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[This
site contains
ressources on Puritanism in both Old and New England, and more
particularly in early seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Lots of
primary sources have been made available from these pages, as well as a selection
of the most useful links on Puritan studies.]
***
Tell
us what you think! Your feedback is important!
What's
here?
AUG 02: New and not
yet sorted:
-- Colonial
Connecticut Records:
searchable,
browsable, and edited by the University of Connecticut (i.e. reliable)
-- 160
Wills
(Essex Co.)
-- Essex
Records Office (England),
because the settlers were Englishmen (see the SEAX catalog: very
useful!)
-- FamilySearch:
the Mormons' site - handle with care, it is error-ridden. But still,
it's a good starting point.
-- 1895
Maps (including
Massachusetts, and the counties)
-- Edward Johnson, Wonder
Working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England 1628-1651 (1910
ed.)
-- 1610 Mirror
for Magistrates
--
Charles E. Banks, The
Winthrop Fleet of 1630
JUL 02: Another
stack of documents we all need (all plain text, zipped, all taken from
the Memory of America e-library, copyright theirs, if any...):
-- John Winthrop's Journal, edited by Savage, in two
volumes, with Savage's interesting notes. Vol.
1 - Vol.
2
-- Robert C.
Winthrop, The Life and Letters of John Winthrop, Vol.
2
(1630-1649), contains a good number of useful letters written by the
famous governor.
-- Local histories:
Sewall's History
of Woburn
(1868), Lewis' History
of Lynn
(1865) and Clap's History
of Dorchester (1859)
-- Cotton Mather's Magnalia
Christi Americana
(1855 edition, first published 1702)
MAY 02: New
documents freshly added (fac simile):
-- New Englands Jonas Cast up at London (1647),
about Robert Child's Remonstrance (pdf file, 1.44Mo)
-- The
Planters Plea,
1630, anon. (attributed to John White, of Dorchester), 56p, html
format. See
title page.
-- The Simple Cobler of Agawam, by Rev. Nathaniel Ward
(1647, huge pdf file: 4.9Mo!!)
-- John Winthrop's Arbitrary Government Described and the
Government of the Massachusetts Vindicated of that Aspersion
(1644,
pdf file, 2Mo)
-- James Savage's Genealogical
Dictionary of the First Planters of New England,
in 4 volumes, plain text files, between 1.5Mo and 2.0Mo)
Read this first!
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This is a history site, not a
religious site! I am not religious, I 'only' study New England
Puritanism and provide research material. Therefore this site does not
contain "pro-puritan" propaganda. The aim is scientific and
consequently I try to be as objective and reliable as possible, so that
these pages can be helpful for other students of puritanism both in Old
and New England, and mostly in the Seventeenth century, but also in the
Sixteenth. I have tried to make available primary documents that can
help you make your own opinion about this subject. Secondary material
should be mistrusted a priori, till it proves 'sound'.
The risk is of course
that of 'filiopietistic' interpretation of the past, a sort of
uncritical celebration of the feats of one's ancestors. This is why I
give you links towards academic projects, which can be expected to be
reliable (or else what should??) and to sites I found useful for my
own research.
I give you access to my
own research as well, at least what I have been able to put online,
that is for the time being my MA Thesis, which is a good place to
start! ;-)
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Primary Sources
On this page I have tried to
list ALL the texts I could find on the Web written by New Englanders in
the 17th century or related to Puritan New England, before or after
immigration. I have tried to make this page as exhaustive as possible
and to centralize all the sources available. If you find texts NOT
listed on my page, please drop me a note here.
Calvinist theology and political philosophy
This page is designed as an E-Library of political philosophical
texts, mostly related to American colonial history, but there are a few
texts written in the 16th century, at a time when theologians and
political philosophers were often the same men.
As for Calvinist texts, you will find works of men like John Ponet,
Calvin, Goodman, John Knox, John Foxe, Beza,
Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards
Theocracy, Aristocracy and
Democracy in Early New England
This is my MA Thesis
(2000). Starting with an analysis of the Charters and the Covenants as
influential fouding "tools", I have discussed the parameters
that could help determine whether or not Massachusetts was a theocracy,
and I have tried to reassess the concepts of democracy, aristocracy and
oligarchy in a detailed analysis of the evolution of the franchise. I
have also used legal and judicial documents.
You can also read a summary
of this work in French.
The English Reformation
Sources and links, with a special effort on
translations of the Bible into English, and a special section with
numerous texts by John Knox
Local History: Massachusetts
Earliest Towns
An in-progress page where you can find a list of
all the towns founded in Massachusetts in the first two decades, with
links to pages, local historical societies, to online books (or not
online, for that matter!), contacts, plus the usual stuff: useful sites,
mailing lists...
Of
William Bradford; Of Plymouth Plantation:
a short, in-progress selection of links pointing to online ressources on
the work and its author, part of a project aiming at the first French edition of Bradford's
narrative.
Locate Books on Puritanism (in progress)
Buy them easily from Amazon, or locate them in some
libraries in France and Great Britain (in Paris but also in other towns,
at the British Library, at the Cambridge University Library...)
