PUBLICATIONS
January 2000 Issue
The Geographical Review
January 2000, Vol. 90 (1), pp. 18-34
"GEOGRAPHY IS TWINNED WITH DIVINITY": THE LAUDIAN GEOGRAPHY OF PETER HEYLYN
ROBERT J. MAYHEW
Keywords: Peter Heylyn, history of geography, Laudianism, politics, theology.
ABSTRACT:
This critical history of geography looks to the political concepts that historical
actors held and analyzes the incorporation of these concepts into geography. Peter Heylyn,
who politicized his geographical books Microcosmus (1621) and, still more, Cosmographie
(1657), followed William Laud's characteristic brand of High Church Anglicanism, avowedly
hostile both to Roman Catholicism and to Calvinist forms of Protestantism, while upholding
an ideal of the Church of England as both independent and apostolic. Further, Laudians
were stalwart defendants of monarchy as a divine institution.This Laudian vision of church
and state informed Heylyn's geographical works,which goes against a received wisdom that
they are divorced from his polemical historical, political, and theological tracts.We thus recover
the politics of early modern geography as contemporaries might have understood
them.
Keywords: Peter Heylyn, history of geography, Laudianism, politics, theology.
ABSTRACT:
This critical history of geography looks to the political concepts that historical actors held and analyzes the incorporation of these concepts into geography. Peter Heylyn, who politicized his geographical books Microcosmus (1621) and, still more, Cosmographie (1657), followed William Laud's characteristic brand of High Church Anglicanism, avowedly hostile both to Roman Catholicism and to Calvinist forms of Protestantism, while upholding an ideal of the Church of England as both independent and apostolic. Further, Laudians were stalwart defendants of monarchy as a divine institution.This Laudian vision of church and state informed Heylyn's geographical works,which goes against a received wisdom that they are divorced from his polemical historical, political, and theological tracts.We thus recover the politics of early modern geography as contemporaries might have understood them.