Gender, mysticism, and enthusiasm in the British post-Reformation

Abstract

The seventeenth century is seen as a watershed in the history of Western Christian mysticism, marking its development as a distinct ‘science’, and the separation of spheres distancing academic theology from spirituality, a divorce which clearly has gendered dimensions. This article explores that shift in the British context. First, it considers the resurgence of mystical currents in the turbulent crisis of authority in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The conclusion is that gender played a central role in the Anglican-rationalist reaction against ‘enthusiasm’, and the pathologizing of mystical divinity as a form of melancholy. Second, there is discussion of the doctrine of revelation expounded by two female mystics (the Benedictine nun, Gertrude More, and the Franco-Flemish spiritualist, Antoinette Bourignon) and their supporters.

Keywords:

• mystical theology
• gender
• Counter-Reformation spirituality
• radical religion
• Gertrude More
• Antoinette Bourignon

Notes

1 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, new ed, (New York: Anthony Clarke, 1972), 197.

2 See, for example, Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘The Unity of Theology and Spirituality’, Gregorianum 50 (1963): 571–87; Andrew Louth, Theology and Spirituality, rev. ed. (Oxford: SLG Press, 1978); Mark McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

3 Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

4 J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Enthusiasm: The Antiself of Enlightenment’, Huntington Library Quarterly 60, no. 1–2 (1997): 7–28.

5 Bernard McGinn, ‘The Venture of Mysticism in the New Millennium’, New Theology Review 21, no. 2 (2008): 70–71.

6 Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable, Volume One: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Michael B. Smith (London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 12–13.

7 De Certeau, The Mystic Fable, 13.

8 De Certeau, The Mystic Fable, 25–26.

9 See Jean Gerson, Jean Gerson: Early Works, ed. and trans. Brian Patrick McGuire, Classics of Western Spirituality, 92 (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998), 77–78.

10 George Gartshore, The Wisdom of the Apostle Paul's Preaching (Edinburgh, 1734), 20; see also Leigh Eric Schmidt, ‘The Making of Modern “Mysticism”’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 71, no. 2 (2003): 277.

11 Hugh Cressy, Exomologesis (London, 1647), 634–35.

12 Cressy, Exomologesis, 637.

13 Benet of Canfield [William Fitch], A Bright Starre, Leading to, & Centering in, Christ our Perfection (London, 1646); Nicholas of Cusa, Ophthalmos Aplois or the Single Eye, trans. Giles Randall (London, 1646).

14 Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (London, 1646), preface.

15 Benjamin Bourne, The Description and Confutation of Mysticall Antichrist the Familists (London, 1646), 108.

16 Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 136.

17 John Webster, Academiarum Examen: or, the examination of the academies (London, 1654), 29, 77.

18 See John Nickolls, ed., Original Letters and Papers of State, Addressed to Oliver Cromwell (London: William Bowyer, 1743), 99.

19 Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley, CA: 1992), especially 45–86.

20 Mack, Visionary Women, 34.

21 Cressy, Exomologesis, 36.

22 Méric Casaubon, A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasme (London, 1655), A3v.

23 See Michael Heyd, ‘Be Sober and Reasonable’: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 63 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), especially 72–108.

24 Casaubon, A Treatise, 118, 129.

25 Casaubon, A Treatise, 62–63.

26 John Menzies, Roma Mendax, or The falshood of Romes high pretences to infallibility and antiquity evicted (London, 1675), 21.

27 George Keith, Quakerism No Popery (London, 1675), 81. On Menzies and Keith, see Dictionary of Scottish Church History & Theology, ed. Nigel M. de S.Cameron, David Wright et al. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993), 452, 559–60.

28 Matthew Scrivener, The Method and Means to a True Spiritual Life (London, 1688), 66.

29 Scrivener, Method and Means, 89–91.

30 Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Of Adoration in Spirit and Truth [….] In which is disclosed the pith and marrow of a spiritual life, of Christs imitation & mystical theology (St Omer, 1673), 166

31 See Edward Stephens, Enthusiasmus Divinus: The Guidance of the Spirit of God (London, 1697), 10.

32 Some examples of the broad and enduring reception of Baker's work among Quakers, Cambridge Platonists and Nonjuror mystics are given in David Lunn, ‘Augustine Baker (1575–1641) and the English Mystical Tradition’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 26, no. 3 (1975): 269–70.

33 Gertrude More, The Spiritual Exercises of the most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More of the Holy Order of St Bennet (Paris, 1657), 189.

34 More, Spiritual Exercises, 67, 224–25.

35 More, Spiritual Exercises, 188–89.

36 ‘Out of Harphius [= Herp]: The same Author in the preface to his Book called the paradice of the contemplatives.’ See Augustine Baker, ‘An Exposition of ye Book called ye Clowd’, Downside Baker MS 12, fol. 2.

37 Augustine Baker, Sancta Sophia (London, 1657), 156. But between 1659 and 1687, medieval and early-modern works of mystical devotion including Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection (1659), The Holy Life of Philip Nerius (1659), Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love (1670), and The Life of Teresa of Avila (1669, 1671), were translated into English by Cressy and Abraham Woodhead.

38 Baker, Sancta Sophia, 157.

39 Baker, Sancta Sophia, 157–58.

40 Abraham Woodhead, The Roman Church's Devotions Vindicated (London, 1672), 110.

41 See George Garden, ‘The Life of Mrs Antoniet Bourignon’, National Archives of Scotland, CH 12/20/14, and Antoinette Bourignon, ‘Antichrist Discover'd’, Aberdeen University Library MS 512. On Garden, see Dictionary of Scottish Church History & Theology, 531.

42 George Garden, An Apology for Antoinette Bourignon (London, 1699), 26, 28–29.

43 Garden, An Apology, 34.

44 Garden, An Apology, 165.

45 Antoinette Bourignon, ‘To An English Divine, who had had some of my Writings Englished, and desired to have more of them; and to know my condition and abode’ (Amsterdam, 21 February 1671), part 4 in The Light Risen in Darkness (London, 1703), 67.

46 Garden, Apology, 52.