Angels of Light? Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions Edited by Andrew Colin Gow Edmonton, Alberta In cooperation with Sylvia Brown, Edmonton, Alberta Falk Eisermann, Berlin Berndt Hamm, Erlangen Johannes Heil, Heidelberg Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Tucson, Arizona Martin Kaufhold, Augsburg Erik Kwakkel, Leiden Jürgen Miethke, Heidelberg Christopher Ocker, San Anselmo and Berkeley, California Founding Editor Heiko A. Oberman † VOLUME 164 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/smrt Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period Edited by Clare Copeland Jan Machielsen LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 Cover illustration: “Diaboli sub figura 2 Monialium fraudulentis Sermonibus, conantur illam divertere ab incepto vivendi modo,” in Vita ser. virg. S. Maria Magdalenae de Pazzis, Florentinae ordinis B.V.M. de Monte Carmelo iconibus expressa, Abraham van Diepenbeke (Antwerp, ca. 1670). 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For Robin, Lyndal, and Nick CONTENTS List of Illustrations ...................................................... ix Editors’ Acknowledgments ............................................ xi Notes on Contributors ................................................ xiii Introduction ............................................................... 1 Clare Copeland & Jan Machielsen I Angels, Demons, and Everything in Between: Spiritual Beings in Early Modern Europe ......................... 17 Euan Cameron II Dangerous Visions: The Experience of Teresa of Avila and the Teaching of John of the Cross ............................. 53 Colin Thompson III Participating in the Divine: Visions and Ecstasies in a Florentine Convent ............................................... 75 Clare Copeland IV Heretical Saints and Textual Discernment: The Polemical Origins of the Acta Sanctorum (1643–1940) ....................... 103 Jan Machielsen V Augustine Baker: Discerning the “Call” and Fashioning Dead Disciples .......................................................... 143 Victoria Van Hyning VI A Seventeenth-Century Prophet Confronts His Failures: Paul Felgenhauer’s Speculum Poenitentiae, Buß-Spiegel (1625) ...................................................... 169 Leigh T. I. Penman viii CONTENTS VII Visions, Dreams, and the Discernment of Prophetic Passions: Sense and Reason in the Writings of the Cambridge Platonists and John Beale, 1640–60 ............................... 201 R. J. Scott VIII Gijsbert Voet and Discretio Spirituum after Descartes .......... 235 Anthony Ossa-Richardson IX “Incorporeal Substances”: Discerning Angels in Later Seventeenth-Century England ..................................... 255 Laura Sangha Afterword: Angels of Light and Images of Sanctity ............ 279 Stuart Clark Further Reading ....................................................... 305 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1.1 Jean d’Arras. L’Histoire de Melusine. Lyon, ca. 1480 ............. 26 1.2 Girolamo Zanchi. In Jacob Verheiden. Praestantium aliquot theologorum, qui Rom. antichristum praecipue oppugnarunt effigies. The Hague, 1602 ............................................ 34 3.1 Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Vita seraphicae virginis S. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis, Florentinae ordinis B.V.M. de Monte Carmelo iconibus expressa (Antwerp, 1670), image 12 .......... 81 4.1 Frontispiece of the Acta Sanctorum. vol. 1. Antwerp, 1643. ....................................................... 137 10.1 Orazio Gentileschi. St Francis and an Angel. ca. 1600. Houston Museum of Fine Arts .................................... 287 10.2 Vincenzo Foppa. Miracle of the False Madonna. ca. 1468. Fragment of a fresco for the Portinari Chapel, Sant’ Eustorgio Basilica, Milan ........................................... 290 10.3 Filippo Abbiati. St Peter Martyr Unmasks the False Madonnna. ca. 1700. Quadreria del Duomo, Milan .......................... 292 10.4 Lelio Orsi. The Temptation of St Anthony. ca. 1570s. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles ....................................... 296 10.5 Paolo Veronese. St Anthony Tempted by the Devil. 1552–53. Musée des Beaux Arts, Caen ...................................... 299 10.6 Albrecht Dürer. Temptation of St Anthony. From the Prayer Book of Maximilian I. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich .......................................... 301 10.7 Jan Wellens de Cock. The Temptation of St Anthony. ca. 1510–20. Metropolitan Museum, New York ............... 302 EDITORS’ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This collection of essays emerges from a conference held at Balliol College, Oxford in May 2011. We would like to thank all the participants for their helpful comments and for cultivating a series of stimulating discussions. Special acknowledgment is due to the John Fell Oxford University Press (OUP) Research Fund and the History Faculty of the University of Oxford for their generous financial support. Jeremy Hinchliff (Balliol College, Oxford), Owen McKnight (Jesus College, Oxford), Judith W. Mann, and Ton van der Gulik, O.Carm. provided invaluable assistance with some of the images in this volume. We are grateful to Andrew Gow for his encouragement and to two anonymous reviewers for their comments and advice. We also thank Arjan van Dijk and Ivo Romein at Brill for their support and assistance in bringing this volume to print. The editors owe a particular debt of gratitude to Robin Briggs, Nicholas Davidson, and Lyndal Roper. They have been inspirational teachers, generous with their wisdom and selfless in their encouragement. This book is dedicated to them. Oxford, 15 October 2012 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS EUAN CAMERON is Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation Church History at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He is the author of a number of works on early modern religious history, including Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250–1750 (2010) and The European Reformation (2nd ed., 2012). STUART CLARK is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Swansea and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (1997) and Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (2007). CLARE COPELAND is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Early Modern Ca- tholicism at Somerville College, Oxford. Her monograph on canonization in early modern Italy is forthcoming with Oxford Uni- versity Press. JAN MACHIELSEN is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Junior Research Fellow in the Humanities at Balliol College, Ox- ford. His historical research focuses on demonology, with a particular interest in its role within the early modern university curriculum. ANTHONY OSSA-RICHARDSON is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, researching a project on the his- tory of ambiguity. His first book, a monograph on the early modern historiography of the pagan oracles is forthcoming with Princeton University Press. LEIGH PENMAN is a research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of Lon- don and author of the forthcoming monograph Unanticipated Millenniums: The Lutheran Experience of Chiliastic Thought, 1600–1630 (Springer). xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS LAURA SANGHA is Lecturer in British History (1500–1750) at the Uni- versity of Exeter. Her research interests lie in religious cultures, belief and practice in early modern England during the “long” Reformation. She is the author of Angels and Belief in England 1480– 1700 (2012). R. J. SCOTT is a doctoral researcher at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the significance of dreams for spiritual identity in the theological, pastoral, and radical contexts of seventeenth- century England. COLIN THOMPSON is Fellow Emeritus of St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He is both a linguist and theologian by training and has published widely on the Spanish Carmelite mystics, including John of the Cross: Songs in the Night (2002). VICTORIA VAN HYNING is a doctoral researcher on the Lives and Let- ters Project at the University of Sheffield. She is a contributing editor to The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 3: “Life Writing” (2012). INTRODUCTION CLARE COPELAND & JAN MACHIELSEN In his Cautio Criminalis (1631–32) the German Jesuit and witchcraft sceptic Friedrich Spee recalled—or invented—a discussion between an unnamed prince and an anonymous clergyman.1 Over