ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the Dutch artist, Anabaptist prophet, and spiritualist David Joris (ca. 1501–1556) interpreted the senses. Publishing over 240 known works, writing to dozens of supporters across Europe, and the subject of considerable opposition, Joris espoused several controversial ideas that shaped polemical discourse through to the end of the seventeenth century, especially his movement of demons and angels from the natural world into the inner conscience of the individual. Such ideas sprang from his conviction that he and his followers had achieved spiritual perfection, part of which involved the “renewal of the senses” that allowed them to ‘see’ the truth behind the letter of scripture and the spiritual meaning of all things. Their renewed inner senses (which interpreted the input from the physical senses) were now like those of Adam, hence they could experience creation as it was originally intended. How his followers believed they ‘saw’ the world in a new light remains obscure, but his ideas achieved considerable attention, both positive and negative, and provided an alternative to learned or elite models.
