Discerning Spirits in the Early Enlightenment: The Case of the French Prophets

Riordan, Michael B.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75738-4_11

Discerning Spirits in the Early Enlightenment: The Case of the French Prophets

Michael B. Riordan⁷

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First Online: 01 August 2018

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic ((PHSWM))

Abstract

Historians of medieval Christendom and early modern Catholicism have written widely about the discernment of spirits. How could people distinguish God’s prophecies from prophets inspired by Satan? Riordan shows what happened to the discourse of spiritual discernment in an eighteenth-century, Protestant, context. He examines the debate among Scottish mystics about the French Prophets who delivered prophecies across Scotland between 1709 and 1716: were their outward prophecies compatible with inward mysticism? Previous historians have studied how Enlightenment critics presented the Prophets as religious extremists. Riordan argues that discernment discourse is a better lens through which to see the Prophets’ own belief system. Both mystics and Prophets used rational tools to police the bounds of acceptable belief.

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Notes

1.
Rosalynn Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York: York Medieval Press, 1999); Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); Wendy Love Anderson, The Discernment of Spirits: Assessing Visions and Visionaries in the Late Middle Ages (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).
2.
Robert P. Baird, “Miguel de Molinos: Life and Controversy,” in Miguel de Molinos, The Spiritual Guide, ed. and trans. Robert P. Baird, 1–20 (New York: Paulist Press, 2010).
3.
Claire Walker, “Spiritual Property: The English Benedictine Nuns of Cambrai and the Dispute over the Baker Manuscripts,” in Women, Property and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England, ed. A. R. Buck, Margaret Ferguson, and Nancy E. Wright, 237–55 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2004); Victoria van Hyning, “Augustine Baker: Discerning the ‘Call’ and Fashioning Dead Disciples,” in Angels of Light?: Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period, ed. Clare Copeland and Johannes M. Machielsen, 143–68 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
4.
Michael David Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).
5.
Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007), chap. 4.
6.
W. Gregory Monahan, Let God Arise: The War and Rebellion of the Camisards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
7.
Lionel Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm: Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 5 and 52.
8.
Ibid.; Hillel Schwartz , The French Prophets: The History of a Millenarian Group in Eighteenth Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
9.
Schwartz, French Prophets, chaps. 7–8; Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm, chap. 3.
10.
Elizabeth Bouldin, Women Prophets and Radical Protestantism in the British Atlantic World, 1640–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), chap. 4.
11.
Sarah Apetrei, “‘Between the Rational and the Mystical’: The Inner Life and the Early English Enlightenment,” in Mysticism and Reform, 1400–1750, ed. Nigel S. Smith and Sara S. Poor, 198–219 (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2015).
12.
Helen Berry, “The Pleasures of Austerity,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 37.2 (2014): 261–77; Greg Peters, Reforming the Monastery: Protestant Theologies of the Religious Life (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 58–9.
13.
Michael B. Riordan , “Mysticism and Prophecy in Scotland in the Long Eighteenth Century” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2015), chap. 3.
14.
Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Mysticism, 6 vols. (New York and London : SPCK and Crossroad, 1992–2017); Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness (London, 1911); Aldous Huxley , The Perennial Philosophy (New York: Harper, 1945).
15.
Liam Temple, Mysticism in Early Modern England (Martlesham, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming).
16.
Elisabeth Dutton and Victoria Van Hyning, “Augustine Baker and the Mystical Canon ,” in Dom Augustine Baker, 1575–1641, ed. Geoffrey Scott, 85–110 (Leominster: Gracewing, 2012).
17.
