Miracles in Enlightenment England

by Jane Shaw

The Enlightenment, considered an age of rationalism, is not normally associated with miracles. In this intriguing book, however, Jane Shaw presents accounts of inscrutable miracles that occurred to ordinary worshippers in early modern England. She considers the reactions of intellectuals, scientists, and physicians to these miraculous events and through them explores the relations between popular and elite culture of the time.
Miraculous events in England between the 1650s and the 1750s were experienced mainly not by Catholics, but by Protestants. The book looks at the political and social context of these events as well as interpretations and explanations of them by scientists, the Court, and the Church, as well as by preachers, pamphleteers, friends, and neighbors. Shaw links the lived religion of the time to intellectual history and amends the hitherto received view. The religious practice of ordinary people was as crucial to the development of Enlightenment thought as the philosophical and theological writings of the elite.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 2006

About the author

The Very Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw was installed as the eighth Dean of Grace Cathedral on November 6, 2010. She is responsible for the overall vision and mission of the Cathedral, overseeing the spiritual life of the Cathedral and giving leadership to the Cathedral community. She runs the Cathedral in collaboration with the Chapter (the Senior Management Team) and Trustees (the Cathedral Board).

Dr. Shaw joined Grace Cathedral from the University of Oxford where she was Dean of Divinity and Fellow of New College, Oxford, and taught history and theology at the university for sixteen years. She is also Canon Theologian of Salisbury Cathedral and an honorary canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and has served as Theological Consultant to the Church of England House of Bishops.

Dr. Shaw was educated as an undergraduate at Oxford, has an M.Div. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in History from UC Berkeley, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Episcopal Divinity School. She is a Fellow of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican monastic community in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Robert D. Cornwall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eighteenth-century England witnessed a philosophical debate about miracles, both contemporary and biblical, but this debate was not new. There had been an ongoing debate about the veracity of contemporary miracle stories since at least the middle of the seventeenth-century, a debate that drew the attention of the intellectual elite, theologians, and the broader community. Jane Shaw writes about miracles in England as part of a broader conversation about the nature and historical boundaries of the English Enlightenment. Arguing that there was no linear progression from superstition to enlightened reason, she places the beginnings of the Enlightenment in the mid-seventeenth-century. Beginning at the time of the Civil War interest in the miraculous among Protestants picked up dramatically and increased as the century wore on.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of miracles from 1650 to 1750 is a story of waves. Jane Shaw does a great job showing that history seldom moves in straight lines. If you are interested in Charles II's 92,000 miracles or George Fox's 150 Quaker miracles, this is a great introduction. My only complaint is that 1700-1750 does not get the same in depth coverage as 1650-1700.