The Discernment of Spirits
Assessing Visions and Visionaries in the Late Middle Ages
by Wendy Love Anderson
“[Anderson] succeeds in neatly fitting together selected pieces of the history of discernment of spirits to provide a valuable, readable description of the contours of its evolution in the late Middle Ages.” — Debra L. Stoudt, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, The Medieval Review Late medieval Christians lived in a world of visions, but they knew that not all visions came from God: angels, demons, illness, nature, or passion could also inspire an apparent divine visitation. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the involvement of visionaries in everything from reform movements to military campaigns to papal schisms raised the political and spiritual stakes of determining whether or not a vision was truly from God. In response, a diverse group of medieval thinkers – including men and women, clergy and laity, visionaries and theologians – gradually began to transform the loose patristic readings of Pauline discretio spirituum into a system with the potential to distinguish between true and false visions and between genuine and delusional visionaries. Wendy Love Anderson chronicles the historical, political, and spiritual struggles behind the flowering of late medieval mysticism and what came to be seen as the Christian doctrine of discernment of spirits.
Wendy Love Anderson, Born 1975; 1999 M.A. in Religious Studies, University of Chicago, 2001 PhD in History of Christianity, University of Chicago; presently Academic Coordinator and Lecturer in the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.
- By (author) Wendy Love Anderson
Other Titles in this Series
Martin Bucer zwischen den Reichstagen von Augsburg (1530) und Regensburg (1532)
Beitrage zu einer Geographie, Theologie und Prosopographie der Reformation
Volume 55
Der ‘Oberdeutsche vierzeilige Totentanz’
Formen seiner Rezeption und Aneignung in Handschrift und Blockdruck
Volume 88
Wyr gleuben all an eynen Gott
Das Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum in seiner Bedeutung fur Martin Luther und Philipp Melanchthon
Volume 141
Gelehrtentum und Patrizierstand
Wirkungskreise des Nurnberger Humanisten Sixtus Tucher (1459-1507)
Volume 77
Leibhaftige Frommigkeit
Die Verehrung der Seitenwunde Christi als Schnittflache und Fluchtpunkt spatmittelalterlicher Frommigkeitsphanomene
Volume 136
Konfessionelle Konkurrenz
Gelehrte Kontroversen an den Universitaten Heidelberg und Mainz (1583-1622)
Volume 118
Sterbekunst als Selbstsorge zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft
Frühneuhochdeutsche artes moriendi in Augsburger Inkunabeln und Frühdrucken (1472–1519)
Kirche und Politik am Oberrhein im 16. Jahrhundert
Reformation und Macht im Sudwesten des Reiches
Volume 89
Religiose Dynamik zwischen 1380 und 1520
Antriebskrafte der Mentalitat, Frommigkeit, Theologie, Bildkultur und Kirchenreform
Volume 140
Evangelische Stundenliturgie in Wurttemberg
Zum Chordienst der Kloster und Klosterschulen nach Einfuhrung der Reformation
Volume 113
Ritualwandel und Deutungshoheit
Die fruhe Reformation in der Residenzstadt Wittenberg (1500-1533)
Volume 74
Lazarus Spengler (1479-1534)
Der Nurnberger Ratsschreiber im Spannungsfeld von Humanismus und Reformation, Politik und Glaube.Mit einer Edition von Gudrun Litz
Volume 25
Memoria – theologische Synthese – Autoritätenkonflikt
Die Rezeption Luthers und Melanchthons in der Schülergeneration
Volume 90
Ketzer, Konsuln und Busser
Die stadtischen Eliten von Montauban vor dem Inquisitor Petrus Cellani (1236/1241)
Schrift und Geist bei Thomas Müntzer
Eine systematische Analyse im Kontext der scholastischen Theologie seiner Zeit
Volume 142
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