Riches and Poverty in English Protestant Culture, c.1550–1800: Vernacularising the Parable of Dives and Lazarus

Abstract

Abstract The story of the rich glutton Dives and the poor beggar Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) was a popular subject in sermons, pamphlets, poems and ballads in early modern England. This article is the first substantial analysis of how the short but powerful biblical narrative was adapted and explained over the course of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It shows that—despite the huge religious, social and economic changes of this period—the message remained remarkably consistent. The beggar Lazarus himself was always depicted as a straightforwardly positive figure, offering an unusually clear association of poverty with virtue. However, many authors also used him to present a model of acceptable behaviour that imposed severe limits on the agency of the poor, and some turned him into a foil to criticise sharply those who failed to conform to such a model. Meanwhile, most portrayals of the rich man Dives presented his sinful misuse of his wealth as a lesson about not only the dangers of luxury but also the virtue of charity. A few authors offered more extreme interpretations that fitted with their specific circumstances, including radical condemnations of the rich and powerful during the political unrest of the mid-seventeenth century. Even more noticeable, however, is the striking resilience of a very ‘traditional’ core message, which previous scholarship on early modern religious attitudes towards wealth and poverty has tended to neglect.