Conversations with Angels

Also by Joad Raymond

MAKING THE NEWS: An Anthology of the Newsbooks of Revolutionary England

1641–1660 (edited) (1993)

THE INVENTION OF THE NEWSPAPER: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (1996;

2005)

NEWS, NEWSPAPERS AND SOCIETY IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN (edited) (1999)

MILTON AND THE TERMS OF LIBERTY (edited with Graham Parry) (2002)

PAMPHLETS AND PAMPHLETEERING IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN (2003)

NEWS NETWORKS IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BRITAIN AND EUROPE (edited)

(2006)

MILTON’S ANGELS: The Early-Modern Imagination (2010)

THE OXFORD HISTORY OF POPULAR PRINT CULTURE: Volume one: CHEAP PRINT
IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND TO 1660 (edited) (2011)
Conversations with Angels
Essays Towards a History of Spiritual
Communication, 1100–1700

Edited by

Joad Raymond
Professor of English Literature, University of East Anglia, UK
Selection and editorial content © Joad Raymond 2011
Individual chapters © Contributors 2011
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-55203-6
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First published 2011 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conversations with angels : essays towards a history of spiritual
communication, 1100–1700 / [edited by] Joad Raymond.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Angels –Christianity – Early works to 1800. 2. Spiritual life – Christianity.
3. Communication – Religious aspects – Christianity. 4. Angels in popular
culture. 5. Angels in literature. I. Raymond, Joad.
BT965.C66 2011
235′.30902—dc23 2011013816
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements ix

Notes on Contributors xi

1 Introduction 1
Joad Raymond
Part I Natural Philosophy
2 Strategies of Interspecies Communication, 1100–2000 25
Walter Stephens
3 Angels and the Physics of Place in the Early Fourteenth Century 49
James Steven Byrne
4 Galileian Angels 67
Nick Wilding
5 Newtonian Angels 90
Simon Schaffer
Part II Magic
6 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 125
Sophie Page
7 False Illuding Spirits & Cownterfeiting Deuills:
John Dee’s Angelic Conversations and Religious Anxiety 150
Stephen Clucas
8 ‘Behold, the dreamer cometh’: Hyperphysical Magic and
Deific Visions in an Early Modern Theosophical Lab-Oratory 175
Peter J. Forshaw
Part III Representation
9 Singing with the Angels: Hildegard of Bingen’s
Representations of Celestial Music 203
William T. Flynn
10 ‘And the angel said ...’: Conversations with Angels in
Early Modern Music 230
Jessie Ann Owens

v
vi Contents

11 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 250

Ingrid D. Rowland
Part IV Reformations
12 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels in
Early Modern England 273
Alexandra Walsham
13 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 295
Peter Marshall
14 Radicalism and Mysticism in the Later Seventeenth Century:
John Pordage’s Angels 317
Joad Raymond
Index 341
Illustrations

1.1 A manuscript of solomonic magic, giving instructions on

how to summon an angel. University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, uncatalogued manuscript, ‘Crafte of
Cunjureynge’. 12
4.1 Asterism of the belt and sword of Orion, Sidereus Nuncius
(Tommaso Baglioni, Venice, 1610), unnumbered, sig. D5v.
Reproduced with permission from Linda Hall Library of
Science, Engineering and Technology. 75
4.2 Asterism of the belt and sword of Orion (mislabelled as Pleiades),
Sidereus Nuncius (Zacharias Palthenius, Frankfurt, 1610),
unnumbered, sig. B9v. Reproduced with permission from Linda
Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology. 76
4.3 Portrait of Galileo, Istorie e dimonstrazione intorno alle macchie
solare. Reproduced with permission from the Museo Galileo. 78
4.4 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Saint Matthew with
the Angel. Oil on canvas, 223 x 183 cm. Inv. 365.
Gemaeldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany.
Reproduced with permission from Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY. 82
4.5 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Saint Matthew and the
Angel. S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, Italy. Reproduced with
permission from Scala/Art Resource, NY. 83
5.1 William Blake: design for Edward Young, Night Thoughts,
Night the Ninth, lines 1866–1869. Reproduced with permission
from the British Library. 91
5.2 George Bickham, The apotheosis of Isaac Newton, first
published 1732, republished in this version in 1787. 96
5.3 Daniel Defoe, Refléxions sérieuses et importantes de Robinson
Crusoe: suivi d’une vision du monde angélique. Amsterdam
(i.e., Paris), 1721. 104
5.4 William Whiston, Scheme of the Seven Heavens (?1745).
University Library Cambridge, 1.48.25. 114
7.1 Dee’s ‘Shew’stone’, mounted on a wooden cradle.
British Library, Sloane MS 3188, f. 9r. 153
7.2 The ‘Enochian’ or ‘angelic’ alphabet. British Library,
Sloane MS 3188, f. 104r. 155
7.3 The ‘Heptagonum stellare’: one of Dee’s talismanic
‘instruments’. British Library, Sloane MS 3188, f. 48v. 156

vii
viii List of Illustrations

7.4 One of the angelic ‘Kings’ who governs ‘enchanters,

Coniurers, witches [and] wicked spirites’. British Library,
Sloane MS 3188, f. 57r. Courtesy of the trustees of the
British Library. 167
8.1 Oratory-Laboratory engraving from Heinrich Khunrath,
Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. By courtesy of the
Department of Special Collections, University of
Wisconsin-Madison. 176
8.2 Painting from British Library Sloane Ms. 181 ‘Tabulae
Theosophiae Cabbalisticae’. Courtesy of the trustees of
the British Library. 184
10.1 Text and Performing Forces in Rosso, Missus
est Gabriel angelus 235
10.2 Antiphons in Regis, Missa Ecce ancilla 236
10.3 Juxtaposition of Antiphons and Mass Ordinary
in Regis, Missa Ecce ancilla, Credo 239
10.4 Placement of Cantus firmus in Relation to the Gospel 242
10.5 ‘Tota pulchra es’ as a Refrain 243
10.6 ‘Total pulchra es’ as a Descant 243
11.1 Pietro da Cortona, painting of two guardian angels,
Palazzo Barberini, Rome 251
11.2 Athanasius Kircher, Itinerarium Extaticum Coeleste 259
Acknowledgements

This volume began life with a conference entitled Conversations with Angels,
held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at
Cambridge University from 9 to 10 September 2005. The conference was
supported by, and would not have taken place without, awards from the
British Academy and from CRASSH, and I gratefully acknowledge them
here. I co-ran that conference with Lauren Kassell in the Department of
the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge. I would like to thank
Lauren, who was also involved in the early stages of editing this volume:
regrettably she withdrew to focus on other commitments. Thanks also
to Professor Ludmilla Jordanova, the Director of CRASSH, for her help in
organizing the conference, and for her contributions to discussions, and
to Catherine Hurley, CRASSH administrator, for her unfailing assistance.
Other speakers and respondents not represented in this volume helped
make the conference a stimulating event: they are Stuart Clark, Catherine
Rider, Juliet Fleming, Anthony Grafton, Kate Harvey and Frank Klaassen. I
would also like to thank those who attended the conference and contrib-
uted to its intellectual culture as well as its spirit. Ruth Ireland, my editor
at Palgrave Macmillan, has been very patient; I hope the wait was worth it.
My father, Pete Raymond, supplied the original artwork on the cover, ‘Light
and Dark Angels’.
Joad Raymond
Swaffham Prior, April 2011
Contributors

James Steven Byrne is Lecturer in the Writing Program at Princeton

University. He is writing a history of astronomy as practiced at medieval
universities. His research interests include the relationship between natu-
ral philosophy and theology, and medieval theories of the influence of the
celestial realm on the terrestrial world.
Stephen Clucas is Reader in Early Modern Intellectual History at Birkbeck,
University of London. He is editor, with Stephen Gaukroger of the journal
Intellectual History Review. His most recent publication is a co-edited collec-
tion of essays on Marsilio Ficino, entitled Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio
Ficino and His Influence (2010).
William T. Flynn is Lecturer in Medieval Latin in the Institute of Medieval
Studies at the University of Leeds. His publications include Medieval Music as
Medieval Exegesis (1999), and a performing edition of Hildegard of Bingen’s O
frondens virga. He has chapters on Hildegard’s poetry and music in Rhetoric
Beyond Words, ed. M. Carruthers (2010), and in A Companion to Hildegard of
Bingen (with M. Fassler and T. Leigh-Choate), ed. D. Stoudt, G. Ferzoco and
B. Kienzle (forthcoming).
Peter J. Forshaw is Assistant Professor in the History of Western Esotericism
at the University of Amsterdam’s Center for the History of Hermetic
Philosophy and Related Currents. He is editor-in-chief of Aries: Journal for the
Study of Western Esotericism and webmaster and elected council member for
the Society for Renaissance Studies, Society for the History of Alchemy and
Chemistry and European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. He
is currently preparing a monograph, The Mage’s Images: Occult Theosophy in
Heinrich Khunrath’s Early Modern Oratory and Laboratory, for Brill’s Studies in
Intellectual History and a translation of Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum sapien-
tiae aeternae (1609) for Brill’s Aries Book Series: Texts and Studies in Western
Esotericism and is researching books on Christian Cabala in the Early Modern
Period and A Cultural History of Alchemy.
Peter Marshall is Professor of early modern religious and cultural history
at the University of Warwick. He has co-edited the essay collection Angels
in the Early Modern World (2006), and his other books include Beliefs and the
Dead in Reformation England (2002), Mother Leakey and the Bishop: A Ghost
Story (2007) and The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (2009).
Jessie Ann Owens is Professor of Music and Dean of the Division of
Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies in the College of Letters and Science
xii Notes on Contributors

at University of California, Davis. She is the author of Composers at Work:

The Craft of Musical Composition 1450–1600 (1997) and series editor of Music
Theory in Britain, 1500–1700: Critical Editions.
Sophie Page is Lecturer in medieval history at University College London.
She has published on medieval magic, astrology and the history of animals
and is currently working on magical diagrams and preparing a monograph
on medieval monks and magic.
Joad Raymond is Professor of English Literature at the University of East
Anglia. In addition to articles on early-modern literature, politics and print
culture, he is the author of The Invention of the Newspaper (1996), Pamphlets
and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (2003) and Milton’s Angels: The
Early Modern Imagination (2010).
Ingrid D. Rowland is Professor in the University of Notre Dame School of
Architecture, Rome. She is the author of Giordano Bruno: Philospher/Heretic
(2008), The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth
Century Rome (1998), The Place of the Antique in Early Modern Europe (2000),
The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery (2004) and From Heaven
to Arcadia: The Sacred and the Profane in the Renaissance (2005).
Simon Schaffer is Professor of the History of Science in the University of
Cambridge. He is the co-editor of The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Innovation
from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation (2007) and of The Brokered
World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence 1770–1820 (2009). Between 2008
and 2010 he held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship.
Walter Stephens is the Charles S. Singleton Professor of Italian Studies at
Johns Hopkins University. He has published Giants in Those Days: Folklore,
Ancient History, and Nationalism (1989); Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and
the Crisis of Belief (2002); and numerous essays on Italian authors, especially
Torquato Tasso and Umberto Eco. He recently co-edited The Body in Early
Modern Italy (2010).
Alexandra Walsham is Professor of Modern History at the University of
Cambridge. In addition to many essays and articles, she is the author of
Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early
Modern England (1993), Providence in Early Modern England (1999), Charitable
Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England 1500–1700 (2006) and The
Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity and Memory in Early Modern
Britain and Ireland (2011). With Peter Marshall, she has edited Angels in the
Early Modern World (2006).
Nick Wilding is Assistant Professor in History at Georgia State University,
teaching Early Modern History and the History of Science. He is the
 Notes on Contributors xiii

recipient of the Renaissance and Early Modern Studies Post-Doctoral Rome

Prize. He has published articles and reviews on Galileo, Sagredo, Salusbury,
Hooke and Kircher and has worked on several archival databases. He is cur-
rently writing a biography of Gianfrancesco Sagredo and preparing a new
translation of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
1
Introduction
Joad Raymond

Conversations

It is easier to talk to the Devil than to God. The Devil is more immediate and
will talk audibly back to us. He is always prepared to listen. He engages in
dialogue, while God is remote, imperfectly accessible. Sin makes the Devil
and his colleagues intelligible to the finite understanding of humans; God
is ineffable. God’s silence is both literal and metaphoric. Not only does He
not audibly speak to us: conversing with the idea of God is, and has fre-
quently been seen as, fraught with risks and difficulties. From these dif-
ficulties arises the neoplatonic tradition of negative theology, in which
hidden divine truths are approached through a discussion of what God is
not, emphasizing our darkened and limited intellects, the ‘unknowing’ that
definitively shapes how and what humans think. By delineating what God
is not, we can approach a coarse understanding of what He might be. And so
Dionysius, the pseudonymous fifth century theologian, writes in The Divine
Names:

The most divine knowledge of God, that which comes through unknow-
ing, is achieved in a union far beyond mind, when mind turns away
from all things, even from itself, and when it is made one with the daz-
zling rays, being then and there enlightened by the inscrutable depth of
Wisdom.1

Pseudo-Dionysius wrote knowingly about heavenly things, but especially

angels because they were a means of understanding heaven: for him, angels
were a mediating concept, beings halfway between humans and God, sem-
piternal, spiritual beings, yet knowable by humans. In this way, they were
messengers (aggeloi, malakim) in practice, communicating with humans
in several biblical texts, but also conceptually or intellectually, as they
provided a means of understanding God through the very fact of their
existence.

1
2 Joad Raymond

We are presently surrounded by a secular commodification of angels.

Bookshops devoted to the occult present shelves dedicated to angels, report-
ing encounters with angels, instructing us in the protection offered to us by
angels, in how to identify our guardian angel, in how to improve our life
through understanding of or conversation with angels. Some offer instruc-
tion in the lost angel magic of John Dee. Angel iconography haunts high
street shops, from home decorations to t-shirts. Modern art, religious and
secular, is full of angels, from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America through
Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet to Antony Gormley’s The Angel of the North.
Angels probably seem anything but unfamiliar in the modern world. Yet
this familiarity may be a false friend when it comes to understanding the
angels of the medieval and early-modern world. Pre-1700 (and this date is
open to debate and relocation) angels were more integrated into political
theory, theology, social institutions, music, science, literary theory, and
intellectual life generally, not only as content, but as a way of thinking
about form and the thing itself. They were part of the pre-modern episteme,
and the project of this book is as much to defamiliarise that episteme as to
recover it. At some point, a series of shifts altered the place of angels and
of angelology in the culture. This was probably not a single epistemic shift
(such as secularisation or empiricism), and there are some significant and
potentially misleading continuities in the picture, but rather a modification
of lines, proportions and perspectives that effected a transformation in the
whole picture.
The ubiquity of angels does not extend to contemporary historical schol-
arship. The reasoning that makes God remote and the Devil familiar may
hold for contemporary scholarship as well as for medieval and early-modern
European history. Much more has been written on the subjects of medieval
demonology and the witch-hunts in early-modern Europe than on angels
(by which I mean unfallen angels, those who, in the Christian myth, did
not turn away from God to sin with Lucifer) and angelology. There is an
inherent interest in the phenomenon of the witch-craze, and in the social
motives and intellectual premises of persecutors; but scholarship also reflects
the traditional theological distinction between the fallen world, with its
sensible and visible agency, and the invisible world, accessible only through
contemplation. Demons continued to be everyday participants in human
history while God stood at a distance, and even angels were seldom visible
and audible, and more commonly witnesses and invisible helpers.
Conversations with angels nonetheless took place in medieval and early-
modern Europe, and in the two senses already mentioned: conversations
between humans and angels as beings that involved an exchange of words
or thoughts, and conversations with an idea, in which humans used the
existence of angels as a means of understanding their world. This duality,
and perhaps further relationships, is embedded in the semantics of the
word conversations, which comprehends not only verbal exchange, but also
 Introduction 3

the now- obsolete senses of living in a place or among others, consorting

with, intimacy, sociability, and engaging with a society. It can also imply
sexual intercourse.2 Conversations stands alongside and obtains its meaning
from other cognate or associated words: colloquium, conference, conlocutio
(a private conversation), dialogue. Discussing angelic speech in his Summa
Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) plays on the relationship between
conversatio and conversio: angelic conversations involve a lower angel turn-
ing towards a higher angel or to God in order to receive illuminatio.3 The
intercourse and exchange between humans and angels between c. 1100 and
c. 1700 were described by all these terms, and these senses are explored in
the chapters in this volume: by ‘conversations’ with angels I mean some-
thing like the Latin conversio, dazzlingly elaborated by Aquinas, a turning
towards in hope or fear of salvation, a channel momentarily opened. Angels
are messengers and thus represent not only conversants in a dialogue, but
the medium through which conversation occurs. Conversation is under-
stood literally, but also as a powerful figure for comprehension, insight and
mediation.

Scholarship

‘Conversation’ indicates not only the organic exchange but a range of rela-
tionships that can obtain between conversants. Those who summoned
angels using ritual magic sought complex forms of sociability, but for the
most part, which is to say in the Thomist tradition, the speech of angels was
not the horizontal exchange of a humanist republic of letters, but terrify-
ingly and sublimely vertical; angels relay a downward message compelling
enlightenment, even when speaking to lesser angels. Yet there were a range
of patterns of conversation, both literal and figurative. This range includes
real people talking to real angels (or leaving records of these conversations
that indicate their perceived reality), but also paintings and musical compo-
sitions of conversations with angels, and writing about angels that under-
takes a kind of conversation as it attempts to attune natural philosophy to
the imperceptible presence of a spiritual world. The chapters by James Byrne,
Nick Wilding and Simon Schaffer concern the place of angels in creating
and authorizing knowledge in natural philosophy; the chapters by Sophie
Page, Stephen Clucas and Peter J. Forshaw describe more immediate conver-
sations between humans and angels, engineered through ritual magic; the
role of angels in music, and the close and extended analogy between music
and angels, are explored in the chapters by Jessie Ann Owens and William
Flynn, while Ingrid Rowland looks at representation in letters and paintings;
and the chapters by Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham, and my own
chapter, look at the ongoing dialogue between theology and angels in the
Reformation and counter-Reformation. Yet the distinction between these
conversations, between the literal and the figurative, is not always easy to
4 Joad Raymond

locate. The problem is not only the blurring of perception (did John Pordage
and John Dee converse with angels, or were they deluded?), but also the
close accommodation between these modes: representation must conform
to theological truths (exemplified in Rowland’s chapter on Guardianship),
and theology relies upon representation (in particular, a theory of how the
ineffable can be comprehended by the limited faculties of humans) for its
exposition. In the archive, the literal and figurative frequently collapse one
into another.
This focus on conversation, on how humans used literal and figurative
conversations with angels to acquire or imagine new forms of knowledge
and new understandings of the relationship between God and man and
of the arrangement of the natural world, recovers lost perspectives on the
social and cultural histories of theology, magic, natural philosophy, music
and literature in medieval and early-modern Europe. This necessitates an
interdisciplinary approach, and one which recognises the permeability of
these ideas across Europe. The volume does not seek to offer a comprehen-
sive and global history, but to explore points of convergence between the
disciplines and between medieval and Renaissance theology, natural phi-
losophy, politics and imaginative culture. The cumulative effect is to restore
to angels some of the intellectual vitality and cultural substance that the
centuries have taken away, and to bring angels closer to humans.
Scholarly writing about angels – though less plentiful than that written on
the topic of demons (in some ways a narrower topic) – has focussed on scho-
lastic philosophy in the medieval period, and occultism in the modern. It
has tended to pitch the theology against history, literary scholarship against
the history of exegesis, social against intellectual history. With the excep-
tion of Philip Marshall and Alexandra Walsham’s Angels in the Early Modern
World (2006), it has made little claim for the enduring cultural significance
of angels. Much can be learned from, and much of the groundwork for
this volume is established by, the scholarship on demons and demonology.
Stuart Clark’s magnum opus, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft
in Early Modern Europe (1997) is essential for an understanding of the rela-
tionship between angels and science or knowledge in early-modern Europe.
Clark shows that a belief in the efficient causes of spirits continued through
the seventeenth century, even among natural philosophers who articulated
a mechanist view of the universe and who were committed to experimen-
talism. Schaffer, to whom Clark’s analysis is indebted, extends this account
in his chapter on Newton in this volume.4 And Walter Stephens’ Demon
Lovers (2002), with its discussion of the assumption of virtual bodies, and of
interspecies sexual intercourse as epistemological proof, reprised with the
theme of conversations in his chapter in this volume, lays out a valuable
framework for understanding the place of the natural philosophy of angels
in medieval Europe. This offers an imaginative leap, important if we are to
grasp the sense of the everyday presence of angels, towards acknowledging
 Introduction 5

the intellectual coherence of the zealous theorists of witch persecution. Yet

there is a surprising tendency for angels to disappear in broader studies of
politics and religion: there are only brief mentions of them in Diarmaid
MacCulloch’s Reformation (2004) and Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the
Altars (1992), for example. This is not because angels were merely tangential
to medieval and early-modern thought. Rather, I suspect that their central-
ity is such that they infiltrate common language and pertain to so many
quotidian things – prayer, politics, virtuous conduct – that the specificity of
angelic doctrine becomes absorbed in the everyday. Hence angels become
invisible in the discussion of more local and focussed topics. The sheer
quantity of passing allusions to angels makes a sustained discussion of writ-
ing specifically about them difficult to undertake.
The role of angels in constructing and articulating an understanding of
the world is most evident in writings of the twelfth and thirteenth centu-
ries. What took place at that time could be described without exaggeration
as an angelological renaissance.5 It is hard to overlook the importance of
angelology to Aquinas. Quaestiones 50–64 of his Summa Theologiæ consist
of what is, in effect, a separate treatise on angels, addressing topics from
the number of angels, through how they move, to how it was possible for
them to sin. His Treatise on Separate Substances examines the nature of mat-
ter and creation through the lens of angels and demons. The editors of the
Blackfriars edition accordingly draw attention to the central role of angels
in the Summa: Thomas needs to write about angels as a way of conceiving
God. This is because Christian theology has at its centre an account of the
relationship among God, Christ and Man. God, though ineffable, can none-
theless be approached by accounts of beings that stand between God and
humans. Angels mediate between God and man, and they explain (or can
be used to explicate) the differences between God and Man in a way that
Christ cannot.6
The two other major scholastic angelologists have also prompted sig-
nificant historical scholarship on angels. Marcia Colish’s essential study
of Peter Lombard (c. 1100–60) deals enlighteningly with the twelfth and
thirteenth century theology of angels, and particularly with questions of
angelic freewill and soteriology.7 This emphasis partly reflects the interests
and significance of Lombard’s own writing, but Colish’s work further dem-
onstrates the knotty technicality of the theological problems, and how close
to theology the historian must come in order to expound the internal logic
of their solutions. Colish is aware of the relationship between rhetorical
form – in this case, the sententia – and the kinds of questions that a writer
will ask, and how he or she will resolve them. It is precisely because writing
about angels is so diffuse that it is particularly susceptible or sensitive to
this interrelation between mode of writing and knowledge: a discussion of
angels in a systematic theology is likely to be quite different from one in a
work of practical divinity.
6 Joad Raymond

The third great medieval angelologist, Bonaventure (1221–74), is the focus

of David Keck’s Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (1998). Building on
Colish’s work, Keck shows how angelology became a formal topic through
the influence of Lombard and Bonaventure, and how, from the twelfth cen-
tury onwards, all discussions of angels were structured by the methodo-
logical conventions of the numerous commentaries on Lombard’s Sentences.
Moreover, Keck shows how understanding of angels in the anagogical sense
(one of the fourfold senses of exegesis, through which things in this world,
or descriptions of things in this world, lead up to things in the world beyond
it, including angels) made them a means of interpreting and describing
diverse aspects of the human world, from religious rituals and practices, to
the church community and all human hierarchies.
Keck’s work made angels more perceptible as a category and as a complex
locus of discussion among those addressing religion in the context of intel-
lectual or cultural history, and this is perhaps the main intellectual associa-
tion between research on the medieval period and on the early-modern.
The emphasis has fallen profoundly on the occult rather than the manifest
or even, perhaps, the representative. Ariel Hessayon’s recent study of the
seventeenth century antinomian TheaurauJohn Tany, for example, regis-
ters how angels fit into Tany’s conceptual and devotional culture, in a way
that earlier writings on civil war enthusiasm have passed by.8 Some subjects
demand an engagement with angels: scholarship on John Milton and the
Elizabethan magus John Dee, for example. In both cases, the attraction of
the topic, and perhaps why angels seem central, is the very atypicality of
the role of angels. The digestive and sexual practices of Milton’s angels have
served as a focus of critical attention, because their unusual or heterodox
character has suggested that here, and perhaps here alone, Milton is think-
ing about angelology, rather than telling a story.9 Even Robert West’s fine
Milton and the Angels (1955), while seeking to contextualise Milton’s beliefs,
focuses on Protestant controversy rather than consensual doctrine, and
emphasises the occult above scholastic and patristic doctrine.
Dee is perhaps the clearest example of how scholarly exploration of early-
modern angels emphasises the atypical, and those interests and activities
in which angels are central, and self- consciously deployed, rather than
those in which angels are common yet peripheral, part of the fabric of
an enchanted universe. Dee famously spoke with real, though immate-
rial angels. He summoned them by magical means, conversed with them
through a ‘showstone’, relying on a scryer to mediate their apparitions and
words to him.10 While Victorian scholarship had little time for angelic
apparitions, regarding them as little better than fraud or fairies, the pro-
foundly influential work of Frances Yates rehabilitated them through their
associations with neoplatonism.11 Recent work – such as Peter French’s
John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (1972), very much of the Yates
school, and Nicholas H. Clulee’s John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between
 Introduction 7

Science and Religion (1988) – has sought to establish a degree of coherence

in Dee’s far-reaching interests, and show the interconnections among
his neoplatonism, antiquarianism, magic, science and religion. French
discusses the angels that appeared to Dee, though mainly focussing on
angelic hierarchies; Clulee presents a fuller picture of the varieties and
intellectual bases of sixteenth century magic, but not of angels. Both asso-
ciate angels with neoplatonism and magic – and conspicuously not natural
philosophy or theology – and are more interested in the sources for the
representation of angels by Dee and his scryers than in the location of
angels in Dee’s broader fields of knowledge.12 This may be because angels
were firmly associated with neoplatonism and hierarchies in writings of
the Yates school, which emphasised their conceptual significance to the
exclusion of considering their reality, to Dee and others, as participants
in Creation. Angels are numerous and conspicuous in György E. SyĘny’s
John Dee’s Occultism (2004) though they are located almost exclusively in
relation to magical traditions.13 There is much about Picatrix (discussed
below) and little about Aquinas, and this does not reflect the nature of
Dee’s own intellectual frameworks, in which the two were simultaneous if
not interdependent.
The particular value of Dee’s diaries is that they are conversations with
angels and as such are rare, and that they illuminate the conjunction
between the two terms, conversation and angels. William Sherman’s 1995
study of Dee’s reading and writing presents him as an ‘intelligencer’ rather
than a ‘magus’, connected to networks of scholarly communication and the
sociable networks of power; but in counterbalancing the Yatesian emphasis
on magic, the occult and neoplatonism, he omits any discussion of Dionysius
or Trithemius, and with them angels.14 By way of contrast, diverging sharply
from Yatesian scholarship, Deborah Harkness’ John Dee’s Conversations with
Angels (1999) discloses the intellectual and theological seriousness of Dee’s
interests in angels, and, more generally, their implication in both magic
and everyday experience even among Protestants. Harkness can be cred-
ited, together with Keck, with making angelology more perceptible. But it
is startling to consider, given the celebrity of Dee’s angel- conversations (in
the seventeenth century as well as the twenty-first), and the fact that Dee
scholars have long and necessarily been concerned with angels, that more
attention has not been paid to what Dee’s angels actually say. Dee’s records
are among very few that present extensively the words of actual angels,
or what were credited to be angels. There are certainly grounds enough to
suggest that his scryers may have deliberately fabricated or distorted the
words of those angels, but it is also possible that this was not the case. If we
were to take seriously the historiographical injunction to work with actors’
categories, then we might learn by exhibiting less scepticism towards Dee’s
transcripts, and, if not to accept them as real, at least to investigate them as
conversations.
8 Joad Raymond

Attention to the persistent presence of angels in, and their occasional cen-
trality to, natural philosophy, their role in the intellectual environment not
only of Dee and Tany but also in more mainstream theology, both Protestant
and Roman Catholic, suggests continuity in belief and practice. This is
not to deny the reality of shifts and confessional conflict. Kate Harvey’s
2005 PhD thesis, ‘The Role of Angels in English Protestant Thought 1580
to 1660’, traces, in compendious writings about angels and the writings of
enthusiasts, the development of a specifically Protestant English angelology.
She detects a shift in the perceived relationship between angels and men,
from angelic superiority, through equality, to a claim of human superior-
ity through Christ’s Atonement. In this very anthropocentric angelology,
accounts of angels serve as models for human communities and behaviour.
The contributors to Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham’s Angels in the
Early Modern World – who, importantly, take the history of angelology out of
the confines of the monastery and the university – find evidence of change
and difference as well as more subtle processes of adaptation. However, it is
possible to overstate the consequences of the Reformation for angelic doc-
trine. Feisal G. Mohamed’s In the Anteroom of Divinity: The Reformation of
the Angels from Colet to Milton (2008) belongs to a scholarly tradition that
assumes that an antipathy to, or embarrassment around, angels is embed-
ded in Protestantism. While beliefs in angels initially ‘survive’ they do so
in an amended way that is compatible with Protestant scepticism. They
are then rapidly killed off by individualism, because it is fundamentally at
odds with a Dionysian, hierarchical universe: there are echoes here of R.
H. Tawney’s ‘the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism’ and of Max
Weber’s ‘Disenchantment of the world’ theses.15
Mohamed argues that angels have an ongoing role in early-modern
Britain, but does so by reducing them exclusively to ideas (as opposed to
living beings), and correlating theological positions on angels (such as
guardianship and their relationship to church government) to attitudes
to the pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy. Yet these correspondences are indi-
rect and far from universal: Protestant doctrine is far too developed and
engaged with other forms of knowledge and argument for these flat cor-
respondences to hold. Not all those who espoused angelic hierarchies used
the pseudo-Dionysian schema; not all supporters of episcopacy accepted
pseudo-Dionysius’ authority. Mohamed also posits an antithesis between
rationalism (anti-Dionysian) and spiritualism or mysticism (pro-Dionysian).
Yet a figure like Pordage belies these divisions: he supported hierarchies
without pseudo-Dionysius, and both held a church office and founded an
antinomian gathered church. He conversed with angels and offered insights
into angels through reason and revelation (disclosing that there was no
reason in the angelical world). His church – renamed the Philadelphians
– survived into the eighteenth century, and Pordage’s spiritual inheritance
was perpetuated by natural philosophers who sought to demonstrate the
 Introduction 9

reality of angels through experiment.16 Pordage believed in angels not as an

idea, but as a real part of the universe. He was not alone: though they may
have disagreed about the extent to which they were active in the world of
humans, almost every Christian in the period covered in this book believed
in angels as simultaneously literal and symbolic creatures, both ideas and
beings. A reconstruction of mundane practices is a necessary aspect of any
sketch of beliefs, which is to say, in understanding the place of angels in
medieval and early-modern Europe, we need to take into account the com-
plex, sometimes messy, fabric of life as it is lived.
In 1695, we find the anonymous author of Scala Naturæ offering ‘Rational
proof’ of the existence of guardian angels, proof based in nature and scrip-
ture.17 The argument derives entirely from a hierarchical view of creation,
but that hierarchy is drawn not from pseudo-Dionysius but from a descrip-
tion of nature. For this author, conversations with angels are essential to an
understanding of humans:

’Tis universally agreed that Man was Originally designed for Conversation,
because he is made both fit for it, and also desirous of it. ’Tis agreed like-
wise that Adam and Eve were by their Original Innocence and Integrity
fitted in Paradise for Conversation with Angels. Now, to be made fit for
Conversation, and yet denyed it, was, not to have been in Paradise, but
in a Desart. But when we find that an Evil Angel was actually admitted to
them in that place, it must be concluded that their good Guardians could
not in Justice be excluded from their Conversation.18

Scala Naturæ is not a work of scholarship or great prose; it is neither original

nor powerful. However, the vitality (rather than ‘persistence’) of beliefs and
argument such as these at the end of the seventeenth century – unless we
are willing confidently to dismiss them as antiquated and unfashionable –
suggests that periodisation and scholarship need further revision.

Periodisation

In 1643, holding a commission from the Earl of Manchester to put into

effect the Parliamentary Order of 28 August to remove superstitious monu-
ments from East Anglian churches, William Dowsing set about to complete
the reformation of images in England. Devotion to angels was essential to
late-medieval piety, and in the name of the second commandment (which
Reformers treated as the second commandment, while earlier writers regarded
it as a subsidiary to the first) Protestants attacked the worship of angels as a
doctrinal error of Roman Catholicism.19 Images of the invisible world risked
not only impropriety but also idolatry. In medieval churches, the down-
ward gaze of supernal beings served as a reminder of human indebtedness
to them. While some Reformers allowed that images, provided they were not
10 Joad Raymond

used for devotional purposes, could teach worshippers and remind them of
their duties, others argued that image and idol were the same thing, and that
both had to be expunged.20 In the first wave of Protestant iconoclasm in the
sixteenth century, Reformers entered churches to remove only those rep-
resentations of the community of saints (which included angels) that were
actively used in worship. The later reformation sought to destroy what was
left, the incidental imagery, on tombs, windows and ceilings.21
Dowsing, part of this later reformation, kept a journal of his iconoclasm.
His first entry describes his work in Peterhouse, Cambridge: ‘We pulled
down two mighty great angels, with wings, and divers other angels, and
the 4 Evangelists, and Peter ... and about a hundred chirubims and angels,
and divers’ superstitious letters in gold.’22 Subsequent entries chart a mas-
sacre of angels, executed at one in eight of the churches he visited. Many of
these cherubim were probably putti carved in ceilings, and therefore only
doubtfully angels.23 Other angels appeared in windows. In May 1644, while
Dowsing was already about his work, Parliament added angels to the forbid-
den images listed the previous August.24 Dowsing had pre- empted this addi-
tion and therefore seems to have taken particular offence at church angels.
Dowsing is a poster boy for English Protestant iconophobia. However, the
rupture in conversations with and representations of angels that occurred
during and following the Reformation can be, and has been, exaggerated:
iconoclasm cannot stand as a metonym for Protestant attitudes to angel doc-
trine. The chapters in this book testify to facets of continuity. This can be
seen at the level of the curious minor detail: angels from the twelfth century
to the seventeenth frequently dressed extravagantly, with colourful robes
and sometimes hats. It can also be witnessed at the broader conceptual level.
During the period c. 1100–c. 1700, angels were subjects in an interspecies
relationship and objects of knowledge, especially a way of understanding
and representing natural philosophy. The historical periodisation of angels
could meaningfully (and periodisation is in practice a process of assigning
meaning and significance to historical narratives) use these dates rather than
the familiar scheme that posits breaks or shifts during the Reformation and
the (itself doubtful) scientific revolution. At the beginning of this period,
discussions of angels emerged from the monastery and moved into the friary
and the university, commencing, as Walter Stephens shows, a new phase of
angelic-human communication, and of interaction between popular and elite
interest in the evidence of angelic (and perhaps especially demonic) interven-
tion.25 At the same time, the notion of conversing with an angel became more
complex. Until about 1100, it was generally assumed within Christian com-
munities that the mechanics of human-angel conversation were straightfor-
ward: angels were all around, they somehow spoke, and somehow you heard
and understood what they were saying. Thereafter, with the elaboration and
systematisation of knowledge about angels, and the subjection of angels to
the new heuristic method of the quaestio, communication became, alongside
 Introduction 11

spiritual propulsion and cognition, a complicated part of a beautiful, per-

haps baroque, realm of ideas. Angels become, crucially, associated with the
idea and grounds of knowledge and evidence. There is a profound continuity
in what is at work in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Aquinas’ Treatise on Separate
Substances (written c. 1270), early-fourteenth century examinations, by John
Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol, Walter Chatton and William of Ockham, of how
angels relate to place (discussed by James Steven Byrne below), and Newton’s
interest in angels as a way of explaining forces (which Simon Schaffer dis-
cusses in his chapter). It is this coincidence between belief in angels as real
beings, whose actions surround us, with whom humans experience a natural
fellowship, and a neo-scientific interest in angels as a means of exploring
and even experimenting upon the world that makes angels powerful and
ubiquitous in this period.
The year 1700 is not a terminal date in any strong sense, as Walter
Stephens’ chapter contends. It would be many years before angels would
be subsumed into Victorian kitsch. Interest in angels, among poets and
natural philosophers, continued through the eighteenth century: Blake was
not entirely isolated.26 One copy of a manuscript of Solomonic magic (see
below, and Page’s chapter) entitled ‘Crafte of Conjureynge and howe to rule
the ffierye Speritts of ye Planetts & make the Deuyle appeare if wanted’,
perhaps written by ‘J. barlerrese’, and now in the library of the University
of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, appears to date from, or was revised dur-
ing, the late seventeenth century (see Figure 1.1). It contains instructions
and spells for summoning angels to appear visibly in circles, for summon-
ing ‘a familia spirit to speake wth when you will’, and godly prayers ‘to be
sayd in the beginning of euery operation’ to purify and protect the magi-
cian. It shows medieval traditions alive at the end of the period covered
in this volume, reinvigorated by renaissance occultism and influenced by
Rosicrucian philosophy.27 Poets continued to think of angels as Milton’s
epic machinery, to use them to represent flight or interstellar transvection,
and to do so enriched by a belief that these were real things, as well as imag-
inative phenomena. Philosophers, including natural philosophers, con-
tinued to use angels, as the chapters by Ingrid Rowland and Nick Wilding
in this volume show, as a means of authorizing knowledge through repre-
sentation. Angels were not killed off by the scientific revolution nor suffo-
cated in the air pump. Angels continued to appear to the bodily senses of
Muggletonians, Swedenborgians and the New England godly. Angel magic
and conjuration was still employed, though perhaps less frequently than in
the seventeenth century. In the later-seventeenth century, there is a multi-
plication of perspectives on angels, and of languages or discourses in which
they are described. Angels are described in catalogues of spiritual appari-
tions, in theological works, in mechanist treatises of natural philosophy,
in epic poems, in works of political philosophy and of practical divinity,
all in ways that are understood, in one way or another, to convey truths.
12 Joad Raymond

Figure 1.1 A manuscript of solomonic magic, giving instructions on how to summon

an angel. University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, uncatalogued manuscript,
‘Crafte of Cunjureynge’

There may have been an increasing division between these simultaneous

and interdependent languages, in terms of their relationship with the world,
or their mode of referentiality. There is, however, no simple pattern of dis-
placement. Catalogues of the actions of spirits occupied the shelves, writing
 Introduction 13

desks and minds of the same men (mostly) who devised mechanist accounts
of nature. Mechanist philosophy and experimentalism were not only com-
patible with, but a necessary corollary to, doctrines of immaterial beings.
These alliances may have dissolved in the 1740s, but others were formed.28
What was lacking, and what changed over time, was the intensity brought
about, first, by the simultaneity of these allied perspectives; secondly, by the
need to keep systems distinct yet interdependent; and thirdly, by the close
analogy between sacred truth and the imagination, between the literal and
the figurative, the mechanical and the immaterial. These perspectives on,
or languages of, angelic being and action drifted apart. The history of these
dissolutions has, however, not yet been written.
There were shifts and clear discontinuities within the period as well.
Between about 800 and 1300, interventions by angels in human society
(or perceptions of them, or the importance attached to such interven-
tions) decreased, and angels became more prominent as celestial objects of
human contemplation, at least among the elite. At the same time, they may
have become more actively involved in ritual magical practices, which used
incantation of angels’ names and other spells to summon angels, fallen and
unfallen.29 The Reformation effected a step- change in a shift already in
progress within Christianity away from the worship of angels and from the
elaboration of their roles. Justification by faith alone, double-predestination,
and the rigorous application of the prohibition of images, all reduced the
role of angels in the experience of worship and practical divinity. The ini-
tial call for a theology based on sola scriptura did not expunge all traces of
angel doctrine not based on scripture, and Protestantism did not transform
the theology of angels – or angelology – altogether. Protestants such as
Andrew Willet, in his voluminous and much reprinted Synopsis Papismi,
That is, A Generall Viewe of Papisty: wherein the whole mysterie of iniquitie and
summe of Antichristian doctrine is set downe (1592), identified major elements
of doctrine that they claimed distinguished their own theology from that
of Roman Catholics. The reality, however, was that doctrine was much
more variegated and qualified than Protestant polemic allowed.
Philip West, whose Milton and the Angels offers an overview of early-
modern angel doctrine, suggests that there were three points of angelology
on which most Protestants could not be reconciled to Roman Catholic or
traditional doctrine: the pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy of nine orders; the
doctrine of an individual guardian angel assigned to every believer at con-
ception or birth; and the legitimacy and efficacy of a limited adoration of
angels. Though a useful starting point, West’s schema demands a strik-
ing amount of qualification. Many Protestants acknowledged that defi-
nite hierarchies existed, though unknown to humans, and some accepted
Pseudo-Dionysius’ schema.30 As Marshall’s chapter in this volume shows,
many Protestants espoused a doctrine of individual angelic guardianship,
which could be used to articulate a specifically Protestant soteriology and to
14 Joad Raymond

pinpoint demarcations within reformed theology. There was a specifically

Puritan account of angelic guardianship. The worship of angels, on the
other hand, was in many respects a clear dividing line between Protestants
and Roman Catholics. The latter, however, drew a distinction, decreed by
the Council of Nicaea in 787, between latria, the worship of God, dulia,
reverence to lesser creatures, and hyperdulia, a special reverence for higher
creatures.31 The late-medieval cult of angels was not uniformly observant
of these precise distinctions or their implications, though they were care-
fully re-articulated and negotiated in counter-Reformation theology and
polemic. Catholic angels were reinvigorated in the counter-reformation;
and counter-reformation propaganda for an English audience, as Alexandra
Walsham’s chapter shows, downplayed doctrinal differences, and the
Roman Catholic view of miracles and supernatural intervention, much as
Protestant polemic overstated them.32 Protestants, moreover, found ways of
calling for angelic intercession that were not entirely dissimilar to Catholic
worship; and the Arminian clergyman Richard Montagu offered a sympa-
thetic account of both guardianship and invocation, stirring much con-
troversy, in the 1620s.33 These confessional differences were dynamic and
complex.
West sometimes treats Protestant angelology as a residue of tradition, an
incongruous trace of the past, if not quite a conceptual contradiction. Other
historians of early-modern religion, who have touched upon angels, indi-
cate similar presuppositions. The deep-rooted character of pre-Reformation
faith in and attachment to angels, this model implies, prevented the thor-
ough and systematic expulsion that Protestantism logically required. The
Reformers desired to purge theology of angels, but were forced to com-
promise their intentions by the inertia of belief and by the approximately
260 references to angels in scripture. Philip Soergel has, however, deline-
ated the extensiveness of Luther’s angel doctrine; Peter Marshall, here and
elsewhere, has shown the integration of angels in Protestant theology; and
I have sought to show the importance of angels to the Protestant imagina-
tion, in poetry and theology.34 Angels survived – if that is the right word
– because they were thoroughly involved with the understanding of the
world. Though Protestants may have challenged particular points of doc-
trine, there was never a serious possibility of Pyrrhonism or thoroughgoing
scepticism. There remained in Reformed communities a devotional and also
a hermeneutic commitment to angels. Despite the smashing of angels in
churches, angels inspired Protestant poetry. Where predestination obviated
angelic intercession, the doctrine of guardianship could be used to explicate
and understand predestination. The notion of a local guardian was a means
of understanding place (and vice versa). It could be said that angels were
reinvented, but this took place within a framework of understanding that
ensured intellectual and perhaps emotional continuity at the same time as
doctrinal adjustment.
 Introduction 15

Perhaps the most material continuity in the period c. 1100 – c. 1700 is the
continuity of texts such as The Book of the Angel Raziel. Sophie Page’s chapter
examines the place of angels in ritual magic in medieval Europe through the
transmission of magical manuscripts, some of which entered Western tradi-
tion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as translations of Arabic and
Jewish texts. Sepher Rezial Hemelach, translated as Liber Razielis or The Book
of the Angel Raziel, was one of these, a compilation of magical texts that –
according to legend – was given by the angel Raziel to Adam and descended
through the hands of successive prophets to Solomon, with whose name it
is sometimes associated. According to the Zohar, this legendary work con-
tains secret knowledge not imparted even to angels. The actual work known
as Raziel survives in several medieval manuscripts, which contain different
selections of texts, plus in numerous later copies. It offers occult knowledge
extending through astrology, heavenly hierarchies, cosmic geography and
the power of names.35 Several of these texts instruct the initiate in sum-
moning and conversing with angels: ritual magic was one of the ways in
which humans sought and conducted conversations with angels between
the thirteenth century and the seventeenth. Though Raziel was an obscure,
occult work, and not printed until 1701 (itself a sign of continuity as well
as change), it was copied and distributed in manuscript in the early-modern
period. (The Illinois manuscript mentioned above is not a direct copy, but
borrows from the texts and traditions.) Thus, as Forshaw writes, the Abbot
Johannes Trithemius refers to Raziel in a work condemning the summoning
of demons; while his pupil, Cornelius Agrippa, used ritual magic to sum-
mon angels, claiming that it was possible to distinguish them from demons,
and Raziel was probably one of the texts he used. Picatrix, another text of
ritual magic in the Arabic tradition that entered western Europe at around
the same time, also provided a means to summon spirits. These were the
kinds of books owned and used by John Dee (discussed in Stephen Clucas’
chapter), Simon Forman, Elias Ashmole and John Pordage (who is discussed
in my chapter). This textual continuity ensured a degree of continuity in
understanding and in practice.
What these books promise is more than an apparition of an angel – a
visual show of the kind that Faustus seeks in Christopher Marlowe’s epony-
mous play – but rather a conversation, or even companionship. The com-
panion angel is the counterpart to the witch’s or magician’s familiar, but it
is modelled also on the doctrine, which developed in the early years of the
Christian church, though rooted in ancient pagan beliefs, of an individual
guardian angel assigned to each human at conception or at birth. Many
Protestants who used magic must implicitly have subscribed to this doc-
trine. When ritual magic is used to summon a (good) angel, the human does
not seek the execution of a particular task: the desired outcome is knowl-
edge of nature, perhaps alchemical insight, or illumination, in the form of
spiritual revelation or purification. Whereas Aquinas’ angelic conversation
16 Joad Raymond

is profoundly unidirectional and involves the passing of illumination up

the chain of command, magicians envisage more of a colloquium or a con-
ference. ‘Conference’ or ‘conferences’ was how William Lilly described, at
distinct points in his autobiography, communications with angels attained
by Simon Forman, Alexander Hart and John Napier (and others used the
same word to describe Lilly’s engagements).36 Dee entitled his manuscript
‘Conference with Angells’, though the hostile Meric Casaubon entitled his
printed edition of the same A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for
many Yeers Between Sr. John Dee ... and Some Spirits (1659), a title that refuses
the egalitarian ‘conference’ in favour of a scornful scepticism. Magical texts
also promise colloquium (in Latin) with angels.37 The relationship is not a
simply hierarchical one: there is an element of kinship in these confer-
ences. The caelestialization of angels that Henry Mayr-Harting detects in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is counterbalanced in a magical tradi-
tion, and in an English Protestant tradition that views angels and humans
as beings that are in some ways comparable, both the creatures of God,
capable of fellowship.38
The centuries under consideration by the chapters in this volume, then,
witnessed a conversation with angels in at least the double sense outlined
earlier. First, a form of material sociability, in which humans and angels
expressed creaturely kinship through dialogue. The Protestant insist-
ence that the age of miracles, prophecy and angelic apparitions was over
(an pronouncement that was in any case usually hedged with qualifica-
tion) did not terminate this, as in both Protestant and Catholic countries
people continued to speak with angels.39 Secondly, a conversation about
the nature of the world that took place using angels as ideas or thought
experiments; the reality of angels offered the basis for reasoned explana-
tion of natural and supernatural phenomena that resulted in knowledge.
This double- conversation extended between c. 1100 and c. 1700, passing
through the turbulence of the Reformation, and it merits consideration as
a period adjacent to, and in dialogue with, other periods that give order to
other historical movements.

Dialogues

The reality of angels can be apprehended through their role in music. This
may seem paradoxical: however close music is to spiritual revelation, it
has, or seems to have, little to do with belief. Yet the idea of music was
enmeshed with angel doctrine, as human music was governed by the ideal
music of the spheres, generated by angels and audible to them.40 Liturgy and
human prayer were hypothetically modelled on the prayers sung by angels.
Moreover, as the chapters by Owens and Flynn in this volume reveal, music
can be a means of exploring and reflecting theology. Angels tied music to
knowledge; and the practice of music involved a form of emulation of and
 Introduction 17

experience of kinship with angels. It thus articulated belief as well as defined

it. Music expressed, in both theory and practice, the reality of angels.
Belief is elusive as an historical phenomenon. To write of conversations
between humans and angels, or of how the limited capacities of humans can
be raised to encounter angels, is self- consciously to place a distance between
the act of analysis and the nature of being human, as if the scholarly prose
can find a more objective point of view outside the human. However, to
write about how we speak to angels, or of our conversations with angels, to
designate humanity with a first-person pronoun, is to make assumptions
about a shared nature and perhaps shared experience. Believing, as I do, that
a certain degree of humanity is hardwired into us, and that there are col-
lective experiences and emotions, this seems a reasonable use of language.
Nonetheless, it is not only a linguistic problem. It can also suggest a privileg-
ing of a narrower set of beliefs about the universe associated, despite ancient
origins, with a monotheistic and especially a Christian point of view. This is
a dilemma integral to serious scholarly writing about theology in historical
contexts. While it is perfectly possible to unpack beliefs, particularly unu-
sual beliefs, without appearing to endorse or subscribe to them,41 to explore
the internal coherence of faith is to risk writing something that sounds like
theology or even apologia. Yet, and especially when writing about religious
radicals and enthusiasts, including those visionaries who claimed to have
seen angels, it is necessary to possess a degree of imaginative sympathy in
order to achieve comprehension. Perhaps, then, it is necessary to reverse the
tendency of recent decades, among historians and especially among literary
critics, and write the history of religion in a way that sounds like theology.
Conversations with angels, a dialogue with the past that does not impose
categories – such as ‘spiritualist’ and ‘rationalist’ – that would have been
resisted by those whom we are discussing, necessitates a complex approach
to belief. As little interest as I personally have in authors of modern angel
manuals of the kind that Walter Stephens discusses in his chapter, manu-
als that instruct the contemporary reader in how to communicate with her
own guardian angels, I find it essential to accept on his terms the faith that
John Pordage had in the invisible, angelical world. If, instead of attributing
his visions to the chemical effects of his magical preparations, we explore
how they make sense having suspended our disbelief, we are more likely
to understand not only his beliefs but also his motives, actions and values.
This results in something of an uneasy paradox. However, being distanced
from all contemporary religion may provide a useful foundation for estab-
lishing communication with religion in history – much as sixteenth cen-
tury humanists envisaged that to bring the past to life and to learn from
it in the present, one had first to accept that it was another country, quite
remote from the present.
This humanist discovery of an unfamiliar past is a project that this vol-
ume seeks to advance. The contributors come from a range of disciplines,
18 Joad Raymond

and in creating a dialogue between the disciplines we hope to recover a

lost perspective on the social and cultural histories of theology, magic,
natural philosophy, music and literature in medieval and early-modern
Europe. The effect is sometimes disorienting – as disorienting as passing
Antony Gormley’s imposing sculpture The Angel of the North while driving
past Gateshead – as the literal and the figurative collapse into each other.
This is only to reflect the conversations with angels that took place in a
period when the perceived reality of a spiritual world coexisted with a
natural philosophy attuned to the imperceptible but logical presence of
that world, and when representation and theological truth could be so
profoundly intertwined. While the iconography may be very familiar, I
would argue that the structures of belief are alien, and these interdiscipli-
nary perspectives facilitate the recognition of just how unfamiliar these
structures are. Accordingly, this volume seeks both to describe the range
of beliefs in (and knowledge about) angels, the artistic and practical explo-
rations and expressions of those beliefs, and to encourage a reassessment
of those beliefs. In doing so, the contributors seek to i) encourage a non-
anachronistic view of natural philosophy; ii) reinstitute ritual magic to its
mediating place in early modern society; iii) show the intellectual dyna-
mism of medieval and early modern theology; and iv) revitalize under-
standing of contemporary interdisciplinarity by viewing its pre-modern
reality. The four sections into which the volume is divided – natural phi-
losophy, magic, representation and reformations – propose not fields to
be mapped or covered in their fullness, but organizing categories that dis-
solve into the other concerns of the book. In medieval and renaissance
Europe, angels were a topic in which theology, natural philosophy and
politics converged. Conversations with Angels brings together historians of
these fields and critics working on visual, musical and literary representa-
tion, to consider medieval and renaissance concepts of the nature, office
and significance of angels, and the ways in which literal and figurative
dialogues with angels were conducted.

Notes
1. Thanks to Simon Schaffer for his help with this chapter. Pseudo-Dionysius: The
Complete Works, trans. and ed. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem, with Preface and
intro. Rene Roques, Jaroslav Pelikan, Jean Leclercq and Karlfried Froehlich (New
York and Mahwah, NJ, 1987), 109.
2. See OED, ‘conversation’; Peter Burke, The Art of Conversation (Cambridge, 1993).
3. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, ed. Thomas Gilby et al., 61 vols (Cambridge,
1964–81), 14: 107–19, 192–93.
4. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
(Oxford, 1997), esp. ch. 19.
5. Though for a discussion of the limited usefulness of the term ‘angelology’, see my
Milton’s Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination (Oxford, 2010), ch. 2.
 Introduction 19

6. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, vol. 9: Angels (Ia. 50–64), ed. and trans.
Kenelm Foster (Cambridge, 1968), xxi–xxii for the editors’ arguments; St Thomas
Aquinas, Treatise on Separate Substances, trans. Rev. Francis J. Lescoe (West
Hartford, CT, 1963).
7. Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard, 2 vols (Leiden, 1994).
8. Ariel Hessayon, ‘Gold Tried in the Fire’: The Prophet TheaurauJohn Tany and the
English Revolution (Aldershot, 2007).
9. On Milton see especially Stephen M. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry
and Materialism in Seventeenth- Century England (Ithaca, NY, 1991) and Robert H.
West, Milton and the Angels (Athens, GA, 1955); for Dee, see below.
10. On Dee’s reading, see Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels:
Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge, 1999), 104 and Julian Roberts
and Andrew G. Watson, John Dee’s Library Catalogue (London, 1990). See also
Deborah E. Harkness, ‘Shows in the Showstone: A Theater of Alchemy and
Apocalypse in the Angel Conversations of John Dee (1527–1608/9)’, Renaissance
Quarterly, 49(1996): 707–37.
11. James O. Halliwell, ed., Private Diary of Dr. John Dee and the Catalogue of His Library
of Alchemical Manuscripts, Camden Society, 19 (London, 1842), Frances A. Yates,
The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London, 1979) and Giordano Bruno
and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964).
12. For scholarship that extends all of these connections, see Stephen Clucas, ed.,
John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought (Dordrecht,
2006).
13. György E. SyĘny, John Dee’s Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs
(Albany, NY, 2004), esp. 181–240.
14. William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English
Renaissance (Amherst, MA, 1995).
15. Kate Harvey, ‘The Role of Angels in English Protestant Thought 1580 to 1660’,
Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge University, 2005); Feisal G. Mohamed, In the Anteroom of
Divinity: The Reformation of the Angels from Colet to Milton (Toronto, 2008).
16. Simon Schaffer, ‘The Consuming Flame: Electrical Showmen and Tory Mystics
in the World of Goods’, in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds, Consumption and the
World of Goods (London, 1993), 489–526.
17. Scala Naturæ (London, 1695), 19. See also Ann Blair, ‘Mosaic Physics and the
Search for a Pious Natural Philosophy in the Late Renaissance’, Isis, 91 (2000):
32–58.
18. Scala Naturæ, 31.
19. Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, vol. 1: Laws Against Images (Oxford, 1988),
371–92.
20. Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago, 2003); Aston, England’s
Iconoclasts, 1: 371–96, 401–73.
21. John Morrill, ‘William Dowsing and the Administration of Iconoclasm in the
Puritan Revolution’, in Trevor Cooper, ed., The Journal of William Dowsing:
Iconoclasm in East Anglia during the English Civil War (Woodbridge, 2001), 1–28,
at 11–12, 25–27.
22. Cooper, ed., Journal of William Dowsing, 155–56.
23. Charles Dempsey, Inventing the Renaissance Putto (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001).
24. Cooper, ed., Journal of William Dowsing, 94–95.
25. See Chapter 2 and Walter Stephens’ Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis
of Belief (Chicago, 2002).
20 Joad Raymond

26. Elizabeth Reis, ‘Otherworldly Visions: Angels, Devils and Gender in Puritan New
England’, 282–96 and Owen Davies, ‘Angels in Elite and Popular Magic, 1650–
1790’, 297–391, both in Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham, eds, Angels in
the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2006); Jo Poppleton, ‘ “Truth Cannot Be an
Enemy to Truth”: Natural Philosophy, Poetry and Politics, 1680–1730’, Ph.D. the-
sis (University of East Anglia, 2006), ch. 3.
27. University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, uncatalogued manuscript, ‘Crafte
of Cunjureynge’. See pp. 1, 5, 31 and 100 (for Rosicrucianism); illustration from
p. 38.
28. Simon Schaffer, ‘Occultism and Reason’, in A. J. Holland, ed., Philosophy: Its History
and Historiography (Dordrecht, 1985), 117–43; Clark, Thinking with Demons, ch.
19; Raymond, Milton’s Angels, chs 11, 14.
29. The first two points are Henry Mayr-Harting’s, from Perceptions of Angels in
History: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered in the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1998),
13–18; the qualifications are mine.
30. Though see Mohamed, Anteroom of Divinity, which is exclusively focussed on hier-
archies. My Milton’s Angels, chs 2 and 3, and Marshall and Walsham, ‘Migrations
of Angels in the Early Modern World’, in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels,
1–40, consider Reformed angel doctrine more generally.
31. David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York, 1998), 172–73;
Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, 1: 47–48.
32. Marshall and Walsham, ‘Migrations of Angels’, 21–31; Trevor Johnson, ‘Guardian
Angels and the Society of Jesus’, in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels, 191–
213.
33. Richard Montagu, Immediate Addresse unto God Alone (London, 1624); Alexandra
Walsham, ‘Angels and Idols in England’s Long Reformation’, in Marshall and
Walsham, eds, Angels, 154–55.
34. Philip M. Soergel, ‘Luther on the Angels’, 64–82 and Peter Marshall, ‘Angels
Around the Deathbed: Variations on a Theme in the English Art of Dying’,
83–103, both in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels; see Chapter 3; Raymond,
Milton’s Angels.
35. See Chapter 6; Steve Savedow, ed., Sepher Reziel Hemelach: The Book of the Angel
Raziel (San Francisco, 2000); Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental
Science, 8 vols (New York, 1923–58), 2: 279–89.
36. Lilly, Mr. William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times (London, 1715), 14, 24–25, 54.
See also William Lilly, The Starry Messenger (London, 1645), 11 and H. Johnsen,
Anti-Merlinus (London, 1648), title-page.
37. See Page’s essay, pp. 139–40 below. Raymond, Milton’s Angels, ch. 12.
38. Mayr-Harting, Perceptions of Angels; on fellowship in English Protestant angelol-
ogy, see Harvey, ‘Role of Angels in English Protestant Thought’.
39. Alexandra Walsham, ‘Miracles in Post-Reformation England’, in Kate Cooper and
Jeremy Gregory, eds, Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representations of Divine Power in
the Life of the Church, Studies in Church History, vol. 41 (Woodbridge, 2005),
273–306; D. P. Walker, ‘The Cessation of Miracles’, in Ingrid Merkel and Allen G.
Debus, eds, Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in
Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC, 1988), 111–24.
40. Richard Rastall, The Heavens Singing: Music in Early English Religious Drama, vol.
1 (Cambridge, 1996); John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in
English Poetry, 1500–1700 (Princeton, NJ, 1961); D. P. Walker, Studies in Musical
Science in the Late Renaissance (London, 1978).
 Introduction 21

41. Famously Carlo Ginsburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-
Century Miller, trans. A. Tedeschi and J. Tedeschi (London, 1982); in the
Anglophone tradition, Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and English
Radical Religion 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1989); Peter Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge:
‘Orthodoxy’, ‘Heterodoxy’ and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London
(Manchester, 2001); David Como, Blown By the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence
of an Antinomian Underground in Pre- Civil-War England (Stanford, CA, 2004).
Part I
Natural Philosophy
2
Strategies of Interspecies
Communication, 1100–2000
Walter Stephens

‘Conversations with Angels’ is a topic that poses some fundamental ques-

tions. Both conceptually and historically, a term like ‘Conversations’ implies
not merely verbal communication, but, in the original Latin sense, frequen-
tations, interactions or dealings. Communication with angels, however,
raises the additional issue of species differentiation and the possibility of
communicating across it. Not only were angels defined as a species distinct
from humans, but Christian antiquity had already distinguished several
phyla of angels in the texts of the Bible. These subspecies were systemati-
cally described around 500 by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Despite
this taxonomic impetus, confusion and imprecision were endemic both
before and after ‘Dionysius’: earlier Christians, notably Saint Augustine,
contended with pagan definitions of the daemonic or spiritual world that
were incompatible with the ontology and cosmology they were attempt-
ing to extract from Scripture. Taxonomy could define itself out of existence
as well: Thomas Aquinas accepted the Pseudo-Dionysian classifications but
concluded that, ultimately, each angel was a species unto itself.1
Defining the interspecies interlocutor was complicated even further by
the moral issue. Unlike our contemporary English usage, medieval and early
modern references to angels did not presume their moral goodness; demons
were merely bad angels, or rather angels gone bad, not a different species.
To presume otherwise impugned the goodness of the creator, for no natural
criterion could distinguish a good angel from an evil one.2 Indeed, from
Saint Paul onward, the fundamental problem of interspecies communica-
tion had always been the ‘discernment of spirits’, particularly of their moral
orientation and intentions toward their human interlocutors. Paul’s warn-
ing (2 Cor. 11:14) that the Devil often disguises himself as an angel of light
in order to foment human sin was the watchword in all discussions of inter-
species communication.3
Perhaps the greatest barrier to consensus was the habitual invisibility
of the angelic, daemonic or spiritual interlocutor. From Biblical times to
modern Evangelicals like Billy Graham, and even the many ‘New Age’

25
26 Walter Stephens

or post- Christian angelologists who have flourished since the 1970s, the
interspecies interlocutor has never appeared visibly with dependable regu-
larity. The visual aspect of angelophanies is indeed their most complicated
and least straightforward feature: while an angel may appear to human
sight ‘as himself’, this is relatively rare outside the experience of certain
mystics who present themselves as prophets. More frequently, the angel
is a ventriloquist, either remaining invisible or else occupying the bod-
ily form or the actual body of a person (or even an animal) visible to
the human interlocutor. Psychologically, it appears that interaction with
a visible angel is obtained with greater difficulty and is less reliable than
other forms of contact. In terms of theory, writers from Pseudo-Dionysius
to Thomas Aquinas maintained that angels were purely spiritual beings
and could only become visible by creating a fictive body. Other theorists,
from the Neoplatonics and Saint Augustine (in some of his works), to Saint
Bonaventure and beyond, held that angels had bodies, but of such rarified
purity that becoming visible to humans was still necessary through some
artificial means.4
The unreliability of visual cues did not stimulate such theoretical specula-
tion without also occasioning curiosity and even skepticism about human
interaction with angels. The history of ‘Conversations with Angels’ is in
part the story of when and how writers reveal confident speculation, inquis-
itive curiosity, uncertainty or doubt concerning the reality or accessibility
of angels. Although the Jewish and Christian Bible contained a number of
straightforward accounts of angelic interaction, the writers of the Gospels
and Acts of the Apostles felt they had to acknowledge the doubt of the
Sadducees, a Jewish sect who denied the existence of angels and an immor-
tal human soul. While these references appear to have lain dormant through
most of the Middle Ages, and were mentioned, if at all, to be dismissed
as patent error, after 1400 they grew increasingly worrisome to Christian
thinkers.5
Interspecies communication also raised linguistic problems. Did angels
and demons need human language in order to communicate with men and
women? If so, were they required to respect the fundamental limitations
of human language, that is, tongues of flesh and scansion within time?6 If
human language was not used, were other communicative strategies suf-
ficiently unambiguous for human understanding? The theoretical question
whether angels and demons could adopt certain communicative strate-
gies eventually proved less problematic than defining the practical criteria
whereby humans might be certain of the content and origin of their ‘con-
versations with angels’. After 1400, the major obstacles to epistemological
certainty involved psychology, defined as the science of the human soul,
particularly the role of the imagination and the cognitive status of dream-
ing. What constituted a ‘real’ conversation or interaction, and what condi-
tions might disqualify it?7
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 27

Finally, like its purely human counterpart, such conversatio did not nec-
essarily impart information; its primary function could be, to use Roman
Jakobson’s term, ‘phatic’ – it might communicate mainly the desire for
commonality or community or for communication itself. Since angels were
etymologically God’s ‘messengers’, they might bear prophetic messages of
national or universal import, as in their interactions with Isaiah and John of
Patmos; or they might provide individual guidance, as they had with Tobit
and Tobias. But they might also provide evidence by their mere presence,
assuming one could be convinced of it, that, to quote our own contempo-
rary popular culture, ‘God is watching us – from a distance,’ or more simply
still, that ‘we are not alone.’ Until recently, most writing about pre-modern
angelology and demonology has begged the question of belief, often ignor-
ing patent evidence of doubt, curiosity and skepticism, out of an untested
conviction that before Darwin, Descartes, Galileo, or some other pivotal fig-
ure, western Christianity enjoyed an undifferentiated ‘Age of Belief’. But the
history of ‘Conversations with Angels’ reveals that desire for belief, and what
William James called The Will to Believe were present even in the Middle
Ages, the ‘age of belief’ par excellence.
It is not difficult to see how such a bias arose among modern scholars. As
David Keck asserts, before the thirteenth century, medieval angelology was
‘remarkably unoriginal’, and the ‘most noticeable developments’ were ‘mat-
ters of increased emphasis rather than originality’.8 Before 1400, issues of
communicative strategy between angels and humans were rarely discussed
explicitly as problematic, though narratives of interaction and theories of
how it took place at times betray uncertainty.9 Systematic Christian angelol-
ogy and demonology, which created a forum making such discussions
possible, only began with Peter Lombard’s Four Books of Sentences in the
mid-twelfth century, while Aquinas and Bonaventure did not achieve their
decisive formulations until a century and a quarter later. Even then, since
Christian angelology was based on exegesis of the Jewish and Christian
Bible, angelologists necessarily presumed the reality of human/angel con-
tact; at their most skeptical, angelologists discussed how such contact might
happen, rather than whether it did. Perhaps Billy Graham expresses this
attitude relatively unchanged when he declares: ‘I do not believe in angels
because I have ever seen one – because I haven’t. I believe in angels because
the Bible says there are angels; and I believe the Bible to be the true Word
of God.’10
This positive rhetorical bias was also due to the embeddedness of medi-
eval Christian intellectual discourse in the traditions of monastic discipline.
David Keck observes that ‘monastic writers employed teachings about angels
to help inculcate angelic habits in their novices, and, indeed, to shape their
own religious communities as a whole.’ In fact, it was commonly assumed,
on the basis of Pseudo-Dionysius’s writings and other criteria, ‘that the
celestial hierarchy was a model for the ecclesiastical hierarchy’.11 Monastic
28 Walter Stephens

imitatio angelorum involved, among other tasks, emulating the angels’ con-
stant praise of God by celebrating the canonical hours with meticulous reg-
ularity. Henry Mayr-Harting reminds us that ‘Christian prayer has generally
been considered as a participation of men with angels in their heavenly
worship.... Every prayer in the common of the Mass, not excluding the cry
for mercy, is an angelic prayer.... [T]he whole mode of antiphonal singing ...
was deemed to derive from angelic worship in heaven’.12 As Keck observes,
monastic writers were acutely aware of acedia or spiritual torpor as an obsta-
cle to joy and fervor in celebrating the liturgy. Thus, ‘because angels may
aid the religious directly, their assistance was requested in this devotional
struggle.’ Moreover, as Keck strangely omits to mention, demons provided a
logically consistent explanation for monastic anhedonia and lethargy, both
in general, as the ‘noonday demon’, and in particular personal struggles
with temptation or despair.13 We could say that, within the monastic con-
text, angelology was a matter of orthopraxis as well as orthodoxy.
The monastic ideology of imitatio angelorum thus presumed that monks
and nuns were surrounded by creatures with whom, willy-nilly, they had
intimate and practically constant contact. When, around 1200, the dis-
course on angels and demons emerged from the monastery into the fri-
ary, the university, and the city, the assumption of an endless conversatio
may have weakened as mundane human interactions increased. Certainly
the Scholastic discourse on angels, from Peter Lombard to the followers of
Aquinas and Bonaventure, treated spiritual creatures both good and bad
with a logic and a detachment that foreshadowed scientific discourse, in
contrast to the empathetic, essentially familial assumptions of monastic
writers. While monastics treated angels as noble cousins, the Scholastics
regarded them somewhat as our more imaginative contemporaries consider
extraterrestrial aliens.
Without risking a too-facile chronology, we can observe that, at certain
points in the later Middle Ages, attitudes toward conversation with angels
appear to change. Henry Mayr-Harting asserts that the ‘specific interven-
tions as social agents’ by angels (e.g. mediating quarrels) assumed ‘decreasing
importance’ in western Christianity between about 800 and 1300, and that
‘helping angels gradually recede in the Middle Ages’.14 Even within monas-
tic literature, angelic interactions cease to be uniformly described as a fact of
existence, and are occasionally represented as an object of desire. Moreover,
ecclesiastical writers become increasingly interested in laypeople’s interac-
tions with angels and, perhaps especially, with demons. One place where the
transition can be noted is the Dialogus miraculorum or Dialogue on Miracles
of Caesarius of Heisterbach, a Cistercian writing in the 1220s. Caesarius’s
Dialogue, a kind of pious monastic Decameron, provides an instructive con-
trast with the systematic, analytical angelology of Scholastics like Aquinas,
who was born while Caesarius was composing this collection. The Dialogue
comprises twelve books, one of which is dedicated entirely to questions of
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 29

demonology. The other books illustrate topics that, we might assume, have
little or no pertinence to angelology, yet, throughout the collection, angels
and demons are treated as everyday companions of monks and nuns.15 Not
only temptation, for instance, but conversion, contrition and confession,
suggest numerous anecdotes involving angels and devils.
Yet a transition is indeed under way in Caesarius’s Dialogue: although
many tales represent human/angel transactions as unremarkable, several
describe clerics who seek contact with demons as something foreign to their
previous experience. A range of communicative strategies are deployed.
Significantly, some of the most dramatic attempts involve the mediation
of a necromancer. In fact, the first three anecdotes of Caesarius’s demono-
logical fifth book concern a necromancer named Philip, who, on separate
occasions, conjures demons at the request of a knight, a priest and a group
of clerics who wish to observe them. At the conclusion of the third tale,
Caesarius repeats his preliminary announcement that the fifth book will
demonstrate ‘That demons exist, and that they are many’.16
That demons merit a book of their own, and that their existence is prob-
lematised, demand some analysis. The Dialogue stages conversations between
a Novice, an inscribed role-model for the reader, and an older author-figure
called the Monk. Although the Monk’s confident disquisitions infallibly
resolve the doubts and perplexities of the Novice, the latter’s naïveté justi-
fies Caesarius’s treatment of fundamental, sometimes radical questions. At
the outset of Book Five, the Novice professes belief in the existence of good
angels because they are mentioned in the Bible, but requests comparable
scriptural authority for the existence of demons. When that is provided, he
nonetheless asserts that ‘I do not confess myself satisfied, unless you make
these things clear by living examples.’ The Monk’s stories of necromancers
prove that ‘there can be no doubt of their [i.e., demons’] existence, since
they can be seen, heard, and touched by men.’17 As both Novice and Monk
make clear, scriptural authority is not entirely sufficient, if interactions of
humans, angels, and demons are to have unequivocal relevance to ‘modern’
thirteenth- century life. But why the exclusive focus on interactions with
demons rather than with good angels in Book Five? Angels are certainly
not absent from the Dialogue on Miracles, but, as its modern index reveals,
its references to ‘Demons’, ‘Demoniac Possession’, ‘Devil’ and ‘Devil’s
Contract’ are significantly more numerous than appearances of ‘Angels’,
even when these are combined with references to ‘Angelic Salutation (Ave
Maria)’. Perhaps Caesarius would have explained these statistics by refer-
ence to Saint Paul’s dictum that the Devil often takes on the appearance of
an angel: the phrase can be interpreted to mean that demons appear more
frequently than angels.18
Caesarius’s Monk asserts that more reliable proof of demonic existence
can be had from the everyday experience of cloistered religious than from
inquisitive laymen and secular clergy.19 However, he undermines this
30 Walter Stephens

declaration by launching straight into the tale of an abbot who envied the
demonic visions of a lay-brother.

