Early Modern Prayer

by William Gibson (Editor), Laura Stevens (Editor), Sabine Volk-Birke (Editor)

Overview

The essays in this book aim to answer the following questions: What was the place of prayer in the early modern world? What did it look and sound like? Of what aesthetic and political structures did it partake, and how did prayer affect art, literature and politics? How did the activities, expressions and texts we might group under the term prayer serve to bind disparate peoples together, or, in turn, to create friction and fissures within communities? What roles did prayer play in intercultural contact, including violence, conquest and resistance? How can we use the prayers of those centuries (roughly 1500–1800) imprecisely termed the ‘early modern’ era to understand the peoples, polities and cultures of that time?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786832276
Publisher:	University of Wales Press
Publication date:	11/07/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	359 KB

About the Author

Graduate and research scholars.

Hometown:

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Date of Birth:

March 17, 1948

Place of Birth:

Conway, South Carolina

Education:

B.A., University of British Columbia, 1977

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

ROWLANDSON'S 'COVER STORY': THE REVISION OF PRIVATE DEVOTIONAL PRACTICE INTO PUBLIC NARRATIVE

Denise M. Kohn

'This Narrative was penned by the Gentlewoman her self, to be to her a memorandum of Gods dealing with her, that she may never forget', explains the preface to Mary Rowlandson's narrative, titillating readers with the novelty of the publication of a woman's account of her captivity and assuring them that Rowlandson was a respectable member of the upper class who wrote her narrative simply to remember it. The frontispiece to Rowlandson's Sovereignty and Goodness of God, printed by Samuel Green in Cambridge in 1682, gives another reason for Rowlandson to write her autobiography: to tell the story of her captivity and restoration, 'Especially to her dear Children and Relations'. The frontispiece asserts that Rowlandson did not intend her work to be published; instead, the narrative was 'Written by Her own Hand for Her private Use, and now made Public at the earnest Desire of some Friends, and for the benefit of the Afflicted'. The carefully worded frontispiece along with the anonymous preface entice readers with the promise of an unconventional story by a colonial author – a woman. The title and preface also create the 'cover story' for Rowlandson's famous narrative: she wrote her story as an act of traditional Puritan devotional practice.

Writing could play an important role in the religious lives of colonial Puritans, both men and women transcribed sermons, kept journals, and wrote narratives for self-examination and the edification of family members. The practice of remembrance – personal reflection upon the self and God's providence – was integral to devotion. In this context, the 'cover story' of the title page and preface reassure Rowlandson's readers that her text was an act of private devotion, not a public account of her captivity in 1675 during Metacom's War. By the time her narrative was published in 1682, the story of Rowlandson's captivity and redemption was well known in New England. Her captivity had been mentioned in histories of the war published in Boston by the ministers William Hubbard and Increase Mather, and in London by Nathaniel Saltonstall, and rumours had spread that she had been forced into marriage with a Native American. The publication of Rowlandson's narrative meant that she was entering the literary marketplace to tell her own history. In addition, she was also making literary history. Ann Bradstreet's Tenth Muse had been published in London in 1650, though colonial printers did not publish her poetry until 1678, six years after her death. As a result, Rowlandson is the first living woman to be published in the American colonial press, and probably the first female American prose writer to be published in the colonies. As a writer of spiritual memoir, Rowlandson was entering the growing marketplace of devotional prose, a genre that was even less open to Puritan women than poetry. The anonymous preface-writer to Rowlandson's narrative, probably Increase Mather, explained to readers that Rowlandson wrote only for herself and that 'this Gentlewoman's modesty would not thrust it into the Press'. Fearing that his testimonial to her modesty and piety would not be enough to quell readers' criticism, Mather begged readers to '[e]xcuse her then if she come thus into publick to pay those vows' to praise God for her safe return from captivity. Mather, whose many publications are a testament to his knowledge of the literary marketplace, was concerned that readers would view Rowlandson's text as transgressive, so he carefully presented her publication as the fulfilment of her debt to God, an extension of her private devotion, not as a woman's voice entering public space.

