The people of early modern Europe were well aware of Paul's warning in 2 Cor 11:14 that Satan could transform himself into an angel of light. Protestants and Catholics alike, as they sought to discern true sanctity from false hypocrisy and divine miracles from demonic wonders, worried about the proximity of the demonic and the divine. The problem of Discernment of Spirits confronted mystics such as Teresa of Avila and Ignatius of Loyola, and preoccupied the scholastic Jean Gerson and the humanist Erasmus. Even if the terminology was Catholic, discernment posed a problem to Christians of all denominations.
The Organisers: Jan Machielsen: johannes.machielsen@history.ox.ac.uk
Clare Ashdowne: clareashdowne@gmail.com Please contact either Jan or Clare to register or for further details Attached is conference programme.
Angels of Light?
Draft Programme
Unless otherwise noted events will take place in Lecture Room 23, Balliol College.
Friday 20 May
10:30 – 11:00 Registration / Coffee (in the foyer outside LR 23)
11:00 - 12:30 “Angels’ Food” or “Devil’s Fire”? The Spiritual Nature of Childhood in Early Modern England / Anna French (Gloucestershire)
‘[I] would have eaten the dirt beside me’: The Restless Dead and Scottish Witches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Diane Purkiss (Oxford)
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch (in Hall)
13:30 – 15:00 Dreaming As They Wake: Inner/Outer Worlds in the Protestant Prophetic Imagination / R J Scott (Sheffield)
Gijsbert Voet and discretio spirituum after Descartes / Anthony Ossa-Richardson (Warburg)
15:00 - 15:30 Coffee (in the foyer outside LR 23)
15:30 – 17:00 Choice is a private matter, after proper training: Giovanni Dominici (†1419) from Florence / Rossana Vanelli Coralli (Bologna)
TBA / Clare Ashdowne (Oxford)
17:15-18:15 Plenary 1
The Temptations of St Anthony and the Art of Discernment / Stuart Clark (Swansea)
The Temptations of St Anthony and the Art of Discernment / Stuart Clark (Swansea)
18:15-19:00 Wine Reception (in the Old Dining Room)
Saturday 21 May
09:30-11:00 Discerning the Spirits in a Jesuit Catechism: Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Doctrina Christiana (1640) / D. Scott Hendrickson, SJ (Oxford)
Dangerous Visions: the experience of St Teresa of Avila and the analysis of St John of the Cross / Colin Thompson (Oxford)
11:00-11:30 Coffee (in the foyer outside LR 23)
11:30-13:00 Fashioning Dead Disciples and Solidifying a Mystics Canon: Augustine Baker Composing The Life and Death of Dame Gertrude More; The Life and Death of Dame Margaret Gascoigne, and their Devotions / Victoria Van Hyning (Sheffield)
Demons & Saints; Heribertus Rosweyde’s Life of Martin Delrio and the pre-history of the Acta Sanctorum
Jan Machielsen (Oxford)
Jan Machielsen (Oxford)
13:00-14:00 Lunch (in Hall)
14:30-15:00 “[T]hese people seeme rather possessed, then inspired:” John Foxe’s Prophetesses / Fiona Kao (Cambridge)
A Seventeenth-Century Prophet Confronts his Failures: Paul Felgenhauer’s Speculum poenitentiae, oder Buß-Spiegel (1625) / Leigh T.I. Penman (Oxford)
15:00-15:30 Coffee (in the foyer outside LR 23)
15:30-16:30 Plenary 2:
TBA / Euan Cameron (Union Theological Seminary/Columbia)
TBA / Euan Cameron (Union Theological Seminary/Columbia)
16:45-17:30 Round table discussion / Reflection / The End