Among other gifts that [the lay-brother] had received from the Lord was
this, that he used often to see demons, under different forms, passing to
and fro in the choir at the night offices.
Once, in confession, he told this to [the abbot], who, being kindled by
his example into a desire to see demons himself, prayed very earnestly to
God that he would deign to grant him this favour; and immediately his
prayer was heard.20

Thenceforth the abbot continued to see demons, most often in the abbey
church, despite having asked God to discontinue the visions.
Notably, this abbot and other monks seem predominantly to have
observed demons, rather than to have conversed with them. Actual con-
versations with demons figure more readily in tales involving possession
and exorcism, as well as necromancy.21 The human interlocutors are usually
laypersons or secular clergy, rather than monks, although monks are some-
times mentioned as bystanders. Active, voluntary involvement with demons
is off-limits for Caesarius’s monks, probably on account of their vows. The
divide has implications for communicative strategy. As Richard Kieckhefer
and others have observed, necromancy and exorcism are related histori-
cally and structurally: necromancy developed as an outgrowth of exorcistic
practices among the minor orders of clergy, which were sanctioned by the
medieval Church. We could say that necromancy began as an experimental
form of exorcism; rather than commanding demons to leave, a necroman-
cer demanded their presence and interaction.22 However, Caesarius makes
a distinction. Unlike his tales involving necromancers, his stories of posses-
sion do not specify that professional exorcists were indispensable conversa-
tional facilitators, as the following anecdote exemplifies:

While a demon was cruelly torturing a man whom he had obsessed, and by
chattering through [the man’s mouth] was giving various answers to vari-
ous enquiries, one of the bystanders asked: ‘Tell us, devil, what price in toil
would you be willing to pay that you might return to the glory in which
you once lived?’ The demon answered: ‘If I had the power of decision, I
would rather go down to hell with one soul whom I had myself deceived,
than go back to heaven.’ All who heard it, wondered at his answer, but he
went on: ‘Why do you wonder at this? so great is my malice, and so intent
upon it am I, that I can never desire anything that is good.’23

Caesarius’s failure to mention the presence of an exorcist is significant.

The demonic interlocutor converses with the bystanders almost casually,
as if he were one of them, with no evidence that he is being constrained
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 31

by holy rituals. As this anecdote implies, one attraction of possession and

exorcism – as of necromancy – was curiosity about demons, including the
opportunity to verify official doctrine about them. Such an attitude was, at
least theoretically, incompatible with the mission of an exorcist, which was
compassion for human suffering and glorification of God.
When another demon was asked the same question as above, he strongly
disagreed with his colleague, providing a colorful and melodramatic illus-
tration of demonic despair through the mouth of a possessed woman:

‘If,’ he said, ‘there were a column of burning iron set up from earth to
heaven, and if it were furnished with the sharpest razors and blades of
steel, and if I were given a body capable of suffering, most gladly would I
drag myself up it from now until the Day of Judgment, now climbing up
a little and now slipping down again, if only I might at the last win home
to the glory in which I once dwelt.’24

In fact, this second tale involves not one but two demons with differing
attitudes to repentance, who debated in a church, through the medium of
two possessed women. Once again, no exorcists are mentioned, and one
wonders quite what their role would have been. The demonic altercation
provides Caesarius’s Monk and Novice the occasion for an extended and
learned discussion of demonic psychology.
Such anecdotes intimate that, as frequently happened in later times, cases
of possession could tempt both exorcists and bystanders into research and
confirmation of doctrine.25 Caesarius relates that another possessed woman
came to the town of Siegburg to be exorcised. He neglects to mention whether
she was eventually cured, but remembers that she was ‘questioned on vari-
ous subjects’. Typically for Caesarius, problems in communication are few,
mostly deriving from demons’ unwillingness or inability to speak positively
about holy topics. Being in the church of Michael the Archangel, the pos-
sessed woman was quite appropriately asked about the binding of Lucifer
mentioned in chapter 20 of Revelation. Caesarius says the possessing devil-
rebuked his questioners for thinking of iron chains, and informed them
that the binding will be effected by three words of the Mass. Rather than
pronounce the words, the devil asked for a missal: ‘The missal was brought
and handed to [the woman] closed; she opened it and found the canon
without any difficulty and putting her finger on the place: ‘Through Him,
and with Him and in Him’ ... she said: ‘... [T]hese are the three words with
which my master is bound.’ The monks who heard this were edified, claims
Caesarius, ‘for they understood the force of the words’, but also because they
knew that the woman was illiterate.26
In short, the performance was not only a source of doctrinal verifica-
tion, but also, by its dependence on inappropriate literacy, a proof that
demons exist in reality. As a strategy of interspecies communication,
32 Walter Stephens

demonic possession has passed from explaining the psychology of demons

to manifesting the human epistemology of demonic presence. The perform-
ance seems to have had yet another ulterior utility. Caesarius’s Monk was
reminded of this anecdote while attempting to answer the Novice’s objec-
tion that God should not allow a person to be possessed on account of the
sins of another. Rather than explore the conundra of theodicy head- on, he
suddenly declared: ‘Let those who doubt the existence of demons wait until
they see demoniacs, for in them the signs of his [sic] presence are clearly
shown, in the way that the devil speaks through their mouths and rages
most cruelly in their bodies.’27 The existence of demons, as the preamble
to the Decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council had recently emphasized, was
vital for defending the goodness of the creator against Albigensian dual-
ism.28 The fall of the rebellious angels argued for their having been cre-
ated good by an all-good creator; that he tolerated their persecution of good
people, but did not approve of it, explained the persistence of evil as God’s
respect for the free will of angels and humans, expressed by not compelling
them to be good.
Scholastic demonologists, especially Aquinas, were even more insistent
about the empirical nature of evidence about demonic existence provided
by cases of possession. Aquinas proclaimed that there were at least two infal-
lible empirical proofs of the reality of demons. He admitted that ‘in regard
to the demons, the Peripatetic followers of Aristotle did not affirm the exist-
ence of demons but said that those things attributed to demons come to
pass from the power of the heavenly bodies and of other natural things,’
but, he retorted, ‘this seems manifestly false, in view of the fact that some
operations of the demons are found which in no way can proceed from any
natural cause, for example that a person possessed by a demon speaks an
unknown tongue; and many other works of the demons are found both in
cases of possession and in the necromantic arts, which cannot in any way
come about except as proceeding from some intellect.’29
These assertions by Thomas are the mature theoretical form of the appar-
ently incidental observations of Caesarius’s monks: possession and necro-
mancy are no longer anecdotal responses to curiosity. After 1400, Thomas’s
remarks were of crucial importance to witchcraft theory, the speculative
discourse about interactions between demons and a new variety of malevo-
lent heretics. Thomas was prominently quoted in 1486 on the first page of
Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum. Kramer made explicit the ambiva-
lent attitude toward witches that Aquinas’s logical formulations had inspired
in previous theorists of witchcraft, who had unwittingly exalted witches as
privileged interlocutors of demons even while reviling them as accomplices
in Satanic crime. As Kramer contended memorably, witches were ‘expert wit-
nesses’ to the existence of demons and their complete availability to human
interaction.30 Thenceforth, possession, exorcism, necromancy, and witch-
craft did not serve merely as practically attested varieties of communication;
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 33

instead, their similarity as communicative situations inspired earnest proofs

that matter is not the sole reality.31 Epistemological and ontological proofs
overtook much of the centuries-long European discussion about conversa-
tions with suprahuman species, accompanying its descent into an unruly
and bloody search for the source of society’s evils.
During the period of c. 1430–1530, witchcraft dominated discussions of
interspecies communication, but after 1560, the pestilent second flower-
ing of interest in witchcraft inspired even more provocative and theoreti-
cal treatments of angelic and demonic conversation. More thoroughly than
their predecessors, writers after 1560 imagined the phenomenon over a
range of possibilities both moral and metaphysical, describing the commu-
nicative strategies that human and suprahuman interlocutors could adopt,
as well as data about the spirit world and the creator that angelic informants
might provide or confirm. As the scope of discussions widened, the issue
of religious doubt became more and more apparent, through both explicit
refutations and the increased volume and specificity of presumed evidence
about the world of spirit.
At Paris, between 1570 and 1572, the Jesuit demonologist Juan de
Maldonado gave an exhaustive series of public lectures on demonology.
The second question Maldonado examined was ‘Do angels exist?’ and he
answered it as Aquinas and the first wave of witchcraft theorists had done.
If we disregard the evidence of Scripture, Maldonado asserted, angelic exist-
ence ‘cannot be proved by reason: but by experience, which passes above all
reasons, it can be proved. By the experience both of the Demoniacs and of
the Enchanters, and by other things that can only be performed by Spirits.’32
Maldonado inspired the first major witchcraft treatise composed since the
1520s, Lambert Daneau’s Dialogue des sorciers of 1574.33 Daneau, a Huguenot
theologian and pastor, was also galvanized by trials recently held at Paris
and in the Savoy.
But Daneau reacted negatively to Maldonado’s line of reasoning, which he
saw as extremely perilous, and refused to discuss angelic reality as a prob-
lem: ‘... for there is nothing worse in the world than to give fools matter for
their folly ... or matter to the merely curious for waxing subtle; and I will
beg ... that you excuse me if I do not provide you an ample discourse on
the whole species and classification of devils, of their colors, humors, hon-
ors and characteristic activities among themselves, as many have done and
still do who wish to be considered the sharpest and most subtle Scholastic
doctors.’ Daneau understood that conceding the legitimacy of a desire to
communicate with angels, or to prove their existence, implies the commu-
nicative insufficiency of Scripture. ‘For my part I wish to speak of these hor-
rible inimical beastly creatures as soberly as I can, and I confess to having
so little acquaintance and communication with them, by God’s grace, that
I know them not at all, except insofar as it has pleased divine wisdom to
reveal them to us in its saintly and sacred Word.’34
34 Walter Stephens

Nevertheless, both by its logic and owing to its internal tradition, the
learned discourse on witchcraft necessarily constituted an implicit supple-
ment to Biblical pneumatology. Thus, Daneau’s wish to eliminate all non-
scriptural proofs of angelic existence was severely limited by his very choice
to argue for the reality of witchcraft. Daneau did scrupulously avoid discuss-
ing demonic copulation, which the Malleus and other treatises considered
the strongest proof of demonic reality. But his reliance on demonic trans-
vection or witches’ flying provided implicit proof of the same sort, to wit,
that demons could interact corporeally with humans, particularly when
compared to scriptural accounts of Christ’s temptation by Satan.35 Still,
Daneau never mentions actual conversations between witches and devils,
and implicates linguistic exchange only in brief references to the pact, the
Sabbat and the deceptiveness of demons’ promises.
Daneau’s distrust of extrascriptural demonology and of attempts to con-
verse with spirits is a rule-proving exception. Conversely, Jean Bodin’s
Démonomanie des sorciers, published six years after Daneau in 1580, is atypi-
cal for the thoroughness of its approach to angelic conversation. Indeed,
Bodin’s entire book situates itself between the two poles of angelic conversa-
tion: witches’ interactions with demons, and relations between God-fearing
people and good angels. Most of the Démonomanie is devoted to describing
and vilifying the former, epitomized by the case of Jeanne Harvillier, whose
witchcraft trial Bodin witnessed in 1578, and took as the inspiration for
his book. At the opposite pole of Bodin’s typology stands the relationship
that he describes between a friend of his and a sort of guardian daemon,
not strictly identifiable with the angels of Christian doctrine. For nearly a
century, scholars have commonly accepted that the man is probably Bodin
himself.36 Just as significantly, these diametrical human/angelic relation-
ships are juxtaposed at the beginning of the treatise, inscribing the subjects
of démonomanie and sorcellerie within the more general topic of interspecies
communication. Indeed, despite his diatribes against crime, Bodin defines
witchcraft not as maleficium but as the attempt to do anything with demonic
aid.37
An introductory chapter describes the ménage of Jeanne and her devil;
then chapter one gives a compendious definition of witchcraft; chapter two,
which describes the companionship between the good spirit and the man, is
intended to demonstrate precisely that contact between humans and good
spirits is possible. Otherwise, Bodin implies, he could not affirm the reality
of witchcraft. ‘All of Holy Scripture is filled with such communication of
angels with God’s elect. I well know that Epicureans and Atheists hold all
this to be a fable; but my purpose is not to make them any wiser. Anyway,
all sorts of philosophers hold such contact to be indubitable. In the book
he wrote on the daemon of Socrates, Plutarch considers the association of
spirits with humans to be most certain, and says that Socrates, who was the
most respected man in all Greece, often told his friends that he constantly
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 35

felt the presence of a spirit that warned him away from evildoing and from
danger.’38
The complementarity of the two relationships is somewhat deceptive.
Although Bodin seems to invoke the good relationship to demonstrate that
evil relationships – or witchcraft – are possible, the reverse demonstration
cannot be ruled out, and indeed seems more psychologically compelling
within the logic and rhetoric of Bodin’s presentation.39 As conversatio, Jeanne
Harvillier’s interactions with her demon seem far more satisfactory and com-
pelling than those of the man and his angelic spirit. Jeanne’s relationship
with her demon exactly follows the norms of human social interaction: her
mother presented her to the demon when she was twelve years old, as other
indigent mothers prostituted their pubescent daughters to rich burghers or
noblemen. In fact, the demon always appeared in the guise of a nobleman,
distinguished by his black clothes, his boots, spurs and sword, and the horse
he hitched outside Jeanne’s house. Had anyone but Jeanne witnessed these
visits, they would have concluded merely that she was lucky enough to have
an aristocratic protector or sugardaddy. Jeanne distinguished herself from
other concubines of her class mainly by her lack of boredom and abandon-
ment: her lover appeared when, where and how she desired; he regaled her
with unusual experiences, including flight; and he stayed with her for over
three decades, even after her marriage. He was such an adroit lover that
their trysts often happened alongside her sleeping husband.40
The opposite holds for the man – let us warily call him ‘Jean’ – and his
angelic confidant. There was nothing remotely normal about their relation:
in the first place, the spirit could not be seen. Second, his communication
was resolutely nonverbal. The relation closely resembled, and was probably
inspired by, Plutarch’s description of Socrates and his daemon. Jean’s dae-
mon communicated like a poltergeist, using noise and touch to indicate his
positive or negative opinion of Jean’s actions or decisions.41 The one time
Jean requested verbal communication, the spirit denied the request with a
forceful blow; and when Jean wished to see his daemon, he witnessed only
a luminous sphere for a brief half-waking moment, except for one occasion
when he glimpsed a marvelously beautiful robed child sitting on his bed.42
Yet despite the severe communicative limitations, the spirit was able to
judge complicated queries and situations by touching Jean’s body or striking
objects around him. Moreover, by waking Jean at opportune times, it pre-
pared him to receive prophetic dreams on returning to sleep.43 Occasionally,
these dreams contained verbal messages, as when God identified himself
and promised to save Jean’s soul.44
At such high points, it might seem that Jean would have little or noth-
ing to envy Jeanne Harvillier. Yet the poverty of his spirit’s communicative
strategies contrasts strangely with the exalted account that Bodin the author
gives of those whom God favors with angelic communications. Moreover,
although scholars have identified the daemon’s protégé as Bodin, Bodin the
36 Walter Stephens

author represents himself as a curious friend who skeptically asked Jean

whether he ever actually saw the spirit, and why the spirit could not use
human language. Indeed, the entire account of the angelic conversations
is aimed at answering, or rather disqualifying, such fundamental empirical
and epistemological questions. And when Bodin describes the beatitude of
those to whom God grants communication with their guardian spirits, he
cannot forego ambivalent qualifications. It is not unlikely that God may
refuse a man’s request for angelic conversation and simply grant him wis-
dom and prudence, or the man may never be aware of his angel’s tutelary
presence.45 Yet verbal interspecies communication seems almost as desirable
as salvation, and is the preferred means to it.
Indeed, the circumstances of Jean’s angelic conversations are riddled
with desire and frustration. Before the experiences began, Jean prayed God,
morning and night for an entire year, to grant them. Moreover, the request
was motivated by anxious perplexity over which of the many conflicting
religions was the true one, and what doctrines one should believe. Nor can
explicit religious doubt be eliminated as a motivation for Jean’s quest. In
fact, as we saw, Bodin the author begins this chapter on an extremely defen-
sive tone, conceding that ‘I know that Epicureans and Atheists consider this
a fable.’46
Scholars have long noticed the similarity between Bodin’s story and an
incident that Torquato Tasso, the poet of Gerusalemme liberata, presents as
autobiographical in his dialogue Il messaggiero, or The Messenger. The dia-
logue recounts a visit by an angelic creature to a personage whom the poet
identifies as himself. The resemblances to Bodin are even stronger, given
that Tasso’s dialogue incorporates some of the same arguments as the more
philosophical sections of La Démonomanie, particularly the notion that the
Great Chain of Being provides a purely natural and unmiraculous foun-
dation for communication between humans and angels. However, Tasso’s
direct dependence on Bodin’s treatise is somewhat improbable.47
Still, Tasso need not have depended on Bodin for the arguments of his dia-
logue, which appear elsewhere in Neoplatonic and witchcraft literature; nor
did he need Bodin to suggest the plot, characterization, or communicative
strategies deployed in Il messaggiero. Tasso wrote the dialogue in the prison
of Sant’Anna, where Alfonso the Second of Ferrara had imprisoned him for
lunacy in 1579. Alfonso’s physicians diagnosed Tasso’s ailment as melancho-
lia, while moderns suspect a nervous breakdown occasioned by the stress of
revising his great poem. But Tasso himself blamed his dementia on a severe
loss of Christian faith. Deliberately or not, he stage-managed his definitive
imprisonment to coincide with his thirty-fifth birthday, 11 March 1579,
‘nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita’, the moment that Dante had identi-
fied with personal and religious crisis in the opening verse of the Inferno. A
month later, Tasso wrote his best friend, an ordained priest, formally con-
fessing and abjuring his anguished inability to believe in Providence, the
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 37

Incarnation, immortality, the sacraments – in short, in anything other than

Aristotle’s prime mover.48
Judging by its arguments and characterization, Il messaggiero constituted
Tasso’s subsequent attempt, in the solitude of his cell, to reconvert him-
self to Christianity. Whether the angelic conversation took place in reality,
in a hallucination, or in Tasso’s literary imagination is no more essential
than the question of Bodin’s influence. But certainly the dialogue begins
at dawn with the poet half-asleep, an experience he shared with Bodin
and other spirit-seekers of the period, and ends with his realization, echo-
ing the finale of Dante’s Paradiso, ‘that in my deep imagination I had phi-
losophized not otherwise than contemplative men are wont to do in their
contemplation’.49
Tasso’s angelic conversation has even less ethical or pragmatic motiva-
tion than Bodin’s. Whereas Bodin hoped to improve his chances of salva-
tion by learning both orthodoxy and orthopraxis, Tasso’s ambition is only
to understand, and he is fully aware, as this and other works show, that
attempts to rebuild faith by reasoning are futile.50 Still, like others before
him, he hopes that if only he can establish the bona fides of his interlocu-
tor, understanding may open the way to belief. The oxymoronic character
of his quest appears clearly in the message borne by the angelic emissary:
nothing about God’s purpose for Tasso, little or nothing about the god of
Christianity, but only an attempt to demonstrate that spiritual creatures
of all kinds – angels, devils, and Neoplatonic daemons like the Messenger
himself – exist in reality.
The daemon attempts to prove the existence of spirits via two sorts of rea-
soning, carefully deployed and labelled as such. The first argument is induc-
tive and expands on Aquinas to maintain syllogistically that, if demoniacs,
necromancers, and witches exist, then spirits necessarily exist. The second
argument, deductive, proposes that nature is both complete and hierarchi-
cally graduated: since the Great Chain of Being exists, there must be a crea-
ture intermediate between humans and God. This variation of the dignitas
hominis argument also fails to convince Tasso, and the daemon finally con-
cedes that the only real proof that spirits exist is the corporeal copulation of
witches and demons. Suffice it to say that the existence of witches halts the
discussion rather than satisfactorily resolving the problem. Moreover, Tasso
never adequately distinguishes between angels and daemons, or between
daemons and devils.
But Tasso’s daemon never quite explains how witches know their demonic
copulation to be real. Worse yet, Tasso the character is never fully convinced
of his daemonic interlocutor’s reality. While still half-asleep, Tasso hears
a voice calling him by name; dissatisfied, he provokes the voice to speak
louder. Then the spirit allows Tasso to touch its hand, while still remaining
invisible. Finally, the spirit puts on a luminous body, similar to the astral
body uniting human bodies to their souls, and becomes radiantly visible.
38 Walter Stephens

Still, the poet is unable to believe in the reality of his interlocutor: perhaps
he is no longer asleep, but that is no proof he is not imagining. In short, the
uncertainties of angelic conversation are never resolved in this dialogue.
Corporeal interaction and sensory data – even the copulation of witches –
give no more certain evidence of angelic reality than logic does. Unable to
get past the epistemological barrier, the poet can learn nothing ethical or
metaphysical from his interlocutor. He never progresses beyond his initial
objection: ‘I still suspect I am dreaming and syllogizing as I dream, and that
my seeing and hearing are not such, but the imagination of hearing and
seeing.’51
The sixteenth century is filled with examples of spirit-seekers who, like
Tasso and Bodin, hankered after contact with angels, Neoplatonic-seeming
daemons, and even devils. Whether Doctor Faustus had quite the experi-
ences or motivations that Christopher Marlowe and others attributed to
him, men like Marsilio Ficino, Pierre de Ronsard, Agostino Nifo, Francesco
Guicciardini, Girolamo Cardano (and his father), the Abbot Trithemius,
Tommaso Campanella, Giordano Bruno, John Dee and many others left
evidence of their opinions – and often their attempts – concerning such
interspecies contact.52 Communicative strategies could be quite varied: as
is well known, ritual magic was heavily dependent on writing, chanting
and combinations of realia (herbs, stones, bodily detritus). It has recently
been suggested that Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa proposed a form of writ-
ten communication with daemonic spirits that would, by its very nature as
writing, compel them to perform the magician’s commands, that is, with-
out recourse to direct visual or auditory evidence of presence.53 ‘Epidemics’
of possession occurred in closed communities beginning around the same
time as Tasso’s and Bodin’s experiences; particularly notable were outbreaks
in nunneries, which were frequently invoked by learned men as proof of
demonic reality, and lasted into the late seventeenth century. 54 The nun
known as Soeur Jeanne ‘des Anges’ became a celebrity, wrote a History of
My Possession, and actually ‘infected’ her confessor, Father Surin; Surin
exulted over his ‘contagion’ by Jeanne’s devils and wrote extensively about
his own possession as well as hers: ‘I am in perpetual conversation with
the Devils, in which I have had encounters which would be too lengthy
to elaborate for you, and which have given me more reasons to know
and admire the goodness of God than I have ever had.’55 As Carlo Ossola
writes, the late sixteenth century and the publication of the Catechism of
the Council of Trent began an ‘angelic invasion of the baroque age’, when
the Tridentine doctrine of the guardian angel as ‘faithful friend’ inspired
a barrage of popularizing treatises in the vernacular, containing recom-
mendations such as ‘Three ways of associating and conversing with our
guardian angel’.56
John Milton’s esteem for Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata shines through
several passages of Paradise Lost, and indeed both poems present a more opti-
mistic concept of angelic conversation than Tasso’s personal and pessimistic
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 39

Messaggiero. While Gerusalemme liberata begins and climaxes with angelic

visitations, Paradise Lost is an angelic epic embedded in a series of angelic
conversations. In particular, the conversations between Adam and Raphael,
based on the apocryphal Book of Raziel and other ancient non- canonical
writings, are presented as the archetype of all interspecies communications.
Indeed, Raphael has to explain the rationale of human/angel interactions
to Adam. More interesting still is Raphael’s prediction that humans may
eventually evolve or mutate into angels. After comparing the Great Chain of
Being to a vast plant, Raphael predicts that, like angels, humans may even-
tually have no need of bodies, food, or sex:

time may come when men

With Angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient Diet, nor too light Fare:
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend
Ethereal, as we, or may at choice
Here or in heavenly paradises dwell.

This theory reveals the human desire for a purely spiritual existence – or
almost. For if Raphael’s visit begins with a discussion of food and corporeal-
ity, it ends with Adam’s curiosity about sex among the angels, a question
that the blushing angel, pleading a scheduling conflict, answers perfuncto-
rily as he leaves.57
Another Puritan, Cotton Mather of Massachusetts, wrote in his diary for
1706 that ‘I often tell [my children] for the good angels, who love them, and
help them, and guard them, and who take Notice of them: and therefore
must not be disobliged.’58 For historians, Mather’s infamous involvement in
the Salem witch panic of 1692, and his virulent defense of it in Wonders of
the Invisible World have overshadowed his fascination for conversations with
good angels. Cotton and his father Increase Mather had disagreed considera-
bly over the value of spectral evidence in the Salem trials, and in 1693 Cotton
rushed Wonders of the Invisible World into print ahead of his father’s Cases of
Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits, which urged caution. It should not be over-
looked, however, that in the immediate aftermath of Salem, both Cotton and
Increase embarked on private quests to encounter good angels. By September
of the same year, 1693, Increase had convinced himself of success, and Cotton,
ever his father’s strongest competitor, followed suit soon thereafter.59
Increase Mather was, if not more optimistic, at least more expansive
in his treatment of positive angelic conversations. In 1696, Increase pub-
lished Angelographia and A Disquisition Concerning Angelical Apparitions,
whose subtitle reveals intimate connections with Salem: ‘In Answer to a
Case of Conscience, Showing that Demons Often Appear Like Angels of
Light, and What Is the Best and Only Way to Prevent Deception by Them’.
40 Walter Stephens

Significantly, Increase argued against the notion that good angels no longer
frequent humans: ‘Their appearings are in a great measure ceased, but their
working is not.’60 More fundamentally, he alluded to Salem (which he never
mentioned by name) when accumulating proof of demonic reality: ‘some
who object that the age wherein we live has no demoniacks, or possessed
persons, do from thence suspect the whole Gospel of fabulosity or impos-
ture. That there are in this age energumens, late examples amongst our-
selves (and more than a few of them) are an awful conviction ....’61 Evil
demons interact with humans more obviously than good angels: ‘there are
evil angels: men cannot but perceive that ... from the bodily possessions ...
if there are evil angels, reason saith they were once good .... And if the evil
angels were once good, we may rationally conclude that there are some who
are, as originally they were, holy spirits.’62
Like King James, Joseph Glanvill and Henry More, the Mathers argued that
the frequentation of evil spirits was the strongest refutation of Sadducism,
the refusal to believe in angelic creatures and human immortality, first
mentioned in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.63 Witchcraft the-
orists had been arguing since the mid-fifteenth century that evidence of
demonic conversatio was the best argument against Sadducism and athe-
ism.64 Angelographia begins by stating, ‘There are such beings as angels. They
are not mere entia rationis [beings hypothesized by reason alone], imaginary
beings, or apparitions ... The Sadducees said ... that the angels are not real
beings, but only apparitions and impressions made in the minds of men.’65
By 1768, John Wesley, an admirer of Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus,
depressed by the extinction of witchcraft belief, concluded that ‘(whether
Christians know it or not) ... the giving up of witchcraft is, in effect, the
giving up of the Bible ... on the other hand ... if but one account of the
intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, [all] ... Deism, Atheism,
Materialism falls to the ground’. Deprived of witches’ testimony to the exist-
ence of devils, Wesley sought other ‘separate spirits’ among the dead, per-
sonally interviewing people who claimed to have interacted with ghosts.66

Postscript: afterlives

As A. N. Wilson and others have reiterated in the face of resurgent

‘Creationism’, ‘Intelligent Design’ and anti-Darwinism, the nineteenth cen-
tury was ‘God’s Funeral’ for many more thinkers than Nietzsche. Wilson
asks rhetorically, ‘Is it not odd, to say the least, that ... the era in which God
died, should have been one of the very greatest periods of church-building
in human history?’ We might answer, No, it is not odd, for the era in which
God died was also one of the great periods in history for attempts to con-
tact separate spirits, the ghosts, angels, and devils of Christian, particu-
larly late-medieval, tradition.67 In the same years, ‘Spiritualists’ theorized
and attempted contact with the dead and other spirits. As Marina Warner
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 41

concludes, ‘modernity did not by any means put an end to the quest for spirit
and the desire to explain its mystery; curiosity about spirits of every sort ...
[has] flourished more vigorously than ever since the seventeenth century,
when the modern fusion of scientific enquiry, psychology, and metaphysics
began.’68 In fact, the questions and the urges behind the quest are far older
than the seventeenth century, as writers since Caesarius of Heisterbach
attest, though its methods have grown more modern and scientific. Perhaps
what has grown even more dramatically is the anxious lucidity of questers,
their awareness of their doubt as a crisis of faith.
By the nineteenth century, angelic conversations could actually turn
themselves inside- out; rather than a consoling angel, the doubter might
experience the Devil himself as Doubt personified. The father of William
and Henry James experienced his crisis of religious doubt in 1844 as a panic
attack and ‘became aware that there was a presence in the room, “some
damned shape squatting invisible to me ... and raying out from his fetid per-
sonality influences fatal to life ... an ever-growing tempest of doubt, anxiety
and despair, with absolutely no relief from any truth I had ever encountered
save a most pale and distant glimmer of the divine existence.” ’69 Dostoevsky
dramatized the Devil-as-Doubt, further battering the idea of angelic conver-
sation as a metaphysical proof, in The Brothers Karamazov. One evening, after
Ivan Karamazov loses his faith in the thickets of theodicy, he experiences a
visit from Satan, disguised as an impoverished and garrulous country gen-
tleman. Although aware he is hallucinating, Ivan is devastated by hearing
his own doubts from the mouth of the Devil, particularly the proposition
that evil spirits do not logically prove the existence of good spirits, God, or
the afterlife: ‘Spiritualists ... think they’re serving faith because devils show
their little horns to them from the other world. “This”, they say, “is a mate-
rial proof, so to speak, that the other world exists”. The other world and
material proofs, la- di- da! And, after all, who knows whether proof of the
Devil is also proof of God?’70 But neither fiction nor popular non-fiction has
yet given up, and conversations with angels and other daemonic beings now
thrive alongside other manifestations of an increasingly desirous religios-
ity, or, as we should say, strategies of interspecies communication. Tellingly,
the preferred term for all sorts of metaphysically and ontologically infused
religiosity is now ‘spirituality’.
As Marina Warner observes, ‘new technologies for seeing, recording and
picturing have reconfigured the traditional materials’ relative to spirits.
A recent exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, documenting
attempts to photograph ghosts and ectoplasms by nineteenth- and early
twentieth- century Spiritualists, provides dramatic illustration.71 But the his-
tory of interspecies communication intimates that seeing or visualization
is often an unreliable experience; though it may be terrifying, as it was
for Ivan Karamazov, it can also be difficult to summon up consciously. As
Tasso, Bodin and many others already demonstrated, visualization often
42 Walter Stephens

depends on liminal or intermediate states of consciousness, dormiveglia or

demi-sommeil. Virginia Krause reminds us of Bodin’s assertion that ‘hearing
is not less, but much more certain than seeing; indeed all the more certain
since hearing can be deceived less than seeing which is often mistaken.’72
This appears to have been true at least for possession and exorcism, which
seem to have evinced demonic presence more directly through voice than
through the bodily suffering of the human victims; while the body might
be manipulated, the voice could differ radically from that of the victim,
and express precise thoughts and emotions that were presumably abhorrent
to the victim. A post-modern variation of Bodin’s precept is found in Ron
Hansen’s sophisticated monastic novel Mariette in Ecstasy, where witnesses
are limited to what they can hear of the protagonist’s alleged physical strug-
gles with demons; visual evidence concerns only the aftermath, the devas-
tating physical effects on Mariette’s body.73
For every artistically and philosophically interesting product like Hansen’s
novel, there are now hundreds of popular, would-be non-fictional encyclo-
pedias of angels, dozens of handbooks revealing how to locate and converse
with one’s guardian angel,74 and nearly as many books providing the same
kind of instruction about the ongoing conversations between humans and
devils75 and between humans and extraterrestrial aliens. According to the
most egregious alienologist, the late Harvard alienist or psychiatrist John
Mack, so- called alien abductees ‘have received information from the aliens
about past destruction of their [own] planet or environment. Now they are
trying to prevent a recurrence [on our planet].’ Unlike the fallen angels
of Christian tradition, the repentant aliens are their own and our better
angels; they are, Mack says, ‘spirit beings ... afflicted by human folly and
destructiveness’. Aliens ‘seem genuinely puzzled regarding the degree of
our apparently mindless or gratuitous destructiveness .... [T]hey do not
understand why we would set about to destroy a realm of such transcend-
ent beauty and they seem in some awkward way determined to stop us
from doing so.’76 Aliens are not only the post-modern surrogate of angels;
having fallen ecologically and transformed their own paradise into hell,
they have also become demons. Appropriately, aliens are often abusive to
their protégés; nor is it always clear that aliens are messengers or aggeloi of
a supreme being, or even that they can teach us anything we don’t already
know. But for their intimates, aliens at least promise the most basic comfort
of conversation: proof that ‘we are not alone’. That consolation, so difficult
to achieve and trust, is the subtext for close to a millennium of interspecies
conversation.

Notes
1. The best overview of Christian angelology is David Keck, Angels and Angelology in
the Middle Ages (New York, 1998).
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 43

2. I will omit the developmental history of the concepts ‘devil’, ‘demon’ and ‘Satan’
from the Book of Job through medieval angelology and demonology. But see
my article ‘Demons: An Overview’, Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones,
2nd edn, 15 vols (Detroit, 2005), 4: 2275–82. Up-to- date articles on many of
the writers and topics mentioned in this essay can be found in Encyclopedia of
Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard M. Golden, 4 vols (Santa Barbara,
Denver, Oxford, 2006).
3. D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the
Late Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1981); Sarah Ferber, Demonic Possession and
Exorcism in Early Modern France (New York, 2004); Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe not
Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism
(Chicago, 2007).
4. Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago,
2002), 58–80; Walter Stephens, ‘Habeas Corpus: Demonic Bodies in Ficino,
Psellus, and Malleus maleficarum’, in The Body in Early Modern Italy, ed. Julia L.
Hairston and Walter Stephens (Baltimore, 2010), 74–91.
5. Stephens, Demon Lovers, 24–25, 356–61, 416 n. 49; Walter Stephens, ‘Mather,
Increase (1639–1723)’; Brian Levack, ‘Glanvill, Joseph (1636–1680)’; and ‘More,
Henry (1614–1687)’, all in Golden, ed., Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, 3: 734–36, 2:
445–46, 3: 787–88.
6. See Joad Raymond, ‘ “With the Tongues of Angels”: Angelic Conversations in
Paradise Lost and Seventeenth- century England’, in Peter Marshall and Alexandra
Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2006), 256–81, esp.
259.
7. Stephens, Demon Lovers, 124–79, 318–21, 360–64; Walter Stephens, ‘Imagination’,
in Golden, ed., Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, 2: 538–40.
8. Keck, Angels and Angelology, 14.
9. See the treatment of Canon Episcopi in Stephens, Demon Lovers, 125–44. The core
development in notions of interactions with angelic creatures appears to have
been a loss of faith in the veracity or verifiability of interactions that did not
happen ‘in the body’.
10. Billy Graham, Angels (1975; Dallas, 1994), 15; he goes on to say ‘I also believe in
angels because I have sensed their presence in my life on special occasions’ (ibid.;
emphasis added).
11. Keck, Angels and Angelology, 118.
12. Henry Mayr-Harting, Perceptions of Angels in History. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered
in the University of Oxford on 14 November 1997 (Oxford, 1998), 14–15.
13. Keck, Angels and Angelology, 121–22.
14. Mayr-Harting, Perceptions of Angels, 5 and 15.
15. Mayr-Harting asserts that angels in the Bible, in the Jewish Apocrypha, and in
the early medieval west, ‘do their work with verve, and often, it must be said,
menacingly’, and that stories about them betray ‘an assumption of hostility
towards humans, not so much by demons, as by angels on God’s side’ (ibid.,
10–11). Both ‘hostile’ and ‘helping’ angels ‘reveal their role in the early Middle
Ages as social agents’ and ‘to claim such an apparition was to make an appeal to
the consensus of a believing community’ (ibid., 10, 12).
16. Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. H. von E. Scott and G.
C. Swinton Bland, intro. G. G. Coulton, 2 vols (London, 1929), 1: 314, 320. The
Latin text was edited by Joseph Strange, and published in 2 vols, Cologne, 1851.
17. Caesarius, Dialogue, 1: 320.
44 Walter Stephens

18. The same implication is in Canon Episcopi’s reference to the verse (Stephens,
Demon Lovers, 130–31). See Increase Mather’s explanation below on p. 40.
19. ‘Monk. – Conrad, one of our elder monks, told me that before his conversion a
certain necromancer made a display to him one night, and he saw demons under
different forms in the light of the full moon. Wherefore there can be no doubt of
their existence, since they can be seen, heard and touched by men’.
‘Novice. – Although it has been proved to me that there are demons, neverthe-
less I should be better pleased to hear the testimony of the religious about them
rather than that only of worldly men’.
‘Monk. – That demons exist, and that they are many, I will show you, not
by doubtful examples of worldly persons, but by most faithful evidence of the
religious, about which you can have no doubt’ (Caesarius, Dialogue, 1: 315–20,
quotation from 320; cf. ibid., 1: 313–14 and Stephens, Demon Lovers, 349–52).
20. Caesarius, Dialogue, 1: 321. Caesarius specifies that these experiences happened
before the monk was elected abbot.
21. The major exception involves a demon who became the manservant of a noble
(ibid., 1: 366–68), but there are others.
22. Walker, Unclean Spirits, 5–7; Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages
(Cambridge, 1989), 55–94, 151–201; Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A
Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (University Park, 1997); Stephens,
Demon Lovers, 322–56.
23. Caesarius, Dialogue, 1: 330.
24. Ibid., 1: 331.
25. Stephens, Demon Lovers, esp. chs 6, 11, 12.
26. Caesarius, Dialogue, 1: 333. Caesarius implies by this observation that the
bystanders were monks or other clergy.
27. Ibid., 1: 332. The passage continues: ‘Novice. – But this may not always be genu-
ine; sometimes it is mere pretence. Monk. – Demoniacs are often spoken of in the
gospels, and in the Acts of the Apostles, as well as in the Lives or Sufferings of the
Saints. I do not deny indeed that some have pretended to be possessed for the sake
of worldly gain, but in many cases there is no pretence, as will be shown by the fol-
lowing example [i.e., of the possessed woman and the missal],’ (Ibid., 1: 332–33).
28. I quote from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook: ‘The devil and the other demons
were indeed created by God good by nature but they became bad through them-
selves; man, however, sinned at the suggestion of the devil’ <http://www.ford-
ham.edu/halsall/source/lat4-select.html>; see Stephens, Demon Lovers, 273. See
also Roger French and Andrew Cunningham, Before Science: The Invention of the
Friars’ Natural Philosophy (Aldershot, 1996), esp. 126–45.
29. St Thomas Aquinas, De malo, 16:1, quoted from St Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, trans.
Jean Oesterle (Notre Dame, IN, 1995), 447. Quoted Stephens, Demon Lovers, 323;
see also De substantiis separatis, ch. 2, and St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae,
Ia, q. 115, a. 5.
30. Stephens, Demon Lovers, passim, esp. 35–36.
31. See the discussions of Andrea Cesalpino’s and Girolamo Menghi’s theories of
possession and witchcraft in Stephens, Demon Lovers, 341–48.
32. Robin Briggs, ‘Dubious Messengers: Bodin’s Daemon, the Spirit World and the
Sadducees’, in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels, 168–90 at 173, quoting J.
Maldonat, Traicté des anges et demons, mis en françois par Maistre François de la
Borie (Paris, 1605), sigs. 6r–8v. See also Jonathan L. Pearl, The Crime of Crimes:
Demonology and Politics in France, 1560–1620 (Waterloo, ON, 1999), 65–75.
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 45

33. Walter Stephens, ‘Diable et sorciers au XVIe siècle: peurs et curiosités face
à l’Autre’, Travaux de Littérature, 18 (2004), Les Grandes Peurs. 2. L’Autre, 9–32,
esp. 25–31. An edition of 1564, variously described as being written in Latin or
French, is mentioned by Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and
Demonology (1959; New York, 1981), 123, and by Alan Charles Kors and Edward
Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 400–1700: A Documentary History (Philadelphia,
2001), 270–71, but I find no trace of it, either in Olivier Fatio, Méthode et théolo-
gie. Lambert Daneau et les débuts de la scolastique réformée. Travaux d’Humanisme
et Renaissance, vol. 147 (Genève, 1976), 13*–19* or in major library catalogues
and bibliographies (Stephens, ‘Diable et sorciers’, 25 and n. 49). Both Latin and
French editions are from 1574.
34. ‘... car il n’y a chose pire au monde, que de bailler au fol argument de sa folie,
au larron object et occasion de desrober, au curieux argument de subtilizer; et
encore je te prieray bien fort, Antoine, que tu m’excuses, si je ne te fay un ample
discours de tout le genre et estat des diables, de leurs couleurs, humeurs, hon-
neurs et negoces particulieres, qu’ils ont entre eux, comme l’ont fait et le font
encores maintenant ceux qui veulent estre tenus pour les plus subtils et aigus
docteurs Scholastiques. Car de ma part je veux parler de si horribles et ennemies
bestes et creatures le plus sobrement que je pourray, et confesse que j’ay si peu
d’acointance et de communication avec elles (par la grace de Dieu) que je ne les
cognoy sinon qu’autant qu’il a pleu à la sagesse divine, par sa saincte et sacree
Parole, nous en reveler’ (Deux traitez nouveaux, tres-utiles pour ce temps. Le premier
touchant les sorciers, auquel ce qui se dispute aujourd’huy sur cette matiere, est bien
amplement resolu et augmenté de deux proces extraicts des greffes pour l’esclaircissement
et confirmation de cet argument. Le second contient une breve remonstrance sur les jeux
des cartes et de dez. Reveu et augmenté par l’auteur M. Lambert Daneau). S. L. (N.P.:
Par Jacques Baumet, 1579), 15. On Maldonado, ibid., 15: ‘... un certain Jesuiste
[sic] Hespagnol nommé Maledonato, homme de mauvais et malheureux nom et
augure, en a disputé si long temps, que tous se faschoyent d’ouyr tant parler de
la nature des diables, ayant pris son theme, et mis son affiché en ces termes, De
Daemonibus; c’est à dire des Demons, ou des Diables.’
35. idem, 62, 71–77 and passim; Stephens, ‘Diable et sorciers’, 25–28.
36. For bibliography, see Briggs, ‘Dubious Messengers’, 168 and n. 2. My analysis here
is based on Stephens, ‘Diable et sorciers’. The essays in L’Oeuvre de Jean Bodin:
Actes du Colloque tenu à Lyon à l’occasion du quatrième centenaire de sa mort (11–13
janvier 1996), ed. Gabriel-André Pérouse, Nicole Dockès-Lallemant and Jean-
Michel Servet (Paris, 2004), especially those by Ann Blair, Claude- Gilbert Dubois
and Marc Venard, are illuminating on the subject of Bodin’s pneumatology and
its place in his natural philosophy.
37. ‘Sorcier est celluy qui par moyens Diaboliques s’eforce de parvenir à quelque
chose’ (Jean Bodin, De la démonomanie des sorciers (Paris, 1582), sig. a1r; Stephens,
‘Diable et sorciers’, 22).
38. ‘Toute l’escripture saincte est pleine de telle communication de l’Ange auec les
esleuz. Ie sçay bien que les Epicuriens, et Atheistes tiennent cela pour une fable: aussi
ie n’ay pas deliberé de les faire sages: Si est ce que tous sortes de Philosophes tiennent
cela pour indubitable. Plutarque au livre qu’il a faict du Daemon de Socrate, tient
comme chose tres- certaine, l’association des esprits avec les hommes, et dict que
Socrate, qui estoit estimé le plus homme de bien de la Grece, disoit souvent à
ses amis, qu’il sentoit assiduellement la presence d’un esprit qui le destournoit
tousiours de mal faire, et de danger’ (Bodin, Démonomanie, 10v).
 Walter Stephens

39. Stephens, ‘Diable et sorciers’, 21–22. See the treatment of palindromic reasoning
in Stephens, Demon Lovers, 334, 357.
40. Bodin, Démonomanie, sig. a3r.
41. Bodin also directs his reader to Judges 13, Job 33:15–30 and Isaiah 50 for parallels
(Démonomanie, fol. 13r).
42. ‘Ie luy demanday pourquoy il ne parloit ouvertement à l’esprit, il me fist response,
qu’une fois il le pria de parler à luy, mais qu’aussi tost l’esprit frapa bien fort contre
sa porte, comme d’un marteau, luy faisant entendre, qu’il n’y prenoit pas plaisir,
et souvent le destournoit de s’arrester à lire ny à escrire, pour reposer son esprit et
à mediter tout seul oyant souvent en veillant une voix bien fort subtile et inarticu-
lee. Ie luy demanday si iamais il avoit veu l’esprit en forme, il me dit qu’il n’avoit
iamais rien veu en veillant, horsmis quelque lumiere en forme d’un rondeau bien
fort claire. Mais un iour estant en extreme danger de sa vie, ayant prié Dieu de
tout son cueur, qu’il luy pleust le preserver, sur le poinct du iour en sommeillant il
dit qu’il apperceut sur le lict où il estoit couché un ieune enfant vestu d’une robe
blanche changeant en couleur de pourpre, d’un visage de beauté esmerveillable:
ce qu’il asseura bien fort,’ (Bodin, Démonomanie, fol. 12v).
43. ‘Et affin qu’il discernast le songe par inspiration d’avec les autres resveries, qui
adviennent, quand on est mal disposé, ou qu’on est troublé d’esprit, il estoit eveillé
de l’esprit sur les deux ou trois heures du matin, et un peu apres il s’endormoit:
alors il avoit les songes veritables de ce qu’il devoit faire, ou croire, des doubtes
qu’il avoit ou de ce qui luy devoit advenir: En sorte qu’il dict que depuis ce temps
là il ne luy est advenu quasi chose qu’il n’en ait eu advertissement, ny doubte des
choses qu’on doibt croire, dont il n’ait eu resolution’ (Ibid., fol. 11v).
44. ‘Depuis il commença, comme il m’a dit, d’avoir des songes, et visions pleines
d’instruction, et tantost pour se corriger un vice, tantost un autre, tantost pour
se garder d’un danger, tantost pour estre resolu d’une difficulté, puis d’une autre,
non seulement des choses divines, ains encores des choses humaines, et entre
autres luy sembla avoir ouy la voix de Dieu en dormant, qui luy dist, «Ie sauveray
ton ame: c’est moy qui t’ay apparu par cy devant,»’ (Ibid., fol. 11r).
45. Ibid., fol. 9v–10r.
46. Ibid., fol. 10r.
47. Torquato Tasso, Il messaggiero, in Dialoghi, ed. Bruno Basile (Milan, 1991), 33–104.
Whether Tasso eventually employed Bodin’s dialogue, in the original or in the
translation of his friend Ercole Cato, is still unclear: Bodin’s book was published
in the year Tasso began the Messaggiero, while Cato’s translation was published
in the same year as Tasso’s final revision. See Demonomania degli stregoni, trans.
Ercole Cato (Venice, 1587); facsimile edn, intro. Andrea Suggi (Rome, 2006).
48. Walter Stephens, ‘Tasso and the Witches’, Annali d’Italianistica 12 (1994): 181–
202, esp. 187–89; Walter Stephens, ‘Tasso as Ulysses’, Sparks and Seeds: Medieval
Literature and Its Afterlife. Essays in Honor of John Freccero, ed. Dana E. Stewart and
Alison Cornish (Turnhout, 2000): 209–39, esp. 216–22.
49. Tasso, Il messaggiero, 104. Cf. Dante, Paradiso 33.142. This finale confirms the
importance of Dante as a role-model for Tasso’s quest for spiritual certainty.
50. See Stephens, ‘Tasso and the Witches’; ‘Tasso as Ulysses’.
51. Tasso, Il messaggiero, 36.
52. Stephens, Demon Lovers, 322–64; Stephens, ‘Habeas Corpus’; D. P. Walker,
Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (1958; reprint, Notre Dame,
IN, 1975); D. P. Walker, Music, Spirit, and Language in the Renaissance, ed. Penelope
Gouk (London, 1985), esp. chs 7–15; Bruno Basile, ‘Cardano, Tasso, e la natura del
 Strategies of Interspecies Communication 47

«genio familiare»‘, Studi di filologia e letteratura italiana in onore di Gianvito Resta,

ed. Vitilio Masiello (Rome, 2000), 1: 425–35; Communicating with the Spirits, ed.
Gábor Klaniczay and Eva Pócs (Budapest/New York, 2005); Anthony Grafton,
Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge,
MA, 1999), 166–72, 187–88; Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan
London: Simon Forman, Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford, 2005), 209–25;
Armando Maggi, In the Company of Demons: Unnatural Beings, Love, and Identity in
the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, 2006).
53. Christopher I. Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa’s
Occult Philosophy (Leiden/Boston, 2003), 203–12.
54. Michel de Certeau, The Possession at Loudun, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago,
2000); Stephens, Demon Lovers, 346–47.
55. Soeur Jeanne des Anges, Supérieure des Ursulines de Loudun (XVIIe siècle): Autobiographie
d’une hystérique possédée, ed. Gabriel Legue and Gilles de la Tourette (Paris, 1886);
Lettres spirituelles du P. Jean-Joseph Surin de la Compagnie de Jésus, ed. Louis Michel
and Ferdinand Cavallera 2 vols (Toulouse, 1926–28), 1: 126–31 (partial English
trans. in Kors and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 356–59); Robert Rapley, A Case of
Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier (Manchester, 1999). Quotation from Kors
and Peters, Witchcraft in Europe, 357.
56. Carlo Ossola, intro. to Gli angeli custodi: storia e figura dell’«amico vero», ed. Carlo
Ossola, Silvia Ciliberti and Giacomo Jori (Turin, 2004), 26.
57. John Milton, Paradise Lost, in The Poems of John Milton, ed. John Carey and
Alastair Fowler (London, 1968), 705–7 (5.493–500); 846–49 (8.595–632).
58. The Diary of Cotton Mather, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7th
ser. (1911), 7.536–37, qtd in Linda Pollock, A Lasting Relationship: Parents and
Children over Three Centuries (Hanover, NH, 1987), 216–17.
59. Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather (Hanover,
NH, 1988), 273.
60. Increase Mather, Angelographia, or A Discourse Concerning the Nature and Power of
the Holy Angels, and the Great Benefit Which True Fearers of God Receive by Their
Ministry, Delivered in Several Sermons. To Which Is Added a Sermon Concerning the Sin
and Misery of the Fallen Angels; also A Disquisition Concerning Angelical Apparitions
(Boston, 1696), 63. See Stephens, ‘Mather, Increase (1639–1723)’.
61. Mather, A Disquisition, sigs. K3v–K4r.
62. Mather, Angelographia, 7.
63. Acts 23:8; cf. 4:1–2; Matt. 22:23; Mark 12:18; Luke 20:27.
64. Stephens, Demon Lovers, 24–25, 358, 416 n. 49; Walter Stephens, ‘The Quest for
Satan: Witch-Hunting and Religious Doubt, 1400–1700’, 49–71 in Stregoneria e
streghe nell’Europa Moderna. Convegno internazionale di studi (Pisa, 24–26 marzo
1994), ed. Giovanna Bosco and Patrizia Castelli (Ospedaletto [Pisa], 1996), 61–62.
Increase Mather concurred: ‘Sadducism is a degree of atheism, and commonly
ends therein’, Mather, A Disquisition, sig. K3v.
65. Mather, Angelographia, 5.
66. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, Enlarged from Original Mss., with Notes from
Unpublished Diaries, Annotations, Maps, and Illustrations, ed. N. Curnock, 8 vols
(London, 1909–1916), 5: 265–75.
67. N. Wilson, God’s Funeral (New York, 1999), 310 (emphasis in original).
68. Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the
Twenty-First Century (Oxford, 2006), 10. Like Wilson, Warner begins from the
rhetorical premise that these developments are a ‘paradox’.
48 Walter Stephens

69. Wilson, God’s Funeral, 313. Such experiences are discussed at length in William
James’s The Will to Believe (New York, 1902) and the Varieties of Religious Experience
(New York, 1897).
70. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky
(New York, 1991), 636–37.
71. Warner, Phantasmagoria, 13; Vince Aletti, ‘Seeing Things: Spirit Photography at
the Met’, The New Yorker (10 October 2005), 90–91.
72. Virginia Krause, ‘Confessional Fictions and Demonology in Renaissance France’,
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35.2 (Spring 2005): 334, quoting La
Démonomanie des sorciers.
73. Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy (New York, 1991).
74. Graham, Angels; M. J. Abadie, The Everything Angels Book: Discover the Guardians,
Messengers, and Heavenly Companions in Your Life (Holbrook, MA, 2000); Migene
González-Wippler, Return of the Angels (Saint Paul, MN, 1999); Julia Ingram and
G. W. Hardin, The Messengers: A True Story of Angelic Presence and the Return to the
Age of Miracles (New York, 1996); Pierre Jovanovic, An Inquiry into the Existence
of Guardian Angels: A Journalist’s Investigative Report, trans. Stephen Becker (New
York, 1995).
75. Aside from the numerous mass-market titles introduced each year, there are
continuous reprints of witchcraft ‘classics’ by non-scholarly presses like Dover
Publications, which has popularized the early twentieth- century translations
of Montague Summers and his associates (e.g., of the Malleus maleficarum,
Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium maleficarium, Ludovico Maria Sinistrari’s
Demoniality), and Llewellyn Publications (Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of
Occult Philosophy, trans. J. F. [London, 1651; reprint, ed. Donald Tyson. St. Paul,
MN, 1993]). Llewellyn and Kessinger both publish extensive catalogues of titles
relating to contemporary magical practices.
76. John E. Mack, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (New York, 1994), 395–96.
I examine other representative titles in ‘I Sing the Body Daemonic: Spirit Matters
in American Culture’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, Special Promotional Issue
(Winter 2006): 1–10.
3
Angels and the Physics of Place in the
Early Fourteenth Century
James Steven Byrne

In 1638, the Protestant apologist William Chillingworth, responding to

the accusation that the learning of Protestant divines amounted merely to
rhetorical niceties, mocked those who found philosophical subtlety in the
disputation of such questions as ‘whether a million of angels may not sit
upon a needle’s point’, the first known appearance of what would become
a common example of the follies of scholastic theology.1 Chillingworth,
imparting a touch of humor to his otherwise rather dour polemic, clearly
intends this as satire, not a representative of a genuine debate among theo-
logians such as his Jesuit antagonist. His accompanying, Latin example,
utrum Chimaera bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones
(‘whether a chimera, buzzing in a vacuum, is able to eat second inten-
tions’) is a meaningless send-up of the language of scholastic disputation.
Still, like all good satire, the question of how many angels could sit on
the point of a needle contained more than a grain of truth. Behind it lay
a serious discussion of angelic properties that had occupied theologians
since the Middle Ages.
Two decades later, the Neoplatonist philosopher Henry More would allude
to this in his The Immortality of the Soul (1659). Contemplating the nature of
the soul separated from the body, More notes that the body, though it may
no longer be joined to the separated soul, is a reference for the ‘size’ of the
soul, as the soul must have ‘as ample, if not more ample, dimensions of her
own’ (because it once occupied the entirety of its body). This, he says, is

worth taking notice of, that it may stop the mouths of them that, not
without reason, laugh at those unconceivable and ridiculous fancies of
the Schools, that first rashly take away all extension from spirits, whether
souls or angels, and then dispute how many of them booted and spur’d
may dance on a needle’s point at once.2

More’s phrasing – the angels are now booted, spurred, and dancing – max-
imizes the ridiculousness of the query, but he also insists that the question

49
50 James Steven Byrne

behind it, whether an immaterial angel may nevertheless have dimensions,

is not at all laughable. More grappled with the problem by drawing on ideas
from the rapidly developing mechanical philosophy, but he was surely
aware that others before him had approached it from different points of
view, most notably that of Aristotelian natural philosophy.
No medieval theologian ever asked, or at least is known to have asked, how
many angels could fit, or dance, on the point of a needle. Theologians did,
however, devote a great deal of though to the question of how or whether
angels could be said to occupy place. Place itself was already a difficult topic,
posing a number of physical problems that medieval philosophers attempted
to address. The problems surrounding place were only exacerbated by the
addition of angels to the question. Some manner of angelic location seemed
necessary in order to account for angels’ roles as messengers to, guardians
of, and general interactors with humanity. On the other hand, the incorpo-
real, spiritual nature of angels was a matter of doctrinal importance. This
raised the question of how an incorporeal being could be said to be in con-
tact with its surroundings, a condition of the Aristotelian understanding of
place. One obvious solution, to deny that an incorporeal angel could occupy
a place at all, was at odds with scriptural and popular portrayals of angels,
and so theologically unpalatable. Thus, beginning in the middle of the thir-
teenth century, most theologians felt compelled to discuss the problem of
the angelic occupation of place.
These discussions took place in theological works, frequently in commen-
taries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. It is well known that medieval
theological works often contain treatments of topics that, like place, prop-
erly fall under the purview of natural philosophy. Historians of medieval
science have not ignored such theological texts but have tended to exam-
ine questions of natural philosophical interest in isolation, excerpted from
their theological contexts.3 However, these physical questions are generally
found where they are for a reason, in order to shed light on some difficult
theological problem. Questions regarding place, in specific, are commonly
considered in conjunction with the issue of angelic location, because many
theologians felt the need to explain precisely what place was before they
showed how angels occupied it. The difficulties posed by angels’ incorporeal
natures pushed theologians to develop theories of place that did not rely,
as Aristotle’s did, on physical contact, a problem that became even more
acute after the condemnations of 1277, which declared one popular solu-
tion, proposed by Thomas Aquinas, erroneous. This essay will examine the
attempts of four Franciscan theologians, John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308),
Peter Auriol (c. 1280–1322), Walter Chatton (c. 1285–1343) and William of
Ockham (c. 1288–1347) to develop theories of place that both satisfied the
lingering physical questions regarding Aristotle’s definition and were appli-
cable to incorporeal angels.
 Angels and the Physics of Place 51

Place and the problem of angels in medieval thought

As with most topics in natural philosophy, the medieval discussion of place

began with the doctrine of Aristotle, whose most detailed treatment occurs
in Book IV of the Physics. After rejecting a number of alternatives, the
Philosopher determines that ‘the place of a thing is the innermost motion-
less boundary of what contains it.’4 This definition draws attention to three
important aspects of the Aristotelian notion of place. First, it is a container.
Strictly speaking, a body and its place do not overlap at all, they merely
touch. That is, place is a volumeless shell around a body, surrounding it but
not passing through it. Second, place requires physical contact. The shell
that defines a body’s place is the boundary of some other body, and it must
actually be in contact with that body to be in a place. Finally, place is immo-
bile. A body may move, but it moves to a new place. Likewise, the place itself
does not move as it surrounds the body. Both of these attributes caused dif-
ficulty for commentators. The notion of place as a container led to the ques-
tion of the place of the eighth sphere, the outermost sphere of the cosmos,
whose rotation causes the cycle of day and night. There was nothing outside
it to contain it (or if there was – some natural philosophers posited the exist-
ence of additional spheres beyond the eighth – this merely pushed the prob-
lem back a layer), so what was its place?5 Likewise, if place is immobile, what
is the place of, for example, a boat in a river, a problem that Aristotle himself
raised?6 Obviously, the boat’s place cannot be the surrounding water, since
that is constantly in motion. Aristotle solved this problem by arguing that
the entire river is the place of the boat, a solution that not all commentators
found satisfactory.
The standard, late thirteenth- century response to this question was sug-
gested by Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74), who distinguished between the
‘proper place’ of the ship, the water itself, which is mobile, and the ‘common
place’, the river, which is immobile. Common place was determined not by
containment, but in relation to a fixed object, in this case the river itself.7
Aquinas’s follower Giles of Rome (c. 1247–1316) developed this distinction
by introducing the notions of material place (the boundary of the contain-
ing object) and formal place (the position of a body with respect to fixed
points, such as the celestial poles).8 Place was thus split into two compo-
nents, one based on physical contact, the other primarily relational. A body
would have both a material and a formal place, though they might differ.
These questions were physical, and in the late thirteenth century they were
primarily discussed in commentary on the Physics. However, as theologians
sought to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine, further
complications emerged. Angels, in particular, posed serious questions for
those who insisted upon a strictly Aristotelian concept of place. Medieval
theology held that angels were incorporeal, creatures of spirit rather than
52 James Steven Byrne

body, a doctrine whose roots dated back to the Church Fathers. Augustine,
for example, notes that ‘angels ... do not have bodies that can be felt’.9 John
of Damascus, whose De fide orthodoxa was an important source for medi-
eval angelologists, described angels as ‘immaterial and incorporeal’.10 While
theologically important, incorporeality made the application of Aristotle’s
theory of place to angels extremely problematic. It was not at all clear how
an incorporeal angel could be in contact with, or bounded by, a physical
container.
The simple expedient of denying the angelic occupation of place outright
was unpalatable to most medieval theologians. There were potential theo-
logical difficulties involved in the denial that angels were in place. Walter
Chatton, for example, noted that, if angels were not in places, then fallen,
damned angels would be no more in hell than in heaven, rendering their
casting- out meaningless.11 However, the primary obstacle was the scriptural
and popular portrayal of angels. Scripture is rife with stories of angels inter-
acting with humans in a seemingly physical manner. It doubtless would
have seemed odd to suggest that, for example, the angel Raphael could have
accompanied Tobit from Nineveh to Rages (Tobit 5:5–6:22) while simultane-
ously asserting the impossibility of Raphael’s ever actually being in either
Nineveh or Rages. Likewise, one would assume that, for Jacob to be able to
wrestle with an angel (Gen. 32:24–26), the angel must have been there in
the first place.12 Popular portrayals of angels were also often nakedly physi-
cal. In the French liturgical drama Mystère de Daniel, for example, an angel
drags the character Abacub by the hair to the lion’s den in which Daniel is
imprisoned, and then drags him back after forcing him to give the belea-
guered prophet a meal.13 The angel is not only interacting with Abacub and
Daniel, but also moving about; how can one understand motion without
reference to place? Indeed, the idea of motion is built into the Latin word
angelus, derived, as medieval theologians were well aware, from the Greek
angelos, or messenger, one who is sent, and therefore must move, to deliver
some news. So, while Aristotle’s theory did not easily encompass incorpo-
real angels, there was theological and scriptural weight behind the idea that
angels must nevertheless occupy place.
Even before the majority of Aristotle’s works became incorporated into
medieval arts education in the thirteenth century, theologians were inter-
ested in the question of angels and place. Peter Lombard, (c. 1100–60), whose
Sentences were the fundamental teaching text for later theologians, provided
a determination of the question of angelic place that would set a pattern for
many later responses. He explains that there are two ways in which some-
thing can occupy a place. First, because ‘having the dimensions of length,
width, and height, it creates distance in a place, like a body’ and second,
because ‘it is defined and determined by a place since whenever it is some-
where, it is not encountered everywhere.’ The second way of occupying a
place ‘agrees not only with corporeal things, but also with every spiritual
 Angels and the Physics of Place 53

creature’.14 Peter’s solution presents a common insight: an angel must be

somewhere, because it is not everywhere. The obvious, though unstated,
contrast is with God, who alone is everywhere.