Scholarship on this captivity narrative constitutes a crowded arena, and a good deal of this work has addressed the question of its authorship. Several scholars have emphasized the role that others, especially elite men of New England, played in the publication and even composition of this text. Teresa Toulouse has demonstrated the way that Mather and other ministers appropriated Rowlandson's narrative to assert their authority and express their anxiety amidst the generational and sociopolitical conflict in colonial America and between Old and New England in the period. Lorrayne Carroll argues that Mather's preface for Rowlandson's text initiated a tradition in which he and others wrote narratives in which they impersonated the voice and position of female captives, constructing and controlling female identity for their own purposes.

All of these are sound reasons that help to explain why Mather and others supported the printing of her narrative. I want to focus, however, on Rowlandson's own motives, and argue that she wanted to publish her own writing for her own reasons. This task is connected with my emphasis on the importance of understanding this captivity narrative also as a piece of devotional writing that would have been read by its immediate audience as participating in a rich tradition of writing for spiritual examination and improvement. It was, in essence, writing as prayer.

This essay examines the ways that Rowlandson employs forms of devotional practice to create her own narrative, but it looks beyond the 'cover story' created by the frontispiece and preface to consider her autobiographical and literary impulse. Twenty-first-century readers primarily think of Rowlandson's text as a 'captivity narrative', a generic categorization that tends to elide the context of seventeenth-century spiritual writing from which her narrative arises. This essay will look at the conventions of Bible reading and devotional writing, especially as prescribed in popular Puritan manuals, to situate Rowlandson's work within the larger framework of Puritan devotion. Secondly, it will examine the ways that Rowlandson revises the conventions of private devotion and creates a public, oratorical and self-defensive style, using biblical citations as coded speech to validate her actions and sanction her publication. Finally, I argue that Rowlandson's transformation of private devotional practice into public narrative suggests that ultimately she wrote for a public audience much larger than the small circle of her children and relations asserted by the 'cover story' of the frontispiece and preface. While we can never really know her intentions as a writer, the evidence that she was writing a private narrative is from the cover and preface. The fact that the frontispiece and preface validate her text via cultural norms of feminine privacy and reticence does not mean that readers should accept the belief that she sought privacy and reticence – especially when the evidence of her narrative suggests otherwise. The 'cover story' needed to proclaim her modesty to validate her text, especially within the context of rumours that Rowlandson, the wife of a Puritan minister, had 'married' a Native American. Indeed, while Rowlandson's reasons for writing would have been multifaceted, one of those reasons would have been to defend herself as a 'Gentlewoman'.

Rowlandson and the Culture of Puritan Devotional Practice

Scholars have suggested that Mather or Joseph Rowlandson inserted or at least guided Rowlandson's use of biblical verses and sermonizing rhetoric in her narrative. However, it is just as likely, or more likely, that Rowlandson included the citations and created her distinctive meta-narrative and oratorical tone without editorial guidance from Mather or her husband. While Rowlandson lacked the formal Harvard education of Mather and her husband, she would not have lacked the biblical knowledge or the ability to create an exhortative, oratorical narrative voice. She was immersed in a culture that venerated the literary as part of daily devotional practice, and as the daughter of a wealthy landowner, she had an education commensurate with her status. In the preface to her narrative, Mather saw no need to explain how Rowlandson developed knowledge or skill as a religious writer; instead, he focused on allaying readers' fears that she had engaged in unfeminine behaviour by 'thrusting' her narrative into the press.

