puritanism and art

Front matter

Ill

Peer jel rosters

ailearaengei a

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY : z

2. DEFINITIONS.

I.—WHAT IS PURITANISM ? 11.—WHAT IS ART ? 5 . 3 ; ;

I.—EARLY Days . : : = A u.—To THE END OF THE MEDIEVAL Pee 5

4. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION : ‘

5. THE DESTRUCTION OF ANCIENT ART IN ENGLAND. I.—PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION . : A 11.—PERIOD OF ELIZABETH

IIIL—STUART AND COMMONWEALTH aot

7. THE PURITAN AS ARTIST.

I.—SOME MISCONCEPTIONS ; f : 11.—MILTON . : : ; : ; ; IlIIL.—BUNYAN . ; - ; ; F

8. PURITANISM AND ECCLESIASTICAL ART. I1.—ARCHITECTURE AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 11.—CHURCH ARCHITECTURE AMONG THE PURITANS

1I1.—THE ‘GOTHIC REVIVAL F : :

g. PURITANISM AND MusIc.

I1.—THE REFORMATION AND MUSIC . ; . _I1.—MusIC UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH . III.—PURITANISM AND SECULAR MusIc ‘ Iv.—MUSIC AFTER THE COMMONWEALTH . ;

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER I0. PURITANISM AND AMUSEMENTS.

1.—MERRY ENGLAND : ; : 11.—PuBLIC CONTROL OF AMUSEMENTS 111.—PURITAN OBJECTIONS

II. PROTESTANTISM AND PICTURES.

I.—THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

11.—PRE-REFORMATION ART IN GERMANY .

111.—THE First PROTESTANT ARTIST I1V.—PROTESTANT ART IN HOLLAND V.—PROTESTANT ART IN ENGLAND

12. CONCLUSION.

I.—SUMMARY AND ‘REVIEW 11.—THE EVANGELICALS 11.—MODERN TENDENCIES

PAGE

261 268

299 302 304 314 327

341 351 357

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

JOHN MILTON AT THE AGE OF TEN. From the Engraving by

Cipriani. After the Painting by Cornelis Janssens Frontispiece

THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST, AMIENS CATHEDRAL

RENOUNCING THE VANITIES BY ORDER OF SAVONAROLA. From the Painting by Frank W. W. Topham, in the ee Art Gallery, New South Wales ;

St. PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS. THE Meee DRAUGHT OF FisHEes. From the Cartoons by Raphael in the Victoria and Albert Museum

THE SCHOALE INN, NorFork. (Built in ae From a print in the Norwich Museum THE STAIRCASE, “‘ IRETON’S’”’ HOUSE, Hefei

Mr. OLIVER CROMWELL, OF ELy, Visits Mr. JOHN MILTON. From the Painting by David Neal

“Tur INDUSTRIOUS ’PRENTICE PERFORMING THE DUTY OF A CHRISTIAN.” From the Engraving by William Hogarth

INTERIOR OF ST. JAMES’S CHURCH, PICCADILLY, LONDON TITLE-PAGE OF BurTon’s ‘“‘ ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY ”

“Tur ANNUNCIATION ”’ AND “‘ ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.”’ From ‘‘ The Little Passion”’ by Albert Diirer

THE SYNDICS OF THE CLOTH HALL. From the pee by Rembrandt ; .

CuristT HEALING THE Sick. (‘‘ The Hundred Guilder Piss." From the Etching by Rembrandt .

LANDSCAPE IN SUFFOLK. From the ae es ix Gainsborough R.A. :

Tue WinpMiLt. From ae Painting tie On «2 Cit ,

DEDHAM VALE. From the Painting by John Constable, R.A.

