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
Paradiesgarten oder Gefangnis?
Das Nurnberger Katharinenkloster zwischen Klosterreform und Reformation
Volume 30
Ordnungen fur die Kirche – Wirkungen auf die Welt
Evangelische Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrhunderts
Volume 84
Spatmittelalterliche Frauenfrommigkeit am Niederrhein
Geschichte, Spiritualitat und Handschriften der Schwesternhauser in Geldern und Sonsbeck
Volume 62
Wege des Humanismus
Studien zu Praxis und Diffusion der Antikeleidenschaft im 15. Jahrhundert. Ausgewahlte Aufsatze Band 1
Volume 72
Catalogus und Centurien
Interdisziplinare Studien zu Matthias Flacius und den Magdeburger Centurien
Volume 45
Martin Luther’s Understanding of Faith and Reality (1513-1521)
The Influence of Augustinian Platonism and Illumination in Luther's Thought
Volume 130
Die Enzyklopadie der beruhmten Manner und Frauen
Domenico Bandini, sein 'Fons memorabilium universi' und die kompilatorische Biographik der Renaissance
Volume 97
Spathumanismus und reformierte Konfession
Theologie, Jurisprudenz und Philosophie in Heidelberg an der Wende zum 17. Jahrhundert
Volume 31
Reformatorische Theologie und Autoritaten
Studien zur Genese des Schriftprinzips beim jungen Luther
Volume 85
Confessional Identity in the Swiss Reformation
Studies on Basel and the Lord's Supper in the Sixteenth Century
Diplomatie und Pergament
Karriere und Selbstbild des gelehrten Juristen Giovan Francesco Capodilista
Volume 110
The Munich Kunstkammer
Art, Nature, and the Representation of Knowledge in Courtly Contexts
Volume 73
Ehen mit Hindernissen
Verwandtschaft, Recht und genealogisches Erinnern im Florenz der Renaissance
Volume 133
Martin Luthers Reformation der Ehe
Sein theologisches Eheverstandnis vor dessen augustinisch-mittelalterlichem Hintergrund
Volume 95
Die Erfindung des Theologen
Wittenberger Anweisungen zum Theologiestudium im Zeitalter von Reformation und Konfessionalisierung
Volume 28
Reformation als Transformation?
Interdisziplinare Zugange zum Transformationsparadigma als historiographischer Beschreibungskategorie
Volume 126
Der Anfang der Reformation
Studien zur Kontextualitat der Theologie, Publizistik und Inszenierung Luthers und der reformatorischen Bewegung
Volume 67
Similar Books
A Companion to Christianity and Sport in Europe and North America (19th-21st centuries)
Volume 1: Western and Eastern Europe
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Contesting Labeled Identities
The Sociology of Gentilics in Biblical and Northwest Semitic Literature
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Cultic Kisses
Fruitful Encounters Between Deities and Humans. Festschrift for Angelika Berlejung on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
De/colonizing Theologies
Glocal Histories, Contemporary Challenges, Theoretical Reflections
Volume 4
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Epigraphic “Shades” from Hellenistic Thrace
Contextualizing Inscriptions in Greek from Thracian Tombs
Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament
Fifth International Symposium of the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT), 14-17 May 2015, Nottingham