Angels and place before the condemnations of 1277

Though the topic of angelic place had been discussed in scholastic theol-
ogy beginning with Peter Lombard, it became a matter of serious debate
only during the mid-thirteenth- century controversy over universal hylo-
morphism, that is, the question of whether all beings, spiritual as well as
corporeal, are composed of both matter and form. Bonaventure (1221–74),
the leading Franciscan theologian of the day, argued for the existence of
a ‘spiritual matter’, out of which beings like angels were composed. At the
same time, Thomas Aquinas, an equally prominent Dominican theologian,
vehemently denied the existence of spiritual matter and insisted that angels
were beings of pure form.15 The debate over universal hylomorphism was
not directly relevant to questions of place – spiritual matter was held to be
incorporeal, and was still subject to the same problems regarding place – but
it did mirror a similar split in doctrines of angelic place.
In upholding the composition of angels out of matter and form,
Bonaventure asserted the similarity of spiritual and corporeal beings.
Although they are composed of different types of matter, both consist of
combinations of matter and form. His doctrine of angelic location likewise
posits a similarity between angelic and corporeal place. In his commentary
on the Sentences, he explains that an angel, like any other being, has a cor-
poreal place (locus corporealis) because it is finite and because ‘created things
have an order in the world ... such that one is here, one is there’. And this
place must be corporeal because ‘only in body is there a potential distinc-
tion between here and there’.16 Bonaventure does draw some distinction
between the way spiritual and corporeal beings occupy place. For example,
spiritual beings are not measured or conserved by their places, as material
beings are. However, like Peter Lombard, he is clear that there is an under-
standing of place applicable to both corporeal and incorporeal beings. He is
also more explicit than the Lombard in noting that this place is corporeal,
because it is bodies that have the power of locating things. That is, place is
specifically a property of locating bodies. This theory does not, however,
make reference to Aristotle, so it remains unclear what the relationship
between his understanding and that of place as the boundary of the con-
taining body is meant to be.
Aquinas, by contrast, denied that an angel could occupy a place in the
same manner as a corporeal being, just as he denied that both were com-
posed of matter and form. Rather than through containment, an angel ‘is
said to be in a corporeal place through the application of angelic power to
some place in any way’.17 In other words, angelic place is the result not of
54 James Steven Byrne

physical contact, but of operation, of the angel creating an effect in some

specific area. Because angelic power is finite, an angel is limited to operating
in a finite area, and that is its place. This is entirely separate from Aquinas’s
understanding of how corporeal creatures occupy place, which draws on the
notions of proper and common place.18 He proposes two parallel systems of
physics, one for angels, the other for material bodies.
Each of the competing theories of Bonaventure and Aquinas had its own
appeal. Bonaventure offered an understanding of place that encompassed
both incorporeal and corporeal creatures, but did not confront Aristotle.
Aquinas, though he proposed separate theories of place, explicitly explained
how they were to be understood in relation to Aristotelian doctrine.
However, the choice between the two was complicated, to say the least, by
the condemnations of 1277. In March of that year, in response to concerns
that Aristotelian and, in particular, Averroist philosophers were promulgat-
ing doctrines that conflicted with basic Church dogma, Etienne Tempier,
bishop of Paris, condemned as erroneous 219 propositions on a variety of
topics.19 Among these were several positions that Aquinas had held, includ-
ing one relating to angelic place. The final error condemned was the propo-
sition that

separate substances [i.e., angels] are nowhere according to substance. This

is an error if it is understood such that their substances are not in a place.
If, however, it is understood that substance is the reason of being in a
place, then it is true that [separate substances] are nowhere according to
substance.20

Because Aquinas held that angels were in a place only through operation,
not by substantial presence, the condemnation clearly applied to him.
Tempier’s authority was limited to Paris (though a similar set of errors was
also condemned at Oxford), the condemnations of the propositions associ-
ated with Aquinas were later reversed, and Aquinas’s supporters continued
to espouse modified versions of his theory.21 Still, the damage had been
done. The condemned article became a common point of departure for sub-
sequent discussions of angelic place.

Scotus, Auriol and the aftermath of the condemnations

The condemnation clearly played a role in the development of John Duns

Scotus’s theory of angelic place.22 Scotus begins his treatment of the ques-
tion ‘whether an angel requires a determinate place’ with a rejection of
Aquinas’s position. He accuses Aquinas of having reversed the relationship
of priority between place and operation: Aquinas asserts that angels were
present in a place through their operation, while Scotus, drawing on a sta-
men of Aristotle’s in Physics VII to the effect that ‘the mover is together with
 Angels and the Physics of Place 55

the moved,’ argues that it must therefore be the case that ‘an angel will be
naturally present in some place by its essence before it is present in it by its
operation.’23 This addresses the objection raised in the condemnation, as it
puts an angel in a place essentially, not merely virtually, but the question of
just how an angel is essentially present is still an open one.
Scotus goes on to develop an elaborate theory of place, one that makes
reference to, but overturns, several important aspects of the definition of
Physics IV, and then explains how it is that angels fit it.24 Scotus begins
his account by addressing the problem of the immobility of place, rather
than anything specifically angelological. He argues that ‘place has immo-
bility entirely opposed to local motion, and incorruptibility according to
equivalence by comparison to local motion.’25 What Scotus is getting at in
this rather opaque passage is the idea that, strictly speaking, a body whose
surroundings are in motion, like a boat in a river, will have a successive
series of places. In the case of the boat, at any given moment, the water sur-
rounding it will be its place. The water is in constant motion, so new water
is continually replacing the old, which makes for a new place, since the
boundary of the boat’s container will have changed. However, each of these
successive boundaries is equivalent to the others, and in this way, the boat
can be understood to be in the same place while different water composes
each successive boundary, all of them are otherwise the same. Places in this
sense can be distinguished, according to Scotus, ‘because they have differ-
ent relationships – not only in number but also in species – to the whole
universe’.26 That is, places are not distinguished by their relationships to
specific bodies but rather have something like a fixed and underlying order.
As Richard Cross points out, this seems very much like a doctrine of space,
though Scotus is not explicit on this point.27
Though Scotus’s notion of immobile place reduces the importance of place
as a container, it did not eliminate it.28 Thus, he notes that an angel is not
actively in a place because, being indivisible, it does not separate the sides
of a container.29 In fact, says Scotus, an angel need not be in a place at all,
‘because very many were able to be made without the creation of corporeal
creatures’.30 This passage emphasizes the importance of corporeal contact
for Scotus’s doctrine. He may move toward an idea of space by thinking of
places as having an abstract, universal order, but place does not exist before
the creation of corporeal things. Angels, however, did exist before corporeal
creatures, and so, logically, must not need to be in a place. They are, how-
ever, capable of occupying place. According to Scotus

there is in an angel a passive potential, by which it is able to be in a

place.... Thus, it is not necessary to seek some intrinsic reason for an
angel’s necessarily being in a place, because there is none, but there is
only in him a passive potential, by which he is able to be in a place
because it is not repugnant to him.31
56 James Steven Byrne

This account differs from those of both Peter Lombard and Bonaventure
in that, for Scotus, an angel is not of necessity in a place; it is capable of
being nowhere. However, when an angel is acting in the corporeal world, it
must be in a place because, as he has already shown, action implies presence.
The angel must also be in a determinate place because its power is finite. If,
says Scotus, an angel could exist in any place, however large or small, this
would imply its infinite power. It has no determinate shape, and therefore
if it can exist in a place of a specific size, it can exist in any other place of
the same size, but there are upper and lower sizes beyond which it cannot
go.32 This means that an angel ‘has a determinate place, but nevertheless
[has it] indeterminately’.33 Its place is determinate because it must operate,
and therefore be present, in some specific location, but the angel occupies
it indeterminately because it does not need to occupy one place more than
another, or, indeed, any place at all.
Angels only fulfill one of the conditions of corporeal occupation of
place – the need to be in a determinate place – and fulfill that only partially,
because of their finite natures rather than any necessary link to a place
with specific dimensions. In some respects, Scotus’s account is similar to
Aquinas’s in that the focus is on the need for an angel to be able to operate
in the corporeal world. For Scotus, mere operation is not enough to consti-
tute location, but angels still occupy place in a manner distinct from that of
material beings. He uses his doctrine of corporeal location as a basis for the
development of a notion of angelic location, but the latter is stretched so far
that it is unclear whether both can be considered subsets of an overarching
theory of place, as in Peter Lombard and Bonaventure.
The difficulties that Scotus encountered in reconciling his theory of place
with incorporeal angels are highlighted in the work of Peter Auriol. Like
Scotus, Auriol first presents a general treatment of the doctrine of place,
before going on to consider the issue of angelic place.34 He introduces the
concept of place as ‘position’ (positio), which he says is simply a thing being
‘here or there’.35 He goes on to say that position is an aspect or type of
quantity (in the following question, he will call it a ‘passion of quantity’
[passio quantitatis]), ‘distinct from body, surface, and line, so it is saved that
place is a distinct quantity’.36 Auriol’s position, like Scotus’s immobile place,
is thus tied to location within the universe, rather than a relationship to
some container or fixed point.37 Auriol goes even further in this direction
than had Scotus, who retained some notion of place as containing body. By
making position a passion of quantity, understood as space-filling exten-
sion, he associates it entirely with being located, rather than locating. This
is explicitly meant to be a broadening of the Aristotelian notion of place.
Auriol notes that, by this understanding, a glorified (that is, a resurrected)
body, one of whose attributes is ‘subtlety’, the ability to pass through mat-
ter, occupies a place, which it cannot under the Aristotelian doctrine, as it
cannot be contained by any material body.38 Auriol also emphasizes that he
 Angels and the Physics of Place 57

has presented a metaphysical doctrine of place, whereas Aristotle presents

a physical doctrine. Aristotle’s position is not wrong, but it is a narrower,
subordinate understanding.39
Having laid out his doctrine of position, one might expect Auriol to go
on to show how it can be applied to angelic place. His position seems in
many respects to be a more explicit and rigorous extension of Scotus’s state-
ments regarding the immobility of place, and Scotus had provided a theory
of place that applied to angels. Likewise, the mention of glorified bodies
(which share with angels the problem of being unable to be contained by
material objects, though they remain, obviously, bodies) looks like it might
point toward a discussion of angelic position. This, however, is not the case.
On the contrary, Auriol finds himself in a real quandary. As his question on
angelic place makes clear, Auriol’s understanding relies on corporeality, and
at least the possibility of physical contact. After rejecting a few alternatives
(including Aquinas’s position), Auriol explores the relationship between
angels and position.40 An angel cannot have position because position is
a passion of quantity – it requires quantity as its subject, and cannot exist
without it. An angel, being incorporeal and indivisible, has no quantity, and
therefore no position. The problem, Auriol makes clear, lies with the specific
nature of angelic indivisibility rather than with indivisibility in general.
He draws a distinction between a mathematical point, whose indivisibility
is ‘an indivisibility having and concerning position’, and an angel, which,
although it is, like a point, indivisible, is a ‘substance that is not positioned’.41
So, it is not an angel’s indivisibility per se that prevents it from having posi-
tion, but rather the incorporeality of the angelic substance.
Auriol further clarifies his objection to the application of position to
angels by introducing the notion of ‘presence’ (praesentia). ‘Presence’, he
says, giving a definition nearly identical to that he had used for ‘position’, is
that ‘by which something is said to be ‘here” ’. It is determined by a line of
distance between the present object and something else:

Nothing is able to be the subject of presence ... except that which is able
to be the end (terminus) of a distance, and between which a linear dis-
tance is able to fall ... indeed, to the extent that I am able to be said to
be here, and you to be there, it is because we are the ends of one linear
distance.42

This concept is easily applied to corporeal objects, but, as Auriol points out,
is more problematic with respect to angels:

A linear distance is not able to fall between two angels, or between an

angel and a body, such that the angel is situated as an end of that line.
Proof: because it would be either an intrinsic end of that line, and then it
would be a point, or an extrinsic end, and then there would necessarily
58 James Steven Byrne

be a continuum; then, indeed, [the angel] would be contiguous with the

line and would be in contact with it. However, contact and contiguity are
conditions of continuous quanta.43

However, angels are not points – Auriol has already made that clear – nor,
being indivisible, are they continuous quanta. Ultimately, the problem is
one of physical contact, as angels, being indivisible, but not mathematical
points, cannot come into contact with even a notional line of distance.
While Auriol is aware that his contemporaries put forth theories explain-
ing how an angel is able to occupy a place, he is unable to do so himself.
Indeed, he expresses doubt as to whether the question of angelic place is
properly solved by considering place itself at all. It seems to him that it
rather requires the discovery of some new kind of cause:

The Master [Peter Lombard] says in the first book of the Sentences that the
way in which a spirit is present in a place is intelligible. It seems to me
that between spirit and body there is no such condition or application or
connection, but rather that a spirit is remote from all such condition in
the body. It is necessary, therefore, that this application and determina-
tion be reduced to some kind of cause.44

But Auriol plainly has no idea what this new sort of cause would be. Aware
that this is not a satisfying solution, he offers a challenge to the reader: ‘if
these [conclusions] do not please, whoever knows how to invent some kind
of cause, whether formal or efficient, will be able to see the way in which an
angel is in a place.’45 This is a cry for help, not a conclusion. Although Auriol’s
doctrine of position was a neat solution to many of the problems facing the
Aristotelian definition of place, it left the question of angelic occupation of
place open to even greater doubt than it had been in the past.

The solutions of Chatton and Ockham

This unwillingness to even attempt to offer a solution is perhaps the rea-

son that Walter Chatton opens his own discussion of place with an attack
on Auriol’s position. Chatton was one of a very small number of medieval
atomists, those who believed that continua were composed of indivisible
parts, though this belief does not play an explicit role in his rejection of
Auriol, nor in the discussion of his own theory. He takes issue with Auriol’s
assertion that place is a passion of quantity, arguing that if this is the case,
it must either be a relative or an absolute thing. It is clearly not a relative
thing, because Auriol has removed the locating container from the discus-
sion; thus, it cannot serve as one of the terms in a relationship. If this were
not the case, then, for example, the heavens would not be able to be in a
place, because they have no container. Auriol would likely have agreed with
 Angels and the Physics of Place 59

Chatton in denying that position is a relative. Chatton, however, also denies

that it can be an absolute thing, ‘because, that [absolute thing] having been
destroyed by the power of God, an object will still be in a place.’46 In other
words, Chatton wants place to be entirely inseparable from a located body,
even by the power of God. Therefore, according to Chatton, place can be
nothing other than the space in which an object is located; that is, an object
has a place, because it is somewhere specific in space, and not somewhere
else. As Chatton says, ‘space is that through which there is a response to the
question made by the “where” (ubi) of something’.47 Scotus and Auriol may
both move towards the equation of place and space, but Chatton is quite
explicit about it.
How space serves to define place is illustrated by the examples that Chatton
gives. ‘If everything other than this body and the body of Rome were anni-
hilated’, he writes, ‘the one would still not be where the other was’.48 Even
if only two bodies were to exist, they would not necessarily overlap or con-
tact one another. Therefore, there must be some way of distinguishing their
relative locations in the absence of Aristotelian containers. This concept
can also be extended to a single entity. ‘If, other than God there were only
an angel in the nature of things, and you were to ask where the angel is,
I would say that it is here and not there.’49 Again, if nothing were to exist
but an angel (or some other being) and God, the angel, as a finite creature,
would still not be coterminous with God, who is infinite. So there must still
be a way of distinguishing where the angel is from where it is not. In both
cases, it is space that enables a distinction of place, either because there is
space intervening between two objects (and so they are in distinct places) or
because there is space in which an object is not.
Chatton does not explicitly define ‘space’, but his examples imply that,
for him, it is not a really existing entity. If an angel is still in a place even if
nothing other than it and God exists, then the space in which it is located
cannot be a real being. It is simply an emptiness or void that can receive
objects. This means that angelic incorporeality is not an obstacle to place,
since being in a place requires no contact whatsoever, merely being in a spe-
cific part of place. In many ways, this is merely a rendering formal of Peter
Lombard’s assertion that an angel is in a place because ‘whenever it is some-
where, it is not encountered everywhere.’50 The principle behind both ideas,
that a finite object must be in a place in some sense, because it cannot be
everywhere at once, is the same. Chatton, however, does not see the need to
invoke a more specific notion of space that applies only to corporeal bodies.
His doctrine of space encompasses both the incorporeal and the corporeal
without need for further distinction.
Chatton’s contemporary and chapter-mate, William of Ockham, took a
different approach to the problem. Rather than providing an alternative
theory of place, Ockham attempts to show that an Aristotelian treatment
of the subject, if properly understood, is sufficient to account for angelic
60 James Steven Byrne

place. In this respect, he is similar to Duns Scotus, though Ockham is

able to integrate his accounts of corporeal and incorporeal place much
more completely. Ockham gives his most detailed treatments of place in
two commentaries on the Physics, though he also discusses the subject in
his quodlibetal questions. 51 His treatment of place is superficially similar
to that of his Aristotelian predecessors in that he stresses the definition
of place as the innermost boundary of a containing object and solves
the problem of the immobility of place both by making a distinction
between proper place (the immediate surroundings of a body, which are
mobile) and common place (the whole of a body’s surroundings, which is
immobile) and by following Scotus in noting the equivalence of a body’s
successive proper places. 52 However, Ockham departs significantly from
traditional, medieval Aristotelianism by denying that place has any exist-
ence separate from a body at rest or in motion; in other words, place is
simply a way of understanding that a body is at rest or moving.53 This was
a serious departure not only in terms of ontology, but also with respect
to how Ockham would treat certain aspects of being in motion or being
at rest.
Though Ockham does not mention angels in connection with place in
his commentaries on the Physics, he clearly had them in mind when devel-
oping his doctrine. His commentaries were written in the same period,
roughly from 1322 to 1324, during which he composed the two treatises
in which he treats angelic location in detail, the Tractatus de corpore Christi
and the first quodlibet of his Quodlibeta septem.54 Ockham was a rival of
Chatton’s, and he was explicit in rejecting the other man’s theory of space
as place, though in fact there were significant areas of agreement between
the two. In his commentaries on the Physics, Ockham denies that space,
which he understands as being equivalent to void, constitutes place on
the grounds that it can be neither a substance, a quantity, a quality, nor
a relation, and hence, cannot exist.55 Chatton had already implied that
space was not a separately existing entity; Ockham simply eliminates all
other possibilities and then uses this to undermine the validity of the con-
cept itself. However, Ockham does not believe in the complete impossibil-
ity of void space. He holds that God, in his infinite power, could create a
void, and even that he could place an angel in a void. In his first quodli-
bet, Ockham, in an interesting thought experiment, asks that ‘an angel be
placed in a vacuum, and afterwards, let that vacuum be made a plenum of
air. This having been done, it is manifest that the angel is not in the whole
plenum.’56 This implies that, prior to the addition of the air, the angel did
not occupy the whole vacuum, a position that is very close to Chatton’s
statement that if only an angel and God were to exist, the angel would still
be in some place and not another. However, for Ockham this is a special
case that could only arise through divine intervention rather than a gener-
ally applicable doctrine of place.
 Angels and the Physics of Place 61

Angels play a more determinate role in Ockham’s rejection of the notion

that an object is in a place through its quantity, as Auriol had argued, in his
Tractatus de corpore Christi. Ockham responds to this theory by raising the
objection that

according to the saints and authentic doctors – and it is enough that it is

the intention of the canonical scriptures – an angel is in a place ... even
though it is not a quantity but indivisible, lacking all parts designed to be
distant locally [from one another].57

An understanding of place like that of Auriol must be wrong, because it

fails to explain how angels can occupy place (a problem of which Auriol
himself was painfully aware). Note that Ockham does not specify precisely
how an angel occupies a place, he merely assumes that it does on the author-
ity of Scripture and ‘the saints and authentic doctors’. In a sense, he oper-
ates inductively, proceeding from authoritative evidence that angels occupy
place to a rejection of a theory of place that denies that possibility.
When, in his Quodlibeta septem, he does explain how an angel is in a place,
Ockham again proceeds inductively. In the fourth question of his first quo-
dlibet, he begins with the assumption that an angel can exist in a place, and
then proceeds with a determination of precisely how this is so. He opens by
noting that an angel is in a place because ‘through its substance it is here,
and not anywhere else,’ a statement that echoes those of Bonaventure and
Chatton.58 After giving his definition of place, he makes a distinction, argu-
ing that there are two ways that something can be in a place, circumscrip-
tively and definitively:

Circumscriptively is for something to be in a place, whose part is in part

of the place, and [whose] whole is in the whole place. Definitively, how-
ever, is when the whole is in the whole place, and not outside, and the
whole is in any part of that place.59

An angel, according to Ockham, occupies place not circumscriptively but

definitively, such that the whole of the angel is in each part of its place; this
is necessary because an angel is indivisible and, as such, lacks parts. But,
says Ockham, this can be distinguished from the way in which God is in
a place (all of God is also in each part of a place) because ‘an angel is in a
certain way surrounded and contained by the place, such that it is in that
place, and is not outside the place in which it exists.’60 Once again, the key
distinction is between angelic finiteness and divine infinity. Containment
for Ockham thus becomes a relationship of being surrounded by another
object, rather than being in contact with or bounded by it. In this way, he
is able to save the application of a theory of place based on the Aristotelian
idea of containment to angels. Ockham distinguishes between being
62 James Steven Byrne

‘circumscriptively’ and ‘definitively’ in a place, but he makes it clear that

these are two different manifestations of a single understanding of place;
the manner in which a being occupies a place has more to do with the being
itself (namely, whether it has discrete and extended parts) than it does with
the nature of place, which in both cases is defined by an object’s being con-
tained by something else.61

Conclusion

The attempt to minimize or eliminate the importance of physical contact

to understandings of place is the common thread linking the theories of
Scotus, Auriol, Chatton and Ockham. The condemnation of Aquinas’s posi-
tion in 1277 resulted in a reluctance to adopt solutions that had angels
occupying places only by operation, not by substance – all four theologians
were careful to discuss condemnation 219 and its implications for angelic
location. For the most part, Aristotle’s theory remained an important
touchstone, with only Chatton proposing a radically different doctrine
of place. However, there was a shift of emphasis from contact to finite-
ness. For Scotus and Ockham, finiteness became a substitute for contact in
explaining how an incorporeal angel could be contained by a body, while
for Chatton finiteness in space was enough to guarantee place. These deci-
sions were based in part on the desire to come to an understanding of place
applicable to incorporeal angels. Ockham, for example, rejects Auriol’s
theory on the grounds that it fails to apply to angels, a failure that clearly
bothers Auriol himself.
Of course, angels were not the sole, or even necessarily the primary,
concern of those who sought to refine Aristotle’s doctrine of place. Giles
of Rome’s theory, for example, was constructed without reference to angels
and continued to receive support, most prominently among the group of
Parisian philosophers associated with Jean Buridan. Even those theolo-
gians who did discuss place in the context of angels had additional con-
cerns. Scotus, for example, was clearly interested in the problem of the
immobile container, Chatton rejected Auriol’s doctrine on purely techni-
cal grounds, Ockham’s theory was related to his wider, nominalist pro-
gram, and Auriol, of course, failed to apply his, or any, understanding of
place to angels at all.
However, the fact that it is possible to understand medieval theories of
place without reference to their theological contexts does not mean that it is
always advisable to do so. The importance of applying place to incorporeal
beings in the decisions of Scotus, Auriol, Chatton and Ockham to move
away from contact and containment is only apparent when one considers
their theories in conjunction with the angelological questions that surround
them. Even Auriol, who cannot apply his doctrine to angels, touts its ability
to account for the place of glorified bodies, a result of his abandonment of
 Angels and the Physics of Place 63

containment and contact.62 Theological considerations also likely played

a role in the decision to adopt specific physical theories. The theological
utility of Ockham’s physical doctrines, including the applicability of his
theory of place to angels, may help to explain why otherwise quite conserv-
ative scholars such as Gregory of Rimini and Hugolinus of Orvieto adopted
them, despite the sharp criticism directed towards Ockham’s physics in
mid-fourteenth- century Paris.63 Many other considerations surely played a
role in the choice to adopt one theory of place over another, but the amount
of space devoted by theologians to the question of angelic location indi-
cates that it was, in many cases, given as much weight as strictly physical
concerns.
Questions regarding the applicability of physical doctrines to theologi-
cal questions did not die with the Middle Ages. Henry More, who mocked
scholastic inquiries into angels dancing on pinheads, sought to use Robert
Boyle’s experiments with the air pump to prove the existence of incorporeal
beings such as angels. Boyle, in turn, thought that More’s interpretation
of his results would lead to atheism, and also ruminated on the implica-
tions of his corpuscular philosophy for the resurrection of the body.64 More
rejected Cartesianism precisely because he felt that it did not leave room
for the existence of incorporeal beings.65 Though the physics had changed,
both in method and content, incorporeality remained problematic. Like
his medieval predecessors, More sought to use current physical theory to
bolster his understanding of theology and was prepared to reject any phys-
ics that failed to yield theologically acceptable results. Though the ensuing
angelological discussions often rendered their subjects highly abstract, one
should bear in mind that behind all of the technical, philosophical discus-
sion was a desire to conform to scriptural and pastoral portrayals of angels.
Theologians like Bonaventure, Chatton and Ockham insisted so strongly
on physical theories that encompassed angels precisely because Jacob could
wrestle one, because Christ’s birth could be announced by one and even
because Abacub was dragged by his hair in order to bring the prophet Daniel
his lunch. All of these things had to happen somewhere.

Notes
I thank Chris Schabel, for answering my questions about Peter Auriol and generously
providing my with an edition of Auriol’s question on angelic location. I also thank
Joad Raymond, Mike Mahoney and Lauren Kassell for offering their comments on
this essay.

1. William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (London,

1687), 14. Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham, ‘Migrations of Angels in the
Early Modern World’, in Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham, eds, Angels in the
Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2006), 1, n. 1. I thank Joad Raymond for directing
me to this reference.
64 James Steven Byrne

2. Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul (London, 1659), 341–42. Cited in R.
James Long, ‘Of Angels and Pinheads: The Contributions of the Early Oxford
Masters to the Doctrine of Spiritual Matter’, Franciscan Studies, 56 (1999): 239–54,
n. 23.
3. A few exceptions relevant to the current topic are Helen Lang, Aristotle’s Physics
and Its Medieval Varieties (Albany, NY, 1992), 173–87; Olivier Boulnois, ‘Du lieu
cosmique à l’espace continu? La représentation de l’espace selon Duns Scot et
les condemnations de 1277’, in Jan. A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, eds, Raum
und Raumvorstellungen im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1998), 314–31; Chris Schabel, ‘Place,
Space, and the Physics of Grace in Auriol’s Sentences Commentary’, Vivarium, 38
(2000): 117–61.
4. Aristotle, Physics IV, 212a20–21, trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gay, in Jonathan
Barnes, ed. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. 1
(Princeton, 1984), 361.
5. On medieval responses to Aristotle’s notion of place in general, see Pierre Duhem,
Le système du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon a Copernic, vol. 7
(Paris, 1956), 158–302; and Edward Grant, ‘The Medieval Doctrine of Place: Some
Fundamental Problems and Solutions’, in A. Maierü and A. Paravicini Bagliani,
eds, Studi sul XIV secolo in memoria di Anneliese Maier (Rome, 1981), 57–79.
6. Aristotle, Physics IV, 212a15–19.
7. Grant, ‘Medieval Doctrine of Place’, 63.
8. Ibid., 64. Cecilia Trifolgi, ‘An Anonymous Question on the Immobility of Place
from the End of the XIIIth Century’, in Jan A. Aersten and Andreas Speer, eds,
Raum und Raumvorstellungen im Mittelalter, 151–52.
9. St Augustine, The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Charitiy, trans. Bruce Harbert,
in Boniface Ramsey, ed., The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st
Century: On Christian Belief (Hyde Park, NY, 2005), 309.
10. John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa: Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus, ed.
Eligius M. Buytaert (St Bonaventure, NY, 1955), 69.
11. Walter Chatton, Reportatio super Sententias: Liber II, ed. Joseph C. Wey and Girard
J. Etzkorn (Toronto, 2004), 164.
12. The text of the passage refers only to Jacob wrestling a ‘man’ (vir), but this was
commonly understood to represent an angel. Augustine, for example, notes the
difficulty of accounting for ‘how Jacob wrestled with an angel whose presence
was so solidly tangible.’ Augustine, Enchiridion, 309.
13. Paul Heinze, Die Engel auf der mittelalterlichen Mysterienbühne Frankreichs
(Greifswald, 1905), 29–30. The play itself can be found in Édélestand du Méril,
Origines latines du théatre moderne (Paris, 1849), 241–54.
14. Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, vol. 1, pt 2, (Rome, 1971), 270.
15. David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York, 1998), 93–99.
16. Bonaventure, Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, vol. 2 (Quarracchi,
1885), 77.
17. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (Ottawa, 1941), 325–26.
18. See above, n. 7.
19. For a recent account of the condemnations and their institutional context, see
J. M. M. H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200–1400
(Philadelphia, 1998), 40–56.
20. Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. 1 (Paris, 1886), 555.
21. This was particularly common among Dominicans. See, for example, Durand
of Saint-Pourçain, In Petri Lombardi Sententias commentariorum libri IIII (Venice,
1571), ff. 101r–102v.
 Angels and the Physics of Place 65

22. On the importance of the condemnations of 1277 to Scotus’s doctrine of angelic

place, see Boulnois, who argues that the condemnations ‘were not the exclusive
cause, but a partial cause and sine qua non’ of Scotus’s position; Boulnois, ‘Du lieu
cosmique’, 331.
23. John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, 840–41. See also Lang, Aristotle’s Physics, 175–78.
24. Lang, Aristotle’s Physics, 173–87; Richard Cross, The Physics of Duns Scotus (Oxford,
1998), 193–213.
25. Scotus, Ordinatio, 843.
26. Ibid., 844.
27. Cross, Physics of Duns Scotus, 209–13.
28. See Ibid., 211.
29. Scotus, Ordinatio, 845.
30. Ibid., 845.
31. Ibid., 845.
32. Ibid., 846–47.
33. Ibid., 847.
34. Peter Auriol, Reportatio in secundum librum Sententiarum, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1–2. In
preference to the Rome edition of Auriol’s commentary, which contains serious
defects, I rely on the edition of question one contained in Schabel, ‘Place, Space,
and the Physics of Grace’, 143–54. Chris Schabel was also kind enough to provide
me with his own, unpublished edition of question two, on which I again rely in
preference to the Rome edition.
35. Auriol, Reportatio, 143.
36. Ibid., 150. It is important that place be a distinct quantity so that place is
not identical with the body in it (e.g., that the place of a line is not the line
itself).
37. See also Schabel, ‘Place, Space, and the Physics of Grace’, 137–38.
38. Auriol, Reportatio, d. 2, p. 3, q. 1, p. 144.
39. Ibid., 151–53. Note that this section is omitted from the Rome edition.
40. Ibid., d. 2, p. 3, q. 2.
41. Ibid., d. 2, p. 3, q. 2.
42. Ibid., d. 2, p. 3, q. 2.
43. Ibid., d. 2, p. 3, q. 2.
44. Ibid., d. 2, p. 3, q. 2.
45. Ibid., d. 2, p. 3, q. 2.
46. Chatton, Reportatio, 160.
47. Ibid., 161.
48. Ibid., 162.
49. Ibid., 162.
50. See above, n. 14.
51. André Goddu, The Physics of William of Ockham (Leiden, 1984), 112–36.
52. Goddu, Physics of William of Ockham, 118–19.
53. William of Ockham, Quodlibeta septem, ed. Joseph C. Wey (St Bonaventure, NY,
1980), 721–26. See also Goddu, Physics of William of Ockham, 112.
54. Paul Vincent Spade, Intro. to The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (Cambridge,
1999), 8–9.
55. Goddu, Physics of William of Ockham, 127.
56. Ockham, Quodlibeta septem, 49. See also Goddu, Physics of William of Ockham,
132.
57. William of Ockham, Tractatus de corpore Christi, in Charles A. Grassi, ed., Opera
philosophica, vol. 10 (St Bonaventure, NY, 1986), 148.
66 James Steven Byrne

58. Ockham, Quodlibeta septem, 23.

59. Ibid., 25.
60. Ibid., 26.
61. Angels are not the only beings to occupy places definitively. The body of Christ,
for example, occupies the Eucharist definitively, though in this case it is not
because Christ’s body is indivisible, but rather because the whole body must be
in each part of the Eucharist in order to account for the efficacy of the sacrament.
See Eleonore Stump, ‘Theology and Physics in De sacramento altaris: Ockham’s
Theory of Indivisibles’, in Norman Kretzmann, ed., Infinity and Continuity in
Ancient and Medieval Thought (Ithaca, NY, 1982), 207–30.
62. See above, n. 37.
63. See Gregory of Rimini, Lectura super primum et secundum Sententiarum, ed. A.
Damasus Trapp, vol. 4 (Berlin, 1979), 277–339. Hugolinus of Orvieto, Commentarius
in quattuor libros Sententiarum, ed. Willigis Eckermann and Venicio Marcolino,
vol. 3 (Würzburg, 1986), 137–44. On the controversy over Ockhamism, see
William Courtenay, ‘The Debate over Ockham’s Physical Theories at Paris’,
in Stefano Caroti and Pierre Souffrin, eds, La nouvelle physique du XIVe siecle
(Florence, 1997), 45–63; and Thijssen, Censure and Heresy, 57–72.
64. Jane E. Jenkins, ‘Arguing about Nothing: Henry More and Robert Boyle in the
Theological Implications of the Void’, in Margaret J. Osler, ed., Rethinking the
Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, 2000), 153–79. Fernando Vidal, ‘Brains, Bodies,
Selves, and Science: Anthropologies of Identity and the Resurrection of the
Body’, Critical Inquiry, 28 (2002): 930–74.
65. Jenkins, ‘Arguing about Nothing’, 165.
4
Galileian Angels
Nick Wilding

‘Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?’1

Angels were everywhere in Baroque Europe. Theologically, they mediated

between God and humans; iconographically, they were highly visible in
architecture and art; and devotionally, they became increasingly interested
in the well-being of individuals.2 Their emblematic ubiquity as markers of
the Baroque, and therefore kitsch, has transformed them into mere orna-
mentation. Yet, angels played a crucial role in early modern beliefs and prac-
tices, especially in their engagement with questions of natural philosophy.
I argue that the nature of the relationship between angels and natural philo-
sophical practice would seem to be threefold: first, angelology provided a
conceptual vocabulary with which natural philosophers made sense of their
instruments and defended their practices against charges of theological het-
erodoxy; second, the figure of the angel provided an ideal epistemological
model towards which natural philosophers strove, in varying social organi-
sations; third, and beyond the scope of this chapter, is the fact that angels
entered natural philosophy not only as a form of practice, but as an object
of study: their very pre- existence determined the lines along which debates
on matter might be drawn.
Were natural philosophy to be originally and essentially pitted against
theology, we would expect to find traces of attacks and attempted expul-
sions of angels from the emerging discipline. There is no evidence of such
casualties in the supposed war with heaven.3 We might also expect angels
to be invoked only to defend a beleaguered religion from the attacks of an
iconoclastic and demystifying ‘new science’. A nice place to test the valid-
ity of this popular oppositional model is the case of Galileo. By looking at
Galileo’s angels, we might be better able to approach the minefields of the
trial and condemnation. It is, of course, impossible to reconstruct the nature
and extent of Galileo’s personal piety with any degree of accuracy, and
such an exercise would be less interesting than attempting to understand
the uses to which his religiosity was put.4 Far from destroying the celestial

67
68 Nick Wilding

hierarchy with a mathematicised cosmos, Galileo frequently aligns himself

with angels in his writings and images so that something of their nature,
power and authority might be transferred to him by association. This is
most evident in his writings concerning the astronomical discoveries per-
formed with the telescope in the 1610s, where the presence of angels under-
pins his entire mode of public presentation. Such playful conceits became
the object of criticism from within religious orders, especially the Jesuits, in
the 1620s. The Jesuits adopted an iconography and epistemology of angelic
and cherubic natural philosophy during the same period. Galileo continued
to play with the angelic imaginary in order to provide adequate models
for the relationship between the human body, scientific instruments and
knowledge. The Jesuits did the same but shied away from his individualist
epistemology in favour of the construction of a corporate angelic body. After
Galileo’s failed attempt to separate the natural philosophical from the theo-
logical in the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, his angels were relegated
from the literal realm to the symbolic. In the Dialogue, the invocation of
angelic agency in thought experiments is treated as a sign of epistemologi-
cal desperation.5 As John Heilbron has shown, angels are gradually effaced
from their efficacious and demonstrative roles even within the mainstream
continental tradition over the eighteenth century.6
The reason for the gradual demotion of angels from cause and fact to rhe-
torical flourish in natural philosophy is still poorly understood. It should be
clear that enlightenment angelicide has been much overstated, and that the
heavenly horde in fact made a series of tactical retreats from certain territo-
ries of elite knowledge in an effort to colonise new areas opened by mission-
aries. Nor, as several essays in this volume make clear, were angels banished
universally from natural philosophy as active agents. Perhaps what needs
to be explained in the case of Galileo is less the inevitability of the fall of
angels from essences of pure reason to jokes of poor reasoning than the
risk involved in conspiring to push them. What did Galileo have to gain
by invoking angels in his natural philosophy, and why did his use of angels
change during his career?
A traditional date for the initial unravelling of the Ptolemaic cosmos with
empirical data is early 1610, when Galileo wrote and published the Sidereus
Nuncius. The invention of the telescope, or rather, the adaptation of the spy-
glass to astronomical ends, has featured heavily in traditional narratives of
the scientific revolution. Van Helden has described the Sidereus Nuncius as
‘the product not of an intellect but rather of an instrument’.7 The publica-
tion of the book was part of a complex strategy of simultaneously releasing
results of the new telescopic discoveries while limiting the possibilities of
their replication or falsification.8 Galileo adopted a single strategy to side-
step two potentially disastrous charges: that optical devices were inherently
unreliable as instruments capable of producing matters of fact, and that full
disclosure of the instrument’s operations would undermine his control over
 Galileian Angels 69

it. He depicted his work of instrument construction, observation, data gath-

ering and interpretation as an angelic operation. The results were rendered
authoritative and secure; their method of production left unknowable.
Part of the reason for the episode’s iconicity is that it was presented and
received as such at the time. Contemporary readers recognised the novelty
and urgency of the message.9 The modern reader of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius
experiences a sense of wonder that seems simple, profound and ahistorical.
Contemporaries also reported their amazement and curiosity. But to what
extent is this the same sentiment? How might the transformation of contex-
tual frameworks over four centuries recast apparently innocent terms? Or,
to put it another way, how might we restore the specifically religious wonder
experienced by contemporary readers of early modern natural philosophi-
cal texts?
Among the tens of thousands of personal letters printed in Italy in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there are many musings on the nature
of epistolary communication.10 We should recall that at this stage, there
was no discreet subgenre of scientific letters, and that when we read mod-
ern editions of scientific correspondence, we are often looking at snippets
decontextualised from a dense rhizome of political, moral or religious gos-
sip, news and opinions. Early modern correspondents were fairly consist-
ent on their views of what letters (and perhaps all writing) were for: they
breached the gap of absence between presences. They did this across space,
by bearing presence where speech could not go, and across time, by render-
ing permanent evanescent speech.
In the 1608 edition of the Reverend Angelo Grillo’s Letters, to cite just one
example from Galileo’s immediate circle, Grillo self-reflexively mused on
the work of letters in one to Marcus Welser, a future protagonist in astro-
nomical disputes:

Heavenly embassies [ambasciate celesti] (as I consider your letters to be)

should not be carried by anyone but angels, and for this reason your little
angel [angioletto] nephew gave me yours ... so that simultaneously reading
the one and admiring the other, I came to see and hear you at the same
time; in this way, with the benefit of such highly esteemed presence I
was restored from the damage of such unfortunate distance. O! what an
angelic face the one had! And the other a heavenly tongue!11

Letters, angels and family members did the same kind of work in early mod-
ern Europe: they destroyed distance and restored presence. This was also
the task performed by the telescope, and Galileo immediately established
the parallel.
It is likely that Galileo, deeply invested in perfecting his epistolary style,
read Grillo’s popular published letters. The cited passage may have even
provided him with a title for his new iconoclastic pamphlet, as he changed
70 Nick Wilding

its name from the clunky Astronomy Announced to Astrologers [Astronomia

denuntiato ad Astrologos]12 to the snappier and wittier Sidereus Nuncius, an
approximate Latin translation of Grillo’s ‘heavenly embassies’. The title
was a self-reflexive and playful courtly conceit: ‘nuncius’ might mean an
embassy, an ambassador and a message. Galileo’s book promised to fulfill
an informational fantasy of immediacy and semiotic plenitude by speaking
as an angel.
While most contemporary readers of the Sidereus Nuncius played along
with Galileo’s conceit, at least one claimed to be scandalised by Galileo’s
supposed identity of heavenly ambassador: Orazio Grassi, Galileo’s Jesuit
sparring partner on the question of comets, mocked Galileo’s preten-
sions to the virtual court. ‘Come, Galileo, true interpreter of the stars,’
he taunted, ‘Come, ambassador of the sidereal court ...’13 This accusa-
tion elicited a marginal complaint by Galileo, where he shut down the
ambiguities with which he had been playing since the book’s publica-
tion: ‘I did not call myself the starry ambassador, neither would you have
called me such, if you’d understood the title of my book, which is writ-
ten Sidereus Nuncius, which means Sidereal Embassy or Message, and not
Ambassador’.14 Earlier responses were not so hostile, and Galileo in no
way refused the various offers of authors to engage in ‘conversation’ with
the starry ambassador.15
The term ‘nuncius’ is problematic in that its meanings are so varied. The
ambiguity between ‘message’ and ‘messenger’ derives in part from a shift
in the practice of diplomacy in the early modern period. The function of
the late medieval Nuntius or Nunzio was to deliver the message; the emer-
gence of the Ambassador, who etymologically ‘stood in for’ his sovereign,
transformed the role into one of semi-autonomous mediation. As the social
status of the diplomat ascended, so too did the status of its cultural equiva-
lences. The translation of Nuntius as ĮDŽDŽİNJǎǐ justified an iconographic shift
whereby Renaissance diplomats, as conflict resolution experts, were heralded
as manifestations of the angelic.16 The professionalisation and formalisation
of diplomacy also helped produce a new genre of literature, the avviso, also
known as the nuntius. This was originally a diplomatic report, supposedly
private and confidential, between the diplomat and his sovereign. These
documents, or others claiming their status, had a tendency to be leaked and
sold, and by the late sixteenth century, manuscript and printed newslet-
ters circulated and recycled their way around Europe, producing not only
a consuming public and new category of news, but a professionalization
of the avviso compiler- copyist-translator.17 The credibility of such reports
was a major concern both for regulating authorities and, to a lesser extent,
readers;18 the problems posed were mirrored in the world of diplomacy, as
counterfeit diplomats presented fake credentials to far- off courts, and in the
supernatural realm, where angels might at any point reveal themselves to
be disguised devils.
 Galileian Angels 71

The Sidereus Nuncius straddles these categories, presenting itself as a pur-

loined or intercepted avviso from the heavens, a diplomatic report, and an
angelic utterance. This was a dangerous strategy, as the authority of such
texts was far from self- evident. Individuals, academies and states developed
sophisticated techniques for evaluating the veracity of messages and mes-
sengers. The subversive potential of the genres was soon realised by writers
like Ferrante Pallavicino, whose Post-Boy Robbed (1641) and Celestial Divorce
(1643) unleashed a new front in what Edward Muir has recently described as
the ‘culture wars of the late renaissance’.19
Even at its inception, Galileo’s reconstruction of the recently invented
Dutch device left its correct use and context undetermined: initially the
spyglass was offered to the Venetian government as a military instrument;
only with the rejection of Galileo’s patent application did he increase its
power and use it as an astronomical tool. The vernacular cannocchiale did
not become a pseudo- classical ‘telescope’ until it was named such in 1613. 20
The processes through which the instrument gained social meaning in its
first months are worth analysing, because they seem so obvious: origi-
nally, news of the wonderful device arrived in Venice from Holland via
Paolo Sarpi’s political correspondence networks of informants and avvisi.
Galileo then reverse- engineered the ambiguous annunciation, reinvent-
ing it and adding intellectual theory to artisanal praxis. In his mind, this
transfer of the device from a spectacular optical trick produced in lens-
makers’ workshops to a philosophically coherent instrument should have
been enough to guarantee him some degree of authorship over its future
development and production. Importantly, the identity of the instrument
was forged not in its material manufacture and use, but through ritual.
The way in which the ‘new’ instrument was presented to the governing
class of the Venetian Republic is particularly revealing, especially as it has
become one of the iconic moments in imagining the scientific revolution:
on 21st August 1609, Galileo was granted the opportunity to present his
instrument to a group of Venetian patricians from the campanile of S.
Marco. We have an eyewitness account of the scene from one of the most
important participants, Antonio Priuli. The group of patricians ascended
the bell tower ‘to see the wonders and singular effects of Galileo’s tube,
which was straight, and covered with crimson velvet ... with which, plac-
ing one eye and closing the other, each one of us saw distinctly in addi-
tion to Fusina and Marghera, also Chioggia, Treviso and even Conegliano,
the campanile, dome and façade of Santa Giustina of Padua: we could see
the people going in and out of the church of San Giacomo in Murano, we
saw people getting in and out of the ferry boat at the start of the Rio de’
Veneri, and many other details in the lagoon and in the city which were
quite admirable’.21 Enhanced patrician eyes took in terrafirma domains
and the cityscape below, slipped down streets and canals and voyaged out
over the lagoon towards the increasingly contested Adriatic and Venetian
72 Nick Wilding

‘sea-state’. The proto-panoptic gaze is at once political, mercantile and reli-

gious, binding together the elements of the state into a single civic unit by
casting a net of correspondences.
The San Marco campanile was not chosen by chance as the site of this rit-
ual gift- exchange: it was already a privileged node in the architectural and
social system through which the Venetian patriciate expressed their right
to rule. The tower was simultaneously part of a semi-private religious space,
the Doge’s chapel of San Marco, and a public monument around which the
city and empire was organised. The five bells of the campanile marked the
working day of Venetian life; this role was mirrored and developed by the
Torre del Orologio across the piazza, which marked the entrance to the city’s
commercial zone and the Mercerie, the main thoroughfare to the mercantile
centre of the Rialto. The campanile, like that of San Pietro di Castello to the
east of the city, had once served as a lighthouse. After a lightning strike at
the end of the fifteenth century, its present form of a pyramidal roof was
constructed. A golden angel weather vane was placed on the apex in the
1530s, indicating wind direction for those on land and sea. The empire was
guarded and guided by an angel.
Statues of angels swarmed up the crest of the façade of the Basilica of
San Marco. Within the mechanism of the clocktower, an angel appeared
with the three Magi to salute mechanically the Madonna on Ascension Day.
Automata wild-men, known as Moors, beat the hours from the roof of the
Torre.22 At carnival, an acrobat would descend a rope stretched from the top
of the San Marco campanile either to the corner of the Doge’s palace or to a
boat moored in the bacino. This feat, originally performed by Turkish acro-
bats, was Christianised in the sixteenth century to become the ‘flight of the
angel’ (volo del angelo).
Angels thus performed a variety of civic and religious functions on the
liminal zone between supposedly private elite political deliberation and
public mass performance of Venetian politics. Angels participated in the
general early modern trend to regulate and control the working day and
signal holidays; they governed trade by indicating the direction of winds
and took over the role of lighthouses.23 Remarkably, these crucial rituals of
state were performed (with the exception of the acrobat) by automata and
machines. Renaissance Venetian ritual has generally been seen as a power-
ful tool by an elite to offer symbolic participation in statehood to a disen-
franchised populace, but this mechanisation of ritual is surely also part of
the process of legitimation.24 Venetians were probably aware of the politi-
cal and social roles of automata in the Byzantine court, Arabic technologi-
cal traditions and Classical automata texts; angels were first added to clock
devices in Europe in the thirteenth century. The mechanisation of angels
reached its culmination in the work of Vaucason, who made automati-
cally flying models in his youth.25 The contract works both ways: whereas
automata were often met with an expression of fear of diabolic magic and
 Galileian Angels 73

possession, here we find machines adopting the function, guise and power
of angels in the heart of a Renaissance state.26
Galileo’s ceremonial presentation of his device for patrician evaluation
took place directly below the most visible angel in the city and replicated
the aegis’ surveying scan. Moreover, the eyeglass was immediately under-
stood to be an instrument that manipulated not only space but also time.
As Galileo explained in his formal letter to Doge Leonardo Donà, presented
three days after the ritual, what he had to offer was

a new artifice of an eye-piece drawn from the most recondite specula-

tions of perspective, which brings visible objects so close to the eye, and
represents them as so large and distinct, that something which is, for
example, nine miles away appears to us as if it were only one mile away.
This may bring great enjoyment to any business or undertaking on sea
or land: at sea one may, much further than usual, discover the ships and
sails of the enemy, so that we may discover him for more than two hours
before he discovers us ...27

The ability to telescope time, it was claimed, would be of enormous benefit

to both mercantile and military endeavours. Cyborg senators, Galileo sug-
gested, could replicate the gaze of their guardian and thereby further incor-
porate angels into the hierarchies of the Serenissima.
The status of the instrument was intensely problematic in its first years:
Giambattista della Porta claimed that he had already demonstrated a similar
device in his Natural Magic; such a claim could only damage the astrono-
mer’s credibility. While Galileo himself was not above trading in wonders
and marvels, such as the armed magnet he attempted to sell to Rudolph
II, the inclusion of his device within the category of della Porta’s optical
devices meant that there was a danger that it might be seen as a tool of
marvellous distortion and manipulation, a tool for producing spectacular
effects rather than a reliable aid to credible observation. One of the ways in
which scepticism over the reliability of the effects produced by the telescope
was countered was by transferring the new optical instrument from a dis-
course of natural magic and recasting it into the realm of the angelic. The
telescope had to be aligned to the divine messenger: both were to guarantee
access to credibly manipulated presence.
As is well known, the attempted ceremony met with only partial suc-
cess: Galileo was not granted his patent application, as the instruments
were readily available from other sources on the open market. This fail-
ure led straight to a series of further instrumental modifications: first, the
astronomical telescope, with its stopped down lens and steady mount; then
the extraordinary adaptations for solar observations, with either coloured
lenses or filters, or additional projection devices added to protect the human
observer.
74 Nick Wilding

The initial enthusiastic identification of the instrument with angels was

also modified. As Galileo turned his back on Venice and its republican
angels, he also began to change the nature of his claims for privileged access
to celestial information. One way to chart this change is to look at tech-
niques of representation of astronomical phenomena.
Iconographically, angels were often pictured with a large range of objects,
most obviously the instruments of the Passion, or in a few cases, like Saints,
their particular attributes. Later, they delivered the palms of martyrdom
to calm the nerves of the sacrificial holy. Illuminated manuscript angels
often carried, unsurprisingly, illuminated manuscripts. Most frequently, in
altarpieces, statues and stained glass windows, Renaissance angels carried
musical instruments. The shared vocabulary of natural philosophical and
musical instruments and organs enabled the easy exchange of their cultural
uses.28
There is something peculiarly fitting in the early modern amalgamation
of the experiences of ecstatic transportation by religious music and of visual
transportation by the telescope. The depiction of instrumental observation
as angelic is no mere casual conceit, but part of a wider and contested cam-
paign to guarantee credibility for the natural philosopher, the optical device
and graphic representation.29
Even while Galileo was making his nightly observations of what would
turn out to be four satellites orbiting Jupiter, he noted down the way these
observations would appear in woodblock illustration. The rhetorical func-
tion of Galileo’s illustrations has often been pointed out – what has received
less attention is the way in which he originally conceived of the satellite
observations not as typographical characters printed black on white but as
white on black woodcuts. Looking at the book was meant to replicate the
experience of making the observation. While Galileo’s Venetian printer
Baglioni changed these images to their negative (probably to save on ink),
the ‘pirate’ imprint in Frankfurt the same year, which in many ways repre-
sents an earlier text than that of the first edition, printed some of the stellar
observations the ‘right’ way round, as Galileo had originally intended (com-
pare figures 4.1 and 4.2).
In the Istorie e dimonstrazione intorno alle macchie solare (1613), the images
here were produced by projecting through the telescope onto a blank sheet
of paper, shading in the sunspots, laying the drawing on an engraving plate
and burning through the shaded spots with acid to etch into the plate. It is
difficult to imagine the production of an image in the early modern period
with an ideal of less human mediation or more confidence of its own epis-
temological capabilities.30 For Galileo, the aura of the work of art in the age
of mechanical production is only enhanced, not diminished. If the aim of
the illustrations was to produce unmediated access to the original experi-
ence of observation, it is worth considering how Galileo presented his views
of perception itself to his audience. It is important to remember, of course,
 Galileian Angels 75

Figure 4.1 Asterism of the belt and sword of Orion, Sidereus Nuncius (Tommaso
Baglioni, Venice, 1610), unnumbered, sig. D5v
76 Nick Wilding

Figure 4.2 Asterism of the belt and sword of Orion (mislabelled as Pleiades), Sidereus
Nuncius (Zacharias Palthenius, Frankfurt, 1610), unnumbered, sig. B9v
 Galileian Angels 77

that early modern projection techniques were not ‘precursors’ to modern

photography, but forms of cultural production that made sense in their own
right.31
In the Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo uses a Lucretian vocabulary of simulacra
to describe the process of visual perception. In this model, a convincing
representation is as good as the thing it represents. Traditional ontologi-
cal considerations of representation are irrelevant. Galileo’s commitment to
visual representation establishes an exact equivalence between instrumen-
tal observation and the viewing of the book. By attempting to eliminate
human agency from the production of the image, while arguing that this
made the image more reliable, a contract was established between the instru-
ment and the angelic. The images and diagrams of the Sidereus Nuncius are
the central message of the book’s annunciation: the reader views what has
previously been visible only to angels.
It was not until 1613 that a supernatural being actually used a tele-
scope. On the frontispiece of the Istorie e dimonstrazione intorno alle macchie
solare, Galileo had two chubby, winged creatures depicted playing on the
Mannerist frame of his portrait (see Figure 4.3). They are shown using the
two instruments that had become emblems of his identity, the geometrical
compass and telescope. These are not fully-fledged angels, but the recently
Christianised Classical sprites, known as putti. Putti evolved from Bacchoi,
young, innocent and enthusiastic followers of Bacchus, often depicted on
Roman sarcophagi. In the fifteenth century they became synonymous with
sprites, or spiritelli, often representing winds, breath or the human soul.
They were often employed by funeral sculptors to carry garlands or torches;
sometimes they would be made to work harder, collecting the grape har-
vest. They were usually drunk and playful and were often caught wearing
grotesque masks or riding goats. Gradually they became assimilated into an
iconographic tradition where they became decorative aids to both sacred
and profane subjects, breezily supporting the Virgin on her Assumption, or
cavorting with Mars and Venus as erotes or amoretti. Theologically, they had
little substance and were often identified with the cherubim or seraphim.32
As John Heilbron has demonstrated, the first appearance of putti as natu-
ral philosophers seems to be in Rubens’s famous illustrations to Aguillon’s
Six Books of Optics (1613).33 There, they engage in demonstrations to allow
the natural philosopher the leisure to witness untroubled. Over the course
of the seventeenth century, they were made to work harder, often becoming
a visual euphemism for manual labour itself, clearing the space of experi-
mentation of labourers’ bodies. They stand in for technical expertise and
guarantee experiments’ success. By the 1660s they have mastered the full
range of new instruments, from optics to hydraulics. Jesuit iconography,
especially in the workshops of Athanasius Kircher and Kaspar Schott, easily
enlarged the domain of cherubic labour to include natural philosophical
practice.
78 Nick Wilding

Figure 4.3 Portrait of Galileo, Istorie e dimonstrazione intorno alle macchie solare,
(Rome, Giacomo Mascardi, 1613)
 Galileian Angels 79

There are spaces where a putto might happily skip, but an angel fear to
tread: it seems that angels are never depicted operating instruments. They
might act as guides through the cosmos, explaining its system, as in the case
of Kircher’s Cosmiel or as Christianised Muses, receiving the returns from
their gifts. Putti, on the other hand, will effortlessly dissect, draw, pump,
crank, measure and observe.
The enrolment of putti into the laboratory labourforce and angels into the
academies served to illustrate the asprirations and claims that natural phi-
losophers made about themselves. Galileo was, of course, unwaveringly elit-
ist in his socio- epistemology of the good natural philosopher: soaring above
the plebs like an eagle, his powers of perception and judgement make him
worth a thousand ordinary mortals.34 The Dedicatory Letter to the Dialogo
starts with the claim: ‘However great the difference might be between men
and other animals, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to claim that more or less
the same degree of difference exists between men themselves’.35 In Galileo’s
model, the natural philosopher is not only equipped with a better body
than the pleb, but also more finely honed senses. In turn, his wit and inven-
tiveness improves itself self-reflexively, augmenting sensory superiority by
fashioning and mastering instruments. In this story, the natural philoso-
pher is a solitary figure at the top of the intellectual food chain, able, if not
to glance upon the face of God or angels, at least to have access to the lec-
tern of the Book of Nature.
Other contemporaries, engaged in the same pursuits and practices, rejected
such claims while still trying to harness the power of angels. The Society
of Jesus, for example, deployed huge resources to produce an iconography
of their mutual contract with the superhuman in the production of natu-
ral facts. Their sociology of knowledge production and epistemology of the
body, however, relied on, or generated, an entirely different conception of
the function of the angelic.36 As Athanasius Kircher explained, ‘A perfect
observation, free from all error and falsehood could only be carried out by an
angel’.37 Given that the sensory limitations of the human body made perfect
observation impossible, the only viable response was to utilise the figure of
the angel as an epistemological ideal, whose functional equivalence would
be not a court natural philosopher, but a community of obedient and highly
disciplined observers, each contributing their small and fallible offering to
the larger, correctable project. This was the model the Jesuits deployed in
their attempts to produce reliable data on magnetic variation, eclipse obser-
vations, and other attempts to chart and stabilise the globe. In doing so, they
exploited a devotional tradition that, from their earliest years, had depicted
them as an angelic corps.38 In 1640, the Society triumphally represented
itself as a ‘company of angels’, an image that was immediately echoed by
supporters such as Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz and satirised by Pascal.39
If superhuman aid were found in this many early modern laboratories and
other sites of experimentation, to what degree does Galileo’s deployment
80 Nick Wilding

of the angelic and cherubic serve specific needs and underpin a particular
ontology? One popular topos appropriated and transformed by the Galileian
agenda is that the basic role of the natural philosopher is to read the Book
of Nature correctly. This was a loaded claim at the start of the seventeenth
century: the partial rejection of the authority of Aristotelian cosmology did
not automatically produce the new science, it allowed for the production of
a wide variety of new philosophies. Julius Schiller and Jacques Gaffarel, for
example, reread the constellations as de-hellenized and re-christianised.40
Galileo insisted that the language in which the book of nature was writ-
ten was that of mathematical characters or geometrical figures. This empha-
sis and reliance on the visual had several implications. Carlo Ginzburg has
remarked upon Galileo’s image of the natural philosopher’s peculiar mode
of engaging with the world, ‘professionally deaf to sounds and insensitive
to tastes and odours’,41 The provocative passage in which Galileo lays out
his philosophy of body is in the 1623 Il Saggiatore: the correct object for
scrutiny is ‘figures, numbers and movements, but not smell, nor tastes, nor
sounds, which I do not believe are anything more than names outside the
living animal’. There are several paradoxes here. The passage is usually read
as a witty precursor to Lockean theories of secondary qualities, but its target
and context are quite different. Pietro Redondi has brilliantly demonstrated
how it was viewed by contemporaries as an attack on the Tridentine doctrine
of transubstantiation, with its reliance on Aristotelian matter-theory. Simon
Schaffer has convincingly argued that Galileo’s celebration of the eye should
be read against his actual practices of construction and experimentation that
brought the whole body into play. Galileo’s dismissal of smells, tastes and
sounds as ‘mere names’, and his sceptical discussion of the possibility of nat-
ural language adequately to describe even the simplest object in his Letters on
Sunspots might fruitfully be read against the remarkable prose that contains
them.42 If a large part of human sense perception is unreliable and subjective,
communicable only through a constantly deferring language that will never
succeed in conveying the truth of an object, how is the natural philosopher
to proceed? What alternative models might save the venture, and how might
these ideals be transferred to actual practices in the real world?
The paring away of human mediation in the production of the sunspot
images is part of a larger project to replicate angelic perception by granting
new authority to instruments in observation. Similar concerns motivated
Robert Hooke’s remarkable fantasy of using instruments to approximate and
restore the capabilities of pre-lapsarian Adam in the 1660s. By reimagin-
ing angels, Catholic natural philosophers posited a new model by which
the limitations of human sensory organs might be bypassed. The extraordi-
nary investment in instruments at the start of the seventeenth century was
essentially theological in nature.
The sensory advantage deployed in telescopic observation was not the
automatic production of the instrument alone, but a complex negotiation
 Galileian Angels 81

between bodies and instruments. Contemporaries who had access to the

first generation of Galileian telescopes had great difficulty in replicating his
observations. In September 1610, Galileo wrote to Christoph Clavius, the
great Jesuit mathematician, to advise him on how he should use the new
instrument and confirm his own discoveries:

I’m not surprised [you haven’t seen the Jupiter moons]: this could be
because either your telescope’s simply not good enough, or wasn’t stead-
ied properly. This is absolutely necessary, as when you hold it in your
hand, even if it’s resting on a wall or some other stable place, just your
pulse, and even breathing, mean that you can’t make observations. This
is even more pronounced in those who haven’t seen and done it before.
As they say, practice makes perfect with instruments.43

The early modern natural philosopher’s body has been imbued with a
code of graceful control, which informed the gestural techniques necessary
for instrument manipulation.44 Galileo’s comments to Clavius show instead
how the body is disciplined by the instrument. The telescope, in negating
even the basic life functions of the heart and respiration, comes close to pro-
ducing a dead cyborg. Even the act of observation threatened its own exist-
ence, as the eye gave off moisture that misted up the lens.45 Experiments in
proto- objectivity necessitated imagining alternatives to the human.46
The solution to this problem of the relationship of the body with the
instrument was to subordinate the former to the control of the latter. The
instrument was normally fixed and manipulated as little as possible. The
earliest telescope seems an essentially portable instrument. Galileo carried
his around with him when he went on tour to demonstrate it; it could be
sent relatively easily, usually unassembled, as a gift. But in the actual sites
of observational replication, it quickly became almost part of the architec-
ture. The body became a passive receptor, whose main gestural task was self-
negation. The ultimate example of this instrumental discipline was Galileo’s
project to implement the theoretically brilliant idea of using the periods of
the moons of Jupiter as a celestial clock to calculate longitude. The practi-
calities of observation aboard ship were almost impossible. Galileo’s solu-
tion was the total subordination of the body of the observer to the needs of
technology. He devised a helmet, with an inbuilt telescope, which was to be
strapped on tightly. The observer was placed in a chair secured to the base of
a large metal bowl. This bowl floated on viscous oil inside another bowl, to
keep the observer stable as the ship yawed.47 Understanding of the human
eye underwent profound changes in this same period, instrumentalising it
and making it compatible with new optical devices.48 A more radical icon of
instrumental control of human agency would be difficult to find.
The early modern cyborg, reduced to a single instrumentalised eye, obvi-
ously has its precursors in the fields of artistic draughting and gunsighting.
82 Nick Wilding

Figure 4.4 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Saint Matthew with the Angel (destroyed
in World War II). Oil on canvas, 223 x 183 cm. Inv. 365. Gemaeldegalerie, Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin, Germany.

