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Puritanism's ascetic pedigree: Catholic treatises and Protestant "counterpoysons" in Early Modern England

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RossHC_2009redux.pdf (41.61Mb)
Date
2009
Author
Ross, H.Chris
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Abstract
 
 
Some scholars researching the puritans have noted parallels between their approach to spiritual formation and that of the Catholic religious communities of the medieval and early modern periods. Specifically, an ascetic or pietistic orientation, emphasizing the methodical practice of spiritual disciplines such as meditation, has been acknowledged in both groups. Some have suggested that early puritan writers knowingly adopted elements of the Catholic ascetic tradition, but relatively little has been done to prove or disprove this claim. An analysis of popular religious writings circulating in Elizabethan England reveals evidence supporting the notion that similarities between the two traditions were more than coincidental. During the Elizabethan period, several Catholic texts were illegally circulated in England, which taught ascetic devotional methods in a basic format suitable for lay readers. These Catholic ascetic treatises, written by authors such as the Spanish Dominican, Luis de Granada (1505-1588), and the English Jesuit, Robert Persons (1546-1610), were patently unique among the approved religious texts sold in Protestant England. Their originality was underscored by Catholics, in fact, who criticized English Protestants because they had produced nothing similar. However, in 1603, the puritan Richard Rogers (1550/1-1618) published a devotional guide called the Seven Treatises, significant features of which are reminiscent of this ascetic genre. Rogers and others portrayed his work as a "counterpoyson" to Catholic books, expressing confidence that it would effectively silence the boasts of Catholic writers who claimed to hold a monopoly on devotional instruction. It appears that Rogers composed much of his Seven Treatises in conscious emulation of the Catholic texts whose influence he hoped to suppress. What's more, it is likely that his work inspired many seventeenthcentury puritan writers, whose devotional manuals reflect the same ascetic emphases. Such evidence suggests that the observed similarity between the puritans' spiritual approach and that of the more ancient ascetic tradition was, in part, a result of their conscious imitation and adaptation of that tradition's teaching, as it was expressed in these sixteenth-century Catholic ascetic manuals.
 
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http://hdl.handle.net/1842/30703
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