Quarter 1 Test: Puritanism, The Scarlet Letter, the Enlightenment Flashcards
The Renaissance
A rebirth of letters and art stimulated by the recovery and study of texts from classical antiquity. These texts were studied to find moral, political, and philosophical truths. Arrived to England from Italy.
Under which ruler did the Renaissance flourish?
Henry VIII
Humanism
The Renaissance recognition of the dignity of the individual and the worth of life in this world.
Anne Bolin
Henry VIII married her after divorcing Catherine without papal consent. Anne bore him Elizabeth I.
Opinion of England towards the Catholic Church
Against it because they disliked paying taxes to a distant church.
What happened between 1529 and 1536?
Henry VIII, after his divorce, severed ties with the Catholic Church. This is known as the Reformation, a cleansing of the Church from the centuries of corruption. He seizes papal lands and dissolves monasteries.
Results of the Reformation:
A. Gives people of England a vested property interest in Church of England to keep property
B. Gives people a reason to support the King who has given them former church property (the country got richer)
C. Keeps most of Catholicism’s ceremonies, so he doesn’t give a theological reason to defend Catholicism.
Queen Mary
Henry VIII’s oldest daughter. Takes the throne after Henry and tries to bring England back to Catholicism by persecuting Protestants
Amstelkring
A secret Catholic Church hidden in somebody’s house in which Catholics and other religious dissenters from the seventeenth century Dutch Reformed Church, unable to worship in public, held services.
What happened to many Protestants during Queen Mary’s persecution?
They fled to Switzerland and Germany and absorbed radical Calvinist doctrines.
Martin Luther
Began the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Taught that God speaks through the Bible—not through priests or the pope. This was revolutionary because it destroyed the underlying powers of the Church.
John Calvin
Taught the doctrine of predestination.
Predestination
The belief that God chooses or “elects” those who will be saved and people can do nothing about their own salvation. People who believed in this doctrine thought they should live a holy life in order to appear that they were of the “elect” and had God’s “grace.”
Puritans
Believed in predestination.
“The sun never sets…”
“on the British Empire” –Queen Elizabeth I (said because the empire was so huge that there was always somewhere in it where the sun was shining.)
Which of Shakespeare’s works was inspired by the discovery of the New World?
The Tempest
Different types of settlements in the New World
a. Religious–some (separatists and puritans) wanted to institute a purer form of worship based on scripture.
b. Economic–some wanted to own land and better their social standing (which was impossible in England due to its dramatically expanding population and exorbitant cost of living.)
c. Political–some came to escape bad marriages or jail terms
Oliver Cromwell
A Puritan who rose to power in England after a war caused by James I and Charles I suppressing the Puritans
Were colonies very connected?
No. They sometimes even hated each other.
John Smith
Established a colony in Virginia in 1607
John Winthrop
Established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. Wrote and delivered the sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity.” Saw the Puritan New World settlement as a covenant with God. Said that they will be like a “city upon a hill.”
3 important forces that influenced colonial Puritanism:
a. The social system of 17th-century England
b. Calvinism
c. The New England environment
How did the social system of 17th-century England influence colonial Puritanism?
a. Medieval Feudalism–Society highly stratified into an upper, middle and lower class.
b. Church and State closely related–King heads the Church, etc.
c. The Colonial Puritans unconsciously accepted the class system of England–Puritan leaders came from English middle class; already used to looking down on lower classes; naturally assumed leadership in the New World. Church tied to state.
Plain style
How the Puritans dressed, spoke, and wrote. Very simple.
Why did English separatists leave England and go to Holland?
They saw no hope of reforming the Anglican Church.
Why did the English Separatists leave Holland?
They feared becoming Dutch
How did Winthrop’s Puritan group see themselves?
As a chosen people; connected to the Israelites who fled to the Promised Land
Where was Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” sermon delivered?
Either on the journey to the New World or just before departure.
What was Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity”?
A sermon instructing the Puritans on how to construct and live in a godly community. Also served as a warning. Contains the “city upon a hill” idea.
William Bradford
One of the original Dutch/Mayflower Pilgrims. Wrote “Of Plymouth Plantation.”
“Of Plymouth Plantation” by William Bradford
Bradford’s personal journal telling the story of the Pilgrims, God’s chosen people (the new Israelites,) who were sent into the wilderness on a divine errand. A Jeremiad.
Jeremiad
A style of Puritan writing in which the author gives an anguished call for return to earlier holiness.
Catharine of Aragon
Married Henry VIII to form an alliance between England and Spain. Could not bear a son (instead, bore Mary) for him. Henry VIII divorced her for Anne Bolin.
Covenant
Agreement/contact with God. Puritans believed that they had a covenant with God in the New World. He will bless them if they are faithful to him.
Hester Prynne
Protagonist of The Scarlet Letter. Committed adultery with Dimmesdale, was punished: had to wear a red “A” on her collar.
Arthur Dimmesdale
A young priest who committed adultery with Hester Prynne. Hated himself for it and his conscience constantly bothered him. Died on the scaffolding after revealing his sin.
Roger Chillingworth
Hester’s husband whom she cheated on. A doctor. Learns Dimmesdale’s secret and torments him. Dies a year after Dimmesdale.
Pearl
Hester and Arthur’s daughter. Very wild and passionate. A living symbol of the scarlet letter.
5 sayings from Poor Richard’s Almanac
- If your head is wax, don’t walk in the sun.
- There are no gains without pains.
- One today is worth two tomorrow’s
- Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.
- What you would seem to be, be really.
Who was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s grandfather?
A judge in the Salem witch trials
The Enlightenment
Aka the Rise of Science (late 1600s to 1700s)
Royal Society
A British scientific academy founded in 1662
Newton and Locke argued that the universe was an ____ and that man could understand its laws by the application of _____.
Orderly system; reason
By the time of the Enlightenment, history advances not towards God’s millennium but towards…
Achievements of human progress resting on individual energy and character.
Deism
Valued progress from religion to science since we now have the evidence. Assumed humans were naturally good. Believed that a harmonious universe suggested a benevolent god, who, having set the world in motion, gave humans reason to understand Creation.
Who said, “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan/The proper study of mankind is man”?
Alexander Pope
Deists saw people as a..
tabula rasa
Why does Benjamin Franklin best represent the spirit of the Enlightenment?
He was self-educated, a man of the world, public-spirited, curious about the nature of the universe, preferred to watch human behavior rather than debate theology. Depended on first-hand experience.
Ben Franklin’s works that we read:
The Way to Wealth
Poor Richard’s Almanac
Autobiography Part II
Letter to Joseph Priestly (about progress of science)
Something of My Religion (about religion)
