxe's lifetime (London, 1563; London, 1570; London 1576; London, 1583). The poem was consistently printed in Latin in all of these editions.

Further reading on John Hooper:
Newcombe, D.G. "Hooper, John (1495x1500–1555), bishop of Gloucester and Worcester and Protestant martyr." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. May 26, 2016. Oxford University Press. Accessed January 23, 2025.
https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13706.

Transcription:

IN CLARISSIMI DOCTRINA ET PIETATE
uiri Ioannis Hoperi martyrium, Conradi Gesneri carmen.

Aureus Hoperus flammis inuictus et igni,
Atque suum Christum confessus ad ultima uitae
Momenta, integritate sua præclarus, et ardens
Exterius flammis, diuinus martyr: at intus
Eximio fidei feruore accensus, ad astra
Spiritus ascendit, coelesti luce beatus.
In terris cineresque manent: et fama corusca
Flammae instar lucens, lucebit, dum stabat orbis:
Vtcunque immanes Boreae, magnaeque procellæ
Flatibus aduersis tam clarum abrumpere lumen
Nitantur frustra nam quae Deus ipse secundat,
Quis prohibere queat? mortalia facta sed ultro
Et commenta ruunt, uastaque uoragine sidunt.
Hoperi exemplo, quotquot spiratis Iesu
Doctrinam Christi, discrimina temnere uitae,
Durare, et uosmet rebus seruare secundis
Discite. namque dabit deus his meliora: nec auris
Audijt ulla, oculus nec uidit: sed neque captus
Humanæ mentis potuit complectier unquam,
Qualia quanta Deus seruet sua bona beatis.

Conrad Gessner, Poem on John Hooper, in: John Foxe, Rerum in ecclesia gestarum, quae postremis et periculosis his temporibus evenerunt, ... commentari, vol. 1, Basel: Nicolaus Brylinger and Johannes Oporinus, 1559, p. 305.

[VD16 F 1956] München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- 2 H.ref. 33-1/2, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10143731-6