[T]o prevent [thei]r being guilty of like wickedness:” Proto-sentimentalism in Benjamin Wadsworth’s sermon on Judges 5, 28 February 1708 and 02 March 1708

 GEMMS-SERMON-18952 is a sermon in two parts by the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Wadsworth. A “[k]indly and intelligent” president of Harvard College who was known for tolerating the unruly drinking habits and pranks of his students for the duration of his term from 1725 to his death in 1737,[1] Wadsworth was also a minister of the First Church of Boston, where he remained as a pastor from the time of his ordination in 1696 to his taking the presidency of Harvard College in 1725.[2] As the first part of GEMMS-SERMON-18952 is dated 28 February 1708 and the second part 02 March 1708 and the manuscript contains no evidence of Wadsworth having travelled to a location other than the First Church of Boston in 1696,[3] it is safe to assume that GEMMS-SERMON-18952 was preached by Wadsworth from the pulpit of the First Church, “one of the most important pulpits in New England” in the period.[4]  GEMMS-SERMON-18952 deconstructs the text of Judges 5 to warn that “Kings & great ones” should be mindful “of [God’s] vengeance on [thei]r oppressors; to prevent [thei]r being guilty of like wickedness” to that of the Israelites who forsook God.[5] By adopting an approach which is not dissimilar to the literary strategies of the sentimentalists of later decades, Wadsworth creates a sermon in the form of an essay on Judges 5 which is “usefull to Instruct men in and quicken [the]m to, a religious life.”[6] Of course, it would be anachronistic to claim that a text written in 1708 is representative of a mode of literature which did not firmly take hold of the American literary aesthetic until the approximate mid-point of the century. Nonetheless, Wadsworth’s sermon does betray a certain kind of proto-sentimentalism which precedes the movement by making space to process emotions of triumph and defeat, using Judges 5 to instruct on effective leadership and deliverance from oppression.

FIGURE 1: Benjamin Wadsworth (1669/70-1737) by an unidentified artist, oil on canvas, 17th-18th c. Photograph © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Harvard Art Museums, H3.[7]

The rhetorical use of sympathy

In studying a manuscript, one must be mindful of what Lori Rogers-Stokes has dubbed as formalist “intentional gaps” in the source.”[8] Intentional gaps both carry and obscure great meaning in the study of manuscript sources, being a covert rhetorical strategy of “deliberate gaps that represent meaning and can be noted, addressed, and understood in that light.”[9] The first part of Wadsworth’s sermon is dated 28 February 1708, which falls on a Saturday in the Julian calendar used in the period; the second part is dated 02 March 1708, calculable as a Tuesday in the Julian calendar, due to 1708 being a leap year.[10] It is likely, therefore, that the first part of the sermon would have been preached on Sunday 29 February at the approximate onset of Lent. An intentional gap both between the date of the text’s authorship and the sermon’s probable preaching and in Wadsworth’s neglect to explain an ongoing deviation from normative preaching practice thus becomes evident. At the onset of Lent, Christian preaching traditionally follows a thematic focus on penitence and spiritual cleansing to align with Christ’s penitence and spiritual cleansing at his temptation in the desert by Satan. New Testament texts which document the event are normally taught at Lent alongside lessons on complementary Old Testament texts which foreshadow Christ’s temptation; the Old Testament book of Judges, particularly chapters 4 and 5, is normally preached in thanksgiving services on the second Sunday after Trinity Sunday.[11]

 It has long been established that both the printed and the preached sermon in the period was “the principal literary means of getting across the Christian message” to an audience. The intentional gap in Wadsworth’s sermon on Judges 5, then, lies in the very choice to preach the book at this particular time of year. Shifting normative preaching practice and his sermon’s rhetoric away from the characteristically formalistic Puritan retrospection of Lent, Wadsworth moves in his rhetoric towards a focus on the holy season’s redemptive themes.[12] Constructing his sermon on Judges 5 according to a socially-engaged response to Lent’s theme of redemption is characteristic of an emotional and proto-sentimental interest in bringing “mens private affairs” into the public view to “promot[e]” the importance of Judges 5’s redemptive message and “[th]e cause of God and his people.”[13]

Judges 5 – and indeed many Old Testament texts with thematic concerns of oppression and a redemptive leader – formed a role in constructing notions of colonial identity in the period, addressing emotions of frustration and injustice in the face of restrictive policy and royal imposition on colonial affairs, following the implementation of the Charter of Massachusetts Bay in 1691.[14] The Charter removed a considerable degree of the colony’s autonomy in dictating restrictions on trade, revoking the privilege of its self-government through election in favour of the king appointing its governor and deputy, and expanding the powers of the governor, as well as guaranteeing the “liberty of Conscience [to be] allowed in the Worshipp of God to all Christians (Except Papists).”[15] The colonists took considerable exception to the loss of autonomy enforced on them by the Charter of 1691; from its implementation to its annulment by The Massachusetts Government Act of 1774, attempts by the Crown to regulate the colony’s governance and exert control over its functioning were met with continual resistance and dissatisfaction.[16] Biblical texts such as Judges 5 were referred to with particular zeal during the time of the loss of colonial autonomy corresponding with the Charter of 1691’s implementation. As the colony was subject to the whims of a king who was deemed to be tyrannical in matters of ruling in colonial affairs, the use of Judges 5 in sermons of the period, with its redemptive themes and a maternal saviour-leader rescuing the people, speaks to a particular proto-sentimental concern with identifying with emotions related to oppression and the loss of autonomy. Likewise, the Israelites of Judges 5 may be read as being particular signifiers of emotional identification to the hearers of sermons in the early eighteenth century: the Israelites of Judges 5 are “guilty of like wickedness” to the colonists of early eighteenth-century New England, who had[17]  – and exercised – the right to exercise their “liberty of Conscience” and reject the laws and legalism of the dominant congregationalism of the colonies, a problem which, although sanctioning individualism of belief and removing the issue of covert Antinomian rebellion against congregational structures,[18]  rapidly became a matter of concern for ministers of the First Church of Boston such as Wadsworth.[19]

