Study Guide Island Christianity
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The Practice of Piety
First printed in 1602, Lewis Bayley’s Practice of Piety became the most popular devotional manual in seventeenth-century New England (Hayes 43). By 1753 the book was already in its 59th English edition, and John Eliot’s Algonquian translation Manitowompae Pomantamoonk had been printed twice (1665 and 1685). Like the Bible and sermons, New England devotional manuals were a form of social literature, often being read within prayer groups, including all female prayer groups (Hayes 30). Indeed a special abridged version of Bayley’s work designed especially for women appeared in 1728 (Meditations and Prayers for Household Piety; Hayes 43). Like other devotional manuals, Bayley’s work offered practical advice for worshippers, including “prayers for many different occasions,...advice on reading the Bible, practicing closet devotions [private religious practice], singing psalms, and observing the Sabbath” (Hayes 43, 30). The iconographic title page to the 1620 edition reflects this advice in its familiar use of images of death’s head, winged time, and a lamp-bearing virgin, all of which warned Christians that one goal of worship was to prepare for death. Such iconography was common in Puritan devotional manuals from this era (Hambrick-Smith 37), as well as on gravestones and funerary rings. These icons stirred the hearts of Puritans and cleared the way for God’s redemptive grace. Manitowompae Pomantamoonk’s popularity on the Vineyard provides insight into the community’s ideals, as well as Puritan attempts to normalize Algonquian spiritual practice. A 1685 copy of Manitowompae Pomantamoonk inscribed by Gay Head minister Zachary Hossueit survives in Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford (Goddard and Bragdon I. 470-471).
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