Household Religious Instruction in Seventeenth-Century England and America: The Case of Sarah Symmes Fiske's A Confession of Faith (Composed 1672)

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Notes

¹ On the Symmes and Fiske families, and their prominence in Colonial New England, see Pierce, Vinton, Pattee, and Adams. The granddaughter of Zacariah Symmes, a prominent Puritan minister, Sarah Symmes was born in 1652 in Charleston, Massachusetts. In 1671, she married Moses Fiske (1642–1708), son of John Fiske, minister at Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Upon receiving his MA from Harvard in 1665, Moses Fiske became minister of a church in Braintree, MA, approximately ten miles from Boston. The church, which had been struggling before his arrival, flourished under Moses Fiske's leadership. Over the next twenty years, Sarah Fiske had fourteen children; at least six died in infancy. She died in 1692, perhaps in childbirth. She is buried, with her husband, in the ministerial tomb in Braintree (now Quincy), MA. The tomb in which Fiske is buried is still extant.

² Sarah Symmes Fiske's grandfather, Zacariah Symmes, journeyed to New England on the same ship as Anne Hutchinson, but later testified against her at her trial (Vinton 3). And when Sarah Fiske died, Moses Fiske married Anna Shepard, daughter of the Reverend Thomas Shepard, who played an important role in the Antinomian Crisis (Knight 177–78). Adams remarks upon “the manner in which the New England clergy intermarried, continually, so to speak, breeding-in” (608).

³ On the role of mothers in household education in England, see Charlton, Green, McQuade, and Spufford. On literacy instruction and reading in Colonial New England, see Hall; Knight, “Word Made Flesh”; and Monaghan.

⁴ Green argues that for a work to be classified as a catechism, it must contain two features: it must be “in question and answer” format and “the basic intention of the author [should] be to provide instruction on a religious topic, broadly defined” (52). On the difficulty of determining whether a work belongs to a particular genre, see Fowler.

⁵ In 1642, the Boston General Court passed a law mandating that all heads of households catechize their children and servants “once a week, at the least” (Eames 88). On the importance of catechizing in Colonial New England, see Eames. Sarah Fiske's father-in-law, John Fiske published a popular catechism, The Olive Tree Watered in 1657. He writes that he had composed it “for the first entrance of our Chelmesford Children” (n.p.).

⁶ On the importance of printers to the publication of early modern works, see McKenzie.

⁷ Excerpts from the English version of this catechism can be found in Catechisms Written For Mothers. It differs from other maternal-directed catechisms printed in England at this time in its inclusion of instructional woodcuts designed to illustrate exemplary biblical personages. For example, it includes the following exchange: “Q.15 Who was the strongest man? A. Samson, who slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass . . .” This text is accompanied by a woodcut that shows Samson, armed with a large weapon, smiting a hapless Philistine.

⁸ We know that at one time Moses borrowed a “large concordance” from Sarah's father, suggesting that he (and presumably Sarah) read the Bible in this way, checking one use of a word against another (Vinton 20). On Puritan reading habits, see also Lisa Gordis 97–113.

⁹ See, for example, 2 Chron. 6.41 “clothed with salvation” and Ps. 104.1 “clothed with glorie & honor.” The marginal gloss to Phil 3.9 in the 1599 edition of The Geneva Bible explains that “to be in Christ is to be not found in a man's own righteousness, but clothed with the righteousness of Christ imputed to him.”

¹⁰ For more on Burch and her catechism, see McQuade, “A Knowing People.”

¹¹ Moses Fiske was the third pastor of First Church, Quincy. Before becoming a church in 1639, First Church was the Chapel of Ease where Anne Hutchinson worshipped and where her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright presided when they became involved in what is now known as the Antinomian Crisis. One of the central issues at stake in Hutchinson's trial was a woman's ability to interpret Scripture. It is one of the more interesting coincidences of literary history that less than forty years later Sarah Fiske drew upon her knowledge of scripture to compose A Confession while serving as a pastor's wife in the same church.