Angelology and Metaphysical Poetry
The angel, as creature of the divine, messenger of God, has inspired many in worship and in poetic muse. As a result, the belief in angels has a rich history deeply embedded not only in devotional literature, but the everyday lives of early modern British artists. These celestial beings are illusive in both physical form and in metaphysical ideation. Through their mysteriousness and complexity, they became important symbols which rely heavily on chronological literary context in order to understand. Coupling this with metaphysical poetry, something which delves into intricate musings and techniques–reversing meaning and identifying paradoxes, it is important to understand the classical iteration of angels before applying them to 17th century poetic works such as the Christmas Day poems by Matthew Hale or even poems by Masters like John Donne.
The English word “angel” is derived from the Greek word “aggelos” which means messenger. Medieval images of angels were not simply complimentary artwork to biblical stories, but pieces of great devotion. Angels themselves, up until about the late 15th century, had been worshiped by Catholics as separate, but subservient deities to the divine will of God. They had even been placed on a celestial hierarchy as just above mankind and just below God himself. Because of this, the relationship between humans and angels existed as borderline idolatry. People believed that angels walked among them and influenced our lives well into the 1800’s.4 A prayer to a guardian angel just might alleviate the pain one felt living in early medieval times. As a matter of fact, there were also summoning rituals for both angels and fallen angels to avenge and strike down people who done some great wrongdoing.1
However, around the time of Thomas Aquinas, many ideas about angels started to be reconsidered or even challenged altogether. Some common questions indulged by early modern thinkers were “what form did angels exist in?” “Did they exist in a separate spiritual world and follow alongside mankind or were they simply invisible and one could bump into an angel accidentally?” “Were they able to change shape and form and if so how many could fit on the pin of a needle?” These questions may at first seem rather asinine, but it was believed that discovering the role of angels in the physical world could enlighten mankind as to its own place in the cosmos. In medieval artwork, angels were depicted asexual and took the form of young men. The Council of Nicea back in 325 AD had approved of angels being represented in art and set precedence to depict them with wings in order to help tell the difference between angels and saints when they appeared simultaneously in paintings or mosaics.4 The council’s ruling, however, did not help the medieval world in figuring out the actual form of angels.
Ultimately, Aquinas concluded in his musings in the 13th century that angels consisted of visible bodies through condensed and colored air2 . Furthermore, he conjectured that angels could not change their form to be seen by mankind unless divine will commanded it. The idea of God’s will put to rest several speculations that angels used their free will to perform miracles and reaffirmed the angel’s roles as messenger of God. Most people of the time, though, still held the belief that angels offered subtle influences over mankind since direct influence was at the time now considered false. A common medieval belief was that each person had a good angel and an evil angel fighting to ensure the soul either went to heaven or hell.4 The evil angel, i.e. a fallen angel or demon, would be most active on a person’s death bed since that was believed to be the most important moment in forgiveness and grace to make it into heaven. This is best represented in Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus.