As the eighteenth century progressed and sentimentalism became the dominant mode of thought in ethics, philosophy, and literature, the Protestant sermon transformed “from form to forensics,” moving in its rhetorical construction from one of formulaic textual assembly to one centered in the “science of oratory” which sought to appeal to more individual and reflective concerns.[20] As the dominant methodology of sermon construction moved towards oratory, sensibility – “the acute physical and emotional ability to feel [...] and to empathize with the feelings of others” – became recognized as a series of rhetorical strategies that could (and should) be deployed to provoke feeling in audiences.[21] Simultaneously, tolerance for individualism of belief, opinion, and the personal expression of the emotions became increasingly legitimized as a “sourc[e] of spiritual authority.”[22] As a preacher writing in the early eighteenth century, Wadsworth – particularly in his sermon on Judges 5 – speaks to an early, proto-sentimental concern with thinking of “emotions and passions as legitimate sources of perception” in the interpretation of scripture.[23] Where Wadsworth maintains a focus in both parts of his sermon on Judges 5 being a celebratory “song of praise for God’s delivering Israel, and destroying their oppressors,”[24] he also employs the “rhetoric of emotion and sensation” to turn nouns demarcating emotion into verbs, thus increasing their sensational affect to his audience.[25] As is characteristic to sentimentalism’s later “dual ability” to “extend identification” with the emotions beyond that of previous centuries’ literary styles and techniques,[26] Wadsworth negates the positive connotations of the word “courage” in describing “Israel’s sin” as a verb by prefixing it with the word “not.”[27] Inviting his audience to become immersed with the Israelites’ “ha[ving] not courage” and thus experiencing “[thei]r punishment” for “bec[oming] Idolators,” Wadsworth unifies the emotions and identities of the audience with the Israelites of Judges 5.[28] By creating a rhetorical strategy grounded in a relatable experience of “ha[ving] not courage,” Wadsworth thus constructs a warning against “like wickedness” which is built on the sympathy, empathy, and expression of emotion (which, in this case, takes the form of a negation of emotion) characteristic of the sentimentalism of later decades.[29]

The language of sympathy

In his sermon, Wadsworth extends his rhetorical use of sympathy towards a use of the language of sympathy.[30] By underlining – and thus emphasizing – the words “not courage,” together with the underlined emphasis of “God rais.d up Deborah to deliver” the Israelites from their oppressors[31] – as in FIGURE 2 below – Wadsworth speaks to rhetoric’s unique ability to emphasize and articulate cultural concerns, giving them expression through a language of sympathy which unites the reader with him in a common experience of emotion and empathy with the Israelites:[32] 

FIGURE 2: Extract of a sermon on Judges 5 by Benjamin Wadsworth, Congregational Library & Archives, Boston, MA, MS0992, p. 585.[33]

In seeking to “recover the ‘particularity of past experience’” in approaching the issue of making sense of the commonality of experience that Wadsworth is addressing in his sermon – particularly in relation to the intentional gap of his writing a sermon on the redemptive themes of Judges 5 at the approximate onset of Lent – it is useful to acknowledge the deployment of the rhetorical strategy of emphasis.[34] In underlining extracts of his text in FIGURE 2’s extract of the manuscript, Wadsworth notes to emphasize through rhetorical parallelism and stressing words and phrases at the sermon’s performance to foreground the Israelites’ sin, punishment, and redemption as delivered by the figure of Deborah. Wadsworth, then, uses a form of proto-sentimental and sympathetic language in his manuscript by which he can warn of the “like wickedness” of which rulers may become susceptible, where “sympathy could be used as a handy rhetorical tool to both emphasize unity and increase the sense of it through the power of fellow feeling.”[35]

 “Fellow feeling,” a set of rhetorical techniques designed to provoke emotions which would unify a reader or hearer of a sermon, was “aimed specifically” from the Puritan sermons of the seventeenth century onwards “at strengthening (or renewing) mutual affections” by forming arguments according to a language of sympathy reminiscent of the sentimentalism of later decades.[36] From around the mid-point of the eighteenth century, for example, a view of “motherhood that was defined by women’s spiritual and emotional work rather than by their physical labor” became the dominant mode of thought in the public, intellectual, and literary imaginations, shaping a language of sympathy which was used to articulate the role and the figure of the Christian mother.[37] Simultaneously, sentimentalism took hold of the American and wider transatlantic sensibility.

Notwithstanding the dominant cultural proclivity in the eighteenth century for viewing the figure of the mother as the main spiritual and emotional laborer of the family, the idea that the mother could hold power as the head of the family or the ruler of a nation also carried weight in the period. The idea of the mother as a ruler with the power to affect significant sociocultural change finds part of its origins in Judges 5:7, where Deborah proclaims that she “arose” as a “mother in Israel” that was chosen by God to lead His people to victory against Israel’s oppressors.[38] In his sermon, Wadsworth similarly interprets Judges 5:7 as illustrating Deborah as an exemplar to “Rulers of a people.”[39] Stating that “Rulers of a people (as Deborah now was) should have a parental dear affection” to those that they rule, “as ready to pity & relieve them, as a mother is her children,” Wadsworth again notes through underlining to stress these key words and phrases through his oral performance of the sermon, emphasizing with underlining the rhetorical parallelisms Rulers, Deborah, parental, and mother, as in FIGURE 3 below:[40]

 

FIGURE 3: Extract of a sermon on Judges 5 by Benjamin Wadsworth, Congregational Library & Archives, Boston, MA, MS0992, p. 586.[41]

The sentimental view of the mother as a spiritual and emotional leader of a society and its familial structures was indeed a feminized one. By stating that “Rulers of a people [...] should have a parental dear affection” to their people “as a mother” does towards “her children,” Wadsworth here draws the reader or hearer of the sermon away from a warning against “being guilty of like wickedness” of which the Israelites were guilty and towards instruction on how a ruler should behave. Playing into the proto-sentimental view of the mother as a spiritual and emotional leader while simultaneously recognizing the biological essentialism of Deborah’s maternal and female body, Wadsworth interprets Deborah’s and the ruler’s role as one that is – and should be–  feminized.[42]  The aspiration for a ruler’s role to be feminized in line with Deborah’s role as a “mother in Israel” speaks in Wadsworth’s sermon to a usage of sentimental rhetoric and the language of sympathy which carries an aim for rulers to adopt the unifying and redemptive role of the mother in favour of the more stereotypically destructive and war-like characteristics of the male leader.[43] 