Facing page T7408

164 166

206 210 268

306 316 320

334 336 340

Introduction

THE author of this book has done a piece of work which has long been awaiting a master workman. Old errors die hard, and few prejudices have been so obstinate as the one which Mr. Crouch has set himself to combat in these pages. What literature, architecture, and the fine arts have owed to the Puritan spirit is an immense subject, and it is not to be expected that it can be exhausted within the limits of a single volume. But every reader will, I think, feel that there is here a contribution of permanent value. What we know as the Puritan period of English history is perhaps the most discussed and controverted portion of our annals. It is rich in noble names and noble deeds; and if it is disfigured by many acts which could not be justified in our own less strenuous times, historians are substantially agreed that it deserves its place among the heroic ages of mankind. The general effect of modern historical research has been to relieve our own distinctively Puritan movement of many of the stains that were believed to have darkened its record. For generations Cromwell and his Ironsides were the convenient scapegoats on whose heads were laid all the sins against architecture and art which distressed ecclesiastics could attribute to no other origin. We are only now beginning to understand that the real Vandals lived in the days when the monasteries were being destroyed, and during the later years when Elizabeth’s “ visitors ”’

xii INTRODUCTION were in full career. We listen to-day with feelings of great good humour while well-intentioned beadles and sextons lay Thomas Cromwell’s severities to the charge of Oliver. For gradually the truth prevails, and time and common sense come to the rescue.

But the writer of this book appreciates the fact that the Puritan spirit is not of any one period alone, nor of any one country. There is a controversy of Roundhead and Cavalier in the canvases of Michelangelo and Raffaelle. The grand austere Master, dominated by the spirit and teaching of Savonarola, stands contrasted with the more sensuous and luscious school of Raffaelle ; and in the contrast is to be read the influence of Puritanism on Art. What Mr. Crouch has written here of the similar contrast between Rembrandt and Rubens is another admirable illustration of the same truth; and the life and work of Albrecht Diirer point the same moral and adorn the same tale. The very richness of the subject is one of its difficulties, as well as one of its attractions. Few themes are more fascinating; few more suggestive to the student of ethics. Nobody will, we think, rise from any serious study of the facts to deny that it was not at the hands of Puritanism that the gravity and dignity of Art suffered.

From the charge that Puritanism was the enemy of Literature we in England are saved by the magic of the name of Milton. But it is a fair argument that Dante and Spenser belonged to the same great school. Neither can the old tradition of Puritan antagonism to the drama survive when all the facts are considered. The protest of Puritanism against a drama degraded and debased is not to be confounded with an antagonism to the drama in its nobler forms. Milton’s Masque of Comus was written to be acted, and was a glorious

INTRODUCTION xiii plea for chastity and virtue presented in dramatic form. Neither do we forget Milton’s famous lines in praise of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare :—

“Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson’s learnéd sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.”

This betrays no antagonism to the stage. We might place it beside John Calvin’s defence, against the Genevan extremists, of stage plays in that famous Puritan era. He had no objection to the drama as such. He only insisted that the play should be noble and that the players should be beyond reproach.

Precisely the same principle is illustrated in the attitude of representative Puritans to fiction. When we remember that “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Robinson Crusoe ”’ were the products of men who were both famous Puritans, we understand that it was no more in the thought of such men to object on principle to the vehicle of fiction for the lessons they desired to convey than it was in their thought to criticise the parables of Christ. Not only have many of the noblest novels been the work of men and women of the Puritan school, but the Puritan has proved himself a master in the world of wit and humour. Nobody has more freely and powerfully wielded the weapons of satire and caricature. Nobody has contributed more to the mirth and laughter of mankind. Only he has scrupled to jest about sacred things, and has preserved his reverence for all that is worthy of respect in life.

All this comes out in our author’s pages. He would not contest the point that to the Puritan there were interests dearer than the interests of Art. The interests of Truth were dearer. If a picture or a stained xiv INTRODUCTION glass window, however beautiful, encouraged superstition and idolatry, he would destroy the picture or the window, holding that Truth was of superior authority to Art. In the same way he would regard the interests of morality as superior to the interests of literature; and if a book was written with the utmost charm and power of style, but was calculated to undermine the fundamental verities of faith, or sanctities of conduct, the Puritan would esteem that book well lost. Such a principle may be nght or wrong; but at least it is not ignoble, and it ought not to be interpreted as inimical to Art and Literature in themselves. It is my hope that this book, which represents the research work of many years, will find a multitude of readers, and receive at the hands of competent scholars the careful consideration that it deserves.

