Graduate Student, History
Merton College
Thesis Title: Terrors of Conscience, Theological and Medical Interpretations in England 1550-1642
Dr. Margaret Pelling
Dr. Sarah Mortimer
About
My research focuses upon the terrors experienced by those suffering from a guilty conscience as depicted in English sources dating from the mid-sixteenth until the mid-seventeenth century. According to sermons, biographies, pamphlets, plays, ballads and medical texts, a guilty conscience could have a dramatic impact upon the body and the mind, causing fever, sleeplessness, wasting of the body and visions of demons.
In Protestant theology, the source of this terror was the knowledge of the wrath of God directed against a sinner. Those who believed themselves to be reprobate (cut off forever from the grace of God) were literally experiencing Hell on earth. They were (to borrow a phrase from the puritan preacher Robert Bolton) 'damned above ground'.
Contact Information
Merton College
Oxford
OX1 4JD