GEMMS-SERMON-18952 is a sermon, then, that “opens up a public moral space” that engages with proto-sentimental, emotive themes of redemption, unification, and maternity as tools by which to instruct “Kings & great ones.”[44] It is worth considering that, although it does remain anachronistic to claim that Wadsworth’s sermon is representative of sentimental literature, he does create a space in its text to work through emotions and address affective notions of suffering under an oppressor; by adopting techniques which are strikingly similar to those of the sentimentalists of later decades, Wadsworth “Instruct[s] men in and quicken[s] [the]m to, a religious life.” Further study of the complete collection of sermon notes (GEMMS-MANUSCRIPT-1357) or of the Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons’ database holdings on Wadsworth (GEMMS-PERSON-2721) would likely demonstrate a deeper engagement with proto-sentimental literary characteristics in his work, connecting his figure as a writer with an aesthetic sensibility which precedes the sentimentalists. However, in its engagement with the text of Judges 5 and in its rhetorical construction, GEMMS-SERMON-18952 shows a demonstrable early understanding of a proto-sentimental sensibility: namely, that “sentiment [wa]s indicative and necessary”[45] to the instruction of “Kings & great ones,” in “consider[ing] [th]e wonders of divine mercie on his peo-ple, and of his vengeance on [thei]r oppressors; to prevent [thei]r being guilty of like wickedness” to that of the Israelites of Judges 5.[46]

Note on the text:

The letter “y” in the manuscript source represents the abbreviated thorn or “th” sound in Benjamin Wadsworth’s hand. Where the manuscript states “yt”, for example, the corresponding word “that” has been written in full in square brackets to increase clarity for the reader.

References

[1]  “History of the Presidency.” Harvard: Office of the President, Harvard University, accessed 07 August, 2024, https://www.harvard.edu/president/history/#1700s.

[2]  “Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 1707-1712,” Digital Collections, Congregational Library & Archives, accessed September 11, 2024, https://congregationallibrary.quartexcollections.com/manuscript-collections/browse-the-benjamin-wadsworth-sermons.

[3]  Benjamin Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 1707-1712, MS0992 (GEMMS-SERMON-18952) (Boston: The Congregational Library & Archives, 2019), 585 & 587, accessed 06 August, 2024, https://congregationallibrary.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/benjamin-wadsworth-sermons-1707-1712/33730.

[4]  “Wadsworth, Benjamin (1670-02-28 - 1737-03-16)” (GEMMS-PERSON-2721), GEMMS: Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons, last modified July 15, 2024, https://gemms.usask.ca/node/793323.

[5]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 585, accessed 06 August, 2024, https://congregationallibrary.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/benjamin-wadsworth-sermons-1707-1712/33730.

[6]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 1.

[7]  Benjamin Wadsworth (1669/70-1737), object number H3, 17th-18th c., oil on canvas, 82.5 x 69.5 cm (32 1/2 x 27 3/8”), Harvard Art Museums, accessed 08 August, 2024, https://hvrd.art/o/304883.

  

[8] Lori Rogers-Stokes. “Reading for Unreadability; or, Embracing the Gaps in Congregational Church Records,” in The Part and the Whole in Early American Literature, Print Culture, and Art, ed. Matthew Pethers and Daniel Diaz Couch (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2024), 33, Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture.

[9]  Rogers-Stokes, “Reading for Unreadability,” 40.

 

[10] “History of the Presidency.”

  

[11] The Holy Bible, Containing the Old Testament, and the New: Newly Translated out of the Original Tongues: And with the former Translations diligently compared and verified, By his Maisties speciall commandement, King James Version (London: Robert Barker, printer to the Kings most Excellent Maiestie, 1614), JISC Historical Texts PDF, accessed 31 July, 2024, https://data.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/view?pubId=eebo-99837776e&terms=the%20holy%20bible&field=title&filter=publisher%7C%7CBy%20Robert%20Barker,%20printer%20to%20the%20Kings%20most%20excellent%20Maiestie.

[12]  Philip Waller, Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870-1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1017.

[13]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 585.

[14]  “Massachusetts Bay Colony,” Britannica, accessed 12 September, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Winthrop-American-colonial-governor.

[15]  “The Charter of Massachusetts Bay - 1691,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School: Lillian Goldman Law Library, last modified 2008, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mass07.asp#1.

[16]  “The Massachusetts Government Act; May 20, 1774,” American Battlefield Trust, accessed 12 September 2024, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/massachusetts-government-act-may-20-1774.

[17]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 585.

[18]  “The Charter of Massachusetts Bay – 1691.”

[19]  James F., Cooper, Jr., Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts (Oxford University Press, 1999), ProQuest Ebook Central.

[20]  Gregory S. Jackson, “America’s First Mass Media: Preaching and the Protestant Sermon Tradition,” in A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America, ed. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 410, Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture Series, ProQuest Ebook Central PDF, accessed 21 July, 2024, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.salford.idm.oclc.org/lib/salford/detail.action?docID=243574.

[21]  Nora Doyle, Maternal Bodies: Redefining Motherhood in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 89, ProQuest Ebook Central PDF, accessed 16 July, 2024, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469637211_doyle.

[22]  Jackson, “America’s First Mass Media,” 410.

[23]  Jackson, 410.

[24]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 585.

[25]  Jackson, “America’s First Mass Media,” 410.

[26]  Jennifer A. Williamson, Twentieth-Century Sentimentalism: Narrative Appropriation in American Literature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 1, ProQuest Ebook Central PDF, accessed 19 December, 2023, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/salford/detail.action?docID=1576557.

[27]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 585.

[28]  Wadsworth, 585.

[29]  Abram Van Engen, Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England. Religion in America Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 127, ProQuest Ebook Central PDF, accessed 19 December, 2023, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/salford/detail.action?docID=3056457.

[30]  Van Engen, 143.

[31]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 585.

[32]  Gero Guttzeit, “Rhetoric and Literary Theory,” in Handbook of English Renaissance Literature, ed. Ingo Berensmeyer (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2019) 203-21, vol. 10, Handbooks of English and American Studies, ProQuest Ebook Central PDF, accessed 26 October, 2023, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.salford.idm.oclc.org/lib/salford/detail.action?pq-origsite=primo&docID=5158670.

[33]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 585.

[34]  Mary Morrissey, “Interdisciplinarity and the Study of Early Modern Sermons,” The Historical Journal 42, no. 4 (December 1999): 1117, accessed 06 May, 2023, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3020939.

[35]  Van Engen, Sympathetic Puritans, 143.

[36]  Van Engen, 143.

[37]  Doyle, Maternal Bodies, 5.

[38]  The Holy Bible.

[39]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 586.

[40]  Wadsworth, 586.

[41]  Wadsworth, 586.

[42]  Doyle, Maternal Bodies, 91.

[43]  Doyle, 91.

[44]  Simon Strick, American Dorologies: Pain, Sentimentalism, Biopolitics (New York: State University of New York Press, 2014), 21, Project Muse PDF, https://doi.org/10.1353/book.28834.

[45]  Strick, American Dorologies, 20.

[46]  Wadsworth, Benjamin Wadsworth sermons, 585.

