Angels of Light?

Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-90-04-23369-0
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 164, 306 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 635 g

Reihe: Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions

"And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." (2 Corinthians 11:14) Paul's warning of false apostles and false righteousness struck a special chord in the period of the European Reformations. At no other time was the need for the discernment of spirits felt as strongly as in this newly confessional age. More than ever, the ability to discern was a mark of holiness and failure the product of demonic temptation. The contributions to this volume chart individual responses to a problem at the heart of religious identity. They show that the problem of discernment was not solely a Catholic concern and was an issue for authors and artists as much as for prophets and visionaries.

Zielgruppe

All those interested in religious history in the early modern period.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Copeland, Clare

Machielsen, Johannes

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Praktische Theologie Christliche Spiritualität, Christliche Mystik
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Editors’ Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors

Introduction
Clare Copeland & Jan Machielsen

I Angels, Demons, and Everything in Between: Spiritual Beings in Early Modern Europe
Euan Cameron

II Dangerous Visions: The Experience of Teresa of Avila and the Teaching of John of the Cross.
Colin Thompson

III Participating in the Divine: Visions and Ecstasies in a Florentine Convent
Clare Copeland

IV Heretical Saints and Textual Discernment: The Polemical Origins of the Acta Sanctorum (1643–1940)
Jan Machielsen

V Discerning the “Call” and Fashioning Dead Disciples: The Many Lives of Augustine Baker
Victoria Van Hyning

VI A Seventeenth-Century Prophet confronts His Failures: Paul Felgenhauer’s Speculum Poenitentiae, Buß-Spiegel (1625)
Leigh T. I. Penman

viii CONTENTS

VII Visions, Dreams, and the Discernment of Prophetic Passions: Sense and Reason in the Writings of the Cambridge Platonists and John Beale, 1640–60
R. J. Scott

VIII Gijsbert Voet and Discretio Spirituum after Descartes
Anthony Ossa-Richardson

IX “Incorporeal Substances”: Discerning Angels in Later Seventeenth-Century England
Laura Sangha

Afterword: Angels of Light and Images of Sanctity
Stuart Clark

Über Autor(innen)

Machielsen, Johannes
Jan Machielsen, DPhil (2011) in History, University of Oxford, is a Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford and a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He has published several articles on the interplay of demonology and late humanism.

Copeland, Clare
Clare Copeland, DPhil (2010) in Theology, University of Oxford is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Early Modern Catholicism at Somerville College, Oxford. Her monograph on canonization in early modern Italy is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.