The Beauty and the Benefit: Child and Youth Piety in Early Modern England (original) (raw)
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The story of the early modern child is essentially one of continuity. While it has been argued by some, most famously Philipe Ariès, that childhood underwent a profound transformation at the end of the Middle Ages, the evidence suggests that early modern children were ultimately quite similar to their medieval and classical predecessors. They too were viewed as vulnerable beings whose cognitive and spiritual “incompleteness” was more or less assumed. Indeed, as historian Steven Ozment once remarked, the early modern child was “a creature in search of humanity.” Far from belittling children, however, this not-quite-human status actually called attention to their distinctive powers and behaviors; occasionally it even gave them special symbolic standing within their communities. For the student of culture, this characterization of the child is worth considering in detail, since it has consequences for how we think about drama, religious life, and politics during the period. In what fol...
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Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain
Ashgate Publishing eBooks, 2012
Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History) Alec Ryrie Scholars increasingly recognise that understanding the history of religion means understanding worship and devotion as well as doctrines and polemics. Early modern Christianity consisted of its lived experience. This collection and its companion volume (Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain, ed. Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie) bring together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to discuss what that lived experience comprised, and what it meant. Private and domestic devotion-how early modern men and women practised their religion when they were not in church-is a vital and largely hidden subject. Here, historical, literary and theological scholars examine piety of conformist, non-conformist and Catholic early modern Christians, in a range of private and domestic settings, in both England and Scotland. The subjects under analysis include Bible-reading, the composition of prayers, the use of the psalms, the use of physical props for prayers, the pious interpretation of dreams, and the troubling question of what counted as religious solitude. The collection as a whole broadens and deepens our understanding of the patterns of early modern devotion, and of their meanings for early modern culture as a whole. Download Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Brit ...pdf Read Online Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Br ...pdf
Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture , 2018
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