William Perkins, the imagination in Calvinist theology and “inner iconoclasm” after Frances Yates

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers Frances Yates’s famous attribution of “inner iconoclasm” to the rhetorical and logical innovations of Petrus Ramus (1515–1572), particularly as exemplified in the theological writings of the Elizabethan preacher William Perkins (1558–1602). According to Yates, the rejection, by Ramists such as Perkins, of the imagistic art of memory practised by Raymond Lull (c.1232–c.1315) and Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was tied directly to Ramists’s commitment to the Calvinist rejection of religious images. For Yates, the rejection of images in religious contexts motivated Ramists, including Perkins, to reject all images, both physical and imaginary. Contra Yates, this article suggests that there is little warrant to connect the rejections of mnemonic and religious imagery. Furthermore, Yates’s implicit suggestion that both Ramism and Calvinism constitute rejections of the human imagination tout court is contested through a detailed engagement with the philosophical theories of the imagination articulated by Ramists, Calvinists and proponents of the art of memory. The article concludes with an exposition of Perkins’s account of imagination, and its connection to his treatment of religious images, arguing that Perkins retained an important place for the imagination even within his theology.