Another way to understand the image of the sailor in his celatone might
be to compare two competing images of instrumental subordination,
Caravaggio’s two versions of Saint Matthew and the Angel, both painted in
1602 (Figures 4.4 and 4.5).49
 Galileian Angels 83

Figure 4.5 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Saint Matthew and the Angel. S. Luigi
dei Francesi, Rome, Italy.
84 Nick Wilding

In the first version, rejected for its impropriety, Matthew looks on in sur-
prise as the angel guides his writing hand. The aged disciple becomes a pupil
to the young angel, his apostolic symbol, in a divine reversal of a writing
lesson. His hand, holding the instrument of the pen, itself becomes instru-
mental, riskily renouncing the Apostle’s agency in the act of producing his
Gospel. Jacobus de Voragine’s biography of Matthew makes an etymologi-
cal play on the Saint’s name. He is the ‘hand of God’ (an abbreviation of
‘manus’ and ‘theos’).50 Irving Lavin has brilliantly documented the iconog-
raphy of the Saint, showing how Caravaggio drew on Raphael’s depiction of
Socrates in the School of Athens for his identity.51
In the second version, Matthew’s racy legs were uncrossed, and one foot
covered up. The Saint’s face was changed to match his physiognomy in the
two earlier lateral paintings, the Calling and the Martyrdom, both still also
in situ. The angel was snatched away from its intimate embrace and given
a dynamic aerial arrival, echoing the angels of the Martyrdom and the ray
of light of the Calling. This separation recast the scene of writing: the angel
dictates, and Matthew writes. The labour of textual production is redis-
tributed; the pen put back in the control of the writer. Writing represents
speech; it does not show itself. The divine logos manifests itself in harmony
with human free-will. The angel is merely the messenger bringing the word
of God.
It is possible that the theological shift in the depiction of the relation-
ship between human free-will and angelic intervention is connected to the
contemporary controversy on Molinism. The problem of predestination was
certainly crucial both to angelologists and natural philosophers.52 Galileo’s
employment of angels as emblems of epistemological authority, rather than
physical causes in natural philosophy, sidestepped the issue of angelic free-
will and foreknowledge. The idea that angels were involved in the physi-
cal running of the everyday universe certainly struck Galileo as ridiculous.
While evaluating the problematic status of Copernicanism in the light of
an apparent softening of policy after the favourable reception of Il Saggiatore
amongst Church elites, Galileo described the cosmology of a key player,
Niccolò Riccardi, the Master of the Sacred Palace. Riccardi’s personal opinion
on the debate between Copernicans and Ptolomaics was deemed irrelevant:
‘he doesn’t follow Ptolomey or Copernicus, but is content in his rushed way
to posit angels, who move the celestial bodies as they go, with no difficulty
or problem at all, and this will have to suffice for us’,53 The only mention of
angels in the final version of the Dialogo represented them as irrelevant in
explaining causes.
Caravaggio’s use of Raphael’s Socrates to depict St. Matthew was also rede-
ployed by Stefano dell Bella for his frontispiece to Galileo’s 1632 Dialogo, where
the iconographic resemblance to Galileo’s own physiognomy was exploited
to make a joke about the nature of the dialogic.54 In the increasingly vicious
debates of 1618–23 between the Jesuit Orazio Grassi and Galileo concerning
 Galileian Angels 85

comets, the issue of legitimate models of natural philosophical authorship

became central. Galileo ghostwrote the Discorso delle Comete (1618) under the
name of his friend Mario Guiducci; Grassi, whose own works were published
under the anagrammatic figure of his own pupil, attacked this relation-
ship between the spoken and the written as literally ‘dictatorial’. Guiducci
defended the relationship using the model of Socrates and Plato.
The two options presented by Caravaggio of how one might understand
the role of human agency in relation to angelic intervention correspond
to Galileo’s class- distinction of his observers: the strapped-in sailor is an
inscription device like the first Matthew; the natural philosopher engages
his capacity of understanding as he transcribes the heavenly message. The
irony is, of course, that the production of instruments that enable natural
philosophers to elevate their own status is itself reliant on artisanal tech-
nique and knowledge. Both cyborgs are forged in the Arsenal.
The natural philosopher with his instruments is not merely a superior
being to the pleb, he has been initiated into a higher level of perception.
Galileo’s general model of materialist perception develops into a nice piece
of self-reflexive presentation of his discoveries and his own character: ‘If the
stars work on us and influence us mainly by light, one could perhaps, with
some likely hypothesis link the passions and talents of the soul to many
large and vigorous stars, and the acumen and discernment of the wit to the
most subtle and almost invisible light’.55 The moons of Jupiter have revealed
themselves, rather than been discovered, by creating the mind of Galileo,
which was capable of perceiving them for the first time. Astrology makes
astronomy possible.
The telescope’s insertion into the process of perception raises the human
towards the divine because it reforms human senses. To show that these
are relative limits that should not be used on their own to designate reality,
Galileo offers the example of keener-sighted animals, the lynx and eagle,
which he says might be able to see the satellites naturally.56 The telescope
has transformed his body into just such a predator.
Where might this leave the reader of Galileo’s works? If he allows himself
to undergo the initiation rite of accepting Galileo’s redesignation of quali-
ties, then he emerges from the act of reading with a reformulated relation-
ship between his body and the natural world. His body, like Galileo’s, which
first detected the light from the moons of Jupiter, becomes highly sensitised,
finely wrought:

Sarsi perhaps believes that all the hosts of good philosophers may be
enclosed within walls of some sort. I believe Sarsi, that they fly, and that
they fly alone like eagles, and not like starlings. It is true that because
eagles are scarce they are little seen and less heard, whereas birds that
fly in flocks fill the sky with shrieks and cries wherever they settle, and
befoul the earth beneath them. But if true philosophers are like eagles,
86 Nick Wilding

and not like the phoenix instead, Sig. Sarsi, the crowd of fools who know
nothing is infinite; many are those who know very little of philosophy,
few, indeed, they who truly know some part of it, and only one knows
all, who is God.57

Restoration London produced fantasies of bodily regeneration based on

the ideal of instrumental prosthetics functionally reproducing pre-lapsarian
Adam.58 For Catholic natural philosophers, for reasons that are as yet unclear,
it was angels who provided the preferred site for techno-theological invest-
ment. The epistemological and ontological orders around these figures,
however, should not be overdetermined: Catholic natural philosophers were
also interested in the body of pre-lapsarian Adam, and Protestants also had
angels watching over them.59 The focus on Adam may reflect both a preoc-
cupation with original sin amongst Protestant writers and a general distrust
in angelology.60 Among Catholic writers, the uses of angels and putti were
deeply contested by different social groups and deployed to radically differ-
ent ends. What is clear, though, is that far from viewing the rapid transfor-
mations of natural philosophy as an inherent threat, angels were present at
its nativity, watched over it and even lent a hand in its production.

Notes
1. The Acts of the Apostles, 1. 11, King James Version. The line was used by the
Dominican Tomasso Caccini against Galileo in 1614.
2. See P. Marshall and A. Walsham, eds Angels in the Early Modern World (Cambridge,
2006), especially T. Johnson, ‘Guardian angels and the Society of Jesus’, 191–
213.
3. For an extreme expression of this view, see A. White, A History of the Warfare of
Science with Theology in Christendom (New York, 1896).
4. See, however, A. Poppi, Cremonini, Galileo e gli Inquisitori di Stato di Padova (Padua,
1993) for interesting material.
5. As Salviati puts it in the Dialogo, ‘that which taketh beginning from a Divine
Miracle, or from an Angelical operation; as for instance, the transportation of
a Cannon ball or bullet into the concave of the Moon, doth in all probability
depend on the vertue of the same principle for performing the rest’.
6. J. Heilbron, ‘Domesticating Science in the Eighteenth Century’, in W. Shea, ed.,
Science and the Visual Image in the Enlightenment (Canton, MA, 2000), 1–24.
7. G. Galileo The Sidereal Messenger, trans. Albert van Helden (Chicago & London,
1989), intro., vii.
8. M. Biagioli, ‘Replication or Monopoly? The Economies of Invention and
Discovery in Galileo’s Observations of 1610’, Science in Context, 13 (2000): 547–92
(expanded in Galileo’s Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy, Chicago,
2006).
9. See J. Kepler, Discussion avec le Messager Celeste, ed. I. Plantin (Paris, 1993), pp.
ix–xxii ‘La réception du Sidereus Nuncius’.
10. A. Quondam, ed., Le “Carte messaggiere”: retorica e modelli di comunicazione epis-
tolare per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento (Roma, 1981) at 35, calculates
that in Italy alone up to 40,000 letters had been printed by the late 1620s.
 Galileian Angels 87

11. A. Grillo, Lettere del Molto R.P. Abbate D. Angelo Grillo, 3rd edn (Venice, 1608), 993.
The letter is undated.
12. A. Favaro, ‘Intorno alla licenza di stampa del Sidereus Nuncius,’ Rivista delle
Biblioteche, 2 (1889): 89–103, reproducing Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Capi del
Consiglio de’ Dieci – Notatorio, Reg. 34, 1610–14, unpaginated (1 March 2010).
13. L. Sarsi [i.e., Grassi] Ratio Ponderum Librae et Simbellae (1626), reprinted in A.
Favaro, ed., Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, Edizione Nazionale (Firenze, 1890–1909)
(henceforth OG), 6: 388, translated in S. Drake and C. O’Malley, trans., The
Controversy on the Comets of 1618 (Philadelphia, 1960).
14. Galileo’s marginal note is reproduced in OG, 6: 388–89.
15. See especially the study of the reception of the Sidereus Nuncius in Kepler,
Discussion avec le Messager Celeste, ix–xxii. For a debate over the meaning of the
book’s title, see, for example, E. Rosen, ‘The Title of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius’,
Isis, 41 (1950): 287–89; S. Drake, ‘The Starry Messenger,’ Isis, 49 (1958): 346–47;
and, for an attempted closure of the debate, F. Russo, ‘Note sur la traduction
du titre de l’ouvrage de Galilée, Sidereus Nuncius’, Revue d’histoire des sciences, 20
(1967): 67–69.
16. D. Ménager, Diplomatie et Theologie à la Renaissance (Paris, 2001). See, for exam-
ple, T. Tasso’s Il Messagiero (Firenze, 1580).
17. See especially, M. Infelise, Prima dei giornali. Alle origini della pubblica informazione
(Bari, 2002).
18. See, in a closely related field, D. Queller, ‘The Development of Ambassadorial
Relazioni’, in J. Hale, ed., Renaissance Venice (Ottawa, 1973), 174–78.
19. E. Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines and Opera
(Cambridge, MA, 2007).
20. See A. Favaro’s ‘Intorno ai Cannocchiali costrutti ed usati da Galileo Galilei’,
Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 60 (Parte seconda) (1901)
317–42; A. van Helden, ‘The Invention of the Telescope’, Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, vol. 67, pt 4 (1977): 1–67 and van Helden, ‘Galileo
and the Telescope’, in P. Galluzzi, ed., Novità celesti e crisi del sapere (Firenze,
1984), 149–58.
21. OG, 19: 587.
22. See M. Muraro, ‘The Moors of the Clock Tower of Venice and Their Sculptor’, The
Art Bulletin, 66(4) (December 1984): 603–9.
23. On the introduction of civic clocks, see C. Cipolla, Clocks and Culture, 1300–
1700 (New York, 1977) and G. Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and
Modern Temporal Orders (Chicago, 1996).
24. The classic study is E. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981).
25. S. Bedini, ‘The Role of Automata in the History of Technology’, Technology and
Culture, 5 (1964): 24–42.
26. See A. Marr, ‘Gentille curiosité: Wonder-working and the Culture of Automata in
the Late Renaissance’, in R. J. W. Evans and A. Marr, eds, Curiosity and Wonder
from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot, 2006), 149–70.
27 OG, 10: 250–51 (letter dated 24 August 1609).
28. Galileo compares the canna (pipes) of an organ to the telescopic tube of the can-
nocchiale in Il Saggiatore (OG, 6: 269).
29. The best discussion to date of the role of angels (and especially putti) in science
is Heilbron, ‘Domesticating Science’.
30. The most stimulating account of Galileo’s use of graphics are M. Biagioli,
Galileo’s Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy (Chicago, 2006), 135–
217 and O. Gingerich and A. van Helden, ‘From Occhiale to Printed Page: The
88 Nick Wilding

Making of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 34

(2003): 251–67.
31. M. Gorman, ‘Projecting Nature in Early Modern Europe’, <http://www.stan-
ford.edu/~mgorman/publications/ProjectingNature.pdf> and K. Vermeir, ‘The
Magic of the Magic Lantern (1660–1700): An Analogical Demonstration and the
Visualization of the Invisible’, British Journal for the History of Science, 38 (2005):
127–60.
32. C. Dempsey, Inventing the Renaissance Putto (Chapel Hill, 2001).
33. Heilbron, ‘Domesticating Science’, 13.
34. G. Galileo, Il Saggiatore (1623), reprinted in OG, 6: 236–37.
35. G. Galileo, Dialogue, Discoursing upon the Two Main Systems of the World, Ptolomaic
and Copernican, Proposing Inconclusively the Philosophical and Natural Reasons for
Both the One, and the Other, trans. Nick Wilding (Penguin, forthcoming).
36. Bellarmine’s 1615 articulation of the angelic in The Mind’s Ascent to God might be
fruitfully compared to Galileo’s. See R. Bellarmine, Spiritual Writings (New York,
1989), esp. 144–45 (cited in Heilbron, ‘Domesticating Science’, 7).
37. A. Kircher, Magnes (Rome, 1641), 483, cited and discussed in Heilbron,
‘Domesticating Science’, 7 and M. Gorman, ‘The Angel and the Compass’, in P.
Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher – The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York,
2004), 248.
38. See J. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA, 1993) for the early iconography,
both diabolical and angelic, of the group.
39. The image is from the Imago primi saeculi, ‘Lectori’ (Antwerp, 1640). For Caramuel’s
comparison of the Jesuits to apocalyptic angels, see his ‘Oratio in Laudem
Societatis [Iesu]’, 27 September 1640, Bruges (Vigevano, Archivio Capitolare,
Fondo Caramuel, IV, 4), reproduced in Caramuel e la Cultura Enciclopedica – Mostra
di Manoscritti (30 Ottobre – 10 Novembre 1982) (Vigevano, 1982), 146. Pascal quotes
the Imago at the start of his Cinquième lettre écrite a un Provincial (20 March 1656),
printed in Oeuvres Complètes (Paris, 1963), 387.
40. J. Schiller, Coelum stellatum Christianum (Augsburg, 1627); J. Gaffarel, Curiositez
Inouyes, sur la Sculture Talismanique des Persans, Horoscope des Patriarches, et Lecture
des Estoiles (Paris, 1629).
41. Carlo Ginzburg, Myths, Emblems, Clues, 108, cited and discussed in S. Schaffer,
‘Die Reichweite experimenteller Wissenschaften: Modelle, Mikrogeschichten,
Mikrokosmen’, Historische Anthropologie, 13 (2005): 343–66.
42. P. Redondi, ‘I fondamenti metafisici della fisica di Galileo’, Nuncius, 12 (1997):
267–89.
43. OG, 10: 431–32 (letter dated 17 September 1610).
44. M. Biagioli, ‘Tacit Knowledge, Courtliness, and the Scientist’s Body’, in S. Foster,
ed., Choreographing History (Bloomington & Indianopolis, 1995), 69–81.
45. OG, 10: 273–78 (letter dated 7 January 1610).
46. On the status of seventeenth- century ‘forerunners of objectivity’, see L. Daston
and P. Galison, Objectivity (Cambridge, MA, 2007).
47. For an animated movie of the celatone in use, see <http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/
genscheda.asp?appl=SIM&xsl=multimed&lingua=ENG&chiave=500174>
48. D. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, 1976).
49. For full details, see the scheda on pp. 412–16 of M. Cinotti, Michelangelo Merisi
detto il Caravaggio. Tutte le Opere (Bergamo, 1983).
50. I. Lavin, ‘Divine Inspiration in Caravaggio’s Two St. Matthews’, The Art Bulletin,
56 (1974): 59–81, at 62.
 Galileian Angels 89

51. See the above article, and also by the same author, ‘Addenda to “Divine
Inspiration”‘, The Art Bulletin, 56 (1974): 590–91 and ‘A Further Note on the
Ancestry of Caravaggio’s First Saint Matthew’, The Art Bulletin, 62 (1980): 113–14.
52. See Johnson, ‘Guardian Angels’; and M. Gorman, ‘Molinist Theology and Natural
Knowledge in the Society of Jesus, 1580–1610’, in Science et religion de Copernic à
Galilée (1560–1610), École française de Rome, Collection, 260 (Rome, 1999).
53. OG, 13: 182.
54. See I. Pantin, ‘Une Ecole d’Athènes des astronomes? la représentation de
l’astronome antique dans les frontispices de la Renaissance’, in E. Baumgartner
and L. Harf-Lancnerp, eds, Images de l’antiquité dans la littérature française (Paris,
1993), 88–95.
55. OG, 11: 111 (letter dated 21 May 1611).
56. OG, 11: 115.
57. OG, 6: 236–37.
58. S. Schaffer, ‘Regeneration: The Body of Natural Philosophers in Restoration
England’, in C. Lawrence and S. Shapin, eds, Science Incarnate: Historical
Embodiments of Natural Knowledge (Chicago, 1998), 83–120.
59. See, for example, A. Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, hoc est Universalis Hieroglyphicae
Veterum Doctrinae temporum iniuria abolitae Instauratio (Rome, 1652–54), 2(1):
44–45, or Turris Babel, sive Archontologia (Amsterdam, 1679), 163 for a list of
authoritative sources for reconstructing Adam. The troublesome frontispiece
of T. Sprat’s History of the Royal Society (London, 1667) depicts an angelic Fame
crowning the bust of Charles II.
60. P. Marshall and A. Walsham, ‘Migrations of Angels in the Early Modern World’
in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early Modern World, 1–41; and P.
Harrison, ‘Original Sin and the Problem of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’,
Journal of the History of Ideas, 63 (2002): 239–59.
5
Newtonian Angels
Simon Schaffer

O for a Telescope His Throne to reach!

Tell me, ye Learn’d on Earth! Or Blest Above!
Ye searching, ye Newtonian, Angels! Tell,
Where, your Great Master’s orb? His Planets, where?
Those conscious Satellites, those Morning-Stars.
First-born of Deity!
Edward Young, The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life,
Death and Immortality, Night the Ninth (1745)

In his very widely read ‘moral survey of the heavens’, a reconciliation of a

plurality of inhabited worlds with the principles of Trinitarian Christianity,
the Hertfordshire parson Edward Young invoked angels as guides to the
universal system. Important sources for this passage included the morning
hymn from the fifth book of Paradise Lost, with its appeal to those ‘Sons of
Light, / Angels, for ye behold him’. But Young’s were now Newtonian angels,
so involved a rather specific spirit of celestial knowledge and piety. The
verse’s sentiments addressed Pope’s Essay on Man, notably its celebrated ref-
erence to those ‘superior beings’ who ‘show’d a Newton as we show an Ape’.
He also responded to a work to which Young subscribed, Henry Pemberton’s
View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (1728), which was prefaced by young
Richard Glover’s verse on the angelic inspirations of Newtonian cosmol-
ogy. Like many Augustan writers, Young conceded that rightly guessing the
laws of motion had made Newton immortal. A bust of Newton stood in his
elegant hall at Welwyn, with the motto Hic naturae clavis est.1
Thus Young’s use of these materials was somewhat nuanced. The ‘key’ of
Newtonian astral knowledge might well be borne by angels, yet unlike the
Miltonic sons of light neither Newtonian angels nor Newtonian instruments
immediately beheld the Deity. Their Newtonian ‘single vision’, in the words
of Young’s greatest illustrator and Milton’s greatest emulator William Blake,
might be aptly imagined as angelic. However, these were angels of (see Figure
5.1) decidedly limited power. Young’s lines suggested a tension between the

90
 Newtonian Angels 91

Figure 5.1 William Blake: design for Edward Young, Night Thoughts, Night the Ninth,
lines 1866–1869 (made 1795–97)

capacity of Newtonian astronomy to fix and measure the cosmos and its
ambiguous effect on empirical piety. This was ‘an Age more curious than
devout; / more fond to fix the Place of Heav’n or Hell / than studious this
to shun, or that to secure’. The parson insisted, notoriously, that ‘an unde-
vout Astronomer is mad’ and that impious cosmology ‘makes the Universe
92 Simon Schaffer

an orrery’, turning the heavens into a mechanical representation rather

than a living witness of the Creator. In many different ways, Young’s poem
expressed and reflected upon the intricate legacy of Isaac Newton’s enter-
prise, especially upon the several roles angels played in that project.2
Newton himself certainly sought to bar vulgar stories of apparitions and
spirit possession from the world. But he devoted considerable energy to mak-
ing sense of the revelatory messages angels had delivered and he analysed the
prophetic future state of humanity in angelic terms. As envoys and media-
tors, angelic agents raised issues closely linked to the problems of mediation
and action at a distance that dominated much of his natural philosophy.
Further, Newton was posthumously represented as accompanied by angels,
as an angelic spirit uniquely capable of revealing the true principles of the
cosmos to humankind. Many early- eighteenth- century English heroes were
imagined with angelic companions, but Newton’s case seems striking both
because he so signally analysed the way bodies and spirits were at work in
the heavens and because, unlike the celestial travellers with whom he was
destined to move, during his earthly life he was reputedly immobile, notori-
ously cloistered and secluded. Angels’ actions might help explain the puzzle
of a stationary sage who unlocked the mysteries of motion. The purpose
of this chapter is to explore some of the relations between these complex
angelic agents in Newton’s world.

‘Dread discourse’: Isaac Newton in conversation with angels

This chapter’s title might appear oxymoronic. Newton’s cosmological pro-

gramme allegedly marked a key moment in the expulsion of angels from
nature, and angelology from the scenes of natural philosophy. There was a
somewhat gradual iconographic shift in Baroque experimental images that
led to the disappearance of angelic cherubs from their evocative position as
winged assistants of experimental and mathematical natural philosophers.
Air pumps and measuring rods were no longer quite so commonly shown
as tools in the hands of putti. It used to be argued that ‘in England, as else-
where, angelology died of mere disuse some time near the end of the sev-
enteenth century. As beings with almost no function left in nature, angels
could no longer claim attention of the able’. According to the authoritative
critic Robert West, ‘Newton ... and others of real stature had little interest in
the question’.3
More recent scholarship, however, has insisted on Newton’s sustained
and intense interests in a host of questions about angels and spirits. During
the key period of the first half of the 1680s, for example, he abandoned
models of space-filling interplanetary fluids and vortex motions. It was not
in his fabulously fruitful youthful meditations of the 1660s just after the
Restoration, but rather in a dramatic period two decades later in Cambridge
that Newton first formulated the principles of universal gravitation and
 Newtonian Angels 93

coined the term centripetal force. This was just before he composed Principia
mathematica between 1684 and 1686. In contemporary pamphlet literature
of the time following the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, speculations
on the meaning of spectacular comets and prophetic interpretation of scrip-
tural history flourished as means of making sense of imminent doom.4 At
exactly the same time, Isaac Newton pursued active work on the spiritual
agents evident in alchemical processes, on the proper interpretation of
angelic messages in the scriptural prophecies and the Apocalypse, started to
compose a scholarly genealogy of idolatry and heresy, discussed the mate-
rial and spiritual effects of cometary motion and solar vortices and drafted a
provisional history of the Church. One of his earliest statements on cosmic
gravitation was in a 1681 letter to the divine and cosmologist Thomas Burnet
about the emergence of the Earth from the primordial Chaos of Genesis.
This was also when Newton canvassed the possibility of interplanetary spir-
itual beings. His remarks on that possibility were set out in an essay of the
1680s on the proper interpretation of the vision of the New Jerusalem in
chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation: ‘so may the heavens above be replen-
ished with beings whose nature we do not understand’, wrote Newton. ‘And
as the Planets remain in their orbs, so may any other bodies subsist at any
distance from the earth, and much more may beings, who have a sufficient
power of self motion, move whether they will’. While few of these materi-
als were ever published, much of their import was soon incorporated into
Newton’s novel cosmology.5
Nor did angelic agents at once vanish from the world Newton helped
describe. Against Hobbesian and Cartesian mechanisms and their seemingly
atheist implications, Newton and his allies developed an active cosmology,
which represented creation as populated by hosts of intermediate spiritual
agents, a world in which pneumatics and pneumatology were entangled.
His notion of spirit encompassed acids, airs, aethers and angels. ‘His abiding
concern was to assert the existence of the non-material in the world’, writes
the historian J. E. McGuire.6 Against the claim that his cosmology helped
impose a hegemonic rationalist worldview on ‘the magical basis of popular
culture’, historians have urged a more subtle account of the uneven develop-
ment of the marketing of a range of putatively Newtonian principles and their
impact on public belief.7 Augustan milieux most congenial to Newtonian
enterprises found angels useful resources in their accounts of nature and
nature’s laws, especially of Newton’s non-human nature. In Jonathan’s,
Button’s and Garraway’s coffee houses, in lectures around Exchange Alley
and at Crane Court, in fashionable churches in St James’s and along the
Strand, spiritual agents were stock in trade, alongside orreries, pumps and
microscopes. As a notorious example, in the ferocious dispute between the
two Hanoverian court philosophers Samuel Clarke and Gottfried Leibniz in
1715–16, the heterodox Clarke and his principal sponsor, Newton, urged that
the true cosmology showed divine action constantly at work in creation and
94 Simon Schaffer

that Leibniz’s rationalism tended to atheism and even republicanism. Issues

of the union of Protestant churches, of free thought and of the articulation
of the Protestant succession mattered to the dispute. In sermons given at St
Paul’s, Clarke appealed to the capacities of angels to define the character of
miracles and of divine sustenance of natural order. Precisely what angels
could perform, whether miraculous or natural, was at the very centre of this
fight. ‘It may be said that angels work miracles; but less properly so, or of an
inferior order’. Leibniz read Newtonian views as ‘tales of fairies’, redolent of
the ‘odd imaginations of Dr Henry More and of some others’ that fancied
the world replete with ‘extended spirits or immaterial substances’. These
contests brought the claims of Newton and his expositors about angels and
spirits into courts, pulpits and print shops.8
Rob Iliffe has persuasively argued for a deliberate strategy of self-fashioning
involving the construction by Newton and his closest allies of a defined sys-
tem of esoteric and sacred knowledge divulged to few and a wider project
of marketing popular Newtonian principles. What mattered were the tech-
niques through which interpreters could make sense of the new cosmology
and how that new cosmology defined the role proper to its interpreters.9
In Glover’s verses at the front of Pemberton’s designedly accessible View,
Newton was eulogised as driving ‘th’obstructing mists / of ignorance away’
in just the same way as ‘some kind angel’ had turned back the Deluge. In
common with many who sought to versify and publicise Newton’s legacy,
Glover envisioned him travelling like an angel through the heavens. ‘Some
other worthy of an angel’s care’, it was imagined, would eventually illu-
minate mysteries Newton had left unsolved, such as the obscurely ‘subtle
spirit’ that caused the reflection of light.10 The most celebrated of these eulo-
gies, James Thomson’s To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, printed a few weeks
after the great man’s death, wondered acutely whether Newton now sat ‘in
dread discourse’ with angels, with the blessed, or with cherubim among
the orbiting planets.11 The Gentleman’s Magazine and comparable journals
carried hosts of verses that analogised Newtonian intelligence to angelic
action. Completion of the Newton monument in Westminster Abbey in 1731
prompted a proposed inscription that saw him ‘half- esteem’d an Angel – till
he dy’d.... / And, thro’ the Paths of Knowledge walk’d with God’.12
The fortuna of a small group of Newtonian anecdotes was similarly linked
with the status of angels and celestial spirits. So his nephew John Conduitt
recorded the expostulation about Newton by the French mathematician the
Marquis de l’Hôpital on first being shown the analysis of fluid resistance
in Principia mathematica: ‘is he like other men?’ When Conduitt prepared
his abortive life of Newton, he incorporated this expression into the text:
‘His virtues proved him a Saint & his discoveries might well pass for mira-
cles ... was Newton a man?’ Within two decades, in a life of Newton printed
in the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, the question had already
taken on an appropriately heavenly sense: ‘Is he like other men? I cannot
 Newtonian Angels 95

believe otherwise than that he is a genius or a celestial intelligence entirely

disengaged from matter’.13 Angelic iconography was, of course, a common-
place in Augustan memorials and polemics, by no means limited to images
of Newton in the heavens. Poetic achievement could exploit the angelic
place vouchsafed to astronomical verities to help raise its own literary status
to the celestial condition. Many protagonists of the Whig enlightenment
were granted angelic apotheoses or, as in the case of Joseph Addison’s Vision
of Mirzah (1711), made them for themselves. The grammar of the frontis-
piece to Andrew Motte’s English version of Principia mathematica (1729), for
example, was familiar: far above this world system, a spirit communed with
the celestial philosopher. In 1732, the Clerkenwell drawing-master George
Bickham similarly produced a remarkable and widely distributed image of
Newton’s apotheosis, adorned with Newtonian angels wielding globes, tel-
escopes and geometrical instruments (see Figure 5.2).14
Angelic agents stayed equally useful allies in the ideological struggles of
the time. Daniel Defoe’s various political allegories, couched in the form
of spiritual visions and celestial journeys, provide telling examples. His
1705 satire on the Occasional Conformity Act described a lunar journey
that included pneumatic machines, named Elevators, that allowed ‘converse
with ... Guardian Angels’. The pointed joke was that spiritual enthusiasm
could be engrossed by natural knowledge. In early 1711, he ran a sequence of
issues of his Review on a comparable lunar voyage, now directed against the
Jacobites and ‘the Devil, who is The Pretender’. Mr Review taught the diaboli-
cal James Stuart that ‘all the Angels of Heaven are employ’d vigorously and
successfully to withstand him ... for that ever since the Revolution in Heaven,
when Lucifer and all his Angels abdicated the Place ... Limitations have been
put upon his Power’.15 Nor was such imagery peculiarly British. A 1707
print by Bernard Picart showing Descartes guided by Philosophia towards
angelic Truth was easily adapted by London publicists merely by substitut-
ing Newton for his French rival and appropriately altering the letterpress.
What distinguished the angelic imagery of the Newtonian campaign, how-
ever, was the fact that his natural philosophy so explicitly addressed the
issues of ‘celestial intelligence’, its relation with matter and its capacity to
act at a distance through heavenly space.16
These expressions worked partly because they reflexively exploited some
basic tenets of Newton’s natural philosophy of active principles and living
nature. Newton’s statements gave his readers resources to understand divine
intelligence and action by analogy with that of the natural philosopher. In
manuscript versions of the famous General Scholium added to the second
(1713) edition of Principia mathematica in order to render explicit against
his rivals the theological burden of his cosmology, Newton wrote that ‘I am
one and the same during life in all the instruments of sense. God is one and
the same always and everywhere’. Eventually, God was compared not with
himself but more prudently with ‘every man’. Newton’s account of such
96 Simon Schaffer

Figure 5.2 George Bickham, The apotheosis of Isaac Newton

 Newtonian Angels 97

principles impressed in passive, inert matter at the creation acting as sec-

ondary causes of evident forces of attraction and repulsion was then used to
make sense of celestial intelligence. ‘Have not the small Particles of Bodies
certain Powers, Virtues or Forces, by which they act a distance?’, he asked
rhetorically in the Optice of 1706. ‘We meet with very little Motion in the
World, besides what is owing to these active Principles or to the Dictates of a
Will’, he added. In manuscript notes on this passage, he added that ‘we find
in ourselves a power of moving our bodies by our thoughts (but the laws of
this power we do not know) & see the same power in other living creatures
but how this is done & by what laws we do not know ... We cannot say that
all nature is not alive’. In a subsequent English version of Opticks (1717) he
omitted the reference to God’s will and added the statement that without
such principles ‘all Life would cease’. Now, his Life ceased, he had become a
celestially active principle.17
It was as if Newton grasped the principles of action at a distance because
he could act at a distance. His reputed solitude and removal from the mun-
dane world was transmuted into an ability to divine the world’s sense with-
out the need for mediation. Hence emerged the sense of the angelic, at least
non-human, quality of this author. One of Newton’s erstwhile confidants,
the errant Swiss mathematician and visionary enthusiast Fatio de Duillier,
was well placed to assess the nuances of Newton’s image in the highly sec-
tarian culture of early- eighteenth- century London millenarianism. Keen
advocate of Camisard prophets, admirer of John Pordage and Richard Roach,
he counselled Conduitt in summer 1730 on proposed inscriptions for the
Westminster monument. Fatio recalled yet another version of l’Hôpital’s
expression. He suggested the highly ambiguous Nam hominem eum fuisse, si
dubites, hocce testatur marmor: ‘If you doubt there ever were such a man’, or
perhaps ‘if you doubt this was a man’, you were to be assured by the blunt
witness of Newton’s monument.18

‘The Sacred Account of Good Angels’: William

Whiston’s angelology

As Newton’s remarks on the distribution of life in his cosmos could be made

to suggest, the relation between the new cosmology of active principles and
the superhuman, angelic, status of that cosmology’s author was worked out
in most detail in Augustan writings on the plurality of inhabited worlds.
As Patricia Fara has shown, statements about extraterrestrial inhabitants
were deliberately turned into the common fare of Newtonian cosmology.19
The right way to read these texts for angelological significance was already
adumbrated in Thomas Hobbes’ telling remark in Leviathan: ‘it is not the
shape, but their use, that makes them Angels’.20 Hobbes meant to distin-
guish between the angels of the Old Testament, which he reckoned appari-
tions used as messengers, and those of the New, which he was prepared
98 Simon Schaffer

to concede might be substantial (though therefore positioned in space).

Hobbesian reflexion on where angels were and how they were used directs
attention to the applications of Newtonian speculation on the inhabitants
of other worlds, the places and their motions. In the wake of such signifi-
cant and quickly translated works as Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité
des mondes (1687) and Huygens’ Cosmotheoros (1698), British cosmologists
and priests joined a programme to extrapolate the reality and properties
of other worlds’ inhabitants. The analogy with the New World across the
Atlantic was commonly made, not least because it was held that Newton’s
natural philosophy practically aided navigation, conquest and trade. In
his posthumously printed verses on celestial voyaging, The Ecstasy (1720),
the Dissenting Whig playwright and poet John Hughes imagined an astral
encounter with the angelic soul of Newton, ‘the great Columbus of the
skies’. Mary Baine Campbell is right to characterise the bizarrely ‘ethnic
pageant’ of worlds earthly and celestial in this new enterprise, while Frank
Lestringant points out how the imagination of a New World evacuated of
its original inhabitants allowed reveries of the agents of a reformed reli-
gion flourishing in empty space.21 Newtonian lecturers used such analogies
to bolster the claim that their new astronomy underwrote the existence
of intelligence and life throughout creation. Crucial here were hierarchical
and rather ingeniously distinguished models of spirits, a spectral spectrum
ranging between mundane spirits and higher angels, extending through
celestial realms. In 1692, both Richard Bentley, sermonising in London
on the relation between Newton’s natural philosophy and proper religion,
and Edmond Halley, writing in the Philosophical Transactions on the Earth’s
structure, insisted that other planets were inhabited by ‘rational minds;
some higher in the natural perfections, others inferior to the human souls’.
Bentley explained to his congregation that there was exactly the same kind
of evidence for life on other planets as there was for ‘God’s creating the
Angels’, and both principles were true, scriptural and Newtonian.22
Such views were peddled for metropolitan polite and pious audiences
alike. Among the most notorious and effective of these propagandists was
the heretical prophet William Whiston, dissident anti-Trinitarian disciple
of Newton and, after his expulsion from the Cambridge mathematics chair,
energetic exploiter of the print media of the capital. He skilfully connected
the commercial credit of schemes for new machines and navigation meth-
ods with the devout credibility of new philosophy and astronomy. In his
university he had made no doubt of the relation he saw between the univer-
sal extent of Newton’s new cosmology and the religious consequences of a
plurality of inhabited worlds. His Astronomical Principles of Natural Religion,
first published in 1717, was a masterpiece of print culture. It carried many
engravings by the London cartographer John Senex illustrating the world
system and its immediate astronomical phenomena and accompanied the
author’s newfangled Copernicus, a machine designed to demonstrate eclipses,
 Newtonian Angels 99

cometary transits and planetary motions. Senex also manufactured globes

for Whiston to exhibit scriptural chronology and astronomical principles.
Aimed at mobilising a version of Newtonian cosmology for the purposes of
prophetic and scriptural apologetics, larded with appropriate passages from
Milton and from Newton himself, Whiston’s text embodied much of the
material he delivered as lectures in the London coffee houses, the Marine,
Douglas’s and then Button’s, to auditors such as Richard Steele, Alexander
Pope and Edward Young.23 In 1728, Young versified modish taste for orre-
ries and philosophical lectures in lines on Charlotte Clayton, confidante of
Princess Caroline and patron both of Clarke and of Whiston:

some Nymphs prefer Astronomy to Love;

elope from mortal men and range above.
The fair Philosopher to Rowley [designer of the orrery] flies,
where in a box the whole Creation lies.

After making fun of fashionable Newtonianism, Young continued with the

line that ‘Whiston has engagements with the fair’. It was here the polite
audience encountered one of the most sustained public arguments of the
epoch about the reality of ‘Newtonian angels’.24
In his statements on the ‘uses of all parts of the system of the visible
world’, Whiston explicitly told Londoners that ‘the Air expanded about the
several Planets ... appear[s] to be the proper Places for the Habitation of not
wholly incorporeal, but Invisible Beings’. Welding scripture to Newton’s
philosophy, Whiston explained that while experimental and medical pneu-
matics taught the use of earthly air as the medium of light and the support
of animal respiration, the higher, rarer and vaster tracts of air must also be
useful for ‘invisible Beings, not destitute of all Bodies’.25 Then he set out
more details of these Beings’ properties. He could now exploit three dec-
ades of work on the plurality of worlds and the plenitude of creation in the
wake of Newton’s Principia mathematica. Active principles vouchsafed life
throughout creation and in planetary atmospheres this life was angelic. In a
key passage, he appealed to that fact that

the Sacred Account of the Invisible World, or of good Angels, and wicked
Daemons, their Places and Ministrations, is exactly agreeable to the true
System and Phaenomena of Nature... there are also another Species of
Beings belonging to our System, I mean, those Souls, or Spiritual Beings,
who are either wholly free from Bodies, or rather free from such Gross
and Visible Bodies as we have, but inhabit ordinarily in purer or more
ethereal Regions, in more subtle and aerial Bodies and Vehicles ... Nature
does favour the Existence of such Creatures, by shewing us such large
and noble Regions of the World, as best of all suit to the Habitation
of such Beings ... I mean all the wide spaces of the atmospheres of the
100 Simon Schaffer

Planets ... Nature, as we still find, abounds in all proper Places with Living
Creatures, not only on the Earth, or in dry Land, but within the Earth,
and Waters, and lowest Air, every where.26

Whiston’s cosmological project depended on his linkage between

astronomical evidence of celestial activity, the ways in which this activ-
ity matched the principles of terrestrial experimental pneumatics and the
guarantee of such principles by his idiosyncratic version of prophecy and
heretical readings of Scripture. Whiston explicitly identified himself with
Milton’s seraph Abdiel, the solitary loyal angel who uniquely stood out
against Satan’s rebellion: ‘servant of God, well done’.27 This granted the
angelic condition a local political and prophetic use. He shared many con-
temporaries’ view that Newton’s achievements were angelic, but gave this a
specific sense by claiming that the revelation of the true principles of plane-
tary motion and earthly mechanics had itself been prophesied by Scriptural
seers, an ‘eminent prelude and preparation to those happy times of the resti-
tution of all things, which God has spoken of by the mouth of all his holy prophets
since the world began, Acts iii.21’. Significantly, Whiston then explained that
his own ‘discoveries concerning true religion and primitive Christianity’
were a second sign, just behind ‘the wonderful Newtonian philosophy’, of
the imminent prophetic millennium.28 In the final years of Newton’s life,
Whiston’s lectures combined lessons in magnetism, pneumatics, astronomy
and the sacred architecture of Solomon’s Temple. In 1729, concerned that
Pemberton would not make Newton’s theology sufficiently explicit in the
View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy, he carefully gathered and printed a
thirty-page collection of everything Newton had printed on the true theol-
ogy. Whiston’s performances ably linked facts about prophetic completion
with models of immediately contemporary celestial events such as eclipses,
comets, storms or meteors. Important to his approach was the painstak-
ing accumulation of testimonies of matters of fact. ‘Sir Isaac Newton’s
Experiments and Demonstrations’ were his model for the method through
which successful prophetic predictions and evidences of angelic action were
to be managed.29 He was viciously assaulted by High Church clerics for his
anti-Trinitarian errors and equally powerfully satirised by Scriblerian wits
who found his prophetic utterances and his visionary projects for longitude
and mechanics evidently risible or, worse, subversive of public credit.30 But
‘Wicked’ Whiston’s lectures on the natural philosophy of angels were by no
means atypical of the public culture of the epoch.

‘Spirits acting at a distance’: Daniel Defoe in the Angelic World

Several substantial works on angelology appeared in England in the period

of Whiston’s development of a Newtonian cosmology of the invisible world
of angels. Alongside projects that sought to explain the agency of such
 Newtonian Angels 101

spirits sat catalogues of these spirits’ qualities and places, an angelogical

natural history to be found in texts such as those of the Somerset naturalist
John Beaumont FRS and of the west Midlands Presbyterian minister John
Reynolds. Authority on and critic of the visionary cosmologies of Burnet,
Whiston and their contemporaries, Beaumont assembled vast catalogues of
angelic appearances and spiritual encounters. Reynolds more directly used
the argument for a plurality of worlds and the vast expanse of the aerial and
planetary spaces revealed by the new astronomy: ‘here will be room enough
for a vast Multitude of Etherial Inhabitants. So well will Philosophy accord
with Scripture’. In common with Whiston, Reynolds added that ‘it is not
the Course of Nature or of Providence, to leave large Tracts of Space without
something of Life, or some suitable Inhabitant or other’. The principle of
plenitude, backed by Newton’s astronomy, dictated the angelic population
of aerial and aetherial spaces and ‘such vast territories as lye beyond our
Planetary system’.31
In a metropolis wracked by crises of public credit, judged especially vul-
nerable in markets and assemblies to the passions of enthusiasm and pos-
session, it mattered much how these spirit stories and angelic facts were
made and used. Defoe’s anti-Jacobite tales of lunar voyages in the angelic
realm, published in A Review in early 1711, were followed a week later by his
celebrated editorials on the condition of ‘Lady Credit’ and the task of win-
ning her affection.32 It may well have been telling for Whig propaganda and
angelology that the coins distributed at the magical ceremonies of the royal
touch maintained well into the eighteenth century by the exiled Stuarts as
signs of their divinely rightful monarchy were still known as angels.33 Not
coincidentally, many of those who most fiercely satirised Whiston’s schemes
were also waspish commentators on the vagaries of the capital market. The
literary technology of credit production developed at the Royal Society pro-
vided angelology with some useful resources. So when the eminent Whig
cleric Francis Hutchinson compiled a long catalogue of witnessed matters
of fact that told against the reality of witchcraft in 1718, he made sure to
add a prudent sermon on angels, arguing for experimental philosophical
evidence of ‘a nobler, active substance, superior to passive insensible dead
Matter, and that we take to be the substance of the angelick natures and the
souls of men’. This was how judicious accounts of the invisible population
of the celestial regions could be put to work in the public realm.34
Further evidence of this common context of Augustan angelology at the
period of Whiston’s lectures is also provided by Defoe’s series of works on
the invisible realm published between 1719 and 1728. A pre- eminent fiction
maker and financial journalist, Defoe used the techniques of creditwor-
thy testimony read as a student of experimental philosophy at Newington
Academy and in the publications of the natural philosophers. He applied
them to establish the plausibility of the angelic world and then use them in
powerful satires. In his journalism he mobilised ‘convincing Testimonies’ of
102 Simon Schaffer

‘a Converse of Spirits, I mean between those unimbodied, and those call’d

Soul, or incas’d in Flesh’, with ‘the very Time, Persons, Circumstances &c of
such Things’.35 Diabolic communication played a key role in Defoe’s denun-
ciation of manipulators of credit, especially stock jobbery in the epoch of
the South Sea Bubble. Angelic communication played a comparably decisive
role in his moral philosophy of dreams, visions and vocation. His use of
such angelic visitations in his fictions and polemics was so marked that it
drew the attention of contemporary writers, notably the ailing critic Charles
Gildon, who twitted Defoe with his ‘Coining of Providences’ and his obses-
sion with ‘the messages of angel guardians’ in Robinson Crusoe. What was
‘coined’ was forgery, and forgery was well known to be a principal trouble in
the establishment of reliable values and thus solid intelligence. These tell-
ing remarks pointed to the appropriately fraught context for contemporary
remarks on angelic messages and messengers.36
So in his sequence of publications, A Vision of the Angelick World (1720),
The Political History of the Devil (1726), An Essay on the History and Reality of
Apparitions (1727) and A System of Magick (1728), Defoe set out a sketch of
a cosmology of angelic agents to underwrite the integrity of angelic com-
munication. The spy, traveller, journalist and merchant was understandably
fascinated by the possibility of immediate spiritual converse. ‘I make no
question but that there is not only a world of spirits, but that ... there is a cer-
tain converse between the world of spirits and the spirits in this world; that
is to say, between spirits uncased or unembodied and souls of men embod-
ied or cased up in flesh and blood’.37 His accounts of communication with
spirits have drawn considerably more attention than his natural philosophy
of the invisible world. Much of this natural philosophy was heterodox. He
debated the ineffectiveness of angelic messages, wrote of classes of inter-
mediate spirits, denied they were corporeal, granted angels foreknowledge
and somewhat independent agency, and privileged dreams as the preferred
mode of angelic communication.38 More significantly, Defoe wrote much
on the relation between the place of angels and the new principles of the
plurality of worlds taught by the Newtonian publicists.
Defoe’s angelic cosmology was striking precisely because he stoutly
rejected the possibility of life on the planets. ‘None of the planets are in
this sense habitable’, he insisted in his imaginative Vision of the Angelick
World, prompted, so the text claimed, by a reverie following a conversation
with a learned friend about the plurality of worlds. Extreme cold and heat,
absence of air or distance from the Sun, ruled against the silly ‘dreams of
our Astronomers’. His own dream showed others’ dreams were false. By the
time he composed his Essay on Apparitions (1727), he was convinced that
‘the Objections against the Planets being habitable are unanswerable, but
by the Absurdity of bringing Almighty Power in to create several new spe-
cies of Creatures, some to live in Fire, some in Frost, some in all Darkness in
ice, some in boiling Waters and scalding Air’.39 To make the planets waste
 Newtonian Angels 103

spaces was an idiosyncratic claim in the epoch of Newtonian pluralism

and its magnificent natural theology of cosmic life.40 Defoe himself used
the terrors of uninhabited waste to great effect both in his Tour Through
the Whole Island of Great Britain (composed 1724–26), where he wrote of
depopulated land as ‘a country looking so full of horror’, and in his History
of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements in the Several Arts and Sciences
(1727), which insisted on a providentialist and mercantilist command to
spread ‘Inhabitants into remote parts of the World’, to fill up the primordial
‘Universal Blank’ with commerce, trade and travel: ‘every improveing qual-
ity circulated through the World and the whole Globe seems now to be into
a kind of general acquaintance with it self’.41
Thus, it was certainly not ignorance of the claims of Newtonian writers
that prompted Defoe’s evacuation of the planets, nor any pious admiration of
solitude. Calculations of celestial distances by Newton, Whiston and Halley
were useful weapons for Defoe against the ‘bad Historian’ Milton’s notion
that it took but nine days for angels to fall from Heaven. Rather, Defoe had
his own candidates for celestial populations, and in this respect he closely
emulated the theorists of Newtonian angels (see Figure 5.3). ‘Flatter not
yourselves that those regions are uninhabited because the planets appear to
be so. No, no; I assure you this is that world of spirits’.42 In this respect, Defoe
followed Whiston’s account of the Invisible World very closely, as did John
Reynolds in his account of the Angelical worlds. In contrast to the improb-
able and irrational notion of planetary inhabitants, Defoe judged it certain
that in the air and atmosphere, in seemingly void space, there were huge
numbers of ‘Angels or of ministring Spirits’ created by God and disposed in
a hierarchy of powers and degrees from Archangels to nearby atmospheric
beings. These were ‘invisible Substances, Bodies without Body’, since ‘body
can only act upon body, not upon spirit, no spirit being empower’d to act
out of the compass of its own sphere’. Just as Whiston in 1717 lectured on
these nobler atmospheres and the spiritual beings who lived, moved and
acted there, so Defoe a decade later wrote of ‘an Army of ministring spirits’
posted in the air and celestial space.43
Crucially, these angelic spirits were engaged in the enterprise of intelligent
communication, precisely the function Defoe’s providential deity dictated
as the key to the peopling, exploitation and commercial mastery of this
planet. In his clever satires on the diabolical evils of stock jobbery and mar-
ket manipulation, embodied in texts on the angelic realm and the spiritual
inhabitants of atmospheres and celestial space, Defoe spelt out the ways in
which ‘these Spirits, acting at a distance’, could afford news and knowledge to
humanity. Some intelligences were certainly satanic, for it was from the Air
that its prince the Devil ‘sends out his Spies, his Agents and Emissaries, to
get intelligence’. Hence emerged Defoe’s telling analogies between diaboli-
cal spiritual intelligence and the ‘truly infernal’ schemes of ‘the late project
called the South Sea stock’, an episode he took to be the most spectacular
104 Simon Schaffer

Figure 5.3 Daniel Defoe, Refléxions sérieuses et importantes de Robinson Crusoe: suivi
d’une vision du monde angélique. Amsterdam (i.e. Paris), 1721
 Newtonian Angels 105

contemporary instance of manipulation of intelligence and subversion of

good credit. In contrast, benevolently aerial angels could ‘intimate to Man
many things useful to him in the Conduct of his Life’. Thus, the angelic
cosmology of aerial and atmospheric agents was an apt way of figuring a
large scale information order, constantly subverted by false rumour and
cunning intelligence, just as constantly under the surveillance of mobile
envoys whose function was to act at a distance through a network of con-
verse and reportage.44

Locke and Newton on angelic intelligence

Augustan texts on the use and place of angels in space could therefore
exploit a spiritual cosmology to explore the ironies and effects of remote
credit, intelligence and knowledge. Like their Renaissance predecessors
discussed elsewhere in this book by Nick Wilding, the instrumentalised
envoys and delegates represented by Newtonian angels inhabited the realm
of social epistemology. The west country Deist writer John Trenchard,
Defoe’s great rival in the ‘paper wars’ of Augustan politics, explained in his
Natural History of Superstition (1709) that ‘‘tis hardly conceivable by Nations
who have no Notion of Writing, how Men should converse at a distance,
and know one anothers Thoughts, but by the mediation of visible or invis-
ible Agents’. This was why native Americans took ‘Paper and Letters to be
Spirits’. Mediation of intelligence thus became nicely, if somewhat super-
stitiously, figured as spiritual intercourse.45 Prophetic maps of the angelic
population of the air and atmosphere could well be turned into resources
that helped map the frictions and consequences of the information order.
A salient example was provided in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, a text authored by an eminent political intelligencer, natu-
ral philosopher and commercial administrator, thus much concerned with
the realities and reliability of knowledge about commodities.46 Robert West
alleges that Locke (like Newton) ‘had little interest’ in such questions, yet he
acknowledges that ‘when he speculated on what man can know and how he
knows it, Locke could not leave angels out of account’. Indeed, ‘without the
notion and allowance of Spirits, our Philosophy will be lame and defective’,
Locke wrote in one of his most widely read treatises, that on the principles
of education (1693). Similarly, in the Essay he defined the scope of natural
philosophy as including ‘angels, spirits, bodies’.47
The Essay granted angels two at least interestingly related functions: as
limits to human knowledge and as expressions of the reliance of knowl-
edge on remote communication. Though natural knowledge of spirits
was clearly available, no proper ‘science of unembodied spirits’ was to be
had, for ‘angels of all sorts are naturally beyond our discovery’. This told
against the claims of enthusiasm, as witness the difficulty of discriminat-
ing between the seeming certainties of diabolical and holy inspiration.48
106 Simon Schaffer

However, the capacity of angels to act at a distance, both in time and space,
was an important resource for the exploration of how reliable knowledge
was to be obtained and what its functions were. ‘The several degrees of
angels may ... some of them be endowed with capacities to retain together
and constantly set before them, as in one picture, all their past knowledge
at once’. Since Locke strongly urged the dependence of individual identity
on just this capacity for retention, recommended the accumulation of com-
mon places and written diaries as means to strengthen the self, and judged
his argument might solve puzzles of corporeal resurrection, this gave his
angels a high degree of individual power as memory banks. Literary mne-
motechnics was an enterprise that could almost match what angelic reten-
tion achieved. Further, ‘angels have now, and the spirits of just men made
perfect shall have in a future state’, direct and intuitive knowledge of the
self- evident truth of currently obscure propositions.49
In a lengthy passage, this immediate intuition was then directly con-
nected with angelic information. His best case of the limited grasp of human
experience was, precisely, mortals’ failure to understand how angels could
communicate directly. But that angels did so was undeniable. Here Locke
helped himself to a common Baconian trope, put forth in the Restoration
by writers such as Joseph Glanvill and Robert Hooke, that artificial instru-
ments were ways of restoring the lost capacities of prelapsarian paradise.
Locke conjectured the possession by angels of ‘organs of sensation and per-
ception’ that would indeed enable them to make out microscopic particles
and their motions, and to communicate without mediation. These were
the angels whom Young imagined carrying telescopes that could reach the
deity. That humans could not achieve this immediate acquaintance with
occult principles was as much a commercial as an epistemic fact: some-
one equipped with microscopes for eyes would be unable to communicate
with his fellows. ‘He would not make any great advantage by the change,
if such an acute sight would not serve to conduct him to the market or the
exchange’. Thus, angelic capacities were at once the limits and the ideals
of the commercial communication system. This was one reason why they
occupied such a salient position in the most sophisticated epistemologies of
Augustan Britain.50
These epistemologies help make sense of what made angelic agents impor-
tant occupants of a specifically Newtonian cosmos in this period. As we have
observed, Newton was much concerned with the most intimate details
of angels’ nature. Several of his closest interlocutors, Whiston and Locke
among them, knew this well. In the months after the Glorious Revolution,
Locke published his Essay and met Newton, first in London salons, then at
the country house of his patrons the Masham family at Oates in Essex. They
discussed scriptural interpretation, alchemy and the ways Newton could get
influential metropolitan patronage. Locke had already written a review of
Principia mathematica in the Netherlands; now Newton prepared a special
 Newtonian Angels 107

copy of the Principia for Locke’s use and drafted long texts on the ways
Scripture had been corrupted, and witnesses suborned, by evil Trinitarians.
He also composed a diagram of the schedules of the Apocalypse and sent
it to Locke for his enlightenment.51 A notebook of the period marked with
Masham’s address was filled with Newton’s notes on scriptural references
to angels. Passages from Daniel, Revelation and throughout the Bible were
marshalled painstakingly to explore the bodily and spiritual character of
angels, their relation with Christ and their role as messengers. Newton noted
Revelation 22: ‘I Iohn fell down to worship before the feet of the Angel which
shewed me these things. Then said he to me see thou do it not for I am thy
fellow servant & of thy brethren’; and passages from the Gospels on the state
of bodies after the resurrection: ‘In the resurrection they neither marry nor
are given in marriage but are as the angels of God in Heaven Mat 22.30.
Mark 12.25. Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the
Angels Luke 20.36’. The aim was to accumulate proof-texts against orthodox
doctrines of Christ’s incarnation, an aim Newton extensively shared with
his correspondent Locke and his disciples such as Clarke and Whiston.52 He
was, specifically, using scriptural angelology to forge an account of spiritual
mediation. The notebook thus also spelt out the immediate political dangers
of misattribution of power to angelic agents. The 1667 History of the Royal
Society had appealed to Solomon’s patronage of natural history and the gold
trade in a characteristic move to warrant the global information order of the
new philosophy. Newton used the Solomonic precedent for different ends.
Even a monarch such as Solomon, ‘the wisest of men’, builder of the Temple
where he judged the scenes of Revelation took place, had nevertheless fallen
into idolatry. Newton reckoned this might be because his heathen ‘wives &
concubines’ had convinced him that ‘the supreme God had committed the
government of the world to Angels & such like intermediate beings & that of
this sort were the Heathen Deities’. In the 1680s, under a Catholic monarch,
it was evident that such ‘whoring after Idols’ might recur whenever such
angelic mediation was fatally mistaken.53
During this period of the Glorious Revolution and the composition and
publication of the Principia, therefore, Newton was especially devoted to
the painstaking analysis of how spiritual agents at work in the cosmos
mediated between Deity and creation. These agents included that ‘sub-
tle spirit’ of Newtonian optics about which Glover wrote at the head of
Pemberton’s View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy. In a striking document
associated with the early versions of Principia in the mid-1680s written
against the theological dangers of Cartesian notions of space and mat-
ter, Newton remarked admiringly on ‘that power which can bring forth
creatures not only directly but through the mediation of other creatures’.
This ‘so far from detracting from the divine power enhances it’.54 The aim
of the project was to specify exactly what such mediating creatures might
be and how they worked. Newton had long accumulated considerable
108 Simon Schaffer

evidence in alchemy and optics for a range of spirits and agents putatively
to be identified with the body of light or a vegetative spirit diffused in
nature. Such agents could then act as precedent for the novel notion of
universal gravitation now canvassed in the Principia. So when in summer
1686 Newton learnt from London that his rival Robert Hooke was claim-
ing priority in ‘the invention of the rule of the decrease of Gravity’, it was
significant that the Principia’s author at once cited words he had sent to
the Royal Society back in late 1675 about just such a spirit that carried the
‘food of the Sun and Planets’ through space and was imbibed by Sun and
Earth: ‘in these words’, he now argued in 1686, ‘you have the common
cause of gravity towards the earth Sun and all the Planets’. This was one
way in which Newton used his work on mediating spirits to explain and
defend his notion of cosmic gravitation.55
There were several others. From 1681, Newton also began constructing
an innovative account of cometary orbits that held them to be eccentric
ellipses. Since they and their effluvial tails moved in closed orbits of long
periods, comets could be agents that restored activity and brought life and
change to the heavens and the Earth. These were cosmological principles
that Whiston and others exploited to great effect from the 1690s in writings
on cometary and spiritual agency. In a vast proposition on comets’ motions
printed towards the end of the 1687 Principia, Newton claimed ‘that spirit
which is the smallest but most subtle and most excellent part of our air, and
which is required for the life of all things, comes chiefly from comets’. He
added in the first version of this final book of Principia that the doctrine of
cometary return and agency was well known to the ancient philosophers,
but this truth had been lost through the cunning machinations of priests
and monarchs. In the epoch of the Exclusion Crisis and the regime of a
Catholic monarch, such a genealogy for the principles of spiritual media-
tion and active restoration in the cosmos had important political and theo-
logical significance.56
So in its first formulation in the 1680s, the Newtonian cosmology included
the indispensable presence of spiritual agents moving in celestial space and
restoring earthly life. This was also the concern of the long catalogue of
biblical references to angels that Newton compiled during his conversations
in 1689–91 with Locke about scriptural corruption and primitive faith. For
the exact definition of angelic agents formed part of a programme that
had eschatological concerns intermixed with its cosmological aims. The
ancient principles of cometography and gravitation had been undermined
by priestcraft and the divine right of monarchs. So, too, the proper sense
of the Apocalypse and the prophecies had been distorted. Because priests
had twisted scripture to set up idolatrous religion, with its false and politi-
cally significant misattribution of spiritual agency to mere matter, it was
now urgent to produce a proper Church history, re-read the prophecies and
install the true cosmology.57
 Newtonian Angels 109

Newton and ‘the government of the world by the Angels’

In the 1680s, Newton exploited work in optics, alchemy and astronomy to

characterise the real spiritual agents that mediated divine action, moved
in space and restored life. He simultaneously mobilised patristic scholar-
ship and more recent arguments of Cambridge commentators, such as the
eminent early-seventeenth- century Christ’s College fellow Joseph Mede, to
find literal evidence for these agents in the visions of the Book of Revelation.
Newton owned a copy of the 1672 republication of Mede’s works: ‘Mr Mede
layed the foundation & I have built upon it’, Newton noted in his first draft
treatise on apocalyptic interpretation, echoing his more notorious and
closely contemporary remarks about his relation with Hooke.58 The tex-
tual crux was the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse, with its references
to ‘an angel come down from heaven’ and the ‘First Resurrection’ of mar-
tyred saints, returned to life and reigning with Christ for a thousand years
during which the Saved Nations would gather round a restored Jerusalem,
to be ruled by these raised Saints. Only after final war with Satan and a
destructive Fire from Heaven would a Second, general, Resurrection ensue.
Mede had somewhat hesitantly read these passages literally. The denizens
of the New Jerusalem, both resurrected martyrs and ‘such of the Living as
have not worshipped the Beast nor his Image’, would all have real physical
bodies. While the Raised Saints might not need ‘maintenance and nourish-
ment’, they would certainly require ‘a place of abode’ (though he sagely
rebuked one Calvinist preacher’s idea that new Jerusalem’s place might be
in America, since Mede judged its natives hard to convert).59 These were pre-
cisely the passages favoured in mid-seventeenth- century chiliastic broad-
sides against monarchy and idolatry. ‘Since your business lies professedly
against the Apocalypticall beast and all his complices’, according to a ser-
mon preached before the House of Commons in 1643, ‘you may expect
that the militia of Hell and the trained bands of Satan (i.e.) those that have
received the mark of the beast, shall be put into a posture of warre’. The
same sermon used Mede’s ‘propheticall calendar’ and ‘those that study the
Almanack of Heaven written in visible Characters’ to prophesy ‘Jerusalems
Rising’. The Saints found Mede’s literal readings of the First Resurrection
and Millennium useful tools and republished his learned Apocalyptic
commentaries.60
These were thus somewhat fraught foundations for the heretical Newton’s
eschatological building project in the period of royalist restoration and pop-
ish plots.61 The Christ’s College divine Henry More, Mede’s most energetic
Restoration successor in Cambridge and Newton’s immediate interlocutor
on these matters in the early 1680s, sought to show how these readings
of millennium and resurrections could be turned to more prudent politi-
cal purposes.62 Newton’s aim then was to read the eschatology of the New
Jerusalem, with judiciously selected guidance from Mede, More and close
110 Simon Schaffer

allies such as the west country divine Joseph Glanvill, to establish scrip-
tural grounds for the presence and agency of spiritual intermediaries. His
first draft treatise on Revelation, composed at the same time in the 1670s
as his early work on vegetative and optical spirits, already insisted that the
persecuted saints were the Angels in the war in heaven. It was these ‘angels’
who would be resurrected at the second coming.63 Newton then reworked
these notes in a new treatise composed in the later 1680s at the period of
his completion of Principia mathematica. This was the first decisive formula-
tion of his view on the angelic inhabitants of the New Jerusalem and of his
crucial argument that the figures of Antichrist and of the Satanic deceiver
stood for a distributed and threatening ‘spirit of delusion’ against which
these saints, himself presumably among them, must struggle.64 He reck-
oned that the City would be inhabited by the mortals living at the Second
Coming and by their rulers, the persecuted saints restored to life from sleep:
‘to conceive that the children of the resurrection shall live among other
men and converse with them daily as Mortals do with one another, and
reign over them after the way of temporal kingdoms is very absurd and fool-
ish. Do men converse with Beasts and Fishes, or Angels with men?’ Rather,
millennial converse between resurrected saints and mortal subjects would be
intermittent and celestial. ‘Angels and Christ and the Children of the resur-
rection’ would move at will ‘in the air and heavens’ just as ‘fishes in water
ascend and descend’. The cosmology of the New Jerusalem that Newton
forged in the 1680s therefore demanded spiritual agents travelling freely
through interplanetary atmospheres and deep space and regularly manifest-
ing themselves to earthly mortals.65
There were direct links between this cosmology of angelic travellers and the
natural philosophy of active mediation upon which the Principia depended.
In Mede’s gloss on Revelation chapter 20 and, more extensively, in More’s
writings of the 1650s and 1660s on the spiritual vehicles of mobile angels,
the matter of the heavens was distinguished into spheres of air, aether and
celestial space. Mobile spirits were understood as shifting between these
spheres. The informative angelic apparitions of the kinds Augustan writ-
ers so often described, the insistence on angels’ presence in interplanetary
space and the aerial apparitions that directed human judgement, acquired
their natural philosophical explanation this way. Newton’s notion of the
converse between angels and humans in the New Jerusalem depended on
just such a model of spiritual mediation with celestial entities. In the 1680s,
in his exposition of the condition of the Celestial City, Newton spelt out
exactly how the messianic Christ, angels and risen saints would deal with
each other:

