Puritanism 1560-1770. What is a Puritan? The Puritans were single-minded visionaries convinced of...
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Puritanism
1560-1770
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What is a Puritan?
• The Puritans were single-minded visionaries convinced of the rightness of their beliefs, but they were also practical and businesslike.
• They felt that Christian worship and church organization should be simplified in order to more closely resemble Biblical models.
• Many Puritans were persecuted for their beliefs and fled England for Holland and, ultimately, for North America.
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“Purifying” the church
• “Puritan” is a broad term, referring to a number of Protestant groups that , beginning about 1560, sought to “purify” the church of England which since the time of Henry VIII had been inseparable from the government.
• Puritans wished to return to simpler forms of worship.
• Puritans believed worship was personal and did not believe that clergy or the government should act as intermediaries between the individual and God.
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Persecution
• Many Puritans suffered persecution in England.
• Some were put in jail and whipped, their noses slit and their ears lopped off.
• Some fled England for Holland.
• Fearing that in Holland they would lose their English identity, they left with William Bradford for North America, advertised as the “New World.”
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Early Arrivals
• The first and most famous group of the English Puritans landed in 1620, on the tip of Cape Cod, just before Christmas
• By 1640, more than twenty thousand English Puritans had sailed to what they called, New England
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Puritan Beliefs• Because of Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience,
most humanity would be damned for all eternity
• God in his mercy had sent Jesus Christ to save particular people
• Two principal indications of the state of your soul; the inner arrival of God’s grace was demonstrated by the individual’s outward behavior and; after receiving grace, the individual was reborn and behaved like a saint
• People looked for signs of grace and so tried to live exemplary lives
• The Bible is the literal word of God
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Puritan Values
• Self-reliance
• Industriousness
• Temperance
• Simplicity
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Characteristics of Puritan Writing
• The Bible provided a model for Puritan writing; Puritans saw direct connections between Biblical events and their own lives.
• Puritans used writing to explore their inner and outer lives for signs of the workings of God.
• Diaries and histories were the most common forms of writing.
• Puritans favored a plain style, similar to that of the Geneva Bible; stressed clarity of expression and avoided complicated figures of speech.
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Emphasis on Education
• Puritans placed great emphasis on education
• Harvard College, originally intended to train Puritan ministers for the rapidly expanding colony, was founded in 1636
• The first printing press was established in the colonies in 1639
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The Witch Trials of the 1690’s
• During the winter of 1691-92, the daughter and the niece of Rev. Samuel Parris began to dabble in magic
• By February, the girls started having fits and lesions appeared on their skin.
• A doctor diagnosed the girls as victims of malicious witchcraft.
• Urged to name those responsible for the “witchcraft,” the girls named Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good, two unpopular women from the village, and Tituba, a slave whom Samuel Parris brought back from Barbados.
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The Accusations begin
• During the trial, the girls writhed and moaned and behaved as though they were being chocked.
• Based on this “evidence,” Sarah Good was condemned.
• Tituba confessed to being a witch and claimed that a coven of witches existed in Massachusetts.
• She claimed that she had seen several names written in blood in the Devil’s book.
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The Witch hunt begins• Zealous ministers like Cotton Mather argued that
the epidemic of witchcraft proved that new England was a holy place, since the devil was so interested in it.
• Hundreds of people from all over Eastern Massachusetts came to Salem claiming to be victims of witchcraft.
• Soon the prisons were overcrowded with people accused of being witches (over 150 people).
• A special court was established. Between June and September, 19 people were hanged and one man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death.
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So what happened in Salem?
• Some historians believe that Salem experienced mass hysteria; a shared delusion.
• Some suggest that new economic pressures from a strict government cuased bitterness, aggression and outright paranoia among neighbors.
• A recent theory proposes a fear of unusual or powerful “nonconformists” – particularly women – may have led to restrict behavior.
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Women were targeted• Statistics show that the majority of the “witches” were
unmarried women between the ages of forty and sixty; eccentric and independent loners with abrasive personalities.
• Some may have been midwives or people with unusual healing abilities and knowledge of herbal remedies.
• Most significant, the accused were often women who could potentially come into their father’s inheritances and become independent property owners – something patriarchal Puritans would have seen as a threat to male power.