Overview

The apparent disappearance of mysticism in the Protestant world after the Reformation used to be taken as an example of the arrival of modernity. However, as recent studies in history and literary history reveal, the “Reformation” was not experienced in such a drastically transformative manner, not least because the later Middle Ages itself was marked by a series of reform movements within the Catholic Church in which mysticism played a central role. In Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750, contributors show that it is more accurate to characterize the history of early modern mysticism as one in which relationships of continuity within transformations occurred. Rather than focus on the departures of the sixteenth-century Reformation from medieval traditions, the essays in this volume explore one of the most remarkable yet still under-studied chapters in its history: the survival and transformation of mysticism between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. With a focus on central and northern Europe, the essays engage such subjects as the relationship of Luther to mystical writing, the visual representation of mystical experience in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art, mystical sermons by religious women of the Low Countries, Valentin Weigel’s recasting of Eckhartian gelassenheit for a Lutheran audience, and the mysticism of English figures such as Gertrude More, Jane Lead, Elizabeth Hooten, and John Austin, the German Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, and the German American Marie Christine Sauer.

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Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750 is an important and consistently insightful contribution to the fields of mysticism, of European and American cultural studies, of the history of religion, and of women's studies. It offers new ways of thinking about the relationships between and among historical periods, texts, and national cultures. - Lynn Staley, Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the Humanities and Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Colgate University What happened to mysticism after the Reformation? As this thoroughly engaging and expansive volume shows through a myriad of examples, medieval mysticism generated many afterlives, becoming absorbed, transformed, or reappropriated even when rejected. Mysticism and Reform, 1400-1750 is helpful to all scholars and readers interested in the debates and currents that defined spiritual life from the fifteenth century on. A truly helpful and meticulous collection of essays. - Patricia Dailey, Columbia University This provocative collection of essays explores the complex ways in which early modern contemplative writing draws on its late medieval and patristic inheritance. It highlights the period's productively paradoxical tensions between personal conversion and political reform; between individual yearning for union with God and institutional desire for order and control; between image and iconoclasm; between ecstasy and ecclesiology; longing and liturgy; song and silence; prophetic psalm and political polemic. Contemplative aspiration is shown here to be rooted in the socially liminal and the politically unstable circumstances of reformed Europe, as mystical writers seek redemption from time by aligning history's turbulent pattern with their understanding and interpretation of the Divine imperative. - Vincent Gillespie, J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language, University of Oxford This excellent volume grew from a 2008 conference organized by Poor and Smith, both scholars of medieval studies at Princeton... In their introduction, the editors write that the essays explore 'the survival and transformation of mysticism between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period.' ... This study is for those interested in ecumenism and in understanding based on a 'politics of love. - Choice, vol. 53, no. 4, December 2015 This capacious and stimulating collection brings together scholars working on texts from across Northern Europe and the colonial New World and spanning more than 300 years. Despite the range of these essays, they are united in their conviction that the mysticism that flourished during the High Middle Ages did not disappear with the advent of Protestantism. - Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 69, no.3, Fall 2016 This collection of essays explores in fascinating detail the pluralistic, complicated ways in which mystical writers from 1400-1759 drew upon late-medieval contemplative writers... The editors brought together important essays that shed new light on the relationship between inner mystical experience and the Modern Age. - Lutheran Quarterly, vol. 30, no.1, Spring 2016

Author Information

Sara S. Poor is associate professor of German and director of the Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton University.

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