The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit

In October 1656 James Nayler, a prominent Quaker leader, rode into Bristol surrounded by followers singing hosannas in deliberate imitation of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. In Leo Damrosch's trenchant reading this incident and the extraordinary outrage it ignited shed new light on Cromwell's England and on religious thought and spirituality in a turbulent period.