And as Christ comes attended with an innumerable company of Angels,

and by the conversation he has with them sends them whither he will, so
the children of the resurrection shall have their communication with the
 Newtonian Angels 111

Angels. And such as has been the government of the World by the Angels,
such may be their dominion over mortals in the world to come.66

In the 1680s, Newton held that the world is now governed by angels and
that this governance would be continued in the New Jerusalem. He found
one important precedent for this cosmology of mobile angelic agents and
its epistemology in Glanvill, an admirer of More’s spiritualism whose work
on witchcraft and spiritual apparitions More publicly endorsed. In writings
Newton owned, Glanvill used More’s notion of the soul’s aerial vehicle to
explain how souls moved between the ‘those immense tracts of pure and
quiet aether that are above Saturn’, through the aerial atmospheres and into
ultimate embodiment in matter.67 Glanvill also insisted on the importance
of the ‘intermediate Agents’ through which ‘by the Analogie of the Natural
World’ it was evident that ‘God rules the lower world’. In a text of 1666
on the reality of apparitions, republished under More’s guidance in 1681,
Glanvill was the first writer in English publicly to use this key phrase ‘anal-
ogy of nature’, specifically to urge the reality of spiritually mediating agents
in nature:

The Air and all the Regions above us may have their invisible intellec-
tual Agents, of nature like unto our Souls ... That all the upper Stories of
the Universe are furnish’d with Inhabitants, ‘tis infinitely reasonable to
conclude from the analogy of Nature: Since we see there is nothing so con-
temptible and vile in the world we reside in, but hath its living creatures
that dwell upon it; the Earth, the Water, the inferiour Air; the Bodies of
Animals, the flesh, the skin, the entrails; the leaves, the roots, the stalks
of Vegetables; yea and all kind of Minerals in the subterraneous Regions:
I say, all these have their proper Inhabitants; yea, I suppose this Rule may
hold in all distinct kinds of bodies in the world, That they have their
peculiar Animals. The certainty of which I believe the improvement of
microscopical observations will discover. From whence I infer, That since
this little spot is so thickly peopled in every Atom of it, ‘tis weakness to
think that all the vast spaces above, and hollows under ground, are desert
and uninhabited.68

This passage provided the immediate textual precedent for Newton’s for-
mulation of the nature and location of the celestial pathways of mobile
saints in the 1680s. Just like Glanvill, he asserted that ‘all regions below
are replenished with living creatures (not only the earth with beasts and
sea with fishes and the air with fowls and insects but also standing waters,
vinegar, the bodies and blood of animals and other juices with innumer-
able living creatures too small to be seen without the help of magnifying
glasses)’, thence inferred that ‘the heavens above [may] be replenished with
beings whose nature we do not understand. As the planets remain in their
112 Simon Schaffer

orbs so may other bodies subsist at any distance from the earth and much
more may beings who have a sufficient power of self motion move whether
they will, place themselves where they will and continue in any regions
of the heavens whatever, there to enjoy the society of one another and by
their messengers or angels to rule the earth and converse with the remotest
regions’.69
In his later writings on Revelation and on natural philosophy, Newton
returned to and refined these views about angelic agents in space: ‘after the
resurrection of the dead it may be in their power to leave this Earth at pleas-
ure and accompany [Christ] into any part of the heavens, that no region
of in the whole Univers may want its inhabitants’, he wrote in a late draft
on the Apocalypse.70 At least as significantly for the relation between these
angelic agents and the information order of Newtonian cosmology, the
appeal to the ‘analogie of nature’ to warrant inferences from evident natural
philosophical phenomena to the existence of such agents gained increasing
power in his project. His colleague John Locke used the argument in the
Essay to show that ‘the rule of analogy makes it probable ... that there are
several ranks of intelligent beings excelling us in several degrees of perfec-
tion’. Similarly, in the early 1690s, Newton used just the same argument to
show how ‘a great part of the phaenomena of Nature’ could be explicated
in this manner. He confessed he had omitted this argument explicitly from
the 1687 Principia ‘least I should be accounted an extravagant freak’.71
However ‘extravagant’ and ‘freakish’ the argument from the analogy of
nature to the agency of spiritual entities might seem, it was a vital resource
for the making of his cosmology. In various versions of a huge History of the
Church written at the same time as his completion of the Opticks, Newton
acknowledged that knowledge of ‘the nature of the angels’ was one of those
‘truths of great importance’ only to be gained by more sophisticated and
mature believers, ‘strong meats for men’. But this knowledge mattered most
because it might unlock the structure of his invisible world.72

Newtonian angels and the invisible world

Newton reckoned knowledge of angels attainable and desirable. In this

respect he was decidedly more ambitious than his interlocutor John Locke.
Newton’s project linked two communication systems both involved with
the puzzle of how intermediaries could reliably convey action at a distance
and thus make the invisible world apparent. A true cosmology must show
how divine agency was at work always and everywhere in the motions of
bodies and the affairs of humanity, lest it lead to atheism and corruption.
That cosmology’s evidence depended on authentic numerical data gathered
across the globe in time and space from informants whose reports could
then be treated as matters of fact. In Newton’s world, theological propri-
ety accompanied the proper information order. The deeds of angels and
 Newtonian Angels 113

intermediate spiritual agents provided an indispensable theme in the treat-

ment of such distant actions. Newton often linked right government with
knowledge of divine creation as interpreted by natural philosophers. This
process of divine validation of global data management clearly emerged at
last in the most celebrated additions to the second edition of the Principia.
In 1713, some ‘hypotheses’ adapted from his rules for interpreting the Book
of Revelation, then prefaced to the third book in 1687, were reworked as
regulae philosophandi. They stated that ‘the causes assigned to natural effects
of the same kind must be, as far as possible, the same. Examples are ... the
falling of stones in Europe and America’; and that ‘idle fancies ought not to
be fabricated recklessly against the evidence of experiments nor should we
depart from the analogy of nature’.73
Thus, in his prudently organised public statements released to Augustan
audiences about reliable natural knowledge, Newton used resources from his
long campaign to accumulate evidence for the action of intermediaries in
the cosmos, in interplanetary spaces and in the New Jerusalem. Convinced
that after the First Resurrection angels and saints would circulate in the
cosmos, and that throughout the solar system comets would act to restore
activity and transform worlds to life, he discussed these claims with his clos-
est interlocutors such as Locke, Conduitt and Whiston. Arguments about
the replenishment of creation with living beings helped link together the
cometary circulation with the angelic agents of the millennium. From 1713
onwards, he printed accounts of rare vapours, ‘steams or effluvia’, and ‘an
exceedingly rare aethereal medium’, which might well be present in space
and act as mediators of vital agency in matter.74 When during a fireside con-
versation in 1725 Conduitt asked Newton about these notions, the gouty
natural philosopher reiterated his views about cometary orbits and ‘a revolu-
tion in the heavenly bodies’, a fiery apocalypse and subsequent replenish-
ment and revivification, ‘& laughing added he had said enough for people
to know his meaning’.75
What Newton meant was much disputed in Georgian England’s angelic
conversations. These involved both the information order on which his cos-
mology relied and also the celestial order which it seemed to describe. In
the mid-1720s, Daniel Defoe cheerfully used Newton’s calculations of the
extent of the atmosphere in his arguments about the proper residence of
angels and aerial spirits as newsmongers, yet stoutly denied the possibility
of beings on other planets. In 1727, William Whiston, as another exam-
ple, was much troubled by the claim that universal gravitation might be
caused by the active medium of a spiritual aether, yet completely convinced
that Newtonian cosmology confirmed the existence of prophetic angelic
agencies at work in the atmosphere. He constructed a sublime chart of the
angelic heavens stretching almost ninety miles above the surface of the
Earth (see Figure 5.4). He used Newton’s reading of the Apocalypse alongside
proof-texts from apocryphal writings such as the Testament of Levi, with its
114 Simon Schaffer

Figure 5.4 William Whiston, Scheme of the Seven Heavens (?1745)

 Newtonian Angels 115

‘wonderful Explication of the Invisible World, as distinguished into Seven

Heavens and as exemplified in the Model of the Temple of Jerusalem’. His
chart showed the places for ‘the Powers of the Hosts which are ordained
against the Day of Judgement’ and ‘the angels who carry answers to the
angels of the presence of the Lord’.
These were the heterodox views he put forth at the same time as conver-
sations about scriptural prophecy with Edward Young in 1746. At the same
time, Young sang of ‘Newtonian angels’ and their vain search for divine
power.76 Doubtless the angelic resonances of Newtonian cosmology stayed
current in enlightened Britain. In 1795, when William Blake was producing
his representations of Young’s Newtonian angels, so the radical artist James
Barry made an astonishing image of ‘reserved knowledge’, a wrapt celestial
conversation between Newton, the astronomers and a celestial angel about
the hidden principles of the true cosmology. The image was destined to
decorate the headquarters of commercial enlightenment, the Great Room of
the Royal Society of Arts, to show the progress of humanity from primitiv-
ism to the final state of ‘beatitude or misery’ in Elysium or Tartarus.77 The
aim of this chapter has been to recapture these kinds of angelic genealogy
both within Newton’s cosmos and within the construction of his persona,
and thus to show how angelic converse was a vital part of their manifold
uses. Hic naturae clavis est.

Notes
1. Milton’s verses (Paradise Lost book 5, lines 153–65) were, for example, reprinted
in William Whiston, Astronomical Principles of Natural Religion (London, 1725),
xxxi–xxxii. Richard Glover, ‘A Poem on Sir Isaac Newton’, is in Henry Pemberton,
A View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (London, 1728). For Young’s lines on
Newton’s immortality see Night Thoughts, night the ninth, line 1510 and for
his Newton bust see Henry Pettit, ed., Correspondence of Edward Young (Oxford,
1971), 600. For Young’s response to Pope see M. H. Nicolson, Newton Demands the
Muse (Princeton, 1946), 134 and Daniel W. Odell, ‘Young’s Night Thoughts as an
Answer to Pope’s Essay on Man’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 12 (1972):
481–501. For these angels and Newton’s reason, see Daniel Stempel, ‘Angels of
Reason: Science and Myth in the Enlightenment’, Journal of the History of Ideas,
36 (1975): 63–78 at 64.
2. Edward Young, Night Thoughts, 40–41. For Young’s pluralism, see William Powell
Jones, The Rhetoric of Science (Berkeley, 1966), 153–59; Michael J. Crowe, The
Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750–1900 (Cambridge, 1986), 84–86. Blake made an
(unpublished) watercolour illustration of these lines from Night Thoughts with
figures gazing through a vast telescope alongside a characteristic image of the
Newtonian geometer (David Erdman, ed., William Blake’s designs for Edward
Young’s Night Thoughts, 2 vols (Oxford, 1980), 2: 91, NT 509). Compare John Mee,
‘As Portentous as the Written Wall: Blake’s Illustrations to Night Thoughts’, in
Alexander Gourlay, ed., Prophetic Character (West Cornwall, 2002), 171–204.
116 Simon Schaffer

3. J. L. Heilbron, ‘Domesticating Science in the Eighteenth Century’, in William

R. Shea, ed., Science and the Visual Image in the Enlightenment (New York, 2000),
1–24, at 14–15; Robert West, Milton and the Angels (Athens, 1955), 21–22. But for
specifically Newtonian putti see, for example, the vignettes by Joseph Nutting
in Isaac Newton, Analysis per quantitatum series, fluxiones ac differentias (London,
1711), ed. William Jones. Thanks to Stephen Snobelen for this reference.
4. For the fables about Newton’s work in the 1660s and the rapid development
of his cosmology in the 1680s see D. T. Whiteside, ‘Before the Principia: The
Maturing of Newton’s Thoughts on Dynamical Astronomy 1664–1684’, Journal
for the History of Astronomy, 1 (1970): 5–19.
5. For Newton’s work in 1679–1684, see R. S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography
of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980), 344–95; B. J. T. Dobbs, The Janus Faces of
Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (Cambridge, 1991), 122–66. For
gravitation in the primordial cosmos see Newton to Burnet, January 1681, in
H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall and Laura Tilling, eds, Correspondence of
Isaac Newton, 7 vols (Cambridge, 1959–77), 3: 332; for Newton as ‘in a maner
transported’ by interpretation of the Apocalypse, see Henry More to John
Sharp, 16 August 1680, in M. H. Nicolson, ed., The Conway Letters (New Haven,
1930), 478–79. On angels in interplanetary space see ‘The end of ye world day of
Iudgment & world to come’, Jewish National Library MSS Yahuda 9.2 fol. 138.
6. J. E. McGuire, Tradition and Innovation: Newton’s Metaphysics of Nature (Dordrecht,
1993), 213. See John Henry, ‘Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy:
Active Principles in pre-Newtonian Matter Theory’, History of Science, 24 (1986):
335–81, and idem, ‘Pray do not Ascribe that Notion to Me: God and Newton’s
Gravity’, in James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, eds, The Books of Nature and
Scripture (Dordrecht, 1994), 123–47.
7. Roy Porter denies the hegemony of Newtonian rationalism both in Marijke
Gijswijt-Hofstra, Brian P. Lewack and Roy Porter, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe:
The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1999), 243, and in Roy Porter,
Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000),
382. For the survival of angels in Newton’s cosmology, see for example Owen
Davies, ‘Angels in Elite and Popular Magic 1650–1790’, in Peter Marshall and
Alexandra Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2006),
297–319 at 315.
8. H. G. Alexander, The Leibniz- Clarke Correspondence (Manchester, 1956), 72 (on
Henry More), 93 (on angels). Clarke’s sermons in the Boyle Lectures he gave at
St Paul’s Cathedral in 1705 on angelic capacity are in his Discourse Concerning
the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion and the Truth and Certainty of the
Christian Revelation (London, 1706), 352. For Newton’s drafts against Leibniz,
see Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard Cohen, ‘Newton and the Leibniz- Clarke
Correspondence’, Archives internationals de l’histoire des sciences, 15 (1962): 63–126.
For the political meaning of the fight see Steven Shapin, ‘Of Gods and Kings:
Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz- Clarke Disputes’, Isis, 72 (1981):
187–215 and Domenico Bertoloni Meli, ‘Caroline, Leibniz and Clarke’, Journal of
the History of Ideas, 60 (1999): 469–86.
9. Rob Iliffe, ‘ “Is He like Other Men?” The Meaning of Principia mathematica and
the Author as Idol’, in Gerald MacLean, ed., Culture and Society in the Stuart
Restoration (Cambridge, 1995), 159–76; Larry Stewart, ‘The Selling of Newton’,
Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986): 178–92.
10. Glover, ‘A Poem’, in Pemberton, A View, sig. a2[2]. See Mark Greenberg,
‘Eighteenth- Century Poetry Represents Moments of Scientific Discovery’, in
 Newtonian Angels 117

Stuart Peterfreund, ed., Literature and Science: Theory and Practice (Boston, 1990),
115–37 at 127–29; Patricia Fara, Newton: The Making of Genius (London, 2002),
64–65. Pemberton pointed out that Newton had ‘not made so full a discovery of
the principle, by which this mutual action between light and matter is caused,
as he has in relation to the power by which the planets are kept in their courses’
(260).
11. James Thomson, A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, 3rd edn (London,
1727), 15.
12. Gentleman’s Magazine, 1 (April 1731): 169; Fara, Newton, 42.
13. John Conduitt’s notes, King’s College Cambridge Keynes MSS 130.5 fols. 4–5
and 130.14 p. 1 are printed in Rob Iliffe, ed., Early Biographies of Isaac Newton
1660–1885, 2 vols (London, 2006), 1: 184 and 1: 169; compare ‘The Life of
Sir Isaac Newton’, Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, 3 (1748):
289–301 at 295. For these variants, see Westfall, Never at Rest, 473 and Fara,
Newton, 2.
14. Francis Haskell, ‘The Apotheosis of Newton in Art’, Texas Quarterly, 10 (1967):
218–37; for Addison’s angelic vision see Stempel, ‘Angels of Reason’, 65–66;
for Augustan poetics’ exploitation of angelic Newtonianism, see Greenberg,
‘Eighteenth- Century Poetry’, 123 on ‘Thomson’s ambitious ascent’; for Bickham’s
image see Fara, Newton, 50–51. Bickham’s image was republished in 1787 and
seems one plausible source for Blake’s illustration of Newtonian angels in Night
Thoughts.
15. [Daniel Defoe], The Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World
in the Moon (London, 1705), 109–10; Daniel Defoe, A Review, 7, 502–3 (13 January
1711). See Rodney M. Baine, Daniel Defoe and the Supernatural (Athens, 1968), 22;
Narelle Shaw, ‘Ancients and Moderns in Defoe’s Consolidator’, Studies in English
Literature, 28 (1988): 391–400; Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge,
1996), 69–73.
16. For the Picart print reworked, see Mordechai Feingold, The Newtonian Moment:
Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture (New York, 2004), 114–15.
17. For the variants of the General Scholium see Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard
Cohen, eds, Isaac Newton’s Philosophia naturalis Principia Mathematica: The Third
Edition with Variant Readings (Cambridge, 1972), 762n. Compare Larry Stewart,
‘Seeing Through the Scholium: Religion and Reading Newton in the Eighteenth
Century’, History of Science, 36 (1996): 123–65; Stephen D. Snobelen, ‘ “God of
gods, and Lord of Lords”: The Theology of Isaac Newton’s General Scholium to
the Principia’, Osiris, 16 (2001): 169–208. For variants in Opticks see Isaac Newton,
Optice (London, 1706), 343; Opticks (1730; New York, 1952), 375–76, 399–400; and
Cambridge University Library MSS Add 3970 fol. 620r in J. E. McGuire, Tradition
and Innovation, 198–203.
18. Fatio to Conduitt, 8 August 1730, King’s College Cambridge Keynes MSS 96 (F).
See Frank E. Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton (1968; London, 1980), 191–212;
Charles A. Domson, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier and the Prophets of London (New
York, 1981); Hillel Schwartz, The French Prophets (Berkeley, 1980), 233–42,
268–72.
19. Patricia Fara, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Newtonianism, Natural Theology and the
Plurality of Worlds Debate in the Eighteenth Century’, History of Science, 35
(2004): 143–60 at 146–48.
20. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651), 212. My emphasis.
21. John Hughes, The Ecstasy: An Ode (London, 1720), 8; compare Greenberg,
‘Eighteenth- Century Poetry’, 126. For New Worlds and empty spaces see Mary
118 Simon Schaffer

Baine Campbell, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe
(Ithaca, 1999), 147; Frank Lestringant, Une sainte horreur ou le voyage en Eucharistie
(Paris, 1996), 335.
22. Richard Bentley, Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World,
Third and Last Part (London, 1693), 5–7; Edmond Halley, ‘An Account of the
Cause of the Change of the Variation of the Magnetical Needle’, Philosophical
Transactions, 16 (1692): 563–75 at 575. See Crowe, Extraterrestrial Life Debate,
23–24.
23. James E. Force, William Whiston, Honest Newtonian (Cambridge, 1985), 54–60
for his apologetics; M. H. Nicolson and G. S. Rousseau, This Long Disease my
Life: Alexander Pope and the Sciences (Princeton, 1968), 158–59, 223–27 and Larry
Stewart, The Rise of Public Science (Cambridge, 1992), 94–97 on his audiences;
Stephen D. Snobelen, William Whiston: Natural Philosopher, Prophet, Primitive
Christian (Ph.D Thesis, Cambridge University, 2000), 68–69 and 173 for his
lectures and his images. For Senex’s globes see William Whiston, A Collection
of Authentick Records Belonging to the Old and New Testament (London, 1727),
1014–15.
24. Edward Young, Love of Fame, the Universal Passion (London, 1728), 103–4. The
copy of these poems at BL C.45.c.18 is annotated by Horace Walpole and iden-
tifies Charlotte Clayton as the subject here: see Antony Coleman, ‘Walpole’s
Annotations in a Copy of Love of Fame’, Notes and Queries (December 1979): 551–54
at 552. For fashionable orreries, see Alice Walters, ‘Conversation Pieces: Science
and Politeness in Eighteenth- Century England’, History of Science, 35 (1997):
121–54. For Young’s encounters with Whiston, see Pettit, ed., Correspondence of
Edward Young, 227 and 302.
25. William Whiston, Astronomical Principles, 91–93.
26. Ibid., 148–51. See Crowe, Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 31.
27. Whiston identifies himself with Abdiel and cites the lines from Paradise Lost
book 6 in Memoirs, 2 vols (London, 1753), 242. Compare Stephen D. Snobelen,
‘William Whiston, Isaac Newton and the Crisis of Publicity’, Studies in History
and Philosophy of Science, 35 (2004): 573–604.
28. Whiston, Memoirs, 34. The verse refers to St Peter’s miraculous cure of a lame
beggar at the Temple and his sermon to the Jewish worshippers there on the
prophetic return of Christ. Whiston would have seen an analogy with his own
prophetic lectures to metropolitan freethinkers.
29. Snobelen, Whiston, 98–99, 200 and tables 3.2 and 4.1. For Whiston’s collection of
Newton’s religious views see Sir Isaac Newton’s Corollaries from his Philosophy and
Chronology (London, 1729); for his concern about Pemberton’s silence on these
matters, see Whiston, Memoirs, 335.
30. For attacks on Whiston see Stewart, Rise of Public Science, 202–8; Eamonn Duffy,
‘Whiston’s Affair: The Trials of a Primitive Christian 1709–1714’, Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 27 (1976): 129–50; George Rousseau, ‘ “Wicked Whiston”
and the Scriblerians’, Studies in Eighteenth- Century Culture, 17 (1987): 17–44;
Stephen D. Snobelen, ‘Suffering for Primitive Christianity: William Whiston and
Toleration in Eighteenth- Century Britain’, in Miguel Benitez, James Dybikowski
and Gianni Paganini, eds, Scepticisme, clandestinité et libre pensée (Paris, 2002),
269–98.
31. John Beaumont, Historical, Physiological and Theological Treatise of Spirits (London,
1705); John Reynolds, Inquiries Concerning the State and Oeconomy of the Angelical
Worlds (London, 1723), 184–85.
 Newtonian Angels 119

32. Defoe, A Review, 7 (3 February 1711): 537–39.

33. Donald C. Baker, ‘The “Angel” of English Renaissance Literature’, Studies in the
Renaissance, 6 (1959): 85–93 at 90.
34. Francis Hutchinson, Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft (London, 1718),
260–61. For credit crises and literary production see Colin Nicholson, Writing
and the Rise of Finance: Capital Satires of the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge,
1994), 51–90; Patrick Brantlinger, Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain
1694–1994 (Ithaca, NY, 1996), 74–85.
35. A Review, 8 (17 May 1711): 94–95 is cited in Baine, Defoe and the Supernatural,
30. See Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences, 32–51 for the Newington Academy
and experimental philosophy; and Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English
Novel 1600–1740 (London, 1988), 83–87 on the circumstantiation of spirit nar-
ratives.
36. [Charles Gildon], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr D- de F- of London
(London, 1719), 8, 39. Thanks to Jo Poppleton for this reference. For Gildon’s
criticisms and the status of matters of fact in Newton and Defoe, see John
Bender, ‘Enlightenment Fiction and the Scientific Hypothesis’, Representations,
61 (Winter 1998): 6–28 at 10–12.
37. [Daniel Defoe], Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe with His Vision of the Angelick World (London, 1720), second pagi-
nation, 14. Compare Jeffrey Hopes, ‘Real and Imaginary Stories: Robinson Crusoe
and the Serious Reflections’, Eighteenth- century Fiction, 8 (1993): 313–28.
38. Baine, Defoe and the Supernatural, 15–29.
39. Defoe, Vision of the Angelick World, 26–31; The Political History of the Devil, as well
Ancient as Modern, pt 1 (London, 1726), 83; Essay on the History and Reality of
Apparitions (London, 1728), 53–54.
40. Fara, ‘Heavenly Bodies’, 149–50.
41. Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. Pat Rogers
(Harmondsworth, 1971), 377; History of the Principal Discoveries and Improvements
in the Several Arts and Sciences (London, 1727), 1, 79.
42. Defoe, Political History of the Devil, 79; Vision of the Angelick World, 32.
43. Defoe, Essay on History and Reality of Apparitions, 55–57; Political History of the
Devil, 48–51.
44. Defoe, Political History of the Devil, 78, 212–13; A System of Magick, (London,
1728), 327; Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions, 179. For Defoe on angels
as newsmongers see Baine, Daniel Defoe and the Supernatural, 24–25; for the
satiric purpose of these agents in Defoe, see P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, The
Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (New Haven, 1988), 149–50.
45. John Trenchard, Natural History of Superstition (London, 1709), 21. For Trenchard,
Defoe and the paper wars about credit, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian
Moment (Princeton, 1975), 432, 452–56, 466–74. For political intelligence sys-
tems see P. Fritz, ‘The Anti-Jacobite Intelligence System of the English Ministers’,
Historical Journal, 16 (1973): 265–89; for commercial intelligence systems and
early modern natural philosophy see Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge
(Cambridge, 2000), esp. ch. 7.
46. For Locke’s politics of covert information, see Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary
Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, 1986), 462–66, 54–48
and for interlinked interest in trade, credit and reliable knowledge in the Essay
and a comparison with Defoe on piracy and money, see Constantine Caffentzis,
Clipped Coins, Abused Words and Civil Government: John Locke’s Philosophy of Money
120 Simon Schaffer

(New York, 1989), 77–88: ‘it would not have been far wrong to entitle the book
An Essay concerning the understanding of gold’ (214 n.71). For Locke on commercial
and colonial policy see David Armitage, ‘John Locke, Carolina and Two Treatises
of Government’, Political Theory, 32 (2004): 602–27.
47. West, Milton and the Angels, 22, 29; John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education,
ed. J. W. Yolton and J. S. Yolton (Oxford, 1989), 245 and Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, 28th edn (London, 1838), 550 (IV.21.2).
48. Locke, Essay, 428 (IV.3.27) and 537 (IV.19.13).
49. Ibid., 89 (II.10.9) and 522 (IV.17.14). For Lockean mnemotechnics see Lucia
Dacome, ‘Noting the Mind: Commonplace Books and the Pursuit of Self in
Eighteenth- Century Britain’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 65 (2004); 603–25; for
satiric response, see Christopher Fox, Locke and the Scriblerians (Berkeley, 1988),
69–78.
50. Locke, Essay, 200–3 (II.23.12–13) and 211 (II.23.36). For the restoration of prelap-
sarian capacities through prosthetic instruments, see Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity
of Dogmatizing (London, 1661), 5; Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London, 1665),
preface. For more details, see the discussion by Nick Wilding in Chapter 4.
51. James Axtell, ‘Locke, Newton and the Elements of Natural Philosophy’, Paedagogica
Europaea, 1 (1965): 235–45; G. A. J. Rogers, ‘Locke’s Essay and Newton’s Principia’,
Journal of the History of Ideas, 39 (1978): 217–32. Newton’s Apocalypse diagram for
Locke at Bodleian Library Oxford, MS Locke c.27 f.88r has been transcribed by
Stephen Snobelen.
52. ‘Of the holy ghost his nature & his gifts’ and ‘Angeli boni & mali’, King’s College
Cambridge, Keynes MSS 2, fols XXV–XXVIII. For conversations with Locke
see Correspondence of Newton, 3: 79, 82; for long exchanges with Whiston, see
Whiston, Memoirs, 36.
53. ‘Idolatria’, King’s College Cambridge, Keynes MSS 2, fol. VI. For Newton’s anti-
idolatry in this passage see Rob Iliffe, ‘Those “Whose Business It Is to Cavil”:
Newton’s Anti- Catholicism’, in James Force and Richard Popkin, eds, Newton and
Religion (Dordrecht, 1999), 97–120 at 102. For Solomon as commercial and natu-
ral historical patron see Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (London, 1667),
408–9.
54. Isaac Newton, ‘De gravitatione’, in A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall, eds, Unpublished
Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1962), 142. For the date and mean-
ing of this passage see Dobbs, Janus Faces, 36.
55. Halley to Newton, 22 May 1686 and Newton to Halley, 20 June 1686, in
Correspondence of Newton, 3: 431, 439; the original words are in Newton to
Oldenburg, 7 December 1675, ibid., 1: 366.
56. Isaac Newton, The Principia, trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (Berkeley,
1999), 926. The printer’s manuscript first qualified this as a ‘fermental’ spirit,
thus linking it even more clearly with the agents of the 1670s: Koyré and Cohen,
eds, Principia Mathematica, 745n. See David Kubrin, ‘Newton and the Cyclical
Cosmos: Providence and the Mechanical Philosophy’, Journal of the History of
Ideas, 28 (1967): 325–46 at 335–36 and Sarah Schechner Genuth, Comets, Popular
Culture and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (Princeton, 1997), 138–45. For pro-
phetic and cometary predictions see W. E. Burns, ‘A Whig Apocalypse: Astrology,
Millenarianism and Politics in England during the Restoration Crisis, 1678–1683’,
in J. E. Force and R. H. Popkin, eds, Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern
European Culture: The Millenarian Turn (Dordrecht, 2001), 29–41 at 32–33.
57. Rob Iliffe, ‘ “Making a Shew”: Apocalyptic Hermeneutics and the Sociology of
Christian Idolatry in the Work of Isaac Newton and Henry More’, in Force and
 Newtonian Angels 121

Popkin, eds, Books of Nature and Scripture, 55–88 at 63–68 and 77–82, and Iliffe,
‘Newton’s anti- Catholicism’, 101–6.
58. ‘Rules for methodising [construing] the Apocalyps’, Jewish National Library,
Yahuda MS 1.1, fol.15r, reprinted in Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton
(Oxford, 1974), 121; Newton to Hooke, 5 February 1676, Correspondence of Newton,
1: 416: ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’. Newton’s copy of Joseph Mede’s
Works (London, 1672) is no. 1053 in John Harrison, The Library of Isaac Newton
(Cambridge, 1978).
59. The Works of the Pious and Profoundly Learned Joseph Mede, 3rd edn (London, 1672),
603–04 (on Revelation 20), and 812 (letter 51 to William Twisse, April 1635). For
Mede on the first resurrection, see Katharine Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in
Reformation Britain (Oxford, 1979), 221–28 and Jeffrey Jue, Heaven Upon Earth:
Joseph Mede and the Legacy of Millenarianism (Dordrecht, 2006), 113–15.
60. Henry Wilkinson, Babylons Ruine Jerusalems Rising (London, 1643), sig. A3 and p.
23, cited in Sarah Hutton, ‘The Appropriation of Joseph Mede: Millenarianism in
the 1640s’, in Force and Popkin, eds, Millenarian Turn, 1–13 at 3.
61. For Newton’s enforced prudence see Stephen D. Snobelen, ‘Isaac Newton, Heretic:
the Strategies of a Nicodemite’, British Journal for the History of Science, 32 (1999):
381–419 and for the importance of disciplinary order see Rob Iliffe, ‘Abstract
Considerations: Disciplines, Audiences and the Incoherence of Newton’s Natural
Philosophy’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 35 (2004); 21–48.
62. Paul Korshin, ‘Queuing and Waiting: The Apocalypse in England 1550–1750’,
in C. A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich, eds, The Apocalypse in English Renaissance
Thought and Literature (Manchester, 1984), 240–65 at 242–43; Sarah Hutton,
‘Henry More and the Apocalypse’, in Michael Wilks, ed., Prophecy and Eschatology
(Oxford, 1994), 131–40; Iliffe, ‘Making a Shew’, 57–63; Warren Johnston, ‘The
Anglican Apocalypse in Restoration England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55
(2004), 467–501 at 477–85.
63. Jewish National Library, Yahuda MS 1.3. prop. VIII, fols 10–11.
64. Stephen D. Snobelen, ‘Lust, Pride and Ambition: Isaac Newton and the Devil’, in
James Force and Sarah Hutton, eds, Newton and Newtonianism (Dordrecht, 2004),
155–82 at 160.
65. Jewish National Library, Yahuda MS 9.2, fols 138r–139r. See Manuel, Religion of
Isaac Newton, 100–1; Reiner Smolinski, ‘The Logic of Millennial Thought: Sir
Isaac Newton Among His Contemporaries’, in James Force and Richard Popkin,
eds, Newton and Religion (Dordrecht, 1999), 259–89 at 283–85; James Force, ‘The
God of Abraham and Isaac (Newton)’, in Force and Popkin, eds, Books of Nature
and Scripture, 179–200 at 185–86 and James Force, ‘Providence and Newton’s pan-
tokrator’, in Force and Hutton, eds, Newton and Newtonianism, 65–92 at 83–84.
66. Mede, Works, 614 and Henry More, An Antidote against Atheism (London, 1653),
147, 162. Newton’s copy of More’s Antidote, bound with his Platonic poems, is no.
1114 in Harrison, Library of Isaac Newton. The passage from Newton is at Jewish
National Library MS Yahuda 9.2 fol. 138.
67. Joseph Glanvill, Lux Orientalis (London, 1662), 151: see Robert Crocker, Henry
More (Dordrecht, 2003), 113.
68. Joseph Glanvill, A Philosophical Endeavour Towards the Defence of the Being of
Witches and Apparitions (London, 1666), 7–9 (my emphasis); the same expression
is used to the same end at pp. 42 and 44; this text was republished after Glanvill’s
death as Saducismus Triumphatus by Henry More in 1681. See McGuire, Tradition
and Innovation, 77, who agrees that Glanvill’s is a very early English use of the
notion of analogy of nature.
122 Simon Schaffer

69. Jewish National Library, Yahuda MS 9.2, fols 139r–140r.

70. ‘The synchronisms of the three parts of the prophetick interpretation’, Jewish
National Library MS Yahuda 6, fol. 19r, in Manuel, Religion of Isaac Newton,
135–36 (composed after 1700).
71. Locke, Essay, 509 (IV.16.12); Cambridge University Library, MSS Add 3970 fol.338
(composed early 1690s). See I. B. Cohen, ‘Hypotheses in Newton’s Philosophy’,
Physis, 8 (1966): 163–84; McGuire, Tradition and Innovation, 78, 197–98.
72. Jewish National Library MS Yahuda 15.6 fol.100v (draft History of the Church);
compare Snobelen, ‘Lust, Pride and Ambition’, 176.
73. Newton, Principia, 795. See Maurizio Mamiani, ‘The Rhetoric of Certainty:
Newton’s Method in Science and in the Interpretation of the Apocalypse’, in M.
Pera and W. R. Shea, eds, Persuading Science (Canton, 1991), 157–72 and McGuire,
Tradition and Innovation, 52–53.
74. Newton, Principia, 761, and Opticks, 368.
75. King’s College Cambridge, Keynes MS 130.11 fol. 1r, printed in Iliffe, Early
Biographies of Newton, 165–66; discussed in Kubrin, ‘Newton and the Cyclical
Cosmos’, 340–41, and James Force, ‘Newton’s Theocentric Cosmogony and
Hume’s Cometary Seeds’, in Robert Crocker, ed., Religion, Reason and Nature in
Early Modern Europe (Kluwer, 2001), 159–79 at 166–67.
76. William Whiston, A Collection of Authentick Records, 310 (on the Seven Heavens),
426 (on the Invisible World), and 1072 (against Newton’s active aether). A
Scheme of the Seven Heavens is bound with Whiston’s 1749 Memoirs in Cambridge
University Library 1.48.25: see Snobelen, ‘William Whiston’, fig. 3.22. Young
reports his prophetic conversation with Whiston in a letter to the Duchess of
Portland, 6 April 1746, in Correspondence of Young, 227 and on Whiston’s lectures
on Solomon’s Temple in June 1748 in ibid., 302.
77 James Barry, An Account of a Series of Pictures in the Great Room of the Society of Arts
(London, 1783), 40, 121. Compare William Pressly, The Life and Art of James Barry
(New Haven, 1981), 174, 295.
Part II
Magic
6
Speaking with Spirits in Medieval
Magic Texts
Sophie Page

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, learned magic texts of Arabic and
Jewish origin were translated into Latin, introducing new ideas about angels
to medieval Europe. Although the Christian Church accepted the existence
of invisible spirits, scholars were engaged in uneasy debates over their cor-
poreality, man’s ability to comprehend them and the nature of their influ-
ence in the sublunary world. The imported magic texts, on the other hand,
were full of tangible certainties. They gave angels names, attributes and
locations, revealing a vivified cosmos in which temporal divisions – the
hours, days, months and seasons – and physical elements – fire and the air,
winds, sea, stars and earth – were ruled over or personified by spirits. This
was a pragmatic cosmology: the attributes of a spirit told the magic operator
what purpose it would be useful for, its name gave him the power to speak to
it directly, and descriptions of the spirit’s relationship to the physical world
instructed him in the best materials and times for his operation. From the
thirteenth century, ecclesiastical authorities condemned learned magic texts
for encouraging interaction with demons rather than for presenting fraudu-
lent operations; that is, the authorities accepted that the spirits described
in the texts had real powers but classified them as demonic. This allowed
elaborate and alien hierarchies to be absorbed into the Christian cosmos.
For readers and operators of magic texts, however, it was always possible to
regard the angels and spirits of magic texts as good or neutral beings rather
than evil demons.
The learned magic texts in circulation in late medieval Europe contained
diverse approaches to speaking with spirits. Two significant traditions were
Hermetic and Solomonic magic.1 Hermetic texts belonged to Greco-Roman
and Arabic traditions of magic, and involved the invocation of celestial spir-
its and drawing down planetary spirits or forces into astrological images.2
This genre of magic, also called ‘astral magic’ to include works not specifi-
cally attributed to Hermes, incorporated a range of attitudes to spirits, from
supplicatory prayer to trapping them in matter.3 Solomonic magic texts
had Jewish origins or significant Jewish influences. They included prayers

125
126 Sophie Page

to angels but also allowed the compulsion of inferior spirits through their
exorcism by certain names and the use of magic circles, characters and sac-
rifices.4 Although a broad distinction between the two genres is useful, no
ritual element is unique to one group of texts; texts from both genres share
many ritual aspects, such as the petitioning of higher spirits to send lesser
spirits to assist the operator. Both traditions of magic frequently use the
ambiguous or neutral term ‘spiritus’, but the Christian emphasis on good
and evil sources of power led to different approaches to spirits in Christian
ritual magic texts written under the influence of Hermetic and Solomonic
magic. Ritual magic texts by Christian authors tended either to direct most
of their rituals to God and the angels (angelic magic, or theurgy) or to focus
particularly on summoning demons (demonic magic, or necromancy).5
Christian necromantic experiments to summon demons cite Solomon more
frequently than Hermes as the original operator or inventor of a ritual, and
angelic magic texts claim Solomon as the original recipient of the revelation
more often than Hermes. The influence of Hermetic magic can be seen,
however, in the attention to astrological timing and the celestial locations
and attributes of many spirits. Moreover, necromantic experiments were
collected with items of astral magic in compilations that reveal the popular-
ity of both genres.
This paper focuses on what was distinctive about rituals in learned magic
texts for speaking with spirits and explores the reasons for the appeal of
these rituals to medieval readers enthusiastic for spiritual experience. These
pragmatic texts showed how humans and spirits could interact and included
rituals tailored to the natures of particular spirits. Some rites purified the
operator to prepare for angelic conversation, and others protected him while
interacting with demons. I will argue that although magic texts treated con-
versations with spirits as instrumental actions to further the goals of the
operator (for example, offering him increased knowledge of the cosmos),
such conversations were also desirable for their own sake and provided pos-
sibilities of spiritual elevation, companionship, even friendship and love.
Magic texts consulted for this paper include all the main genres of learned
magic that involved interaction with spirits. Jewish magic, with its sig-
nificant angelogical tradition, is particularly important in this respect. It
reached a Latin audience primarily through the Liber Razielis, a compilation
of seven works of Jewish magic collected and translated under the patron-
age of Alfonso X, ‘El Sabio’, King of Castile (1252–84).6 The Liber Razielis is
associated with Solomon, but individual parts of it regularly cite Hermes,
and the compilation should be viewed as a synthesis of the two traditions.7
The seven magic texts circulated as a complete set but also individually, in
smaller groups and in a summarized version translated into many European
vernaculars.8 Although the preface cites a single Hebrew original for the
compilation, it is likely that the structure was partly a creation of Alfonso
himself and his translators, who appended nine works of magic to the
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 127

original seven.9 Five of the books of the Liber Razielis give instructions for
speaking with spirits: the Liber ale (book 2) on natural magic, the Liber tem-
porum (book 4) on angels associated with divisions of time, the Liber mun-
dicie et abstinentie (book 5) on ritual cleanliness and abstinence, the Liber
Sameyn (book 6) on the angels of the heavens, and the Liber magice (book 7)
on image magic.
Other works of ritual magic in circulation in the Latin West gave
prominence to rituals for speaking with spirits: the Almandal,10 a work of
Solomonic magic with instructions for invoking angels; the Liber iuratus,
a Christian work of angel magic attributed to Honorius of Thebes;11 and
the Liber de essentia spirituum12 and the Picatrix,13 both from the Arabic tra-
dition of astral magic. Conversations with demons were also appealing to
medieval readers. My examples of necromantic experiments to speak with
spirits are drawn from four fifteenth- century manuscripts, which contain
important collections of occult material: MS Wellcome 517, which has an
eclectic range of occult items, including magical, astrological, alchemical
and divinatory texts; MS Florence, Biblioteca Laurentiana, P. 89, sup. Cod.
38 and MS Edinburgh, University Library 121, which bring together necro-
mantic experiments and astral magic; and MS Oxford, Rawlinson D. 252,
which contains a more coherent set of necromantic rituals and prayers for
invoking spirits.14 This paper includes three necromantic experiments as
appendices to illustrate this genre, which has not received as much scholarly
attention as the major ritual magic texts.

The art of conversing with incorporeal, invisible beings

Conversations with spirits in magic texts are distinctive in two significant

ways. Firstly, the interaction is usually instigated by the magician through
ritual means rather than being spontaneous or granted by unsolicited
divine grace. The narrative prologues of some prominent magic texts and
genres such as the Ars notoria, Liber Razielis and Liber iuratus are arguably an
exception, since they describe how God sent an angel to reveal knowledge
of the magical art to a human. In the case of the Liber Razielis, however,
the main precipitating action for Adam’s reception of the magical book is
a prayer for mercy he offers God after he has been ejected from Paradise.
The prayer is reproduced in the magic text with the implication that it still
retains the instrumental qualities of a successful petition to God. The ritual
instigation of conversations with spirits in magic texts results in interesting
ritual solutions to the problem of how corporeal and visible nature can con-
verse and reason with incorporeal and invisible beings. A second significant
characteristic of speaking to spirits in magic texts is that the conversation
is instrumental and tends to take the form of either the instruction of the
operator by a spirit (usually an angel) or the interrogation of a spirit (usu-
ally a demon) by the magician.15 These two forms of communication are
128 Sophie Page

parallel to Christian narratives of the interaction between holy men and

angels (instruction) and exorcists and ghosts or demons (interrogation). In
magic texts, the primary aim of the operator conversing with a spirit is to
acquire knowledge. This essay therefore focuses on magical operations to
speak with (loquor cum) spirits, that is, rituals intended to produce instru-
mental conversations. Less attention will be paid to other common forms of
communication between men and spirits in magic texts such as invocation,
prayer and binding words, since these modes of speech were attempts to
gain power over a spirit rather than to have a spoken exchange.16
Conversations between spirits and men are founded on a problematic
imbalance: how can a corporeal and visible human converse and reason
with an incorporeal and invisible spirit? Magic texts suggest various ways
this difficulty can be resolved. Two primary methods were to increase the
purity of the operator (and hence detach him from corporeal things) or to
increase the impurity of spirits (and hence attach them to matter). A third
solution was to create a space or use a medium that was less attached to
earthly matter and therefore more amenable to spiritual beings.
Increasing the purity of the operator through ritual ablutions, sexual
abstinence and fasting was thought to attract the presence of angels and
even to adjust part of the soul so that it welcomed spirits or ascended to their
celestial level. In the Liber munditie et abstinentie Solomon is quoted as saying
that cleanliness is an attribute that makes a man holy and draws spirits to
him, encouraging them to become the companions of men and tell them
secrets.17 The operator is told that if he fulfils the requirements for internal
and external purity and acquires the necessary virtues, he will ascend to a
spiritual level that is separated from earthly things.18 Those who arrive at
this state are loved by angels, and consequently good spirits associate with
them.19 Many operations in this text, especially those involving commu-
nication with spirits, begin by prescribing a period in which the operator
must guard against such things as uncleanness, evil, wine, eating anything
with blood, feeling or expressing desire, touching someone or something
dead and speaking evil or unclean words. According to Jewish traditions,
human beings had to undergo lengthy rituals of purification in order to
meet with angels, especially on account of people’s physically offensive and
potentially polluting smell.20 Works of magic typically averted this problem
with lengthy suffumigations. In the magic text Almandel, the angel appears
to the operator after being invoked but only begins to speak when it smells
the suffumigations burnt in the holy Almandal (a wax tablet, table or altar).
In this text, like the Liber Razielis, an emphasis is placed on amicitia: the
angels of the second altitude depart with the words ‘I am the friend of you
and of yours’.21
An alternative to purifying the operator was to increase the impurity of
spirits. It was the usual practice in magic texts to invoke a higher spirit and
request that it sent a spirit or spirits under their command to the operator.
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 129

These lesser spirits were considered weaker and more corruptible by matter
and therefore more easily controlled. The operator used matter to bind and
dominate spirits, and even to deliberately pollute their celestial nature.22
In the Solomonic magic tradition, animals were killed to attract spirits
through the shedding of blood, a substance considered particularly entic-
ing to demons. A sacrificed animal’s body could itself form the binding
enclosure to draw the demon down and trap it. A necromancer and his
assistant were caught in 1323 attempting to summon the demon Berich to
recover money stolen from the Cistercian abbey of Sarcelles.23 They had
buried a black cat in a chest at a crossroads and were intending to use its
flayed skin to construct a magic circle to bind the demon. Angels were also
symbolically polluted and bound to matter through the ritual of inscribing
angelic names in animal blood (sometimes that of a sacrificed animal) on
the object or diagram used to draw them down and even imprison them.
In the Picatrix and several Hermetic magic texts, the operator is instructed
to sacrifice an animal appropriate to the planet invoked and to consume
some of the offering himself – usually the liver or heart – as part of the
ritual.24 The sharing of sacrificial meat bound spirits and humans together
and made their communication easier.
The rituals for purification and pollution were intended to place men and
spirits on a more equal footing, raising the operator to the level of angels or
making the spirits corrupted with terrestrial matter like man. In the Liber
de essentia spirituum, a magic text influenced by Neoplatonic ideas, inferior
spirits are said to possess passibilitas, or suffering akin to that of man impris-
oned in a corruptible body and world.25 This gave these spirits a weakness
that enabled the magician to imprison them in matter, but also, perhaps
surprisingly, it gave them a fellow sympathy that made them willing help-
ers in the ritual.26 The similitude of man and spirit created by magic ritu-
als formed a bridge across the physical barriers between species of being
and was often linked to the love and friendship of angels. Prayers to angels
requested not only that they appear before the operator and do his will but
that they be ‘true friends and associates’ (amici veri et socii).27 This amicitia
offers one answer to the question ‘Why would spirits want to converse with
men?’ Benign spirits are asked or expected to appear not just in human form
but as human companions. An experiment in the Liber Razielis which origi-
nates (via Hebrew sources) in a Greek prayer to Helios describes how to see
the Sun at night and ask him whatever you want.28 When the Sun appears
before him. the operator requests that ‘he speaks to me as a man with his
companion’.29
Finally, to facilitate communication, the operator could choose and manip-
ulate the medium in which the transfer of knowledge would take place. This
might have involved constructing a physical space with supernatural quali-
ties, such as a magic circle, or the ritual provocation of a state of being that
transcended corporeality, such as a dream or a vision.30 The magic circle
130 Sophie Page

was a demarcated area that constrained spirits within or outside it against

their usual freedom of movement. As a special space into which spirits
could descend, it was the spirit’s equivalent to human dreaming, a fragile
and ambiguous context for communication that was not firmly attached to
Heaven or Earth. The connecting bridge between Heaven and Earth could
take other forms. A fifteenth- century experiment to speak with a spirit
named Saxon (Appendix 1) that will be discussed in more detail later in this
paper uses an orthodox image – Jacob’s ladder – in the invocation.31 Many
magic texts, especially those deriving from the Arabic tradition, worked on
the basis of constructing such strong correspondences between Heaven and
Earth at a particular moment that all the elements of the operation – star,
herb, stone, spirit, word, character and intention – united in a congruence
that surpassed the metaphysical separation of the conversing beings.

Angelic instruction and the interrogation of demons

The purpose of conversing with angels was not simply the acquisition of
knowledge but the transformation of the operator; in some cases, it was
designed to explicitly raise him to the celestial realm. Magic texts suggested
various ways in which the operator could be transformed by his conversa-
tion with spirits. The author of the Liber de essentia spirituum claimed to
have lived with spirits in the desert for thirty years and through them to
have attained the ranks of the blessed and knowledge of the celestial hierar-
chies.32 But not all magic texts required such commitment from their opera-
tors. According to the Almandel, angels of the first altitude will render a
man perfect after he has spoken with them only once. From this time on,
he will have no need to fear eternal damnation or dying without the grace
of the saviour. In an expression of love for the human with whom they have
conversed, it is said that the angels will marvellously rejoice when such men
receive the grace of their Creator.33
The transformation of magic operators through their conversations with
angels has parallels with orthodox hagiography, in which conversation with
angels, typically a private and repeated occurrence, is a sign of the saint’s
future status in Heaven. Spiritual contacts also provided an explanation for
unusual knowledge and wisdom possessed by ancient pagan authors. The
twelfth- century scholar and translator Hermann of Carinthia cited Hermes
and Socrates as examples of patriarchs of the earliest age who had ‘daily
experience’ of celestial spirits which were ‘so familiar that they remained
with them and spoke to them’.34 The Liber magice associates holy individu-
als with spiritual companionship, attributing a story to Hermes in which a
hermit who studied, contemplated and prayed to the Creator for a long time
was rewarded with his own guardian angel (proprius spiritus) and a revela-
tion of the science of images.35 The Irish saints Colomba and Patrick were
said to speak frequently with particular angels, respectively named Axal and
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 131

Victor, with whom they had personal relationships.36 Their conversations

were similar to those described and sought in magic rituals in that they
depended upon a similitude between the human and spiritual speakers –
Victor speaks to Patrick like one human to another.37 Moreover, the angels
revealed secrets normally hidden to man. Shortly before Columba’s death,
his seventh- century biographer Adomnán reported that he was heard to
sing new spiritual songs, he suddenly possessed knowledge of many things
about the past and future hidden since the beginning of the world, and he
understood obscurities in the sacred scripture.38
In general, angels provided knowledge through revelation and teaching
while other spirits, especially demons and the dead, were interrogated for
their knowledge. The distinction between the two modes of communication
could be slight, however, since both involved instrumental rituals and pur-
poseful conversations. According to the Liber Razielis each new owner and
operator had to acquire his own angelic teacher in order to understand how
to use the book.39 This angelic instruction was a repetition of the conversa-
tion between man and angel which opened the book, when the angel Raziel
descended to earth with a divine mandate to give it to Adam and explain its
powers. To acquire his angelic teacher, the operator undertook seven days of
ritual purification, then sacrificed two white doves and invoked the angels
assigned to the appropriate month. Three days later, he was instructed to
sleep in the ashes of the burnt intestines of the doves inside a house deco-
rated with burning candles.40 Angels would then visit him in the night and
teach him how to perform the magical operations.41
An almost identical ritual, with seven days of purification, the sacrifice
of two white doves and the preparation of a space for receiving spirits, is
found in the third chapter of the Liber temporum.42 But here, instead of the
angelic teachers, a more ambiguous spirit in the form of a venerable man
visits the operator who is told he can interrogate the spirit about anything
he wishes to know.43 The adaptability of rituals to different relationships
with supernatural beings and new, arguably less pious, goals, is also typical
of Christian ritual magic texts. The Liber iuratus offers the means for the
corporeal and visible operator to speak, reason with and be instructed by
incorporeal and invisible beings.44 Although the main set of rituals in this
text is intended to give the operator a beatific vision of God, the prayers can
also be adapted to compel spirits to come, respond, stay, retire and obey.45
Demonic as well as angelic tutors can be found in medieval magic texts.
The master of all sciences and arts summoned in an experiment attributed
to Michael Scot is a demon who gives the operator lessons for thirty nights
in his sleep.46 In this experiment, there are some hints of the amicitia that
was desirable from angels. The three higher demons who are invoked to
supply the teacher appear to the operator as kings and are described as his
associates (socii), while the spirit teacher is asked to chastise him gently
and teach him with love.47 Nevertheless, the relationship between master
132 Sophie Page

and pupil is full of the restraints typically imposed upon dangerous and
deceitful demons: the spirit can be summoned or dismissed at the opera-
tor’s desire and will only be freed from the binding relationship once he has
completed his work.
Different rules governed the magic operator’s actions according to which
kind of spirit was being invoked and its place in the angelic or demonic
hierarchy. The Liber iuratus warns the operator not to look at or speak to the
angels he has summoned until they have spoken first and addressed him as
a friend (‘Amice, quid petis?’). The operator replies that he seeks peace and
their friendship (‘Pacem et amiciciam vestram’), and if he has been correctly
purified, they will respond favourably and answer all his questions.48 A nec-
romantic experiment in MS Wellcome 517 (Appendix 2) describes how to
make a magic ring from a stone that has been painted with a man’s face.49
In the course of making the ring, the operator is instructed to stay overnight
in an uninhabited house. He is permitted to watch angels playing with the
ring but not to speak with them. Afterwards, he can use the ring to interro-
gate the demon inhabiting a possessed person, but he has to question other,
presumably more dangerous, spirits indirectly through the medium of a boy
of five or six who sits with him in a magic circle.50
According to the Liber Sameyn there were seven species of supernatural
being to which the magic operator could speak: angels, spirits of the air, the
souls of the dead, the winds, demons, shades of the waters and phantoms.51
All these supernatural beings were summoned through the invocation of
the angels of the fifth altitude and their ruler Ascymor, who could also be
invoked to speak to the moon and the stars.52 Although the rituals are simi-
lar, the operator behaved differently according to whether he was address-
ing a celestial body, the soul of a dead person or a demon. The moon and
stars are treated with reverence: the operator sacrifices a white cock in their
honour, then mixes its blood with flour and water and bakes a kind of bread
(torta) with it.53 Three pieces of the bread are then inscribed with the names
of the angels of the fifth altitude and laid out on a table under the moon and
stars to be infused with their power. The operator makes his conjuration,
asking the moon and stars to fill two people with love and passion for each
other. At the end of the ritual, two of the pieces of bread are put in a jar and
buried, but he may use the third for himself to have grace and love from all
men. The operator’s attitude to the celestial bodies in this ritual and the pre-
viously mentioned operation to speak to the sun is one of mixed deference
and command. After the operator has compelled the Sun to appear before
him during the day, the operator is told to interrogate it about whatever he
wishes to know.54 But its appearance when summoned at night is rather
more terrifying: the operator will hear a voice like thunder from the north-
ern part and see what appear to be flashes illuminating the earth before
him. He is told to incline his body until he is lying face down on the earth
and from this submissive position recite his prayer to the Sun.55
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 133

The experiments relating to Ascymor continue with a ritual to speak with

a dead person (mortuus) in which the operator puts a card (carta) inscribed
with the names of the angels of the fifth altitude on the tomb of the person
he wishes to raise from the dead. Bearing a new jar containing oil mixed with
honey, the operator invokes the assistance of the spirit Thozynarudya, ‘who
sits in the tomb over the bones of the dead’ (qui sedes in sepulcris super ossa
mortuorum). The operator demands that the dead person appear before him
and answer all his questions truthfully without contradiction or attempting
to frighten the magician. Since the dead person will be reluctant to come,
the magic operator may have to conjure him two or three times until the
earth opens and he emerges. The vase is placed before the risen dead, and
the operator is warned to carry a staff, presumably to protect himself if
things go wrong.56 When the interrogation is finished, he empties the vase
and thereby banishes the dead person back to his tomb.
The operator who wishes to speak to demons must go to a place where
people have been killed. Here he recites the names of four demons and con-
jures them by the power of the angels of the fifth altitude. The demons are
commanded to send the spirit Agargayroth to enter his service. This spirit
will then appear before him in the likeness of a column. In this operation,
the binding of the spirit is particularly severe. Agargayroth is said to be the
operator’s captive and prisoner (captus et captivus), and he must be prepared
to answer the operator’s questions at any time. The conjunction of uses for
which Ascymor and his angels can be invoked – to cause love and to speak
with spirits – is not surprising. Rituals to bind a spirit to the operator in order
to have a purposeful conversation are related to those which were intended
to bind a person to love him. This is not the amicitia or bonus amor sought in
angelic magic, but rather the instigation of obsessive desire and submission
to the operator’s will.57 The aim was to bind the spirit (or woman) so com-
pletely to the will of the operator that it would do whatever he wanted.
The demons and spirits of necromantic experiments had to be managed
carefully, and lengthy adjurations of the names of Christ or angels were
intended to force demons to be compliant and truthful when summoned for
an interrogation.58 The spirits of the earth are said by the Liber iuratus to be
so full of wickedness and depravity that the operator is advised to write his
request on a tile with a piece of charcoal and then leave it inside the magic
circle rather than risk speaking to them directly.59 Although demons are
more likely to be inimici than socii, there are some exceptions to this rule.
The experiment for speaking to the spirit Saxon (Appendix 1) summons him
by the power of the operator’s own personal demon (privatus demon), who is
said to be Saxon’s associate (tuo socio). In the Rawlinson manuscript, a short
experiment to gain a demon privatus gives this spirit the role of tutor, which
is normally associated with angels and emphasises that it will respond truth-
fully to questions.60 These two experiments drew on the classical concept of
a ‘familiar daemon’, with its positive or neutral connotations.
134 Sophie Page

Medieval writers sometimes speculated on friendly relations between men

and demons, particularly in the context of the devoted demonic servant.
Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum (1220–35) was a work for
novices that aimed to produce monks who were experts in the nature of the
Devil so they could combat him and gain mastery over their own spiritual
experiences. The Dialogus presents a wide spectrum of demonic behaviour
that is sometimes ambiguous, in spite of its repeated assertion that demons
are the enemies of mankind. Caesarius’s demons offer humans friendship,
are capable of compassion and repentance, and sometimes perform admira-
ble actions in service to a knightly master.61 One demon saves the life of his
master’s wife by fetching lion’s milk from Arabia to cure her; another trans-
ports his master to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. When asked why he would
choose to serve a man, a demon servant responds that it is a great consola-
tion to be with the sons of men.62 Demonic servants were also thought to
give their masters access to unusually extensive knowledge. Jean Froissart’s
Chronicle relates how Raymond, Lord of Corresse, received a constant bul-
letin of events across Europe from his familiar spirit Orton, who is described
as his servant and a friend.63 In the late fourteenth century, however, the
ambiguity of demons came under attack. One of the articles in the 1398
condemnation of magic by the faculty of theology at Paris declared that it
was an error to believe that some demons were good, some benign, some
omniscient and some neither saved nor damned; another ruled that to seek
the intimacy and friendship of demons was wrong.64
Cautionary narratives of interaction with demons suggested that these
caused very different transformations in the human participant to conver-
sations with angels. As well as lessening the chances of their souls ascend-
ing to Heaven, the bodies of humans who had spoken to demons never
recovered from the experience and often succumbed to death very quickly.
Caesarius of Heisterbach told the story of a knight called Henry, who, doubt-
ing the existence of demons, urges a necromancer named Philip to sum-
mon some for him.65 When a demon arrives in the form of a foul human
shadow higher than the tops of the trees, he claims to be a good friend of
the necromancer. Henry’s questions to the demon show his curiosity about
the hidden world of spirits: Where was the demon when he was called? Why
does he want Henry to give him a cock? Where does his knowledge come
from? The knight is not a skilled interlocutor like the necromancer, how-
ever, and the demon soon assumes control of the conversation and starts
to make requests that are intended to trick the knight into falling into his
power. Although Henry is wise enough to refuse these, he escapes from the
demon only after the necromancer has intervened, and for the rest of his
life his appearance is deathly pale, even though the experience prompts
him to reform his behaviour.66 The difficulty of keeping control of the con-
versation with demons is also illustrated by Gerald of Wales’s story of the
Welshman Meiyr, who went mad following intercourse with a demon that
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 135

had taken the form of a beautiful girl.67 He was cured by the saintly men
of St David’s church but retained the ability to see and communicate with
unclean spirits. Because of their superior knowledge, he could identify sin-
ful men and incorrect books, and he gained some truthful knowledge of the
future. Yet in exchange for these heightened perceptions, he was terribly
harassed by the demons and eventually tricked by them into a false belief
in his own safety, which led to his death.
Medieval literature is full of vivid descriptions of the rewards and dangers
of conversations with spirits. Magic rituals to speak with spirits were appeal-
ing because they could be performed by any reader with the means and the
audacity, and also because there were distinct rituals particular to the spirit,
either persuading an angel of the practitioner’s piety or protecting him from
the assaults of demons.

