Ghosh Article

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History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221

Max Webers idea of Puritanism: a case study

in the empirical construction of the

Protestant ethic$

P. Ghosh*Department of History, St Annes College, Oxford OX2 6HS, UK

Received 31 January 2003; accepted 3 February 2003

Abstract

The article examines the construction of Puritanism in Max Webers famous essays on the

Protestant Ethic, and finds that the principal, empirical source for this lies in a set of neglected

writings deriving from the religious margins of Britain: Scotland, Ireland and EnglishUnitarianism. However, the impulse to construct Puritanism was not simply empirical, but

conceptual. Historical Puritanism would never have aroused so much of Webers attention

except as a close approximation to ascetic Protestantismthe avowed subject of the

Protestant Ethic and an undeniably new and modern idea. The nature of Weberian asceticism

and its relationship to Puritanism is thus the articles second major concern. Besides exploring

the intellectual world of Max Weber, the article also offers a more general, theoretical finding:

that empirical sources are not tablets of stone, eternally available to the truth-seeking

historian; rather they have a history of their own. They rise into prominence (or fall out of

sight) in much the same way as secondary literature, because they can hardly be understood

independently of organizing concepts, and so seldom are.

r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

$Abbreviations: PE, Protestant Ethic; AfSS, Archiv f.ur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik; GARS,

Gesammelte Aufs.atze zur Religionssoziologie (T.ubingen, 1920) Vol.i; WL, Gesammelte Aufs.atze zur

Wissenschaftslehre (T.ubingen, 1968) ed. J. Winckelmann; WuG, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (T.ubingen,

1972) ed. J. Winckelmann; MWG, Max Weber Gesamtausgabe ed. Horst Baier et al. (T .ubingen, 1984);

letters by Weber within the latter edition are cited simply as Briefe. Where unspecified, place of publicationis London.

*Tel.: +44-1865-274800.

E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Ghosh).

0191-6599/03/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S0191-6599(03)00002-0


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The empirical status of Max Webers Protestant Ethic (or PE) is undoubtedly one

of the most problematic aspects of a legendary, yet problematic text. Weber insisted

that it was a purely historical work offering a purely historical presentation

[XX.53; XXI.109],1 yet it plainly does not offer an historical account based on theideal of the past for its own sake. On the contrary, Weber was emphatic that the

concepts, or leading ideas, which supplied the necessary framework for any account

of the past, could not be derived from the ideas adhered to by past actors, but only

from those of the present-day analyst. It was concepts alone which allowed one to

make any kind of search amidst a practically infinite mass, or chaos, of empirical

matter: life in its irrational reality and the possible significations it contains are

inexhaustible.2 But since historical work was not anchored to a constant foundation

at some particular point in the past, it followed that the concepts of the modern

analyst, and the fundamental value-scheme or Kultur which underlay them, would

themselves become obsolete as the time horizon of the ever-moving present

continued onwards: At some point the colours change: the significance of

perspectives which have been employed instinctively becomes uncertain, the path

is lost in the twilight. The light cast by the great problems of Kultur has moved on.3

There was certainly a magnificent candour to this. When Weber wrote these words in

1904, he was anticipating not merely the general disappearance of his oeuvre at some

unspecified point after his death, but that of the PEin particular, the epicentre of his

own Kultur and scholarly labours at that dateand this even before the text had

been written. On the other hand his conception of built-in scholarly obsolescence

also served a defensive purpose alongside that of theoretical rigour, and there can beno doubt that he would have dismissed out of hand those historians and sociologists,

chiefly outside Germany, who have sought since the 1930s to criticise or defend his

findings empiricallythat is, from their own vantage point and assumptionsbut

who were so far removed from the Kultur of the Wilhelmine Reich, that, had it

occurred to them to inquire as to what Webers value-scheme was, they would have

declared it irrelevant.4 Still, if this kind of intellectual encounter is better described as

1References in square brackets in the text are either to the original text of the PEin AfSSXX (1904) 154,

XXI (1905), 1110 in the form [XX.1], or, as page numbers alone, to new material inserted in the revised

1920 text in GARS i.17206. All translations from German are my own. No disrespect for current English

language translations of the PE is intended thereby; but in my opinion none of these is framed according

to sufficiently historical principleson which point see my comment Translation as a conceptual act,

Max Weber Studies 2 (2001), 5963, or n.62 below. More specifically, none makes any adequate distinction

between the 19045 and the 1920 texts.2 Die ,,Objektivit.at sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis [1904], WL 213; for

chaos e.g. ibid., 177, 197, 207.3 Ibid., 214.4For a scholarly introduction to this literature, Malcolm MacKinnon, The Longevity of the Thesis: a

Critique of the Critics in ed. H. Lehmann and G. Roth, Webers Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence,

Contexts (Cambridge, 1993) c.10; still more recent is R.F. Hamilton, The Social Misconstruction of Reality

(New Haven, 1996), c.3. At first sight it seems surprising that anyone would want to pursue such an

obviously unhistorical exercise into the 1990s. However, it should be borne in mind that the principal

contributors have never been historians of religion or ideas. The only significant historian participants

came from within economic history and are now far in the past (H.M. Robertson, Kurt Samuelson),

P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221184


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a mismatch, it would appear to yield a straightforward result: that though Weber

remains well worthy of investigation as a product of the Kultur of his own day, and

as the author of ideas and concepts which have a perceived relevance for ours, one

may safely dispense with any further examination of the empirical foundations of thePE in the 17th century. If from a Weberian perspective empirical criticism is now

trivial and irrelevant, from the standpoint of early modern history the PE has long

since joined the unending list of past historical works which are wrong or

superseded.

However, though there is great strength in this position, it surely requires some

refinement. Weber was emphatic that the academic science or Wissenschaft which

was his lifelong vocation was not a matter of Kultur and values alone. Though he

took value positions to be fundamental and ultimately non-negotiable, he did not

accept that this rendered the role of science trivial, or that anyone committed to

the values of science could simply advance their value positions without further

ado, regardless of criticism and discussion by others with different values: the

distinguishing feature of value-free science was precisely that it could render

adherence to values significantly more fruitful and socially productive.5 Now one of

the specific disciplines imposed by science was the check imposed by empirical

testing, and one of the peculiarities of the PE is that, unlike many other classics of

European thought which preceded or eluded a university context, it has an extremely

high empirical and scholarly content. So whatever Webers predictions of

obsolescence for the future, he was extremely anxious to establish its evidential

and scholarly qualifications when he wrote it, just as he was similarly concerned todefend himself against critics in his own lifetime. Statements about the necessary

empirical foundation of the PE abound in the text:

I need hardly emphasise that, insofar as it occupies a purely dogmatic sphere, this

sketch relies at all points on formulations made in the literature on church and

dogmatic history; thus it is borrowed at second hand and to that extent makes

absolutely no claim to originality. Self-evidently I have sought to steep myself

in the sources on Reformation history so far as I can. However, deliberately to

ignore the intensive and acute theological labours of many decades as a result,

instead of allowing oneself to be guided by this literature towards anunderstanding of the sourcesas is simply unavoidablewould have been a

great presumption. I can only hope that the enforced brevity of the sketch has not

led to incorrect formulations and that I have avoided significant misunderstand-

ings of an empirical [sachlich] kind at least.6

(footnote continued)

leaving the field today to sociologists. It would seem that the underlying concern here has not been

historical, but rather to clarify the status of a canonical father of their discipline.5For the classical statement of this position, Science as a Vocation [1917/19], MWG I/17.71111.6 [XXI.3 n.3]. Cf. [XXI.5 n.4] on the appallingy undergrowth of footnotes, which were however

necessary to enable the reader... to make at least a provisional check of the ideas in this sketch; or [XX.19

n.1] lamenting the lack of detailed empiricalor concrete [sachlich] engagement with certain historicaltheses

of Sombart [on the evolution of modern capitalism] by reviewers and critics.

P. Ghosh / History of European Ideas 29 (2003) 183221 185


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So in order to understand the PE, even as a 20th century construction, we must be

able to offer some account of the role played by Webers scholarship, as of his

reliance on the scholarship of others. Belief in evidential positivism was wholly alien

to him, but still belief in the reciprocal relationship between scientific empiricismand Kultur, and the concepts generated by Kultur, was undoubtedly his. In this way a

study of Webers empiricism remains a study of his ideas. Many possible

empirical examples present themselves to our scrutiny, but in what follows I have

selected the concept of Puritanism, principally because of its range and significance.

