Benjamin Furly, Quakers, Quietism and radical religious currents of the seventeenth-century

What is it about?

This work explores the intellectual, social and cultural context of the Quaker Benjamin Furly, in seventeenth-century Netherlands. It shows his early Enlightenment intellectual local group networks and connections to European Quietists. It also shows his renowned library collection of radical religious works, in particular, Quietist works, and contextualises Quaker participation in the widespread Republic of Letters, and their connection to the changing religious currents in Europe of the time. It explores especially, Quaker connections to Quietism in the persons of the French Quietists, Jeanne Guyon and Francois Fenelon. The article contends that, contrary to accounts of Quakers and Quietism in Quaker historiography, both movements were then at the forefront of innovative challenges to ecclesiastical orthodoxy in Europe.

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Why is it important?

The connectiveness between Quakers, Quietism and the French Quietists in particular, is established in Quaker spiritual history. However, the subject has not been revised or explored in depth since the early twentieth-century, when it was attributed with negative connotations by the historian Rufus Jones. This work takes into account the wider cultural and historical context of Quakers and Quietism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth-centuries, showing, in the light of further research, a more positive and dynamic connection than previously supposed.