This edited collection of papers arose from a conference at Queen Mary University of London in 2018. The collection uses lifecycle moments to explore the experiences of different faiths as they navigated the stresses and strains of living in early modern England. The stated aim of the editors is to facilitate not only a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between religion and lifecycle, but to encourage cross-confessional comparison, currently rare in the scholarship of early modern religion communities. Papers therefore range across Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities both before and after the break with Rome, allowing the reader to think about continuity and change in and amongst the numerous upheavals that characterised the period. The editors also take to task the idea of ‘the’ lifecycle, suggesting instead the term ‘life-spiral’ as it arose from the conference discussions that subsequently shaped the book. Life-spiral, the editors suggest, more successfully captures the recurring and overlapping nature of what has previously been described as the life-cycle. Early modern individuals might go through the lifecycle on several occasions, as spouses died, remarried, and became parents (either biological or adoptive). Moreover, these life-cycles or life-spirals were interwoven and overlapping. Birth in particular, this volume shows, did not just create new parents, it might also quickly shift to the ultimate point of the life-spiral – death. These categorical complications become very evident in the collection’s structure. As might be expected, the editors have chosen to organise this volume around the established points of the lifecycle: birth, childhood and youth; adulthood and everyday life; and the dying and the dead. Almost every contribution in this book might be at home in any one of these sections, as the fundamental messiness of the lifecycle, or the life-spiral, makes itself evident. The editors and contributors to this volume further unpick our understandings of lifecycle or life-spiral by exploring the different types of lifecycle that were at play on the lives of ordinary people in early modern England. Whilst much scholarship focuses on the bodily lifecycle, shaped by birth, physical maturation, ageing, and death, this volume explores the social lifecycle of school, work, marriage, and the religious lifecycles of faith and denomination.
Unsurprisingly, a key theme of the contributions to this volume is that of community. Contributions by Mary Clare Martin, Caroline Bowden, and Nancy Jiwon Cho explore the ways in which children might be raised to be good members of their religious community. For the Catholic Jerningham family this was done through the careful selection of a school, and a dutiful correspondence home. For less elite families, the home was central with support from day schools. These contributions highlight the effort that was invested by parents and by a congregation more broadly in seeking to include children in the daily activities of their religious community. Bernard Capp and Tessa Whitehouse explore the tensions that existed at the boundaries of communities defined by religion. Capp studies the secular dynamics of conversion narratives, from professional advancement to the extension of social networks, to adolescent attention-seeking, whilst Whitehouse looks at the importance of the lifecycle in bridging denominational differences. Emily Vine and Lauren Cantos’ contributions to the volume place the body (or bodily remains) at the centre of community boundary-making. Vine’s contribution on the burial practices of London’s Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities presents a particularly interesting case study, not just of the importance of burial sites in communities, but also the maintenance of community boundaries that exist within the administrational constraints of parish and district.
Another central theme in this collection of essays is that of transition and the liminal moments and spaces that facilitate such transition. Alexandra Walsham’s opening chapter explores the flexibility of the spiritual lifecycle through ‘second birth’ or religious conversion later in life. Physical and religious age, Walsham argues, were fluid in response not only to the individual convert, but also to the lifecycle of the religious denomination itself. For David Fletcher, the stage offers a space in which religious doctrine could be questioned and challenged whilst also emphasising the ubiquity of the lifecycle as an organising element of early modern life. Rebecca Whitely beautifully illustrates the power of images to shape the mind and therefore to encourage deep spiritual reflection whilst also exploring the womb as both liminal space and proof of God’s power and creativity. Birth and death dominate this collection as they dominated early modern life. This is particularly evident in Rosemary Kemp’s detailed reading of John Souch’s painting Sir Thomas Ashton at the Deathbed of his Wife which also forms the front cover of the book. The bed chamber in which the portrait is set is also the backdrop for many of the lifecycle events discussed throughout the book, bringing us back to the overlapping stages of the life-spiral —a space where birth and death meet.
Contributors to this book lay claim to a variety of disciplines, and the source material used is therefore rich and extensive. Diaries, letters, autobiographies, conduct books, hymns, drama, line drawings, paintings and conduct books all contribute to a wide-ranging consideration of religion and everyday life amongst the turbulence of seventeenth century England. This book will, of course, be of significant interest to scholars of religion in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. Yet, this collection’s approach of interweaving religion and domestic life —highlighting the flexibility of denominational and community boundaries, the precarious nature of both physical and spiritual lifecycles, and the overlapping of birth and death —means that it has a reach far beyond studies of religion. Scholars and students of everyday life, of birth, death and every lifecycle stage in between, and of identity and community will also find useful elements in this broad collection of scholarship.
