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Private and domestic devotion - how early modern men and women practised their religion when they were not in church - is a vital and largely hidden subject. This collection brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to discuss the lived experience of early modern religion in domestic settings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Contributions analyse Bible-reading, the composition of prayers, the use of the psalms, the use of physical props for prayers, the pious interpretation of dreams, and the troubling question of what counted as religious solitude.
List of contents
Contents: Introduction: private and domestic devotion, Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie; Varieties of domestic devotion in early modern English Protestantism, Ian Green; 'Hamely with God': a Scottish view on domestic devotion, Jane E.A. Dawson; 'My now solitary prayers': Eikon basiliske and changing attitudes toward religious solitude, Erica Longfellow; Sleeping, waking and dreaming in Protestant piety, Alec Ryrie; Dismantling Catholic Primers and reforming private prayer: Anne Lock, Hezekiah's Song and Psalm 50/51, Micheline White; English reformed responses to the Passion, Jessica Martin; Old Robert's Girdle: visual and material props for Protestant piety in post-Reformation England, Tara Hamling; 'Their practice bringeth little profit': clerical anxieties about lay scripture reading in early modern England, Kate Narveson; 'In my private reading of the scriptures': Protestant Bible-reading in England, circa 1580-1720, Jeremy Schildt; Sobs for sorrowful souls: versions of the Penitential Psalms for domestic devotion, Hannibal Hamlin; Singing the Psalms for fun and profit, Beth Quitslund; Intimate worship: John Austin's Devotions in the Ancient Way of Offices, Alison Shell; Index.
About the author
Jessica Martin is priest-in-charge of the Cambridgeshire parishes of Duxford, Hinxton and Ickleton, and a former Fellow in English at Trinity College, Cambridge. Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University
