Puritanism

Manners and doctrines

The “puritan” word nowadays indicates a movement protesting of the end of the 16th century at the beginning of the 17th century. The puritans did not use however this term to be identified themselves.

The word always described a type of religious practice rather than a particular Church. The Catharisme means puritanism étymologiquement.

The only theological movement which can be defined seriously by the puritan word was undoubtedly the Calvinisme, which led in particular to the emergence of the Église presbytérienne.

Of Henri VIII in Elisabeth Anger

After its rupture with the Pope in 1531 on the question of its divorce with Catherine d' Aragon, the king Henri VIII separated the Church from England of the supervision of Rome in 1534. This rupture had an effect that Henri VIII had not envisaged: it opened a breach with the English Christians who wanted to reform the church in the direction of the ideas of Martin Luther.

In fact, the cause of the Protestantisme quickly advanced under Edouard VI. The archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, published off the first Book Common Prayer (Book of Common Prayer) in December 1549, to formalize the English adaptation of the continental Reform: the primitive church of the first times is taken as model, the accent is put on the accessibility of the Writings in English language, the communion for all by the bread and the wine.

However, during the reign of its successor Marie Tudor, England returned to the Roman Catholicisme. Many Protestants were carried out (Cranmer and other great figures of the Reform condemned to roughing-hew), were persecuted and constrained with the exile in Europe. They came into contact with reformers calvinists to Geneva or Lutherans in Germany and radicalized their positions. Two of the most popular books of time - the Bible of Geneva and the John Foxe' S Book off Martyrs - were published in this period.

The death of Bloody Mary (Marie the bloody one) and the accession with the throne of Elisabeth 1st in 1558 was thus greeted with enthusiasm by these Protestants. But its first actions, though restoring Protestantism, those which disappointed aspired to a vast reform. The puritanism then seems to have emerged from the dissatisfaction caused by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement with 1559 by which the queen reaffirmed the independence of the Église of England with regard to Rome and detailed the structure of this Church: the most radical Protestants transfer there concessions with the “Papisme”. Contrary to the continental Protestant movements, the Reform Anglican indeed maintained the church under the control of monarchy via a episcopal hierarchy, while leaving intact much catholic practices, two unacceptable points with the eyes of the puritans. They refused to entirely apply the directives and ritual formulas of the Book off Common Prayer . The implementation forced and tâtillonne of the new liturgical order pushed back them in an attitude of marked opposition.

Many these puritans - as they were called in a controversy on the formal garments in the neighborhoods of 1560 where one made fun their will “to purify” the vestments - sought in vain the support of the Parlement to try to institute the shape of government of the Church of England close to the Presbytérianisme. The English puritanism turned to preaching, published Pamphlet S and Libelle S virulent, and accumulated various experiments of religious expression, social behavior and organization. Its success growing was also the work of its guards in the nobility and at the Parliament and of its influence in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

The question of the hierarchy of the Church was delicate: Elisabeth gave her support for the Richard Hooker theologist who wrote “laws of the policy connected with the church” (Off the Laws off Ecclesiastical Polity) to counter the arguments presbytériens. Hooker stated a direct refutation of the “brothers of the Church of Geneva” and drew the broad outlines of a via media for the Church of England. This via media , which one criticized the weak doctrinal substance, constituted a whole of specifically ordered rules which became “the backbone” of the Anglicanism.

Of Jacques VI in Olivier Cromwell

Parallel to the Reform Anglican, the Church of Scotland had been created on a model calvinist presbytérien, that the puritans hoped to extend in England. The crowning of Jacques VI of Scotland as king of England under the name of Jacques I {{er}} awoke their hopes. But with the Conference of Hampton Court in 1604, the king, who was not puritan itself and which was wary of them, rejected their complaints of a sentence: “not of bishop, not of king” ( No bishop, No king ). It authorized however the publication of the King James Bible , in vernacular language, in particular to reinforce orthodoxy Anglican against the Bible of Geneva. This one had become popular in the puritans while at the same time it had anti-royalists translations and contained revolutionary notes.

The pressure assimilatrice of the Church of England further increased under Charles I {{er}} under the influence of its archbishop William Laud, the via media élisabéthaine being applied everywhere with force. The puritans were seen like troublemakers putting in danger the unit of monarchy and the Church and, for this reason, always prone to a sometimes wild repression. The sorrows of imprisonment heavy, were accompanied by the confiscation of the goods and corporal punishments: in particular, one marked with red iron the face of condemned mention “S.S.” ( sower off sedition - seed of sedition). The exile of the puritans towards Europe continued, the first movement of emigration towards the America began (the epopee of the Mayflower date of 1620 but the puritan ideas continued to gain ground in England.

When the conflict between the Parliament and Charles Ier degenerated into true civil war in 1640, the puritans hastened to seize the occasion of exorter the nation to renew its contract with God. The Parliament convened an assembly of ecclesiastics and laymen, all of obedience calvinist, known under the name of “Westminster Assembly” which did not manage to reform the government of the Church completely. However the army of Olivier Cromwell, which had demolishes the royal forces, carried to the capacity its general. Cromwell largely supported the puritan movement and conceded only one low pluralism. The large defender of the puritanism of the time was the poet John Milton. Various puritan tendencies appeared, among which the group of the Quakers knew only a long prosperity.

Great persecution and the New World

The restoration of monarchy in 1660 also restored the Anglicanism in the strict model of William Laud and the puritan clergy was expelled of the Church of England. Those which refused integration were catalogued like nonconformists . The English puristanism entered then during the time called the Great Persecution and was constrained to defer on the puritan colonies which thrived in America the hope to carry out its objectives.

In 1640, the Puritan Holy the Commonwealth (Holy puritan community) counted 40 churches in America, which burst in various churches and factions. The vastest group was found in the church presbytérienne and the Congregational Church . The methodism at the 18th century and the evangelism at the 19th century were deeply influenced by the puritanism. At the 19th century, some congregations adopted the unitarianism.

See too

External bonds

Puritanism and puritans by Michel Duchein, honorary General inspector of the Files of France.
Puritanism, Puritans

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