As we shall see, it is in large part a synonym for ascetic Protestantism, the declared

subject of Part II of the PE; but whereas the latter is palpably a modern invention,

Puritanism is not. It thus supplies the single most expansive empirical test-case

available to us. After first establishing the terms status and meaning (Section I), I

seek to explain how Puritanism was constructed in fact (Sections II and III), before

finally considering the empirical construction of the PEas a whole, and in particular

the position of ascetic Protestantism (Section IV).

I

Puritanism is a central term in Webers vocabulary yet one of the least discussed.7

No doubt one reason for the absence of comment lies in its apparent self-evidence:

talk about Puritanism was uncalled for because this was not a new idea by Weber.But if this was the assumption, then it is mistaken. The definition he offers of this

many-sided term makes it plain that although the natural or initial association of

this term is English (or Anglo-American), he will not be content with too narrow or

specific a use of the term: Here we always use the expressiony in the sense which it

acquired in the popular language of the 17th century: [that of] the ascetically directed

religious movements in Holland and England, regardless of differences in dogma or

plans for church institutions. [XXI.2 & n.2] So Puritanism is essentially a synonym

for ascetic Protestantism in its English, Dutch and (in fact) American heartlands

[cf. XX.7]. Now this is not merely geographically expansive; it constitutes a generic

term, a half-way house between a specific historical description and a sociologicaltype. Alongside an apparently conventional historical association of Puritanism with

(most obviously) 17th century England, the broader use of the term emerges when

Weber declares that both Sebastian Franck (c.14991542), one of the most

individual thinkers of the early German Reformation, and the deistic Benjamin

Franklin (17061790) are generic Puritans. [XXI.8 n.7, 17 n.22] Puritanism is

indeed of much the same order as ascetic Protestantism in its combination of a

typological element (ascetic) with an historical one (Protestantism), even if in the

former case this is less visible. Yet Puritanism has its advantages over ascetic

7 It is, for example, almost invisible in the recent synoptic compendium Ed. Hans Kippenberg and

Martin Riesebrodt, Max Webers ,,Religionssystematik (T.ubingen, 2001), even allowing for the fact that

this volume focuses primarily on the sociology of religion rather than the PE.



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Protestantism, for if, like most of Webers readers, we find the latter too remote and

insufficiently historical, and seek instead for a relatively simple and empirically

recognisable shorthand for the religious concerns of the PE, it is not to be found in

Calvinismagainst which usage Weber strongly protested8 but in Puritanism.Indeed one of many possible improvements to the original title might be to change

Protestant Ethic to Puritan Ethic, since it is evident that in ordinary usage the

traditional and capacious label of Protestant does not denote the novel, sharply

formulated and purely Weberian concept of ascetic Protestant in the mind of the

reader. (On the other hand, once we know that Protestant was intendedby Weber to

denote ascetic Protestant, then the title becomes indefeasible.)

Another obvious reason why Puritanism should have eluded comment lies in the

sheer proliferation of religious labels at work in the PE. In Part I, consistent with its

status as a set of prolegomena, there is almost no reference to Puritans, just as there

is very little reference to asceticism, and the discussion is almost entirely in terms of

Protestantism.9 Of course, Protestantism was then drastically transmuted into

ascetic Protestantism in Part II, and it is this which supplies a first and most general

type of label. There is, next, the specific breakdown of the constituents of this

movement: Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism and T.aufertum (the group of German

and English adult baptisers, which cannot be captured by the English term

Baptists alone). Somewhere in-between these two come Puritans and Puritanism,

so making up a third conceptual stratum. In-between, because although in general

terms Puritanism can and should be taken as an equivalent for ascetic

Protestantism, closer reading of the text reveals a slightly more complicated story,since the profile of Puritanism varies somewhat as Weber moves through the four

component groups within ascetic Protestantism in Part II Section I.

The case of Calvinism is the most straightforward. Here there is in effect an

equation between Calvinism and Puritanism, and the latter term is frequently

deployed. A symbolic reference to steel-hard Puritan merchants [XXI.20] is

particularly striking: after all, steel-hard might well be described as the ultimate

ascetic accolade given its famous deployment at the end of the text, when the steel-

hardness of an ethic is transmuted into the steel-hardness of a modern rational and

capitalist framework, a steel-hard housing [XXI.108].10 Hereafter persistent

8 Antikritisches zum ,,Geist des Kapitalismus, AfSS 30 (1910), 178; cf. The Protestant Ethic Debate

(Liverpool, 2001) tr. A. Harrington & M. Shields, 623. One could compose an entire bibliography of

Webers readers and critics who have disqualified themselves on this ground alone.9There is one, apparently innocuous exception to this in the 1904 text [XX.7] and one footnote reference

which looks forward to Part II, describing it as the historical pursuit of the Puritan concept of the calling

backwards in time [XX.50 n.1]. Then there is a 1920 insertion which, by transgressing the assumptions

underlying the original text, might be deemed thoughtless in a rhetorical or presentational sense [73].10 In German ein stahlhartes Geh .ause. This is the image which Talcott Parsons famously translated as

an iron cage, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930), 180. Having taken on a cultural life

of its own, the phrase has inspired a commentary: David Chalcraft, Bringing the text back in: on ways of

reading the iron cage metaphor in the two editions of The Protestant Ethic, in ed. L.J. Ray and M. Reed,

Organizing Modernity (1994), 1645; Peter Baehr, The iron cage and the shell as hard as steel:

Parsons, Weber and the stahlhartes Geh .ause metaphor in The Protestant Ethic, History and Theory 40

(2001), 15369. Both authors agree that the best rendering of Geh.ause is shell, displaying much virtuosity



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references to Puritans and Puritanism are less frequent, but even so, the strategic

intention of making Puritanism a bridge or linking idea across all the specific

components of ascetic Protestantism remains firm in the cases of Pietism and

Methodism. Thus the treatment of Pietism opens with a reminder that almost allprominent representatives of Puritanism have been included amongst the Pietists at

one time or another [XXI.401]; again, the fact that Methodism is to be seen

primarily as a development of Pietism in no way precludes Webers aligning it in

relation to Puritanism as wellas an emotionally based enhancement of the Puritan

type. [XXI.59] In a revealing usage he notes that where Wesley struggled against the

justification through works typical of his age, he simply revived the old-Puritan idea

[altpuritanisch]y, a remark which carries the underlying implication that some later

ascetic developments via Pietism might be regarded as new or late-Puritan, whilst

Puritan supplies a generic similarity overriding all differences in detail. [XXI.58] It

is only the section on Baptists and T.aufertum where Weber fails to make a link to

Puritanism by name, and prefers instead to invoke Calvinist and Protestant

asceticism [XXI.68, 712]. The obvious explanation lies in his conviction that

T.aufertum represents a distinct and quite separate route to asceticism from

Calvinismvia sect formation rather than by inner religious purityand thus it

raises a separate series of issues for discussion. This brief lapse of Puritanism as a

discursive thread here can be paralleled by occasional references elsewhere, where

Puritanism takes on a more partial and conventional characterhence more specific

references to Puritan, Baptist and Pietist Christianity or to English Puritanism

[XXI.53 n.108; 74, 90]. However, the latter usage continues to imply thatPuritanism on its own is a more general category, and such is the broader truth,

which always prevails when Weber is trying to describe ascetic Protestantism as a

whole: both when he is introducing his general schemewhere he of course includes

the T.aufertum of Baptists, Quakers and Mennonites under the Puritan heading

[XXI.2 n.2]and also when the discussion moves away from the individual religious

groups. Thus at the moment he ceases to talk specifically about T.aufertum the next

sentence begins: We have now to follow out the Puritan idea of the callingy

[XXI.73]. This is indeed what occurs in the final section (II.2), where in contrast to

what has gone before Weber now proposes to treat ascetic Protestantism as one

holistic mass [Gesamtmasse] [XXI.74], and the text becomes densely saturated withreferences to Puritans and Puritanism as a result.11 Here is the clearest testimony

to the conceptual status of Puritanism as a common idea penetrating all the

component groups of ascetic Protestantism; it reveals, too, that even Weber found

it a less cumbrous term to use.


and learning in advocating their case. Without entering into detailed criticism, I note, however, that shell

is an organic metaphor quite alien to Weber, and one which implies quite different German equivalents

(Schale, H.ulse). Housing is not merely the elementary and literal rendition ofGeh.ause, but its implication

of a structure which both restrains and provides for modern man, is the term which best captures Webers

original meaning. The point may be substantiated by reference to its appearance in a variety of other

contexts within Webers oeuvre, something which was not undertaken by either of the cited authors.11See e.g. [XXI.89-104] passim.



