Christening a Child Christening a Child Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University Grants for Engaged Learning

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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Black and white image depicting several people, including presumably the godmother and the priest, gathered around a basin where a child is being baptised. Other members of the congregation can be seen in the left side of the image. Image from A Booke of Christian Prayers (London, 1578) by Richard Day. By Permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library. CC-BY.4.0.
Christening

Jaques: I do not like her name. Orlando: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened. As You Like It 3.2.229–231

In early modern England, all children born alive were christened (or baptized) soon after birth. In general, fathers and godparents attended the ceremony, which took place at the local church about three days after the child’s birth. The mother remained secluded at home recovering from the birth.

The purpose of the ceremony was to initiate the process of the child becoming as Christian, as well as to formally name the child. The most popular names for boys in Elizabethan England were Henry, Thomas, Edward, John, William, and Robert; for girls, the most common names were Elizabeth, Anne, Jane, Margaret, and Katherine. Most English children from this period were not given middle names.

The Church Ritual

The Church of England’s ritual for the process was solidified in 1549 in Book of Common Prayer. When the father and godparents arrived either before Matins (morning services) or after Evensong (evening prayers), they brought the babe to a special, raised basin filled with holy water called a baptismal font, located near the entrance to the sanctuary. The parish priest would meet them there.

The central part of that ritual involved the priest making a short statement about how baptism is central to salvation for Christians because it washes them clean of the sin with which all humans are born. Next, the instructions note that, Here shall the priest aske what shall be the name of the childe, and when the Godfathers and Godmothers have tolde the name, then shall he make a crosse upon the childes forehead and breste, saying. Receyve the signe of the holy Crosse, both in thy forehead, and in thy breste, in token that thou shalt not be ashamed to confesse thy fayth in Christe crucifyed, and manfully to fyght under his banner against synne, the worlde, and the devill, and to continewe his faythfull soldiour and servaunt unto thy lyfes ende. Amen. And this he shalt doe and saye to as many children as bee presented to be Baptised, one after another.Book of Common Prayer, 1549 Notice that the child is not immersed in the water, but rather than sign of the cross is made upon its forehead. This ritual, part of the new Church of England that differentiated it from the Catholic Church, was the subject of considerable debate in the time period. Numerous partisan tracts about the ritual of christening were published in the period, when English Christians were pulled between the old religion of the Church of Rome and the evolving Church of England, which was subject to ascending forces of puritanism between 1560 and 1660.

Key Print Sources Cressy, David. Birth,Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford University Press, 1999. Cressy, David and Lori Anne Ferrell. Religion and Society in Early Modern England: A Sourcebook. Routledge, 2005. Hamlin, Hannibal. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion. Cambridge University Press, 2019. Kitson, P.M. Religious Change and the Timing of Baptism in England, 1538–1750. The Historical Journal vol. 52, no. 2, June 2009, pp. 269-294
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. A birth celebrated. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/huswifery/christening.html. Accessed 10 May 2018. Elizabethan Prayer Book. The Book of Common Prayer. 1559. http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1559/BCP_1559.htm. Szreter, Simon. Registration of Identities in Early Modern English Parishes and amongst the English Overseas in Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History. Ed. Keith Breckenridge and Simon Szreter. Proceedings of the British Academy. London, 2012. British Academy Scholarship Online. 30 Jan. 2014. 10.5871/bacad/9780197265314.003.0003. Accessed 10 May 2018.
Image Source Day, Richard. Image of a Child’s Baptism. 1578. Folger Shakespeare Library.