Patricia Brückmann, “‘Paradice It Selfe’: Hugh Cressy and Church Unity,” 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 1 (1994): 83–107; Gabriel Glickman, “Christian Reunion, the Anglo-French Alliance and the English Catholic Imagination, 1660–72,” English Historical Review 128.531 (2013): 263–91.
18.
Edward Stillingfleet , An Answer to Several Late Treatises, Occasioned by a Book Entituled a Discourse Concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of Rome, and the Hazard of Salvation in the Communion of It, vol. 1 (London , 1673), 9.
19.
Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (London , 1677).
20.
Ibid., 83.
21.
Riordan, “Mysticism and Prophecy in Scotland ,” chap. 3.
22.
Gilbert Burnet, History of My Own Time: The Reign of Charles II , ed. Osmund Airy, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1897), 246–7.
23.
Michael B. Riordan , “The Episcopalians and the Promotion of Mysticism in North-East Scotland ,” in Records of the Scottish Church History Society (forthcoming).
24.
Robert Wodrow , Analecta, or, Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences Mostly Relating to Scotch Ministers and Christians, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1843), 174.
25.
Pierre Poiret , ed. Bibliotheca Mysticorum Selecta (Amsterdam: 1708), 5–95.
26.
“Of the Simplicity of The Interiour & The Conformity to The Holy Scripture,” Fettercairn Papers, Acc.4796, Box 104, Folder 2, National Library of Scotland , Edinburgh.
27.
George Garden, An Apology for M. Antonia Bourignon in Four Parts (London , 1699).
28.
Henry R. Sefton, “Bourignonism in North East Scotland ,” in ed. James Porter, After Columba—After Calvin: Community and Identity in the Religious Traditions of North East Scotland, 55–9 (Aberdeen: Elphinstone Institute, 1999).
29.
Riordan, “Mysticism and Prophecy,” 111–19.
30.
Antoinette Bourignon , L’Antichrist Decouvert (Amsterdam, 1681).
31.
Bourignon, An Admirable Treatise of Solid Virtue (London , [1693 or 1698]), 102–3.
32.
Riordan, “Episcopalians and the Promotion of Mysticism.”
33.
Garden, Apology, 352.
34.
I examine the tensions that arose between Garden and the Episcopalian wing of the Scottish church in “Episcopalians and the Promotion of Mysticism.”
35.
James Lundie to Archibald Lundie, August 17, 1709, Lundie Papers, MS 9847, f. 11, National Library of Scotland .
36.
Ibid.; Thomas Dutton and James Cunningham letters, MS 569590, 16–44, Mitchell Library, Glasgow (henceforth DCC; all letters are undated and unaddressed, unless indicated).
37.
MSS 2686, 5166, Acc.5892, National Library of Scotland ; La.III.708–9, University Library, Edinburgh; MS 53, Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen; MS 5012, University Library, St. Andrews ; A.2.82, Chetham’s Library, Manchester.
38.
La.III.708, University Library, Edinburgh.
39.
Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
40.
J. Ramsey Michaels, introduction to John Lacy , The Spirit of Prophecy Defended. ed. J. Ramsey Michael (Leiden: Brill, 2003), xxvii and xxxii.
41.
James Lundie to Archibald Lundie, April 7, 1709, Lundie Papers, MS 9847, f. 9, National Library of Scotland , Edinburgh.
42.
Ibid.
43.
Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm, 97–101; Thomas Dutton to Isabel Cameron and Katherine Orem, January 17, 1709, DCC, 125.
44.
John Lacy, Prophetical Warnings of John Lacy (London , 1707), 35.
45.
Ibid., 19.
46.
A Collection of Prophetical Warnings of the Eternal Spirit (London , 1708), vi.
47.
Ibid., 32.
48.
Ibid., vi.
49.
Apetrei, “‘Between the Rational and the Mystical’, in Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 60.
50.
Warnings of the Eternal Spirit, Pronounced at Edinburgh (London , 1709), 4.
51.
Ibid., 6.
52.
Ibid., 5.
53.
Cunningham, January 24, 1710, DCC, 259–60.
54.
Cunningham, DCC, 287; warning, October 18, 1710, MS 5166, 22–31; Acc.5892, National Library of Scotland .
55.
A True Copy of Letters Past Betwixt Mr. Robert Calder, Minister of the Gospel, and Mr. James Cunningham of Barns (Edinburgh, 1710).
56.
Alexander Falconer, commentary, DCC, 218.
57.
Bourignon, “Antichrist Discovered,” MS 512, 4 and 15, Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen .
58.
Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm, 252–84.
59.
Katherine Pringle, Lady Abden, “The Last Revelation that shall be putt in Print to the Sons and Children of Men,” BrMS 2/5/4, Brechin Diocesan Archive, University Archives, Dundee (henceforth “LR”).
60.
Ibid., 3.
61.
Ibid., 4.
62.
D. P. Walker, “The Cessation of Miracles,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance, ed. Ingrid Merkel and Allen Debus (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1988), 111–24.
63.
Bourignon, L’Antichrist Decouvert.
64.
LR, 200–2.
65.
Ibid., 221–3.
66.
G. D. Henderson, ed. Mystics of the North-East (Aberdeen: Spalding Club, 1934), 198.
67.
Falconer’s commentary, DCC, 293; register of sasines, Crail, B10/2/3/44; “Memorial from James Cunningham , late of Barnes,” GD1/1234/3, National Records of Scotland .
68.
DCC, 344–68; list of prisoners at Preston, GD1/53/72/1, National Records of Scotland ; list for Wigan, KB6/86/1, National Archives, London .
69.
Cunningham, DCC, 218.
70.
Thomas Hope to Andrew Michael Ramsay, September 2, 1709, Fettercairn Papers, Acc.4796, Box 104, Folder B, National Library of Scotland .
71.
Pierre Poiret to [Andrew Michael Ramsay], n.d., Episcopal Chest, CH12/12/669, National Records of Scotland .
72.
Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, 112.
73.
Colin Thomson, “Dangerous visions: The experience of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross,” in Copeland and Machielsen, eds., Angels of Light?, 53–73.
74.
Poiret to [Ramsay], n.d., Episcopal Chest, National Library of Scotland .
75.
[Serenus Cressy], Holy Wisdom: Or, Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, ed. J. Norbert Sweeney (Wheathampstead, Herts.), 417–32.
76.
Henderson, Mystics, 201–3.
77.
Ibid., 222.
78.
[Cressy], Holy Wisdom, 70, 520 and 522.
79.
Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm, 96, 259.
80.
Dutton, DCC, 82.
81.
Dutton, October 27, 1709, DCC, 98.
82.
Ibid.
83.
Dutton, DCC, 89.
84.
Dutton, December 6, 1709, DCC, 121.
85.
Dutton to Isabel Cameron and Catherine Gordon, January 14, 1709, DCC, 124.
86.
Dutton, December 6, 1709, DCC, 119.
87.
Dutton, November 22, 1709, DCC, 113.
88.
Dutton, December 6, 1709, DCC, 119–20.
89.
Dutton to Isabel Cameron and Catherine Gordon, January 14, 1709, DCC, 129.
90.
Dutton, October 27, 1709, DCC, 100–1.
91.
Dutton, DCC, 86.
92.
For example, Warnings of the Eternal Spirit, to the City of Edenburgh, Pronounced by the Mouths of Margaret Mackenzie, and James Cuninghame (Edinburgh, 1710), ii.
93.
Dutton, November 22, 1709, DCC, 113.
94.
Forbes of Pitsligo to Andrew Michael Ramsay, November 20, 1709, Fettercairn Papers, Acc.4796, Box 104, Folder B, National Library of Scotland .
95.
Ibid.
96.
Warnings at Aberdeen , Acc.2686, 51–79 and 83–92, National Library of Scotland ; Lord Grange’s notes on a packet of letters from Jean Forbes, Mar and Kellie Papers, GD124/15/1081, National Records of Scotland.
97.
Cunningham to James Inglis, DCC, December 6, 1709.
98.
Alexander Falconer, commentary, DCC, 210.
99.
Henderson, Mystics, 203; James Cunningham to George Garden, November 17, 1709.
100.
Records of prophets’ meeting, October 2, 1713, La.III.709, 308–14, University Library, Edinburgh; MS 1012, 572–4, University Library, St. Andrews.
101.
Cunningham to Inglis, December 13, 1709, DCC, 230.
102.
Warnings of the eternal spirit … of Mackenzie and Cuninghame, 9, 10.
103.
Ibid., 17, 18, 27, 29 and 30.
104.
Its classic statement can be found in Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Knopf, 1969).
105.
Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth Century Britain , ed. Knud Haakonson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); B. W. Young, Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century England: Theological Debate from Burke to Hume (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000); S. J. Barnett, The Enlightenment and Religion (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).
106.
Schwartz, French Prophets; Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion; Laborie, Enlightening Enthusiasm; Clarke Garrett, Origin of the Shakers : Spirit Possession and Popular Religion: From the Camisards to the French Prophets (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Jane Shaw , Miracles in Enlightenment England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

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Independent scholar, Edinburgh, UK
Michael B. Riordan

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Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, USA
Michelle D. Brock
University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PE, Canada
Richard Raiswell
Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada
David R. Winter

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Riordan, M.B. (2018). Discerning Spirits in the Early Enlightenment: The Case of the French Prophets. In: Brock, M., Raiswell, R., Winter, D. (eds) Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75738-4_11

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75738-4_11
Published: 01 August 2018
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