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The consequences of this position, which are only implicit in the PE, become fully

apparent in the pre-war writings for Economy and Society and the Economic Ethics

of the World Religions. Within a comparative focus, it becomes clear that Weber

has crystallised Puritanism/ascetic Protestantism as one of the great historical worldreligions: thus we encounter Puritanism and Islam, Puritanism a n d Judaism,

Romanism and Puritanism, Catholics, Jews and Puritans.12 It is evident from such

remarks that even if his thinking about pre-Puritan Christianity fell well short of any

clear-cut, ideal-typical formulation, still Puritanism possessed that kind of logical

clarity in abundance, and was thus implicitly marked off from previous forms of

Christianity as practically a separate world religionsomething which is of course

also implied by the argument of the PE. The most prominent example of the

handling of Puritanism as a major unit in the comparative history and sociology of

world religions lies in the conclusion to Webers pre-war essay on Confucianism,

published in 1915, a conclusion which he significantly enhanced and entrenched

under the heading Confucianism and Puritanism when it was revised in 19191920.

Both of these world religions were eminently rational and worldly; yet such

similarities masked forms of polar opposition, since their worldliness and rationality

operated in quite different ways. Exposing this contrast led Weber to offer his fullest

and most explicit definition of the term Puritanism:

Now Puritanism represents the most radically opposed type of rational treatment

of the world [to that of Confucianism]. It is a concept with no single meaning.

Practically speaking, and in its most concrete sense, the ecclesia pura [pure

church] signified above all else the Christian community which took communionin Gods name purified of any morally reprobate participants, though it might rest

on a Calvinist or Baptist foundation and, in accordance with this, its church

constitution might be framed either along more clerical [synodal] or congrega-

tionalist lines. But in a broader sense one can understand this heading as including

all the ethically rigorous, Christian-ascetic lay communities; thus as including the

T.aufer, Mennonites and Quakers, with their mystical-pneumatic origins, the

ascetic Pietists and the Methodists. The characteristic feature of this type as

distinct from [Confucianism] is then: that here rationalization of the world, the

reverse of flight from the world, prevails despite ascetic rejection of the world, or

rather it prevails precisely within the form of ascetic rejection.13

All the same, Weber could never dispense with ascetic Protestantism.

Puritanism was an essentially historical term, whether it be used in its specific,

17th century sense or in its wider, and more authentically Weberian frame, as a

component within the long-term evolution of modern Occidental rationalism and

12Respectively Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Religi.ose Gemeinschaften (T.ubingen, 2001) Ed. Hans

Kippenberg, MWG I/22-2.422, 428 (cf. 364f. on Islam); WuG, 717.13 Konfuzianismus IV, AfSS 41 (1915), 375-6; cf. MWGI/19.4645. More predictably, given Webers

assumption of a particular affinity between the two ethics, his treatment of Talmudic Judaism in the pre-

war sociology of religion for Economy and Society is suffused by a comparison with Puritanism: MWGI/

22-2.41432. On the other hand, it is not systematically pursued, and it is by no means the only such

comparison that occurs. In these respects the conclusion to Confucianism stands alone.



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asceticism across millennia. By contrast ascetic Protestantism encapsulated

asceticism, a trans-historical (or sociological) type. Together with mysticism it

constituted a central typology within Webers religious sociology, whereas any

equation between Puritanism and the idea of a pervasive or trans-historical typewas almost non-existent.14 Having a mind which was both historically and

systematically inclined, Weber needed both historical and typological (or socio-

logical) terms, even if a broad equation between Puritan religious communities

and all essentially ascetic Protestant communities remained a tolerably stable

resting point both in the PE and thereafter.15

II

Yet within the PE this equation raises an obvious question. As noted, Weber was

quite explicit that the concepts used to structure any account of human reality, both

sociological and historical, were framed by the present-day inquirer; they were not

ultimately derived from concepts pertaining to the subjects or period under

discussion.16 Thus it is clear in fact that Webers root concept was not Puritanism

but ascetic Protestantismhence the titles deployed throughout the PEwhich

was a Weberian, not an historical construct. Yet he commonly equated the two. So

how was it, given his un-historical starting point, that he could light upon a concept

such as Puritanism which was historical in derivation, at least in origin?

There are two kinds of answer to this. One is that, without subscribing to any

na.ve or inflexible view of an objective past, it may be said that a Weberian

construction of Puritanism was at least objectively possible. In the 16th and 17th

centuries the term Puritan could be construed as possessing something of the

psychological quality that Weber was looking for in religious behaviour: it bridged

the gap between the external imperatives contained within theological doctrine and

church government, and the more personal actions of everyday life. If the most

obvious initial meaning of the term lay in the idea cited above of the ecclesia pura, so

making Puritanism a movement for institutional reform of the church, still this

movement took place within an Anglicanism which was itself capacious,

decentralized and relatively ill-defined; furthermore, it first occurred at a time when

institutional secessionthe formation of sectswas not seen as possible. As a result

Puritanism was associated not merely with external and institutional reform, but

14For a rare occurrence see the Zwischenbetrachtung within the Economic Ethics of the World

Religions, when Weber considers the possible revolutionary tendency of virtuoso religiosity under the

(opposed) ascetic and mystic headings. To the former he allocates the Type: the genuinely puritanical

revolutions: AfSS 41, (1915) 403. However, both the political context and the dilution of Puritans and

Puritanism into the more general puritanical indicate that this is unusual. Another oddity is a one-off

reference to Babylonian Puritanism, when discussing the Jews of the exile: GARSiii.372. However, this is

not a typological reference, but merely an attempt to create a proper noun label, so as to distinguish the

Babylonian from the Egyptian exiles.15WuG, 717.16See Die ,,Objektivit.at sozialwissenschaftlichery Erkenntnis [1904], esp. WL 196200.



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also with the inner purification of individuals in their local practice and conduct.

This occurred directly through the kind of traditional examples of Puritan conduct

that Weber continues to invoke in Part II Section II (the maypole, the Book of

Sports, the theatre); through the less well-known forms of economic conduct whichstructure this section as a whole (the preciousness of time, commitment to labour,

the vocation and saving); and also through the search for personal election and the

signs thereof, which provides a principal component of Part II Section I. Of course,

in this last case, Weber transmutes traditionally external theological doctrine into an

internal and psychological imperative. Now it is true that after 1640 Puritanism also

developed via the institutional route of sect formationan idea which Weber

preferred to identify with the Baptisers, as a strand set somewhat apart from

Puritanism. Even so, such developments came only at the end of some 70 or 80 years

of an individually based Puritanism, which could never be defined solely in

institutional terms, because it always placed a strong emphasis on personal religious

merit. Thus historical Puritanism made available to Weber a set of general

resources centred on personal election and personal conduct;17 and these resources

supply the foundation for almost the whole of the second part of the PE, always

excepting the brief section on the Baptisers and the sectarian idea (though this too

could be subsumed under the later history of Puritanism). As a result the Puritan

conduct manuals which he cites as being of central importanceRichard Baxters

Christian Directory, Robert Barclays Apology, Philipp Speners Theologisches

Bedencken [XXI.75]really were a treasure trove, offering original texts which could

be mined in detail. In a very general sense, then, we may say that the PE had asignificant empirical basis; and this too was in agreement with Webers prescriptions

in the sphere of method, since although he insisted on an original concept formation

in the present, he also accepted that there would then be a continuous process of

convergence between concept and the empirical data of the past, a process which (as

we have seen) would only be terminated by an alteration in the agenda of the

present.18

Even so, given his presentist assumptions, Weber would hardly have reached

back to a specific historical locus in the 17th century without the assistance of

contemporary thinking in his own dayand here was his second route to

Puritanism. Looking first to Germany, it is clear that the rise of Kulturprotestan-tismus, a Protestantism tacitly freed from church ties and possessing a primarily

individual, ethical and psychological basis, was fundamental. When to this is

added the predictable tendency of Continental thinkers to assimilate the processes of

English history to their own 19th century experience, and so to locate the

revolutionary 1640s as a formative episode, it is easy to see why ideas about

17As is well-known, there was not always a perfect match between the Calvinist theology that Weber

admired for its logicality and potency, and the Puritan practice he associated with it: Richard Baxter, a

weak predestinarian, is an obvious case. Here Weber was prepared to subordinate even dogma to his

primary emphasis on the individual personality [XXI.74 n.1], though it should also be remembered that

Puritan and ascetic practice was never to be traced to one source alone.18See esp. WL, 2039, 214. I do not inquire here whether Webers methodological position is entirely

consistent.