C. SILVESTER HORNE.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY

THE belief that Puritanism and Art are eternally antagonistic, by reason of the very nature of Puritanism and the very nature of Art, is almost universal. This belief arises partly from prejudice, and partly from the popular habit of confusing the essential with the accidental.

Every great movement that has commended itself to successive generations of men has had a valuable idea at the root of it, and in nine cases out of ten these ideas have had to challenge older ideas which have become over-developed, or distorted, or outworn. But the older idea, being the idea in possession, has generally been so bound up with the beliefs and customs of the time—bad and good—that the newer idea has had to pull down much that it would gladly have retained. In other words, an idea is very rarely suffered to unfold its full beauty and truth, and its broken lights only succeed in shining here and there through the obstacles which hinder or even falsify it.

The French Revolution is a case in point. Its central thought of individual liberty was beyond price ; but so enormous and unwieldy was its task, that within a few years the Terror and the military dictatorship of Napoleon forced thousands of its best friends to recoil from it in disgust, as from one of the most hateful of

B human crimes. Yet the idea lay all the time, as true and fine as ever, underneath an apparently stultifying accident of its historical emergence.

It has been the same with Puritanism. Its idea has rarely been able to expand constructively ; its time has gone in dissenting and protesting, until outsiders have wondered if dissidence be not its chiefest joy and its vital breath. Again, it will be found that its so-called narrowness was due to its moral and spiritual intensity, and that the evils against which it raised its voice were real and not imaginary.

There have been times, over and over again, in history when the necessity for insisting upon great moral and spiritual truths has been supreme; times when it has been impossible for serious-minded men and women to spare any time for the embroideries of life. They have been as a garrison in a beleaguered city ; the whole of their strength has been directed to the task of keeping the enemy outside the gates. But the habits of life that may be necessary in a time of siege, or when men are engaged in active warfare—the short rations and the limitations of life—need not be continued in every direction when the time of peace has come.

Yet this “last of all our heroisms,”’ as Carlyle called Puritanism, is so misread in certain quarters that many people actually believe the Puritans preferred the hardships of war to the sweets of peace. These people are persuaded that Puritanism owed its birth to a number of illiterate and fanatical persons in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who had wrong and foolish ideas about kings and bishops, and whose chief pleasure lay in preventing their neighbours from engaging in the harmless diversions of life; that they had such a hatred of art as to hinder or destroy its manifestations when-

INTRODUCTORY 3 ever they came in contact with them, three of their favourite relaxations being the prohibition of the drama, the chipping off the noses of carved figures, and the wholesale destruction of painted windows; that the almost universal representation of the Puritan in fiction and the drama is a true picture and not a caricature, and that all that has been charged against him in the past is essentially true to-day; that he is still characterised by a narrowness of creed that is only equalled by his limited intellectual outlook, and that he still looks with suspicion upon art and beauty, and the innocent pleasures of life.

“The Puritan is a man of anarchy, a man of doubt. Axe in hand, he grimly arraigns the Christianity of the past, condemns it all, and proceeds to efface its memorials. . . . The Puritan’s gospel is a gospel of gloom, that checks all joy and heart affluence, and shuns the natural as much as the supernatural: his theory of life is ‘ Thou shalt mortify thy neighbour as thyself.’’’ * So wrote John D. Sedding in a paper that was received with applause by the Church Congress at Portsmouth in 1886, and has been since published in a bound volume of essays. One might fill an encyclopedia with similar quotations from the writings of men who, on other subjects, have shown fairness and accuracy. When men like Matthew Arnold and James Anthony Froude lend the weight of their names to such charges, it is well for those who believe in the inherent force and truth of Puritanism to look at this question calmly and dispassionately.

Is there a real quarrel between Puritanism and Art ? Was the antagonism which is stated to have at one time existed between the two activities an essential antagonism, or was it only accidental and due to con-

* John D. Sedding: ‘Art and Handicraft,” pp. 38-9.

ditions that no longer persist ? Isolated examples are not in themselves evidence of a universal tendency, and it is unscientific to group men into classes from single or abnormal specimens.

