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Profanation of the Sabbath and Holy Days

The vast majority of dance-related court records fall under the category of profanation of the Sabbath and holy days. In fact, nearly seventy percent of the all the REED dance references are to prosecutions for dancing on Sundays and holy days. [67] (See Appendix 2: Table 1.) Many of these individual records have already been discussed under previous topics, but some discussion of how the Sabbatarian controversy affected dancing provides a useful context.

In Sabbath and Sectarianism in Seventeenth-Century England, David Katz distinguishes between English Sabbatarianism and Saturday-Sabbatarianism. The former refers to the increasing insistence of Puritans and other Protestant reformers that Sundays and holy days should be devoted to “worship, good works, and religious education.” [68] Saturday-Sabbatarianism refers to the controversy about whether Saturday or Sunday should be the Christian Sabbath. [69]

English Sabbatarianism was a departure from Continental Protestantism, which distinguished itself from Catholicism by condoning Sunday recreations. While Calvin was never a proponent of dancing at anytime for any reason, he “made a point of playing at bowls on Sunday to demonstrate his own attitude to the question.” [70] Similarly, Luther encouraged working and playing on Sunday to “remove this reproach from Christian liberty.” [71] However, a variety of trends in England such as increasing literacy, the economic utility of a day of rest, and biblical interpretation all contributed to the widespread desire for a more orderly and educational Sunday, or “Lord’s Day.” [72] As dancing was rarely educational, occasionally disorderly, and more visible than personal religious beliefs, it became an easy and convenient target for attacks by Puritans and reformers. Nevertheless, almost all areas of England had long-established dance traditions, and there was fierce resistant to changing these traditions. Altering the prayerbook might upset some, but banning the dancing that was held between morning and evening services on Sundays or eliminating morris dancers from church ales and festive processions affected everyone, if not necessarily as a participant, certainly as a viewer or audience member.

Not only were there disagreements about dancing among Protestant sects, but dancing also figured in clashes between Protestants and Catholics. Dancing on the Lord’s Day was a particularly hot topic in Lancashire because of the prominence of openly practicing Catholics. As one Protestant reformer complained, 'our people iudge it an honest and lawfull keeping of the Lords Sabboth, to pype and dance all the afternoone.  And who are greater maintainers of this impietie, than our recusants and new communicants. Their purses are euer open for the hyring of the pyper, their children and seruants, alwaies ready to dance after him, and themselues seldome fayle to be spectators.' [73] Many Protestant reformers felt that to condone a popish practice like dancing was akin to condoning Catholicism itself.

Other Protestants took the opposite view. One of the explanations King James I gives for allowing dancing and other recreations on Sundays and holy days is that to ban them would enable Catholic priests to persuade potential converts to Protestantism that, “no honest mirth or recreation is lawfull or tolerable in Our Religion, which cannot but breed a great discontentment in Our peoples hearts, especially of such as are peraduenture vpon the point of turning.” [74] Although many moralists decried the king’s declaration as misguided, if not immoral, others felt that the combined political and religious threat from Catholicism outweighed the simple moral threat of dancing. In some respects the Stuart monarchs’ view on Sunday recreations had much more in common with Continental Protestantism.

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