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English Puritanism were widely if gaseously accepted beyond the Channel in Webers

day. Even for an author as uninterested in England as Thomas Mann, the Puritan

origin of English ideas of the state and of freedom was as obvious as the force of

1789 in France.19 The same stereotype undoubtedly underlay Webers interest inEnglish Puritanism, but with the major difference that Weber had a serious interest

in England and so he tried to move beyond stereotype, to develop it in an empirical

and wissenschaftlich fashion.20 Even so, despite a general context which was

apparently helpful, there was in fact no substantial discourse regarding Puritanism

within German academic literatureabove all because of a primary assumption that

English Protestantism was to be understood as a local and insular peculiarity, a

deviation either from the Lutheran norm, or else from the most obvious Continental

alternative to Lutheranism, Genevan Calvinism.

If we look at the types of German scholarship that were of importance for Weber,

there was (first) the dogmatic approach, epitomised by Matthias Schneckenburgers

comparative analysis of the dogmatic structures of Lutheranism and Calvinism

dating from the 1840s, a work which Weber went out of his way to praise in the PE

[XXI.21].21 It should be said that this was not merely a work of dogmatics, since it

also penetrated into the psychological sphere which was Webers primary concern;

but still dogmatics did supply the overt frame of reference, and this hinged upon

Calvinism, not Puritanism. Insofar as the work had a regional bias, it looked either

to the Swiss Calvinism of Schneckenburgers lecture audiencewhich was quite the

reverse of Webers viewpoint, with its specific dismissal of Calvins personal views

and of Switzerland in favour of Calvinism as a mass phenomenon in areas ofpotential capitalist Kultur [XXI.6 n.5]or else towards the church politics of

German states, as they sought to fuse Lutherans and Calvinists under the auspices of

united state churches (the Prussian Union of 1822 being the most obvious example).

But none of this came anywhere near England. Schneckenburgers focus became

more English in his supplementary lectures on the small Protestant church

parties, which included accounts of both Quakerism and Methodism, and this

secondary work also exerted an undoubted influence on Weber [XXI.59 nn.115, 117].

But it too remained a dogmatic treatment. Methodism was observed from the

standpoint of Reformed doctrine,22 as a derivative of Calvinist theology, and the

idea of Puritanism with its social and ethical connotations does not feature.The acme of German interest in English religious history, and a work which came

as close as any to breaking away from a purely German construction of the subject,

19Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Munich, 1918), 238. Of course this view has a genealogy going

back (at least) to Voltaires Lettres philosophiques (1734).20For a biographical approach to Webers Anglophilia, see Guenther Roth, Weber the Would-Be

Englishman in ed. idem & Hartmut Lehmann, Webers Protestant Ethic (Cambridge, 1993), 83121, and

then his Max Webers deutsch-englische Familengeschichte 1800-1950 (T.ubingen, 2001), cc.I, II, IV, XIV.21Cf. XX.46 n.2; XXI.5 n.4. Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und reformirten Lehrbegriffes ed.

E. G.uder (Stuttgart, 1855); the text was edited posthumously from the notes of lectures delivered at the

new Bern Hochschule, Schneckenburger having died (aged 44) in 1848.22M. Schneckenburger, Vorlesungen .uber die Lehrbegriffe der kleinen protestantischen Kirchenparteien

ed. K. B. Hundeshagen (Frankfurt a.M., 1863), 103.



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was the important book by Hermann Weingarten on Die Revolutionskirchen

Englands (1868), which Weber deemed excellent [XXI.5 n.4]. However, the essence

of Weingartens standpoint was not purely religious, but rather that of religion

coloured by a strong liberal and political agenda.23 Thus his work offers a clearstatement of the thesis more commonly associated with Georg Jellineks famous

essay The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1895): that liberal

Protestantism rather than the French Revolution supplied the origin of European

liberties and of the rights of man.24 Indeed we can hardly be surprised that

Protestant claims of this kind long preceded Jellineks argument from an

emancipatory Judaic and legalistic perspective, and the religious-political agenda

was evidently one root of Webers perception of the books excellence, alongside its

pioneering scholarship in English pamphlet sources and ephemera. However, though

Weingartens views were undoubtedly agreeable, they served primarily as a support

only for Webers mapping of the sectarian idea, rather than for the more general

Puritan theme. Specifically, Weingarten drove a clear but all too restricted narrative

thread through 17th century England, centring on a single, linear transition from

Independentism through to Quakerism after 1653 (the date at which Cromwell

stamped down on politically subversive sectarians), a process which climaxed in the

creation of a free sectarian religiosity as entrenched by the English Toleration Act of

1689. So, even via this Anglocentric routealbeit one which, like most German

authors, Weingarten traced back to its Continental origins in Anabaptism25a

genuinely broad-ranging conspectus of English religious life was largely omitted. For

Weingarten Puritanism served only as a residual and general label: it surfaced in theintroduction to his account, but played little role in the principal action.26

Thirdly and lastly, there was Ernst Troeltschin Webers eyes much the most

important contemporary analyst of religious history. Like Weber, Troeltsch was

deeply interested in English religiosity, and he was similarly concerned with religion

as Kulturas a force shaping the totality of human conduct outside the institutional

sphere; but still this did not lead him to Puritanism. The degree of prominence the

term achieves in his famous later work, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und

Gruppen (The Social Doctrines of the Christian Churches and Groups, 1912), must be

23An obvious sign of Weingartens political views, and perhaps their cause, lies in his closeness to Carl

von Hase, at once university professor, liberal Protestant and deputy at the Frankfurt parliament: see the

entry for Weingarten, Hermann by F.C. Arnold in the Realencyklop .adie f.ur protestantische Theologie und

Kirche (Leipzig 18961913) ed. A. Hauck, Vol. 21.24Die Revolutionskirchen Englands (Leipzig, 1868), e.g. 447. There can in fact be no doubt that

Weingarten was a major (yet unacknowledged) source of inspiration for Jellinek: Die Erkl.arung der

Menschen- und B.urgerrechte (Leipzig, 1895), 315 passim.25Quakerism represented an historically successful and suitably tempered version of the enthusiasm of

the Anabaptists at M .unster in 1535; the comparison between the two then presented an obvious (but

unstated) analogy to the commonplace German liberal view of the revolution of 1848 as compared to 1688

in England: ibid., 2.26See c.1, The English Reformation of the 16th century. Puritanism and Independentism. The sub-title

signifies a transition from a vague and general concept to the more precise one. After the PE had been

published, the kind of criticism I outline here was then readily perceptible to German scholarship: see

Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (T.ubingen, 1912), 752 n.412.



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ascribed solely to the negative impact of the PE and the desire to practice a form of

damage limitation as a result;27 even so usage of the term remains a mere detail, and

it in no way explains the scheme of the book. The essence of Troeltschs viewpoint,

which was expounded with greatest clarity in the years 19031906 before the onset oracknowledgement of any Weberian disturbance, hinged on the fundamental

difference between old [alt] and modern [neu] Protestantism,28 that is, between a

church-based and an individual, post-institutional religion. The crucial point of

departure in the search for a new Protestantisma search that was, as Troeltsch

admitted, far from complete in his own daylay in the 18th century Enlightenment,

a distinctly post-Puritan era. Hence the weight of interest in this era displayed

both in his important encyclopedia article on the English moralists (1903), and also

in his major synthetic survey Protestant Christianity and Church in the modern

epoch of 1906a work whose coverage of the period after 1700 was never

superseded by any later writings.29 Both works were commended by Weber in the

original text of the PE,30 but despite obvious general similarities in approach and

interests, the commendation concealed major differences. Troeltsch maintained a

strict separation between institutional and individual religion, a separation which

was marked out (in his view) by a specific historical transition ca.1700 (or 1688 in

England). But this did not allow for Webers typologically messy (or sophisticated)

attempt to analyse religion in terms of the social ethics deriving from the practices of

a mass of individualsfor Troeltsch a modern phenomenonat a time when pre-

modern church-based religion was overtly supreme.31 In short, it did not allow for

17th century Puritanism and the English revolution that went with it. Thus thehistorical account offered by Troeltsch in 1906even though by then he had had the

27Soziallehren, 77380. As will be seen from the text, Troeltschs original and fundamental dividing line

was located c.1688 or (more crudely) 1700, with Calvinism consigned to the dustbin of old Protestant

history. However, the claim of the PEthat there was a modern ascetic Protestantism in the 17th century,

forced Troeltsch to redraw Calvinism, so that it was divided into primitive (and still old) Calvinism, and

new (or Weberian) Calvinism: ibid., 605794. Even so, Troeltschs central ideas about the later period

remained essentially unaltered, and Die Soziallehren did not go beyond 1700 except in a brief Conclusion.28 Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit, in ed. P. Hinneberg, Die Kultur der

Gegenwart (Berlin, 1906) Teil I, Abt. IV., 253458, here 450. The centrality of the distinction was

repeatedly enforced throughout Troeltschs lifetime: egg. Die Absolutheit des Christentums (T.ubingen and

Leipzig, 1902) 123, 94129; Soziallehren, Preface, 1 Nov. 1911, VIIVIII.29 Moralisten, englische (1903) in Realenzyklop .adie f.ur protestantische Theologie und Kirche ed.