The Familiar Spirit and the Guardian Angel

The spirits summoned by a magic operator were thought to reveal a marvellous

realm of hidden knowledge that compensated for the risks involved. When the
spirit Saxon appears, it asks, ‘What do you want and what are you asking for?’
The operator can respond with whatever he likes, and all the secrets of the
world will be immediately revealed to him. Another possible route for the con-
versation to take is revealed by a list of eighteen questions the operator should
ask the spirit, according to a short text in a necromantic handbook:68

When the spiryt is apperyd

1. What is thy name? Undyr what status and what dygnite hast thou?
2. What is thy powyr et thy offyse?
3. Undyr what planet et syng art thou?
4. Of what parte arte thow of ye world?
5. Of whych element art thow?
6. Q<uestio> Whych is thy monyth?
7. What is thy day et thyn owyr?
8. What is thyn howre, day or nyght?
9. Q<uestio> Wysch is thy wynde?
10. What be thy cara<c>te<re>s that thow obeyst to?
11. Q<uestio> Wysch is thy mansion et thy day?
12. Q<uestio> Wysch is thy sterre?
13. Q<uestio> Wysch is thy stone?
14. Whych is thyn erbe?
15. What is thyn offyse to do?
16. What is thy metale?
17. What is thyn aungellys name that thow moste obeyst to?
18. And in what lyknes aperyst thow? How many commyst thow
with all?
136 Sophie Page

The manuscript in which this list appears is dominated by Christian

prayers containing orthodox adjurations. It reveals the influence of the
hermetic viewpoint that to persuade or gain power over a spirit required
knowledge of its place in the cosmos. Although the compiler of the magic
experiments was confident in the power of his Christian formulas to
bring a spirit to him, he used the conversation to gain more concrete
power over it, perhaps in order to summon it at will. Since Christian writ-
ers accepted a cosmos of vast numbers of spirits but rarely assigned them
specific names, locations or attributes, acquiring these details was use-
ful. But the list also reveals curiosity about the cosmos and the spirit’s
place in it.
Since spirits could warn the operator of future mishaps as well as reveal
all the secrets of the cosmos, it was desirable to be able to summon them
frequently. Rituals to persuade or compel a spirit to become personally
attached to the operator take the form of short experiments and lengthy,
complex rituals. Short experiments tend to involve simply binding the spirit
to the operator or enclosing it in an object so that its advice is readily avail-
able. An experiment in Wellcome MS 517 (Appendix 3) gives instructions
for enclosing a spirit called Cherubin in a ring so that it will be on hand
to safeguard the operator from future accidents, warn him of future events
and answer all of his questions.69 When the spirit appears before him, the
operator must interrogate it without trembling and with a firm soul, and
we are told that a certain Elenchorius has been successful in enclosing this
spirit. It was even easier to acquire a demonic companion, unlikely as it
may seem for this to be desirable. The Liber ale notes that to make a demon
follow the operator around on a permanent basis and tell him many things
he has to kill a hoopoe while invoking demons in a deserted place where
there are no sounds of cocks or dogs and where wheat does not grow. Then
he carries half of the bird’s blood with him and anoints himself with the
other half.70
The fifteenth- century Halle manuscript contains a complete copy of the
Alfonsine Liber Razielis and its nine appendices, including texts describing
how to acquire various types of personal spirits: the demonic servant and
angelic instructor discussed above and also the rarer familiar spirit (spiri-
tus familiaris) and the more orthodox guardian angel (proprius angelus). The
manuscript is full of stories of exemplary men who had their own personal
spirits that increased their wisdom and elevated their status. Solomon’s
spiritual instructor was said to have been a benign angel called Natael (or
Natanael) who was the king’s constant companion,71 and the ‘masters’ of
previous Biblical figures are revealed: Adam’s master was the angel Raziel,
Noah’s was Gabriel and Moses’s was Trazo.72 The Liber Razielis associates
holy men with angelic conversations, prophets with making the dead speak,
and philosophers with getting responses from demons.73 This leaves the
familiar spirit as the ideal companion for a magician. Indeed, the Picatrix
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 137

places spiritual companionship at the very origins of magic, stating that

the founder of this art, Caraphzebiz, was the first to have a familiar spirit
who performed marvels for him and helped him understand the secrets of
nature and the sciences.74
The Liber Theysolius, a magic text devoted to acquiring a familiar spirit,
was appended to the Liber Razielis by Alfonso’s scriptorium.75 This work
places the acquisition of a familiar spirit in the tradition of the ancient
prophets and potentates of Egypt, India and Arabia, who are said to have
invoked their familiars to tell them about the future and answer all their
questions.76 Ascymor appears again in this text as a kind of tutelary angel
for speaking with spirits, and he and his army are invoked in many of
the operations. In the Liber Theysolius the spiritus familiaris carries con-
notations of famulus, or slave, because of the operator’s complete control
over the spirit; but the word familiaris suggests more strongly the sense of
a friendly intimate. The familiar spirit can take the likeness of a human
known to the operator (a good person or a murderer, depending on his
purpose) or any bird, beast, reptile or fish for which he can provide a dead
body.
After he has chosen the human or animal form to vivify,77 the operator
is told to undergo various ablutions and recite the names of the army of
Ascymor on particular lunar days. If he desires a familiar spirit in human
form (this is assumed to be the usual practice), he goes to the tomb of the
chosen person and divides three loaves into three parts in the name of the
father, the mother and the dead person he intends to vivify.78 Following
this offering, which resembles the bread rituals discussed earlier, the dead
person is commanded to rise again to life in a series of conjurations, which
order it to take the form it possessed when living and to be healthy, pleas-
ant, gentle and possessed of amenable love (bono amore) and good will.79
Some conjurations are addressed to spirits rather than the dead person, ask-
ing that they implant a creative ‘virtue’ or life force in the body. When
petitioning the spirits, the operator is more conciliatory, in keeping with the
different attitude the operator usually adopts when speaking to the angels
(or superior spirits), demons (or inferior spirits) or the dead.80 When the
text provides a ritual to retain the familiar spirit (that is, the vivified dead
body), it is intended to make the spirit fear the operator and therefore do
his will.81
Alongside the main set of rituals, the Liber Theysolius offers many words
of advice for seeing and speaking to spirits of all kinds: angels, demons, the
spirits of animals and the guardian angels of men and women. This scientia
spirituum, which we might translate as ‘the art of interacting with spirits’,
consists both in what the operator needs to know about spirits (their names,
locations, attributes and how to address them) and how he should prepare
himself for the interaction, for example through study and by cultivating
virtue and abstemiousness. This last quality is important because among
138 Sophie Page

the many impediments that can prevent spirits from approaching and
speaking to a man are the wantonness and frivolity of youths, the ponder-
ousness of old men, and stupidity, deformity, dirtiness and disobedience.82
In the Liber Theysolius a closer relationship with spirits is a goal in itself, and
interaction with the world of spirits is presented as an exciting and a com-
forting activity: sometimes those who want to speak to spirits are seeking
solace in them.83 Speaking to spirits is possible for any willing student of
the sciencia spirituum. Although some men achieve communion with spirits
through their holiness, others can do it through the strength of knowledge
and words (propter vigorem scientie et verborum).84 Moreover, the more one
studies spirits, the easier it is to get to know them, and the greater love there
will be between men and spirits.85
The most important relationship for the magic operator is with his own
spirit (that is, the spirit personally attached to him) because he will only suc-
ceed in performing magical operations if it can help him.86 In general, the
spirits of men and women are most helpful to the magic operator because
they are mankind’s closest neighbours (magis noster convicinus).87 The Liber
Theysolius offers a solution to the problem of the metaphysical distance
between humans and spirits by suggesting that the operator work his way
through the networks of spirits in familiar environments, graduating to
those that are increasingly alien to his experience. Thus, the text advises
the operator to first acquire companions and neighbours (consocii et vicini)
among the terrestrial spirits, then one of his acquaintances will introduce
him to a spirit of the air. From the spirit of the air, he can get to know a
spirit of the sky; through this relationship, he may meet a spirit of the sea
and thence a spirit of the lower world. This section ends with a comment
on what a truly remarkable, rich and precious thing the acquaintance of a
spirit is.88
The personal spirit of the Liber Theysolius has similarities with the Christian
guardian angel. According to the magic text, every person had a spirit per-
sonally attached to them who would offer assistance if the relationship were
cultivated appropriately. Christian theology also accepted that every living
thing had its own spirit, and the later Middle Ages saw the flourishing cult
of guardian angels, spirits that were seen as personal mediators between
individual souls and their Creator. As Bernard of Clairvaux eloquently
expressed it ‘[God] has given his angels charge of you to guide you in all
your ways, in all your needs, in all your longings. Otherwise you would run
headlong into the ways of death’.89 The custodial role of guardian angels
led necromancers to seek their protection when they summoned danger-
ous spirits. In the necromantic experiment attributed to Michael Scot, the
operator is advised to petition God for a guardian angel (angelus tutela) who
will protect him, help him complete the magical operation and give him
power over other spirits. Similarly, MS Oxford Rawlinson D 252 contains a
prayer to a guardian angel, asking for its assistance in exorcising, conjuring,
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 139

adjuring and constraining an evil angel (perversus angelus).90 In the course of

this set of prayers, the evil angel is also addressed (ut sis obediens tu perverse
angele) and commanded to obey the operator.91
Although the existence of guardian angels was not questioned, that so
many prayers to them survive in medieval manuscripts suggests that many
people were anxious to secure or be certain of their assistance to the soul.92
Magic texts attempted to resolve this insecurity by describing rituals to
ensure the guardian angel’s favour and to induce it to be more imminent
and loquacious with the soul in its charge. It was a general function of magic
texts to make the inhabitants of the cosmos more perceptible, and, being
the spirits most likely to take a personal interest in humans, guardian angels
were very attractive for instrumental conversations. Orthodox prayers to
guardian angels sometimes request knowledge of the petitioner’s time of
death93 or of his salvation and the glories of Heaven.94 A fifteenth- century
prayer even asks the petitioner’s angel to appear to him and teach him.95 But
these dialogues are initiated to keep the petitioner’s mind focused on the
fate of his soul, and the prayers are supplicatory in tone.
The Halle manuscript contains a text entitled the Epistola Jeroboam heremite
ad Nab filium suum de proprio angelo which gives a ritual for anyone wishing
to acquire a holy angel to watch over his life and soul.96 The operator should
fast on bread and water for three days, concluding on his birthday. When he
has received confession and is clean, contrite, cleanly dressed and washed
and has a well-intentioned heart, he is ready to implore the grace and mercy
of God. On the third day, he should go alone and in secret to a church to
invoke his guardian angel. He must salute the angel seven times, recite the
Paternoster, the Ave Maria and the Creed, and pray to God, ‘who gave every
body a prompt and true spirit to guard and defend him from all illusions
and incursions of unclean spirits’.97 The operator addresses God with hum-
ble supplication: he entreats him (humiliter deprecator) or is humbly beseech-
ing (humiliter implorando), but his language changes when he begins to speak
directly to the angel.98 Now the operator demands (suppliciter deposco) that
his angel give him a true response, help him in everything he desires and be
benevolent when he is judged before God. These (supplicatory) commands
to the angel reveal that the text is well placed in a compilation of magic
texts. It includes many orthodox elements, but the increased instrumental-
ity of the ritual is apparent in the tone of the conjuration, the use of specific
empowering actions (gesture, location, prayer, invocation by name) and a
magical emphasis on secrecy.
The text then describes the angel’s response if the operator’s prayers are
successful:

If the angel speaks to you, that is if you are pure and have sincerely
confessed, his light will surround you like a wind of blown dew and he
will say: ‘I am he who in the sight of God, am a guardian angel (spiritus
140 Sophie Page

assisto), and I will never leave you or depart from your body unless you
wish me to’.99

The operator is told how to communicate with the spirit – by turning in

different directions until he can hear him – and he will even be able to
summon the angel when others want to have a conversation (colloquium)
with it.100 The text ends with two comments. First, the operator is reassured
that the angel will continue to guard his body from all harm and that it will
occupy his soul in the presence of God.101 This is the orthodox function of
the guardian angel, although here the emphasis is on the certainty of its
support. Second, the operator is told that once he has performed the ritual
in a consecrated place, he will be able to repeat it in any secret and clean
location. This emphasises the ability of the operator to call his angel when-
ever he needs it and perhaps even enable others to acquire their own guard-
ian spirits.102 As we have seen above, magic rituals were often considered
adaptable, either to different goals or to repetition with less complex rituals.
The flexibility of magic texts was part of their approach, providing practical
means for their users to manipulate the cosmos and its inhabitants.

Conclusion

Magic operators performed rituals to speak with spirits when they sought
knowledge, rather than when they needed help to perform an action. There
were other potential benefits, however. Conversations with some spirits were
thought to elevate the operator’s soul, and in other cases the body received
protection through the forewarning of future accidents or a stronger bond
with a guardian angel. All spirits were thought to have access to secrets
beyond human understanding or reach, and sometimes the operator’s curi-
osity was directed at the spirit themselves, as shown in Caesarius’s narrative
of the knight Henry and the list of questions to ask a spirit recorded in a
necromantic manual. Above all, conversations with spirits were desirable
for their own sake. This is most apparent in the Liber Theysolius, but it is
implicit in the emotional language used in many rituals to speak with spir-
its. Operators sought the love and friendship of powerful angels as well as
the obedience and even companionship of demons. Although the operator
may have been frightened by the potential for demonic hatred or malice,
these are not the emotions he himself shows towards them; and since he
commands the demons to appear in attractive forms and speak truthfully, he
tries to force them to at least play the part of the amenable correspondent.
In the late Middle Ages, there was a new openness to spiritual experience,
consisting of a new conceptual category of divine possession and a growth
in mystical technologies to achieve communion with the divine and the
elevation of the soul.103 Pious men and women could undergo incorporation
and inhabitation with the divine, though all were thought to be vulnerable
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 141

to possession by the Devil, even through the accident of a misjudged action

or wish.104 The personal, even internal, encounter with spirits claimed by
some religious had a broader parallel in lay society in the flourishing cult
of guardian angels. The late medieval enthusiasm for spiritual experience
was monitored closely by the ecclesiastical authorities, however, and the
proposition that the magical arts could achieve a vision of holy spirits was
condemned by the faculty of theology at Paris in 1398.105 Magic rituals to
speak to spirits belong to this culture of longing for spiritual experience and
uncertainty of its possibilities, dangers and orthodoxy. In general, magic
texts presented certainties about the nature of the cosmos and spirits, but
when operators sought the friendship, love and obedience of spirits their
rituals ventured into uncertain realms of emotion.

Appendices106

1. Experiment to speak with a spirit called Saxon (MS Edinburgh, University

Library 121, s.xv, ff. 95v-96v)107
Si vis cum spiritu loqui qui vocatur Saxon fac sic: ieiunes die pasce vel pen-
tecosti vel Johannis Baptiste usque ad noctem et tunc comedas et vadas ad
unam cameram et fac istos karacteres super lapidem marmoreum cum san-
guine ale columbe vel galline nigre sicut habetur in presenti figura. Totum
fac cum dictis sanguinibus. Postea circumvade vii vicibus lapidem qui sic
cum kara<cteribus> scriptus fuerit. Et habeas tecum candelam de cera vir-
ginea. Et scribe in candelam ista nomina cum sanguine antedicto: Sadaye,
Dymah, Lexqueh. Postea incende candelam et mitte in medio circuli. Et
habeatur foramen in medio ubi stet candela et dicas istam coniuracionem:
‘Coniuro te Saxon per fidem quam debes socio tuo, privato demoni, per
illum creatorem qui te plasmavit et omnia creavit. Et per scalam quam
vidit Jacob angelos ascendentes et descendentes et per Sanctum Johannem
cui su<n>t omnia secreta celestia revelata. Et per omnes apostolos, mar-
tires, virgines et populum cristianum, et per omnes magistros viros qui
fecerunt mirabilia in illo mundo, quod tu venias velociter sine ulla mora.
Et non venias cum tonitru nec cum voce magna nec cum deformitate sed
cum humana forma sicut consuevisti. Coniuro te Saxon quod tu venias
per illa nomina: / f.96 / Famobah, Sabicach, Distox, quod tu sine mora
facias’.
Tunc ille spiritus statim veniet cum forma humana ut pulcer homo sicut
umquam vidisti et dicet tibi ‘Quid vis et quid petis’. Responde tunc quid
tu volueris. Et dicet tibi omnia secreta mundi statim. Et affert tibi thezau-
rum absco<n>ditum et lapides preciosos ad invisibilitatem meliores, qui in
mundo inveniri possunt, virgines et mulieres et quicquid volueris. Et faciet
tibi discordiam ad voluntatem tuam et alia multa. Et quando facis istud
experimentum caveas quod nullus ad cameram nisi tu solus, nec te videant
intrare cameram. Et quando vis quod recedat ille spiritus dicas sibi ter:
142 Sophie Page

‘Recede in pace hoc praecipio tibi per istum qui te eiecit de throno alt-
issimo et malum nec scandalum michi facias’. Et non habeas in camera
penes te ensem neque gladium’.

2. Experimentum mirabilem (MS Wellcome 517, s.xv, ff.81–81v)

Quicumque voluerit experimentum mirabile complere querat lapidem in
quo depictus sit vultum hominis masculi et accipe argentum et inde fac
annulum in nomine eius qui experimentum voluerit operari. Facto annulo
habeas domum ubi nullus habitet et habeas manutergium album et men-
sam et de super pone manutergium et anulum et oblationem panis et vas
plenum optimo vino et 2 ca<n>delas ardentes et per 3 noctes facias et in
crepusculo vero noctis intra solus hanc domum hec dicens.
‘Veni cum pace ad visitandum istam domum’. Supra annulum invoca hec
7 nomina: ian, disparreffua, dardaneus, effreinel, sarbuniel, gatintya, pan-
zarenus. Hiis itaque dictis, redi ad lectum nichil loquendo et non signes te et
iaces <s>upra / 81v / latus dextrum. Sic facias per 3 noctes. Tertia nocte vide
beatus spiritus ingredientes. Cave bene ne loqueri eis, videbis itaque allu-
dere et deportare anulum. Tu vero redi mane cum redieris invenies anulum
ibi dimissus fuit. Tunc accipe anulum et reserva in aliquo mundissimo loco
involutum in purpura et hec sunt virtutes anuli:
Pone ipsum in digito medio sinistre manus et quicquid petieris non nega-
bitur tibi et si ex eo aliquem vel aliquam tetigeris super omnia amabit te et
si ipsum anulum in ore habueris statim eri<s> invisibilis et pone in digitum
demoniaci et demon docebit te quecumque volueris interrogare. Si ad col-
lum demoniaci suspendatur, statim deliberatur infirmus.
Quando volueris operari accipe puerum 5 annorum vel 6, balneatum
et albis vestibus indutum et facias circulum ad modum istius <character>.
Sede intus cum puero et mitte annulum in digito eius et invoca coniu-
raciones predictas. Cum venerit spiritus querat puer quicquid vult velit
commedere et bibere et aurum et argentum et vestes splendidas et lapi-
des preciosas vel aliquid tale. Postquam feceris que petieris precipiat puer
eis ut recedant. Tu vero fac crucem <cross > in fronte pueri et recedent
quocumque voluerit puer. Cum aut<em> hoc facere volueris videas ut
sis balneatus et habeas vestes lotas et vide ne aliquis sciat operationem
tuam.

3. Ad includendum spiritum qui vocatur Cherubin (MS Wellcome 517, s.xv,

f.83v)
Ad includendum spiritum qui vocatur Cherubin accipe anulum argen-
teum vel firmaculum vel cristallum et vade ad quadrivium ante ortum solis
vel post solis occasum, habens gladium in manu tua novitur vibratum cum
ista scriptura de encausto vallatum:
‘Ihesus Nazarenus rex iudeorum qui talia agit’. Dic Pater noster et Ave
maria et Credo et ‘In manus tuas Domine’.
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 143

Postea dices: ‘Coniuro Egipia, Benakin, Beauke, Abaukat’, Tradasyn,

Bynglasyn, Elethenonfison, Diascolon, ut mihi includatus in isto anulo fir-
maculo, argenteo, vel cristallo spiritum qui vocatur Cherubin ut me premu-
niat de futuris contingentibus bonis et malis, in angustia et in fortunis, de
futuris inveniendis et de omnibus questionibus’.
Postea verte faciem versus orientem dicens : ‘In nomine patris et filii
et Spiritus Sancti Amen’. Tunc tange anulum argenteum cum spiritu tuo
dicens, ‘Propter honorem vibracionis loquiter spiritus in predictis, tu qui
spiritum Cherubin includis’, sic facies per 3 vicies ante ortum solis vel post
occasum solis, semper habens gladium in manu tua noviter vibratum et
cum Ihesu Nazarene vallatum post, tertiam ammonitionem (?), et tertiam
noctem spiritus vult apparere et ad omnia interrogata respondere. Ita facias
non tremebundo, oportet forti animo. Elenchorius propter istam coniurac-
tionem fecit inclusionem.

Notes
1. A well-known medieval discussion of these two genres is in the Speculum astrono-
miae ch. 11, P. Zambelli, C. F. S. Burnett, K. Lippincott and D. Pingree, eds
(Dordrecht, 1982), 240–51. Here ‘abominable’ Hermetic magic is especially associ-
ated with suffumigations and invocations, while ‘detestable’ Solomonic magic is
linked to inscribing characters and exorcising them by certain names. On this
distinction, see D. Pingree, ‘Learned Magic in the Time of Frederick II’, in Le scienze
alle corte de Federico II, Micrologus, 2 (1994), 39–56, and N. Weill-Parot, Les ‘images
astrologiques’ au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance. Spéculations intellectuelles et practiques
magiques (Paris, 2002), 40–62.
2. See C. Burnett, ‘The Establishment of Medieval Hermeticism’, in The Medieval
World, eds, P. Linehan and J. L. Nelson (London and New York, 2001), 111–30; P.
Lucentini and V. Perrone Compagni, I testi e i codici di Ermete nel Medioevo (Florence,
2001) and V. Perrone Compagni, ‘I testi magici di Ermete’, in P. Lucentini, I.
Parri and V. Perrone Compagni, eds, Hermetism from late antiquity to humanism
(Turnhout, 2003), 505–33.
3. On astral magic see D. Pingree, ‘Some of the Sources of the Ghayat al-Hakim’,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 43 (1980): 1–15 and N. Weill-Parot,
‘Dans le ciel ou sous le ciel? Les anges dans la magie astrale, XIIe-XIVe siècle’, in
J.-P. Boudet, H. Bresc et B. Grevin, Les anges et la magie au Moyen Âge, Mélanges de
l’Ecole Française de Rome, 114 (2002), 753–71.
4. Significant ritual magic texts which claim an association with Solomon – the Liber
Razielis, Liber Almandal, Liber sactratus sive iuratus and the Ars notoria – are dis-
cussed in J.-P. Boudet and J. Véronèse, ‘Le secret dans la magie rituelle médiévale’,
Il Segreto, Micrologus, 14 (Firenze, 2006), 101–50.
5. See, C. Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic
(University Park, PA, 1998), on angel magic and R. Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites
(University Park, PA, 1997) on necromancy.
6. 1. Liber clavis, 2. Liber ale, 3. Thymiama, 4. Liber temporum, 5. Liber mundicie et
abstinentie, 6. Liber Sameyn (quod vult dicere Liber celorum), 7. Liber magice or Liber
virtutis. In later manuscripts an abridged version of the first appended text (the
144 Sophie Page

Liber Semiphoras) replaces the Liber magice, possibly as a response to the Speculum
astronomiae’s condemnation of image-magic texts in the 1260s.
7. On this work and Alfonso’s involvement in its production, see A. García Avilés,
‘Alfonso X y el Liber Razielis: imágenes de la magia astral judía en el scriptorium
alfonsí’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 74 (1997): 26–39 and S. Page, ‘Uplifting Souls:
the Liber de essentia spirituum and the Liber Razielis’, forthcoming in C. Fanger, ed.,
Mystical Technologies (University Park, PA).
8. MS Rome, Biblioteca Vaticana, Reg. lat. 1300 (s.xiv), and MS Halle, Universitäts-
und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, 14. B. 36 (s.xiv) contain the fullest sur-
viving copies of the Liber Razielis. Paris MS Lat. 3666 (s.xiv ex–s.xv in) contains
the Latin prologue most closely related to the Hebrew Sefer Raziel ha-Mal’akh
(ed. Isaac ben Abraham, pr. Amsterdam, 1701). On the vernacular versions, see
F. Secret, ‘Sur quelques traductions du Sefer Razi’el’, Revue des Études Juives, 128
(1969): 223–45.
9. 1. Liber Semiphoras, 2. Glosae Semiphoras of the Jew Zadok of Fez, 3. Verba in operi-
bus Razielis of Abraham of Alexandria, 4. Flores of Mercurius of Babilonia, 5.
Capitulum generale sapientium Aegypti pro operibus magicae, 6. Tabulae et karacteres
et nomina angelorum gradium, 7. Liber super perfectione operis Razielis of the Greek
philosopher Theyzolius, 8. Liber ymaginum sapientium antiquorum, 9. Ymagines
super septem dies ebdomade et sigilla planetarum.
10. I have used the fourteenth- century copy of the Alma<n>del in MS Halle, 14. B.
36, ff. 239–43. On this text see J. R. Veenstra, ‘The Holy Almandal. Angels and
the Intellectual Aims of Magic’ in J. N. Bremmer and J. R. Veenstra, eds, The
Metamorphosis of Magic (Groningen, 2002), 189–229 which includes a transcrip-
tion of a seventeenth- century English copy of the text.
11. Liber iuratus, ed. G. Hedegård (Stockholm, 2002).
12. Liber de essentia spirituum, ed. S. Page, ‘Image-Magic Texts and a Platonic
Cosmology at St Augustine’s, Canterbury in the Late Middle Ages’, in C. Burnett
and W. F. Ryan, eds, Magic and the Classical Tradition (London, 2005), 69–98.
13. Picatrix Latinus, ed. D. Pingree (London, 1986).
14. On MS Oxford, Rawlinson D. 252 see F. Klaassen, ‘British Manuscripts of Magic
1250–1500: A Preliminary Survey’, in Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits, 3–31 at 21–24,
and J.-P. Boudet, ‘Deviner dans la lumière. Note sur les conjurations pyroman-
tiques dans un manuscrit anglais du xve siècle’, in D. Pichot, S. Cassagnes-
Brouquet, and L. Rousselot, eds, Religion et mentalités au Moyen Age (Rennes,
2003), 523–30.
15. In this article I use ‘angels’ to refer to unfallen angels, ‘demons’ to refer to fallen
angels, and ‘spirit’ to the category of being that includes both. The latter is an
important category, since the term ‘spiritus’ in magic texts is ambiguous and
could be interpreted variously as angel or demon by the reader.
16. On Christian formulas for commanding spirits see Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, ch.
6; on prayers to the planets in the Hermetic tradition, see V. Perrone Compagni,
‘Una fonte ermetica: il Liber orationum planetarum’, Bruniana & Campanelliana, 7
(2001): 189–97, and on the power of words generally see C. Fanger, ‘Things Done
Wisely by a Wise Enchanter: Negotiating the Power of Words in the Thirteenth
Century’, Esoterica, 1 (1999): 97–132.
17. Liber mundicie, ch. 9, MS Halle 14. B. 36, f.65v: ‘Et dixit Salomon mundicia est res
que facit hominem sanctum et congregat spiritus et facit eos socios hominis et
facit scire secreta angelorum’.
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 145

18. Liber mundicie, ch. 1, MS Vatican Reg Lat 1300, f.87v: ‘qui istas virtutes supradic-
tas in se habuerit sciat quod erit spirituale et non terrestre... per istum librum qui
de eo operatur sit spiritualis et recedit et separatur a terrestribus.’
19. Liber mundicie, ch. 1, MS Vatican Reg Lat 1300, f.87v: ‘Et diligent eos angeli celo-
rum. Et spiritu boni associabunt ipsos’.
20. M. D. Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism
(Princeton, 1997), 166–70.
21. Alma<n>del, MS Halle, 14. B. 36, f. 240: ‘Amicus tuus sum et tuorum’.
22. On angelic sensitivity to terrestrial pollution in the Jewish tradition, see Swartz,
Scholastic Magic, 169.
23. Les Grandes Chroniques de France (10 vols, Paris, 1920–53), vol. 5, p. 269.
24. Picatrix Latinus, pt 3, ch. 7, 17, 31, 33, 35; ch. 9, 13, ed. Pingree (1986); Liber
de ieiuniis et sacrificiis et suffumigationibus septem stellarum (Florence, Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale II 214, ff. 23v–24v); Liber Mercurii (Florence, Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale, II 214, ff. 24v–26); De imaginibus sive annulis septem plan-
etarum annulis (London, British Library, Royal 12. C. XVIII, sec. XIV, ff.14–14v).
25. Liber de essentia spirituum, 18 and 36, ed. Page, ‘Image-Magic texts’, 92 and 96.
26. Liber de essentia spirituum, 37 and 45, ed. Page, ‘Image-Magic Texts’, 96 and 98.
27. Liber mundicie, ch. 8, MS Vatican Reg Lat 1300, f.95v.
28. Liber Sameyn, ch. 20, MS Halle 14. B. 36, ff. 89–89v: ‘Ad videndum solem de nocte
aperte quod respondeat certe ad interrogationem tuam’. On the two Helios adju-
rations in the Sefer ha-Razim, the Jewish text on which the Liber Sameyn is based,
see R. Lesses, ‘Speaking with Angels: Jewish and Greco-Egyptian Revelatory
Adjurations’, Harvard Theological Review, New Series, 89 (1996): 41–60, esp. 49–51
and 54.
29. Liber Sameyn, ch. 20, MS Halle 14. B. 36, f. 89v: ‘loquatur mecum sicut homo cum
suo socio’.
30. On magic circles, see, Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 170–76. On the ritual provoca-
tion of a dream or vision: Liber iuratus, ed. Hedegård (Stockholm, 2002); John of
Morigny, Prologue to Liber Visionum [c. 1304–18], trans., ed. and intro. C. Fanger
and N. Watson, Esoterica, 3 (2001), and F. Klaassen, ‘Magical Dream Provocation
in the Later Middle Ages’, Esoterica, 8 (2006): 120–47.
31. MS Edinburgh, University Library 121, s.xv, ff. 95v–96v: ‘Coniuro te Saxon ... per
scalam quam vidit Jacob angelos ascendentes et descendentes’.
32. Liber de essentia spirituum, 6, ed. Page, ‘Image-Magic Texts’, 89–90.
33. Alma<n>del, MS Halle, 14. B. 36, ff. 239v: ‘Et est notandum quod ista altitudo ita
reddit hominem perfectum quod postquam una vice aliquis eorum horum (?)
locutus fuerit, numquam de damnatione eterna timere poteris necque moriatis
sine gracia salvatoris. Ita quod admirabiles habet vias ad reducendum hominem
de peccato ad gratiam salvatoris. Et mirifice gaudent angeli quod homines sint in
gratia conditoris’.
34. Hermann of Carinthia, De essentiis, 72vD ed. and trans. C. Burnett (Leiden,
1982), 182, ll. 1–2.
35. Liber magice, ch. 22, MS Vatican Reg. lat. 1300, ff. 125v–6.
36. J. F. Nagy, Conversing with Angels and Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland
(Ithaca, NY, 1997).
37. Muirchú, Vita s. Patricii (between 661 and 700) in L. Bieler, ed. and trans., The
Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh (Dublin, 1979), II 15 (13). 1, pp. 80–88, ‘sicut
homo cum homine loquitur ita conloquio angueli fruebatur Patricus’.
146 Sophie Page

38. Adomnán, Vita Columbae, ed. and trans. A. O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson
(1961, repr. Oxford, 1991), 3.18, p. 208.
39. Liber Razielis, prologue, MS Paris 3666, ff. 6v–7.
40. The ritual of sleeping on ashes in order to receive a vision is also a feature of the
Liber iuratus (pt 1, ch. CI), ed. Hedegård (2002), 111.
41. Liber Razielis, prologue, MS Paris 3666, f. 7: ‘veniet in illa nocte una pars angelo-
rum in aspectu visibili et non fantastico et ostendent ei quomodo faciet illud
quod facere vult et discooperient ei totum secretum sine aliquo pavore’.
42. Liber de temporibus, ch. 3 : MS Vatican Reg lat. 1300, ff. 47v–9 under the title: ‘Ad
sciendum causam quam volueris facere et si est bonum facere eam vel non vel
quando est bonum facere’. See also MS Paris 3666, f. 55r–v for the second version
of the ritual.
43. Liber temporum, ch. 3: MS Vatican Reg lat. 1300, f. 47v : ‘veniet ad te quidam
homo et manifestabit se tibi de nocte in visione et sua similitudo erit quasi hom-
inis venerabilis et tunc sis fortis et non pavescas quia non manifestabit se tibi
quasi in sompno vel visione sed palam. Et interroga ipsum de omnibus que volu-
eris scire’. A magic ritual to speak to an old man in the context of a dream vision
is also found in MS Oxford, Rawlinson D. 252, f.99v.
44. Liber iuratus, epilogue, ed. Hedegård (2002), 150: ‘Hic est liber, quo natura corpo-
ralis et visibilis cum incorporali et invisibili alloqui, racionari et instrui potest’.
See also pt 1, LI (p. 91) for the comment that one of the major goals of a magic
operator is to speak with spirits.
45. Liber iuratus, pt 1, ch. 19, ed. Hedegård (2002), 78: ‘Si pro vocando spiritus agis,
pete sic: ‘... cogendum venire, respondere, stare, recedere, obedire spiritus tales N
michi tali N, filius talis N’.
46. MS Florence, Biblioteca Laurentiana, P. 89, sup. Cod. 38, ff. 256v–260, transcribed
in J. J. Wood Brown, Life and Legend of Michael Scot (Edinburgh, 1897), 231–34.
47. Experimentum Michaelis Scoti nigromantici, ed. Wood Brown, p. 232: ‘placibilis
aplaudens mihi et erudens me cum amore’.
48. Liber iuratus, pt 3, ch. 115, 47–48, ed. Hedegård (2002), 124.
49. Experimentum mirabilem, MS Wellcome 517, ff.81–81v.
50. On the use of boy mediums to speak to demons, see Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites,
esp. ch. 5, and C. Fanger, ‘Virgin Territory: Purity and Divine Knowledge in late
Medieval Catoptromantic Texts’, Aries 5.2 (2005): 200–44.
51. Liber Sameyn, ch. 13, MS Vatican, Reg. lat. 1300, f. 108: ‘Et per istum modum
invoca angelos et spiritus aerum et animas mortuorum et ventos qui currunt et
demone et umbras aquarum et quodcumque fantasma voluerit’.
52. Liber Sameyn, ch. 12–13, MS Vatican, Reg. lat. 1300, ff. 106–8. Ascymor is also
mentioned in the Liber magice, ch. 24 (MS Vatican, Reg. lat. 1300, f. 196) and the
Liber Theysolius (one of the texts appended to the Liber Razielis) in the context of
speaking to spirits. In the Liber temporum, ch. 19, ‘Ascimor’ appears as the pre-
eminent angel of Mars, ruler of the third heaven (MS Vatican, Reg. lat. 1300, f.
67). The description of the heaven of Mars and Ascymor was assimilated into the
Libro del Marte of the Alfonsine Astromagia: MS Vatican Reg. lat. 1283a, ff. 28–28v,
and illustrated on f. 28v with the angel Ascimor in a central sphere and his army
surrounding him: Astromagia, ed. A. d’Agostino, (Naples, 1992), 255 and 328.
53. Liber Sameyn, ch. 13, MS Vatican Reg lat. 1300, ff. 106v–7.
54. Liber Sameyn, ch. 20, MS Halle 14. B. 36, f. 89: ‘interroga ipsum de bono vel de
malo, de morte vel de vita vel de omnibus quod volueris et rendebat tibi certe ad
omni’.
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 147

55. Liber Sameyn, ch. 20, MS Halle 14. B. 36, f. 89v: ‘audies quasi voce tonitrui ex
parte septentrionis et videbis quasi choruscationes que exit et illuminat terram
coram te et quando ista videbis inclina te et recumbes in terram super faciem
tuam et facias istam orationem in rectitutinem solis’.
56. Similarly, the Liber iuratus advises the operator to carry a staff and swords when
he invokes aerial and terrestrial spirits, but states that he will not need them
when operating with the help of the good angels: pt 5, ch. 160, 6, ed. Hedegård
(2002), p. 149.
57. Necromantic experiments entitled pro amore are better categorized as ‘erotic
magic’, see, R. Kieckhefer, ‘Erotic Magic in Medieval Europe’, in J. Salisbury, ed.,
Sex in the Middle Ages (New York and London, 1991), 30–55. Experiments to bind
women and and speak to spirits were considered complimentary goals by the
scribe of MS Florence Plut. 86, sup. 38 who copied many experiments of both
types.
58. See the many necromantic experiments to speak with spirits in MS Florence Plut.
86, sup. 38 at: ff. 146–47, 147v–48, 148v–49, 153v–54, 155–56v and 182–82v.
59. Liber iuratus, pt 5, ch. 135, ed. Hedegård (2002), 142–43.
60. MS Oxford, Rawlinson D. 252, f. 96. ‘Ut demonem privatum qui tibi doceat vel
respondeat verissime de quesitis. In 9 mansione lune fac fieri anulum aureum
non concavum sed sculpatur. In eo istud nomen magna: darielh. Et ponatur
de super allectorius die sequenti et cetera. Alicuius nemoris vel domus vel ville
vel gardini et suff<umiga> thures et vis<i >te querci dicendo : ‘domine domi-
nus omnipotens etcetera’. Hoc facto fac in terra istud signum etcetera supra.’
This experiment originates in Pseudo Pietro d’Abano Annulorum experimenta: J.-P.
Boudet, ‘Deviner dans la lumière’, 524.
61. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, ed. J. Strange (Cologne: J.
M. Heberle, 1851), book 3, ch. 26, book 5, ch. 10, p. 290 and chs 36–37, pp.
319–23.
62. Dialogus miraculorum, ed. Strange (1851), ch. 36, p. 320: ‘Magna est mihi consola-
cio esse cum filiis hominum’.
63. Chronicles, 3, 22, trans. G. Brereton (London, 1968), 296–302.
64. Articles 1 and 23: L. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New
York, 1944), 261–66.
65. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, book 5, ch. 2, ed. Strange (1851),
276–78.
66. Caesarius, Dialogus miraculorum, book 5, ch. 2, 278: ‘ab illa hora miles idem sem-
per pallidus fuit, nativum colorem numquam recupaverit’.
67. Gerald of Wales, Journey through Wales, pt 1, ch. 5, trans. L. Thorpe (London,
1978), 116–121.
68. MS Oxford, Rawlinson D. 252, f. 65. I have replaced the medieval paragraph
symbols with numbers for ease of reference.
69. MS Wellcome 517, f. 83v.
70. Liber ale, tertia ala, ch. 6, MS Vatican Reg lat. 1300, f. 33.
71. In the Liber temporum, ch. 18, this angel gives him knowledge of the Heavens: MS
Halle 14. B. 36, ff. 40v–42.
72. Liber semiphoras, prologue, MS Halle 14. B. 36, f. 244. This text is the first of the
nine magic texts appended to the Liber Raziliels and sometimes replaces the Liber
magice as the seventh book of the compilation.
73. Liber ale, segunda ala, ch. 3, MS Halle 14. B. 36, ff. 16v–17: ‘xiii herba dicitur
sancta...et cum ista faciebant prophete loqui mortuos’; tertia ala, ch. 5 (f. 19): ‘per
148 Sophie Page

ipsum <demonem> habent responsa philosophi et sapientes de omnibus quod

voluerunt querere et scire’.
74. Picatrix Latinus, book 3, ch. 6, 3, ed. Pingree (1986), 110.
75. Liber Theysolius, MS Halle, 14. B. 36, ff. 135–51, inc: ‘Dixit Theysolius hic incipio
dicere de angelis iiii partium mundi’ and at ff. 235–235v, ‘Capitulum ultimum
Theyzoli philosophi super Razielem’. Theyzolius is likely to be a variation of Toz
Grecus whose name was often attached to Arabic image-magic texts. This text
is discussed at greater length in S. Page, ‘Magic and the Pursuit of Wisdom: the
“Familiar” Spirit in the Liber Theysolius’, La corónica, 36.1 (Fall, 2007): 41–70.
76. Liber Theysolius, MS Halle, 14. B. 36, f. 145: ‘Dicunt philosophi antiqui in libris suis
quod solebat esse in tempore antiquo quando prophete erant in egipto quod ipsi
habebant spiritus familiares et sapientes etiam pharaonis unde dicuntur Pharysey.
Et etiam yndici et egypti et alii de partibus arabie habebant etiam spiritus famil-
iares taliter secum quod ipsi per mutacionem faciebant et dicebant omnia futura
et dabant responsum gentibus de his que querebant ab eis. Et respondebant eis illi
spiritus omnibus horis quibus ipsos invocabant et nominabant’.
77. The text uses various terms for the act of creating a familiar spirit from a dead body:
facere mutacionem, resuscitare, vivificare, revivificare and ponere vita in eo.
78. Liber Theysolius, ch. 10, MS Halle, 14. B. 36, ff. 145–45v.
79. Ibid., ff. 145v–46.
80. Ibid., ff. 145v–46. The operator addresses the dead person using praecipio or coni-
uro; with the spirits he is more polite, for example, addressing one as ‘O tu spiri-
tus fortis vive et verax’.
81. Liber Theysolius, ch. 11, MS Halle, 14. B. 36, f. 147v: ‘si volueris retinere spiritus et
quod timeant te et faciant tuam voluntatem’.
82. Liber Theysolius, ch. 11, MS Halle, 14. B. 36, f. 150.
83. Ibid., f. 149: ‘qui voluerit loqui cum eis vel videre eos aut habere solacium cum
eis’.
84. Liber Theysolius, ch. 11, Halle, 14. B. 36, f. 150v.
85. Ibid., f. 150: ‘spiritus sunt tales quod quanto plus studieris in ipsis tanto plus
congnosces eos, et tanto erit maior amor inter te et ipsos’.
86. Liber Theysolius, ch. 11, Halle, 14. B. 36, f. 149: ‘quicumque homo voluerit aliquid
operari vel facere oportet quod suus spiritus faciat suum posse in illo opera, quia
si secundum suam potestatem non vigeret in ipso opera non posset accedere ad
complementum eius’.
87. Liber Theysolius, ch. 11, Halle, 14. B. 36, f. 148v: ‘quando tu habueris noticiam
cum uno spiritu terrestrium de illis qui iam fuerunt consocii et vicini, ille dabit
tibi noticiam spiritus aeris. Et per spiritum aeris cognosces spiritum celi, et per
spiritum celi cognosces spiritum maris, et per spiritum maris cognosces spiritum
infernorum’.
88. Liber Theysolius, ch. 11, Halle, 14. B. 36, f. 149: ‘Unde res est valde admiranda
dives et preciosa noticia spirituum’.
89. Sermon eleven on Psalm 90, verse 11, in S. Chase, ed. and trans., Angelic Spirituality:
Medieval Perspectives on the Ways of Angels (New York, 2002), 113.
90. Oratio ad proprium angelum, MS Oxford, Rawlinson D. 252, ff. 135v–39, at 136v : ‘O
bone angele qui meus es custos et gubernator, deputatus per misericordissimum
conditorem tuum et meum necnon et universorum qui celi ambitu continen-
tur. Intendo in adiutorium et auxilium meum ad exorczisandum, coniurandum,
adiurandum et constringendum inimicum meum crudelem angelum perversum
die ac nocte me persequentem et tecum bellatorem causa mei.’
 Speaking with Spirits in Medieval Magic Texts 149

91. MS Oxford, Rawlinson D. 252, f. 137v.

92. See D. A. Wilmart, Auteurs Spirituels et Textes Devots du Moyen Age (Paris, 1932),
537–58 on prayers to guardian angels.
93. Oratio ad angelum (tenth century?), ed. Wilmart (1932), 543.
94. Oratio ad proprium cuiusque angelum (s.xii), ed. Wilmart (1932), 549–50.
95. Item ad proprium angelum alia oratio (s.xv), ed. Wilmart (1932), 55: ‘Appare michi,
carissime, et move et doce me facere voluntatem dei et mandata eius custodire’.
96. Epistola Jeroboam heremite ad Nab filium suum de proprio angelo, MS Halle, 14. B.
36: ff. 169v–70. Jeroboam was king of Israel after Solomon and a famous idolator
(1 Kings 14:20) but he did not have a reputation as a hermit. He was succeeded
by his son Nadab.
97. Epistola Jeroboam heremite, MS Halle, 14. B. 36: f. 169v: ‘addens unicuique corpori
spiritum promptum et veracem ad custodiendum et defendendum illud ab illu-
sionibus et ab incursibus spirituum immundorum’.
98. Epistola Jeroboam heremite, MS Halle, 14. B. 36: f. 169v (the prayer in its entirety):
‘Angele sancte qui in conspectu Dei spiritus assisti et mihi indigno praeteri
traditus es ad custodiendum et defendendum me in omnibus necessitatibus in
eis et subveniendum. Te supliciter deposco ut nominis tui titulum ab auctore
virtutis omnium tibi traditum mihi revelare nullatenus formides, ut nomine
sancto tuo invocato et nominato responsa vera recipiam, ut munera tue sub-
levationis precipiam, et de omnibus que desidero michi advenias et apereas
benivole, rursumque per eundem Dominum mecum quod venturus est iudi-
care, scilicet, per ignem’.
99. Epistola Jeroboam heremite, MS Halle, 14. B. 36: f. 170: ‘Si angelus te alloquatur,
quod si purus es et clare confessus: quasi ventus roris inflantis, lux eius te cir-
cumdant, et dicet: ‘Ego sum, qui in conspectu Dei Spiritus assisto, et tu de tuo
corpore non recedo nisi cum oporteat me’.
100. Epistola Jeroboam heremite, MS Halle, 14. B. 36: f. 170: ‘Si vero in oriente ipsum
audieris: ad orientem verte. Si vero retro vel sinistro ipsum audieris, ad parte
illam faciem tuam declines. Scias enim quod quando alias ipsum colloquium
desideras, voca eum nomine suo’.
101. Epistola Jeroboam heremite, MS Halle, 14. B. 36: f. 170: ‘et ab omnibus nocu-
mentis, periculis et necessitatibus temporalibus corpus tuum custodiet in hoc
mundo. Et post hac vitam visibilem, animam collocabit coram deo’.
102. Epistola Jeroboam heremite, MS Halle, 14. B. 36: f. 170: ‘Scias quod postquam una
vice feceris in loco consecrato, postmodum poteris facere in omni loci secreto
et mundo’.
103. On divine possession see N. Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic
Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, 2003), esp. 54–75. Mystical technolo-
gies are here understood to include both orthodox and suspect techniques used
to increase the likelihood of a spiritual experience. The latter are the subject of
a forthcoming edited volume by Claire Fanger (see n. 7).
104. A. Boureau, Satan the Heretic. The Birth of Demonology in the Medieval West, trans.
T. L. Fagan (Chicago, 2006), ch. 6.
105. Thorndike, University Records, 261–66 and Jean-Patrice Boudet, ‘Les condamna-
tions de la magie à Paris en 1398’, Revue Mabillon, 12 (2001) : 121–58.
106. I am grateful to Charles Burnett for his advice on these transcriptions. Any
remaining errors are my own.
107. This experiment is copied onto ff. 95v and 96v. On the folio in between is a
diagram of the magic circles which the operator is told to construct.
7
False Illuding Spirits & Cownterfeiting
Deuills: John Dee’s Angelic
Conversations and Religious Anxiety
Stephen Clucas

The manuscripts recording the ‘angelic conversations’ of the Elizabethan

mathematician and philosopher John Dee constitute an almost unique wit-
ness to sixteenth- century beliefs in angels and their supposed communi-
cations with human beings.1 While a great deal of sixteenth- century ink
was expended on angelology, and while there is a wide range of surviv-
ing sixteenth- century manuscripts recording the rituals and ceremonies
by which communication with angels was believed to be possible,2 Dee’s
manuscripts are the fullest and most detailed account by an individual who
claimed to have actually had such communications. As a record of the expe-
rience of angelic communications, Dee’s manuscripts are virtually unpar-
alleled.3 Dee’s conversations have been the subject of numerous modern
studies, beginning with Carl Kiesewetter’s cultural-historical study of Dee
as a ‘Spiritist’ in 1893,4 and have become a hotly debated topic in intellec-
tual history and the history of science.5 The main focus for these debates
has been the complex relationships among magic, science and religion in
the sixteenth century, a topic brought to the fore in the writings of Frances
Yates and Peter J. French in the 1960s and 70s.6 While Yates’s controversial
thesis regarding the role of magic in the emergence of modern science has
been thoroughly addressed, the relationship between religion and magic has
tended to be viewed as less problematic,7 with Yates’s distinction between
‘passive’ religion and ‘operative’ magic being largely accepted as uncontro-
versial. Deborah Harkness, for example, has insisted that

Calling upon God through prayer and summoning spiritual agencies

through magical invocations are technically distinct ... In prayer, the

150
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 151

practitioner subjects himself to the will of God. In magical invocation on

the other hand, the practitioner subverts the hierarchical arrangement of
the cosmos by asserting his or her own will over a spirit and, through a
subsequent binding spell, controlling a spirit’s actions.8

Ignoring as it does both the persistence of the theme of divine medi-

ation in the invocations of the various magic arts from the fourteenth
to the sixteenth century, and the commanding of spirits that formed
an acceptable part of the ecclesiastically sanctioned ritual of exorcism,9
Harkness’s distinction is unhelpful but by no means untypical of contem-
porary views about the separateness of (orthodox) religion and (heterodox)
magic. György Szőnyi, in his more recent study of Dee’s ‘occultism’, has
argued that ‘Western magic’ in Dee’s period was plagued by an ‘ambiva-
lence between the sacred and the demonic’10 and rejects the claims of ‘early
modern magicians who confidently asserted the possibility of separating
white and black magic’. This separation, SzĘnyi argues, is ‘only self- defense
and propaganda’ and magicians could never be ‘entirely free from all dark
temptations’.11 In this chapter, I seek to show that this dichotomy between
‘magical’ invocation and ‘religious’ prayer, between the ‘will of God’ and
the will of the ‘magus’, between ‘white magic’ and ‘dark temptations’,
is unsustainable and masks the religious underpinnings of Renaissance
magic. In the case of Dee, as we shall see, the belief in the possibility of a
legitimate and pious communication with angels (a communication that
had an explicitly operative dimension) was axiomatic. In what follows,
I will show that not only did Dee believe that orthodox religious prayer
was operative, but also that the ‘deep structure’ of the angelic conversa-
tions rests upon fundamentally orthodox theological assumptions about
election, vocation and the ordo salvationis. Dee’s angelic conversations are
certainly fraught with anxieties, but these anxieties are common to the
‘magus’ and to the ordinary believer: anxieties about whether or not they
have been predestined to election, about whether their faith is sufficient
to merit salvation, about whether their actions are properly dedicated to
the glory of God, about their own sense of sin and need for repentance.
What the narratives of Dee’s angelic conversations bear witness to, above
all else, is the need for ‘justification’ and ‘certification’ in a spiritual life
where salvation is ensured by the faith of the individual alone.12 While
Dee sought recondite knowledge of all kinds, he was also looking for signs
of his own salvation. While Dee’s angelic conversations might seem out-
landish to twenty-first- century eyes, and remote even from our under-
standing of the religious experience of everyday Protestant believers of
Dee’s time, its unusually intense and dramatic staging of the outer reaches
of personal faith gives us, I would argue, a particularly vivid sense of the
inner life of ordinary Protestants in late sixteenth- century England, with
its ‘pangs’ and ‘dowtes’, its tribulations and confirmations.13
152 Stephen Clucas

A little after seven o’clock, on the evening of Wednesday 21 November

1582. John Dee and his current ‘skryer’, or crystallomantic assistant, Edward
Kelley, were in a chamber of Dee’s house at Mortlake, close to his ‘oratorie’,
which had been dedicated solely to the purpose of conducting his ‘conversa-
tions’.14 Dee was recording the unfamiliar names of various angels (Bobogel,
Babalel, Leenbarb and Baligon) from an angel known as Carmara revealed
to Kelley in a vision.15 At the conclusion of this transaction, their angelic
guide announced:

One thing yet is wanting, a mete receptacle ... there is yet wanting a
stone ... one there is, most excellent, hid ... in the vttermost part of
the Roman Possession ... Lo, the mighty hand of God is vppon thee ...
Thow shalt haue it. Dost thow see, loke and styr now fro[m] thy place.
E[dward] K[elley] pointed toward [it].

Dee could not see the stone. ‘Thow shalt preuayle with it, with Kings, and
with all Creatures of the World’, the Angel told him. ‘Loke if thow see it’.
Dee still could not see the stone:

I went toward the place, which [Kelley] pointed to, and tyll I cam within
two fete of it, I saw nothing, and then I saw like a shaddow ... on the
grownd or matts hard by my bo[oks] vnder the west wyndow: the
Shaddow was rowndysh, and less then the palm of my hand. I put my
hand down vppon it, an[d] I felt a thing cold and hard: which, taking vp,
I perceyued to be the stone before mentioned.16

In this mysterious fashion, Dee claims to have received the stone that
he was to use in his subsequent dealings with angelic spirits. During the
conversations, the stone – as we can see from a drawing in Dee’s manuscript
(Figure 7.1) – was set on a wooden cradle, which was set upon a ceremo-
nial table ‘two cubits square’ and ‘two cubits high’ constructed of ‘swete
wood’ (presumably cedar or sandalwood) on which was placed a complex
talismanic diagram inscribed in a disk of purified wax nine inches in diam-
eter. This was known as the ‘Sigillum Dei’ or ‘Sigillum Aemeth’ and was a
talisman serving as a combinatory instrument for generating the names of
angels.17 The table was painted with the ‘Characters and names’ of angels,
written in a yellow ink ‘made of perfect oyle, vsed in the churche’. Each leg
of the table stood upon another wax disk or ‘seal’, and under the table was a
cloth of ‘red sylk ... hanging down with 4 knops or tassells at the 4 corners
thereof’.18 The ceremonial atmosphere created with this ‘holy Furniture’19 is
further emphasised by the repetition of fervent and continuous prayers to
God and his angels.
Between bouts of prayer, angelic spirits would appear in Dee’s ‘shew-stone’
in order to impart knowledge to him. Dee himself would not see or hear the
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 153

Figure 7.1 Dee’s ‘Shew’stone’, mounted on a wooden cradle

spirits but would record the ‘discernings’ of his skryer verbatim.20 On the 5
April 1583, Dee was told by the angel Uriel that Kelley could see the angels
‘in sight’, whereas Dee could only see them ‘in fayth’.21 On 26 June the
same year, Dee told a ‘female’ spirit, Madimi, ‘I see you onely by faith and
imagination’,22 although there do seem to have been some visions where
154 Stephen Clucas

‘both [Dee and Kelley] saw certainly’.23 The ‘visions’ which make up these
‘actions’ or ‘conversations’ with angels were preserved by Dee in large man-
uscript volumes. It was one of these volumes, covering the period between
May 1583 and September 1607, that was published by Meric Casaubon in
1659, with the title A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for many Yeers
between Dr John Dee ... and Some Spirits. Unknown to Casaubon, there was
another ‘parcell of Dr dee’s manuscripts’ which lay undiscovered in a con-
cealed drawer of a cedar chest, together with ‘a chaplet of olive Beades, & a
Cross of the same wood, hanging at the end of them’, until the year 1672,
when they came into the possession of Elias Ashmole.24 These additional
manuscripts included ‘The Book intituled the 48 Claves Angelicae, also
Liber Scientia Terrestris Auxilij & Victoria ... De Heptarchia Mystica ... and a
Booke of Invocations or Calls’.25 Together with these four works was a larger
manuscript, a collection of narratives written in Dee’s own hand, the Libri
Mysteriorum (or Books of Mysteries), which claimed to record angelic visions
experienced by his three skryers, Barnabas Saul, Edward Talbot and Edward
Kelley,26 at Mortlake in the years between 1581 and 1583.27 This chapter will
largely focus on the conversations recorded in Sloane MS 3188, which have
attracted less scholarly attention than the printed section of Dee’s conversa-
tions, and give us an unusually detailed account of an experience of ‘famil-
iar conversation’ with angelic beings, and reveals much about the religious
motivations for such conversations, and the religious anxieties that afflicted
those involved in them.
Some time in 1582, Dee wrote a testimonial (entitled ‘Ad omnipoten-
tem Deum Protestatio fidelis <ad> p[er]petuam rei memoriam’), where he
explained that having laboured in vain for many years in his search for
‘truthes naturall and artificial ... in many bokes, & sundry languages’ rely-
ing solely on his ‘owne reasonable discourse’, he was now turning instead
to divine revelation:

to be brief after all my forsaid endevor I could fynd no other way, to such
true wisdome atteyning, but by thy extraordinary gift: & by no vulgar
schole- doctrine or humane invention ... [for] I haue read in thy bokes &
records, how Enoch enioyed thy favour and conversation, with Moyses
thow wast familiar: And allso that to Abraham, Isaac &, Iacob, Iosua,
Gedeon, Esdras, Daniel, Tobias, and sundry other, thy good Angells were
sent ... to satisfy their desires, dowtes & questions of thy secrets.28

He had gradually become convinced that true wisdom ‘could not be

come by at mans hand or by humane powre, but only from ... [God] medi-
atly or immediately’. He was also persuaded that skrying (crystallomancy)
was a legitimate means to attain knowledge which had Biblical precedent:
‘Considering the Shew-stone, which the high Priests did vse ... wherein they
had lights & Iudgements in their great dowtes’.29
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 155

The knowledge that Dee hoped to obtain via these angelic messengers
was not the kind to which ordinary scholars might aspire. He believed
that the ‘Heptarchichall revelacion’30 contained in the various books
of the Libri Mysteriorum was to be the eschatalogical fulfillment of the
Biblical apocalypse. The ‘angels’ with which Dee conversed were gradually
revealing the ‘instruments’ of a theurgical art that made use of a divinely
revealed angelic alphabet (Figure 7.2) and language, a number of magi-
cal artefacts, including a magic ring,31 and various talismans, such as the
‘starry heptagon [heptagonum stellare]’ (Figure 7.3) or the ‘instruments of
Conciliation’. 32 This art, Dee believed, would not only allow him virtually
unlimited control over material creation and political affairs but would
also inaugurate the last apocalyptic epoch preceding the day of Judgement,
which was initially scheduled for 1 August 1583. 33 The theurgical art con-
sisted in a revelation of the secret names of the angels presiding over the
universe, and also the angelic language itself, which God had used to cre-
ate the world. It was held to be identical with the language of Adam and
Enoch, whose wisdom had been lost after the flood, and would also restore
many of the lost books of the Bible. 34 Dee thought, in effect, that he was
to be the unique prophet of a new divine dispensation, marked by a new
holy scripture. Small wonder that Dee kept this manuscript locked in a
secret drawer!35
As a practice, Dee’s Heptarchicall Art raises a number of significant
issues connected to the religious anxieties surrounding agency and action
prevalent in this period, and particularly the moral stigma attaching to
interventions in the natural world, whether by natural or supernatural
means, and the sense of empowerment that such interventions might con-
fer upon the operator. According to Meric Casaubon in 1659 (albeit with
the ulterior mission of attacking ‘Precatorie Enthusiasm’36 and ‘Mistaken
Inspiration’37 amongst his contemporaries), Dee’s angelic conversations
were a form of hubristic presumption or ‘damnable curiosity’, 38 and in
using spirits, he was guilty of ‘using means that are not lawful, to com-
pass ambitious, unwarrantable desires’. 39 In particular, he was disgusted
at Dee’s self-appointed prophetic status, which he saw as evidence of ‘the

Figure 7.2 The ‘Enochian’ or ‘angelic’ alphabet

156 Stephen Clucas

Figure 7.3 The ‘Heptagonum stellare’: one of Dee’s talismanic ‘instruments’

danger of affected singularity and eminency ... of Spiritual pride and self-
conceit’.40 The reasons behind Casaubon’s decision to make the angelic
conversations public fifty years after Dee was dead, and his motives for
criticising Dee’s dealing with spirits are complex. It is not simply that
Casaubon does not believe in spirits; in fact, he sees one of the princi-
pal benefits of the book as being its use as evidence ‘against Atheists,
and such as do not believe that there be any Divels or Spirits’, that is
to say, contemporary ‘Sadducees’.41 What Casaubon insists on proscrib-
ing here are the ‘presumptuous wishes and desires’ of those who claim
divine inspiration – their will to agency (the ‘using of means’ to attain
‘unwarrantable desires’).42 One of the forms that this prohibition of agen-
tive desire took was the insistence on the danger of diabolic incursion,
even for the pious. Casaubon depicts Dee as a sincerely pious, but sadly
deluded, man. Casaubon’s Dee was no ‘Caller, and Coniuror of wicked
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 157

and damned Spirites’ but a good Christian who had been led astray.43 ‘It
may be objected’, Casaubon, reflects:

How Dr Dee, so good, so innocent, yea, so pious a man, and so sincere

a Christian as by these papers (his delusion and the effects of it still
excepted) he doth seem to have been, God would permit such a one to be
so deluded and abused, so rackt in his soul, so hurried in his body for so
long a time, notwithstanding his frequent, earnest, zealous prayers and
addresses unto God, by evil Spirits ... ?44

Even the prayers of a pious man, Casaubon concludes, can be a dangerous

activity if they result in forms of practice that threaten to become ‘unlaw-
ful’ (which, in Casaubon’s terms, apply as much to the Quakers’ eschewing
of prelatical authority, as to Dee’s belief that he was the prophet of the Last
Judgement). ‘This business of Prayer and praising’, says Casaubon, ‘is a busi-
ness ... of much more danger and delusion, then many do believe’.45
Dee, as a ‘Modest Christian Philosopher’, was also profoundly aware of
this danger.46 Casaubon believed that Dee had been deluded by evil spir-
its that Kelley had conjured up.47 Dee himself was profoundly concerned
that the knowledge and the practices communicated by the spiritual beings
should not pose a threat to his immortal soul. He had, in his own words:

alwayes a regard & care to beware of the filthy abuse of such as willingly &
wetingly did invocate & consult ... Spirituall creatures of the damned sort:
angells of darknes, Forgers & patrons of lies & vntruthes.48

This ‘regard & care’ took the conventional form of pietistic and ascetic
practices, that is to say a regime of abstinence, fasting and prayer. Dee’s
conversations are plagued by doubts as to the salutary nature of his spir-
itual informants.49 Like Hamlet confronted by the ‘questionable shape’ of
his father’s ghost, Dee was unsure whether his angelic informants were
spirits of health or goblins damned, or whether their ‘intents’ were ‘wicked
or charitable’.50 But, paradoxically, Dee validates and legitimises his theu-
rgic practices, and his sense of the ‘truthfulness’ of the knowledge that he
obtains by them, using the very pietistic means that they seem to transgress.
In particular, he seeks certainty through recourse to the doctrine of means
and the doctrine of election. He endorses his practice using some of the same
conceptions that Casaubon uses to question and condemn it.
Dee was extremely conscious of the theological prohibitions against
worldly agency, which we know as the doctrine of means, that is to say
that to take undue personal pleasure in one’s talents, deeds or capacities, or
to estimate those gifts, was to be guilty of spiritual pride, and an injury to
God, to whom the esteem or praise was more appropriate, as the source of
those gifts. Thus, one of Dee’s angelic interlocutors reproaches him: ‘Extol
158 Stephen Clucas

not thy self above thy Election ... why dost thou boast thy self and say, this
I can do?’51 The end of action, according to the doctrine of means should
always be the glorification of God, and not the advancement of self-esteem,
or other worldly aims. Human desires should be irrelevant in action, which
should be a medium for divine will. Man is an instrument and a means, not
an initiator of actions. Thus, all human action is to be judged by how far it
reflects a deferral of agency to God: whether the intentions anterior to action
are pious or worldly. Thus, William Perkins, writing in 1601, insisted that
‘we must doe the offices and works of our callings in good manner ... they
must be done in obedience to God, that is, with a minde and intention to
please and obey God’.52 In A Treatise of Gods free grace and mans free will,
Perkins suggested that the ‘substance of any duty’ was ‘to doe it in faith,
with a mind to obey God, and to intend his honour thereby’. Without this
intention, he said any ‘worke’ is like ‘a body without life or soule, or as mat-
ter without forme’.53 Dee certainly conceived of his own ‘particular calling’
in this way, and he constantly characterised himself in the angelic conver-
sations (and elsewhere) as a ‘simple servant’ of God.54 Despite the virtually
unlimited powers over the natural (and supernatural) world the angelic rev-
elations promised him, his stated desire was that:

thy poore, and simple Servant, shall, than, In, and By thé, be better hable
to serve, thé, according to thy well-pleasing: to thy Honor and Glory: Yea,
even in these most miserable, and lamentable dayes.55

Dee validates his actions by continually situating his will to agency

within a pious conception of practice. He habitually negotiates his anxi-
eties about practice by contrasting his own pious practice with the infe-
rior practice of his skryers. One of his first skryers – the preacher, Barnabas
Saul – ‘accownted as a good Seer and skryer of Spirituall apparitions, in
Chrystalline Receptacle, or open ayre’, for example, is upbraided by Dee as
a less pious practitioner than himself: ‘I fownd great diversity betwene his
private vsuall manner and intents of practise, and my pure, sincere devowt
& faithfull prayer vnto thee onely’.56 Dee ‘exhorted him to the good’ and
‘trusting to frame him, by my ernest & faithfull prayers vnto the[e] (my
God)’, but found him ‘at length very vnwilling to here him self rebuked
for his nawghtynes, and to be barred from the Mysteries of <thy> truthes’.
As if to prove his lack of pious intent, the ‘good Spirituall Creatures ... wold
[not] so playnely & preistly give me theyr answers or informations by him’.57
Dee himself feels he possesses two credentials that Saul does not. First, he
defers all his actions to God, whose truths, Dee stresses, are to be revealed
to him ‘in somme bountifull measure vnder the Talent of my Capacitie, to
thy honor & glory, & the benefit of thy Servants, my brethren & sistern, in
and by Christ or Saviour’.58 Second, he has been granted a special election,
which differs from the ‘general points of mans Salvation’.59 ‘[I] perceyuved’,
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 159

Dee says, ‘by som[m]e sligh[t] experience, with two diverse persons, that
thow hadst a speciall care [to] give me thy light, and truth, by thy holy and
true Ministers Ang[elicall] & Spirituall’.60 Thus the desired end of conven-
tional pietistic practices – a sense of one’s election and salvation – leads, in
the case of John Dee, to a belief in the truthfulness of his angelic revela-
tions. This election is guaranteed by the proper orientation of action, that is
toward the glorification of God.
Edward Kelley was likewise upbraided by Dee for his worldly intent in
practice:

My Companion ... would have caused personal apparitions of some of the

reprobate spirits, before the Prince Albert Laskie in my Study, thereby to
shew some experience of his skill in such doings: But I would not consent
to it: And thereupon Galvah [an angel] gave judgement and warning of
such an error, of my Companion his intent.61

The pious intents behind the spiritual actions are constantly signalled both
by the angels themselves – as when Gabriel tells Dee ‘Nature is subject unto
you for the name of the Lord, not as unto Kings, but as unto the Ministers
of his eternal Will, whereby your justification is settled above the works of
Nature already’62 – and by Dee, who often declines to be the willer or agent
of his own actions, insisting, ‘Non nostra, sed Dei voluntas fiat’ (Let not our
will, but the will of God be done).63
Whilst this constant profession of pious intents and reinforcement of his
sense of election does much to assuage Dee’s fears or ambivalence toward
practice, it cannot entirely rule out the possibility of satanic subterfuges of
the kinds detailed in treatises of practical divinity, such as William Perkins’s
Satans Sophistrie (1604). Perkins was concerned that the pious should be aware
that ‘when men begin to leaue their euill courses, and to set themselues to
serue the Lord, presently the Deuill doth spread his net to intangle them’,64
and the devil would often appear when least expected. Even those who (like
Dee) claim to have ‘extrordinarie callings’ were not able to deal safely with
spirits,65 even though Perkins believed that ‘the Angels of God do ascend and
descend to do seruice to all those which are truly ioyned vnto Iesus Christ’.66
There was always the possibility that a ‘healthful spirit’ could be an evil
spirit hoping by subterfuge to endanger the soul of his interlocutor.67
At a vital juncture in Dee’s angelic conversations – at a point when they
have been given forty days to transcribe the ‘holy boke’ from pages revealed
in the ‘shew-stone’ – just such an incursion is threatened. Instead of the
angelic writing, there is nothing in the stone but a dark cloud. Kelley sud-
denly makes as if to discredit the whole venture:

This saterday had byn great and eger pangs betwene EK and me: whole
he wold vtterly discredit the process of our actions: as to be done by [?false
160 Stephen Clucas

page torn] and illuding spirits: seking his destruction. saying that he hath
often heretofore byn told things true, but of illuding diuells: and Now,
how can this be other then a mockery, to haue a cornerd dark clowd to
be shewed him in stade of playn writing?68

Kelley is evidently driven to this outburst for other, less supernatural, rea-
sons: he had been ‘cumbred or vexed ... [by a] sklanderous fellow’ for acting
as a ‘witnes of a bargayn’ between one ‘Litle Ned’ and a bankrupt surgeon
‘Lush’; he had been arguing with their assistant Adrian Gilbert;69 he was in
debt.70 He was also, perhaps, psychologically exhausted by the chronic effort
of Dee’s daily and lengthy angelic conversations: ‘he dwelled here,’ he told
Dee at Mortlake, ‘as in a prison’. He was tired of living in poverty and wanted
‘to lerne some Knowledge, whereby he may liue’.71 His whole attitude, says
Dee, was ‘melancholick, and cross overthwartly to the good and patient vsing
of our selues to the accomplishing of this action’.72 Dee concentrates largely
on Kelley’s statements about the status of the spirits, finding internally con-
sistent, pietistic explanations and justifications for continuing the actions:

I replyed ... that God wold clere [the glass] when it pleased him: and that
we were not to appoint God a time to performe his mysteries and mercies
in; shorter then he hath spoken of. And that undowtedly, the occasion of
this blak clowd was some imperfection of oures, to be amended and that
then, all wold be to our furder cumfort. And as concerning his dowting
the goodnes of the Creatures (dealing with vs), he was to blame, to say ...
or dowt the tree to be yll that bringeth forth good frute. for of these crea-
tures from the begynning of theyr dealing with vs vnto the last howre we
never hard other then the prayse of god, instructions and exhortations to
humilitie, patience, constancy, fayth &c.73

Like an alchemist faced with the failure of his opus, or a devotant faced
with seemingly unwarranted tribulations, Dee first looks to personal unwor-
thiness and sinfulness as an explanation for failure, and thence to God’s
unsearchable providence. In a tautological evasion, Dee insists that the
good spirits must be good because they say good things – ignoring Kelley’s
more subversive suggestion of ‘things true’ issuing from ‘illuding deuills’.
Knowing his Agrippa, Dee might have remembered this writer’s warning
against Theurgy in the De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum:

Many thinke that Theurgie is not prohibited, as who saithe it were gov-
erned by good Angels, and by the divine powers, whereas yet oftentimes
vnder the name of God, & the Angels it is bounde with wicked deceits
of the Diuels ... sometimes the vncleane sprites & the deceauinge powers
doe require also this cleannesse that they may be worshipped and adored
for Goddes.74
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 161

In a characteristic act of double-think, which Casaubon calls the ‘obsti-

nacy’ of Dee’s ‘spiritual delusion’,75 Dee uses Kelley’s potentially destabiliz-
ing and threatening doubts and uncertainties, paradoxically, to strengthen
his own belief in the proceedings. On 20 April 1583, when he was reflect-
ing on an argument he had been having with Kelley in which his assistant
threatened to ‘discredit the whole process of our actions’, Dee re-assured
himself that it was Kelley’s lack of faith that had led him to doubt in the
veracity of the spirits, whereas his own firmness of faith, and proper humil-
ity would ultimately ensure the truth of the proceedings:

thowgh his trubbled mynde did dowt, yet my quiet mynde, which god
hath made ... ioyfully throwgh his mercyes, and which accuseth me not
in this action of any ambition, hypocrisie, or disorderly longing, but
onely is bent and settled in awayting the Lord his helping hand ... and
seeing I haue and do ax wisdom at the Lord his hands, and put my trust
in him, he will not suffer me to be confownded.76

Which is as much as to say, it is true because I believe that it is true. It

should also be noted that, despite the fact that his ‘action’ involves active
invocation and summoning of the various angels dealt with, Dee insists
on characterising it as ‘awayting the Lord his helping hand’ as opposed
to a ‘disorderly longing’ for magical or prophetic powers. The powers to
which Dee lays claim are those that are granted to those who wait in faith
to become the instruments of God’s will, rather than those that are desired
by ambitious or hypocritical operators for their own ends.
Later the same day, Dee and Kelley are visited by a spirit known as ‘El’
or ‘Il’, who presents himself as a ‘physitien’ or apothecary come to cure
Kelley’s spiritual malaise.77 ‘I know, what all your talk hath byn’, Il tells
them, ‘But such myndes, such Infection, such Corruption: and must nedes
haue a potion appliable for the cure’. He performs a little charade, showing
them ‘a great bundell of empty potatorie boxes’, claiming ‘I haue forgotten
all my droggs behinde me’.78 He then gives them an apothecary’s bill in the
angelic language: ‘Iudra galgol astel’. ‘You know we vnderstand it not’, retorts
Dee a little sourly.79 Then Il continues the charade, leading Dee and Kelley
onto more familiar pietistic ground:

Il: You must needs haue an expositor.

