Introduction The rise of English Protestantism and the ultimate victory of Oliver Cromwell produced a curious phenomenon in early modern England: the silencing and eventual destruction of the pipe organ in cathedrals and parish churches across the land. In this dissertation I examine the complex social conditions that led to this state of affairs. It is my contention that in England during the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this ecclesiastical instrument figuratively embodied and literally gave voice to the Roman Catholic Church. When the Protestant Reformation silenced the Catholic Mass, the pipe organ was silenced as well. Because this ancient technology was emblematic of much that was despised in Catholicism, it came under assault by the Anglicans, the Puritans, the Monarchy, the Parliament, Oliver Cromwell’s army, and even the militant rabble-rouser in the street. Attackers ranged from the Acts of the English Parliament to the axe of the Parliamentary soldier. My hypothesis is that the symbolic role played by the pipe organ in early modern English society was responsible for causing this instrument to become the tangible target of wide-ranging aggression. This hypothesis is further enhanced by an investigation of the events that immediately followed the Commonwealth Era in England. With the Restoration of the Monarchy came the restoration of the organ.1 By the close of the seventeenth century, the King of Instruments had not merely survived; it had fully recovered and had begun to flourish in the wake of the devastation that had forced it to forsake its long-accustomed role in English society. Using the English pipe organ to structure a detailed case study of technology in society, I will illustrate by example that modern theories of technology formulated around such notions as novelty, growth, progress, change, and revolution are too narrowly conceived to accommodate the complexity of the various relationships that existed between the pipe organ as a stable technology and the unstable society of early 1 The terms “pipe organ” and “organ” are used synonymously throughout this work. Unless otherwise indicated in the context of the discussion, both terms refer to instruments made in England. 1 modern England.2 Without question, these traditional explanatory categories have yielded fruitful results, but not, as it turns out, for the English pipe organ. My analysis of the nature of the antagonistic relationship between a long-established technology and the diverse social structures that attempted to annihilate it will show that we must include “technology as symbol” among our conceptual categories. Overview of the Project In order to place the pipe organ fully formed into sixteenth-century English society, I felt that it was necessary to review the history of the origin of this instrument. The ambience of the Alexandrian society that gave birth to this ancient technology contrasted sharply with the unsettled environment of early modern England. The pipe organ first made its appearance in Alexandria during the third century BCE. By that point in time, the foundations of Western philosophy, which included a theoretical understanding of music, were already well established. A premium was placed on scholarship. Engineering skills were valued in a social setting that was receptive to innovation. Political and religious institutions were relatively stable and the overall atmosphere was lively and festive. The newly invented organ was quickly accepted into the cultural life of the community. In contrast, in early modern England this musical instrument was subjected to a lengthy period of religious upheaval and political dissent. One manifestation of the widespread discontent was an increasing antagonism toward the musical expression of the Italian Renaissance, which was closely identified with the Roman Catholic Church. During the Protestant Reformation, the pipe organ became a symbolic manifestation of Catholicism. At the same time, as the legitimacy of the use of this instrument in the service of Protestant worship was called into question, there was a growing reaction against its heathen ancestry. 2 This is not to imply that historians, sociologists and philosophers of technology have neglected to address the diversity and complexity of relationships between technology and society, but rather to stress the point that the pipe organ was obviously not a recent innovation undergoing the initial stages of social negotiation in anticipation of its reception into English society. It had long since achieved the status of a normal, unremarkable, socially acceptable and essentially transparent technology. 2 My first chapter brings into focus the details of the organ’s early history in order to draw attention to the intellectual background out of which this ancient technology emerged. It also provides an overview of the instrument as it appears in both ancient and modern histories of technology. Here I show that earlier historians of technology have left elaborate descriptions of the organ, but modern authors have either made a passing reference to this sophisticated mechanism or else have not mentioned it at all. I am convinced that this complex technology with a history spanning more than two thousand years deserves wider recognition in the field of Science and Technology Studies. The main body of my dissertation consists of the second, third and fourth chapters. Beginning with the second and continuing with the third chapter, I examine a collection of primary source documents that pertain to the fate of the pipe organ as a symbol of Roman Catholicism and a victim of the English Reformation. The social disharmony that led to the destruction of the organ lasted from the early stages of the Reformation until the end of the Commonwealth Era. In the fourth chapter, I analyze the process of recovery that began with the Restoration of the Monarchy. My fifth chapter consists of a summary, conclusions, and suggestions for further research. An overview of the early years of the English Reformation shows that after the separation between Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformation movement spread quickly and achieved dominance during the Elizabethan Age. However, the overall transition from Catholicism to Anglicanism did not take place without great cost to society. As a result of England’s severance from Rome and the subsequent dissolution of the monasteries, the church as a social, political and economic structure was significantly weakened. This institution lost the numerous benefits from the extended system of patronage that had previously been linked to the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy. There is one outcome of the separation that has been overlooked by social, political and economic analysts, although it is a facet of the Reformation movement that has been duly noted by historians of music. This particular aspect of the split with Rome is the detrimental effect that it had on the ecclesiastical organ. Organ historian William Leslie Sumner summarizes the devastating consequences of the Puritan attitudes toward the organ that resulted from the close association of this instrument with the Roman Catholic Church: 3 After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 the organ was often identified with Roman Catholicism to such an extent that it had a very chequered history until it was completely disposed of by Cromwell in 1642, as far as its use in Christian worship was concerned, for a period of eighteen years. But for a hundred years before this, waves of “Puritanism” had gone far to cause the neglect or destruction of many instruments, notably in the London district during the reign of Elizabeth (Sumner 1962, p. 101). As this passage indicates, the organ found itself more than once at a critical juncture in English history. The effect of each of these episodes will be covered in the course of my case study. Ultimately, the organ fell victim to the violently destructive relationship that developed between militant Puritanism and the English Parliament, culminating with attacks on the instrument by Oliver Cromwell’s army. Ironically, at the same time that Puritan excess was forcing the pipe organ into a struggle for survival, the Puritan ethic was beginning to breath life into the Scientific Revolution.3 On the subject of science, I must add a note of explanation concerning the difficulty of working with certain vocabulary items. The first of these is the word “science,” which has customarily been used to refer to the investigation and acquisition of knowledge of the natural world from the earliest recorded history to the present day. However, the use of this word in the context of intellectual activity in Classical Greece and the Hellenistic age is problematic because “there is no single term in Greek that is exactly equivalent to our ‘science’” (Lloyd 1970, p. 125). Therefore, the umbrella phrase “Greek science” must be understood to have various interpretations. The Greeks, who introduced the diversity of theories that are customarily labeled in this manner today, considered themselves as “philosophers or physikoi or mathematicians or doctors or sophists” (Lloyd 1970, p. 125). Even among these subgroups there were distinctive differences. The more recent terms “scientific,” “engineer” and “technology” can also be problematic in a dissertation that delves into Classical Antiquity and also spans the early 3 For a comprehensive discussion of the relationship between the Puritan ethic and the advancement