Angels and Belief in England, 1480–1700

Laura Sangha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781848931459
• eBook ISBN: 9781317322801
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la Grande-Bretagne

This study looks at the way the Church utilized the belief in angels to enforce new and evolving doctrine.Angels were used by clergymen of all denominations to support their particular dogma. Sangha examines these various stances and applies the role of angel-belief further, to issues of wider cultural and political significance.

1 THE MEDIEVAL ANGEL, c. 1480–1530

Every year, on the Feast of Saint Michael, 29 September, congregations the length and breadth of medieval England would come together to contemplate and give thanks for God’s holy angels and the ministry and succour they provided to humanity. The sermons and prayers offered on this day focused the laity’s attention on an aspect of belief that permeated numerous areas of religious life, and on concepts and ideas central to the whole community. Angels were a ubiquitous presence on the medieval landscape. The liturgy and preaching of 29 September would have been received in an environment that was imbued with the physical presence of the angels: meditations and music thus building on conceptual ideas with their foundations in the very stone, wood and glass of the church itself. Their principal responsibility of leading men to beatitude meant that the deeds of the angels were as diverse as they were far-reaching; their duties included roles as worshippers, protectors, messengers and guardians, and contemporary understanding and official endorsement of these concepts gave the celestial beings an integral part in the functioning of medieval religious life.

Angelology had a strong scriptural basis, and from here, angels went on to assume their pervasive role in medieval religious culture.¹ For churchmen and theologians, angelic involvement in the scriptural narrative made angels an aspect of belief that could be utilized to explore the mysterious workings of God and the system of eschatology, as well as providing an opportunity to expound such passages as the creation or crucifixion in greater detail. As a result, the study of angelology flourished within the cloister and university, and angels acquired a new place in the fields of philosophy, reason and logic, where rigorous discursive reasoning was applied to reveal the exact nature of celestial beings. As the most marvellous creatures in the universe, it was believed that a deeper understanding of angels could provide insight into the limits of the cosmos and the natural and moral laws that governed it. For the laity, angels also assumed a conceptual importance as they joined humanity in the praise and worship of God, and provided an example of the obedience and love that every man should aspire to. They continued to assume their more practical scriptural roles as messengers and ministers, and appealed to all as protectors and assistants, guiding men on the path to redemption.

The ubiquity of the angelic presence must be understood in conjunction with the religious culture of the Roman Catholic Church. The reputation of the late medieval English Church has recently undergone substantial restoration, and scholars accept that although fifteenth-century Catholicism encompassed elements of belief and practice that offered a tempting target for the evangelically minded, this did not preclude the existence of an enthusiastic, rich and dynamic indigenous religious tradition.² Angels were evidently a common element in these medieval religious cultures, and to a certain extent their involvement in numerous aspects of religious life may provide the explanation as to why they have previously been neglected in historical studies. The ubiquitous presence of the angels appears to have been taken for granted. Angels are so much a part of the iconography of the medieval church that their presence has been overlooked by contemporaries and historians alike. Angels are expected to appear in a scene of the Nativity or Crucifixion, so it has not been felt necessary to comment upon their presence. However, it is often the cultural elements that are unquestioned and whose existence are ‘assumed’ that in fact prove to be most revealing and which can provide the most discerning insight into cultural life. There is no scriptural basis for the appearance of angels at the crucifixion, so the question of why they appear at the very heart of Christian universal history deserves further attention.

The three sections of this chapter seek to locate angels firmly within the framework of late medieval religion, to discover why, and also how they achieved this ubiquitous presence. The liturgy, popular sermon collections, devotional materials, and the lives of the Saints, together with the physical attributes of the church are the principal sources of evidence to be examined. Drawing on these, the first section will establish the extent of the angelic presence within the community. This was the orthodox, public face of angelic belief, and the parish church was the site where men and celestial beings came into contact most frequently.

The second section moves on to look at the impact of these ideas upon personal devotion, and will discuss how representations of angels were interpreted and internalized by the laity, beyond the framework of official doctrine. The struggle for the soul on the deathbed is fundamentally important for personal devotion when it comes to notions of individual judgement, but also relates to belief about angelic involvement in the salvation of humanity. The final section addresses these wider questions, probing the angelic role in the functioning of eschatology, and in doing so locating angels at the very heart of Christian belief.