Doubtless there are many instances on record of so-called narrowness in the history of Puritanism. Prynne, the author of ‘‘ Histrio-Mastix,” doubtless held bigoted views in regard to stage-plays, masques, dancing, and other forms of amusement. He, however, was not a typical Puritan, but an extremist of the most bitter kind. Those who desire to humiliate Puritanism will find many suitable quotations for their purpose in his numerous books.

It would be difficult, however, to find anything quite so bigoted or so savage in all the writings of Puritanism as the words used by the anti-Puritan judge who passed sentence on the unhappy Prynne.

“T shall fine him ten thousand pounds, which is more than he is worth, yet less than he deserves. I will not set him at liberty no more than a plagued man, or a mad dog; who, though he can’t bite, will foam ; he is fit only to live in dens with such beasts of prey as wolves and tigers like himself! Therefore, I condemn him to perpetual imprisonment; and for corporal punishment, I would have him branded in the forehead, slit in the nose, and have his ears chopped off.’’*

And this inhuman sentence was carried out! But Prynne, his judge, and their times are dead; and Puritanism, if it be a living force among living men and women, and if it hopes to keep its youth loyal to the great truths for which it has fought, must face this question of Art in all its activities, in relation to every sphere of human life. It is possible that Puritanism, in some respects, may have been travelling in a wrong

* Quoted by Neal (‘‘ History of the Puritans,”.vol. ii., p. 216) from, Rushworth.

INTRODUCTORY 5 direction, and if so, it will be necessary for it to retrace its steps.

The question we have to discuss is something more than as to whether the soil of Puritanism is suitable for the growth and development of the artistic temperament. The real question is this: ‘‘ Does Puritanism recognise the work of the artist as being of any value in that development of the race here on earth, which, as well as the attainment of Heaven, is the modern Puritan’s religious aim?” If so, to what extent is Puritanism prepared to accept Art’s ministry ?

There is little doubt that Puritanism has not only for the reasons given, again and again, looked with suspicion upon the artist, but that even to-day there are many earnest men and women who consider the pursuit of many forms of art unworthy of those who desire the highest things in life. Not only are the social and moral problems of life in themselves considered by them to be of supreme importance, but Art, in some of its manifestations, at least, is believed to be directly antagonistic to the development of the religious life.

Of course, I am not discussing the question of the relative importance of ministry to the poor, or of the practice of virtues that are explicitly enjoined by religion and of the pursuit of art in itself. What I am anxious, clearly and definitely, to settle is, whether or not those emotional tendencies which we discover in our nature, and which impel us to find pleasure in rhythmic movements, in certain combinations of forms and colours and sounds, are to be condemned and placed outside our scheme of life, and, if not, what is to guide us in their exercise.

The subject is one that is daily forcing itself upon our attention. Questions are being asked in this direction which were unheard of a generation or so ago. The whole surroundings of life are changing, and Puritanism to-day, if it is to maintain its old position, must adapt itself to its new environment. This does not mean that it must give up its principles, but rather that it must radically clear those principles of clogging accretions. It is hardly to be hoped that the work will be done without some passing dissensions in the camp. Tradition dies hard, and not every Free Churchman has a free mind. Indeed, certain Evangelicals, who are supposed to represent modern Puritan thought, still hold opinions in regard to art and amusements that are much out of harmony with the convictions and habits of thousands of men and women apparently equal to them in religious sincerity. Very often exhortations to return to the greyness and aloofness of our ancestors are delivered, not as counsels of perfection, but as though they involve the very essentials of religion ; and it is surely worth ascertaining whether the jots and tittles which the new Puritans are accused of taking away from the law are not, after all, jots and tittles which the old Puritans added to it. It is the standpoint of this volume that during the last fifty years the whole question of art in relation to life has been reconsidered. Truer conceptions of its nature and activities have become generally accepted ; and it is unwise for those who believe that religion should be the guiding principle of all human thought and work to refuse to consider the claims of every form of art.