~ Lauren Pearl Holmes

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A Catholic preaching in Interregnum England: Peter Wright SJ, Sermon on Sts. Peter & Paul, c.1644-1650. Stonyhurst College Ms. A IV 15 (GEMMS Sermon #30000)

GEMMS sermon #30000 is found in a collection of 64 sermons that follow a full liturgical year, and is attributed to the Catholic martyr, Peter Wright, who was executed in London in 1651. (Figure 1) The sermons are not dated, although the last in the collection (which is unfinished in this manuscript) was preached for the occasion of the Jubilee Year of 1650, and thus can be dated to the final year of Wright’s life. Although the collection may represent sermons composed and preached over the course of a single year, they could as well have been composed at different times during Wright’s career, and only subsequently transcribed into a single volume. References in some sermons, though, indicate an audience of Catholics living in England and consequently practising their religion under severe restrictions. The Jubilee Sermon was printed in an article by Godfrey Anstruther in 1951, but the others in the manuscript seem never to have been published.[1]

Figure 1: Portrait of Peter Wright from Edward Leedes alias Courtney, R. P. Petri Writi sacerdotis Angli e Societ. Iesu mors, quam ob fidem passus est London 29 Maij 1651 (Liège, 1651).

Peter Wright was born in Northamptonshire around 1603. As a young man, he joined the war in the Netherlands – fighting on the Dutch side against the Spanish Habsburg empire, which was (of course) perceived as being the Protestant side. However, he soon abandoned the army and in 1629 entered the Society of Jesus, the Catholic Reformation religious order par excellence. In 1636 he was ordained, and in 1642 returned to the military front as chaplain to the English Regiment fighting on the Habsburg side – a regiment largely composed of English Catholics. In 1644, he was sent to England.[2]

Wright’s years in England were those of the Civil Wars between Charles I and the Parliamentarians, the regicide, and the seizure of power by the republican ‘Commonwealth’. Catholics were affected by the turmoil, whether they fought for the King or attempted to remain neutral; some Catholics, after 1646, sought to negotiate toleration with the new powers-that-were.[3] Wright was not a distant observer of these conflicts: he was at Oxford while it served as the Royalist headquarters, acting as chaplain to the Catholic Henry Gage. Gage had commanded the English Regiment under the Habsburgs in Flanders, then returned to command the garrison of Oxford for King Charles I, and was ultimately killed in 1646. After Gage’s death, Wright lived under the protection of the Marquis of Winchester (Figure 2). Winchester, though a Royalist, was reportedly involved with attempts to negotiate with the Independents’ (or Congregationalist) faction in the Army for some sort of toleration for Catholics in whatever post-war settlement was established – this presumably was during his short periods of release from prison, for he remained a prisoner (as a Royalist and a Catholic) from 1645 until the early 1650s.[4]

Figure 2: Wenceslaus Hollar, Portrait of Marquis of Winchester, engraving. 17th century. The Wenceslaus Hollar Collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. 

These royalist connections may well have influenced Wright’s fate. Peter Wright was the only Catholic martyr executed by the Commonwealth during its rule from 1649 to 1653 (when it was replaced by Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector). He was condemned under the Elizabethan statute of 1585, which defined it as treason for an English subject, having been ordained a Catholic priest, to enter the realm. Between 1628 and 1641, executions of Catholics had in fact ceased; various priests were still tried and convicted, but Charles I – by means of reprieves and decrees of banishment – avoiding executing any of them. However, between 1641 and 1646, Charles I’s opponents ensured that twenty priests were executed under the 1585 statute – a sudden return to persecution which Catholics found disconcerting.[5] Yet, during these same years, a small number of men were actually acquitted when tried for the crime of being priests – something which seems to have occurred seldom or never prior to 1641.[6]

This is what happened to Peter Wright’s companion in the dock, Thomas Middleton. Middleton was actually the Superior in England of another religious order, the Dominicans. And the witness against Wright and Middleton was a lapsed Catholic and former Dominican, one Thomas Gage, the actual brother of Colonel Henry Gage. Gage had testified against various other priests, some of whom had been executed. Yet at the trial of Wright and Middleton, Gage gave evidence in favour of Middleton: he stated that Middleton might not necessarily be a priest, even though he was a Dominican friar, and indeed superior. He noted that Saint Francis of Assisi had founded a religious order, and yet never been ordained priest. Against Wright, however, Gage ruthlessly declared that he had seen him celebrating Mass in the military camp at Ghent, and that he had also been Gage’s brother’s chaplain at Oxford. This evidence convicted Wright.[7] Wright may have been in part the ‘proxy victim’ of power struggles between factions in the new republican state: the Independents, with whom his patron had once negotiated, and the Presbyterians, who might consequently be keen to ‘make an example’ of him.[8]

The upshot was that Peter Wright was executed at Tyburn, by the notorious method of hanging, drawing and quartering, on 19 May 1651. (Figure 3) An account of his martyrdom was published that year in Latin, and in Italian translation.[9]

Figure 3: Image of execution of Peter Wright from Mathias Tanner, Societas Jesu usque ad sanguinis et vitae profusionem militans, in Europa, Africa, Asia, et America...., Praga, 1675.  

This sermon (GEMMS-SERMON-30000) attributed to Wright, from the volume now at Stonyhurst, was preached on the Feasts of Ss. Peter & Paul, 29th June (Figure 4). Because Peter is held to be the first pope, Sts. Peter & Paul was a feast of great importance for Catholic claims about the nature of the Church and of the papacy. In this sermon on the two martyred apostles, the preacher’s concern with Peter’s significance for the Church’s authority is apparent. He starts by comparing the order and hierarchy of Old Testament worship to the new order of Petrine supremacy: Peter’s primacy among the Apostles is likened to the divine choice of Aaron for the Israelite priesthood. Here, similarity with the Temple worship which preceded Christ is not a criticism – it is offered as validation:

In the 14th Chapter of the Book of Numbers you shall find that although all the Princes of the twelve tribes of Israel gave their rods to be kept in the tabernacle... yet only the rod of Aaron blossomed forth and produced fruit which was a most certain testimony of his being legally chosen to his sacerdotal and Pontifical dignity, for perpetual memory of which / Almighty God commanded that rod to [be] kept in the tabernacle. This is a most true and excellent type of what we are to say, for what happened figuratively in the Jewish law is actually and really performed in the Catholic Church.