The Fellowship of Angels

In the confession of a true and everlasting Godhead, both distinction in persons, and unity in essence, and equality in majesty might be adored. Which Angels and Archangels praise, Cherubim also and Seraphin, who cease not to cry with one voice.³

The primary angelic occupation in the liturgy was as fellow worshippers alongside mankind. This was their principal function, because all forms of celestial ministry had the glorification of God as their ultimate aim. The contemporary perception of the angelic hierarchy bore witness to this: the upper order, which enjoyed a position in closest proximity to the divine, was wholly defined by their relationship with God. It was only the lowest order of principalities, archangels and angels, which descended to earth to interact directly with humanity.⁴ The greatest of the angels therefore existed solely to worship and honour God, although this was also an important responsibility even for the angels in the lowest order of the hierarchy, and accordingly their intervention in earthly affairs most frequently involved participation in the liturgy of the church.

The perception that religious services brought angels and men together in adoration of God was commonly held in the medieval period, and was emphasized by a variety of sources. The regular participation of angels in the divine liturgy perpetually placed them in the lives of Christians, and created a perception of the relationships between God, angels and men that was fundamental to the church’s angelology. Central to this was the Sanctus, the ‘angelic hymn’ forming the last part of the Preface to the Mass and sung in nearly every rite, the text of which was drawn from Isaiah 6:3:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,

Dominus Deus Sabaoth

pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua

Osanna in excelsis.⁵

The passage dealt with the prophet’s vision of heaven and fittingly it is the seraphim surrounding the throne of God who are the source of the words in the passage. It was designed to convey the joy of redemption but also indicated the angelic contribution, the seraphims’ cry expressing the ‘unmediated experience of the divine and the proper creaturely response’.⁶ The words of the Ferial Preface itself echoed the same ideas, stating that ‘at all times we should give praise to you God’ and again mentioning the angels of the upper orders:

angels praise thy majesty, dominions adore, powers tremble, the heavens, and the heavenly hosts, and the blessed Seraphin unite in one glad voice in extolling thee. Together with whom, we pray thee, that thou wouldest command that our voices should have entrance, humbly confessing thee.⁷

The request for permission to join the angelic hymn emphasized the subservient position of men, and recognized the favour shown by God in granting that their humble prayers be added to the heavenly choirs’ exaltation. It is a theme that was continued in the Preface to Communion itself, which consisted of the well known phrase ‘O all ye angels of the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever’. Angels therefore provided a model of the veneration that man should show towards the Godhead, an idea that was frequently repeated in many of the services found in the Use of Sarum, the liturgical form most frequently employed in the English Church prior to the Reformation.⁸

Many of those passages in the Use that preceded great Liturgical feasts also referred to angels. The extract at the beginning of this section comes from the preface for Trinity Sunday and the Sundays leading up to advent, and was part of the liturgical build-up to the greatest feast in the Catholic Calendar. The service for Easter Even contained several references to angels, including an evocation of the ‘angelic host of heaven’, called upon to exult the divine mysteries. This was evidently a common figurative phrase that embodied the idea of the angelic participation in worship.⁹ Accordingly, it was very common for angels to be depicted with musical instruments, such as those that appear on the minstrel gallery in Exeter cathedral. Angels were also particularly associated with the employment of music in the veneration of God, and numerous hymns refer to this role. The sequence on Christmas Day begins with the lines ‘All hosts, above, beneath/ Sing the incarnate Lord’ continuing that ‘Glory to God on high … Was thundered forth in harmony/ By angel legions bright’, and others are similarly littered with dramatic appearances such as this.¹⁰ If the allure of traditional religion was to some extent based upon the sumptuous quality of worship and its captivation of the senses of the common man, the infiltration of the angels into many aspects of church music therefore created an important area of contact between men and the celestial beings.

Evidently an association between angels and men was a common assumption in medieval liturgical worship, and was conveyed to the congregation through the many references to angels in the order of service. In the past historians have questioned the level of comprehension that the laity had of Latin Catholic services, but scholars have shown that in alliance with other textual and visual aids, and in conjunction with clerical instruction, the laity exhibited a religious outlook that incorporated much of the official religious position.¹¹ It is also true that even for the poorest members of the parish, those who had no access to additional devotional material, the frequently repeated Latin word ‘angelus’ was similar enough to English for the concept to be communicated to the congregation.

