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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface by the General Editors -- Introductory Note -- Warning to the Dragon -- All the kings of the earth shall prayse thee -- Woe to the House
In 1625 Lady Eleanor Davies' life took a dramatic turn when, by her account in 1641, a "Heavenly voice" told her "There is Ninteene yeares and a halfe to the day of Judgement, and you as the meek Virgin". That same year she published her first treatise, A Warning to the Dragon, initiating her controversial career as a writer of prophetic tracts. Between 1641 and 1652 she would produce some 66 of them, using the Bible to gauge the cosmic significance of events, great and small, taking place in her nation and in her personal life. They focus on a complex of personal and political events that Lady Eleanor thought indicated the fast approach of the "last days" foretold by the biblical prophets Daniel and John of Patmos. A complement to Teresa Feroli's facsimile edition of Eleanor Davies' pre-1640 texts (Ashgate, 2000), this pair of volumes reproduces 60 texts from the corpus of 66 printed between 1641 and 1652.
In 1625 Lady Eleanor Davies' life took a dramatic turn when, by her account in 1641, a "Heavenly voice" told her "There is Ninteene yeares and a halfe to the day of Judgement, and you as the meek Virgin". That same year she published her first treatise, A Warning to the Dragon, initiating her controversial career as a writer of prophetic tracts. Between 1641 and 1652 she would produce some 66 of them, using the Bible to gauge the cosmic significance of events, great and small, taking place in her nation and in her personal life. They focus on a complex of personal and political events that Lady Eleanor thought indicated the fast approach of the "last days" foretold by the biblical prophets Daniel and John of Patmos. A complement to Teresa Feroli's facsimile edition of Eleanor Davies' pre-1640 texts (Ashgate, 2000), this pair of volumes reproduces 60 texts from the corpus of 66 printed between 1641 and 1652.
Eleanor Davies (1590-1652) was one of the most prolific women writing in early seventeenth-century England. This volume includes thirty-eight of the sixty-some prophetic tracts that she published. Inspired to prophecy by a visionary experience in 1625, the year of Charles I's accession to the throne, she devoted herself to warning her contemporaries that the Day of Judgement was imminent. Her zeal and her intricately constructed tracts confounded contemporaries who called her mad. She experienced repeated imprisonment and also confinement to Bedlam, London's mental hospital. The tracts tell her own story as woman and prophet. They offer an opportunity to study her experiences as wife, mother, and widow; they also exhibit her extraordinary intellect, extensive education, and fascination with words. In showing how England's history was fulfilling the biblical prophecies in the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation, she commented about the political and religious controversies of the turbulent period preceding and during the English Civil War and Revolution.
Prophecy, madness, and the history of war and revolution in 17th-century Britain color this study of the life of Eleanor Davies
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Little is known of the upbringing of Lady Eleanor Davies, what is known is that her life was mired in both flamboyant personal conflict and in the notoriety of the Castlehaven scandal (resulting in the execution of her brother), and that her writings were embroiled in political affairs. Married in 1609 to Sir John Davies, her husband tried to discourage her prophetic writing and burned her early treatises. Her second husband, Sir Archibald Douglas was equally critical. Once free from the censorship of her husbands, her prophetic career spanned the years between 1625 and 1652. During that time she published some 69 treatises, spent years in prison, and some time in Bedlam, and made astonishin...
"The English women prophets and visionaries whose voices are recovered here all lived between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries and claimed, through the medium of trances and eucharistic piety, to speak for God. [...] Through prophecy they were often able to intervene in the religious and political discourse of their times: the role of God's secretary gave them the opportunity to act and speak autonomously and publicly"--Back cover.
This study of radical prophecy in 17th-century England explores the significance of gender for religious visionaries between 1650 and 1700. Phyllis Mack focuses on the Society of Friends, or Quakers, the largest radical sectarian group active during the English Civil War and Interregnum. The meeting records, correspondence, almanacs, autobiographical and religious writings left by the early Quakers enable Mack to present a textured portrait of their evolving spirituality. Parallel sources on men and women provide a unique opportunity to pose theoretical questions about the meaning of gender, such as whether a "women's spirituality" can be identified, or whether religious women are more or less emotional than men.