A. Hauck (Leipzig, 1896-1913), xiii.436-61; Protestantisches Christentum und Kirche in der Neuzeit

cit. previous note.30 [XXI.3n.3, 5n.4, 14n.21, 31n.60] In the case of Protestantisches Christentum, this indicates that

Weber knew of Troeltschs text, and had conceivably seen some of it in draft before publication. However,

given their differences, the latter point is marginal at best.31Weber criticised Troeltsch with his customary lack of restraint for the simplistic assumption that

sociological types in religion (church, sect, individual) operated entirely separately and did not

interpenetrate each other: at the first conference of the German Sociological Society in 1910, GazSuS,

4659.My general dissent from the (learned and excellent) essays of F.W. Graf on the nature of Webers

relations with Troeltsch will be clear: e.g. Friendship between experts: notes on Weber and Troeltsch in

Max Weber and his Contemporaries (1987) Ed. W.J. Mommsen & J. Osterhammel, 21533. The obvious

source of disagreement lies in the fact that Prof. Grafs intellectual starting point is Troeltsch, whilst mine

is Weber.



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benefit of looking at the PEadhered to a framework which was essentially that of

Weingarten, the crucial section being entitled Anglicanism and Independentism,

with Puritanism making only an occasional entry as a synonym for the latter.32

We see then that there was another sense in which, for all its conceptual andpresent-day emphases, the PE was empirical, since it represented the first substantial

introduction of Puritanism into German academic discoursethis despite the fact

that Weber was neither a specialist historian or theologian. Conversely, however,

without a prior Anglophone literature on the subject, the Protestant Ethic could

hardly have existed. It is here we must seek for the historical and empirical origins of

Weberian Puritanism and to which we now turn.

III

To take the simplest case, it was almost inevitable that studies of Colonial America

would take up the theme of New England Puritanism as a primary identifying trait,

especially given the colonies lack of independent political status, and this is clearly

borne out by the major narrative history used by Weber in 1905, J.A. Doyles The

English in America, where two out of the three volumes then published were devoted

to The Puritan Colonies (1887). Yet though Weber had no difficulty in discerning the

high quality of Doyles work, he only used it once and then in an economic context

[XXI.102 & n.71].33 It is true that Doyle was primarily a narrative historian, but still

he presents a considerable amount of material on American Puritanism in preciselythe period (the 17th century) of most concern to Weber. The same might be said of

Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England and America: an Introduction to

American History, 1892, though Weber somewhat cryptically disapproved of this as

not always critical and impartial [XXI.5 n.4].34 However, the primary reality is that

32 Protestantisches Christentum, 36172; the position is just the same in the brief account of 17th

century England in the article, Moralisten, englische, 4458. Citation of Weingarten is evident in both

accounts, though reliance on the same structural terminology is still more impressive.Mention should

also be made of Eduard Bernsteins essay Kommunistische und demokratisch-sozialistische Str .omungen

w.ahrend der englische Revolution des 17. Jahrhunderts in ed. idem & K. Kautsky, Die Geschichte des

Sozialismus in Einzeldarstellungen (Stuttgart, 1895) i.507718. What most interested Weber [XXI.71 &

n.138, 101 & n.70] here was the emphasis on monetary saving as a bourgeois and ascetic ethic, especially

as displayed by the Quakers (i.6805). However, although Bernstein invoked the Puritan label as a

general description of English religiosity, in essence he did not (as Weber did) treat the English sects as a

group. Thus his account of Calvinism followed the standard Engelsian line that it was a species of

bourgeois revolution: it was not then a precursor of socialism, yet the popular but also Puritan lineage

through Lollardy, Anabaptism and Quakerism was (i.5247). The broader point was that Bernstein was

writing a secular history of socialist antecedents; not a study of religiosity per se. Quite reasonably, then,

Weber was selecting what he considered to be particular insights, but he did not engage with the

conceptual framework as a whole.33Cf. The Puritan Colonies ii.3441.34Campbells book was not a work of original scholarship, but was culled from secondary sources. Its

principal interpretative novelty was to suggest that America and American Puritanism owed as much to

the Dutch as to the English. It may be that Weber objected to this, given that, very crudely, he regarded

Holland as a kind of half-way house, a place where ascetic Protestantism was initially present but failed to



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these writers were neither major sources nor objects of criticism, because America

itself was a secondary concern. It had significance as an English offshoot and as an

extreme example of contemporary capitalism, but in Webers eyes it was historically

primitive: that is, it was still at the beginning of an inevitable historical process ofEuropeanization [XXI.88 n.40], and so could not possibly account for a subsequent

historical development whose fulcrum was located in 17th century Europe. It is

similarly revealing that in 1920 Weber felt obliged to cite two further works on

American Puritanism, yet both had been published well before 19045, when the PE

had been first composed (John Brown, The Pilgrim Fathers of New York and their

Puritan Successors 1897; Daniel Wait Howe, The Puritan Republic of Massachusetts

Bay 1899). Here was a clear sign of an original lack of focus on this area, and even so

these citations were for bibliographical purposes only and made no difference to the

text [88 n.1]. The real centre of attention was England.

However, there were considerable difficulties in the way of mapping English

Puritanism, and the inability of previous German scholars to do this reflected a very

real cultural divide which far transcended any mere lack of perception on their part.

The principal obstacle was the English desire to ignore and conceal the Civil War

period, since this represented a painful rupture absolutely at variance with a

perceived culture of peaceable continuity and stability after 1688. Puritanism was

not quite so disreputable as civil strife, but even so it too was marginalised in

national memory by association. In Webers day English Nonconformity (a label

descended from the 17th century, but with pluralistic and tolerationist overtones

distinct from those of Puritanism)

35

did not see itself as descended primarily fromthe Puritan sects formed after 1640, but rather as the product of a new development,

the mid-18th century evangelical movement, which is most readily associated with

the Anglican and Methodist, John Wesley. Any continuities of a literal kindmost

obviously the continued existence of sects labelled Baptists and Congregationalists

were just that, more literal than essential. The lineal descendants of Old Dissent

were tenacious in preserving its heritage and memory within these sects through

several generations, but after c. 1850 such memory had effectively ceased to exert a

shaping influence: by then the principal public expression of the New Dissent of the

evangelical sects was as supporters of that devoutly constitutional body, the

Victorian Liberal party.36

Now this insular peculiarity was difficult to grasp. Like


establish itself. Thus the Dutch were tougher than the Germans but weaker than the Anglo-Americans:

e.g. [XXI.945 & n.54b]. How could they then have decisively influenced the latter?35The original Non-conformists were the Anglican clergy who refused to conform to the Act of

Uniformity of 1662. Their most celebrated representative was Richard Baxter, who was perceived as

inaugurating the tradition of moderate dissent, which continued to seek for church comprehension or at

least toleration, as distinct from the avowed sectarianism of the Independents. For an excellent statement

of this point of view as depicted in one of Webers sources, J.J. Tayler, A Retrospect of the Religious Life of

England (1845), 22038.36For a contrary view see Raphael Samuel The discovery of Puritanism, 18201914: a preliminary

sketch in Ed. Jane Garnett and Colin Matthew, Revival and Religion since 1700 (1993), 20147, though

only the first part (20123) is about Puritanism in any tolerably precise sense. It is typically colourful

assemblage of material, but conceptual argument, and in particular the premiss that the history of ideas



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any Continental liberal (such as Schneckenburger or Weingarten), Weber did not

regard revolutionary epochs as matters for apology, and though the PE is an

avowedly unpolitical text, the association in his mind between Puritanism and a mid-

17th century liberal and progressive revolution is clear for all to see, above all in theattention it devotes to Cromwell and the Civil Wars.37 One obvious consequence of

this was that he entirely failed to grasp the real chronology of English religiosity, and

it was for this reason he could dub Methodism a mere latecomer [XXI.61 cf. 27], a

subordinate phenomenon, thereby inverting the relative importance of evangelical

Christianity and Puritanism in the shaping of English Kultur c.1900.38

The principal empirical difficulty was that, as a result of their desire to bury the

Civil War epoch, there was relatively little English writing about the Puritans for

Weber to make use of. The quintessential exemplar of the orthodox, continuous

approach was Macaulay, and Webers inability to see merit in Macaulays

treatments of Milton and Bunyan, or to make any use of The History of England,

from the Accession of James II (18481861) is glaringly apparent.39 An equally

pertinent case is that of S.R. Gardiner (18291902)by far the outstanding historian

of the Civil War period at the time when Weber was writing, and a man whose work

on the subject encapsulated the idea, or at least the rubric, that the period 16401660

was a period of Puritan revolution.40 He was indeed an Englishman by birth, but on

the crucial question of religion he was (so to speak) half-English and half-Scottish.

