Actes and Monuments (Foxe's Book of Martyrs)

Day's 1563 folio is the first English edition and the first appearance under the title "Actes and Monuments," but it is not the work's first appearance in print. Two Latin precursors precede it and are collected as the original-language firsts: Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum (Strasbourg, 1554), Foxe's partly completed martyrology, and its greatly expanded successor Rerum in ecclesia gestarum... commentarii (Basel, August 1559, 732 numbered pages), which incorporates the 1554 text almost word for word in its first book. The 1563 English folio is a translation and roughly threefold expansion of the 1559 Rerum. Collectors of the work in its original language take the 1554 Strasbourg Commentarii as the true first; collectors of the English text take Day's 1563.