What boke of phisik is that, that lyeth by you?
Δ [i.e. Dee]: There lay by me on my desk, Marcus Heremita de lege spirituali
in greke and latine,80 but the Latine translation lay open before, on the
left side of which, the sentence began Non raro per negligentia[m], quae
circa alicuis rei operatione[m] commititur, etia[m] Cognito obscurat [Often
through some negligence which is committed relating to the operation
of some thing, the understanding is obscured]. And on the right side
162 Stephen Clucas

began Corpus sine mente nihil p[otes]t perficere [The body without the
mind can accomplish nothing] &c
Il: Mary here is good phisik in dede.81

Il thus provides a reinforcement of Dee’s pietistic validation of his activi-

ties. Dee is directed to read further in the text of Marcus Eremita, where
there is a marginal gloss: ‘Cor contritum’ [the contrite heart]. The passage
begins ‘Sine corde contritum impossibile est omnino liberari a malitia et
vitijs [Without a contrite heart it is impossible in any way to free oneself
from wickedness and vices]’. It is only repentance and contrition that will
cure Kelley’s ‘blindness’, that is his refusal to endorse the truthfulness of the
proceedings. ‘Yf this can not serve him’, adds the comical, scoffing spirit ‘he
shall haue a medicine that a horse can not abyde’!82
The following morning, the angel Uriel is sent to remind Dee and Kelley
of their fortunate election and the general depravity of humanity: ‘When
I gathered you, you were chosen of the myddest of Iniquitie whome I have
clothed with garments made and fashioned with my owne hand – I, AM,
Therfore, Beleue’.83 They are warned not to doubt of the truthfulness of the
conversations on pain of damnation:

Beholde yf you trubble me ones more, or towche the wings of my excel-

lency, before I shall move my self, I will raze you from the earth, as chil-
dren of perdition.84

Dee, however, is praised for his steadfast faith:

I haue hardened the hart of one of you, yea I haue hardened him as
flynt, and burnt him to gither with the ashes of a Cedar: to the entent
he may be proued iust in my work, and great in the strength of my Glory.
Neyther shall his mynde consent to <the> wickednes of Iniquitie, for ...
I haue chosen him, to be a first erthely witnes of my Dignitie.85

Dee’s sense of ‘special gifts’ and extraordinary election is thus confirmed,

and Kelley ingratiates himself with Dee by appearing to be ‘fully satisfyed
of his Dowtes’, a penitential ‘miracle’ which Kelley cannot resist comparing
to a recent incident involving fire and divine judgement:

EK sayd that at the very begynning of this days action ... his belly did
seame to him, to be full of fyre: and that he thowght veryly, that his
bowells did burne: And that he loked downward towards his leggs, to
see if any thing appeared on fire: calling to his mynde the late chance
that befell to the Adulterous man and woman by Sainct Brydes Church
in London.86
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 163

This bodily token of divine presence is frequently repeated in accounts

of their actions in descriptions of a quasi-pentecostal fire that leaps from
the stone into Kelley’s eyes or mouth, investing him temporarily with
gifts of insight and divination.87 Dee and Kelley’s narratives in the con-
versations tend to coincide with the rhetorical strategies of more ortho-
dox Protestant salvation-narratives, in that they resolve temporary lapses
into doubt and uncertainty through corresponding acts of penitence and
contrition, and marvellous signs of continued grace.88 Both kinds of nar-
rative could be said to be as much concerned with the validation offered
by the process of repentance itself as with their illusory aims: the belief
in salvation on the one hand, and the belief in prophetic sense of mission
on the other.
Given Dee’s experience with Il and the penitential doctrines of Marcus
Eremita, it is interesting to note that another devotional work on penitential
themes, William Hunnis’s verse translations of the penitential psalms, the
Seuen Sobs of a Sorrowfull Soule for Sinne, a recently-published ‘little prayer
boke ... in english meter’, features prominently in another spasm of menac-
ing doubt later in the same month’s actions.89 Kelley takes the book to his
bed chamber ‘intending to pray on it, a certain prayer, which he liked’ but
is brought up short by some unfamiliar scribblings inside:

as he opened the boke, his ey espied strange writing in the spare white
paper at the boke’s ende, and beholding it iudged it verily to be his
own letters, and the thing of his own doing: but being assured that he
neuer saw the like of this character [for Conciliation], and that other ...
before this present howre, he <be>cam astonied <and> in great wrath;
and behold, suddenly one appeared to him and sayd, Lo, this is as
good as that other. meaning that [table], which we had receyued ... her
before.90

This apparent undermining of the text that is revealed to them, by the

production of a ‘Cownterfeat’ that was ‘with all, imperfect diuerse wayes,
after the order of our method’, leaves Kelley ‘tossed in his mynde with the
great iniurie of the suttle supplanter of men ... ambitiously intruding him
self to rob god of his glory’.91 Dee, neglecting the possibility that this is a
simple fabrication on the part of Kelley, nonetheless sees its intent. It is a
provocation to textual neurosis. The devilish text is a subtle, parodic desta-
bilization of the ‘true text’:

this Deuilish figure was written down by some wicked spirit, to bring our
perfect doings in dowt with vs: therby eyther to provoke vs to <vtter>
vndue speaches of gods good creatures, or to wavering myndes ... and so
eyther to leaue of, or with fayntharted wauering to procede.92
164 Stephen Clucas

Whether or not Kelley was engineering this doubt to break free of Dee,
as Casaubon seems to think,93 its consequences are rather the opposite. Dee
laughs at ‘the Wicked enemy, for his enuy [and] ass-hedded folish ambition’
and feels his own sense of worthiness reinforced:

I <by gods grace> contrary to such inconveniency <was> armed with

constancie, and confident good hope, that God wold not suffer me ... to
be so vniustly dealt with ... and entended after supper to make my ernest
complaint to the diuine maiestie ... <against> this Wicked intrusion and
temptation of the Illuding diuell.94

Dee’s belief in the angelic revelations as a new scripture leads him to

express a profound concern for textual accuracy, as evidenced by the dense
tangle of marginal apparatus in his manuscripts. In addition to glossing
important passages, he records in the margins doubts about particular read-
ings, and textual corruptions which are amended and corrected by the
angelic teachers themselves. Dee’s pedantic anxiety was probably due, in
part, to the admonishments at the end of Revelation 22:18–19, which warn
that: ‘If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the
plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from
the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out
of the book of life’. Dee makes many inquiries about the construction of
the book (such as how to rule the lines, what colour ink to use)95 and is
continually anxious that he should ‘certifically prepare’ all of the things –
both texts and artefacts – which the angels speak of.96 It is certification of
action – substantiation and verification – that he seeks from the angels, who
frequently exhort him to ‘Dowt not for we are good Angells’.97
Much of the narrative energy of the angelic conversations derives from
this desire for validation on Dee’s part, and this validation often takes ritu-
alized and theatrical forms. Some of the spirits, for example, are represented
as idealized teachers, in the guise of a sixteenth- century magister, complete
with rod for pointing to the lectio they are expounding. The ‘orderliness’ of
the exposition is emphasised, as a sign of truthfulness.98
Things did not always proceed smoothly in Dee and Kelley’s communi-
cations with angels, but even their most problematic moments tended to
confirm, rather than to cast doubt on, the proceedings as a whole. On more
than one occasion, Dee is plagued by ‘illuding’ spirits, who first disrupt
the proceedings, before being ritually punished by ‘true’ angels, as a guar-
antee of the reliability of his dealings. For example, in March 1582, while
Barnabas Saul was still in Dee’s employ, the angel Uriel comes to warn him
of an unhealthy spirit in his midst:

There is a spirit named Lundrumguffa vsing you who seketh your

destruction ... He hawnteth thy howse, and seketh the destruction of thy
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 165

dawghter. His pretence was to haue maymed the[e] in thy sholder the last
night ... Yf thow do not dischardg him to morrow, he will hurt, both thy
wife and thy dawghter ... he will seke Sauls death who is accursed.99

Shortly afterwards, when Edward Talbot calls upon the angel Uriel, they
are visited by a spirit ‘clothed with a long robe, of purple: all spanged with
gold ... his eyes sparkling’. Thinking he is the angel Uriel, they ask whether
the tables they have been given are perfect. He answers, ‘They are perfect.
There is no question’. Dee then asks, ‘Are you Uriel?’ He does not have a
chance to answer, however:

Than presently cam one in, and threw the brave spirit down by the
sholders: and bet him mightyly with a whip: and toke all his robes, and
apparell of[f] him: and then remayned all heary and owggly and still the
spirit was beaten of him who cam in after him. And that spirit, which
so bet him, sayed to the hearing of my skryer. Lo, thus are the wycked
skourged.100

The spirit was, in fact, Lundrumguffa, who, Dee notes, ‘went about to
hinder the truth before in the character ... false cownterfeating’ and ‘foysted
in the shew of angels characters and names before’.101 While the revelation
of this incursion represents a temporary setback, it nonetheless functions
in the long term to dramatically reinforce Dee’s sense of the reliability of
the information he is receiving and the special care that Uriel, Michael and
the other angels have in protecting him and guarding the legitimacy of his
actions.102 As if to bolster this point, there follows a scene in which the angel
of Dee’s profession (Angelus tuae Professionis) undergoes a quasi- communion,
in which the angel (dressed in scholar’s black, and bearing the likeness of
Dee’s own face) receives a talismanic disk from the hand of Michael in place
of a communion wafer. Just as communion itself reinforces the communi-
cant’s sense of faith, so Dee’s ‘spiritual experiment’ validates his role as a
Solomonic prophet of the new apocalypse.
This fear of lapsing into evil, inauthentic or unwarranted practice is also
signalled by powers Dee is promised by the angels. On 20 March 1582, for
example, Dee records a vision in which ‘a strange fowle with many wings’
brings him a ‘tablet’ inscribed with seven letters. These seven letters, he
is told, ‘are the 7 seats of the one and everlasting God’ containing ‘seven
secret Angels’. This ‘bond’ will allow Dee to ‘banisheth the wicked’ and
‘expelleth euyll spirits’.103 Later that same year (on 20 November 1582), the
angel Carmara reveals to Dee various angels of the material creation, includ-
ing ‘King Bnapsen’ (Figure 7.4) who ‘gouern[s] ... All enchanters, Coniurers,
witches [and] wicked Spirites that are hated of God’. This angelic King will
give Dee the ability to ‘cast oute the powre of all wicked spirits’.104 Also in
November, Dee is introduced to ‘Hagonel the First’, who will be a ‘spirituall
166 Stephen Clucas

weapon’ for Dee’s ‘Practise’, to be used against ‘lyers, witches, enchanters,

Deceyuers, Blasphemers: and ... all they that use NATURE with abuse’.105
By giving Dee power over unwarranted abusers of nature, it is implied that
his own practice is to be a correct use of such powers. ‘In Vse we are per-
fect’, Dee is told by certain spirits, ‘Misused we are monsters’.106 When Dee
prepares bundles of prayers and ‘calls’ written in the angelic tongue, he
demands to hear a phrase ‘whereof I had mention many yeres since’ which
will act as a ‘strong charge to the wicked to tell the truth’.107 The phrase (‘life
lephe lurfando’) is given to him as a means to distinguish the good instru-
ments from the bad in his angelic practice.
Throughout Dee’s angelic conversations, the piety of the practitioners is
vital to his conception of the heptarchicall art as a means or instrument
for use.108 Before their apocalyptic practice, they are exhorted to ‘nine
dayes contrition preparatiue’ in which they will ‘vnrip the cankers’ of their
‘infected sowles’.109 Fasting and abstention from sex are both mentioned as
part of the daily routine of the conversations, as are long bouts of prayer.110
Just as Agrippa, in his De occulta philosophia, saw prayer (imprecationes) as
the means by which the magus was able to perform his magical operations,111
so in Dee’s angelic conversations the ‘invocation’ (invocatio) involved in
prayer is seen to be possessed of operative powers: ‘Invocate nomen eius’,
Dee is told by one of the angels, ‘aut nihil agere possumus’ [Invoke his name
or we can do nothing].The Key of prayer openeth all things’.112 Like the ars
notoria, a mediaeval magical art supposedly revealed by angels to Solomon,
Dee’s theurgic art claims to be a universal science and a ‘perfect doctrine
of operating’.113 Both utilize angelic revelations, occult languages, prayer
and abstinence as instruments. They also stress the centrality of faith in the
attaining of wisdom and as a guarantee of authenticity:

[L]et the Operator be constant in his faith, and confidently believe, that
he shall obtain such knowledge and wisdome, in the pronouncing [of]
these Orations, for with God nothing is impossible: therefore let the
Operator proceed in his work, with faith, hope and a constant desire:
firmly believing; because we can obtain nothing but by faith; Therefore
have no doubt in this Operation ...114

Dee, like the Solomonic operator, desired universal knowledge and desired
to use that knowledge as an instrument. Both construed action as embed-
ded in a providential system in which God was ‘the end of all practise’.
Human action and knowledge were, in this conception, co-identical with
the glorification of God.

Many contemporary historians of Renaissance magic – influenced perhaps

by the demonologists of the period they study – emphasise the heterodox
nature of magical practices, and starkly distinguish ‘magic’ from ‘religion’.
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 167

Figure 7.4 One of the angelic ‘Kings’ who governs ‘enchanters, Coniurers, withces
[and] wicked spirites’

Like Harkness insisting on the difference between Christian prayers and

magical invocations, or like SzĘnyi seeing magic as inherently illicit and
impious (‘dark temptations’, which beset the unwary Christian). As I have
tried to show in this chapter, the motivations behind magical practice in
the period were often pious and sincere. Commerce with spiritual beings,
in a period when belief in guardian angels was ubiquitous across confes-
sional divides, was not seen as inherently wrong or dangerous (although
authorities like Augustine certainly gave them cause for concern).115 While
the religious proscription of magical practices is, in itself, an important his-
torical phenomenon and vital to an understanding of the historical reality
of magic, it could be argued that to focus exclusively on the negative reac-
tions of the Catholic and Protestant churches in various parts of Europe is
to ignore the fact that many Catholic and Protestant Christians practiced
(or took an interest in) magic and did not see it as fundamentally impious
168 Stephen Clucas

in character. In order to come to a fuller understanding of the positive

significance of magic for its Christian practitioners, we need to appreciate
the continuities between magic and Christian profession – the normative
character of ritual magical practices from the viewpoint of practitioners, as
opposed to the transgressive character as it was defined in the demonologi-
cal literature.116
The angelic conversations of John Dee, with their continuous stream of
prayers and pious obsecrations, their obsessive self-scrutiny and dwelling
upon election and calling, their penitential practices and their and con-
stantly reiterated desire to defer individual agency to God’s will are a clear
illustration of how orthodox Christian beliefs could be extended impercep-
tibly into magical ones. The 1580s in England was a difficult period for
the English Church, with the forces of Catholic Spain menacing it from
without, and internal divisions from the rise of Puritanism threatening it
from within.117 In this time of spiritual and ecclesiastical turmoil, it is easy
to see how pious individuals like Dee (perhaps nostalgic for lost elements of
Catholic devotions)118 could be drawn towards new and more intense forms
of religious experience. The prophetic self-fashioning and apocalypticism of
the conversations, whilst perhaps untypical of ceremonial magic as a whole,
are in some senses the logical extension of the precatory structures that
these ceremonial forms of magic employed. While Dee’s relationship with
his skryers is often summarily dismissed by modern commentators as cre-
dulity on the one side and charlatanism on the other, the religious doubts
and uncertainties – as well as the inflated sense of vocational ‘singularity
and eminency’ – that they reveal at work, have more to tell us about the
continuities between magical and Christian experiences than they do about
the psychopathology of the gullible.

Notes
An earlier version of this paper was given as part of a series of seminars held at Kings
College, Cambridge entitled Renaissance Afterlives on 25 January 1994. I would like to
thank Richard Serjeantson and the late Jeremy Maule for helpful comments which
they made on that occasion. I would like to dedicate this chapter to the memory of
the late Julian Roberts (1930–2010).

1. The ‘angelic conversations’ were crystallomantic visions reported to Dee by vari-

ous ‘skryers’ or crystalgazers working in his employ between 1581 and 1607. The
records of these skrying sessions can be found in British Library, Sloane MS 3188
(the Libri Mysteriorum, hereinafter referred to by the abbreviation ‘Lib. Myst.’)
and in Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1790, art. 1, and British Library, MS Cotton
Appendix XLVI, 2 vols. The majority of the extant angelic conversations con-
ducted after 28 May 1583 were printed (albeit inaccurately) in Meric Casaubon’s
A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for many Yeers between Dr John Dee ... and
Some Spirits (London, 1659). A True & Faithful Relation is hereinafter referred to
as TFR. A previously unknown additional manuscript source was published by
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 169

C. H. Josten in ‘An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee’, Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 28 (1965): 223–57.
2. For a comprehensive survey of the kinds of magical manuscripts which came
down to the sixteenth century see Frank Klaasen, ‘English Manuscripts of Magic,
1300–1500: A Preliminary Survey’, in Claire Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts
and Traditions of Mediaeval Ritual Magic (Stroud, 1998), 3–31. On the angelogical
tradition see David Keck, Angels & Angelology in the Middle Ages (Oxford and New
York, 1998).
3. For a list of manuscripts that record shorter, and less- detailed, accounts of spir-
itual encounters see Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between
Science and Religion (London and New York, 1988), 280 n.108.
4. Carl Kiesewetter, John Dee, ein Spiritist des 16 Jahrhunderts. Kulturgeschichtliche
Studien (Leipzig, 1893, repr. Schwarzenburg, 1977).
5. See Stephen Clucas, ‘John Dee’s Liber Mysteriorum and the Ars Notoria: Renaissance
Magic and Mediaeval Theurgy’, in Clucas, ed., John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies
in English Renaissance Thought (Dordrecht, 2006), 231–73, esp. 231–29. Recent
studies on Dee’s angelic conversations have included Clulee, John Dee’s Natural
Philosophy, 203–30, Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels:
Cabala, Alchemy and the End of Nature (Cambridge, 1999), Håkan Håkannson,
Seeing the Word: John Dee and Renaissance Occultism (Lund, 2001), Györgi E.
SzĘnyi, John Dee’s Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs (Albany,
NY, 2004) and the essays by Clucas, Harkness and SzĘnyi in Clucas, John Dee:
Interdisciplinary Studies.
6. See Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964),
and The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London, 1979) and Peter J.
French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London, 1972).
7. For Yates’s thesis see especially Yates, Hermetic Tradition, ch. 4, ‘Renaissance Magic
and Science’, 144–68, and ‘The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science’, in
Art, Science and History in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1967), 255–74. For critiques
of Yates’s thesis see Robert S. Westman and J. E. McGuire, Hermeticism and the
Scientific Revolution: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, March 9, 1974 (Los
Angeles, 1977) and Brian Vickers, ed., Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the
Renaissance (Cambridge, 1984).
8. Harkness, Conversations with Angels, 120.
9. See, for example, examples of the exhortation and commanding of spirits in
Girolamo Menghi’s Flagellum daemonum: exorcismos terribiles, potentissimos, &
efficaces, remediaque probatissima, ac doctrinam singularem in malignos spiritus
expellendos, facturasque, & maleficia fuganda de obsessis corporibus complectens: Cum
suis benedictionibus, & omnibus requisitis ad eorum expulsionem (Venice, 1576).
10. SzĘnyi, John Dee’s Occultism, 131.
11. Ibid., 156.
12. See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 3, chs 11–18.
13. See R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford, 1979) and John
Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of
Religious Despair (Oxford, 1991).
14. This seems originally to have been a spare bedroom. See Lib. Myst., f. 43v:
‘What say you concerning the Chamber, for our practise may my farderest little
Chamber, serue, yf the bed be taken downe?’ For references to Dee’s the prox-
imity of Dee’s ‘oratorie’ to the ‘Chamber’ of ‘practise’ see Lib. Myst., ff. 42r, 79v,
98v.
170 Stephen Clucas

15. The angel’s rubric is given as ‘Ho.’ which Dee glosses as Carmara (see Lib. Myst.,
f. 45v). See also Elias Ashmole’s comment on this rubric, Lib. Myst., f. 46r: ‘This
character seemes to stand for Carmara’.
16. Lib. Myst., f. 59v.
17. Ibid., f. 30r.
18. Ibid., ff. 9r–10r.
19. TFR, ‘Preface’, sig. G2v.
20. On the general structure of these narratives see Deborah E. Harkness, ‘Shows in
the Showstone: A Theater of Alchemy and Apocalypse in the Angel Conversations
of John Dee’, Renaissance Quarterly, 49 (1996): 707–37.
21. See Lib. Myst., f. 80r.
22. TFR, 31.
23. Ibid., sig. D3v. On these two modes of seeing in the angelic conversations
see Stephen Clucas, ‘Non est legendum sed inspicendum solum: Inspectival
Knowledge and the Visual Logic of John Dee’s Liber Mysteriorum’, in Emblems and
Alchemy, eds Stanton J. Linden and Alison Adams Glasgow Emblem Studies, 3
(Glasgow, 1998), 109–32 at 118–19.
24. The discovery of the manuscript is recorded by Elias Ashmole, Lib. Myst., ff. 2r–3r.
25. Ibid., f. 2r. These manuscripts survive in British Library, Sloane MS 3191 and
Sloane MS 3678.
26. Although it is often maintained that Edward Talbot was a pseudonym adopted by
Edward Kelley on his first acquaintance with Dee, there is no textual evidence for
this claim, apart from a single – and not completely legible – deleted passage in
Dee’s private diary for 1582. See Edward Fenton, The Diaries of John Dee (Charlbury,
1998), 47, 49. In his entry for 13 July 1582 Dee noted that he and Talbot had
‘parted on friendly terms’ and on 16 July 1582 Dee wrote that he had ‘confirmed
that Talbot was a cousener’ (Fenton, Diaries, 46). Elias Ashmole’s speculation that
Talbot was the ‘assumed name’ of Kelley is taken by him from an unsubstantiated
comment in John Weever’s Funerall Monuments. See Ashmole’s note, Lib. Myst.,
f. 133r, and John Weever, Ancient Funerall Monuments within the United Monarchie
of Great Britaine and Ireland (London, 1631), 45. Until more substantial evidence is
found I am inclined to treat Talbot and Kelley as separate individuals.
27. Sloane MS 3188 contains title pages for three of the Libri Mysteriorum (Lib. Myst.,
ff. 4r, 31r and 60r) plus a title page added by Elias Ashmole to a damaged section
of the manuscript (f. 16r and Ashmole note f. 15r). There is one further ‘Book of
Mysteries’ – the Liber Mysteriorum (& Sancti) parallelus Novalisque. Lesden May 28.
1583, which is contained in the first volume of Cotton MS Appendix XLVI, and
printed in TFR, 1–32.
28. Lib. Myst., f. 7r. Cf. also f. 118r.
29. Ibid., f. 7r. On ‘skrying’ as a popular magical practice in the sixteenth century
(often used for the recovery of stolen goods and other mundane purposes) see
Christopher Whitby, ‘John Dee and Renaissance Scrying’, Bulletin of the Society
for Renaissance Studies, 3.2 (1985): 25–37.
30. Lib. Myst., f. 46r.
31. For a ‘Ring of Gold’ decorated with the letters PELE see Lib. Myst., f. 22r–v and
f. 32r.
32. See Ibid., f. 33r (‘Instruments of Conciliation’), and Ibid., f. 48v (‘Heptagonum
stellare’).
33. See Ibid., f. 101r (5 May 1583): ‘See that all things are in a redyness agaynst
the first day of August next’. On the connection between Dee’s angelic revela-
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 171

tions and political affairs see Stephen Clucas, ‘Dreams, Prophecies and Politics:
John Dee and the Elizabethan Court 1575–1585’, in Kate Hodgkin, Michelle
O’Callaghan and Sue Wiseman, eds, Reading the Early Modern Dream (New York,
2007), 67–80. On Dee’s conversations in the context of late sixteenth- century
apocalypticism see Harkness, Conversations with Angels, 133–56.
34. See Lib. Myst., f. 101v: ‘Oute of this, shall be restored the holy bokes, which haue
perished euen from the begynning, and from the first that liued’.
35. On the discovery of Sloane MS 3188 (and others) in a ‘private drawer’ of a ‘chest
of cedar wood’, together with ‘a chaplet of olive Beades, & a cross made of the
same wood hanging at the end of them’, see the account of Elias Ashmole (dated
20 August 1672), in Sloane MS 3188, ff. 2r–3r.
36. TFR, ‘Preface’, sig. [C]v.
37. Ibid., sig. [A]r.
38. Ibid., sig. H2r.
39. Ibid., sig. Gr.
40. Ibid., sig. Gr. On Casaubon’s attitudes toward, and use of, John Dee’s angelic
conversations see Stephen Clucas, ‘Enthusiasm and “Damnable Curiosity”:
Meric Casaubon and John Dee’, in R. J. W. Evans and Alexander Marr, eds,
Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot, 2006),
131–48.
41. TFR, sig. H2r. On Casaubon’s attack on Sadducceism see Clucas ‘Casaubon and
John Dee’, 141–44.
42. TFR, sig. H2r.
43. A charge laid against Dee by some of his contemporaries in the 1560s. See Dee’s
Mathematicall Praeface to Henry Billingesley’s 1570 translation of Euclid, The
Elements of Geometrie of ... Euclide ... Now First Translated into the Englishe Toung, by
H. Billingsley (London, 1570), sig. Aiir.
44. TFR, sig. [D4]r.
45. Ibid., sig. Ir. This characterisation of Dee’s prayer relates to Casaubon’s views on
the dangers of extemporary prayer in the radical sects of the Civil war period.
See Meric Casaubon, A Vindication of the Lord’s Prayer, as a Formal Prayer, and by
Christ’s Institution to Be Used by Christians as a Prayer: against the Antichristian
Practice and Opinion of Some Men. Wherein, also Their Private and Ungrounded Zeal
Is Discovered, Who Are Very Strict for the Observation of the Lord’s Day, and Make So
Light of the Lord’s Prayer (London, 1660).
46. This self- characterisation by Dee can be found in his Mathematicall Praeface, sig.
Ajv.
47. TFR, sig. [D3]r.
48. Lib. Myst., f. 7r.
49. See, for example, Dee’s reference to a list of ‘28 questions or articles of dowtes in
writing ... for me to rede (vppon occasion) to our spiritual instructor’. Lib. Myst.
f. 101r.
50. Hamlet, I, iv, 40–42.
51. TFR, 7.
52. A Warning against the Idolatrie of the Last Times. And an Instruction Touching
Religious, or Divine Worship (Cambridge, 1601), reprinted in The Workes of ...
W. Perkins, 3 vols (London, 1626–31), 1: 716.
53. William Perkins, Of Gods Grace and Mans Free Will (Cambridge, 1601), in Workes,
1: 713.
54. John Dee, De Heptarchia Mystica, British Library, Sloane MS 3191, f. 45r.
172 Stephen Clucas

55. Dee, De Heptarchia Mystica, Sloane MS 3191, f. 45v.

56. Lib. Myst., f. 7v.
57. Ibid., f. 7v.
58. Ibid., f. 7r.
59. TFR, 21.
60. Lib. Myst., Sloane MS 3188, f. 7r–v. My italics.
61. TFR, 21.
62. Ibid., 37. My italics.
63. TFR, 40.
64. William Perkins, Satans Sophistrie Answered by Our Saviour Christ and in Diuers
Sermons Further Manifested (London, 1604), 4.
65. Perkins, Satans Sophistrie, 12.
66. Ibid., 136–37.
67. On the dangers of diabolic incursion in dealing with spirits see Augustine, De
Civitate Dei, 10: 9–10. Augustine cites the authority of Paul, who warned that
‘Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light’ (2 Corinthians 11:14).
68. Lib. Myst., f. 91r. The underlining is Dee’s own emphasis.
69. Ibid., f. 93r: ‘AG, and he, were reconciled of the greate discord which, yester-
day, had byn betwene them’. On Gilbert’s role in the conversations see Clucas,
‘Dreams, Prophecies and Politics’, 75–77.
70. Lib. Myst., f. 91r: ‘he complayned of want, I sayd my want is greater then his: for
I was in det allmost 300 pownds’.
71. It should be noted that at this time Dee was paying Kelley an annuity of fifty
pounds.
72. Lib. Myst., f. 91r.
73. Ibid., f. 91r.
74. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum declamatio
invectiva (1536), trans. James Sanford, Of the Vanitie and Vncertaintie of Artes and
Sciences (London, 1569), Cap. 46, ‘Of Theurgie’, 59. Agrippa’s critique of theurgy
relies heavily on Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, Lib. X, cap. 9–10.
75. TFR, sigs. Ev–E2r.
76. Lib. Myst., f. 91r.
77. Ibid., f. 91v.
78. Ibid., f. 91v.
79. Ibid., f. 91v.
80. See Julian Roberts and Andrew G. Watson, eds, John Dee’s Library Catalogue
(London, 1990), item no. 1207 ‘Marci Eremitae de lege spirituali capitula &c
graeci & Latini 8o Haganoae 1531’. Eremita was a fifth- century Greek theologian,
who wrote on the monastic life. See Johannes Kunze, Marcus Eremita, ein neuer
Zeuge fur das altkirchliche Taufbekenntnis (Leipzig, 1896).
81. Lib. Myst., f. 91v.
82. Ibid., f. 92r.
83. Ibid., f. 92r. Tuesday 23 April 1583. With an allusion to Exodus 3:14.
84. Ibid., f. 92v.
85. Ibid., f. 92v.
86. Ibid., f. 93r.
87. Ibid., ff. 74v, 76r, etc.
88. See William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1957), 96 ff.
89. William Hunnis, Seuen Sobs of a Sorrowfull Soule for Sinne: Comprehending those
seuen Psalmes of ... Dauid, commonlie called Pœnitentiall: framed into a forme of
familiar praiers, and reduced into meeter by W. Hunnis ... Whereunto are also annexed
 John Dee’s Angelic Conversations 173

his Handfull of Honisuckles; the Poore Widowes Mite; a Dialog betweene Christ and
a sinner; diuers godlie and pithie ditties, with a Christian confession of and to the
Trinitie; newlie printed and augmented (London, 1583). On Hunnis’s poem see Lily
B. Campbell, Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth- Century England (Cambridge,
Los Angeles and Berkeley, 1959), 49–50.
90. Lib. Myst., f. 98v.
91. Ibid., f. 98v.
92. Ibid., f. 98v. The original table is given on f. 98r, the ‘counterfeit’ version on f.
99r with this subscription: ‘Belmagel his cownterfeating of o[u]r instruction
receyued fro[m] god, and to EK his hand, as liuely as could be’.
93. TFR, sig. Hr: ‘[Kelley] was euer and anon upon projects to break with Dr Dee,
and to be gone’.
94. Lib. Myst., f. 98v.
95. See Lib. Myst., f. 81v.
96. Lib. Myst., f. 13v.
97. Ibid., f. 101r.
98. See Lib. Myst., f. 58r, where Kelley is described as feeling like ‘a scholer comming
in the presence of his Master’ when dealing with the ‘spirituall creatures’.
99. Lib. Myst., f. 10v.
100. Ibid., f. 11r.
101. Ibid., marginal notes in ff. 10v, 11r.
102. Cf. also Ibid., f. 61r where a spirit in ‘foles cote’ is unmasked as an ‘enemy of
god’, ff. 65v–66v, where an ‘illuding deuill’ is unmasked and ‘hewed in peeces’,
and ff. 104v–105r where a spirit in the likeness of a ‘braue man’ is revealed as a
‘wicked tempter’.
103. Lib. Myst., f. 24r.
104. Ibid., f. 57r.
105. Ibid., f. 45v.
106. Ibid., f. 54r.
107. Ibid., f. 74r.
108. On the instrumentalism of Dee’s angelic conversations see Stephen Clucas,
‘ “Wondrous Force and Operation”: Magic, Science and Religion in the
Renaissance’, in Philippa Berry and Margaret Tudeau, eds, Textures of Renaissance
Knowledge (Manchester, 2003), 35–57, esp. 43–46.
109. Lib. Myst., f. 101r.
110. On the role of traditional and extemporary prayers in the angelic conversations
see Clucas, ‘John Dee’s Liber Mysteriorum and the Ars Notoria’, 245–55.
111. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (1533), ed. V.
Perrone Compagni (Leiden, 1992), Lib. I. Cap. LXXIII (‘De virtute scripturae et
de imprecationibus et inscriptionibus faciendis’), 240.
112. Lib. Myst., f. 26r. This is a Psalmic locution. See, for example, Psalm 104.1 in the
Vulgate: ‘Confitemini Domino et invocate nomen eius’.
113. Robert Turner, Ars Notoria: the Notory Art of Solomon ... Englished by Robert Turner
(London, 1657), 88. On the ars notoria see Julien Véronèse, L’Ars notoria au Moyen
Age. Introduction et édition critique (Florence, 2007) and idem, ‘Les anges dans l’ars
notoria: révélation, processus visionnaire et angélologie’, in Les anges et la magie
au Moyen Âge. Actes de la table ronde de Nanterre (8–9 décembre 2000), ed. Henri
Bresc, Jean-Patrice Boudet et Benoît Grévin, Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de
Rome, 114 (Rome, 2002), 813–49. On the influence of the ars notoria on Dee’s
angelic conversations see Stephen Clucas, ‘John Dee’s Liber Mysteriorum and the
Ars Notoria’. See also Chapter 6, above.
174 Stephen Clucas

114. Turner, Ars Notoria, 112.

115. See, for example, Jean Bodin, De la démonomanie des sorciers (Paris, 1580), 1.2:
7–14, ‘De l’Association des Esprits auec les Hommes’, where Bodin stresses the
naturalness of ‘La societé, & alliance’ between men and spirits because ‘simili-
tude ou accord l’vne à l’autre’ (7).
116. An excellent outline of the history of the negative character of the demonologi-
cal literature can be found in Noel L. Brann, Trithemius and Magical Theology: A
Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe, SUNY Series
in Western Esoteric Traditions (Albany, 1999), ‘The Demonological Vision’,
33–84. For an insightful view of the intimate connections between magic and
religion see D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: from Ficino to Campanella
(1958; Stroud, 2000), 83–84.
117. See Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967).
118. On the persistence of ‘traditionalism’ into the reign of Elizabeth, see Eamon
Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New
Haven, CT and London, 1992), 565–93. Dee, it should be noted, was particu-
larly attached to a psalmodic prayer book composed by the Catholic martyr
John Fisher, and used it during the conversations. See Clucas, ‘John Dee’s Liber
Mysteriorum and the Ars Notoria’, 248–50.
8
‘Behold, the dreamer cometh’:
Hyperphysical Magic and Deific
Visions in an Early-Modern
Theosophical Lab- Oratory
Peter J. Forshaw

He who denies true dreams, speaks in a dream.1

Arguably one of the most familiar representations of the early modern

occult adept is the engraving in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum
sapientiae aeternae (1609), of a man, presumably the author himself, on
his knees before the tabernacle in his Lab- Oratorium (Figure 8.1). It is an
image that has appeared in countless publications on early modern occult
philosophy, so much so that the Amphitheatre is considered ‘one of the
most important books in the whole literature of theosophical alchemy
and the occult sciences;’2 its author ‘one of the most remarkable theoso-
phists and alchemists of the late Sixteenth Century’. 3 Khunrath’s striking
image originally appeared as the final engraving in a sequence of four cir-
cular ‘Theosophical’ figures in the first edition of his ‘Christian- Cabalist,
Divinely-Magical, and Physico- Chymical’ Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom
(1595).4 Following the order in the Amphitheatre’s title, the three preceding
engravings concern themselves with the tasks of knowing God, Oneself
and Nature, through Cabala, Magic and Physico- Chymistry; this fourth
figure represents Khunrath’s synthesis of these complementary realms of
experience. 5
As most scholarly writing on Khunrath has concentrated almost exclusively
on his alchemical exertions in the Laboratory,6 here the initial focus shall
be on his endeavours in the Oratory; given, however, Khunrath’s criticism
of those who ‘quite un-philosophically separate Oratory and Laboratory from
each other’, some alchemical matter will be introduced in due course.7
The title quote for this chapter comes from the episode in Genesis
37:19, where Joseph’s brothers mock their sibling on account of his
visions. In Khunrath’s Amphitheatre their scornful remark is embedded in
a quote from Cyprian’s Epistles, where the third- century Church Father

175
176 Peter J. Forshaw

Figure 8.1 Oratory-Laboratory engraving from Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum

Sapientiae Aeternae ([Hamburg], 1595)

is defending the sanctity of his own visions against those who would be
similarly dismissive:

I remember what has been shown me, and what, among other things,
the LORD deigned to reveal to me, nor should they be taken as ridiculous
[dreams] and absurd visions, as when Joseph’s brothers said about him:
‘Behold, the dreamer cometh.’8

The Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom is essentially a collection of esoteric

commentaries on selected verses from the Solomonic texts of the Bible and
the extract from Cyprian’s letter appears during Khunrath’s ruminations
on Proverbs 3:24 (‘If thou sleep, thou shalt not fear: thou shalt rest, and
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 177

thy sleep shall be sweet’). There he glosses the verse’s final clause with the
words: ‘sleeping ... you will be Divinely admonished, taught, [and] instructed
with Visions’, followed by the assertion:

Concerning hypnotic Visions, or dream-bringing Revelations, or Divine

and presaging dreams, bear this laconically in mind: The Soul ... in con-
trol of itself and having theosophically acquired a complete knowledge
of itself, justly undertakes to understand and explain the secrets of the
whole created Universe ... to be united with good Spirits; to recount things
past, contemplate present events, [and] presage those to come.9

For Khunrath, knowledge of psyche and physis, or as he usually expresses

himself, of the micro- and macrocosm, is propaedeutic to attempting con-
tact with supernatural beings and acts of prophecy, though there seems
to be a certain reciprocity in that one should pray theosophically before
entering the laboratory.10 While engrossed in investigating the properties of
matter, Khunrath simultaneously displays a fascination for the incorporeal,
moving easily between natural alchemical spirits and the supernatural sen-
tient variety. This engagement with spirits and visions can be found again
in his commentary on Wisdom 7:27 (‘She maketh the Friends of GOD and
Prophets’), where we read,

Those experiencing Divine revelations, and their interpreters predict-

ing future things, are rightly called Prophets or Seers. And Prophets are
inspired to prophesy through the attendance and instruction of Angels;
through visions, enigmas, [and] figures; by a clear and distinct word;
by the inner breath of the Spirit of GOD, ... by receiving the oracles of
GOD.11

Contrary to contemporary claims that the age of prophecy had ceased,12

Khunrath, like Cyprian, believes in the continuing possibility of personal
revelation, ‘for the Lord God still grants some nowadays a drink from
Joseph’s cup’, and he adduces many biblical instances in support.13 In light
of the Solomonic nature of the Amphitheatre, there is a predictable mention
of Solomon’s nocturnal illumination in 3 Kings 3:5.14 The wisdom-seeking
reader is also encouraged to ‘seek revelations of hidden things with GOD
after the manner of Daniel’.15 We likewise find several references to that
other famous dream account in Genesis 28:20, when Jacob saw the angels
on the ladder and subsequently built the House of God (Beth-El) at the site
of the vision.16
Such scriptural citations were also, it should be added, the standard
fare of sixteenth- century occult discourse and highly useful material for
the formulation of magical invocations for angelic visitations and visions.
Khunrath would have had to look no further than one of his favourite
178 Peter J. Forshaw

sources, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533), to find

such information as:

If a prayer be necessary for obtaining oracles, or dreams, whether it be to

God, angels, or heros, there are many places offer themselves out of the
Old Testament, where God is said to talk with men, promising in very
many places presages, and revelations, besides the prophetical dreams of
Jacob, Joseph, Pharaoh, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, in the old Testament, and
the Revelation of John, Paul, in the New; also of holy magicians ... also of
later prophets ... the deities of whom being piously invocated, render us
oftentimes partakers of divine revelations.17

Although Khunrath never really defines what he means by the ‘Divine

Magic’ included in the Amphitheatre’s title, given his praise of Agrippa as
‘a good and philosophical Evangelist, [whose] words presuppose a Theo-
Sophical, not a nigromantic, mind,’18 it is likely that he intended something
along the lines of the latter’s definition of theurgy in De incertitudine et vani-
tate omnium scientiarum (1531), where he states:

Now of this Theurgy or Divine Magick, Porphyrius having delivered many

things, at length concludes, that by Theurgick Operations the soul may
be made fit to receive Spirits and Angels, and to see and converse with
them ... His Rules and Directions are contain’d in his Art Almadel, his
Notorious Art, his Art Pauline, & his Art of Revelations ...19

Turning again to Khunrath’s Lab- Oratorium, we now understand the rele-

vance of the quote high up in the roof beams and serving as the emblematic
title for the whole engraving, from Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods: ‘No
one is ever a great man without divine inspiration’.20 Hence, too, the import
of the words over the entrance to the bed- chamber at the image’s vanishing
point: ‘Dormiens Vigila’ (While sleeping, keep watch), that is, be receptive
to God’s angels as both bringers of dreams and themselves apparitions in
visions. The plaque suspended over the Oratory table adds a Neoplatonic or,
perhaps more accurately, Neopythagorean tone to the proceedings with the
declaration ‘Do not speak of God without light’.21 The most likely source
for this is again Agrippa who, in his turn, doubtless lifted it from Marsilio
Ficino’s translation of the third- century theurgist Iamblichus’s De Mysteriis
Ægyptiorum, Chaldæorum & Assyriorum (1516), where we learn that it was an
injunction of the original lover of wisdom, Pythagoras.22
In his Isagoge to the Lab- Oratorium engraving, Khunrath provides the most
complete description of what he intends by the self- designation ‘Theosopher’,
that is, a ‘Lover of Divine Wisdom’,23 one ‘taught by God, mediately or imme-
diately, by a spiritual or corporeal master, the good messenger of YHVH’.24
Although I think Carlos Gilly slightly overplays the influence of the Arbatel
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 179

de magia veterum, published in Basel in 1575, on Khunrath’s intellectual

development,25 its secondary definition of Theosophy as ‘Knowledge of the
government of God by Angels, ... and to understand the mystery of angels’
undoubtedly participates in the same worldview.26 According to Khunrath,
the theosopher’s penitentially purified mind is capable of ascending ‘to the
αγιαστήϱιον [Hagiastŋrion], that is, the Sanctuary of good Spirits, or God’s
^
Angels (which can be done by a man both waking and sleeping), of receiving
them Cabalistically; he experiences Spiritual things, contemplates superce-
lestial things, [and] sees many Physical things, from and in Hyperphysical
things’.27
Twenty pages earlier, Khunrath had, fortunately, assisted his readers with
a combined description of Magic and Cabala, as ‘the worship of Divine
Beings, dealings with Spiritual Beings and conversation with them, and
the investigation of Natural Things’,28 thereby encompassing the essence
of Jewish Kabbalah’s involvement with both the work of Beresith and
Mercavah, glossed by Khunrath as ‘Wisdom of Nature’ (Sapientia Naturae)
and ‘Wisdom of Divinity’ (Sapientia Divinitatis), respectively based on the
exegesis of Genesis 1 and the vision of angels in the first chapter of Ezekiel.29
Khunrath’s definition of ‘Hyperphysical Magic’, coming a few lines later,
informs the reader that such supernatural work concerns ‘pious and useful
conversation, as much when awake as when sleeping, mediately and imme-
diately, with good Angels, GOD’S fiery ministers’.30
In the Amphitheatre’s prefatory material, Theophilus Aretius’s encomium
praises those who are able to hear the angelic tongues in their mortal
frame,31 doubtless having the apostle Paul in mind (1 Corinthians 13) and
perhaps also Agrippa’s discussion ‘Of the tongue of Angels’ in De occulta
philosophia.32 Khunrath leaves us in little doubt that he believes himself to
be one of that number able to enjoy the ‘most sweet conversation of JEHOVAH
and of the good spirits sub- delegated by GOD’.33 Referring to Corinthians,
where Paul speaks of how every man has his own special gift from God,34
Khunrath declares that he himself has been granted the gift of ‘discern-
ing Spirits’ along with the ‘sense and discerning of good and evil’.35 With
his professed interest in cabala and hyperphysical magic, this certainly
sounds like our theosopher is claiming abilities resembling those described
by one of his major influences, Paracelsus, who in Astronomia magna or
Philosophia sagax (1537–38) had alluded to no fewer than 28 kinds of natural
and celestial ‘Nectromantia’ [sic], including visions in mirrors, beryls and
coals, and divination from dreams, citing Daniel and Joseph as examples.36
Offering an intriguing link between the products of alchemy and the prac-
tice of ritual magic, Khunrath even compares the cup ‘cast Astronomically
from philosophical Electrum, with supreme Divinely-Magical skill’ by the
‘Mysteriarch Aureolus of Hohenheim’ (i.e., Paracelsus) with ‘the silver cup
of the Patriarch Joseph ... in which he prophesied and divined about future
events’ (Genesis 44:5).37
180 Peter J. Forshaw

Many of these practices could also be found discussed by Agrippa’s men-

tor, Abbot Johannes Trithemius, who, despite a certain penchant for magi-
cal theology, nevertheless vociferously condemns many medieval magical
practices in his Antipalus maleficiorum, written in 1508. There he lists divi-
nation through dreams (Enypniomantia), in mirrors (Esoptromantia), and
in crystals (Crystallomantia), as forbidden arts (praescriptae artes), 38 along-
side books of dreams attributed to Daniel or Joseph,39 and others, like the
Sepher Raziel, claiming to be a work delivered to Solomon by the angel
Raziel.40 Trithemius adopts an uncompromising stance, averring that ‘all
who seek to conjure demons into a circle, glass, mirror, crystal, skull, ring,
hand, nail, image, water, fire, or any other thing, or who seek to obtain
visions, dreams, revelations, or judgements know themselves to be deniers
of Christ’.41 Admittedly, the abbot is here condemning the ‘conjuration’
of ‘demons’, which allows a loop-hole for those professing the invocation
of angels, something he himself does; a later publication of the Antipalus
(1624) contains a ‘Supplicatory Prayer to his own angel’, whose invis-
ible presence he invokes as protection against the audacity of malignant
spirits.42
In the Amphitheatre, Khunrath is careful to reject necromancy and ear-
nestly calls for the ‘reformation and lasting restoration of most wretchedly
deformed True Magic’.43 He foregrounds the angels’ tutelary role together
with their didactic qualities, as in the assertion that wise men will experi-
ence the ‘good ANGELS amicably helping us, faithfully advising us, famil-
iarly teaching us’.44 He seems to believe both in external guardian angels as
protectors against malign influences and accidents45 and at the same time
introjects the belief as a form of conscience, as when he advises the poten-
tial sinner to visualise his guardian angel as witness to all his actions and
thoughts in order to restrain himself from committing any shameful act.46
Looking more closely at the Oratory tabernacle in the Lab- Oratorium
engraving, we see the, hopefully, demon-free adept at prayer, in the cru-
ciform posture of the Xϱιστοϕορος [Christophoros] (Vessel of Christ), gaz-
ing raptly at two images on the table.47 These are none other than the
Amphitheatre’s first and second circular figures. That on the left depicts
Christ Resurrected as the θεανθρωπος [theanthrŮpos] (Divine Man),48 encir-
cled by the Hebrew commandments of the Decalogue together with ten
Shemoth, or divine names, the ten Sephiroth, or divine emanations of the
Jewish Tree of Life, ten angelic orders, and other elements of Khunrath’s
Christian Cabala.49 The right-hand figure shows Man in the Cabalist form
of Adam-Androgyne, surrounded by the thirteen Middoth of Jewish theol-
ogy (i.e., qualities of God, such as being eternal, true, just), ten ‘Grades
of Cognition’, stretching from the external object of perception to the
highest intellective faculty of ‘Mens’ (Mind), and a ten-stage ‘Ladder of
Conjunction and Union’, ascending from Faith to Similitude, and leading
to union with God.50
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 181

Anyone familiar with the sixteenth- century English magus John Dee’s
conversations with angels in his oratory,51 especially those performed with
his accomplice Edward Kelley, who for many years practised crystallomancy
as Dee’s scryer in their actions with spirits,52 will be aware of the famous
Sigillum Dei (Seal of God) or Sigillum Aemeth (Seal of Truth) described to
them by the Archangel Michael in some of their early scrying sessions in
March 1582. (These are also discussed by Stephen Clucas above.)53 They may
also know that Dee possessed a copy of the medieval Liber Juratus (Sworn
Book), also known as the Liber Sacer or Liber Angelorum (Holy Book or Book of
Angels).54 Attributed to Honorius of Thebes, this magical work dates back to
at least the thirteenth century and itself contains a Sigillum Dei to be used
for the invocation of angels and for obtaining a ‘visio divina’, declaring,
for example: ‘Now that we haue fynisshed the composityon or makinge of
the seale of god, let us procede to know how we shall obtayne the visyon or
sighte of the deite’.55 It must surely be of some significance, then, to discover
that Khunrath calls the Amphitheatre’s first circular figure both Sigillum Dei
and Sigillum Emet.56
We know from Dee’s diary that Khunrath visited him while he was stay-
ing in Bremen in 1589.57 We also know that Khunrath was already famil-
iar with Johann Reuchlin’s first Christian- Cabalist work, De Verbo Mirifico
(1494), ‘On the Wonder-working Word’. The ‘word’ in question was Christ,
the Logos, and in this, his first engagement with Jewish Kabbalah, Reuchlin
promoted a Cabalistic name for Christ, as the Christian pentagramma-
ton   [IHSVH] supplanting the Jewish tetragrammaton   [YHVH].
This new five-letter name appears at the very end of Khunrath’s 1588 Basel
University graduation theses in the phrase ‘IHSVH Veritas Æterna Ostende
Veritatem’ (IHSVH Eternal Truth Show the Truth).58 Given their shared inter-
est in Reuchlin’s works, it seems likely that both men would have been aware
of the statement ‘Truth [i.e., the Hebrew word  - Emet] is his Seal’ in his
later, more mature De Arte Cabalistica (1517), a work replete with material for
the eager practitioner of angelic magic.59 It seems reasonable to imagine that
magical ceremonies for angelic visions would have been one of the subjects
enthusiastically discussed at their meeting.
Charles Zika’s notion of Reuchlin subordinating magic to religion in order
to create a ‘sacralized magic’ sounds a convincing model for Khunrath’s
approach.60 The Isagoge to the Lab- Oratorium engraving certainly reads very
much like a theosophical reformulation of medieval ceremonial magical prac-
tice, with its ‘golden belt of Divine Truth’, ‘commanding sceptre of Christian
liberty’ and reference to being marked ‘on the forehead of the inner man,
with the ... TAU, taking the place of a MITRE, or GOLDEN SACERDOTAL LAMINA,
or ROYAL CROWN’, to the use of lamps, suffumigations, and other elements of
ritual discussed in the third book of Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia.61 These
should all, of course, be read as metaphors for Christian faith but could pos-
sibly have been actual symbolic objects used in certain ‘theosophical, that
182 Peter J. Forshaw

is divinely-magical, ceremonies, about which it is extremely unlawful to

speak of publicly’.62 The boundary between religious metaphor and literal
divinely magical practice becomes particularly blurred with the concluding
exclamation to this passage:

Behold the SEAL vanquishing and putting adversaries to flight! The

wonder-working PENTACLE, both of the five letters and wounds of the
wonder-working WORD! The powerful A LMADEL!63

Here we receive a hint of Khunrath’s theosophical synthesis of theology

and theurgy, his ‘Christianising’ of medieval sources. This seal bearing the
five-letter name of Christ is equated with the Almadel of a medieval work
of ritual magic, the Ars Almadel, the fourth book of the Lemegeton or Lesser
Key of Solomon, in which the king ‘obtained great wisdom from the cheefe
Angells that governe the 4 Altitudes of the world’.64 There we find detailed
instructions for making the Almadel or ‘Pentacle of Salomon’ out of pure
white wax and an invocation entreating the ‘great mighty and blessed ang-
ell of god’,

That you fortwith appeareth vissibly and plainely in thy owne proper
shape and glory in and throwgh this Cristall stone; That I may vissibly
see Thee, and audibly hear you speake unto me, That I may have thy
blessed and Glorious angellicall assistance, familiar friendship, and con-
stant society, communication and Instruction, both now and at all other
times, to Informe and rightly Instruct me in my Ignorant and depraved
Intellect Judgement and understanding; and to assist me both herein,
and in all other truths ... 65

The Ars Almadel, however, is condemned for its ‘dreadful demonic lies’
by Trithemius in the Antipalus maleficiorum.66 Khunrath’s interest in the
Solomonic sayings in the Bible has already been mentioned, but this devel-
opment carries his admiration of that paragon of wisdom into far more het-
erodox territory, one undeniably rich in material for the practitioner of angel
magic. Together with the Almadel, it also includes four other books. One, the
Ars Notoria, is another work allegedly angelically delivered to Solomon, by
which the practitioner might be infused with the knowledge of all Arts and
Sciences.67 The Ars Paulina, reputedly knowledge gained by the apostle Paul
when he ascended to the third heaven, provides a ‘table of practice’ and
instructions on its use in angelic invocation, together with the names and
instructions for creating seals of angels for each hour of the day and night,
their planetary correspondences and the invocations to be used.68 While
these works could vaguely be argued to at least skirt the borders of accept-
ability, the Lemegeton’s remaining two books, the Goetia and Theurgia- Goetia
explicitly concern themselves with the kind of magic that even Agrippa had
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 183

been careful to condemn in De vanitate as ‘curs’d for being familiar with

unclean Spirits, ceremonies of wicked curiosity, composed of Prayers and
Inchantments ... held Abominable, and wholly Condemn’d by the Decrees
of all Lawgivers’.69 Khunrath is evidently aware of the risk he is taking with
such a reference, for he ardently reassures his readers that his is the ‘virtu-
ous PENTACLE of Solomon ... not that fantastical and blasphemous one of the
Nigromancers or Evil Magicians’.70
Whatever his assurances that he is not seeking wisdom ‘from the conjura-
tions of Nigromancers, nor from a diabolical familiar spirit’,71 the evidence
for Khunrath being actively engaged in angelic invocation seems ever more
compelling when we look at the Isagoges to the Amphitheatre’s first two cir-
cular figures. These feature seven ‘Oracular Laws’ ( LEGES oracúlares), which,
though not acknowledged, are lifted from Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico.72
Their importance is reinforced by the fact that they also appear in one of
the rectangular engravings from the Amphitheatre’s 1609 edition, of a cave
entrance, above which stands the warning ‘Procul hinc abeste prophani (O
you profane get far from here)’. Any reader of Virgil will immediately rec-
ognise these as the words of the oracular Sibyl in the Aeneid.73 On the cave
walls, we find Reuchlin’s seven ‘Oracular Laws’, the fifth of which directly
refers to angels as messengers between God and man. The declaration in the
sixth, ‘Following the customary test, be joyfully obedient towards them’,
is clearly alluding to the admonition to vigilance in 1 John 4:1 to ‘believe
not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God: because many
false prophets are gone out into the world’.74 Elsewhere in the Amphitheatre,
doubtless having encountered warnings about Lucifer’s deceitful ability to
transform himself into an Angel of Light, Khunrath righteously reminds his
readers: ‘We know from the word of GOD, that it is one of the duties of GOD’S
Good Angels to defend the pious or GOD -fearing from their enemies, and to
protect [them] from all evil’.75
Speculation that the two circular figures on the Oratory table are ritual
objects in Khunrath’s performance of magic is surely borne out by the sur-
vival of an artefact in the British Library’s Sloane collection (Figure 8.2). In
a manuscript innocuously entitled Tabulae theosophiae cabbalisticae we find,
if not the original figures themselves, then near contemporary reproduc-
tions. Each figure is 42 cm in diameter, illuminated in colours closely con-
forming to those in the Amphitheatre’s rare 1595 edition (of which only five
copies are known) with the central images gilded onto mirrors, and clearly
intended for some form of meditational or magical exercise.76 The manu-
script title page even bears a curious version of Numbers 6:24–26 in which
all the personal pronouns are reversed, in verbal imitation of the mirror
reflections, where Christ and Adam would be superimposed on the prac-
titioner’s features.77 These verses assume more consequence when we find
Khunrath in the Amphitheatre directing his reader to Numbers 12:6, where
God had said ‘If there be among you a prophet of the Lord, I will appear to
184 Peter J. Forshaw

Figure 8.2 Painting from British Library Sloane Ms. 181, ‘Tabulae Theosophiae
Cabbalisticae’.

him in a vision, or I will speak to him in a dream’.78 It is even more reward-

ing to discover that concealed in the front cover of the same manuscript is a
painting that provides valuable clues to Khunrath’s (or a follower’s) engage-
ment with angelic magic and deific visions.79
This painting has two parts, perhaps intentionally reflecting the two cir-
cular figures. Its two frames seem to be representing Khunrath’s repeated
references to ‘conversation’ when ‘sleeping or waking’, that on the left
depicting the adept invoking angelic presences while awake, for example,
in the practice of crystallomancy; that on the right the practice of oneiro-
mancy while asleep.80 Both contain a polyglot profusion of text offering
precious details of the magical operations taking place. The scene on the
left shows the ‘practising theosopher’ (Der practicirende Theosophus) in his
study, kneeling before a table bearing what looks to be a crystal ball, with
the alchemical label ‘the wonder-working Stone of the Wise’ (Der weisen
wunderthetige STEIN),81 flanked by two crystalline mirrors, one solar; one
lunar, bearing the label ‘Urim’ ( ^ - ‘Fires’). This is, of course, a reference
to the breastplate of Aaron, and we find the accompanying ‘Thummim’
( ^ ‘Truths’) on an open book, in front of the Stone, displaying the same
two Amphitheatral figures of Christ and Adam.82 Reversing the polarity of
the Lab- Oratorium engraving, here we see a crucifix prominently displayed
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 185

on the right of the table and a reproduction of Khunrath’s design for an

alchemical athanor on the left. A side table bears celestial and terrestrial
globes, a bookcase stands packed with works on diverse occult subjects, and
other paraphernalia of the occult philosopher can be found present in the
room. A blaze of light behind the Stone contains biblical references to God
and his angels in relation to fire, including Moses’s vision of the burning
bush (Exodus 3:2) and Ezekiel’s of four living creatures having the likeness
of men (Ezekiel 1:5). At the foot of the altar cloth, we see what appears to be
a book bearing the words ‘Beth El’ (Heb.: ‘House of God’), recalling Jacob’s
struggle with the angel and subsequent vision, together with the phrase
‘Certainly God and his good angel is in this place’ (Gewisslich ist Gott und
seine gute Engel an diesem Orte!).
The right-hand scene shows the theosopher asleep in his bed. The con-
tents of the bedside table reveal that even in sleep he is still at work: together
with the psalter we see volumes entitled ‘On Divine Visions in Sleep’ (Vonn
Göttlichen Gesichten im Schlaffe), ‘Interpretations of Dreams’ (Auslegungen
der Treume), and ‘God-fearing Prayers’ (Gottfurchtige Gebete).83 Related
to the latter, we also find the same psalmodic verse from the Bible in the
Amphitheatre’s Oratory: ‘He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him’
(Psalms 145:19). The doorpost to the bed- chamber bears the message that
those who rightly love and purely honour God with pious God-fearing
prayers will in recompense have the angels as teachers and assistants.84 This
repeated concern with prayers as the vehicles for invoking angels suggests
a careful distancing from the perilous ‘conjurations’ of demons and spirits
in goetia and necromancy.85 Driving home the message is a whole collection
of scriptural verses referring to angels (including Psalms 91:11, 103:20–21,
104:4, Matthew 2:13, Hebrews 1:7).86
It is the stream of five letters issuing from the sleeper’s mouth (IVAOV),
however, that is most revealing. This turns out to be an instance of the
Cabalistic acronymic technique of Notaricon. Each letter represents a word
in a phrase that, fortunately for us, appears on the manuscript’s title page,
one that we have already encountered at the end of Khunrath’s gradu-
ation theses: ‘IHSVH Veritas Aeterna Ostende Veritatem’. This phrase has
even greater significance, moreover, if we turn to another Ms 181 in the
British Library, this time in the Harleian collection, the De Arte Crucifixi
Pelagii Solitarij, a work belonging to the Ars Notoria textual tradition.87
This work by the fifteenth- century Majorcan magus Pelagius, also author
of a Tabula Veritatis,88 provides instructions for creating and consecrating
a crucifix for obtaining a vision of Christ in a dream. For those perhaps
slightly over-wrought in their quest for dream visions, the De Arte Crucifixi
offers the advice ‘If you have done this with purity: Ihesu veritatas aeterna
ostende veritatem, etc. If you have done this purity, Truth will appear to you
in person in a dream while you sleep’.89 The presence of such a singular
phrase (combined as it is with Reuchlin’s wonder-working IHSVH) at the
186 Peter J. Forshaw

conclusion of Khunrath’s university theses, which are themselves promot-

ing the magical doctrine of Signatures, encourages the speculation that he
was already practising Cabalistic ritual magic in his twenties, long before
the publication of the Amphitheatre.
The existence of a magical work so overtly Christian must have literally
seemed a god-send for Khunrath. It must have seemed possible to imitate
Luther’s return to pure scriptural sources by reconstructing a divine magic
grounded in scripture’s original language, one stripped of any medieval
accretions and exorcised of all demons. Certainly, the Amphitheatre’s Sigillum
Emet is far more Hebraic and more pictorially Chistocentric than the seals
in the Liber Iuratus and Dee’s Libri Mysteriorum.90 Khunrath acknowledges
that it must appear quite alien to the majority of his readers, but assures
them that the ‘Divine Names, although Hebraic and on account of that little
known to some, are nevertheless very beneficial ... and by them the Angels
who assist and understand, are summoned to bring aid.’91 While Dee’s seal
includes names of specific angels, most notably those of the seven planetary
angels (Madimiel, Levanael, etc), and tables for generating the names of
male and female spirits, Khunrath’s is more restrained, simply listing the
angelic orders familiar from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s De cœlesti
hierarchia, Duns Scotus’s De angelis, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s
Conclusiones; its sequence most likely coming from Agrippa.92 Presumably
he has something like Athanasius’s various Doctrinal, Tutelar, Procuratory,
Ministerial, Auxiliary, and Receptory orders of angels in mind,93 when he
advises the would-be magus in the same passage on Divine Names to select
a particular name of God, which should be contemplated and invoked with
a particular angel, and thus a particular goal, in mind:

