Congratulations to Charlotte!

  9th August 2016

Congratulations to Charlotte Szeptycki who recently defended her MA by Research in History thesis at viva. Here’s a note from Charlotte outlining her research:

My thesis offers a new and important insight into women’s roles and familial relationships in sixteenth-century England by studying the stories of Protestant women persecuted during Mary Tudor’s Catholic reign (1553-1558) as presented in John Foxe’s popular martyrology, Acts and Monuments. These socially disobedient and religiously radical women would never have been accepted as martyrs by society if their martyrologist had not moulded them into dutiful housewives, mothers, daughters and sisters. However, the effect of persecution could gravely impact the lives of a martyrs relatives as my thesis considers. As such, these women were accused of being the new Eves of early modern society by Foxe’s Catholic critics. Foxe (1516/17-1587) was required to illustrate that these women had balanced their spiritual and familial obligations to the best of their abilities while they were still able to do so. These women, Foxe argued, were providentially chosen by God to defend the new religion of Protestantism in Tudor England.