Jane Lead and the Philadelphian Society are not particularly well known
figures to most scholars of late 17th- and early 18th-century religion.
Born in 1624, Lead experienced a spiritual awakening aged 16. On
Christmas Day 1640, while her family danced and celebrated, she was
overwhelmed with a ‘beam of Godly light’ and a gentle inner voice
offering spiritual guidance. After the death of her husband in 1670 she
received daily spiritual outpourings, finding comfort in a spiritual
community based in London and guided by John Pordage, a follower of the
German mystic Jacob Boehme. Going blind in 1695, she helped form the
deeply millenarian Philadelphian Society for the public gathering of the
chosen in anticipation of Christ’s return in 1697. After several years
of meeting, writing and publishing the group retired in 1703, losing
further momentum after Lead’s death in 1704.
Ariel Hessayon’s edited collection,
Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy,
offers a body of corrective scholarship for a field of research that is
still, relatively speaking, in its infancy. The result of a one-day
conference ‘Blessed Virago: The International Mysticism of Jane Lead’
held in London in 2012, the work is testament both to the quality of
scholarship now applied to Lead’s works, and the growing realization
that Lead and the Philadelphians, though small in number, can offer us
significant insight into Puritanism, millennialism, religious
radicalism, and mysticism. Chapters by several of the authors, including
Hessayon, Warren Johnston, Lionel Laborie and Philip Lockley, often
give a genuine sense of discarding what has gone before. Some older
generalizations and misapplications of Lead’s work and influence have
been rejected in favour of a new and more nuanced analysis driven by
solid archival research and a sensitive reading of the source material.
Engaging with this collection of essays leaves the reader with a sense
that the prevalent understanding of Lead as the matriarch of a peaceful
and genteel religious community is rapidly and purposefully being
undone. Rather, the collection ‘radicalizes’ Lead, proposing that she
was never a central unifying figure among the Philadelphians, but was
rather shunned by the reserved and private majority of the group when
her small band of followers decided to deliver a public testimony from
1697 onwards. The volume thus offers a three-fold reconsideration of
Lead’s legacy; an exploration of her audience while she was alive, a
reconstruction of her posthumous readership, and a re-evaluation of her
role in modern scholarship.
Overall this is a valuable and timely collection of essays that offers
new direction to those concerned with studying the Philadelphians. As
the chapter by Sarah Apetrei reveals, new manuscript sources of Lead’s
works are still out there to be discovered, and it is to be hoped that
the volume inspires more researchers to explore Lead’s important role in
late 17th- and early 18th-century religion. Apetrei’s archival findings
are generously reproduced in full, along with Laborie’s extensive list
of known Philadelphians, providing scholars with the very latest
findings to aid future research. The volume is well presented with
generous scholarly endnotes. It will be of interest to students and
scholars alike, especially anyone with an interest in female
religiosity, alchemy, radical spirituality, mysticism, and the links
between English and continental religious movements.
The full review can be accessed here:
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/2019