 Or again, he insists that Jewish example shows that the Church must have a visible, ordered structure:

The 28th Chapter of Exodus speaketh of nothing, but of the manner and matter and Order in the making and burnishing and setting forth those ornaments. The like is recorded in the Third Book of Kings and 6th Chapter… Here was everywhere order, order in the making of the vestments, order in the disposition of the building, order in the carved work, order in the embroidery, order in the painting, order in the ministers of the house of God.[10]

From this appeal to precedent, Wright moves on to demonstrating the papal supremacy. His argument has two parts: first, he tries to show that it is necessary that the Church should have “one Supreme… Pastor that might in a Monarchical way govern and direct the same”; secondly, he makes the case that “St Peter and his successors are these vicars or Pastors”. Wright argues that since “just and due order” characterized the Temple, and order brings “perfection” and beauty in nature, therefore it follows that Christ would provide that order should also govern the Church.

Figure 4: Peter Wright, "In Festo Sti Petri et Pauli," 47th sermon, Stonyhurst MS. A/IV/15, unpaginated. © Governors of Stonyhurst College. 

Wright’s sermon uses Christ’s ‘Tu es Petrus’ declaration from Mathew 16:18: “You are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my Church” to expound the ‘Petrine claim’, but he also appeals to other texts. For example, he emphasises the differences between promises made by Christ to all the Apostles, such as “the Spirit of truth… shall teach you all truth” (John 16:13), and promises or commands given to St Peter alone, e.g. “Confirm thy brethren.” (Luke 22:32). Wright also cites early Christian authors and Church Councils in support of Catholic interpretations: Augustine, Origen and Ambrose are mentioned during this sermon, as well as St Leo the Great and the Council of Chalcedon, as evidence of Peter’s primacy continuing in his successors. 

Although he refrained from explicit commentary on English political affairs, one cannot help noticing implied connections between his discussion about Church authority, and theories of government – and there is a distinct Royalist tinge to Wright’s observations. For example, Wright declares that order brings “perfection and… imprinteth such a beauty and lustre, upon terrene things that it makes them resemble in some sort the celestial: but on the contrary the want of this order turns all things topsy-turvy, causes perturbations, horrible confusions and the world to became like to an infernal chaos”.  Furthermore, when speaking of the Roman Apostolic Succession, he argued that “If none succeeded St Peter the whole state of the Church is altered… from a monarchy to an Aristocracy… who can therefore not conceive that it’s fallen to a new imperfect form of government.” 

Although, when he does mention England explicitly, Wright carefully speaks of disorder in the government of the Church, the idea of disorder in the polity hovers nearby: as when Wright observed that the absence of order in favour of ‘this private spirit, this self-reflecting judgement’ has produced the current chaos in ‘this kingdom’ – note his use of ‘kingdom’, rather than ‘Commonwealth’ or even ‘nation’. Multiple changes of government, Wright said, at length ruined “the Commonwealth of the Romans”; Christ would not “subject his Church to such chops and changes to be governed first by one, then by many… one while the bishops, then by kings and Princes, here by women, there by Children, then by I know not whom, as it is now and hath been of late in England.” By implying connections between the two, one also gets a sense of their being causally related: the breakdown of civil order has been caused by the rejection of the proper order of Christ’s Church. And indeed, English Catholics did sometimes attribute the catastrophe of the Civil Wars to England’s descent into heresy.[11]

In the final part of his discourse, Wright turns to expound the purpose of the papal succession descended from Peter: that the Church under that primacy is guaranteed not to teach error in its doctrines. Matthew 16:18 is cited: “Portae inferi non praevalebunt”, “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it”; so is Luke 22:32 “Confirm thy brethren” and John 11:14, the command to Peter “Feed my sheep”. This text is explained according to St Bernard of Clairvaux’s interpretation: that Christ’s command, because it specifies no particular ‘flock’, implies a universal responsibility for all his ‘sheep’. Wright’s use of scriptural texts gives us a sense of the essential polemical arguments English Catholic congregations would have been familiar with. 

The end point of Wright’s sermon brings the subject back to his hearers’ spiritual lives. He assures them that that it is a “singular comfort to Catholics to sail in this ship of St Peter”, “cutting through the tempestuous billows of this world” to the “haven of eternal repose”, and to have a “heavenly physician” with “sure and sovereign antidotes against all the poisonous heresies of Satan or his Ministers”. Therefore, in “doubts and difficulties” one should “humbly and promptly submit our selves to its Judgement”, and “never recede in the lest tittle from its doctrine.” The sermon culminates in an exhortation to obedience and a promise of consolation, but this is led up to by a process of argument and proof by which the preacher attempts to demonstrate that the grounds for this confident obedience are indeed rock-solid. 

This sermon, and the collection of which it is part, gives an important insight into Catholic preaching in England – a fascinating perspective on English sermon traditions, as these were the clandestine sermons of a proscribed religious faith. Although records are scant and texts extremely rare, we know that preaching had been essential to the ‘English Mission’ since its beginnings in the late Elizabethan period. This volume of Wright’s sermons gives a sense of how that tradition had developed by the mid-seventeenth century. It further helps us relate preaching in England to the records we have of sermons preached by English Catholics outside England, in expatriate colleges and convents. Peter Wright’s sermon on Sts. Peter & Paul is one of nearly 150 Catholic sermons which have now been added to the GEMMS database. We hope to increase our coverage of Catholic sermons, helping to make GEMMS a truly comprehensive record of early modern English preaching.

The above image of Stonyhurst MS. A/IV/15 is used with the kind permission of Stonyhurst College.

[1] Bl. Peter Wright and Godfrey Anstruther, ‘An English Martyr on the Jubilee Year: A Sermon”, Life of the Spirit (1946-1964) 5(55) (1951), pp.283-294.

[2] Thompson Cooper and Geoffrey Holt. "Wright, Peter (1603–1651), Jesuit." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 30 Apr. 2024. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30050.

[3] S. Tutino, Thomas White and the Blackloists: Between politics and theology in the English Civil Wars (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

[4] M.C. Questier, Catholics and Treason: Martyrology, Memory and Politics in the Post-Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) pp.524-525;  Ronald Hutton, "Paulet, John, fifth marquess of Winchester (1598?–1675), royalist nobleman." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 30 Apr. 2024. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-21621.

[5] Richard Challoner, rev. J. H. Pollen, Memoirs of Missionary Priests… that have suffered death in England on religious accounts… 1577 to 1684 (New York: Kenedy & Sons, 1924), pp. 378, 382-505;  Questier, Catholics and Treason, pp. 492-537.

[6] Lucy Underwood ‘Law, nationhood and religion: Trial defences of English priests, 1585-1650’, English Historical Review; published online March 2024 (cead211), projected print publication 2024, p. 3.