In the early chapters of this book I discuss, as fully as May seem necessary, the meaning of the two forces. I show the way in which they have helped or hindered, as the case may be, the advance of the race in spiritual growth, and suggest what may seem to be the proper attitude of mind for Puritans to have towards this

INTRODUCTORY 7 complicated question. The road we travel stretches far backward, and yet the journey is not tedious, for we meet with those who have been of some importance in the world; we hear again voices long silent. We are present, as spectators, at some of the world’s great happenings. We hear the prophet deliver his message, and the poet sing his song. The saint lives again for us, and the musician produces his melodies and _ harmonies ; we see the preacher in the pulpit, the architect and the craftsman at their work; the theologian in his study, and the painter at his easel; the precisian and the play-writer ; the Puritan and the artist.

And at times the prophet will perhaps be also a poet, and the saint an artist, and the theologian a play-writer. We see apparent confusion and conflict of purpose ; but as we look more closely, we discern a steady and persistent growth, a broadening and a deepening of the current of life. We see also the promise of a future that shall some day arrive, when “all the threads of human development which have hitherto been kept apart shall be brought together and woven into one web.”

CHAPTER bi DEFINITIONS I.—WHAT IS PURITANISM ?

THE people who first applied the word Puritan to a particular section of their fellow countrymen were not influenced in a special degree by a desire for scientific accuracy. On the contrary, they invented a nickname with the idea of misrepresenting and holding up to ridicule a number of people who held strong opinions on an important subject, and who happened at that time to be in a minority in the state. At a later period two other words were constantly used in conjunction with it, “ precisian’”’ and “hypocrite,” and the trilogy of names, ‘‘ Puritan, precisian, and hypocrite,’ applied to the father of Richard Baxter, is sufficient ground for complaint as to the inexactitude of the epithet.

After a time, however, the word Puritan was accepted as a term which defined, with sufficient accuracy, a section of the community holding certain opinions in regard to conduct, religion, and government. For a period of about twenty years the Puritans were the dominant party in the nation, and then for a period of more than two hundred years their ideals and theories were rejected by those in authority in Church and State. Under these circumstances it is but fair that we should examine with a certain amount of suspicion the statements of their bitter opponents, as to the nature of their opinions and as to the quality of the work they accomplished. 8

WHAT IS PURITANISM P 9

The type of mind called “catholic” is apt to build up a too elaborate system of rites, ceremonies, and ordinances, and thus to confuse the material with the spiritual. On the other hand, the Puritan is apt to place too much importance upon the reason and the intellect, and, in consequence, is in danger of becoming dogmatic and hard; as a matter of fact, he has often lost much by refusing to admit the advantages of external aids to devotion. This simply means that men of opposite temperaments may, by the over-emphasis of an idea, become extremists. But it is from the actions of extremists that the average man forms his opinions of a party.

Some Puritans have, for example, held ascetic theories with regard to life. To such as these the artist seemed an unnecessary intrusion, and, as a consequence, his work was despised, and sometimes destroyed. It was a snare of Satan which might lead the saint away from the pursuit of high and holy things ; and so sights and sounds that were likely to captivate the senses were scrupulously avoided. This ascetic side of Puritanism teaches that the soul of man is to be saved by repression and renunciation, that the world is to be despised and overcome, rather than gloried in and enjoyed as a gift from God. Religion to men of this temper is intensely subjective, and when allied to Puritanism it produces a type of mind which, to quote the words of Dr. Martineau, ‘‘ detaches the elect in imagination from the remaining mass of men, sequesters them as a holy people who must not mix themselves with the affairs of Belial.’

But surely Puritans are not alone in having held theories such as these, and it is boldly affirmed that neither asceticism nor exclusiveness are essential characteristics of Puritanism. True there have been times when it seemed both to Catholic and Puritan that such methods were the only possible ones to be followed, if all that was best in ethical progress was to be preserved. And under such circumstances the end justified the means, as in times of war the safety of an army has often demanded the destruction of many fair tracts of country and many noble buildings.

Two of the chief charges brought against the Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are that they invented and perpetuated a new view of life, which looked upon beauty and joy as sinful, and that they taught for the first time that bare and sordid surroundings were necessary 1f men were to worship God in sincerity and truth. These are the most often repeated charges which the opponents of Puritanism are in the habit of making. Anglo-Catholics of the present day in particular are loud and persistent in such statements, and no doubt many among them believe them to be true.

