 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
 |
|
|
Activities: Context Activities Apocalypse: The End of the World as They Knew It  Back to Context Activities
John Winthrop reports in his Journal that in 1637 a Puritan woman was driven to despair by her inability to ascertain whether she was one of God's "elect," destined for heaven, or one of the damned: "having been in much trouble of mind about her spiritual estate, [she] at length grew into utter desperation, and could not endure to hear of any comfort, so as one day she took her little infant and threw it into a well, and then came into the house and said, now she was sure she should be damned for she had drowned her child." Although such a response to spiritual crisis was certainly extreme and anomalous, it was not uncommon for Puritans to experience intense anxiety about their spiritual condition. Puritan theology hinged on the concept of election, the idea that some individuals were predestined by God to be saved and taken to heaven while other individuals were doomed to hell. One's status as a member of the elect did not necessarily correlate with good works or moral behavior on earth, for God had extended a "covenant of grace" to his chosen people that did not have to be earned, only accepted with faith. Despite the apparent ease with which a believer could attain everlasting salvation, Puritans in practice agonized over the state of their souls, living in constant fear of damnation and scrutinizing their own feelings and behavior for indications of whether or not God had judged them worthy. For the Puritans, anticipation of God's final judgment had relevance not just to the individual but to the community as a whole—and as a collective, they were far more confident about their spiritual status. Extending the notion of the covenant to the group, they operated under the conviction that they were the "chosen people of God," or the "New Israel," sent to New England to bring about the Kingdom of Christ on earth. Within the context of biblical history, they understood themselves to be living in the "end time" as it is prophesied in the Book of Revelation, with Christ's Second Coming near at hand. All around them, comets, eclipses, and other "wonders" pointed to the imminence of the Final Judgment. Puritan ministers performed complex analyses of scriptural predictions in order to pinpoint the exact day that New England would herald the Apocalypse, the time at which Christ would return and reign for a thousand years. According to the Puritans, this millennium would usher in the end of history: the earth would be destroyed, the elect would be ushered into heaven, and all others would be cast into hell. The centrality of millennial apocalyptic beliefs to Puritan culture can be indexed by the extraordinary popularity of Michael Wigglesworth's poem "The Day of Doom." With its terrifying images of hellfire and damnation and its stern accounts of God's wrathfulness, the poem might seem grim and unappealing to modern readers. But Wigglesworth's lengthy verse description of the Apocalypse was a bestseller among seventeenth-century Puritans; scholars estimate that after its publication in 1662, one copy existed for every twenty-five New Englanders. Many Puritans were apparently moved to learn its 224 eight-line stanzas by heart. As the title indicates, the action takes place on Judgment Day, when a vengeful Christ divides humanity into two groups: the righteous sheep at his right hand and the sinful goats at his left. The goats' wickedness and religious heresy are exposed, and they are condemned to a burning lake in hell. The poem graphically describes the horrific punishments awaiting the non-elect: With iron bands they bind their hands,With its plain language and catchy rhyme scheme, "The Day of Doom" functioned for Puritans as a kind of "verse catechism," useful for teaching basic theological tenets. It frequently was employed to instruct children, who would thus grow up with a thorough understanding—however terrifying such knowledge might have been to them—of the coming Apocalypse. In this cultural climate, death was approached with both fear and ecstatic expectancy, for it could bring either eternal torment or admittance to everlasting paradise. Only upon death could Puritans finally resolve the spiritual uncertainty that dominated their lives: death offered final and incontrovertible proof of their spiritual identity as either sheep or goats. The importance of death within Puritan culture is signaled by the attention they gave to funerary customs, including the carving of tombstones. Prior to the mid-1650s, Puritans usually left graves unmarked or indicated them only by simple wooden markers. Such non-decorative practices accorded with Puritans' rejection of all religious imagery as idolatrous "graven images" such as the Bible forbade. But by the 1660s, Puritans' preoccupation with death led them to erect elaborately carved gravestones decorated with symbolic images and engraved with language that both commemorated the deceased individual and expressed orthodox ways of understanding human mortality. Typical gravestone iconography ranged from traditional symbols of the transitory nature of earthly existence (skulls, skeletons, hourglasses, scythes) to emblems suggesting the possibility of resurrection and regeneration (wings, birds, flowers, trees, the sun). Eventually, gravestones also came to include representations of cherubs and human forms. One of the most common images found on early Puritan gravestones is the winged death's-head, prominent on the pediment of the Joseph Tapping stone (Boston, 1678). At first glance, the image seems grim and despairing, a visual corollary to the Latin inscriptions on the lower right panel of the stone (Vive Memor Loethi and Fugit Hora, or "Live mindful of death" and "Time is fleeting"). Yet the wings attached to the death's-head suggest the possibility of resurrection and ascension to heaven, thus pictorially signifying the conceptual duality of Puritan attitudes toward death as both a fearful event and a potential means to eternal salvation. The architectural symbolism of columns and tablets on the Reverend Abraham Nott stone (Essex, Connecticut, 1756) similarly functions as a visual emblem of apocalyptic thinking, suggesting the rebuilding of the temple and the Second Coming of Christ as it is prophesied in Revelation. With their iconographic fusion of religious and aesthetic values, gravestones offer important evidence about the interrelationship of spiritual concerns and attitudes toward death in Puritan culture. Questions
[2121] Anonymous, Goffe Rallying the men of Hadley (1883), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-75122]. Indian attacks on villages in western Massachusetts during King Philip's War challenged the viability of English settlement in New England and led many to question why they had fallen so far from God's favor and to wonder whether the Apocalypse was near. [3370] Anonymous, The Rebekah Gerrish Stone (1743), courtesy of Wesleyan University Press. This stone depicts the conflict between time and death: a candle is flanked by a skeleton on the left, about to snuff out the fire, and a winged angel on the right, with an hourglass in hand, making a prohibitive gesture toward the skeleton. This dispute reflects the dual nature of time and Judgment found in Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom" and the more concrete dualism of the Apocalypse: some will be sent to hell and some to heaven. [4427] John Stevens, The Mary Carr Stone (1721), courtesy of Wesleyan University Press. The Mary Carr Stone, in Old Common Burying-ground in Newport, Rhode Island, reads "Here lyeth the Body of Mary the Wife of John Carr, Dyed Sepr; ye 28th: 1721: in ye 21st: year of her age." The carving was made by the elder Stevens, a carver known for both the quality and the innovativeness of his work. The stone's imagery emphasizes rebirth. The sides and bottom feature intricate leaf patterns, pilasters, rosettes: flower and leaves were associated with the life of man (Job 14) and fecundity. At the top is a cherub with wings, and at the base is a pair of peacocks, symbols of immortality. [4433] Michael Wigglesworth, The Day of Doom. Or, A Short Description of the Great and Last Judgment. With a Short Discourse about Eternity. By Michael Wigglesworth. The Seventh Edition, Enlarged. With a recommendatory epistle (in verse) by the Rev. Mr. John Mitchel (1715), courtesy of the Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History, University of Virginia. Originally published in 1662, this New England bestseller was often memorized by the pious: by 1715 it was already in its seventh edition. The poem tells of the coming of Christ on judgment day and the separating of the sheep (saved) from the goats (unsaved). A jeremiad, the text uses fire and brimstone to encourage sinful readers to repent. |
|
 This tool builds multimedia presentations for classrooms or assignments.   An online collection of 3000 artifacts for classroom use.   Download the Instructor Guide PDF for this Unit. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|