DISCIPLINE AND PIETY

DISCIPLINE AND PIETY

1. CALVIN'S TEACHINGS

   • Ecclesiastical Ordinances 1541
     • Democratic election of elders
       • 2 from Narrow Council, 4 from Council of Sixty, and 6 from Council of Two-Hundred
       • Men who are fearful of God and have good spiritual discretion
     • Consistory to meet every Thursday
     • Discipline and Punishment from the Holy Word of God
     • Discipline in the educationary message of the Gospel
       • People living uprightly will influence others to do the same
       • Attending sermons not enough
         • Must understand and follow the Scripture in their entirety - interpreting the message with the preacher
       • Vernacular understanding emphasised
     • Disciplined approach to Scripture
       • One belief and limitations of personal interpretation of Christian belief argued by the Consistory
   • 1537 Articles
     • Outlined the organisation of the Church
     • Expectations of individuals
       • Persons of upright life, and needing to master sacramental knowledge
   • Fourfold Ministry
     • Pastors
       • Proclaim the Word of God and to administer the sacraments as well as admonish, instruct and censure the populace
     • Doctors
       • Masters of Theology, Hebrew - for spiritual and learned education
     • Elders
       • Oversee lives of everyone in the community and to admonish those who were erring/ leading a disorderly life
     • Deacons
       • Provision of charity and poor-relief to the less fortunate members of society

2. Samuel Ward's Diary

   • Puritan 'self-fashioning'
     • Margo Todd; conscious effort to create this identity/ a rite of passage
       • Self-flagellation and a process
         • Parallels with Calvin's own musings, and a fashion of self-deprecation and modesty to make one's efforts seem greater
       • Puritan work-ethic - never a wasted moment
   • 25th May - hearing God's word
     • Nothing conduceth more to the true service and glory of God than often to hear his Word, to call upon him and such Christian exercise
     • A man must therefore labour above all things for alacrity in God's service
   • Calvinist academic at Cambridge
     • God a constant judge and companion
   • 31st May - doubts and anxieties
     • "Not feeling of the reverance which I ought to have in the sight of God" - need for DISCIPLINED control of the faith.
     • Constant reflection on God's majesty and in seeking the truth - God's Word is above all
   • 14th June - lacklustre devotion is sinful
     • Not taking in the sermons or fulfilling Christian practice means you are not following God's path.
     • God's omnipresence means nothing you do will go unnoticed, and he is a continual judge of your actions.
     • While you have no control of your election, you must live as uprightly as possible to prove you are one of the elect - receiving a sign of your election - keeping society morally disciplined
   • THEME - ennui towards religious devotion a sin
     • Needing to be extirpated from humanity and society
   • Plate on the Diary establishes disicplinary message
     • III. To give all glory to God. IV. To bear crosses patiently V. To do good works

3. GENEVA

   • Benedict - exemplary moral order
     • Assertions of a proper church discipline attracted godly visitors to Calvin's Geneva to rhapsodise about the exemplary moral order established there (Knox)
   • Mentzer - energetic ecclesiastical polity
     • Which centred on the local church and consistory
   • CONSISTORY
     • To implement city-wide order
     • Marriage counsel
       • Adultery, unrequited love and ownership of objects
       • Enforcing discipline and morality between spouses
     • Based on judicial and 'fairness' principles
       • Quest for the truth
         • Case of Jane and Bertin Vulliens in 1542 - "examine them better and learn the truth better from the parties on Monday"
       • Much deliberation
         • Evidence for claims brought forward a necessity
       • Emotions to be controlled
         • Place of humility, and no place for anger towards others
     • Calvin admonished those who failed to follow the true faith
       • 1542 - Donne Janne Pertennez - not following Scriptural guidelines and needing greater education
       • Assessing the religious understanding within the community
         • Most common concerns were church attendance and knowledge of prayers
     • Self-enforcement
       • People coming forward to repent
         • Seeking spiritual guidance and counsel, or vindication
       • Disciplining one another
         • Similar to Catholic confession, but for civic morality at large - upholding Calvinist ideals
     • Kingdon - Court and legal counselling service
       • Trying to instruct Genevan residents in the new religious obligations they had to follow
     • Watt - Anxious over female religious behaviour
       • Perhaps explained by Calvin's emphasis on women as moral examples for their children and husbands to follow - disciplined house leads to disciplined society
       • Religious education to shift from the church to the home a common Reformer's concern
       • 1542 Official's Report
         • Women were more easily led astray or more ignorant with regard to Reformed practices
         • More frequently practising 'popish' doctrines
       • Loss of veneration of Mary and female saints
         • Women losing important religious role models
     • Benedict - Essential agency
       • For effecting the communal moral regeneration that appeared so attractive to so many, and the initial excitement of the Reformation
     • Initially no heresy cases
       • Not preaching conflicting views, but on the Scriptural knowledge of the populace
     • Against Catholic vestiges
       • Baptismal names dispute
       • Dancing
         • Removing the folk-tradition aspect
         • Associations with sex and fornication
           • Upholding pious lifestyle and 'upright' behaviour
     • Stages of correction
       • Excommunication final; inability to resolve the issue of sin
       • Beza consolidating Calvin's legacy
         • Issue of control and censuring the populace remained - carrying through with Calvin's vision with gusto
       • Excommunication losing severity?
         • 1 in 8 were excommunicated - multitude of cases and thus the moral judgement perhaps diminishes

