Puritanism Puritans and puritanism Windsor castle is situated

* Puritanism * -Puritans and puritanism-

- Windsor castle is situated in the south-east of England it is near London. It is the biggest castle in the world and it has been inhabited for a lot of years. With Buckingam Palace it is one of the main residences of the British monarchy: the Queen Elizabeth II spends here a lot of weekends during the year and she uses it for civil and private meetings. It dates back at the time of William the Conqueror but in the 17 th century it bacame headquarter of Oliver Cromwell (representative of the Puritans) and his soldiers. In this period the castle suffered damages because the soldiers were underpaied and to escape wars, the State allowed them to steal castle’s treasures.

During the period of the Commonwealth the castle was so described: “La casa del Re è una baracca; tutti si riuniscono qui, dal fanatico, allo straccione, allo sguattero, tutti sono al lavoro. . . Tutti alloggiano dove possono, nelle torri e nei gabinetti”.

Oliver Cromwell * Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) an English military and political leader best known in England his overthrow of the monarchy and temporarily turning England into a republican Commonwealth, and for his rule as Lord Protector of England, Scotland Ireland. was for * Cromwell was one of the commanders of the New Model Army which defeated the royalists in the English Civil War. After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Cromwell dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England, conquered Ireland Scotland, and ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658. * Cromwell was born into the ranks of the middle gentry, and remained relatively obscure for the first 40 years of his life. His lifestyle resembled that of a yeoman farmer until he received an inheritance from his uncle. After undergoing a religious conversion during the same decade, Cromwell made an independent style of puritanism an essential part of his life. As a ruler he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy and did as much as any English leader to shape the future of the land he governed. But his Commonwealth collapsed after his death and the royal family was restored in 1660.

* He was elected Member of Parliament for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640– 49) Parliaments. He entered the English Civil War on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians and became a key military leader. Nicknamed "Old Ironsides", he was quickly promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to command of the entire army. In 1649 he was one of the signatories of Charles I's death warrant and was a member of the Rump Parliament (1649– 1653), which selected him to take command of the English campaign in Ireland during 1649– 50. He led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651. * On 20 April 1653 he dismissed the Rump Parliament by force, setting up a short-lived nominated assembly known as the Barebones Parliament, before being made Lord Protector of England, Wales, Scotland Ireland on 16 December 1653. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. After the Royalists returned to power, they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded. * Cromwell has been one of the most controversial figures in the history of the British Isles, considered a regicidal dictator by some historians. * In a 2002 BBC, Cromwell was elected as one of the Top 10 Britons of all time. His measures against Catholics in Scotland Ireland have been characterised as genocidal or near-genocidal. In Ireland his record is harshly criticised.

The Puritans * The Puritans were a large group of English Protestants during the 16 th and 17 th centuries. * The word "Puritan“ was historically used to characterize Protestant groups as extremists people. * Initially, Puritans were mainly concerned with religious matters, rather than politics or social matters. * They had strange views on clerical dress, in opposition with that of the episcopal system. * They largely adopted Sabbatarian views in the 17 th century, and were influenced by Millennialism.

* In alliance with the growing commercial world, the parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative, and in the late 1630 s with the Scottish Presbyterians, the Puritans became a major political force in England came to power as a result of the First English Civil War. * After the English Restoration of 1660 all Puritan clergy left the Church of England, some becoming nonconformist ministers, and the nature of the movement in England changed radically, though it retained its character for much longer in New England. * Puritans felt that the English Reformation had not gone far enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the Catholic Church: For this reason they identified with various religious groups advocating greater "purity" of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety.

* Throughout the reign of Elizabeth I, the Puritans appeared as a reforming movement: politically, they attempted unsuccessfully to have Parliament pass legislation to replace episcopacy with a congregational form of churc governance, and to alter the Book of Common Prayer. * By the end of Elizabeth's reign, the Puritans constituted a self-defined group within the Church of England who regarded themselves as the godly; they held out little hope for those who remained attached to "popish superstitions" and worldliness Puritanism was fundamentally anti-Catholic: Puritans felt that the Church of England was still too close to Catholicism and needed to be reformed further. * In church polity, some advocated for separation from all other Christians, in favor of autonomous gathered churches. These separatist and independent strands of Puritanism became prominent in the 1640 s, when the supporters of a presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church.

Beliefs * There were substantial works of theology written by Puritans, such as the Medulla Theologiae of William Ames, but there is no theology that is distinctive of Puritans. "Puritan theology" makes sense only as certain parts of Reformed theology, the legacy in theological terms of Calvinism, as it was expounded by Puritan preachers (lecturers), and applied in the lives of Puritans. Core views * In the relation of churches to civil power, Puritans believed that secular governors are accountable to God to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers. They opposed the supremacy of the monarch in the church, and argued that the only head of the Church in heaven or earth is Christ. * Puritans sought both individual and corporate conformity to the teaching of the Bible, with moral purity pursued both down to the smallest detail as well as ecclesiastical purity to the highest level. They believed that man existed for the glory of God; that his first concern in life was to do God's will and so to receive future happiness.

