History

We have covered rites of passage marked by colonial churches—birth, initiation and marriage. Last half of death this week as well as the conclusion of this series.

Because of the frequency of death, a culture of death grew up around objects – mourning attire, mourning rings, the family Bible and a funeral banquet, several which are foreign to us today. They provided a way to remember loved ones and reassert the necessity of survival – in a sense creating a community of mourners. Hair in mourning rings was a substitution for the departed. Lists inscribed in treasured family Bibles in a sense replace the chil¬dren whose short lives were narrated there

Mourning clothing of the sort worn in colonial Virginia had antecedents in the Middle Ages, when elite mourners wore black clothes (although other colors, including brown and red, were also considered proper for mourning). The clothes were worn men participating in burial rites and close relatives. First Mourning lasted where black was worn. Second Mourning last another three months colors shifted to grays. Mourning rings grew popular in the colonial period with rings color reflecting that of the mourning clothes. Wills spelled out who was to get the rings.

Family Bibles were part of mourning – reasserted family unity and survival and were a way for church tasks to be brought home. The choice to keep family records in a Bible was doubtless driven by practicality: paper was not readily available, so it made sense to record one’s records in the white spaces of a book one already owned. Bibles had collections of genealogies anyway.

Mourning ring engraved George, Martha Washington with their hair

Death was a great drama in the colonial period. Deathbeds were not spaces dominated only by close kin, and deathbed scenes were not necessarily intimate. Rather, the deathbed was a more broadly social scene, in which clergy and neighbors participated. Clergymen regularly visited the sick, sometimes leaving home in the middle of the night to celebrate Holy Communion at a parishioner’s bedside.

The funeral rituals had four central elements: a burial, a meal, a liturgy, and a sermon

The burial service employed more collects, prayers, psalms, and scripture selections than today’s service to place the reality of death in the context of the faith and teachings of the church with its proclamation of resurrection and another life beyond death. The burial service could not be used for those where “unbaptized, or excommunicate, or have laid violent hands upon themselves.”

Typically there was a full sermon at death expositions of an appropriate scripture text, not simply eulogies to the departed. There was significant attention given to these sermons and tended to be an education in themselves. John Thompson of St. Mark’s Parish preached on discourses on sin and judgment, the right use of time, true repentance, and righteous living, a call to faithful attendance upon one’s religious duties, and a vigorous affirmation of the promised resurrection.

Virginia clergymen’s funeral sermons made three main points about death and salvation from the pulpit. First, salvation was not absolutely as¬sured. Second, salvation came from God but was related to living a good and holy life (whether the parsons were suggesting that a good and holy life testified to or earned salvation is not entirely clear). Third, parishioners should not postpone repentance until just before death. They were trying to inspire parishioners to lead good and holy lives.

After the service there was the burial – Given the distance between the church and the house due to the size of parishes, families wanted beloved decedents to be interred near the home so that mourners could visit graves easily. Household burial was also a mark of status since it was clear that the decedent was a propery owner. Finally there was the desire to be resurrected with one’s own kin.

The Anglican church did not monopolize burial as it did over marriage. Dissenting denominations—at least those with licensed clergy and authorized meetinghouses—were free to bury their own according to the rites and customs peculiar to each.

Finally a large meal was served at the home after the church service and burial. (Today the reception in the Church is similar to this ). These meals served the purpose of reminding the living that they were indeed alive, that life went on and helped to bring them back to their normal lives. The standard funerary meal consisted of "funeral biscuits" or "mourning biscuits" and wine. The biscuits were probably molasses seasoned with caraway and ginger and often shaped in the design of a heart or cherubim. The funeral biscuits were typically dipped in alcohol before being consumed. 

We have covered rites of passage marked by colonial churches—birth, initiation and marriage. The last one is death and there is more written on it so we will cover half of it this week.

Colonial Virginians encountered death regularly. For people who survived to age 20, life expectancy in Virginia and Maryland was between 23 and 29 additional years, so average age at death was mid-to late 40s which is half our own. Women died at a more frequent rate than men (due to malaria) between the ages of 15-40, which are consequently the typical childbearing years. People died at home and were often buried there in contrast with today.

Epidemic diseases often ran rampant among the settlers. Yellow fever, small pox, measles and even the bubonic plague were diseases feared by the settlers. Infant mortality was high among the colonists and there were few trained doctors for those needing medical attention. All too often, a young wife would die when complications occurred during childbirth.

Due to this trend, the laws allowed people to get an earlier start in creating wills. Any male aged 14 or more, or unmarried females aged 12 or more, could make a will to bequeath personal property. However, only persons over 21 could devise land in a will. Married women could not make wills.

Wills tell us about attitudes toward death in this period. Death was constantly described in theological language. They characteristically opened with a statement like that penned by William Byrd I: "First I bequeath my soul to God that gave it hopeing thro the merits & mediation of my ever blessed saviour & redeemer Jesus Christ to obtain pardon and remission of all my sins and to inherit life everlasting. I bequeath my body to the ground to be decently buryed."

The Anglicans in Va. consciously distinguished her or his "spiritual goods or inward estate" from "the material goods or outward estate," thus enabling "the dutiful to cross the boundary between the everyday material world and the transcendental spiritual world of the Christian afterlife." Death was the great demarcation between the material and spiritual worlds, returning the soul to God. Sermons were preached that preparation for death was a lifelong process.

