While sermon cycles are based on “ordinary” preaching, and occasional sermons have much in common with their ostensibly non-topical counterparts, a complete picture of New England sermon literature cannot be achieved though print sources alone.39 Simply put, for every sermon that circulated via authorized or unauthorized print publication, many more sermons circulated via manuscript both as notes and as more fully realized prose worked up from notes.
David D. Hall has described an entire body of Puritan writing that he categorizes as scribal publication. Adding to scholarship by Harold Love and others, Hall reminds us that in the early modern period, the advent and spread of printing did not stop the production and circulation of manuscripts.40
Rather, both modes of “publication” coexisted. Love has shown that manuscript circulation was, in fact, preferred for certain kinds of texts and in certain literary circles. Hall is hesitant to include all categories of manuscript circulation, however, pointing out that even the reading aloud of a letter (a common practice of the period) might be considered a form of publication. Rather, Hall suggests that scribal publication be limited to manuscripts that are produced, usually in multiple copies and often by a single transcriber, for dissemination beyond a single corresponding group. Most of the modes of scribal publication he has identified are non-sermonic.41
While there is evidence that sermon notes were shared, either by individuals circulating notes or by notebook owners reading aloud,42 there are also instances in which the notes seem to be prepared for the express purpose of preservation and circulation on a more limited scale than the one that Hall describes. In 1660, for example, Nan Foster created a small ten-leaf booklet, hand-sewn with large thread stitches along the spine. An additional piece of paper folded around the main pages of the booklet functions as a title page, declaring the work (in what appears to be a different hand from that inside) “A Sermon, Delivered By the Revd Mr. John Roger Of Ipswich August ye 16th 1660.” Likely based on Foster’s own auditor notes, the manuscript seems to be reworked in the attempt to create a full and fair copy of a sermon that she has heard. Even though there are cross-outs and irregularities of penmanship throughout, the sermon booklet has been prepared for circulation, perhaps specifically as a gift. Close examination of the handmade books can reveal not only how individuals created such idiosyncratic artifacts but also what individuals understood books themselves to be. The vertical orientation of chain lines in the leaves of the main booklet suggest an octavo gathering. Curiously, leaves three through ten are conjugate and nested while leaves one and two appear to be single sheets, suggesting an improvised method of construction. Horizontal chain lines and the position of the watermark on the outer wrapper suggest a separate sheet of paper that was added in a final, separate step to make a cover for the main octavo gathering of the oddly constructed booklet. Nan Foster does not simply copy out a sermon on paper to disseminate it; she conceives her handmade artifact as a book object.
At the end of the book, Foster appends this explanation and apology:
Dear Brother there may Be some & is
Errors ^ & Blunders in the Transcribing of this But
But I trust you will Be able to
Correct’em [characters scribbled out] & free to Excuse ’em for it
has been a tedious piece of work to me
to pick it out &c
Nan ffoster43
This prepared manuscript sermon does not constitute scribal publication in Hall’s sense of the term, but it does indicate more casual, contingent forms of manuscript circulation. That is to say, Foster does not set about to “publish” the sermon with the intent to step in where the use of the press is impractical or otherwise undesirable. Rather, Foster’s main objectives seem to be the preservation of the text in a slightly more worked-up form than notes usually afford and the sharing of that text with another single individual. In offering the personal and spiritual gift of a hard-earned transcription, Foster advertises both the difficulty of the process and the irregularity of the product but offers no apology. These “Blunders” testify to the importance of the project and, in a sense, even add to the value of the gift. “Preservation circulation” and even “gift circulation” might more accurately express the intent of a manuscript creator like Foster.
The roots of a circulating economy of godly preaching did not originate in New England but can be seen in Elizabethan England, where the dearth of university-educated ministers made “godly preaching” a vital, pious commodity.44 In
1605, for example, Henry Borlas compiled notes on ten sermons he had heard while a student at Oxford. (See figure 5.) The volume of copied transcriptions is a gift to the young man’s mother—a pious woman who has inculcated a sense of religion in her son but who presumably has no direct access to good university preaching herself. Although Borlas now has superior access to preaching and takes upon himself the authority to disseminate that pious message, his gift to his mother is one of pure reciprocity. The mother’s piety, the dedicatory epistle implies, has initiated the son’s spiritual journey. In turn, he contributes materially to her access to “godly preaching.” Like Foster, young Borlas reveals the affections that drive him forward through the tedium of manuscript creation. He apologizes in his dedication for any “unskillfulnes in handlinge” of the sermon notes, explaining that he had to find time for the project and also that he was simultaneously creating a separate copy for his grandmother.45 The need to disseminate godly preaching—a self-conscious preoccupation of laity and clergy alike in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—is manifest in the proliferation of sermon notes, circulating manuscript copies, and print sermons. The desires and rationales for each of these circulating genres implicate themselves into the production of the others. Whether providing direct source material for publication or not, notetaking practices cannot be extricated from the larger context of print sermons in this period.
Although manuscript sermons prepared for circulation and preservation sometimes circulated in a kind of pious gift economy, their interpersonal, spiritual value was tied directly to their practical functionality. The production and circulation of manuscript sermons in Elizabethan England were certainly related to the paucity of well-trained ministers who could produce new scriptural explication on a weekly basis. Though such “godly preaching” became more available in print form throughout the early Stuart period, there were still inconsistencies in access and quality. (Sermons preached at prominent locations, such as Parliament, court, or important London churches, dominate print titles in this early period.)46 The amount of print sermon literature could never approach the frequency of actual oral delivery. Furthermore, the incidence of occasional publication outpaced the printing of “ordinary” preaching, especially in the first part of the century.47 Manuscripts prepared for preservation (that is, those developed and written up from auditor notes) filled a significant gap for the serious connoisseur of sermon literature. The kinds of inscriptions and shelf markings that creators gave their own handmade volumes suggest that the manuscript texts could be interchangeable with print texts. The importance was the preaching that was represented rather than the contingent form through which that preaching was preserved.
Figure 5. Pages from a book of sermon notes on preaching at Oxford, created by Henry Borlas, ca. 1605. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
The material appearance of manuscript sermons can give clues to the specific meanings for individual creators and readers. Foster’s single sermon, apparently reconstructed from auditing notes, presents a utilitarian aspect with its solid prose blocks and little marginal space of visual guides indicating sections or movement through the sermon. While acknowledging the imperfections of her transcription efforts, Foster nevertheless strives to (re-)create a text that reads like natural, delivered speech. Borlas, by contrast, offers his mother (and presumably, his grandmother, in some now-lost manuscript) “Certaine sermon notes breifely colleted out of diverse and sundry