Thus he was born into the millennial sect deriving from the Scotsman Edward Irving,

the Catholic Apostolic Church; he married Irvings daughter; and was a deacon in

the church for 15 years (18511866). Here lies the origins of his interest in, and


should not have its starting point in the mere whims of literary phenomena (cf. 207), is relegated to the

background. This may seem odd given the authors Marxist origins. However, these disposed him to

assume that the (re-) discovery of Puritanism was inevitable in any case, and so, paradoxically or

indulgently, they allow far more space for the free play of bourgeois literary dilettantism.37Egg. [XX.3, 44 & n.2, 52 & n.1; XXI.5f, 14 n.21, 17 n.22, 30, 36, 42 n.78, 93]. Another contemporary

sign of Webers political interests lay in the suggestion floated to Georg von Below that he would like to

write a brief review of, and supplement to, Jellineks Declaration of the Rights of Man, which had just

appeared in a second edition: in relation to the historical situation which determined the substance of the

individual rights demanded in the Cromwellian epochy touching essentially on the state doctrine of

Anabaptism and the like: 19 July 1904, NachlaX Max Weber, GstA. Berlin, Rep. 92.38There is an obvious contrast with Elie Hal!evy here. His views on Methodism were first set out in two

articles entitled La naissance du M!ethodisme en Angleterre in the Revue de Paris in August 1906, before

being expanded and re-stated in LAngleterre en 1815 (Paris, 1913), though even the latter remained

unknown to Weber. I note here only that, whilst Hal!evy disagreed with Weber as to the relative

importance and novelty of Methodism in shaping English modernity, he nonetheless accepted the

conventional wisdom that its origins lay in Puritanism: The English are a nation of Puritans,

and Puritanism is Protestantism taken in all the strictness of the dogma which constitutes its theological

coreadherence to the doctrine of justification by faith: The Birth of Methodism in England, tr.

B. Semmel, (Chicago, 1971), 33. Thus although Hal!evy was in many ways much closer to English

religiosity than Weber, just as the degree of his physical and social contact with England vastly outweighed

Webers, clear elements of a Continental perspective remain in view.39 [XXI.5 n.4, 8 n.7, 13 n.19].40An obvious example is provided by his early textbook The first two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution,

16031660 (London, 1876).



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valuation of Puritanism. But this was offset by his first wifes early death (1878), the

waning of the Irvingite sect, and an otherwise English environment which led to his

reception into the Anglican Church. All this helps account for the extraordinarily

(not to say implausibly) eirenic reading he put upon the Puritan revolution.41 Thusit was both necessary, as an anticipation of the long-term and natural current of

religious evolution towards freedom and toleration, and yet unfortunate and

unnecessary, insofar as it became an apple of discord; even so discord was a human

tragedy rather than an underlying problem. The kind of perennial value-clash and

struggle within (as well as between) nations which was axiomatic to Weber, as to

most of his German contemporariesan idea which he transferred to England on

the assumption that all national characters were similarly divided by history [XX.52]

[81 n.3]was hardly conceivable to an Englishman such as Gardiner. For this reason

Weber could make little use of Gardiners standard works; nor of Puritan

revolution; and his citations of Gardiner are essentially documentary and not

interpretative.42

In this sense, then, we might say that the empirical basis of the PEwas weak. Its

conception of English history, and of English Puritanism, was certainly not that of

orthodox, empirically grounded and (insofar as the concept can be applied at all)

specialised English historiography in Webers day. Yet this is by no means a whole

truth, since there was a minority strain of writing which took a different view, and

this, though written in English, was largely Scottish and Anglo-Irish. The different

view was the product of a quite different set of historical experiences and premisses.

The only institutional continuity that was known in Scotland and Ireland had comefrom, or been imposed by, England, and though it might be recognised as a good (as

in Scotland), it was to that extent alien. In Ireland in particular there was little real

contrast between the era of Cromwell and that of 1688, or even that of 1900, since all

might be conceived as epochs of English and Protestant supremacy. Thus there was

no sense in which Cromwell needed to be, or indeed could be, hushed up. A further

contrast with England lay in the religious sphere. For most Scots and Ulstermen

Presbyterianism, which might be regarded as the institutional enactment of

Puritanism, had either triumphed politically or was at least an exclusive and central

41For Gardiners biography, see Charles Firth in DNB, Supplement January 1901December 1911

(1912), ii.758. For his interpretative blandness, e.g. The first two Stuarts, 1834, 1906, 199205, or the

Introduction sub section 12 to Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (1889). Weber could

undoubtedly have referred to the latter had he wished, since he cited from the documents. The correlative

to this bland eirenicism lies in Gardiners purely documentary and narrative enthusiasm, so that

message was much diminished in proportion to matter. For this reason even a High Anglican could

find Gardiner simply invaluable: H.O. Wakeman, The Church and the Puritans 15701660 (1887),

vi. Conversely, the same qualities have caused Gardiner to be neglected by historians of ideas, though for a

near contemporary response, R.G. Usher, A Critical Study of the Historical Method of Samuel Rawson

Gardiner (St. Louis, 1915). Virtual omission of Gardiner is an indication that the conceptual framework of

Peter Blaas major work on English historiography in this period, Continuity and Anachronism (The

Hague, 1978), though excellent in its technical scholarship, is misconceived, not to say Continental: it

relies too much on universal categoriescontinuity and anachronismand has an insufficient grasp of

English singularity (and blandness).42XX.44 n.2; XXI.92 n.51; GARS i.73 n.1.



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realitysomething which could not be said of England. When to this is added the

fact that secular politics were dominated by the distant Westminster parliament, as a

result of treaties or acts of Union with the English, the attraction of religion as a

focus for discussion allowing more room for national autonomy becomes apparent.However, even in England we should take note of some continuities from the so-

called Old Dissent in the 17th century through into the 19th, even if the adherents

of continuity were only a minority. For example, Congregationalists still looked

back to their exclusion from the Anglican Church by the Act of Uniformity in 1662,

albeit in an increasingly acquiescent fashion, celebrating rather than lamenting the

Dissidence of Dissent.43 In addition there was the small sect of Unitarians,

descended from 17th century Arianism and Socianism. Unitarianism was distinctive

because it was not an evangelical, pietistic and socially popular sect; rather it was

defined by an intellectual theology, thereby displaying some significant resemblances

to the 17th century sects, albeit the theology was of a very different, rationalistic

type. Seen along these various lines and squints, the connections between 17th

century Puritanism and late 19th century modernity became more apparent, and it

was from Scottish and Irish Protestantism, and from the fringes of English Dissent,

that Webers empirical and scientific version of English Puritanism derived. Given

the staunch political Unionism of the Scots at this date and the then current English

convention of equating England with the United Kingdom, it would hardly be

reasonable to expect Weber to have been aware of this; on the other hand, the idea of

three distinct nations within a federal United Kingdom would surely not have

surprised him [XXI.97 n.59], especially since the idea of a fractured nation-state wasa commonplace for him and his German contemporaries.

A seminal figure in the unEnglish portrayal of a relevant, modern Puritanism

was, of course, Thomas Carlyle. Even if his now famous work on Letters and

Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1845) was largely excluded because of a political

agenda that lay outside the avowed scope of the PE, Webers sympathy for him is as

clear as his sympathy for the Roundheads or his distance from Macaulay [XX.3].

Within a wider unEnglish or peripheral context, Carlyles influence extends to

almost all the authors who follow below, and who did fit the PEs specific frame of

reference. An obvious example is the Scotsman and friend of Carlyle, David Masson,

author of the monumental six volumes, Life of John Miltoneven if this is a workWeber does no more than mention, because Milton was too individual a figure to be

of use to him [XXI.8 n.7]. One exception, however, is the series of volumes which

appeared under the heading Works of the English Puritan Divines (18451847). These

are in a real sense pre-Carlylean, but they too offer a powerful comment on the

peculiar nature of the 19th century portrayal of Puritanism within the United

43The banner heading of the Nonconformist newspaper, the journal of modern Independents, made

classical for posterity by Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy [1869], ed. J. Dover Wilson (Cambridge,

1932), 56. For a recent treatment of the 1862 anniversary see Tim Larsen, Victorian Nonconformity and

the Memory of the Ejected Ministers in ed. R.N. Swanson, The Church Retrospective, Studies in Church

History, 33 (Woodbridge, 1997), 45973. Notwithstanding the proffered titles, the account is rooted in

19th century church politics, whilst the history of 1662 is largely taken for granted. This is understandable

(if unfortunate), but it shows how remote those events had become by 1862.