Rowlandson's narrative arose out of a complex context of Puritan devotional tradition in seventeenth-century New England. The common practice of sermon transcription meant that church attendance was associated with writing. Men and women took notes during sermons, later transcribing them to read for their own edification, and interpreted and discussed them with family and friends. Meredith Neuman describes the production of sermon literature in Puritan New England as a creative 'discursive process that involves the entire community in the twined endeavors of scriptural explication and the material dissemination of that exegesis'. Bridget Hoar Usher, the widow of Harvard president Leonard Hoar and wife of Hezekiah Usher, Jr. of Boston, was revered in New England for her faith and character and was especially respected for her skill in sermon transcription, a practice typical of women of Usher and Rowlandson's generation. Parishioners could take on roles akin to editors and agents in the growing colonial press, bringing transcriptions of favourite sermons to printers. James Allin, teacher of the First Church of Boston, remarked in the preface to a collection of his sermons published in 1679 that the sermons were 'written out by some pious Hearers from their own Notes and by their desire hastened to Press'. Thomas Shepard's popular book The Sincere Convert was published from notes without his permission. Lay men and women were not merely passive listeners or readers – they actively shaped sermon literature by creating their own textual versions and discussing their interpretations. Such a culture gave Rowlandson ample opportunity to develop the scriptural knowledge and sermonizing style we see in her narrative. As a result, it seems reasonable to assert that Rowlandson wove the biblical citations into the narrative herself and created her own biblical applications and rhetorical style.

Rowlandson's frequent use of biblical verses as references to comment upon her own experience illustrates not only her knowledge of the Bible, but also the degree of familiarity that she expected her readers to possess. Like much of the devotional writing of the period, Rowlandson cited brief biblical verses, inserting them into her narrative without explanation of their meanings or the biblical context. Rowlandson's lack of explication of quotations is not a sign that she lacked biblical knowledge; it is indicative of her assumption that readers would have sufficient scriptural familiarity. Reading the Bible every year was a common Puritan practice: Maria Mather, wife of Increase, read the Bible twice a year after her children were grown. Lewis Bayly's seventeenth-century devotional manual, The Practice of Piety, included directions on how to read the Bible 'once every year over, with ease, profit, and reverence', as did Isaac Ambrose's manual, Prima, Media, et Ultima. Bayly suggested reading the Bible in chronological order to understand both 'the history and scope of the Holy Scriptures', and explained that the Bible could be completed each year by reading three chapters or Psalms every day – one at morning, noon and night – with six chapters left to finish on the last day of the year. Ambrose emphasized the importance of understanding the 'drift and scope' of the Bible, including an 'analytical table' or outline of the books of the Bible for readers to review before they began their annual reading course. Ambrose, however, was less prescriptive in his reading sequence, offering several different schedules and noting that 'every private Christian with a little industry' may devise a reading plan.

Ambrose's manual demonstrated the way in which writing and reading were tied together in religious practice. In addition to annual Bible reading, he encouraged Puritans to write a commonplace book of special verses and 'such places as stare him in the face, that are so evident, that the heart cannot look off them'. He even included directions for the commonplace book, explaining that 'every Christian' can 'make a little paper book of a sheet or two, and write on the top of every leaf ' a title to categorize verses by subject. And he provided several pages of examples from a commonplace book kept by 'a weak Christian, the unworthiest servant of Christ', who despite his personal shortcomings, carefully records biblical verses under fifteen different subject headings, which include titles such as 'Places containing sweet passages which melted his heart'. Ambrose's subject headings about 'places' of 'comfort' and 'sweetness' were similar to many Puritans' descriptions of their spiritual experiences, including Rowlandson's. For example, when describing the death of her eldest sister during the attack on Lancaster, Rowlandson interrupted the dramatic account to note that her sister had found great personal significance in the verse, 'And he said unto me, my Grace is sufficient for thee'. Rowlandson explains that her sister had always described the verse as a 'sweet and comfortable ... place' because it had offered support during spiritual troubles in her youth. Later in the Nineteenth Remove, Rowlandson wrote about a 'Praying Indian' who expounds upon 2 Kings 6:25 as a 'place' that validated eating horse during times of famine. Rowlandson refers to 'comfortable' Scriptures twice in both the Eighth and Thirteenth Removes; Jeremiah 31:16 is a 'sweet cordial' in the Fourth Remove. Ambrose's case of the 'weak Christian' who nonetheless kept a commonplace book illustrated the way that Puritans like Rowlandson and her sister returned to significant passages as 'places' on the pages of their Bibles and metaphysical locations of spiritual solace.