4. SEPARATION FROM CATHOLICISM

   • Calvin and followers keen to separate from excesses and laxities of the Catholic faith
   • 1559 - Knox's preaching and iconoclasm
     • Inspires an iconoclastic rampage in Perth to destroy all Catholic vestments and idols
     • Kirk sessions
       • Keen to commit to the central Protestant focus on the sermon and the godly life of moral DISCIPLINE and prayer
       • Fought Yule celebrations
   • Mentzer - distinguished unequivocally from 'papists'
     • Vigorous concept of election reinforced the penchant for arranging and defining the community
   • Paris Synod 1559
     • Establishes explicit, mutually agreed-upon rules for excommunication throughout the French Reformed churches
     • Polarity to Catholicism
     • Community cohesion through a shared Protestant identity and a common goal of devout, orderly society
       • Catholic clergy increasingly seen as corrupt by all Reformed communities
       • Following the Ten Commandments
         • Duties to God and duties to one's kindred human beings
   • Amsterdam Kerkeraad
     • Warned members against the fellowship of Catholics.
   • Recurrence of plague, famine and strife divine judgement for maintaining apostasy of popery

5. CONTEMPORARY EMPHASIS ON HIERARCHY

   • Discipline enshrined in the Calvinist justice system
     • Chareyne - mirrored the long-established social hierarchy
   • Kirk Sessions
     • Established a justice system of punishment to be meted out to those breaching moral codes, similar to Geneva's
   • Nimes - 'Discipline is the sinews of the church'
     • Moral order along social lines
   • Deacons from higher status having moral ascendancy
     • Co-ordinated the activity of the elders - a hierarchical system
   • Discipline a cure for the moral and civic ills of the period
   • Gender Hierarchy
     • Sanctity of marriage and abhorrence of pre-marital sex
     • Mentzer - the double standard
       • Officials prosecuting women for fornication, whereas men committing the same crime often ignored, or dealt a lesser punishment
       • Yet equal punishment for men and women committing adultery

6. SCOTLAND - M. Todd

   • Kirk's reputation of vigorous repression of festivity
     • 1560 onwards - from local session to General Assembly, waged a stern, unremitting campaign
     • Squash popish superstition - blamed for plague and famine
     • New vision of the 'good life'
       • Community cohesion through a shared Protestant identity
   • REVISION
     • Flurry of legislation in 1570s
       • Spurred by the Reformer's recognition that thus far, Protestantism had made little dent in popular 'supersititous' celebration
       • Mild censures meted out, delayed compliance
         • 1580s acts
           • Lacked the severity that would have assured compliance - punishment weak in context
         • 'Fighting a losing battle'
           • Fines and admonitions having little effect
     • Kirk Sessions documents
       • Elders chose their battles carefully, and with the priorities of the larger church and community in mind
       • Vigorous attacks on masks and costumes
         • Principle concern with the wearing of disguises; gender inversion in dress - fundamental dishonesty
         • Ideas of misrule feared by civil and ecclesiastical authorities all across Europe
         • Concerned with the overturning of the gender hierarchy
       • Perth and Aberdeen reveal a slow pace of cultural Reformation
         • Secured the Reformation with this compromise
           • Less likely to face retaliation of vindication from over-punished locals unused to the new religous regime
           • Authorities behaved not most sternly but with most discrimination - multiple hues of compromise
     • Authorities tempered voluble disapproval with relative tolerance
     • TRANSFORMATION rather than the abolition witnessed on the continent
   • Aberdonian resistance vigorous when Kirk attempted to abolish Yuletide festivities

7. FRANCE - R. A. Mentzer

   • Montauban - 1595
     • Strongly Protestant French town - consistory with pastors, lay elders and lay deacons; moral issues their chief concern
     • Consistory's historical reputation
       • Tireless efforts toward identification and correction of fornication and adultery
     • Men and women performing humiliating penance for extramarital pregnancy
   • Consistories and civil magistrates having shared aim
     • Collusion of moral ideal
     • Cooperated in important ways
       • Cases coming to the Consistory's attention due to municipal justice
       • Ecclesiastical courts granted access to criminal court records and collaborative efforts existed in other Protestant towns
   • Goal of Refomed churches - orderly and godly society
     • Closely observing scriptural directives; especially the ethical code of the Decalogue
   • Parker - taming of a combative and contentious medieval culture
   • French Reformed churches cemented harmonious alliances at regional and local levels
   • Reformed ecclesiastical polity
     • Granted a substantial measure of authority and autonomy, while maintaining an elaborate presbyterian-synodal organisation
     • Pastors and elders assembled periodically in regional colloquies, and provincial and national synods to clarify dogma, institute policy and resolve disagreements
   • System well-suited to liberties and privileges of S. France
     • Consular governments long associated with such liberties etc
     • Reinforced tradition
       • Of municipal self-governance and strengthened the local elite's control over its own affairs

8. GRELL - INTERNATIONAL CALVINISM

   • Importance of godly merchants and ministers for the success and propagation of Calvinism largely recognised
     • Exercised social and moral control over the congregations they served
   • LONDON - attracted economic exiles from France
     • Encouraged royal hospitality to Dutch/ Walloon and French reformed immigrants during the C16th
   • Importance of the foundation of universities and Academies
     • Ghent (1578-83)
     • Herborn (1574)
     • Continued the Genevan tradition of attracting international students
   • WITTE Jr.
     • Principle of Democracy
       • Guaranteed constant reflection, renewal and reform within the church
         • Semper reformanda ecclesiae
     • Perpetual balance between law and liberty
       • Allowed Calvinist congregations to adapt/ adjust themselves to a variety of locales
         • Could accommodate local spiritual and cultural flavours without losing their core religious identity
         • What Calvin adumbrated, his followers elaborated
     • Doctrine of SIN
       • Led Calvinists to emphasise the need for individual discipline and structural safeguards on offices of authority