torna alla schermata "U.S.A."T h e P i l g r i m F a t h e r s
or the birth of the myth of pionerism
In 17th century, a lack of religious tolerance in Europe pulls many to go away from their native countries. In particular a group of Puritans (1) fled away from England to settle down in the New World, the American wild countries. The first 101 people (men, women and children) aboard the Mayflower – after difficult sea conditions – landed at Plymouth in December 1629 and decided to settle down there. The following winter provoked the death of nearly half of the colonists, universally known as the "Pilgrim Fathers", but in spite of all the difficulties the colony became self-sufficient and prosperous.
Still aboard the Mayflower, the men signed an agreement – that became famous as the "Mayflower Compact" – which bound its signatories into a body politic with the aim of forming a government, as in the new land they would have been totally outside any sort of jurisdiction of an organised government. This fact will pave the way to the spirit of autonomy and independence that will animate the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776.
(1) "Puritan" was originally a derogatory word referring to those English Protestants who wished to restore the kind of ecclesiastical and church order laid down in the New Testament. The believed the Reformation of the Church under Elizabeth I to be incomplete and called for its "purification" from what they felt as "corrupted". The term later came to be used to describe anyone who separated from the established Church on points of ritual, polity or doctrine which they believed to be diverging from the "pure" principles of New Testament.