Experiencing God in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern England

The sensorial ravishment of a moment of Divine revelation lies at the heart of this fascinating piece of scholarship by David J. Davis, and is approached from a number of perspectives, all of which are, though, solidly rooted in the religious discourses of late-medieval and early-modern England. Davis elegantly and successfully leads the reader in an historical and disciplinary excurses, moving from contemplative devotion, passing through the iconophilia and iconophobia of Reformation England, as he also takes heed of relating to liturgical languages, religious poetics and ultimately to the scientific endorsements of the religious discourses in the late seventeenth century. As he traces this trajectory of the idea of an encounter with the divine, Davis admittedly points to the book’s leitmotif, namely “to demonstrate that most people held at least one significant, common notion about divine revelation”(p. 3), perceiving the …