Some Puritans also kept diaries of daily temptations and providences as an integral means to fulfil the imperative of remembrance. In a sermon transcribed by his parishioners, the minister Allin told colonists to 'keep up a Remembrance' of providences and be so focused in contemplation of God's mercy that they 'never forget them'. In his Christian Directory; or a Body of Practical Divinity, Richard Baxter noted that 'some think it best to keep a daily catalogue or diurnal of their sins and mercies'. Ambrose noted that many 'ancients' kept 'diaries or day-books of their actions' as a means of preparation for death and to help one account for 'God's dealing towards him, and his dealings towards God in main things'. Ambrose's emphasis on 'main things' echoed Baxter's warning 'to not waste too much time in the ordinary accounts of your life' but to instead focus on the 'extraordinary mercies and greater sins'. As Charles Hambrick-Stowe notes, diaries were brief because the 'purpose was to record time, not to consume inordinate amounts of it'. Baxter even warned readers that extraordinary events might be left unwritten: 'sins and mercies, which it is not fit that others be acquainted with, are more safely committed to memory than to writing'. Puritans burned their diaries at the end of the year or instructed friends to destroy them at their deaths because private devotional practice was so intensely personal that it was meant to be used solely by the author. In the colonies, surviving diaries tend to have been written by prominent people, such as Cotton Mather, who wrote as much to instruct future Christians as he did to examine himself.

Puritans usually wrote their diaries at night, Hambrick-Stowe writes, 'in conjunction with the reflective mood of nocturnal secret devotions'. In Rowlandson's closing to her narrative, she wrote that she 'can remember' when she was able to sleep quietly throughout the night before her captivity. Since her return, however, when 'all are fast [asleep] about me, and no eye open, but his who ever waketh ... my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awful dispensations of the Lord towards us'. Rowlandson's self-portrayal shows her continued alienation from her Puritan community after her return, and it also illustrates the logic of devotional practice. Puritan manuals strongly emphasized the importance of evening prayers and devotion; Ambrose wrote that 'when you layest thee down on they bed, then bring forth thy book, and take account of thy sins'. Private devotion was considered the most 'powerful channel' for grace, and since sleep was emblematic of death, evening devotion was a marker of the point when the believer was closest to God. Rowlandson could have situated the closure of her narrative in a different setting or without any specific mention of setting. But she specifically situated herself at night in bed in private devotion. She wrote, 'I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, & nothing but death before me'. She chose to dramatize herself 'as weeping' while others 'are sleeping'; like David, she says, at night she 'waters her couch with her tears'. Rowlandson emphasized the paradigms of devotional structures, using the practice of regular, evening devotion as a closing frame for her narrative.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Introduction by William Gibson, Laura Stevens and Sabine Volk-Birke. Denise M. Kohn: ‘Rowlandson’s “Cover Story”: The Revision of Private Devotional Practice into Public Narrative.’ Elena Marasinova: ‘The Prayer of an Empress and the Eighteenth Century Russian Death Penalty Moratorium’ Linda Meditz: ‘The Captive at Prayer: Cross-Cultural Trauma as Revealed in the Diary of Stephen Williams’. Penny Pritchard: ‘The Eye of a Needle: Commemorating the ‘Godly Merchant’ in the Early Modern Funeral Sermon.’ Laura Stevens: ‘Mary’s Magnificat in Eighteenth Century Britain’Sabine Volk-Birke: ‘“The Order and Methods of Nosegays”: Imagining Readers in François de Sales's Introduction à la vie dévote (1609) and its eighteenth century English adaptations.’