“The Soul in Paraphrase": Prayer and the Changing Mental Worlds of Early Modern France and England.

9798607307820

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2019

1 online resource (342 p.)

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Prayer was the central ritual of early modern religion, but historians have barely begun to study the ways ideas about prayer changed over three centuries of religious conflict. This dissertation is the first study to look at changes in prayer across the entire early modern period. It examines a series of fractious debates in early modern France and England about the practice of prayer. It argues that prayer became a source of acute conflict as men and women struggled to know how to pray in light of shifting ideas about God’s providence, the intercession of saints, and the possibility of miracles. In the sixteenth century, humanist and Protestant polemicists attacked late medieval forms of prayer as mechanical and irrational. These reformers, however, failed to create a unified devotional culture. Over the next two centuries, English Puritans, French Jansenists, and Enlightenment rationalists labored with limited success to place the practice of prayer on a stable intellectual foundation. They argued about the propriety of using set forms of prayer, the appropriate mental state for prayer, and the validity of petition in prayer. Many continued to pray as their ancestors had, but increasing numbers began to use prayer as a means of disciplining themselves rather than altering their material or spiritual circumstances. The study of early modern prayer reveals the formation of a new kind of European religious consciousness that emphasized sincerity and personal regeneration over ritual conformity.

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English

July 15, 2020

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2019.

Yale University. History.