Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/132

 I think also it lacketh not his prophecy which happened 1501, that throughout all Germany there was seen upon men's garments, crosses, crowns of thorn, the similitude of nails and drops of blood fallen from heaven: and oftentimes these fell within the houses, insomuch that many women wore the same long time upon their garments: if that be true which Gaspar doth report. Hereunto also is to be annexed that which we read in our countryman Froysard, as touching one John of Rochetaylada, a Franciscan friar; not that we have any certainty thereof, but that ve do only show what is there written. He, in the year of our Lord 1346, is said to have foreshowed, that the ecclesiastical order should suffer much through the ambitious avarice and pride; whereupon, he was by pope Clement VI cast into prison. Neither is it to be passed over with silence, that which is reported, that Manfridus, a Dominic friar of Vercellos, is said to have foreshowed that Antichrist should rise up in his time, as it is written by Antoninus.

And Arnoldus de Villa Nova, Catalanus, a singular mathematician and physician, did affirm out of Daniel and Sibil, that Antichrist, after the year of our Lord 1300, should fully rage over the godly, and that there should be persecution in the church. He said moreover, that these cloister monks did falsify the doctrine of Christ. That the sacrifice of the altar was not profitable to the quick nor to the dead, neither that there was any knowledge in the pope's consolations, but only of men's works. At the last he was sent by Frederic, king of Sicily, to the bishop of Rome, where by the way upon the sea he died, and was buried at Genoa. I might also have repeated the testimony of Peter John Aquitane, a Franciscan friar in Vasconia, who, after all the rest, prophesied that in the latter days the law of liberty should appear; who after his burial was by pope Clement IV, declared a heretic, and his dead corpse taken up and burned, if that we may credit Guido of Parpinian. Then we may also repeat those things which so many years before were pronounced of divers, as touching the birth of Luther, and gathered out of Melancthos' commentaries upon Daniel. These things thus presupposed, and those also remembered, whom this miserable storm of persecution hath afflicted, and driven unto recantation and the uttermost terror of death, now our story shall return to them, unto whom God hath given a greater constancy of heart, and steadfastness of faith, to persevere even unto the death; albeit I cannot promise the whole catalogue of them, forsomuch as there were so many christian martps in all parts of the world, whereof a great number were compassed in with craft and deceit, some were poisoned, others were tormented with open torments, many were oppressed with private and unknown murder and death, others died in prison, some by famine, and some, by other means, were openly and privately destroyed; that it is scarcely possible to attain to the knowledge of a small number of them, or if that it happen that I obtain the knowledge of the names of them, yet can I not by any means find out the manner of their execution, and the causes of all them who have suffered in so many and far distant places; neither do I think that one man is able to do it; albeit this one thing is most certain in them all, and may be as perpetual: that whatsoever thing hath happened unto any one of them, by the example