Aquinas’ thoughts on angels became the catalyst to a change in the celestial hierarchy. By the 16th century, during the Renaissance, a complete usurpation of the angelic order was underway. With angels being completely subservient to God and lacking certain freedoms given to man, angels were beginning to be placed as lower lifeforms. Christ’s birth was used to justify this notion as God had chosen to be born on Earth as man through his son Jesus. Through a virgin birth God had shown his preference for the company of man rather than angel. Art itself began to change. Artwork that used to show angels either as beings superior or equal to saints were now starting to be depicted as lesser beings than man. With man’s new found ego in the celestial order, he naturally began questioning even further why an omnipotent God even needed angels to act as a proxy to deliver messages from heaven.4
The protestant reformation, which aimed to get rid of the saints and images which caused idolatry, ran into some issues when confronted with angels. A new redefined Christianity, one that put heavier emphasis on humility and personal salvation, did not want to give as much power to angels as its Catholic counterpart, but they could not simply do away with them like they had wanted with the saints since angels pervaded the entirety of the bible as divine righteous beings directly connect to God. Angels represented a need for mediation between a Christian and God, much in the same way Catholicism used the pope or church as a mediator. This was unacceptable for Protestants ideals. As a result, angels were much more ambiguously defined in early Protestantism. Protestants during the 16th and 17th century believed that angels worked tirelessly for the care and protection of mankind, but few people expected to ever see them or witness their works. The Catholic counter-reformation at this time worked on emphasizing the power of angels and their “obvious” works more by claiming that all of the unanswerable questions in Protestantism were answered by angels. This was in fact more a reference toward ghostly sightings or other supernatural phenomena.3
17th century metaphysical poetry often took on the challenge of coping with the existence of angels. After the Reformation, Protestants may not have had a real place for their celestial cousins, but this did not remove them from Protestant devotion. One major focus of Protestant sermons during this time in fact was angelic love. Angels were considered to have free will, thanks in part to Aquinas, and thereby chose to love both God and man unconditionally. Angels were close to the grace of God and could see the sinful ways of man, yet still chose to love man simply because God loved man.3 Devotional poetry of the time, such as the Christmas Day poems here, centered not just on angelic love toward man or god, but angelic love for God as man, Jesus Christ. Jesus embodied the only two things angels in heaven could ever love unconditionally. Lines through which divulge the popular public image of angels during the 1600s are found specifically in Matthew Hale’s Christmas Day X and Christmas Day XI where lines like “simple shepherds by angel’s flown…/ To entertain this news by heaven’s light” (Christmas Day X) and “The Angels whose pure nature had no spot/of sin or guilt and therefore needed not/ An expiation; yet when sent they were,/The tidings of that peace and joy to bear” (Christmas Day XI). Both lines circulate the idea of angels as divine creatures who celebrate Christ’s birth with immense love and jubilation with a subtle ambiguity as to what their purpose is for being present at the Nativity scene, other than to show affection.
However, John Donne, one of Hale’s more well-known contemporaries, pushes the mystification of angelic love to challenge both sexual and spiritual love in his poem Aire and Angels. Donne hones in on imagined religious ideas and sets them against authoritative truth when approaching the concept of angels. Due to a lack of textual evidence about things like the hierarchy of angels, Donne uses his poetic prowess to reveal the difference in man-made ideas of angels and what is actually seen in the Bible. Thus, Donne even opposes some of Aquinas’ ideas. It is in works like Donne’s Aire and Angels which can be seen a more rigorous exploration of Protestant authoritative truth. The poem describes angels as having their own volition to summon their appearance with a more physical form than just air. In addition to this he states that “angels affect us oft and worshiped be” hearkening back to idolatry and the extent of angelic influence. Now none of these were what Donne or other protestants believed, but are used ironically to focus on the afore mentioned ideations of textual fact and opinion. Angels for Donne were symbolic representations of proper devotion rather than literal mediators of divine mystery.3
The difference between Donne and other metaphysical poets of the time, like Hale, given this small example, lies in the complexity of the angelic metaphor. Poets like Hale approach symbolizing angels in only one or two ways, while a poet like John Donne utilizes three or more literary layers. Though today the role of angels has shifted to an almost purely metaphorical existence, used to embody a normally unseen idea of divine grace or providence, strong connections are still forged within the mythos of angels through contemporary pop culture and fiction. In this way, they still pervade modern culture. It is through the allure of their mysterious presence in Christianity’s theological history as ethereal messengers or spiritual watchmen that they continue to exist, counting down the days until Revelations. They wait patiently with four horses drawn for the return of a King that has been absent for centuries. 5
Bibliography
1Davidson, Gustav, A Dictionary of Angels Including the Fallen Angels, (The Free Press; 1st edition, 1971).Back to text.
2Keller, Katherine Z., Schiffhorst, Gerald J., The Witness of Times: Manifestations of Ideology in Seventeenth Century England, (Pittsburgh, Pa: Duquesne University Press, ©1993).Back to text.
3Mohamed, Feisal G, In the Anteroom of Divinity: the Reformation of the Angels from Colet to Milton, (University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, December 27, 2008).Back to text.
4Walsham, Alexandra, Angels in the Early Modern World, (Cambridge University Press; 1 edition, September 25, 2006).Back to text.
5The King James Version Bible: 1611 edition, (New York: Oxford University Press 2010).Back to text.