In reality, however, this dislike of the Puritan to sumptuousness in the externals of worship, and to public festivals, and dancing, and other so-called allurements of the flesh, was inherited by him from medieval orthodoxy. It was a survival of an old Catholic tradition, which had been insisted upon as essential to the highest form of spiritual life by men who are held in the highest honour by High Churchmen to-day. ‘‘ Nothing but a close study of the manuals of conduct written for friars by St. Bonaventura and his school can make us realise how little the ordinary conscientious Franciscan retained of St. Francis’s joy in life, or in how many respects he was enslaved to a formalism worthy of the post-Reformation Puritan. The discipline of the convent was the discipline of the quarterdeck: the rules of conduct were precise and narrow. Laughter and play are

WHAT IS PURITANISM ? II absolutely forbidden in these books: beautiful sights and sounds are condemned as savouring of ‘concupiscence’; the formal religious talk and the ‘D.V.’ of the Puritan are inculcated; prayer is to be accompanied by sighs and tears; dances and public festivities are improper, not only for the professional ‘ Religious,’ but for all who wish to save their souls.’’*

St. Bernard, in his epistle to Abbot William, points out that the pictures of saints on the walls, “ attracting the worshippers’ gaze, hinder their devotions, and almost remind me of the Jewish ritual,’ and he goes on to say though these may be allowed in parish churches because the bishops, “unable to excite the devotion of the carnal multitude with spiritual things, do so with material ornaments.’’ But we monks, ‘“ who have reputed as filth all that shines bright or sounds sweet to the ear, what fruit do we expect from these things ? ”’

But St. Bernard does not stand alone among the great medieval Catholics in his anxiety to teach one of the great cardinal doctrines of Puritanism, which affirms that religion of the highest kind is absolutely independent of beautiful sights and sounds. Eustache Deschamps, Gerson, David of Augsburg, and St. Francis, all orthodox Catholics, were at one in their dislike of elaborate architecture and music, and Mr. G. G. Coulton, in the essay from which I have already quoted, has pointed out what is absolutely true, that “the Puritanism of the Reformation was simply the strictest and most logical attempt yet made to realise certain thoroughly medieval ideas; its theory had long been the theory of the religious, but none had yet dared to enforce it wholesale.”

But we must not imagine that the asceticism of

*“The High Ancestry of Puritanism,” by G. G. Coulton, Contemporary Review, Aug., 1905.

the medieval Catholic or the post-Reformation Puritan was an unnecessary infliction. On the contrary, it will be found that the insistence upon such habits of restraint has been of incalculable service to the race, for without a flavour of this tincture the heroic life, for the individual or the nation, would be impossible. Speaking on this subject, F. W. Newman, in one of his letters, says: ‘“‘ All the evangelicals, whether British, American, Scandinavian, or Teutonic, I regard as God’s moral salt of the earth, despite of their errors.” Huxley also has brought out this idea with great force. He says: “ Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest in respect of the whole conditions which exist, but of those who are ethically the best.”* Even Nietzsche admits that “asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upward to future supremacy.” And again: ‘““What is essential and invaluable in every system of morals is that it is a long constraint.” + It is unwise, then, to blame Puritanism for what has been in reality an important contribution to ethical progress.

The Catholic ascetic and the Puritan ascetic have each caught a glimpse of a great scientific truth; each has heard a voice which called him to a higher life. To the Catholic it spoke of the importance of saving his soul at any cost, and the method he employed was that of a voluntary retirement from the affairs of the world; the Puritan, on the other hand, was impelled to take an active interest in men’s doings, and so by

* Huxley : “Evolution and Ethics’? (The Romanes Lecture, 1893), p. 33. t Nietzsche: ‘‘ Beyond Good and Evil,’ English trans., pp. 81, 106-7.

WHAT IS PURITANISM P 13 choice he remained in the press of the battle. The one became a monk, a solitaire; the other a prophet, or a reformer. But to most men it will seem that a Paul of Tarsus was a more heroic figure than a St. Simeon Stylites, or that a Luther or a Cromwell helped forward the progress of the world in a larger way than a company of recluses in the retirement of Little Gidding.