Therefore if it was assumed that the laity understood only the occasional word that issued from the priest’s mouth, even this would have been enough for the sacred words of the Liturgy to establish the ubiquitous presence of the angels, thus providing the framework of angelic belief. This framework was built upon by vernacular texts, particularly sermons, which elaborated and gave meaning to the existence of angels, and furthermore, the ritual and decoration of the church gave these concepts a vivid and striking physical presence at the heart of the congregation. Even with a strictly limited comprehension of what the words of the liturgy meant, the notion of the fellowship between God, angels and men was one that could be, and indeed was conveyed to the laity.

Vernacular sermons would have been one of the chief means of disseminating ideas about angels to the congregation, and two collections, which were among the first books printed by William Caxton in 1483, were to have a particularly influential impact upon parish religion. These were Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea and John Mirk’s Festial. Legenda Aurea was a widely read collection of legendary lives of the saints compiled in the thirteenth century, and its arrangement in the chronological order of their feast days was designed to assist clergymen in the composition of sermons.¹² In addition, it is likely that the hagio-graphical work became a book for private reading and devotion, fulfilling didactic purposes whilst also serving as a prompt to piety. It was undoubtedly a medieval ‘best seller’.¹³ Mirk’s Festial was a collection of homilies assembled by an Augustin-ian Prior in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The sermons betray the influence of the Legenda Aurea, but there is evidence that Mirk’s motivation in producing the work was his concern over the threat of Lollardy and the low quality of pastoral care offered by unlettered priests. The Festial was therefore styled to the less educated elements of society, with a simple structure and uncomplicated language, and frequent recourse to narrative and exempla. Caxton’s decision to print the Festial was undoubtedly influenced by its popular appeal, and between 1486 and 1532 a further twenty-two editions were produced, making it the most widely read sermon cycle in the fifteenth century.¹⁴ Throughout the country it was also the text that was most likely to be heard or to inform what was said in the pulpit. Both these texts provide an insight into the common themes and perceptions that were associated with angels during the period.

These collections frequently articulate the liturgical idea of angelic participation in worship. It is perhaps significant that occasions when angels are mentioned in the context of worship are also those feast days in which angels appear in the Use of Sarum, a conjunction of concepts which would link the sermon with the ceremonial in the mind of the laymen, perhaps prompting greater understanding of the latter. On the occasion of Jesus’s birth in Legenda, hosts of angels sang ‘Glory to God in the highest and peace to men of good will’ before the shepherds, and at the Ascension the angels were ‘jubilant’, and the ‘vastnesses of the air’ were ’sanctified by the divine retinue’ as Christ took his place in heaven.¹⁵ Angels also appeared in the Nativity sermon in the Festial, which related: “angeles songen bus: ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’. þat ys to say: ‘Ioye be to God þat ys hegh yn Heuen’”, in this instance Mirk helpfully translating for those who could not grasp even this familiar Latin phrase. On Palm Sunday the angels in heaven were said to ‘maken moche melody yn Heuen’, at Easter ‘þe Fadyr of Heuen makyth wyth all hys angelys soo gret melody for þe vpryst of hys sonne’. Music is indeed a continuous theme, and in De Diebus Rogacionum Sermo Breuis, the narrative tells of a boy who was taken up to heaven where ‘þer angeles taghten hym forto syng bys song: ‘Sanctus Deus, sanctus fortis, sanctus et immortalis, miserere nobis!’ These are lines which appear in the ‘Improperia of the Office of Good Friday’, firmly locating them in orthodox Catholic practice but also providing an example of angels not only j oining in prayer with humanity but also providing the words and music appropriate to the rite.¹⁶

The sermon collections also drew attention to the particular periods of the year when people were encouraged to think about angels: around the time of the Annunciation, when Gabriel performed his crucial function in the narrative of Christian history; or throughout the Nativity when hosts of the angelic beings joyfully proclaimed the birth of the saviour. As already mentioned, the most important date in the Calendar was 29 September, the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, when the laity were instructed to contemplate and give thanks for the ministry of the celestial beings. Both Voragine and Mirk in their sermons call on the congregation to ‘makyþe mencyon of all Goddys holy angels’ in their prayers on that day, and the authors use the op...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Medieval Angel, c. 1480–1530
• 2 The Protestant Angel, c. 1530–80
• 3 The Church of England Angel, c. 1580–1700
• 4 The Confessionalized Angel, c. 1580–1700
• 5 The Catholic Angel, c. 1550–1700
• 6 The People's Angel, c. 1550–1700
• 7 The Empirical Angel, c. 1650–1700
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index