In statements of death, there was the key notion of divine providence and confident hope about the resurrection which provided solace. The death of her husband Mary Bland Lee told her brother, "is so great an affliction to me, that I han’t words to express it." Nevertheless, she did find words: "I know it is my duty as a christian, to bear patiently whatever happens to me, by the alotment of divine providence, and I humbly beseech Almighty God, to grant me his grace, that I may be enabled to submit patiently, to whatever trialls it may please him to lay on me…but that I may bear them as a good christian, with courage and resolution, with calmness and resignation, and that I may resign this life with joy and comfort, when it pleaseth God to remove me, and may have a well-grounded hope in his mercy through the merits and interseshun of our dear Saviour and merciful Redeemer”

Statements dealing with spouses were also based on a relationship with God. In her account of Mr. Fletcher’s death Mary Fletcher spends almost the entire time speaking about their relationship with each other in respect to God. She shows how great of an impact the church has on life in general (Fletcher). She demonstrated this by writing the following: “For some time before this last illness, his precious Soul (always alive to God) was particularly penetrated with the nearness of eternity; there was scarce an hour in which he was not calling upon me to drop every thought and every care, that we might attend nothing but drinking deeper into God”

There were certain rites of passage marked by colonial churches—birth, initiation, marriage, and death for the great majority of its white population and to lesser and varying extents for non-adherents and African Americans as well. We will look at the third one this week – Marriage.

In the 1662 prayer book its was called the “Solemnization of Matrimony."

Unlike the Catholics, the Anglicans rejected marriage as a sacrament but ascribed greatest importance to it in very direct language. First it was “ ordained for the procreation of children.” Secondly “, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of contingency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.” Thirdly “It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. “ Marriage was a "holy estate."

As in England, legal authorization for a man and a woman to marry could be obtained by one of two means. The couple might apply through the county clerk for a license, the clerk in this instance serving as the governor’s deputy. The advantage of the license was its minimal waiting period, but the hefty fees and the posting of a bond put this out of reach for most Virginians. Publication of barms in the parish church was the alternative utilized by most.

On three successive Sundays, the parson or, more likely, the parish clerk announced at the appointed time during or following the service: "I publish the Banns off Marriage between M. of and N. … If any of you know cause, or just impediment why these two persons should not be joyned together in holy Matrimony, you are to declare it." If the man and the woman lived in different parishes, banns were announced in both. For this task, parsons or clerks received a fee

The language of banns made obvious the purpose of ensuring the lawfulness of the intended union

Among mutual concerns, age was central. To guard against precipitous or unwise decisions, anyone under twenty-one years of age had to secure the permission of parents or guardian. Licensing or banns also sought to protect against marriages that might violate the rules of consanguinity. To this concern with blood relationship, Virginia civil authorities, like their counterparts in other colonies into which African slaves had been introduced, added prohibitions of racial intermarriage.

Weddings in Virginia were a monopoly of the Anglican church. Parsons alone could officiate.  At the time the canonical requirement that weddings be performed between the hours of 8 and 12 in the morning. By Canon law, weddings were prohibited during Lent and Advent. However, there were numerous exceptions made.

Like with baptisms, practice among gentry families was to hold the wedding at their home rather than the church. Church rubrics were explicit: weddings were to be performed "not in any private Place" but in a church where one of the parties "dwelieth" and "in the time of Divine Service."

Marriage records have survived mostly from the eastern parts of Virginia but not the back country. When population exploded after 1730 and when people came from outside rather than from home Anglican churches, there were more deviation in the above – more common -law marriages.  

There were certain rites of passage marked by colonial churches—birth, initiation, marriage, and death for the great majority of its white population and to lesser and varying extents for non-adherents and African Americans as well. We will look at the second one this week – Initiation of confirmation.

Last week we looked at Baptism. Baptism brought Church membership but was only an introduction into the church. Initiation and confirmation was the next step. Technically the child had to memorize the Apostle’s creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. (See  tablet below) There was less specific requirement – attendance at church and training in virtuous habits.

Since there was not a system of public schooling in colonial Virginia, the family was the key unit in education and in particular the parents. Since the family was also the entity pushing confirmation, there was a blurring of the lines of secular and religious education. It was all part of one process. The backup was the godparents. Promises made on behalf of the bap¬tized infant obligated godparents to see that the child was nurtured and brought to a mature understanding of the faith

Parents passed on the knowledge and skills they had acquired and which seemed appropriate to their station in life. Part and parcel of this process would be the "do’s and don’ts" of conduct, moral precepts, and traditional stories, verse, and songs, including those biblical in their source. Whether regular Bible reading and family prayers were a fea¬ture in a few, some, or many Old Dominion households is unknown

Other than parent teaching their children, there were local Anglican parson that did teach in private schools which tended to meet the affordability of those with more modest mean. Wealthy families employed their own teachers.

Confirmation was the ritual means — a veritable "rite" of passage—by which the Church of England marked the assumption of adult religious re¬sponsibilities. The Bishop confirmed in England but since there was no Bishop in Colonial America there was a problem with confirmation

Presumably ministers modified or dropped the final exhortation to godparents in the baptism service whereby they were charged to bring the child to the bishop for confirmation when they were satisfied that the child had been sufficiently instructed in the essen¬tials of the faith

(tablets required by the 1606 canons and the basic catechism for those seeking initiation)

Despite the fact there wasn’t a bishop that confirmed children, they still took communion. The Prayer Book rubric provided an escape clause; communion might be administered to those "ready and desirous to be confirmed." Again, what is not known is whether Virginia parsons adopted measures to satisfy themselves that communicants not only desired to be confirmed but could repeat the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments and make the approved responses to the catechetical questions.

While few colonial Virginians were actually confirmed, they realized the the purposes of confirmation but unfortunately without benefit of the rite.