Angels of light? : : sanctity and the discernment of spirits in the early modern period / / edited by Clare Copeland, Jan Machielsen.

• TeilnehmendeR: Copeland, Clare.; Machielsen, Jan.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions, v. 164; Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 164.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (320 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

\'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.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material / Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen -- Introduction / Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen -- Angels, Demons, and Everything in Between: Spiritual Beings in Early Modern Europe / Euan Cameron -- Dangerous Visions: The Experience of Teresa of Avila and the Teaching of John of the Cross / Colin Thompson -- Participating in the Divine: Visions and Ecstasies in a Florentine Convent / Clare Copeland -- Heretical Saints and Textual Discernment: The Polemical Origins of the Acta Sanctorum (1643–1940) / Jan Machielsen -- Augustine Baker: Discerning the “Call” and Fashioning Dead Disciples / Victoria Van Hyning -- A Seventeenth-Century Prophet Confronts His Failures: Paul Felgenhauer’s Speculum Poenitentiae, Buß-Spiegel (1625) / Leigh T. I. Penman -- 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 -- Gijsbert Voet and Discretio Spirituum after Descartes / Anthony Ossa-Richardson -- “Incorporeal Substances”: Discerning Angels in Later Seventeenth-Century England / Laura Sangha -- Afterword: Angels of Light and Images of Sanctity / Stuart Clark -- Further Reading / Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen.