The Reception of German Mysticism in Early Modern England

Daniel J. Tolan, W.J.T. (Torrance) Kirby, Douglas Hedley (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

424 Seiten

2026
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-18610-1 (ISBN)

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The volume aims to establish the weighty influence of Rhenish mysticism on English religious thought, and on Cambridge Platonism in particular, chiefly in the 17th-century.

The volume aims to establish the influence of German or Rhenish mysticism on English religious thought, chiefly in the 17th-century. The English reception of such German mystical authors as Meister Eckhart, the anonymous author of Theologia Germanica, Johannes Tauler, Nicholas of Cusa, Sebastian Franck, Hans Denck, Valentin Weigel, and Jakob Böhme has been hitherto little studied. Such English readers as Henry More, Anne Conway, John Sparrow, John Everard, Giles Randall, and several Cambridge Platonists established a lineage that connected these mystics, and created a philosophical bridge between England and Germany. The volume highlights the international legacy of these mystical writers by adopting the perspective of historico-philosophical engagement with sources, placing them within the theological milieu of their time.

Torrance Kirby, DPhil (1988), Oxford University, is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at McGill University. He has published monographs and edited volumes of essays, including Paul’s Cross and Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520-1640 (Brill, 2014). Douglas Hedley, PhD (1992), Munich, is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Director of the Centre for the Study of Platonism, Cambridge University. He is author of numerous monographs, and co-edited Platonism at the Origins of Modernity (Springer, 2008). Daniel J. Tolan, PhD (2021), Cambridge University, is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow funded in part by the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is the author of ‘The Flight of the All-One to the All-One: The φυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον as the Basis of Plotinian Altruism’ (Harvard Theological Review 114.4 (2021): 469–490).

Contents

Acknowledgements

Figures

Contributors

Abbreviations

Divine Illumination: The Reception of German Mysticism in Early Modern England

Torrance Kirby, Douglas Hedley and Daniel J. Tolan

Part 1

Pre-modern Antecedents

1 Cusanus’ Apologia: Its Systematic Structure and Historiographical Significance

Garth W. Green

2 Got gebirt mich sich: Eriugena’s and Eckhart’s Teachings on the Birth of God in Creation

Adrian Mihai

Part 2

Reception in Early Modern England

3 The Single Eye: On Giles Randall’s Translation of Nicholas of Cusa’s De Visione Dei

Matthew Nini

4 Cusan Astronomical Mysticism in the Hartlib Circle and Its Periphery

Simon Burton

5 “Full of life and marrow” or “dangerous Book”? The Theologia Germanica in Seventeenth-Century England

Benjamin Crosby

6 John Everard: Medieval German Mysticism in Early Modern London

Torrance Kirby

7 John Everard and Hermeticism

Daniel J. Tolan

8 The Uses of German Mystical Texts in Elias Ashmole’s Collections and Milieu: The Languages of Enthusiasm in Interregnum England

Vittoria Feola

9 Christian Cabbalistic Platonism in Paradise Lost

James Bryson

Part 3

Jacob Boehme, Cambridge Platonists, and Spinoza

10 John Pordage’s Concept of God as Spirit in His Metaphysica

Jan Rohls

11 “High Flown” Mystics: Peter Sterry and Jacob Boehme

Eric Parker

12 Questions Concerning Enthusiasm: Henry Maurice’s Reception of Henry More’s Censura of Böhme

Marilyn A. Lewis

13 A Collection of First Editions of Jacob Böhme’s Works: A Visual Essay

Scott Brown

14 Athwart both Spinoza and Pascal! Faith, Reason, and the Cambridge Platonists

Douglas Hedley

15 Anne Conway, Herrera, and Spinoza: On God and God’s Relation to Individual Beings

Marie-Élise Zovko

Part 4

Nachleben

16 Jacob Boehme’s Theosophy and Romanticism in Germany and England

Jan Rohls

17 Fides Quaerens Argumentum Newton’s Fruitful Dialogue between Faith and Science

Jure Zovko

18 Recovering German Mysticism via Early Modern England: Shakespeare and Franz von Baader on Diabolical Evil

James Bryson

Select Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	03.06.2025
Reihe/Serie	Studies in the History of Christian Traditions ; 203
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
ISBN-10	90-04-18610-7 / 9004186107
ISBN-13	978-90-04-18610-1 / 9789004186101
Zustand	Neuware