[7] Henry Foley, “The Life and Martyrdom of Father Peter Wright” in Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (7 vols., London: Burns & Oates, 1884), Vol. II, pp.505-565, at p.525.

[8] Questier, Catholics and Treason, pp. 532-534.

[9] Edward Leedes alias Courtney,  R. P. Petri Writi sacerdotis Angli e Societ. Iesu mors, quam ob fidem passus est London 29 Maij 1651 (Liège, 1651); Leedes, trans. Carlo Zenero, Vera Relatione del Glorioso Combattimento del Rev. Pietro Wirght della Compagnia di Giesù il quale per odio alla Fede Catolica è stato fatto morire in Londra li 29 di Maggio 1651. (Bologna: Carlo Zenero, 1651).

[10] Peter Wright, ‘In Festo Sancti Petri et Pauli”, 47th sermon, Stonyhurst MS. A/IV/15, unpaginated.  Spelling modernized.  All quotations from this source.

[11] S. B. Monta, Martyrdom and Literature in early modern England (Cambridge and New York: CUP, 2005) pp.216-22.

~ Lucy Underwood

Communion Season in Glasgow and the Surrounding Areas, c.1695-1720: Evidence from the Wodrow Collection

GEMMS MS #001768 (MS Gen 408) and GEMMS MS #001779 (MS Gen 410) contain a total of 177 sermons, all of which were given at Communion seasons in Glasgow and the surrounding area between 1695 and 1720 (Figure 1). As such, these manuscripts offer valuable insight into the practice of Communion in the period.

Figure 1: The two manuscripts (MS Gen 408 and MS Gen 410) side-by-side
(Image taken by NC with permission of Glasgow Special Collections)

The manuscripts form part of the collection of Robert Wodrow (1679 - 1734, GEMMS-PERSON-002061), the Scottish minister and ecclesiastical historian, whose papers are held by the University of Glasgow (MS Gen ACCN 1233). Both manuscripts share the same format and structure; including an index at the beginning detailing the initials of the preacher, chapter and verse of scripture, and the page on which the sermon can be found (Figure 2). The only ownership marks are found in MS #001768, which features an inscription ‘to the Rev[eren]d Mr Rob[er]t Woodrow min[iste]r at Eastwod.’ This inscription initially suggests that the sermons were gifted to Wodrow, meaning he was not the original author, and they have therefore been historically catalogued as having an unknown author.

Figure 2: Index of  MS Gen 408
(Image taken by NC with permission of Glasgow Special Collections)

However, closer examination of the collection, and a side-by-side comparison with Wodrow’s sermon notes in MS GEN 430-433 (GEMMS manuscripts #001800, #001801, #001818 and  #001822) means that it is now possible to confidently attribute these manuscripts to Robert Wodrow. The Communion sermons contained cover an extended period during which Wodrow was firstly a librarian at the University of Glasgow (1697 to 1701) and then, from 1703 onward, minister at Eastwood.[1] The manuscripts can therefore, alongside other items in the collection, offer new insights into the networks that Wodrow established in Glasgow before and during his time in the ministry - an undoubtedly fruitful source for future research! However, today’s blog post will focus on the Communion, considering some of the ways that these manuscripts can broaden our understanding of early modern Scottish practice.

The Communion Season

The First Book of Discipline (1560) of the Church of Scotland sets out the vision for the Reformed church. Within the discussion of the ‘Ninth head concerning the policie of the Kirk’ it proposed that ‘foure times in the yeare we think sufficient to the administration of the Lords table.’[2] This was based on the Genevan model, which had been reduced from Calvin’s original proposal to hold a weekly Communion. The Communion, Lord’s Supper, or Sacrament - some of the many designations - played an important and distinct role in Protestant churches. In Scotland, as in Geneva, one of the key features was the Table - with Communion recipients all being seated around tables rather than kneeling to be given Communion (although this became a disputed issue between the 1621 ratification of the Five Articles of Perth and their repeal in 1690[3]).  

The ‘season’ reflects two aspects of Scottish Communion. Firstly, Communion was most commonly held around Easter (which was no longer celebrated  after the Reformation[4]), or in the early summer months, creating a season. Secondly, due to the infrequency of the Communion, it became an event in and of itself, taking place over an extended period of around a week. This became known as the Communion Season, or Holy Fair. The c.1830 Alexander Carse painting, Mauchline Holy Fair, portrays the Season as depicted by Robert Burns in his 1786 poem The Holy Fair, in which he contrasts the festivity of the common folk assembled for the Communion with the puritanical exhortations of the ministers (Figure 3). The celebration of the Communion Season was, by Burn’s time, well established, with attendance at multiple Communions becoming common in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

Figure 3: Alexander Carse (c.1770–1843), The Mauchline Holy Fair, c. 1830 
(Photo credit: National Trust for Scotland, Robert Burns Birthplace Museum)

The importance of the Communion in post-Reformation Scotland has been debated. Andrew Spicer notes that a shortage of ministers meant that the prescription to hold Communion four times a year was not met, meaning that it ‘ceased to have an important place in Scottish worship.’[5] This has been disputed by John McCallum, whose research into Communion practices in Fife between 1560 and 1640, suggests that, whilst Communion was only celebrated annually in most parishes, this infrequency ‘does not make the Sacrament a marginalised element of Scottish worship.’ This, he argues, is evident in the multiple seatings at the Table, ensuring there was space for all parishioners, and the importance with which the Communion Season came to be held.[6] The most comprehensive scholarly discussion of Communion practices is found in Margo Todd’s The Culture of Protestantism in Scotland (2002). Todd’s work reveals how the annual Communion became a great celebration, with urban parishes over time being able to hold more than one in a year. The ministry officially claimed, in their justifications to church authorities, that the practice of holding the Communion around Easter helped to counter the tendency to practice ‘superstition’ at that time. However, it appears, Todd argues, that the local sessions were bowing to the popular demand to hold celebrations at that time of year, with the Communion replacing the traditional Easter festivities. 

