People and Piety: Protestant Devotional Identities in Early Modern England. Edited by ElizabethClarke and Robert W.Daniel. Manchester University Press, 2020. 320 pp. £25.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: The scholarly field of early modern religious history has experienced what John Coffey aptly terms the 'devotional turn', wherein the study of piety has emerged as an essential counterbalance to more traditional political and doctrinal histories.People and Piety, edited by Elizabeth Clarke and Robert W. Daniel, makes a valuable contribution to this field by interrogating the nature of Protestant devotional identities in post-Reformation England.Building on the work of Alec Ryrie and Jessica Martin, this volume advances our understanding of piety as a lived and often contested practice, one shaped by spatial, textual, and performative dimensions.The collection's interdisciplinary approach and its engagement with recent trends in historical scholarship make it a noteworthy intervention in the study of early modern religious life.One of the volume's central achievements is how it complicates the concept of religious identity, approaching 'devotional identities' as distinct from 'denominational identities'.The editors expertly frame the volume, recognizing the need for an analytic lens that differentiates between denominational rigidity and the fluidity inherent in personal devotion.While traditional historiography has often treated post-Reformation England's religious landscape through rigid sectarian boundaries, People and Piety instead highlights the fluidity and hybridity of devotional practice.As the editors argue, devotional identities were shaped not only by confessional allegiance but also by the spaces, texts, and rituals that framed believers' lived experiences.This perspective is supported by an array of primary sources, including hymnals, prayers, diaries, and even theatrical works, which collectively reveal the intricate negotiations that structured Protestant devotional life.The volume is divided into two sections: 'Sites' and 'Types'.The first section explores the spaces in which devotional identities were forged.Particularly compelling is David Manning's chapter on the Little Gidding community (1626-33), which challenges the common assumption that devotional writing was the sole province of clergy or religious elites.Manning's analysis of oral, scribal, and print cultures within this community underscores the interwoven nature of textual production and devotional practice.Similarly, Michael Durrant's study of Katherine Sutton's Experiences (1663) sheds light on the role of printers in shaping devotional works, an often-overlooked aspect of religious material culture.Lynn Robson's essay on devotional identities within early modern prisons is particularly compelling, revealing how devotional identity was shaped by the stark environment of confinement and the rhetoric of suffering and martyrdom.In fact, the contributions examining devotional practices in prisons (Robson, Gill) offer a striking intervention into existing scholarship, highlighting incarceration not merely as punishment but as a powerful locus of spiritual reflection and literary production.These essays would have been even more compelling had they explicitly addressed the broader socio-political implications of imprisonment on shaping devotional writing and religious communities.The volume also productively complicates conventional binaries.Ann Hughes's examination of sermon note-taking reveals the nuanced interplay between personal piety and communal identity within households, highlighting how domestic spaces functioned as active arenas of religious negotiation and identity formation.Similarly, Robert O. Yates' insightful analysis of the Puritan Widow persuasively demonstrates how the theatre became a site for
Source: History
Author: Catherine Kerton‐Johnson
Institution: Purdue University West Lafayette
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409679394