Extreme Puritan baby-naming

boing
41

I hear you, but I do not agree. Puritan is the catchall term used both in the period and today to refer to the group as a whole. Puritans as in anti–Church of England, Protestant radicals, Pilgrims, the Mayflower, all that stuff. Shakespeare uses it, and I’m rather betting that more of us will have encountered Malvolio in the original than Edward Taylor or Cotton Mather or Roger Williams or Jonathan Edwards or Anne Bradstreet or Samuel Sewall und so weiter. So, yeah, Puritan.

There are indeed other terms: Brownist, for example, or Separatist, or, perhaps the best, Congregationalist. One sees these in the texts. But when I teach this material or talk about it, Puritan is the one term I can count on everyone knowing, regardless of how, say, it lumps together someone like Anne Hutchinson with, say, William Bradford, two very dissimilar Puritans. They liked using the term saints, but try explaining this term to an audience used to thinking of Catholic saints (or the figurative senses derived therefrom).

Jamestown was indeed the first recorded ceremony of thanks in America: but it’s the Plymouth version that gave us the holiday and that’s come down into popular memory, so I dunno about that. And the Puritans were incredibly strict on a number of things: sexual mores, land rights (they hated the “adventurers” who came over with them but didn’t identify as Congregationalists), dealings with the Native Americans (although here, indeed, even a cursory read through the texts shows them to not have been the two-dimensional Hateful Racist European Colonizers of popular legend), oh, yes, and religion. So again, I dunno.

The word works because it’s a) accurate (it refers to the people we’re talking about) and b) it refers to exactly the tiny group of colonists that it’s intended to refer to: the Puritans.

My social psych theory holds plenty of water, being largely cribbed from Perry Miller and a legion of Americanists. And the viability of the term, its cultural “legs,” if you will, has little to do with the accuracy of the term when applied to its original context. The 1950s may or not have been Puritanical (ask Hoover for a fun response!); the 1650s, um, yeah, Puritanical.

42

While in the American context Puritans are firmly associated with witch burning, this has more to do with the time period than the religion. Total recorded executions for witchcraft in England and the 13 Colonies is about 300 people. In the same time period in Germany it was over 8000. Thousands were also being burnt in this period by Catholics in France and Poland.

With Unitarianism the picture is also more complex. Some Puritans attacked them, but many of the most prominent such as Henry Vane, John Fry, and Cromwell defended them. Cromwell’s approach to Jews is very liberal for the era. After 400 years of being banned, by the end of his time in office there were several dozen Jews living openly in England, and a Jewish cemetery had been opened.

43

I think if you want a most accurate definition, you need to step even before Cromwell, who was a despicable character, at best, and look at what Tyndale and Taylor were talking about. Tyndale, in particular, was in the trenches on this well before there ever was a Church of England (his own work actually inspired its very existence) , and Shakespeare was heavily influenced by Tyndale - not the other way around. That’s where I gain my definitions. And I’ll stand by them, because of where I got them. Considering he held his degree from Cambridge, did the King James translation, mightily influenced the entire Protestant movement of all persuasions, and then got burned at the stake himself? That’s the guy who understood it.

I don’t argue the suppressive, judgmental culture of the past in the US. Obviously, it has existed all along and was much stronger at certain points. And its influences have unfortunately lasted through many generations. I think it’s the terminology itself that annoys.

(And yes, I heard you about the flee/fly thing. Not everyone is an idiot, and I was joking, obviously. As annoying as usage may be at times, it’s also a perfectly fabulous toy.)

44

Sorry, I have no idea at all what you’re going on about.

Tyndale was a translator and early church reformer: he was burned before the Puritan era.

The Church of England dates its founding to the mission of St Augustine of Canterbury in 597 CE. Tyndale was active some time after that. If you mean CoE in terms of the reformed, Protestant church after Henry VIII, then say so.

Tyndale could not have been influenced by Shakespeare, who was born some time after the former’s death. And to point out that Tyndale influenced Shakespeare is a bit of a truism: qua Tyndale, it’s already quite known, and qua Shakespeare . . . the man was influenced by lots of stuff, Ovid, traveller’s tales, nautical terminology, Hollinshead, English history.

Tyndale held no degree from Cambridge: he got his B.A. at Oxford in 1512 and his M.A. there in 1515. Tyndale scholar David Daniell notes that Tyndale “apparently spent some time in Cambridge” (intro. to his edition of Tyndale’s NT, Yale UP, viii).

Tyndale didn’t “do” the KJV: his translation of the NT and parts of the OT was used by James’s translators, as it had been used for the Geneva Bible and for others before it.

45

krause,

you need to re-read some things. First, the term ‘puritan’ was well in use during Tyndale’s time. Re-check Daniell and others on that.

Second, I did NOT say Tyndale was influenced by Shakespeare. It was obviously the other way around, and Tyndale most certainly did influence both usage and phrasing, as well as other facts you got wrong. It is still estimated that some 80%+ of the KJV is Tyndale’s work.

That said, I’m bored with your pedantry now. It’s not possible to productively discuss matters of principle, nor to find any pleasure or amusement in such plodding.

46

Yay, rereading! I love that. Whyn’t we begin and end with the OED?

Etymology: Probably < classical Latin pūritās purity n. + -an suffix, perhaps after post-classical Latin Cathari or its etymon Byzantine Greek Καθαροί (see note). Compare post-classical Latin puritanus (1609 in a British source), Middle French, French puritain (1587 or earlier in the works of Ronsard, with reference to England), Italian puritano (1598). With use as adjective compare Middle French, French puritain (1590). The word appears to be associated frequently in early use with the appellation of the Cathars, or Catharists (Byzantine Greek Καθαροί ; see quots. 1572 at sense A. 1a, 1573 at sense A. 1a, 1577 at sense A. 1b, and compare Cathar n.), and perhaps was originally intended as an allusion to that name. Since the name of the Cathars was first applied pejoratively by Epiphanius to the Novatianists and other dissident groups in the Early Church, the word would thus have conveyed the imputation of heresy.

The earliest recorded of all of the OED’s quotations for the word is 1572. Tyndale died in 1536. Sorry, but as on many of the other details above, you’ve got this wrong as well.

47

Nope. Because pedantry.
Please fornicating fly somewhere, k?

48

Sorry, but no. Accuracy, as you noted, is important in these discussions. Whereas your claim of pedantry caps a complete and repeated inability to really engage with the discussion, or even to get basic facts correct. Sorry you’re angry about all that, but I’m not really: it’s quite natural to get angry when called out for being false, and your behavior, however regrettable, is wholly understandable.

49

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_122_4_Cosby.pdf

50

A great, concise source, Medievalist. I would image other participants in our discussion here would find it illuminating. It’s sort of away from the original point of my discussion above, though. It’s not really an issue for me that there’s some slippage in the term, or that it’s used variously by people in the time: this would be apparent, as I’ve noted, to anyone who’s read the original texts. My original point was and remains that, whatever the differences in Puritans, or among historiographers using the term, that Puritan works perfectly well in most popular and learned discussions to identify and to talk about the people we’re talking about. But thank you for a detailed, lucid text that addresses the issue: such a nice break from the nebulous handwringing and wholesale make-it-up-as-you-go-alongism offered by others here.

51

Not angry in the least. Was bowing out purely out of annoyance, now turned to disgust.
All done.

52

Well, you seem kind of mad to me. But since your feelings aren’t admissible of the same degree of objective proof as questions like “Where did Tyndale get his M. A.?” and “when’s the first recorded usage of Puritan in English?” I will refrain from further disagreement on this point. Good day to you.

53
1 Like
54

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.