This post is a contribution by MPhil (M2, Master ECMA, Aix-Marseille University) student Amel Aboura, whose dissertation will look at the instrumentalisation of the supernatural in the pursuit of power. For this post, she explored the supernatural through the mens of the notion of transition.
Nothing is quite stable in the rocky climate of 17th century England: faith evolves, power is toppled, the truths of yesterday become the superstitions of tomorrow. It is a period where the boundaries of politics and the sacred, between the intimate and the collective, the visible and the invisible, are muddled and constantly rewriting themselves.
It is in the midst of this climate of instability that strange retellings come to light: women speak of seeing God, priests expel demons, pamphlets accuse, challenge, scandalise. These are not only mystical stories produced by marginalized minds — they are transitions. Religious, social and cultural transitions. Transitions of speech, of influential leaders, of faith’s most pivotal figures.

The supernatural, in early modern England, becomes the center stage of these multiple transitions, and it is through these narratives of mysticism akin to Margaret Mostyn’s that we are allowed to witness a world attempting to reinvent itself amidst the chaos. Through the analysis of not only the accounts of Mostyn through the eyes of Edmund Bedingfield, or An English Carmelite: The life of Catharine Burton by Thomas Hunter, but also Protestant polemic texts such as Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, we can question how the supernatural is weaponized and brandished at a tipping point in history.
The English 17th century is marked by a series of ruptures and reconfigurations: the Protestant Reformation, the marginalization of Catholics under Elizabeth I, civil wars and the ascent of Puritanism among the people.
Throughout, we witness a major religious transition: the turnover of the Catholic
monopoly to the Protestant dominance, followed by an alteration of spiritual practices and authority figures. Exorcisms and miracles recounted in Bedingfield’s The Life of Margaret Mostyn or The Memoirs of Missionary Priests by Richard Challoner illustrate the reasoning of spiritual conquest, in the face of a society turned hostile.
Catholics then adopt a logic of resistance, often in a clandestine fashion, where the supernatural becomes ammunition for counter-attack. The tales of exorcisms, hagiographies, the miracles reported during Catholic missions — each of them have one objective in mind: to protect a certain sense of legitimacy that was long lost and adapt to a different context of social, political and religious persecution. In this way, we can see in this transition what could be referred to as “transitional discourse,” where each side looks to appropriate the language of the sacred for itself for the purpose of controlling its effects.
Another shape that transition takes in this context is that of the experiences of female personalities. Their mystic discourse placed them in a position of ambivalence: on one side, they exist in a cloistered space, obedient to the male hierarchy of the patriarchy and the Church. On the other hand, their visions and writings allowed them to access a level of authority that was exceptional: the status of saint.
Their status painted a shift in the roles of women in the religious sphere: from mere supporters of the faith, they become messengers of the divine word, maybe even the faces of an entire community’s strategy. The supernatural brings them the agency needed to renegotiate patriarchal structures, because even if these women do not overturn them, they manage to rearrange them from the inside. Their hagiographies, published and spread for political and religious aims, their visions are both intimate experiences and established arguments.
Their voices and words, far from solely spiritual, became political tools for the Catholic community of the time, turning this transition into a quiet evolution, significant in the impact of female representation in religious history.
The supernatural in itself meets a change in status as well. At first serving to affirm Catholic authority, it slowly is downgraded into an object of suspicion, even ridicule, among Protestant circles. A change is seen, from a widespread and shared belief to calling into question its rationality, yet without omitting that this rationality did not spark out of genuine concern or integrity.
Once a baseline for sanctity, the supernatural as a concept grows into an argument for superstition and manipulation. Protestant texts, such as Harsnett’s, denounced Catholic exorcisms as dishonest spectacles: through his words he ridiculed possessions and exorcisms of Catholic nature, reducing them to mental manipulation and theater.[1] The supernatural, then, grows into a battleground between spiritual truth and psychological fraud.

This development marks a cultural transition: a world once invisible, omnipresent in the Middle Ages and early modern periods, chips away bit by bit, leaving space for a more rational and individualistic vision, when it comes to the sacred. Andrew Cambers, in Demonic Possession, Literacy and “Superstition” in Early Modern England, analyses this evolution as a form of pseudo-rational retelling of religion, founded on print, alphabetization and the defiance towards community feelings.[2]
Beyond historical facts, the concept of transition gives us a way to read mystical accounts, not as isolated testimonies existing in a vacuum, but as byproducts of culture happening at a critical point.
Moshe Sluhovsky, in Believe Not Every Spirit, insists upon the relevance of reading possession and mysticism narratives as purposefully negotiated constructs — as opposed to mere religious experiences.[3] These texts represent crossroads: between oralcy and literacy, between private experience and public propaganda, between lived sanctity and narrated sanctity. It proceeds to make us aware of how discourse can transform and adapt itself in order to exist in a new regime of truth.
The supernatural, at this point of English history, is far from being a relic from an ancient world, but rather a facilitator of transition. Whether it was religious reconfiguration, shifts in social discourses, redefinitions of female roles, or the cultural evolution towards rationalism, the supernatural became a crucible where old and new orders clashed and blended. Understanding these transformations means seeing the supernatural not as marginal but as central to the fabric of history itself.
[1] Harsnett, Samuel, 1561-1631. A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures. London: 1605. http://lama.univ-amu.fr/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/declaration-egregious-popish-impostures-with-draw/docview/2248552574/se-2, 22-25.
[2] A. Cambers, “Demonic Possession, Literacy and ‘Superstition’ in Early Modern England,” Past & Present 202, no. 1 (February 1, 2009): 3–35, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtn021, 21, 26, 33.
[3] Sluhovsky, Moshe. Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, & Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism, 2008, 2-4.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Laurence Lux-Sterritt (July 15, 2025). A Century of Transition: The Power of the Supernatural in 17th Century England. Early Modern English Nuns in Exile. Retrieved April 23, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/14cbp