ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Barton was re-interpreted over time and utilizes the development of her image to examine the afterlives of early modern Catholicism, and women’s mystical experiences, from the Reformation. Elizabeth Barton existed in a key moment in the history of Catholicism: a tenuous period of Catholic and Protestant co-existence in early modern England. She was both a political prophet and a spiritual casualty of the English Reformation. The interpretation of Catholic figures from the late medieval and early Tudor period was a contested element of political discourse in sixteenth-century England. William Lambarde’s scathing view of Elizabeth Barton is reflective of his Protestant, post-Reformation stance on Barton’s deviance. In the contemporary Western world, the inherited models of the Reformation, Enlightenment, and the age of psychiatry have been enhanced by the increasing secularisation of public discourse and private practice. The varying representations of Elizabeth Barton offer an elucidating case study for the development of early-modernism.