-- Bibliographical
research on line:
a special page to help you
locate books in many European libraries via online catalogues. (The
page is in French, as it is destined mainly to French students)
Puritan
Studies Research Group: Join us and discuss topics
related to Puritanism, from a historical point of view. This Yahoo! discussion
group is open to all students
and academics interested in Politics, Religion and Society from Old to
New England in the 16th and 17th centuries. This will not
only be a place for theologians, but also for, say, students of justice
in Jacobean Essex, the General
Court of early Massachusetts, social relations in Elizabethan
Lancashire, resistance in Zurich and Geneva, and Grace ... everywhere!
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Articles
To
view the following files, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free). Download
it!
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- Calling
and resistance: Huldrych Zwingli’s (1484-1531) political theology and
his legacy of resistance to tyranny, by Andries Raath and Shaun de Freitas
[.pdf]
-
Heinrich
Bullinger and the Marian Exiles: The Political Foundations of Puritanism
by
Andries Raath and Shaun de Freitas [.pdf]
-
The
Origins of Defensive Natural Law in
Huldrych
Zwingli’s Covenant Theology
by Andries Raath [.pdf]
Detailed Chronology of political
evolution (1630-1665)
(actually, no)
Evolution of the Distribution of Political Powers: a Diagram (be
patient)
Images and Maps
The images will be mostly portraits, and the maps
will be scanned from books, therefore subject to copyright! [more to
come] [perhaps]
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| Links to sites and research centers
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Yale
Law School's Avalon Project
offers a great number of texts covering an incredible
timespan, and obviously including seventeenth century history. This is
the one place to find charters, grants etc.
The
Hanover Historical Texts Project
is another site where useful texts
pertaining to puritanism on BOTH sides of the Atlantic can be found.
A
Hypertext on American History from
the colonial period until Modern Times
contains
original texts and analysis on American history in general. Their
comments are reliable, on the whole, but the site is most interesting
for the texts it has that cannot be found elsewhere.
The
American Colonist's Library
(formerly the
Universitylake Web Directory) is an impressive collection of texts
relative to American colonial history, but they include texts from
Europe which influenced the men and events that made Colonial history
what it is.
The
Winthrop Society (their Links
page) is a genealogical society which proposes a list of texts from
the early decades of settlement in the Bay. These texts usually contain
introductions and explanations on context, which can be useful though I
personally don't agree with their interpretation. But the texts are
still very useful as such, and their links page is also interesting.
The
Mayflower Pages,
by Caleb Johnson is an
impressive site devoted to the Pilgrim Fathers and early Plymouth. As
such it is quite useful in so far as Plymouth is a neglected colony
compared to Massachusetts Bay. This site has extremely detailed
genealogical information and a very wide scope of original texts, with
useful commentaries and insight.
The
Plymouth Colony Archive Project,
University of
Virginia
is another site devoted to Plymouth, with an impressive quantity of
secondary information (essays...). Their search facility makes research
quite fast and easy, and it is not hard to find your way among their
pages.
Plimoth-on-Web:
the site of the Plimoth
Plantation Museum; it has a good deal of interesting information on the
Pilgrims, their life before immigration, the myths that were created
around them and lots of other useful things
Other sites of potential interest:
By order of arrival... Newest at
bottom!
The
Puritan Tradition and American Memory : an excellent scholarly
article by Scott Atkins (University of Virginia), which focuses on
reinterpretations of the Puritan past throughout American history. Very
clear and well documented, it opens fascinating perspectives.
Fire and
Ice: Puritan Sermons : the name is eloquent: a site which
contains a lot of sermons and guides you to sites of interest (especially
on specific divines).
A
Puritan Mind : a large
puritan site, by a Puritan, for Puritans: handle with care!
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
: one of the best places to find texts by the Fathers of the Church
or by a great number of churchmen.
Encyclopaedia
Catholica : has
interesting and not too biased articles on religion. Useful if you need a clear text on a precise (or general) point
of theology or religious history. Their treatment of Protestantism is
surprisingly objective.
The
Voice of the Shuttle: their Renaissance Page Used to be a great
site, but it is being refurbished, and many links seem to have
disappeared...
Luminarium
: devoted to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature in particular, it offers
articles and texts on divines of the times (Foxe, Hooker).
Premise:
archives. This page lists all the articles of all the back
issues of the Premise review. Many of them are on the Reformation and
politics and/or religious issues.
Reformed.org:
Historic Church Documents page, featuring Creeds, Confessions of Faith (Dordt,
Westminster),
Catechisms, Sermons (Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield), and other
documents, including the notes from the 1599 Geneva Bible: a most
valuable primary sources page. The Confessions referred to above can
be compared to the Cambridge
Platform, stating the New England Way (1649)
NEQ
Links Page: proposes links to New England's historical societies
and major libraries. Could be useful for researchers, all the more so as
they are centralized on one page.
Red,
White, Blue and Brimstone: Online exhibition at the Library of
the University of Virginia, on the Book of Revelations. Very
comprehensive, and fully documented with dozens of beautiful pictures,
mainly covers/pages.
CRIME,
LAW and DISORDER in EARLY MODERN ENGLAND: a handy selection of
websites, but more useful, two impressive bibliographies:
one on the theme of 'Honour,
Reputation and Defamation', the other, more general, entitled 'Crime,
Law, and Order' |
