Experiencing God in Late Medieval and Early Modern England

Description

Experiencing God in Late Medieval and Early Modern England demonstrates that experiences of divine revelation, both biblical and contemporary, were central to late medieval and early modern English religion. The book sheds light on previously under-explored notions about divine revelation and the role these notions played in shaping large portions of English thought and belief. Bringing together a wide variety of source materials, from contemplative works and accounts of revelatory experiences to biblical commentaries, devotionals, and religious imagery, David J. Davis argues that in the period there was a collective representation of divine revelation as a source of human knowledge, which transcended other religious and intellectual divisions. Not only did most people think that divine revelation, through a ravishing encounter with God, was possible, but also divine revelation was understood to be the pinnacle of religious experience and a source of pure understanding. The book highlights a common discourse running through the sources that underpinned this collective representation of how human beings experienced the divine, and it demonstrates a continual effort across large swathes of English religion to prepare an individual's soul for an encounter with the divine, through different spiritual disciplines and devotional practices. Over a period of several centuries this discourse and the larger culture of revelation provided an essential structure and legitimacy both to contemporary claims of divine revelation and the biblical precedents that contemporary experiences were modelled after. This discourse detailed the physical, metaphysical, and epistemological features of how a human being was understood to experience divine revelation, providing a means to delimit and define what happened when an individual was rapture by God. Finally, the book situates the experience of revelation within the wider context of knowledge and identifies the ways that claims to divine revelation were legitimated as well as stigmatized based on this common understanding of the experience of rapture. Cover Experiencing God in Late Medieval and Early Modern England Copyright Dedication Acknowledgments Contents List of Figures List of Abbreviations Introduction: The Culture of Divine Revelation Notes on the Text PART I: THE DISCOURSE OF EXPERIENCING GOD 1: ‘The entrance to my joys’: Raptus in Contemplative Devotion Raptus in the Medieval Tradition Understanding Raptus Experiencing Raptus Guides to Contemplation 2: ‘Wee should bee rapt vp into the third heauen’: The Reformation of Revelation John Bale and Revelation Raptus in Protestant Commentaries Ravishing the Sabbath Ravishing the Affections 3: ‘Pictures are . . . not for Worship’Images of God in Early Modern England Memorials and Mirrors Tokens of Immanence Providential Pictures Images of Consolation PART II: RAPTUS AS PRAYER AND POETRY 4: ‘A love-tokenof Christ to the Soul’: Prayer and Devotion after the Reformation Praying for Raptus The Union of All Believers Uniting the Bride and the Bridegroom Communion as Raptus 5: ‘Language of the Angels’: The Poetics of Divine Ravishment Poetry as Preparation Passion and Place in Divine Poetry The Poetics of Ascent PART III: CHALLENGES TO THE CULTURE OF DIVINE REVELATION 6: ‘So unsatisfying . . . is Rapture’: The Word and the Spirit in the Seventeenth Century Radicalizing Revelation Prophecy Has Ceased Enthusiasm and All That Jazz Letting the Discourse Fall 7: ‘The foundation of all Knowledge’: The Rationale of Divine Revelation Spinoza’s Imagination Revelation and Reasonable Religion The Soul of the Matter Conclusion Bibliography Manuscripts New Testaments & Bibles Editions of the Book of Common Prayer Printed Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index