Jane Leade: Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic (review)

The spiritual leader of the Philadelphian Society for the Advancement of Divine Philosophy, a London-based congregation with branches in continental Europe, Protestant mystic Jane Lead¹ (sic) (1624-1704) authored at least sixteen books ranging in length from forty to 2,500 pages. In her lifetime, her works circulated in theosophical circles in three languages (English, German, and Dutch); later, they influenced students of mysticism such as William Law and William Blake. In the 1660s and 1670s, she was the coleader of a religious group with John Pordage, a former Anglican minister who was one of the earliest English commentators on the philosophy of German mystic Jacob Boehme. In 1670, upon the death of William Lead, her husband of twenty-six years, she was thrown into poverty, and in about 1674, she moved into Pordage's communal household with his wife Mary. After Pordage's death in 1681, she edited his Theologia Mystica (1683), assumed leadership of their congregation, and began publishing her own works. In 1694, a Dutch Behmenist translated one of her books into German, and at the age of seventy-one, this nearly blind woman then living in an almshouse was catapulted into fame. Two Oxford-educated scholars, nonjuror Francis Lee and Anglican minister Richard Roach, became leading exponents of her philosophy; they also became her personal scribes. In 1695, the Society began printing keynote publications, most notably Lead's "Great Diary," written from 1670 to 1686. Published in three volumes as A Fountain of Gardens (1697-1701), Lead's spiritual diary would become the central text of the Philadelphian movement.

Originally a dissertation titled "Mysticism, Millenarianism and the Visions of Sophia in the Works of Jane Leade (1624-1704)" (University of York, 2002), Hirst's book is not a comprehensive biography but a narrative weaving together an account of Lead's life with a discussion of key themes in selected works. A strikingly slim volume, it draws chiefly on already known sources. Hirst refers here to Lead as "Leade," a spelling that was used on only one of Lead's published works and is no longer common scholarly practice (see, for instance, entries for Lead in the new DNB, ECCO, or EEBO databases). To complicate matters further, her bibliography lists Lead's works under "Lead," while her footnotes cite the same works as having been authored by "Leade." The first of eight chapters devotes ten pages to the first forty years of Lead's life, the second discusses her relationship with Pordage, and the sixth outlines her relationships with Lee and Roach. The sixth chapter, "The Philadelphians' Prophetess," draws heavily on existing scholarship even as Hirst insists that hers is a different approach.² The seventh chapter discusses Lead's millenarianism, and the eighth her decline and death. A brief conclusion devotes less than one page to the posthumous readership and influence of Lead's works.

The strongest and most original section is chapters three through five, "Spiritual Alchemy," "Visions of Sophia," and "Mystical Marriage," which discuss the theosophical and alchemical imagery of Lead's works. As many previous scholars have remarked, Lead's works detail her visions of Sophia, or Wisdom—a feminine spiritual principle in Christian and Jewish thought. A substantial portion of the book is devoted to situating Lead's visions within "the Wisdom tradition . . . attractive not only to spiritual feminists but also to liberation theologians" (p. 63); a central argument is that Lead "developed a less explicitly patriarchal and more gynocentric form of Christianity" (p. 5). Hirst emphasizes that Lead should not be misread as a modern feminist (p. 3), yet she finds that in Lead's works "feminist issues are clearly apparent" (p. 47). Her overall argument for "a female-centredness in Jane's life and works" rests uneasily with her demonstration of the crucial importance of Lead's male friends and patrons (p. 137). Nevertheless, the discussion of "Jane's vision of Sophia in the light of current feminist scholarship and theology," while not wholly without...