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Kingdom. So far as Weber was concerned, this was simply a documentary source,

albeit an important one and one of the evidential pillars on which the final section of

the PE was built [XXI.75 & n.2]. Grateful for the reprints it offered of scarce works

and lesser known English Puritan authors from the 17th century, there is no sign thathe reflected on the agencies at work which led to their 19th century re-publication.

Yet the publisher, Thomas Nelson, was Scottish,44 whilst of the fourteen divines

listed as actual or potential contributors to the project, roughly half were Scottish or

Irish Presbyterians, and half were English Congregationalists.45 The latter, in turn,

had strong connections to the Scottish universitiesthe Englishman in this group

who had not acquired a D.D. or Hon. Ll.D. from Glasgow was unusualand also

by descent to their 17th and 18th century forebears in Old Dissent. Indeed the

average age of this group was quite high by the standards of the day, most having

been borne in the 1780s and 90 s, and there were no young authors in this project. It

was a sign that specifically English enthusiasm for Puritanism as a living tradition

was (in contrast to Webers assumptions) in deep decay at the point when English

Nonconformity was definitively subsumed by evangelicalism. The series was thus a

last gasp which, for whatever reason, did not reach its full extentthe initial listing

of contributors implied publication of 1314 volumes at least, but only eight

appeared; nor was it never reprinted, though it had been deliberately issued in a

relatively cheap and popular form.46 Leaving aside canonical works such as those of

Bunyan and Milton which would safely be absorbed into the category of English

literature, the next phase in the publication history of English Puritan texts of a

purely religious and casuistical kind would not come until the end of the 19thcentury, when it would have become increasingly academic.47 A typical example in

44The books are described as published by Thomas Nelson, Paternoster Row, but they were printed

and bound in Edinburgh. The young Thomas Nelson, following in the wake of so many Scotsmen before

him, had just (in 1844) set up a London branch of his fathers Edinburgh publishing house, and the Works

of the English Puritan Divines no doubt seemed to like an enterprising and thoroughly British initiative: cf.

DNB.45An editor and thirteen writers (though we would call them editors) are listed on the front endpaper

of the second volume to be issued in the series: Bunyans The greatness of soul and the unspeakableness of

the loss thereof... (1845) with an essay by R. Philip. Eleven out of the fourteen are listed in DNBand the

other three might easily be found. The elementary prosopographical analysis which follows is based

primarily on the DNB entries.46See the Advertisement leaflet inserted at the end of the fourth volume to be published in the series,

Richard Baxter, Making light of Christ and salvation (1846) ed. T.W. Jenkyn. This specifically emphasised

the cheap publication scheme, p.1.47This is of course a large generalization which applies more to England than to Scotland. For the

Scottish transition to a more academic perception of Puritanism see e.g. p. 33 & n.105 below. Again, the

biography of F.J. Powicke, who produced a highly regarded two volume life of Baxter in 19247 bears

many resemblances to his 19th century forebears: born in 1854 he was a Congregationalist minister, who

possessed both German and Scottish doctorates (Rostock, Glasgow). Nonetheless, his life of Baxter was a

work of retirement, and though undoubtedly informed by religious devotion, it was scholarly biography,

and not (for example) an edition of a devotional work, let alone of Baxters unappetising casuistry: Who

was Who, 192940 (1941). Within the modest academic revival enjoyed by Baxter in the 1920s, Jeannette

Tawneys slim selection was the most exposure that the voluminous Christian Directory received: cit. next

note.



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this later vein is supplied by Jeannette Tawneys issue of a selection from Richard

Baxters Christian Directory in 192548the first edition of the work since the 1840s.49

A religious impulse, in this case that of Christian Socialism, remained present; but

still the book would never have appeared at all but for R.H. Tawneys unusualability to read in German the first volume of Gesammelte Aufs .atze zur

Religionssoziologie (T .ubingen, 1920) by an author who, unlike most living Britons,

had actually spent a good deal of energy on the unexplored mine of the Christian

Directory and so signalled its worth: Max Weber.50

In considering the unEnglish origins of Weberian Puritanism, we must also take

account of a book Weber did not read: English Puritanism and its Leaders: Cromwell,

Milton, Baxter and Bunyan (Edinburgh, 1861), by the Scotsman John Tulloch, one of

the most important writers on religious ideas and their history in Victorian Britain.

This is a relatively rare bookit was never reprintedand it undoubtedly eluded

Weber, since it is unthinkable that he could have ignored a work with such a title and

contents, had he been able to get hold of it.51 However, it should not be supposed

that too much was lost or changed thereby. Tulloch (18231886) was very much a

moderate and establishment Presbyterian, close to the royal court, who had nothing

to do with the sectarian departure of the Free Church in 1843, and who could readily

assimilate to Liberal or Broad Church Anglicanism. His account of English

Puritanism is principally a set of heroic and even Carlylean life stories,52 but they

are set firmly in the past, and were deemed to require suitably judicious and critical

comment before being transmitted to the present. For example, he found Baxters

Christian Directory the most cited work in the whole PE simply repellent andunreadable: the contemplation to which the reader is invited is a deeply mournful

48Chapters from a Christian Directory (1925), with a Preface by Bishop Gore, was published a few

months ahead of R.H. Tawneys Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), though the latter, which also

came with a Preface by Gore, was first drafted for the Holland lectures of 1922. It of course includes

substantial reference both to Weber and to Baxter, and so to the new edition of the latter, 322 n.51 cf. 220-5.

Conversely, the introduction to the Chapters (pp. ixxvi), which is unsigned and unattributed, was almost

certainly by Tawney himself, since it repeats (or anticipates) the text of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

almost verbatim at crucial points. Compare (e.g.) p. ix and p. 220 respectively.49Robert Philip (17911858), independent minister and one of the contributors to the Works of the

English Puritan Divines, had edited The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter (183947) in four

volumes.50Quotation from J.M. Lloyd Thomas, Introductory Essay [1925], The Autobiography of Richard

Baxter (1931 Ed.), x.Tawneys interest in the interaction between the Protestant Reformation and socio-

economic change long preceded 1920 and may be said to derive ultimately from William Cobbett; but it is

unclear as to precisely how and when he came across Weber (and thus the real significance of Baxter),

except that it was through the 1920 edition of the PE: cf. J. Winter, Introduction to History and Society:

Essays by R.H. Tawney (1978), 1424. The Acquisitive Society, published in April 1921, reveals that by this

date Tawney was reading modern German sources (140, 147). The conception of religious ethics in relation

to industry which would inform Religion and the Rise of Capitalism was also in place: hence historical

emphasis on the latter half of the seventeenth century and a fleeting citation of Baxter (10, 229).51Weber could have known of its existence since it is cited by Dowden, Puritan and Anglican (1900), 20

n.1; however the citation is very misleading, since it appears only as a study of Baxter.52All of Baxters four characters are heroic, and this is matched by acknowledgement of Carlyles

Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell: English Puritanism and its Leaders (Edinburgh, 1861), 54 & n.



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and painful one, over which the heart grows weary, and the conscience rises

affrightedy There is no natural end to the multiplication of questions and cases.53

Now this was hardly an unusual reaction after 1850, as the memory and practices of

Old Dissent faded. The author Weber most admired in this area, Edward Dowden,quoted Tullochs dismissal of the Christian Directory, albeit with a milder gloss,54

whilst the reaction of contemporary liberal Protestants in Germany would almost

certainly have been the same, had they been compelled to confront Baxters manual

of practical ethics, with its endless elaboration of cases and types. Ernst Troeltsch,

who was so compelled by the publication of the PE, managed to confine his reference

to Baxter to one platitudinous sentence,55 and this indicates how unusual Weber was

in going back to Baxter and finding rich meaning in the textanother facet of his

empiricism. All the same, Tulloch stood at a marked distance from Weber, and in

this he was distinct from the authors whom Weber did rely upon. For him

Puritanism was a subject for moral edification, but he showed little appreciation of

its capacity to work in the modern world. His final conclusion was that few things

higher or more beautiful have ever been seen in the world. But we are also bound, if

we would not empty our earthly existence of the beautiful and the grandthe

graceful, fascinating, and refined in many forms of civilisation and artto claim

admiration for much that [Puritans] despised, and [for] a broader, more tolerant, and

more genial interpretation of nature and life than they would have allowed.56

Perhaps it was this uncertainty regarding his subject which explains why English

Puritanism was one of the least known and esteemed of Tullochs works;57 but in any

case the beautiful, the graceful, the fascinating, the refined and (in its English sense)the genial were not categories which could readily be assimilated to Weberian

asceticism.