* Like some of Reformed churches on the European continent, Puritan reforms were typified by ritual and decoration and by an unambiguous emphasis on preaching. Calvinists generally believed that the worship in the church ought to be strictly regulated by what is commanded in the Bible, and condemned as idolatry many current practices, regardless of antiquity or widespread adoption among Christians, against opponents who defended tradition. * Simplicity in worship led to the exclusion of vestments, images, candles, music, etc. They did not celebrate traditional holidays which they believed to be in violation of the regulative principle. * New England Puritans After 1630, Puritans left for New England, supporting the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other settlements. Most of the Puritans emigrated to New England moving across the Atlantic. This was called "Great Migration" because of the big number of Puritan migrators.

* The family Puritans usually migrated to New England as a family unit. Puritan men of the generation of the Great Migration believed that a good Puritan wife did not linger in Britain. Although without property in New England, a wife had some real authority in the family, although hers derived from different sources from her husband's. Puritan marriage choices were influenced by young people’s inclination, by parents, and by the social rank of the persons involved. Upon finding a suitable match, husband wife in America followed the steps needed to legitimize their marriage, including: 1) a contract, comparable to today’s practice of engagement; 2) the announcement of this contract; 3) execution of the contract at a church; 4) a celebration of the event at the home of the groom 5) sexual intercourse. Problems with consummation could terminate marriage: if a groom proved impotent, the contract between him and his bride dissolved, an act enforced by the courts. The courts could also enforce the duty of a husband to support his wife, as English Common Law provided that when a woman married, she gave all her property to her husband became a feme covert, losing her separate civil identity in him. Doing this, she legally accepted her role as managing her husband’s household, fulfilling her duty of “keeping at home, educating her children, keeping and improving what is got by the industry of man. ”

* Education New England differed from its mother country, where nothing in English statute required schoolmasters or the literacy of children. With the possible exception of Scotland, the Puritan model of education in New England was unique. John Winthrop in 1630 had claimed that the society they would form in New England would be "as a city upon a hill"; and the colony leaders would educate all. These were men of letters, had attended Oxford or Cambridge, and communicated with intellectuals all over Europe; and in 1636 they founded the school that shortly became Harvard College. Besides the Bible, children needed to read in order to “understand…the capital laws of this country, ” as the Massachusetts code declared, order being of the utmost importance, and children not taught to read would grow “barbarous” (the 1648 amendment to the Massachusetts law and the 1650 Connecticut code, both used the word “barbarisme”).

* By the 1670 s, all New England colonies (excepting Rhode Island) had passed legislation that mandated literacy for children. In 1647, Massachusetts passed a law that required towns to hire a schoolmaster to teach writing. Forms of schooling ranged from dame schools to “Latin” schools for boys already literate in English and ready to master preparatory grammar for Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. * Reading schools would often be the single source of education for girls, whereas boys would go to the town grammar schools. Indeed, gender largely determined educational practices: women introduced all children to reading, and men taught boys in higher pursuits. Since girls could play no role in the ministry, and since grammar schools were designed to “instruct youth so far as they may be fited for the university, ” Latin grammar schools did not accept girls (nor did Harvard). Most evidence suggests that girls could not attend the less ambitious town schools, the lower-tier writing-reading schools mandated for townships of over fifty families.

Puritanism * Puritanism was an English and Scottish movement of 17 th century wich was only based on the Bible and wich predicated a strict moral. * It was founded after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1559, as an activist movement within the Church of England. . . *. . . But it was subjected to repression, under both Elizabeth’s and James’ reign. * The Puritan movement of Jacobean times became distinctive by adaptation and compromise, with the emergence of "semi-separatism", "moderate puritanism", the writings of William Bradshaw who adopted the term "Puritan" as self-identification, and the beginnings of Congregationalism.

* Most Puritans were non-separating and remained within the Church of England, and Separatists who left the Church of England altogether were numerically much fewer. * Many of the rituals preserved by the Church of England were not only considered to be objectionable, but were believed by some nonconformists to put one's immortal soul in peril. * During the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585 to 1604, anti-Catholicism agreed with English government policy. Three major educational foundations of the 1580 s and 1590 s —Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin — were strongly Calvinist and became Puritan by reputation. The Dublin college came close to being the outstanding Puritan seminary, taking Emmanuel as its model but reputedly becoming more "godly" yet.

* The Puritan spirit in the United States Alexis de Tocqueville suggested in “Democracy in America” that Puritanism was the very thing that provided a firm foundation for American democracy. The theme of a religious basis of economic discipline is echoed in sociologist Max Weber's work, but both De Tocqueville and Weber argued that this discipline was not a force of economic determinism, but one factor among many that should be considered when evaluating the relative economic success of the Puritans are often credited as the first American individualists, and at the same time the Puritan predilection to control others and how they live has been identified with an American social cultural tendency to oppose things such as alcohol and open sexuality. In “Hellfire Nation”, James Morone suggests that some opposing tendencies within Puritanism are at the root of America's current political landscape.