ABSTRACT
A more remarkable and less expected early seventeenth-century instance is the widespread use of poetry by the Grindletonian sect of West Yorkshire and Lancashire, where the very form of poetry was regarded as a means for channelling the working of the Holy Spirit on individuals. Nigel Smith, Elegy for a Grindletonian: Poetry and Heresy in Northern England, 16151640', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Roman Catholic poetry represents another configuration: an international community working in Latin, but also in vernaculars, with individuals often living far away from their home country. Not that English Calvinists should be turning to Roman Catholic verse, but that true Protestants should steer a middle way between the idolatry of Catholic Trinitarian verse and a Socinian argumentation that Owen never regarded as involving poetry. Poetry was a resource for the cultural memory of the Holy Trinity across the entire western Church.
