Evening lecture - Philip Schwyzer, Niall Allsopp and David Parry (University of Exeter) "Writing Religious Conflict and Community in Exeter, 1500–1750"

About

In a sermon on the eve of Civil War, Exeter Puritan minister John Bond hailed Exeter as 'a Beacon upon a hill, yea, as the Centre, heart and head of the West'. As an influential regional capital, Exeter was a centre for religious as well as political developments, and played a pivotal role in successive national conflicts, including the Prayerbook Rebellion/Western Rising of 1549, the Civil Wars, the Glorious Revolution, and the 'Exeter Arian Controversy' in eighteenth-century Dissent. Through these crises, Exeter's preachers, poets, and printers expounded, defended, and contested competing visions of faith and fellowship.

The ReConEx project ('Writing Religious Conflict and Community in Exeter, 1500–1750') draws on a wealth of literary evidence (including poems, sermons, prophecies, pamphlets, letters, travel writing, captivity narratives, diaries, memoirs, and spiritual autobiographies) to trace how Exeter's religious identity was written into being and fought over in the generations following the Protestant Reformation. In this event, we will introduce our project findings so far and will explore how the city of Exeter functioned as a sacred space and a site of confessional conflict facilitating encounters between individuals and the divine as well as between a diverse range of competing and co-existing religious communities.