Tulloch casts into sharp relief the authors whom Weber did use to build up, or

confirm, his picture of English Puritanism. Without pretending that one could simply

translate the men and ideas of the 17th into the later 19th century, they nonetheless

espoused a conception that Weber also shared, but which Tulloch could only utter

with an apology: that Puritanism was continuing to make a vital contribution to

modernity in secular form. There are two significant books to be considered here:

Edward Dowdens Puritan and Anglican: Studies in Literature (1900) and

J.L. Sanfords Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion (1858). Mentionshould also be made of the Rev. J.J. Taylers A Retrospect of Religious Life of

England (1845), though it is of less importance. At this point even the learned

Weberian will be tempted to ask: who? who? A preliminary return to such a question

53English Puritanism, 383.54Puritan and Anglican: Studies in Literature (1900), 1920 & n.1, from English Puritanism, 3834.55Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (T.ubingen, 1912), 776. For a striking parallel

notice Ritschls complaint that Vo.ets Asketika, a work very similar in type to Baxters, was a theoretical

text, which applies the most excessive forms of distinction and the most pedantic schematisation to its

matter: Geschichte des Pietismus, i.124 n.1.56English Puritanism, 488.57T. Bayne in DNB, vol. lvii (1899), 30710, passes over it, aside from a formal bibliographical listing.



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is that these writers are all further examples of the minority tradition of historical

writing outlined above. Sanford and Tayler were both Unitarians; but Tayler was a

generation older (b.1797), and he was also a minister. As such he was still locked into

a denominational and less secular frame of mind, which would prove crucial inrendering him less relevant or usable to Weber. Sanford by contrast (b.1824), was

more capable of detaching himself from his sectarian background and so had a more

expansively secular view of the world. The root cause of his historical writing was

not located in Unitarianism per se but was rather an enthusiasm for Cromwell,

which ran parallel to Carlyles, such that the latters publication of Cromwells

Letters and Speeches in 1845 brought the two men into close contact.58

Edward Dowden (b.1843) was yet another generation younger and so entered the

ranks of Webers older contemporaries. He was a Protestant Irishman, albeit more

an Episcopalian than a Presbyterian,59 but he too had found in Cromwell one of my

earliest objects of hero-worship, a remark that illustrates his reading of Carlyle,

which was in fact extensive.60 From such a background he was well capable of

recognising the secular relevance of Cromwellian Puritanism to his own present, and

in fact Webers prominent citation of Cromwell on the subject of professions after

the battle of Dunbar [XX.44 & n.2], though notionally traced (and readily traceable)

to an unreferenced Carlyle, was almost certainly lifted from Dowdens book.61

Another novelty was that Dowden was an academica Professor of English

Literature at Trinity College Dublin. Regardless of Webers distaste for things

literary, which would crystallise in his later assaults on the literati [40n.]62 in his

view literature and art were genres quite alien to Wissenschaft this broughtDowden very much closer to Weber, since literature in a specifically English and

British context was becoming the university surrogate whereby texts with a

significant religious value might live on in secularized form. The 20th century

transmogrification of Matthew Arnold is perhaps the most famous example of this

58See the Preface to Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion (1858), iiivi. For general

biographical data on Tayler and Sanford, see DNB.59His mother was Presbyterian, but he was an Episcopalian. For general biographical and critical

treatments of Dowden, see H.O. White, Edward Dowden (Dublin, 1943); Terence Brown, Irelands

Literature: Selected Essays (Mullingar, 1988), c.3; Who was Who 18971915 (1920).60Quotation from Dowden to E.D. West, 13 Jan. 1874, in Fragments from Old Letters E.D. to E.D.W.

186992, Second Series (1914) ed. E.D. Dowden, 49. Another reflection of the common interests and

concerns amongst these authors lies in Dowdens quoting James Martineau, one of the most distinguished

Unitarian thinkers of the 19th century, with great approval and sympathy: Puritan and Anglican, 68.

Martineau was one of the thinkers who freed Unitarianism after c.1840 from its (always modest) sectarian

restrictions, and thereby effectively dissolved or secularised it into a far broader free inquiry than that

envisaged by Tayler.61Puritan and Anglican, 13. Webers additional mention of S.K. Gardiner at this point makes no

difference to the argument. If he had found the quotation in Gardiner, he could have cited him alone.62The term, as distinct from the distaste, first emerges clearly in Webers essay on Confucianism for the

Economic Ethics of the World Religions, written before 1914, but published in 1915. It then became a

central item in his wartime vocabulary of abuse and appears, for example, in the 1920 Vorbemerkung to the

GARS in a suitably pungent and revealing usage: [14]. Those interested in comparing the historicity and

utility of Weber translations may compare Talcott Parsons translation of this term (p. 29) with Stephen

Kalbergs (Los Angeles, 2002: p. 162).



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process, whilst the 1909 edition of The Sermons of Thomas Adams, the Shakespeare

of Puritan Theologians, produced by Cambridge University Pressa locus classicus

in such casesillustrates what might be done in a specifically Puritan and Weberian

context.63 So, although Weber may have disliked the rubric, literature in Englandwas at this date closely bound up with rational science, a situation very different

from Germany and explained in part at least by the absence in England of an

academic faculty of theology with the kind of power and status it still enjoyed in

German universities. In this sense a book with the sub-title Studies in Literature was

not necessarily a repellent, although Weber would surely have been less interested in

Dowdens other attempts to perceive character value in literary texts without a

specifically religious character.

Another kind of answer to the query who? who? lies in the fact that, leaving

aside primary texts, the books by Sanford and Dowden are two of the four most

cited secondary works on religious history and ideas in the PE, the other two being

Albrecht Ritschls History of Pietism (18803), much the most cited work, and

Matthias Schneckenburgers exposition of Lutheran and Calvinist dogmatics (which

comes roughly second equal alongside Dowden and Sanford).64 Of course, in itself

such a simple measurement tells us nothing about intellectual influences or

relationships. The reason why Ritschl is so often cited reflects intellectual

disagreement as much as reliance, whilst no-one will suppose that the British

Puritan authors stood closer to Weber than, say, Ernst Troeltsch. (If one adds up

all the references to Troeltschs various works, written or projected, he does in fact

creep into the leading group.) But we are not measuring the influence of livingpersons here; we are estimating a resource, the role played by books, and by what I

have described as Webers empiricism, where (following Weber)65 empiricism

must be taken to include not merely primary sources but all that was accepted as the

scholarly work of the period, founded on conventional evidential procedures. Again,

given the inability of German writers much closer to Weber in person and Kultur to

recognise English Puritanism, it is clear that he could hardly have rooted ascetic

Protestantism within this context unless he had had the sanction of some non-

German writers. We should remember, too, that though today we can only describe

them as second-rate sensitive minds,66 Dowden, in particular, was a well-known

man in his own day with not insignificant connections to Germany and Germanliterature, being both a long-serving president of the English Goethe Society

(18881911) and an honorary member of the Deutsche Shakespeare Gesellschaft.

There can be little doubt that Weber found Dowdens evocation of Goethe as a

central representative of the higher Puritanism [that] has been preached in our own

day deeply sympathetic, since it coincided so well with his own identification of

63For the relevance of Thomas Adams to Weber, below n.115.64This statement is based on a comprehensive index of citations prepared for my forthcoming English

language edition of the PE. However, most of the actual citations of these little known authors are detailed

in the text that follows.65See the quotation above, p. 3 & n.6.66Cf. Terence Brown, Irelands Literature, 35.



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Faust as a central exemplar of modern asceticism. [XXI.1078].67 A more general

point is that since all the authors concerned with the history of Puritanism were

formally excluded, or else stood apart from Oxford and Cambridge, which remained

de facto bastions of Anglicanism long after any formal restriction was removed, theircontacts with the alternative Protestant repository supplied by German universities

and German literature were much more extensive and ingrained than those of the

English social elite. Carlyle is an outstanding example of this contact, even though he

did not actually visit Germany until quite late in life; but it is also true that Tayler

and, if not Sanford, then his Unitarian friend R.H. Hutton, spent extended periods

at German universities when young. In this sense Webers lighting on these writers

was not so coincidental as it might seem at first sight. They may even have been

amongst the English writers Weber was reading in Rome in the winter of 19012.

Whoever they were, they were too obscure even for a person as academic as

Marianne Weber to think it worthwhile to specify individually; yet it was at this

point that the pos

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