Hornbooks and prayers: textbooks for children in Reformation England (XVIth century)

In England in the sixteenth century, sermons, manuals, primers and treatises all retained their importance as didactic tools for instructing adult Christians. But the catechisms added something new. No longer content with simply telling people to teach children or trusting to second-hand methods, catechists undertook to guide the religious education of the young themselves. Most sixteenth century catechisms either were designed to be put directly into the hands of a child, or else they laid out, word for word, a series of lessons for adults to follow when they taught children about Christianity. Some acknowledged the fact that people who were no longer young might still need to learn the basic doctrines of the faith, and many of the titles referred to instruction for children and the «ignoranter sort». Nevertheless, children were unquestionably the primary target audience for the catechisms. Given the large number of these manuals published in the 1500’s, their new concentration on the younger audience marks an important shift in religious pedagogy.