The Season often took place over a period of at least two weeks, with multiple seatings (as many as three in larger parishes, with the first at 4 am), or even offerings of the Sacrament on two consecutive Sundays to accommodate the needs of the parish. As well as the Communion itself, on the Sabbath, there were also preparation sermons on a Saturday and Monday thanksgiving sermons  (these were the three key days, but other sermons also took place - discussed further below). Attendance was compulsory and so shops would be closed and fields left unattended for the duration of sermons, meaning it became a holiday weekend of sorts. Prior to the Communion, examinations were also held over a period of several weeks, testing parishioners on their knowledge of the Catechism. Lists of eligible parishioners would be kept and tokens were given to those who passed their examination, granting them entry to the Communion.[7] 

Existing research points to the development of the Communion Season over time, with it holding increasing importance in the liturgical calendar across the seventeenth century. Todd’s discussion draws attention to the importance of the Communion within wider Protestant worship, considering a broad time period and geographical scope, and McCallum’s research on Fife offers a regional perspective. However, the Communion Season remains relatively unexplored in the wider scholarship, and there is an undoubted need for further regional and national considerations of its role and importance in post-Reformation Scotland. GEMMS MS #001768 and MS #001779 demonstrate a wide number of ways in which this topic might be explored - from attendance and the movement of ministers to the content of the sermons themselves.

GEMMS MS #001768 and MS #001779

Wodrow’s record of the sermons allows us insight into the parishes that he frequented, and how often, and on which date, the Communion was held within each parish. Since the manuscripts were catalogued as unassociated to one another they are not in chronological order. MS #001779 (MS Gen 410) covers the period between 1695 and 1702, when Wodrow was a librarian at the University of Glasgow and confirms his attendance at Communion in five different parishes. MS #001768 (MS Gen 408) covers the later period of 1712 and 1720, during which Wodrow was the minister of the parish of Eastwood. In contrast to the earlier period, Wodrow attended a far larger number of Communions in this period, totaling 39 different Communions over the nine years. This included the Communion season within his own parish, which was held annually in August. John McCallum has shown that in Fife between 1560 and 1640 that the months of March and Easter, and in particular the dates surrounding Easter, were the most common choice for the Communion Season, with the summer months being the second choice.[8] The evidence within the Wodrow manuscripts for Glasgow and the surrounding area  suggests that spring appears to have fallen out of favour by the late seventeenth century or was perhaps never as popular in the west of the country - a question for future research to uncover. Wodrow’s record of Communion seasons points to the spring months being no more popular than Autumn. The date of the Communions varies between parishes and across years, but the manuscript sermons reveal a clear dominance of the summer months. 

As Todd highlights, the Communion Season took place over an extended period of time. The manuscripts provide extensive detail on the structure of the Communion, which appears to most often have taken place over a number of weeks, with the preceding Sabbath(s) before Communion featuring preparatory sermons. In the week of the Communion itself, there were four key days: the Thursday fast day, the Saturday Communion preparation (Figure 4), the Communion on the Sabbath, and the Monday after – with at least one sermon, but usually more, held on each day. On the Communion day, the manuscripts record a number of different sermons, such as the Action Sermon, the sermon given ‘before the tables’, and the sermon ‘at tables.’ In addition to the Monday directly after Communion, which often involved as many as three sermons, the following Sabbath might also feature a sermon relating back to the Communion.

Figure 4: A sermon given ‘By Mr John Dickson … Saturday befor[e] the co[mmun]ion’,
August 15 1696. MS Gen 410, p. 94.
(Image taken by NC with permission of Glasgow Special Collections)

Alongside his own parish, Wodrow frequently attended Communion season at the Barony Parish, as well as the Inner and Outer parishes of the High Kirk, with which he had established a connection in the earlier period. For the Barony Parish, the months given for Communion vary from June in 1712, October in 1713, November in 1714, July in 1715, 1716 and 1717, and February in 1719. This points to two possibilities: either the parish often found the need to move their annual Communion, or by the early eighteenth century the Barony parish was able to hold Communion more than once a year. The latter is highly likely given that Wodrow attended Communion within so many parishes, even dividing his weekends on occasion. In June 1718, for example, he attended the Thursday fast sermon at Govan and then the Saturday, Communion Day, and Monday sermons at Mearns (MS Gen 408, pp. 349, 351-352, 356).  Todd has estimated that in Glasgow alone there were around 13,000 Communion tokens produced in 1700, in contrast to 4,000 in 1604, attesting to their growth and frequency.[9] This is supported by Wodrow’s manuscripts, which reveal the large number of Communion seasons taking place in the Glasgow area, with ministers and attendees travelling between parishes and often attending multiple seasons within the year.

Figure 5: ‘Preaching tent’, National Museums of Scotland (Image accessed 26/01/2024) http://nms.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-100-045-830-C 

As well as the movement of Wodrow himself, the manuscripts record the sermons of over forty ministers and reveal which parishes they preached in beyond their own. James Stirling (GEMMS-PERSON-002140), for example, preached at Communions in his own Barony parish, as well as in Rutherglen, Eastwood, the Outer High Kirk, Eaglesham, and Cathcart. The sermons themselves offer insight into the structure and content of the Communion and highlight the wide range of Old and New Testament scripture that was selected. Other details about Communion practice are also recorded, such as the use of Communion tents - a type of pulpit that was utilised in outdoor sermons. The above image is an early nineteenth-century example held by National Museums Scotland (Figure 5). Wodrow attended outdoor Communion sermons ‘at the tent’ in Eaglesham in 1702 (MS Gen 410, p. 110) and Eastwood in 1715 (MS Gen 408, p. 258). 

This short introduction to GEMMS manuscripts #001768 and #001779 only scratches the surface of the information that can be drawn from Wodrow’s sermon notebooks. There are numerous ways that these manuscripts could be used - from studies of Wodrow, to closer examination of Communion sermons - but above all they attest to the need for further research into Communion practices in early modern Scotland. The Communion season and its regional, as well as national, role and importance in post-Reformation Scotland remains underexplored, and the GEMMS database can offer researchers an accessible and informative starting point to identify and locate related manuscript sermons. 

References

[1] The external binding, on which the inscription is written, appears to have been a later addition.

[2] The First and Second Booke of Discipline, as It Was Formerly Set Forth in Scotland by Publicke Authoritie, Anno 1560 (London: 1641), pp. 62-63.

[3] For more on the Five Articles of Perth, see, Laura A. M. Stewart, ‘The Political Repercussions of the Five Articles of Perth: A Reassessment of James VI and I’s Religious Policies in Scotland’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 38:4 (2007), pp. 1013–36.

[4] Easter, as well as Christmas and other ‘festive’ calendar dates, were not understood to have a scriptural precedent by the post-Reformation Scottish Kirk and were therefore not officially celebrated. During certain periods this prohibition was lifted, and the question of adherence is more complicated. For more on this, see Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (London: Yale University Press, 2002).

[5] Andrew Spicer, ‘“Accommodating of Thame Selfis to Heir the Worde”: Preaching, Pews and Reformed Worship in Scotland, 1560–1638’, History, 88, (2003), p. 408.

