People and Piety

In 1615, clergyman Jeremiah Dyke exclaimed 'surely wee never beginne to know Divinitie or Religion, till wee come to know our selves.' His clarion call, along with the 'devotional turn' in early modern historiography, urges us to look again at how ordinary men and women lived out their faith during extraordinary times. People and piety is an interdisciplinary collection that investigates Protestant devotional identities in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Divided into two sections, it examines the 'sites' where these identities were forged (the academy, printing house, household, theatre and prison) and the 'types' of texts that expressed them (spiritual autobiographies, religious poetry and writings tied to the ars moriendi). The picture of 'lived religion' that emerges takes in such familiar figures of England's Long Reformation as George Herbert, Richard Baxter, Oliver Heywood and Katherine Sutton, while also shedding light on some of their lesser-known contemporaries, including Isaac Archer, Mary Franklin and Katherine Gell. Through cutting-edge and archival research, the book shows that piety did not define people - it was people who defined their piety. Featuring a mixture of established and emerging scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, People and piety will be of interest to those studying and teaching religion and identity in early modern England, and anyone concerned with the history of religious self-expression.