[6] John McCallum, Reforming the Scottish Parish (Ashgate: Surrey, 2010), pp. 81-82. 

[7] Todd, Culture of Protestantism, pp. 77-78, 85-87.

[7] McCallum, Reforming the Scottish Parish, pp. 83-5.

[8] Todd, Culture of Protestantism, p. 113.

Further reading on Communion and post-Reformation worship in Scotland

Alexander J. S. Brook, ‘Communion Tokens of the Established Church of Scotland’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 41, (1907), pp. 453-604.

George B. Burnet, The Holy Communion in the Reformed Church of Scotland, 1560-1960 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1960).

Duncan B. Forrester and Douglas B. Murray (eds.), Studies in the History of Worship in Scotland (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1984).

Ian Hazlett (ed.), A Companion to the Reformation in Scotland, c.1525–1638 (Leiden: Brill, 2021). Especially chapters 10 (Bryan D Spinks, ‘The Emergence of Reformed Worship Tradition’) and 18 (Jamie M McDougall, ‘Popular Festive Practices in Reformation Scotland’).

Chris R. Langley, ‘“A Sweet Love-Token betwixt Christ and His Church”: Kirk, Communion and the Search for Further Reformation, 1646–1658,’ in John McCallum (ed.), Scotland’s Long Reformation, (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

Margo Todd, ‘Profane Pastimes and the Reformed Community: The Persistence of Popular Festivities in Early Modern Scotland’, Journal of British Studies, 39:2 (2000), pp. 123–56. 

~ Nicole Maceira Cumming

GEMMS Virtual Lecture: Hannah Yip, "'Sir Henry Vane’s Affection to the Ministery’: Sermons by the unordained”

There is less than a week before Hannah Yip's free virtual lecture, "'Sir Henry Vane’s Affection to the Ministery': Sermons by the unordained" on Tuesday, 21 November 2023 at 5:00-6:30 GMT/12:00-1:30 EST!

To register to join us live or receive a link to the recording later, see

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/hannah-yip-sir-henry-vanes-affection-to-the-ministery-tickets-546396114487

We hope to you can join us!

Lecture abstract:

"Although there has been extensive research which has explored the preaching of the Ranting sects of the English Civil Wars, the wider phenomenon of sermons delivered by unordained preachers in the seventeenth century remains to be addressed. This lecture will address the handwritten survivals of these sermons (including reports of them, drafts, and full transcripts), the contexts in which these sermons were composed and preached, and their significance for further study. This lecture also seeks to question the approach of these individuals towards writing sermons, from politicians such as Sir Henry Vane the younger, who preached regularly to his family, to polymaths such as the orientalist Edward Bernard, exploring their motivations for preaching and their intended audiences and readers."

Call for papers: Preachers, Hearers, Readers, and Scribes: New Approaches to Early Modern Sermons in Manuscript

The collaborators on GEMMS: Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons invite proposals for papers on sermons in manuscript from 1530 to 1715 for a conference to be held 3-5 October 2024 at Harvard Divinity School and the Congregational Library, Cambridge and Boston, MA. Featured keynote speakers are Dr. Frank Bremer (Millersville University), Dr. David Hall (Harvard University), and Professor Ann Hughes (Keele University).

We are particularly interested in presentations that make use of the GEMMS database (https://gemmsorig.usask.ca/) or the types of manuscripts included in GEMMS, which focuses on sermons, sermon notes, and reports of sermons and preaching.

We would welcome proposals on a wide range of topics, including (but not limited to):

• comparisons of preaching practices across the Atlantic world
• the contents or contexts of individual sermons, sets of sermon notes, or sermon collections
• sermons related to particular Biblical passages
• particular genres of, or occasions for, sermons
• sermons preached at particular venues or in specific regions
• the responses of auditors and/or readers of sermons, or note-taking practices
• women’s relationships with sermons and preaching
• comparative perspectives on sermon manuscripts in other languages or religious traditions
• preaching patterns and methods
• compilers, collectors, or owners of sermon manuscripts
• related manuscript materials, such as liturgical, doctrinal and devotional manuscripts
• perspectives of librarians or archivists on manuscript sermon collections
• use of digital tools and methods to study sermon manuscripts or related data
• related early modern digital resources

Proposals should indicate a preference for longer papers of 20 minutes or shorter papers of 10 minutes. Please include a title and an abstract of 250-300 words. We are also happy to consider other kinds of presentations, such as demonstrations, workshops and roundtable discussions. Select publications will be included in a special issue of Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme.

Send proposals to Jennifer Farooq, gemmsermons@gmail.com, no later than 1 January 2024.

GEMMS Virtual Lecture: Catherine Evans, "'Sweete Words' and 'Lasting Monuments': Manuscript sermons, letters, and poetry"

 There is only 4 days left before the next GEMMS virtual lecture by Catherine Evans, ""'Sweete Words' and 'Lasting Monuments': Manuscript sermons, letters, and poetry" on Tuesday, June 27!

To join us live on Zoom or to the receive a link to the recording, register at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/catherine-evans-manuscript-sermons-letters-and-poetry-tickets-546390688257

We hope you can join us!

Lecture abstract:

“A verse may find him whom a sermon flies”, as George Herbert writes in The Church Porch. Herbert may have been pre-emptively batting away criticism for taking time away from composing and delivering sermons to dedicate himself to the poetic arts, suggesting that for some poetry would be more effective as a spur to devotion. This talk will consider the relationship between verse and sermon from the perspective of the lay reader, examining manuscript poetry written in response to hearing or reading sermons. These include poems by a wife about her clergyman husband’s preaching, verses by an Essex cloth worker on his own sermon attendance, and a reworking of a funeral sermon in rhyme. If, as Arnold Hunt has discussed, we need to consider how sermons taught their hearers to listen to rhetoric and recall the word of the Bible, how did they also move them to create new texts and transform them into poetry?

In A Call to Come to Christ, a poem found in a religious manuscript miscellany once belonging to Lady Betty Bruce Boswell, Elizabeth Melville rewrites Christopher Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love: “Come live [with me] and be my love/ And all these pleasures thou shalt prove… O loath this life and live with me/ This life is but a blast of breath”. She transforms the words of “lawless lust” and “love profane” into “that living well/ Which shall thy dwining [thirsting] drowth expell”. Research for GEMMS has demonstrated that manuscript sermons often sit beside all sorts of “profane” material: personal account books, recipes, and extracts of amatory verse to name a few. By exploring the poetry that sits alongside sermons, and in many cases was inspired by them, this talk will situate sermons within the broader literary landscape of the time.