He who needs Mercy calls upon the GOD of Mercy; he who needs Justice,
upon the Just; and he who needs Power, the Almighty. You, therefore, for
whom there is that solicitude, that care, and who are eager to perform
marvels, survey with the eyes and the mind, the NAMES OF GOD noted
down by me in the first figure of this Amphitheatre ... and select from this
assembly, from such a host, from this well-nigh legion of Holy Names,
that which is most preferable to be piously used for the kinds of opera-
tions to which you give your attention. For the vast choir of Heavenly
Beings can Theo- Sophically follow those symbols of Divinity.94

Although Khunrath, somewhat perversely, uses Latin here instead of Hebrew,

anyone already familiar with the ten Cabalistic Sephiroth would recognise
that by ‘Mercy’, for example, he was referring to the fourth Sephira 
[Chesed] and by ‘Justice’ to the fifth Sephira   [Geburah], each relating
to specific names of God in the Amphitheatre’s figure of Christ Resurrected.
Khunrath’s employment of the word ‘operations’ implies something more
than a contemplative religious exercise but instead recalls the use of the
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 187

term in medieval magical works like the Ars Almadel, Liber Juratus, and Ars
Crucifixi.95
Moving on to the question of why Khunrath attempted to contact
angels, we find that, unlike Dee, he shows no interest in asking his super-
natural visitors for help in locating buried treasure.96 The only intimations
we have of the kind of knowledge he seeks are in scattered references to
receiving knowledge of the Philosophers’ Stone from ‘secret divine vision
and revelation’.97 As an example, Khunrath cites the medieval alchemical
authority, Geber, who teaches in his Liber Divinitatis how ‘after many and
varied works in Alchemy to no purpose ... he was finally Divinely taught the
one true matter ... of the one Catholic Philosophical Stone’.98 Geber, indeed,
sounds like the ideal exponent of Khunrath’s hyperphysical magic, for we
learn that he

received this high gift of true wisdom through Visions (waking and sleep-
ing) and other wondrous Christian- Cabalistical and Divinely-Magical
good conversations about the Work with wonderful God and his Good
Spirits.99

Here Khunrath taps into a whole tradition of alchemical vision literature,

stretching as far back as Zosimus of Panopolis in the third century.100 Two of
the most famous names in medieval alchemy, Arnald of Villanova (c. 1235–
1313) and Johannes de Rupescissa (d. 1362) also wrote about visions and
dreams,101 and the English alchemists seem to have been particularly recep-
tive to such visions; those of George Ripley, John Dastin, Thomas Norton
and William Bloomfield can all be found in Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum
Chemicum Britannicum (1652). While Gérard Dorn’s Dictionarium Theophrasti
Paracelsi (1584) mostly concerns itself with the substances and processes of
physico- chemistry, it nevertheless includes entries on ‘Meditatio’ – ‘when a
man has an inner dialogue with someone else, who is however not seen. As
with God calling him, or with himself, or with his good angel’ – and ‘Visio’
– ‘the supernatural apparition of spirits, somehow visible to the eyes of
men’.102 These reoccur practically verbatim in Martin Ruland’s well-known
Lexicon Alchemiae (1612).103 Appearing the same year as Ashmole’s collec-
tion, William Johnson’s Lexicon Chymicum imitates the earlier dictionary
and lexicon by including a definition of Cabala concerning friendship with
angels and the understanding of all natural things.104 This link between
vision and alchemy, Oratory and Laboratory, is prominent in another of
the Amphitheatre’s rectangular engravings, which features two famous texts
attributed to the legendary Hermes Trismegistus: the alchemical ur-text,
the Emerald Tablet and the beginning of the Pimander, describing Hermes’s
illumination about God and the ‘Nature of Things’ by the ‘Mind of Divine
Power’.105 As was the case with the ‘Oracular Laws’, this is another instance of
duplication, for the same passage from the Corpus Hermeticum immediately
188 Peter J. Forshaw

precedes Cyprian’s statement about his dream visions in the Amphitheatre’s

main text.106
Considering the presence of the Stone on the table in the Sloane 181 paint-
ing, Ashmole provides a possible avenue of exploration in his Prolegomena
to the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, where he discusses the properties
of ‘Magicall’ and ‘Angelicall’ Stones. The ‘Magicall or Prospective Stone’ is
able to ‘Convey a Spirit into an Image, which by observing the Influence of
Heavenly Bodies, shall become a true Oracle’. The ‘Angelicall Stone’ ‘affords
the Apparition of Angells, and gives a power of conversing with them,
by Dreames and Revelations: nor dare any Evill Spirit approach the Place
where it lodgeth’.107 Khunrath’s description of the Divine properties of the
Philosophers’ Stone as the Urim and Thummim by which God ‘Cabalistically
gives an answer, speaks and utters his sayings about great and hidden things,
to the Theo-Sopher’,108 suggests that he, like Ashmole, considers it useful for
conversing with angels. The Hebrew letters  [Aleph],  [Beth] and  [Nun]
appear at the heart of the Amphitheatre’s engraving of the Alchemical Citadel.
Khunrath provides no explanation, but it is intriguing to consider that they
form both the word  [ABN], i.e., ‘Stone’ and  [NBA], ‘to prophesy’.109
Ashmole certainly seems to be implying that one goal of the alchemical
process might be the production of ‘scrying stones’ when he cites the alche-
mists Rhazes and Petrus Bonus in support of his claim that ‘there is a Gift of
Prophesie hid in the Red-stone’, the much sought-after final product of the
Magnum Opus.110 One of Ashmole’s possible sources for this was the English
magus Simon Forman (1552–1611), whose manuscript ‘Of appoticarie
druges’ he possessed, in which Hermes and Moses are mentioned as the
possessors, respectively, of the ‘angelic’ and ‘magical, or prospective’ stones.
Forman further notes that ‘The angelical stone is true medison to mans
bodie against all infirmities and makes a man live longe and by that stone
he obteined wisdom and knowledge of thinges in dreams & otherwise.’111 A
final striking instance comes from Robert Boyle, another English chymist
who believed in the utility of the Philosophers’ Stone for summoning and
communicating with angels.112 The twelfth- century alchemical text the
Turba philosophorum had described how angels were created out of the fin-
est fire,113 and the Paracelsian Jacques Gohorry even writes that angels are
spirits of the quintessence.114 Perhaps this explains the affinity between the
Art of Fire’s most perfect product and God’s fiery ministers?
As a practitioner of both hyperphysical magic and physico- chymistry,
Khunrath is interesting precisely because he resists simple reduction to
either scientific materialist or transcendental mystic. As his favoured self-
appellation ‘Doctor of both medicines and faithful lover of theosophy’
implies, he enthusiastically seeks knowledge by natural and supernatural
means, considering it perfectly legitimate to supplement that gained by
‘Ratio et Experientia’ in the Laboratory with that obtained through the
higher cognitive faculties of ‘Intellectus’ and ‘Mens’ in the Oratory.115 His
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 189

emphasis on the vital unity of the Lab- Oratorium and the twin ideals of
alchemical perfection of matter and christian- cabalist apotheosis of the
soul evidently found its supporters, as the works of individuals like Oswald
Croll, Daniel Mögling, Gabriel Clauder and Johann Siebmacher attest.116 Of
course, it should be recognised that Khunrath is not simply aspiring to be
an effective operator in the terrestrial sphere, but seeks that ‘most blessed’
and ‘DEI-fic vision’,117 by which ‘man mentally migrates into the company
and sanctuary of God’s good Angels’, and, ultimately, ‘into God himself’.118
In all his activities, angels, it appears, were significant participants, both for
the instructive visions and the spiritual protection they afforded the pious
theosopher. As such, it seems only appropriate to conclude with Khunrath’s
final prayer in the Amphitheatre’s Epilogue, that for his guardian angel:

May my good ANGEL, oh LORD, your fiery minister, be on my right and my

left, before, behind, above and below, and indeed surrounding me, who, by
reason of the authority conferred by YOU, may put to flight the brigands or
evil spirits who lurk in the region of the air; check their malice; and defend
me from the roaring lion which goes about, lest it devour me, and lastly,
advise [and] protect me when I am surrounded by evil, lest I perish.119

Notes
1. Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae solius verae: christiano-
kabalisticum, divino-magicum, nec non physico- chymicum, tertriunum, catholicon, ed.
Erasmus Wolfart, 2 pts (Hanau, 1609), pt. 2, 169, citing Julius Caesar Scaliger, De
Sapientia, Liber primus, 24 Somniorum veritas, ‘Qui vera negat somnia, somnians
profatur. Nam non semel inuenimus, & nimis frequenter. Per raraque nox præ-
terit absque sensione.’ As Khunrath’s work is divided into two main parts with
separate pagination, subsequent references to the 1609 edition will be to either
Amphitheatrum I or II to avoid confusion.
2. Denis I. Duveen, Bibliotheca Alchemica et Chemica (London, 1949), 319. See also
Denis I. Duveen, ‘Notes on Some Alchemical Books’, in The Library, 5th series, 1
(1946): 56–58.
3. [Émile Angelo] Grillot de Givry, Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy, trans. J. Courtenay
Locke (New York, 1971), 209.
4. Heinrich Khunrath, Totique, celestis exercitus spiritualis, militiae, proximo suo
fideli, et sibimetipsi, naturae atque arti, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, solius
verae ([Hamburg], 1595), Title page ‘in ORATORIO & L ABORATORIO, MICRO ac
MACROCOSMICE ... secundum Christianæ & Philosophicæ veritatis normam ... exor-
natum figuris quatuor Theosophicis, forma Regali in æs affabre scalptis.’
5. See Amphitheatrum II, 70 ‘Hæc T HEOLOGIA triuna, Biblica, Macro & MicroCosmica,
Catholica plusquamperfecta. Hîc & sic studeat omnis homo: intelliget Biblicè,
Macro & Microcosmicè, Sacrosanctam Scripturam; cognoscet Naturam & semetip-
sum; agnoscet DEVM, vt Creatorem, Redemptorem, Sanctificatorem; (OMNIA IN
OMNIBVS) quem agnoscere, & notum imitari, SAPIENTIA.’ Cf. Johannus Sophronius
Kozak, Physica Mosaica (1637), sig.)(ijr-v ‘Es werden an jederen Christiano Philosopho
drey wissenschaften erfordert/ 1. Cognoscere Deum, Gott recht zu erkennen: 2.
190 Peter J. Forshaw

Cognoscere Naturam, die ursachen der natürlichen wirckungen wissen zu unter-

scheiden. 3. Cognoscere se ipsum/ sich selbst zu erkennen.’ In L’Ouverture de
L’Escolle de Philosophie Transmutatoire Metallique (1633), 160–61, David de Planis
Campy, who was familiar with Khunrath’s Amphitheatre, writes ‘ces trois Sciences
[Cabale, Magie, & Alchimie] representent encore les trois parties de l’Homme
petit Monde; sçavoir, l’intellect, l’Ame & le Corps.’
6. See, for example, Ralf Töllner, Der unendliche Kommentar (Hamburg, 1991);
Urszula Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light: Geometry and Optics in Late
Renaissance Alchemical Illustration (Leiden, 2000); Peter J. Forshaw, ‘ “Alchemy
in the Amphitheatre”: Some Consideration of the Alchemical Content of the
Engravings in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom (1609)’, in
Jacob Wamberg, ed., Art and Alchemy (Copenhagen, 2006), 154–76.
7. Heinrich Khunrath, Vom hylealischen das ist pri-materialischen catholischen oder
algemeinem natürlichen Chaos der naturgemessen Alchymiae und Alchymisten
(Frankfurt, 1708; facsimile rept Graz, 1990), 252 ‘Das Oratorium und Laboratorium
trennen sie gantz un-Philosophisch von einander.’
8. Amphitheatrum II, 169 ‘Divus Cyprianus lib. Epist. 9. Epist. 9. Memini, inquit,
quid mihi sit ostensum, & quid mihi inter cætera reuelare dignatus sit DOMINVS, nec
ridicula illa, & visiones ineptæ sunt habendæ, sicut de Ioseph fratres sui dixerunt,
ecce, somnator venit.’ See S. Cæcilii Cypriani Opera Omnia (Würzburg, 1782), vol.
1, Epistola LXIX Ad Florentium Pupianum de obtrectatoribus, 215–22, at 221.
See also Saint Cyprian, Letters (1–81), trans. Sister Rose Bernard Donna, C.S.J.
(Washington, DC, 1964), Letter 66, pp. 223–30, at 229–30. It would appear
that the Holy Martyr Cyprian enjoyed a somewhat occult reputation in the
sixteenth century. Although Khunrath, perhaps wisely, does not mention
them, various magical manuscripts exist professing to be Cyprian’s works. See
Johannes Trithemius, Antipali Maleficiorum Libri quattuor, in Joannes Busæus,
ed., Paralipomena Opusculorum Petri Blesensis, et Ioannis Trithem, Aliorumque
nuper in typographeo Moguntino editorum (Cologne, 1624), 295 ‘liber alius pes-
tifer 4. Regum, ex dæmonum numero prænotatus ... hoc maledictum opus S.
Martyri Cypriano audent adscribere.’ See also Cypriani Citatio Angelorum ejusque
Conjuratio Spiritus, qui thesaurum abscondidit, una cum illorum dismission, with
the false publication date 1508.
9. Amphitheatrum II, 168 ‘Et dormiens ... Visionibus Diuinitùs admoneberis, doce-
beris, instituêris ... De Visionibus hypnoticis, aut Reuelationibus somnialibus,
siuè insomniis præsagientibus atque Diuinis, hoc tibi Laconicè habeto: A NIMA,
à curarum vituperandarum mole libera, sobria ac sana in corpore sano, vitio-
rum Domina affectuumque Regina, sui compos ac sibi sese Theosophicè insinu-
ata, totius Vniuersi creati (quia DIVINÆ, CREATORIS Vniuersi, particula auræ) iure
aggreditur assequi & exponere secreta; iungi Spiritibus bonis; vetera recensere;
Noua contemplari; præsagire futura.’ On angels in connection to dreams and
visions, see David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York, 1998),
189–96. On dreams more generally, including references to angels, see Steven F.
Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992).
10. Amphitheatrum II, 133 ‘Theosophicè Orandum, Cabalicè, Magicè, PhysicoChemicè
sudandum vel laborandum’; 162 ‘TheoSophicè Orandum, sapienter Laborandum’.
Cf. [Johann Ambrosius Siebmacher], Hydrolithus sophicus seu Aquarium Sapientum,
in Museum Hermeticum Reformatum et Amplificatum (Frankfurt, 1678), 73–144, at
87 ‘Si itaque nunc te in oratorio tuo summo cum studio exercuisti, & cognitam
materiam ad manus habes, tunc in laboratorio diligentiam studiumque tuum
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 191

commode applicare convenientem laborem ad manus sumere, & ita initium

facere poteris.’
11. Amphitheatrum II, 154–55 ‘Reuelationes Diuinas patientes, earundemque inter-
pretes futura prædicentes, propriè Prophetæ aut Vates dicuntur. Imbuuntur
autem Prophetæ ad prophetandum, per Angelorum apparitiones & institutiones;
per visiones, ænigmata, figuras; verbo claro & expresso; interno afflatu Spiritus
DEI, tam vigilantes, quàm dormientes, immediatè & mediatè, oracula DEI accipi-
endo.’
12. See Max Engammare, ‘Calvin: A Prophet without a Prophecy’, Church History,
67.4 (1998): 643–61, at 644, 647 who cites Calvin’s Institutio religionis christianae
2.15.2, Sermon 86 on Genesis, and Commentary on Romans. For him ‘predic-
tive’ prophecy had ceased; what remained was restricted to exegesis.
13. Khunrath, Chaos, 27 ‘Dann Gott der Herr schencket auch noch wohl heutiges
Tages einen einen Trunck aus Josephs Becher.’
14. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 165–66. See also Khunrath, Chaos, Vorrede, sig. )()(
6r which also refers to Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Esdras and Paul.
15. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 153 ‘Danielicè discitote rerum absconditarum reue-
lationes quærere apud DEVM.’ He refers the reader to Daniel 2:17 and following,
particularly 2:19 ‘Then was the mystery revealed to Daniel by a vision in the
night: and Daniel blessed the God of heaven’.
16. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 117.
17. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. James Freake,
ed. Donald Tyson (St. Paul, MN, 1993; repr. 1997), Book 3, ch. 61, 663.
18. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 99 ‘H. C. Agrippæ vtar verbis, quem, ex scriptis
suis genuinis; noui bonum & Euangelistam philosophicum, quia verba præsup-
ponunt mentem Theo- Sophicam, non nigromanticam.’
19. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, The Vanity of Arts and Sciences (London, 1676), 120. For
more on theurgy, see Hans Lewy, Chaldæan Oracles and Theurgy: Mysticism, Magic
and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire (Paris, 1978).
20. ‘Sine afflatv Diuino nemo vnquam uir magnvs’. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.
LXVI. See also Amphitheatrum I, 11 and Amphitheatrum II, 110, 137.
21. ‘Ne loquaris de deo absque lvmine’. See also Amphitheatrum II, 27.
22. Agrippa, Three Books, 14, ‘Hence was also that significant saying of Pythagoras:
“Do not speak of God without a light”.’ See also ‘A Discourse of the Nature of
Spirits’, in Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Fourth Book Of Occult Philosophy, trans.
Robert Turner (1665), 111–46, at 138 ‘Pythagoras did determine, that God could be
in no wise truly worshipped without lights burning’. Possible sources for Agrippa
and Khunrath are either Ficino’s translation of Iamblichus de mysteriis (Venice,
1516), sig. 86r Symbola Pythagorae phylosophi: ‘De rebus diuinis absque lumine
ne loquaris’ or De Sole, in Margarita Facetiarum (1508), sig. [Lv v]: ‘Pithagoricum
praeceptum est ... de rebus mysterijsque divinis absque lumine non loquen-
dum’. Bearing in mind Khunrath’s meeting with Dee, it is interesting to note
that Thomas Tymme cites Iamblichus’s Adhortatio ad Philosophiam cap. xxi, ‘De
Pythagoreis sine lumine ne loquitor’, on the title page of his A Light in Darkness
which illumineth for all the Monas Hieroglyphica of the Famous and Profound Dr John
Dee, ed. S. K. Heninger (Oxford, 1963).
23. Khunrath, Chaos, Vorrede, sig.)()(5v glosses ‘Theosophus’ as both Gottweiser and
Philotheosophus.
24. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 212 ‘rectè edoctus, idque vel immediatè, vel mediatè,
quod est, per Magistrum, spiritualem aut corporeum, nuntium   bonum.’
192 Peter J. Forshaw

25. Carlos Gilly, Magic, Alchemy and Science 15th–18th Centuries: The Influence
of Hermes Trismegistus, 2 vols (Florence, 2002), 1: 342 ‘Arbatel ... from which
Khunrath nevertheless derived the central idea of the Amphitheatrum, which is
that of ‘Theosophia’ as the highest science and at same time the epitome and
method of the true sciences’.
26. The Arbatel of Magick: or The Spiritual Wisdom of the Ancients, in [pseudo-]Agrippa,
Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, 206. The primary meaning is ‘Knowledge of the
Word of God, and ruling one’s life according to the word of God.’
27. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 168 ‘in ^ αγιαστήϱιον, hoc est, Sanctuarium Spirituum
bonorum, siuè DEI Angelorum, (quod fieri potest homine tam vigilante, quàm
dormiente) Spiritualia, Cabalicè recipiendo, patitur; supercælestia contemplatur,
Physica, ex & in hyperphysicis ... videt multa.’
28. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 147 ‘in Diuinorum cultu, Spiritualium tracta-
tione atque cum iis conuersatione, & Naturalium inuestigatione, piè ac sapi-
enter consisteret’. He continues, ‘CABALA est Diuinæ reuelationis, ad salutiferam
DEI, & Maschiah agnitionem; Formarum separatarum, Naturæ (in Macro &
MicroCosmo) nostriq[ue] ipsius cognitionem, vnionem, & fruitionem; necnon
SS.æ Scripturæ intellectum verum; vel immediatè, aut medio conueniente (quo
Diuina humanitus sentire possimus) tam Vniuersaliter quàm Particulariter,
TheoSophicè sortita, Symbolica RECEPTIO.’
29. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 73. See Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem,
1974; repr. New York, 1978), 11 on ma’aseh bereshit (The Work of Creation) and
ma’aseh merkabah (The Work of the Chariot). The notion of a Christian Cabala had
been implicit since Pico’s promotion of the utility of Cabalistic exegesis for the
conversion of the Jews. In Alchemy and Kabbalah, trans. Klaus Ottmann (Putnam,
CT, 2006), 88, Scholem comments on the novelty of Khunrath’s Amphitheatre, as
being the first publication to assert a definitive blending of alchemy, magic and
‘Christian Cabala’.
30. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 147 ‘HYPERPHYSICOMAGEIA (respectu Naturalis &
Doctrinæ causa, sic dicta) est cum Angelis bonis, flammeis DEI ministris, sub
modo delegatæ à DEO administrationis, tam vigilando quàm dormiendo, mediatè
& immediatè, pia & vtilis conuersatio.’ Khunrath is relatively unusual in prefer-
ing the Greek ‘hyperphysicus’ instead of the Latin ‘supernaturalis’. It is interest-
ing to note that one of his readers, Michael Maier, also chooses this term in his
alchemical emblem book, when discussing the Philosophers’ Stone in Atalanta
fugiens (1618), 62.
31. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum I, 11.
32. Agrippa, Three Books, Book 3, ch. 23, 530–31.
33. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 135 ‘dulcissimo IEHOVÆ spirituumque bonorum à
DEO subdelegatorum.’
34. Ibid., 111. See 1 Corinthians 7:7 and 12:10.
35. Ibid., 149 (mispaginated as 147 [sig. T3r]) ‘habebam donum discretionis Spirituum,
(1. Corinth. 12,10.) & sensum ac discretionem boni ac mali, (Hebr. 5,14.)’.
For more on the scriptural basis of discernment of spirits, see Nancy Caciola,
Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY &
London, 2006), 3ff.
36. Paracelsus, Astronomia Magna: Oder Die gantze Philosophia sagax der grossen und
kleinen Welt ... (1571), sigs 123r, 130r, 139v,140r. See also De Signatura Rerum,
in Hüser’s edition of Paracelsus’s Opera, 2 vols (Straßburg, 1603–1606), 1: 921
where Paracelsus calls it by the more common term ‘Necromantia’ ... Visionen
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 193

gesehen/ in Spiegeln/ Brillen/ Steinen und Wassern/ in mancherley Gestalt/ &c.’

Cf. Trithemius’s discussion of the practices of Necromancers and invokers of
demons (Necromantici, & dæmonum inuocatores) in Antipalus, 292 ‘vel ad cir-
culum vocant, vel includunt vitro, vel in speculo repræsentant, siue in crystallo,
sicut ipsi putant, siue falso pollicentur visibiles, & qui spirituum qualescunque
exhibent visiones.’ Hüser’s edition of the Opera is a rich source for Paracelsus’s
writings on magic and divination, including Liber Artis Praesagae Theophrasti (2:
192–204), Philosophia Occulta (2: 285–300), particularly 288f ‘Von Geistlichen
Gesichten und erscheinungen im Schlaaff’ and, of course, the Archidoxis Magicae
(2: 544–73), replete with illustrations of magical seals.
37. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 101 ‘Ex poculo verò Iosephi Patriarchæ, Gen. 44.
vers. 5. argenteo, in quo prophetabat & vaticinabatur de futuris, vt bibere tibi
liceat, peroptabis.’ See De Compositione Metallorum (Book 6 of Archidoxis Magicae),
in Paracelsus, Opera, 2: 568.
38. Trithemius, Antipalus, 285–86. See Noel L. Brann, Trithemius and Magical
Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe
(New York, 1999). For more on ‘Trithemius’s Bibliography for Necromancers’,
see Appendix One in Paola Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the European
Renaissance (Leiden, 2007), 101–12.
39. Trithemius, Antipalus, 290, 297.
40. Ibid., 294. On the magical use of crystals and mirrors, see Richard Kieckhefer,
Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, 1997),
104–7, 236–39, 242–45, 287–92.
41. Ibid., 310–11 ‘Omnes igitur qui Dæmones per libros & artes Necromanticorum
inuocant, coniurantes illos ad circulum, ad vitrum, ad speculum, ad crystallum,
ad capita mortuorum, ad annulum, ad manum, ad vnguem, ad imaginem, ad
aquam, ad ignem, vel ad quamcunque aliam rem; vel procurantes sibi per eos
visiones, somnia, reuelationes, siue iudicia, sciant se abnegatores Christi.’
42. ‘Oratio Svpplicatoria ad proprium angelum Iohannis Trithemii Abbatis
Spanhemensis’, in Busæus, Paralipomena Opusculorum (1624), 735–38. The begin-
ning of Trithemius’s prayer is almost identical to the first 30 lines of Pelagius’s
‘Oratio ad ipsum angelum cuiuscunque hominis [&] proprium cujus nomen per
solum spiritum reuelatum cognoscitur, at Osiel est generale.’ See Jean Dupèbe,
‘L’Ecriture chez l’ermite Pelagius: Un cas de theurgie chrétienne au XVe siècle’,
in Le Texte et son Inscription (CNRS, 1989), 113–53, at 130f. With reference to
Pelagius’s angel Osiel, it is intriguing to note that the Citatio Angelorvm attributed
to Cyprian mentioned above was published with a Conjuratio fortissima et proba-
tissima in Usielem.
43. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 123 ‘Abeat in malam rem, cum suo magistro, discip-
ulis, totaque schola pestilentissima, Nigromantia: cuius abolitionem extirpato-
riam veræque Mageiæ miserrimæ deformatæ reformationem ac instaurationem
duratoriam, Amphitheatri huius figura quarta posui ChristianoCabalisticam;
quam accuratè contemplare.’
44. Ibid., 188 ‘A NGELOS bonos, nobis amicè assistentes, nos fideliter monentes,  
iussu benigno familiariter docentes, atque in viis nostris tutò ducentes, sinè fal-
lacia experiemur.’
45. Ibid., 155.
46. Ibid., 106.
47. Ibid., 23, 210.
48. Ibid., 44, 57, 197.
194 Peter J. Forshaw

49. A. E. Waite, The Secret Doctrine of Israel: A Study of the Zohar and Its Connections
(New York, n.d.), 323 rightly considers it to be a ‘Summary of the Christian
Kabalah’.
50. For a more detailed description of these figures, see Peter J. Forshaw, ‘Curious
Knowledge and Wonder-working Wisdom in the Occult Works of Heinrich
Khunrath’, in R. J. W. Evans & Alexander Marr, eds, Curiosity and Wonder from
the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot, 2006), 107–29.
51. Stephen Clucas notes Dee’s description of his ceremonial space as his ‘oratorie’
in ‘John Dee’s Angelic Conversations and the Ars Notoria: Renaissance Magic and
Mediaeval Theurgy’, in Stephen Clucas, ed., John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in
English Renaissance Thought (Dordrecht, 2006), 231–73, at 252.
52. John Dee, A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years between Dr.
John Dee and Some Spirits, ed. Meric Casaubon (London, 1659). On Dee, see
Stephen Clucas, ‘Enthusiasm and “Damnable Curiosity”: Meric Casaubon and
John Dee’, in R. J. W. Evans and Alexander Marr, eds, Curiosity and Wonder from
the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot, 2006), 131–48 and Deborah E.
Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of
Nature (Cambridge, 1999). On scrying, see György E. Szönyi, ‘Paracelsus, Scrying
and the Lingua Adamica: Contexts for John Dee’s Angel Magic’, in Clucas, ed.,
John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies, 207–29.
53. John Dee, Mysteriorum Liber Secundus, in John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery: Original
Sourcebook of Enochian Magic, ed. Joseph H. Peterson (San Francisco, 2003); see
Chapter 7, above.
54. Julian Roberts and Andrew G. Watson, John Dee’s Library Catalogue (London,
1990), 57, 169.
55. British Library MS Royal 17A. XLII, The Sworne Booke of Honorius, f. 14v. Gösta
Hedegård, Liber Iuratus Honorii: A Critical Edition of the Latin Version of the Sworn
Book of Honorius (Stockholm, 2002), 71 ‘Viso de composicione sigilli Dei vivi
videndum est de visione divina, ad quam habendam sic est procedendum.’ While
the Royal MS dates from the sixteenth century, the British Library’s Sloane col-
lection has several early copies, including MS 3854 (14th century) and MS 313
(from the late 14th or early 15th century), the latter once the possession of both
Ben Jonson and John Dee. For more on the Liber Juratus, see Robert Mathiesen,
‘A Thirteenth- Century Ritual to Attain the Beatific Vision from the Sworn Book
of Honorius of Thebes’ and Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The Devil’s Contemplatives:
The Liber Juratus, The Liber Visionum and the Christian Appropriation of Jewish
Occultism’, both in Claire Fanger, ed., Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of
Medieval Ritual Magic (Stroud, 1998); The Sworn Book of Honourius the Magician,
As Composed by Honourius through Counsel with the Angel Hocroell, ed. and trans.
Daniel J. Driscoll (Gilette, NJ, 1983).
56. Amphitheatrum II, 10 ‘sigillo DEI (quod est EMES, VERITAS, figura Amphitheatri
huius prima)’; 155 ‘Est enim EMES, VERITAS, DEI sigillum, figura Amphitheatri
huius prima.’ Cf. David de Planis Campy, Bouquet Composé des Plus Belles Fleurs
Chimique (Paris, 1629), 1003 ‘Emeth, qui est interprété sceau de Dieu’. De Planis
Campy also includes Dee’s Monas hieroglyph on p. 991 and reference to ‘la
Caballe Chimique’ on p. 1002.
57. James Orchard Halliwell, ed., The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee (London, 1842),
31.
58. Heinrich Khunrath, De Signatura rerum naturalium theses (Basel, 1588),
Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Diss. 148, No 52, sig. Avjr. These can be found in
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 195

Frank Hieronymus, Theophrast und Galen-Celsus und Paracelsus. Medizin, Natur-

philosophie und Kirchenreform im Basler Buchdruck bis zum Dreissigjährigen Krieg, 4
vols and index (Basel, 2005), vol. 3, 2592–94.
59. Johann Reuchlin, De Arte Cabalistica: On the Art of the Kabbalah, trans. Martin
and Sarah Goodman (New York, 1983; repr. Lincoln and London, 1993), 287.
On Reuchlin in relation to magic, see Charles Zika, ‘Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico
and the Magic Debate of the Late Fifteenth Century’, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, 39 (1976): 104–38, also included in Charles Zika, Exorcising
our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden,
2003), 21–68, together with ‘Reuchlin and Erasmus: Humanism and Occult
Philosophy’, 69–97. See also Bernd Roling, ‘The Complete Nature of Christ:
Sources and Structures of a Christological Theurgy in the Works of Johannes
Reuchlin’, in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern
Period, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (Leuven, 2002), 231–66.
60. Zika, ‘Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico’, 120, 138.
61. See, for example, Agrippa, Three Books, Book 3, ch. 63, 668–70, ‘What things may
be called holy, what consecrated, and how these become so betwixt us and the
deities; and of sacred times’.
62. Amphitheatrum II, 154 ‘ceremonias quasdam TheoSophicas, non damno, h.e.
Diuino-Magicas, de quibus publicè fari nefas summum.’
63. Amphitheatrum II, 209 ‘En SIGNACVLVM, vincens ac fugans partes aduersas!
PENTACVLVM & quinque literarum ac vulnerum, VERBI mirifici mirificum! A LMADEL
virtuosum!’
64. British Library Ms Sloane 3825, Salomons Almadel Art, f. 145v. On the Almadel, see
Jan R. Veenstra, ‘The Holy Almandal: Angels and the Intellectual Aims of Magic’,
in Metamorphosis of Magic, 189–229. See also the transcription with introduction
and commentary in R. A. Pack, ‘ “Almadel” auctor pseudonymous: De firmitate
sex scientiarum’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 42 (1975):
147–81.
65. British Library Sloane MS 3825, f. 147r–v.
66. Trithemius, Antipalus, 296 ‘liber Almadal Solomoni adscriptus ... spurca menda-
cia in eo, quæ dæmoniaca sunt omnia.’
67. Ars Notoria: The Notory Art of Solomon, Shewing the Cabalistical Key of Magical
Operations, the Liberal Sciences, Divine Revelation and the Art of Memory. Written
originally in Latine, and now Englished by Robert Turner (London, 1657). See
Stephen Clucas, ‘John Dee’s Angelic Conversations and the Ars Notoria’, 231–73;
Julien Véronèse, ‘Les anges dans l’ars notoria: révélation, processus visionnaire et
angelologie’, in Henri Bresc, Jean-Patrice Boudet et Benont Grivin, eds, Les Anges
et la Magie au Moyen Âge, Mélanges de l’Ecole Frangaise de Rome, 114 (2002),
813–49. See also Lynn Thorndike’s ‘Solomon and the Ars Notoria’, in A History of
Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols (1923–58), vol. 2, 279–89.
68. Thorndike, History of Magic, 2: 282 cites a sixteenth- century manuscript in the
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (BN 7170 A) which states that the ‘Pauline art’
was purported to have been discovered by the Apostle Paul after he had been
snatched up to the third heaven, and delivered by him at Corinth.
69. Agrippa, Vanity of Arts and Sciences, 115.
70. Amphitheatrum II, 44 ‘Hoc PENTACVLVM Solomonis virtuosum: non illud
Nigromanticorum seu Cacomagorum phantasticum atque blasphemum.’
71. Ibid., 122 ‘nec Nigromanticorum coniuratoriis; non à diabolico spiritu
familiari.’
196 Peter J. Forshaw

72. Johann Reuchlin, De Verbo Mirifico (1494; Stuttgart, 1964), 30. The first four
appear in the Isagoge to Figure 1, the other three in that for Figure 2.
73. See too Amphitheatrum II, 120. Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI, l. 258.
74. Amphitheatrum (1609), ‘Entrance’ engraving: ‘Erga illos secundvm notam proba-
tionem, jucunda obœdientia esto.’ Cf. Arbatel, 210 ‘Let him accustome himself
to try the Spirits, as the Scripture admonisheth; for grapes cannot be gathered
of thorns’. The standard ‘test’ involved requesting the spirit to confess that Jesus
Christ incarnate was the Son of God (1 John 4:2–3). See Athanasius, Opera (Paris,
1572), 1008e ‘Cum aliqua se nobis obtulerit visio, audacter requirite quis sit ille,
& unde venerit, ac sine mora si sanctorum fuerit revelatio, angelica consolatione
timor vertetur in gaudium: Si verò diaboli fuerit tentatio, fidelis animae percunc-
tationibus evanescet, quia maximum est securitas indicium interrogare quisnam
est, & unde.’
75. Amphitheatrum II, 155 ‘Obiicis; Bonis semper sese immiscet nequam ille versutus,
qui se transformat in Angelum Lucis, & seducit incautos & simplices. Respondeo,
Scimus ex verbo DEI, officiorum Angelorum DEI Bonorum esse, defendere pios
siuè DEVM timentes ab hostibus suis, ac custodire ab omni malo.’
76. Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-
Madison, Duveen D 897; Öffentliche Bibliothek der Universität Basel, Standort
JG10.4; Universität Darmstadt, Hessische Landes und Hochschulbibliothek. Schloss
64283 Darmstadt [DM 3300] Ms Gr.fol.4/16; Rostock, Universitätsbibliothek
Rostock Signature: G VI-7; Location: 28- SON; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Signatur *46.N.11 Alt Prunk.
77. British Library Sloane MS 181 ‘Tabulae theosophiae cabbalisticae’, f. 3 ‘Benedicat
tibi (mihi) DOMINUS, et custodiat te (me). Ostendat DOMINUS faciem suam tibi,
(mihi) et misereatùr tui (mei). Convertat DOMINUS vultum suum ad te (me) et det
tibi (mihi) pacem.’ Numbers 6:24 ‘The L ORD bless thee, and keep thee’; 6:25 ‘The
L ORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee’; 6:26 ‘The L ORD
lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.’
78. Amphitheatrum II, 155 referring to Numbers 12:6.
79. British Library Sloane MS 181, ff. 1–2 (24 cm high & 32 cm wide).
80. For more on divination by dreams, see, for example, Nathanael Homes,
Daemonologie and Theologie (London, 1650), ch. 9, ‘Of Oneirologie, Oneiromancie,
Somnispicine, or Divination by Dreames’. See also Agrippa, Three Books, Book 3,
ch. 51, ‘Of Prophetical dreams’, pp. 633–35.
81. Cf. Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum (1599), whose title proclaims
that Magnesia is the true subject of the secret wonder-working Stone (geheimen
wunderthetigen Universal Steins).
82. On the Urim and Thummim see, for example, Exodus 28:30 and Leviticus 8:8.
See Chymical, Medicinal, and Chyrurgical Addresses: Made to Samuel Hartlib, Esquire
(London, 1655), 5 ‘The Vrim & Thummim were substance; for Moses put them into
the breast-plate, the words signifie light and perfection, knowledge and holiness,
manifestation and truth.’
83. Cf. Khunrath, Chaos, Vorrede, sig. C.)()(5v ‘meinem Buch von Visionibus oder
Gesichten/ und sonderlichen ... Offenbahrungen’.
84. British Library Sloane Ms. 181, f. 2 ‘Wan wir Gott und seine güte Engele rech-
tschaffe lieben und rein ehren, auch einsame Gottfürchtige anredüngen zu
ihnen öffteres üben, so haben wir sie gewislich gegenwertige beschlißere und
lehrmeistere und beijstehende.’
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 197

85. Cf. Véronèse, ‘Les anges dans l’ars notoria’, 813.

86. Psalm 91:11 ‘For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy
ways’; Psalm 103: 20–21 ‘Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength,
that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye
the Lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure’; Psalm 104:4
‘Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire’; Matthew 2:13 ‘And
when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in
a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into
Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young
child to destroy him’; Hebrews 1:7 ‘And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his
angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire’.
87. Julien Véronèse, ‘La notion d’ “auteur-magicien” à la fin du Moyen Âge: le cas de
l’ermite Pelagius de Majorque (+ v. 1480)’, in Médiévales, 51 (2006): 119–38, at 134.
88. Frank Klaassen’s online catalogue of ‘Manuscripts of Ritual Magic and Related
Texts’, lists a manuscript in Leipzig Stadtsbibliothek, Ms 730 (DCCXXX),
‘Circulus seu tabula veritatis proscribente eam discipulo suo Magistro Libano
Gallo Pelagius, Magister, Eremitae in Insula Majoricarum.’ This is followed in
the catalogue by MS 731 (DCCXXXI), ff. 1a–58a, Drey Bucher Pelagii, Welcher
ein Heiliger und Einfiedler gewesen ist, von den Offenbahrungen, Dadurch alle
Weischeit, und der gantzen Welt Heiligkeit von Gott Koennen erlanget werden.’
http://homepage.usask.ca/~frk302/MSS/ritual.html
89. British Library Harleian MS 181 (fols 75r–81r) De Arte Crucifixi Pelagii Solitarij, at f.
80r ‘Interim autem dum non potes dormire, revolve ea verba: Ihesu veritas aeterna
ostende veritatem. Si hoc cum puritate operatus fueris; apparebit tibi dormienti
in sompnis veritas ipsa personaliter ...’. On Pelagius and the Ars Crucifixi, see
Stephen Clucas, ‘Regimen Animarum et Corporum: The Body and Spatial Practice
in Medieval and Renaissance Magic’, in The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Culture, eds D. Grantly and N. Taunton (Aldershot, 2000), 113–29. On Pelagius
and his influence, see Dupèbe, ‘L’Ecriture chez l’ermite Pelagius’, 124 where he
provides a transcript beginning ‘Magistri Pelagii heremitae de proprio Angelo
in somniis apparente cum reuelatione’; Jean Dupèbe, ‘Curiosité et Magie chez
Johannes Trithemius’, in Jean Céard et al, eds, La Curiosité à la Renaissance (Paris,
1986), 71–97; François Secret, Hermétisme et Kabbale (Naples, 1992), 91–118 pas-
sim. Gilly (Magic, Alchemy and Science, 2: 143) argues that Pelagius is the ultimate
source for Khunrath’s ‘fundamental sentence’ in the figure of Adam-Androgyne:
‘Reiiciatur Binarius, et Ternarius, per Quaternarium, ad Monadis reducetur, sim-
plicitatem’ (Let the Binary be rejected, and the Ternary be reduced, by means of
the Quaternary, to the simplicity of the Monad).
90. Raphael Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton, NJ,
1994), 156, remarks on ‘the impression of seeing a complex Jewish emblem writ-
ten in Hebrew’.
91. Amphitheatrum II, 124 ‘Diuina Nomina, quanquam Hebraica, & propterea non-
nullis parum cognita, tamen multum prodesse ... Angelosque qui adsunt atque
intelligunt, ad opem ferendam iis inuitari.’
92. See, for example, the ‘Decem beatorum ordines iuxta traditiones Hebraeorum’ in
the Scala Denarii, in Henry Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia Libris Tres,
ed. V. Perrone Compagni (Leiden, 1992), 289.
93. Athanasius is cited as a source in Agrippa, Three Books, Book 3, ch. 17, pp. 505–6. Cf.
Arbatel, 201, Aphorism 27: ‘he which will, may ask a physical Angel, mathematical,
198 Peter J. Forshaw

or philosophical, or an Angel of civil wisdom, or of supernatural or natural wis-

dom, or for any thing whatsoever’.
94. Amphitheatrum II, 124 ‘DEVM Misericordiæ implorat Misericordia egens; Iustitia,
Iustum; Potentia, Omnipotentem. Vos igitur, quibus est ea sollicitudo, ea cura,
& qui mirabilium conficiendorum auidi estis, oculis & animo perlustrate
NOMINA DEI, fig. Amphitheatri huius prima à me annotata ... eligiteque ex hoc
conuentu, de tali exercitu, ex hac fermè Nominum Sacrorum legione, quo sit
potissimum in eiuscemodi operationibus, quibus operam datis, piè vtendum:
Theo- Sophicè enim potest illa Diuinitatis symbola Cælestium ingens chorus
sequi.’
95. British Library MS Sloane 3825 f. 146r: ‘The golden seal will serve and is to be
used in the operations of all the Altitudes’; BL MS Royal 17 A. XLII, f. 13r: ‘et
per hoc sanctum et sacrum sigillum quando erit sacratum poteris facere opera-
tiones quæ postea dicentur in hoc libro’; British Library MS Harleian 181 f. 75r:
‘Cum operationem Crucifixi Ihu Nazareni Salvatoris nostri ...’.
96. Clucas, ‘John Dee’s Angelic Conversations and the Ars Notoria’, 258.
97. Khunrath, Chaos, 112 ‘Geheimen Göttlichen Vision und Offenbahrung.’
98. Amphitheatrum II, 150 (mispaginated as 148 [sig. T3v]) ‘Rex Geber (vt videre
est ex eius libro Diuinitatis) post multos & varios in Alchimia frustra ac variè
exanthlatos labores, tandem Lapidis Philosophici Catholici vnici ... materia
vnica, in triunitate catholica, vera ... visione somnii vnius (quod facere DEO
facillimum, & impetrare credenti Theosophiceque Oranti & Laboranti non
impossibile) Diuinitus fuit institutus.’ The Liber Divinitatis is the first book of
Geber’s Liber de Septuaginta. Although I did not notice a reference to dream
visions in Marcellin Berthelot’s transcript in Archéologie et Histoire des Sciences
(Paris, 1906), 310–63, perhaps one could be found in surviving manuscripts,
such as the fifteenth- century copy in Glasgow’s Ferguson collection (Gla MS 39,
ff. 1–40), the sixteenth- century copy in Leiden (MS. Vossianus Chym. F. 3. C16
f. 224v–35v); or in the Mellon collection (MS 2 c.1350 f. 17v).
99. Khunrath, Chaos, 26 ‘Also auch haben Geber, wie sein Liber Divinitatis lehret/
und andere mehr/ diese hohe Gabe der wahren Weißheit durch Visiones
(wachend un auch schlaffend) und andere wunderbahre Christlich- Cabalisch
und Göttlich-Magisch zu Werck gestalte gute Gespräche mit dem wunderbahren
Gott und desselben Guten Geistern.’
100. See ‘The Visions of Zosimus’, trans. Frank Sherwood Taylor, Ambix, 1 (1937–38):
88–92.
101. Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 18. For a reference to Arnald’s Interpretatio de visioni-
bus in somniis, see Clifford R. Backman, ‘The Reception of Arnau de Vilanova’s
religious ideas’, in Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl, eds, Christendom and its
Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500 (Cambridge, 1996),
112–31, at 114.
102. Gerardus Dorneus, Dictionarium Theophrasti Paracelsi (Frankfurt, 1584), 64,
‘Meditatio dicitur, quoties cum aliquo alio colloquium habetur internum, qui
tamen non videtur, vti cum Deo, ipsum invocando, vel cum seipso, vel proprio
angelo bono’; p. 91, ‘Visio, dicitur supernaturalis spirituum apparitio, homi-
num oculis quodammodo conspicua.’
103. Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae sive Dictionarium Alchemisticum (Frankfurt,
1612), 327, ‘Meditatio’; 481, ‘Visio’, with the German gloss: ‘Ein ubernatür-
lich Gesicht/ oder Erscheinung der Geister.’ Perhaps it is not coincidental that
 Hypherphysical Magic and Deific Visions 199

Ruland’s Propugnaculum Chymiatriæ (Leipzig, 1608) features Jacob wrestling

with the angel on its frontispiece.
104. Gulielmus Johnsonus, Lexicon Chymicum (London, 1652), 40 ‘Cabala, Cabalia,
Ars Cabalistica, est Scientia occultissima, quae divinitus una cum lege Moysi tra-
dita fuisse fertur ... cum Angelis amicitiam cultoribus suis contrahit, rerumque
naturalium omnium cognitionem tradit.’ He refers the reader to Pico, Reuchlin,
Galatinus, and Paracelsus’s Philosophia sagax.
105. Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek ‘Corpus Hermeticum’ and the Latin
‘Asclepius’ in a new English Translation, with Notes and Introduction (1992;
Cambridge, 1995), 1.
106. Amphitheatrum II, 168–69. On the possibility of the theosopher being ‘theo-
didactically instructed’ by the ‘Mind of Divine Power’, see 154 ‘A Pimandro, h.e.
ς [theodidktikos]) instituêris’.
Mente Diuinæ potentiæ (ϑϵοδιδακτικω
107. Ashmole¸ Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, Prolegomena, sig. Bv.
108. Amphitheatrum II, 204 ‘Est enim    VRIM, per quod, presente, &   T HVMMIM
  TER MAX[IMVS] de maximis & abstrusis, Cabalicè dat TheoSopho responsa,
loquitur & vocem emittit suam.’
109. François Secret, Hermétisme et Kabbale, 23 provides an instance from Francesco
Giorgi’s De Harmonia mundi (Venice, 1525) of similar cabalistic inversion of
word order by the exegetical technique of tzyruph with the example of Ruach
(Spirit) and Hur (Opening, Cave, Hole). See Giorgi, Harmonia mundi, Cant. III,
Tom. V, Cap. 8, sig. LIIIIv–Lvr: ‘Hinc non sine mysterio   quod est spiritus
inversis litteris, per siruph more cabalistico reddit   hur, quod foramen sig-
nificat, per quod transiens corpus animale fit spirituale ...’
110. Ibid., sig. B2r. The medieval encyclopaedist Thomas of Cantimpré’s description
of the blessing of a stone to return it to its prelapsarian state makes me wonder
whether a parallel could be drawn with the alchemical reduction of substance
to primal matter in order to remove impurities. See Frank Klaassen, ‘English
Manuscripts of Magic, 1300–1500: A Preliminary Survey’, in Fanger, Conjuring
Spirits, 3–31, at 7.
111. Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman,
Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford, 2005), 192–93.
112. Lawrence M. Principe and William R. Newman, ‘Some Problems with the
Historiography of Alchemy’, in William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton, eds,
Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.,
2001), 385–431, at 397.
113. Turba Philosophorum, in Jean-Jacques Manget, ed., Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, 2
vols (Geneva, 1702), vol. 1, 447 ‘Sunt angeli quos ex igne creavit ... ex tenuissimo
tenuissimi ignis.’
114. Jacques Gohorry, De Usu & Mysteriis Notarum (Paris, 1550), sig. Kijr, ‘Angeli, spiri-
tus sunt essentiæ quintæ.’
115. See the Grades of Cognition in the engraving of Adam-Androgyne.
116. Oswald Croll, Basilica Chymica (1609), 7, 33 ‘Vide Amphitheatrum Khunradi
cedro dignissimum’; the title page of the Speculum Sophicum Rhodo-Stauroticum
(1618) of Theophilus Schweighardt (i.e. the Rosicrucian Daniel Mögling), fea-
tures the words ‘Ora’ and ‘Labora’, and an engraving inside is clearly inspired by
Khunrath’s Lab- Oratorium; Gabriel Clauder likewise refers to Khunrath’s ‘Ora et
Labora’ in Tractatus de tinctura universali, in Manget, 1: 144, 150, explicitly citing
him on pp. 123, 131, 148.
200 Peter J. Forshaw

117. Khunrath, Amphitheatrum II, 112 ‘Visionem beatissimam, imò DEI-ficam.’

118. Ibid., 69 ‘Homo mentaliter migrat in consortium & sanctuarium Angelorum DEI
bonorum; imò, in DEVM (etiam in hac vita) ipsum’.
119. bid., 222 ‘Sit, ô DOMINE, mihi à dextris & sinistris, ante, retro, sursum atque
deorsum, imò circulariter, A NGELVS meus, minister tuus flammeus, bonus, qui
sub modo delegatæ à TE administrationis, latrones in æris regione latitantes seu
spiritus fuget malignos, malitiam illorum coerceat, meque à leone rugiente cir-
cumeunte defendat, ne me deuoret, & malo denique circumdatum, ne peream,
moneat, custodiat.’
Part III
Representation
9
Singing with the Angels: Hildegard
of Bingen’s Representations of
Celestial Music
William T. Flynn

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), the twelfth- century Benedictine nun,

was best known in her own day as a prophetic visionary who successfully
founded and led two convents. Today she is probably even better known for
an extraordinary cycle of songs, which includes Ordo Virtutum, her musical
representation of the angelic virtues in their quest to care for a human soul.
This chapter demonstrates how Hildegard interpreted the celestial music
that she heard the angels sing in her visions, and, focusing on her two songs
dedicated to the angels, shows how she represented these auditory revela-
tions in the music she created for her convents’ use. In order to do this, I
will first discuss Hildegard’s reflection upon her visionary experience. I will
then take up her auditory experience of angelic song and her theological
interpretation of angelic music. Next, I will examine the visionary context
in which Hildegard’s two songs dedicated to the angels (O gloriosissimi lux
uiuens angeli and O uos angeli) are embedded, and investigate the angel-lore
that Hildegard draws upon in her visions and in these songs. Finally, I will
briefly discuss how the two songs could have been used in the liturgy of
Hildegard’s own convents, and demonstrate how the extraordinary range
(two and one-half octaves) of O uos angeli can be linked to Hildegard’s theo-
risations about angelic music.

Visions and virtues

Hildegard regularly claimed that she received her visions (in sight and
sound) through a lux uiuens, a living light. Such claims, modelled upon
Old Testament prophets (especially Ezekiel and Isaiah), are used throughout
Hildegard’s visionary works. Thus, for Hildegard, the ultimate source of this
light was ‘the omnipotent God’ working through her: Hildegard reported
that she heard the words that authorised her writing and interpreted her
visions as God’s words heard ‘in the Spirit’.1

203
204 William T. Flynn

However, Hildegard was not consistent in her descriptions, and periodi-

cally modified them as she reflected upon her cumulative visionary experi-
ence. Around 1175, twenty-five years after her first visionary work, Sciuias,
was completed, she gave her most complete and careful description of her
manner of ‘seeing’ in a letter to Guibert of Gembloux.2 In it, she stated that
she delighted in a gift of vision within her soul (uisionis munere in anima
mea) from infancy (ab infantia). She ruled out trance (extasis) as a source for
her visions and emphasized that she received them while awake (vigilanter,
apertis exterioribus oculis). She described being illuminated by a living light
(lux uiuens) whose shadow (umbra) she could inwardly consult at any time
to acquire insight into the writings (scriptura), sayings (sermones), virtues
(uirtutes), and certain deeds of men (quaedam opera hominum) that are
modelled (formata) in the living light. Finally, she gave a careful description
of the process though which what she saw and heard was transformed into
writing:

Quicquid autem in hac uisione uideo seu didicero, huius memoriam per
longum tempus habeo, ita quod, quoniam illud aliquando uiderim et aud-
ierim, recordor. Et simul uideo et audio ac scio, et quasi in momento hoc
quod scio disco. Quod autem non uideo, illud nescio, quia indocta sum. Et
ea que scribo, illa in uisione uideo et audio, nec alia uerba pono quam illa
que audio, latinis que uerbis non limatis ea profero quemadmodum illa in
uisione audio, quoniam sicut philosophi scribunt scribere in uisione hac
non doceor. Atque uerba que in uisione ista uideo et audio, non sunt sicut
uerba que ab ore hominis sonant, sed sicut flamma coruscans et ut nubes
in aere puro mota. Huius quoque luminis formam nullo modo cognoscere
ualeo, sicut nec spheram solis perfecte intueri possum.
Et in eodem lumine aliam lucem, que lux uiuens mihi nominata est,
interdum et non frequenter aspicio, quam nimirum quomodo uideam
multo minus quam priorem proferre sufficio, atque interim dum illam
intueor, omnis mihi tristitia omnis que dolor de memoria aufertur, ita ut
tunc mores simplicis puelle, et non uetule mulieris habeam....
Anima autem mea nulla hora caret prefato lumine quod umbra uiuentis
luminis uocatur, et illud uideo uelut in lucida nube firmamentum absque
stellis aspiciam, et in ipso uideo que frequenter loquor et que interrogan-
tibus de fulgore uiuentis lucis respondeo.3

(Now, I retain a memory of anything I see or learn in this vision for a long
time, so that, once I have seen and heard it, I may bring it to mind. And
I see, hear, and know all at once, as if, in that moment, I discover what
I know. But what I do not see, I do not know, because I am unlearned.
And I write those things that I see and hear in the vision, and I do not
set down words other than those I hear. And I report them in unpolished
Latin words, just as I hear them in the vision, for I do not learn from
 Singing with the Angels 205

this vision how to write like philosophers write. And the words that I see
and hear in that vision are not like words that are heard from a human
mouth, but like a glittering flame and like a cloud moving in the clear
air. Moreover, I can in no way know the appearance of this light, just as I
cannot gaze fully at the sphere of the sun.
And sometimes, though not often, I catch sight of another light in that
same light. This I have named the living light, but I am of course much
less able to explain how I see it than the first; nevertheless, while I gaze
at it, every sadness, every pain is erased from my memory, with the result
that, at that time, I have the manner of a simple girl and not of an elderly
woman....
Now, no hour of mine lacks the first light which is called the shadow
of the living light, and I see it as if I gaze upon the firmament in bright
cloud without stars, and in it I see those things I often speak about and
what I give in answer from the radiance of the living light to those who
are inquiring.)

Thus, Hildegard’s mature reflection on her manner of ‘seeing’ suggests

that the process of writing ‘what she saw and heard’ was mediated not only
by the ‘shadow of the living light’ but also by her ability to consult her
memory and to bring back into mind the sudden insights she had gained
in visions. Although she insists that the words she renders ‘in unpolished
Latin’ were ‘just as’ she ‘heard them’, she undermines all idea of simple tran-
scription by claiming that they are ‘not like the words heard from a human
mouth, but like a glittering flame and like a cloud moving in clear air’.
Hence her process of writing was time- consuming and cumbersome and
often included periods of illness that she connected with her difficulties in
expressing her visions accurately.
Hildegard’s descriptions of her visions as directly inspired by God and as
mediated in a complicated manner are only seemingly contradictory, since
she ascribed this complex form of mediation to God’s messengers, the angels,
and particularly to the angelic virtues. Hildegard followed the tradition most
widely spread by Augustine that the angelic host was the light created on the
first day (Gen. 1:3),4 although her version of their creation differs in some
respects from his, and as Peter Dronke noted, it has its closest parallels with
that of the twelfth-century neo-Platonist philosopher, Avencebrol: At God’s
command (let there be light), ‘the light, which will never be darkened, began
to flash, to which also the living spheres, namely the angels, began to cling’.5
However, most of Hildegard’s angel-lore follows traditional lines: the first
light is not the world’s day (since the sun had not been created) but rather the
light of creation, which was interpreted as God’s light mediated by his Word
and Spirit, and in which the angels participate and reflect on. Hildegard
therefore most often describes angels as some form of brightness or light,
and in several instances extends the name ‘living light’ to angels. In Sciuias
206 William T. Flynn

the central virtue is Scientia Dei (Knowledge of God), who is described as

having ‘the awe-inspiring flashing of divinity’ (terribilem fulgorem diuini-
tatis), ‘but nevertheless like other virtues, she appears in a form to human
beings’ (sed tamen ut ceterae uirtutes in forma apparet homini).6 While it is
clear that Hildegard is describing the personification of a divine attribute,
a virtue, it is also clear that this is an angelic virtue, since Scientia mediates
between God and the rest of creation (including the other angels, as the fol-
lowing paragraph makes clear):

Quod uero circa eandem imaginem conspicis pulcherrimam multitu-

dinem angelicam formam ... in tanta ueneratione stantem ut et eam time-
ant ac diligant: hoc est quod ubique scientiam Dei beati et excellentes
spiritus in angelica ministratione per inexplicabilem et purissimam lau-
dem colunt ... Deum amplectentes in ardore suo, quia lux uiuens sunt.
(But you see, around this same image [Scientia], a most beautiful multi-
tude of angelic forms ... standing in such great veneration that they too
fear and love her; which is to say that, everywhere, the blessed and excel-
lent spirits worship the Knowledge of God in angelic ministry through
inexplicable and purest praise ... embracing God in their ardour, since
they are living light.)

In Hildegard’s last visionary work, Liber diuinorum operum, 3.3, she further
refined her description of the process of mediation in a vision of God’s Spirit
as a fountain of living water over which the angelic virtue Caritas presided,
assisted by Sapientia, Humilitas and Pax. As Dronke has noted, this passage
describes all created things as ‘shadows’, but ‘when [Hildegard] speaks of
shadow, she cannot mean something purely illusory. For her the shadow
exists, from first to last, because it is irradiated by Caritas’. Moreover, Dronke
pointed out that Caritas herself is, in some sense, also a shadow reflecting
the divine light.7 Like Scientia Dei, Caritas describes herself as mediating
God’s light to the other angels who are described as living light:

Ego caritas uiuentis Dei claritas sum, et sapientia mecum opus suum
operata est; atque humilitas, quae in uiuo fonte radicauit, adiutrix mea
extitit, ipsique pax adheret. Et per claritatem, quae ego sum, uiuens lux
beatorum angelorum fulminat; quoniam sicut radius a lumine fulget, ita
claritas haec beatis angelis lucet; nec esse debuit quin luceret, sicut nec
lux absque fulgore est.8
(I, Charity, am the brightness of the living God, and Wisdom has per-
formed her work with me; and Humility, who shines in the living font,
stands by as my helper, and Peace clings to her. And through the bright-
ness which I am, the living light of the blessed angels flashes; for just as
 Singing with the Angels 207

a ray shines from a light, so this brightness shines from the holy angels;
and it must shine, as there is no light without radiance.)

These descriptions of the angelic virtues as intermediaries between God (as

Trinity) and creation rely on the personification of ‘Wisdom’ in Proverbs 8,
but is here expanded into a whole theory of angelic mediation through the
virtues that accounts for prophetic inspiration, including that of Hildegard
herself. Just as the virtues are described in terms of their ability to reflect
divine light, becoming shadows of the ‘living light’, human inspiration is
described as an overshadowing. In Liber diuinorum operum, Hildegard reports
hearing Caritas speak of Hildegard’s own first visionary work as a result of
this process:

Claritas quoque mea prophetas obumbrauit, qui per sanctam inspira-

tionem futura predixerunt.... De umbra autem hac scriptura Sciuias
processit per formam mulieris, quae uelut umbra fortitudinis et sanitatis
erat, quoniam uires istae in ea non operabantur.9
(Also, my [Charity’s] brightness overshadowed the prophets, who foretold
future things through holy inspiration.... And from this shadow the work
Sciuias came forth through the form of a woman, who was like a shadow
of strength and wholeness, for these powers were not operating in her.)

For Hildegard, prophetic inspiration grows out of and reflects God’s com-
munication with humanity in the incarnation. The choice of the word
‘overshadowed’ (obumbravit) to describe her own inspiration was no doubt
intended to reinforce this link: At the Annunciation (Lk. 1:34–35), in answer
to Mary’s question ‘How can this be?’ the angel predicts: ‘The Holy Spirit
shall come upon you and the power of the most high shall overshadow
(obumbrabit) you’. In having Caritas describe her book Sciuias as coming
forth from this shadow, as well as describe Hildegard herself as ‘a shadow of
strength and wholeness’, Hildegard links the incarnation of the Word to the
inspiration of her own prophetic words.
In the next passage from Liber diuinorum operum a second- order level of
inspiration is described by the virtue Sapientia, who attributes Hildegard’s
scientific writings, second visionary work (Liber uite meritorum), and other
insights to a different process:

Ipsa [Sapientia] quoque opus suum inspexit, quod in umbra aquae uiuae
in rectam constitutionem ordinauit, cum etiam per hanc predictam et
indoctam muliebrem formam quasdam diuersarum rerum naturales
uirtutes quaedamque scripta Vitae Meritorum, necnon et quaedam alia
profunda misteria aperuit, quae illa in uera uisione uidens ualde debili-
tata est.10
208 William T. Flynn

(The same virtue [Wisdom] also examined her own handiwork, which,
in the shadow of the living water, she arranged in proper order, when
indeed, through this unlearned form of a woman mentioned before, she
revealed certain natural powers of diverse things and certain texts about
the merits of life, and also certain other deep mysteries, and that woman,
seeing these things in a true vision, was greatly weakened.)

In this passage, Hildegard contrasts her experience of direct ‘overshadow-

ing’, described by Caritas, with the access to her prophetic knowledge, pro-
vided by Sapientia. Sapientia arranges ‘her handiwork’ in a kind of spiritual
mirror, ‘the shadow of the living water’, which is then revealed to Hildegard
for her to consult and meditate upon, providing the material for her reflective
process (described elsewhere as consulting the ‘shadow to the living light’).
Thus, after a lifetime of reflection upon her visions, Hildegard presents a
complex theory not unrelated to neo-Platonism, in which all human knowl-
edge of God, although received in the Spirit, is mediated by angelic virtues
who reflect divine attributes. Though Hildegard’s ‘living light’ often speaks
in a divine persona (whether Father, Son or Spirit), Hildegard never claimed
the direct unmediated intervention of God, not even of the Holy Spirit, in
her careful descriptions of prophetic inspiration. For Hildegard, the anthro-
pology of inspiration, indeed her whole theory of creativity, required the
angelic mediation of the virtues.

Angelic and human song

At least towards the end of her life, Hildegard seems to have considered her
knowledge of music to be one of the miraculous revelations given to her by
the virtue Sapientia. In the Protestificatio from Sciuias (finished around 1153),
she had not listed music as one of the powers bestowed upon her, attributing
only her powers of exposition, understanding and writing to inspiration:

maxime coruscationis igneum lumen aperto caelo ueniens totum cer-

ebrum meum transfudit et totum cor totumque pectus meum uelut
flamma non tamen ardens sed calens ita inflammauit, ut sol rem aliq-
uam calefacit super quam radios suos ponit. Et repente intellectum expo-
sitionis librorum, uidelicet psalterii, euangelii et aliorum catholicorum
tam ueteris quam noui Testamenti uoluminum sapiebam, non autem
interpretationem uerborum textus eorum nec diuisionem syllabarum
nec cognitonem casuum aut temporum habebam.11
(And a fiery light of the greatest brightness, coming from the opened
heavens, filled my brain, and like a flame it enkindled my whole heart
and whole breast, not so much blazing, but warming, in the way that
the sun makes something upon which it places its rays grow warm. And
 Singing with the Angels 209

suddenly I began to sense the meaning of the explanation of books,

namely of the Psalter, the Gospels, and the other catholic books, as
much from the Old as from the New Testament. However, I did not have
the interpretation of the words of their texts, or the division of syllables
or the knowledge of the cases or tenses.)

Around 1163, in the Prologue to Liber uite meritorum, she expanded the list
of her inspired works to include a ‘Symphony of the harmony of heavenly
revelation’ (‘symphoniam harmonie celestium reuelationum’). This may
refer to an early collection of her songs, but it does not indicate whether it is
a collection containing musical notation or the words alone.12 Finally, about
1177, when she recounted the same visionary experience that compelled her
to write Sciuias in the autobiographical portion of her Vita, Hildegard’s dis-
cussion of her own prophetic gifts includes her ability to produce song:

In eadem uisione scripta prophetarum, euangeliorum et aliorum sanc-

torum et quorundam phylosoforum sine ulla humana doctrina intellexi
ac quedam ex illis exposui, cum uix noticiam litterarum haberem, sicut
indocta mulier me docuerat. Sed et cantum cum melodia in laudem Dei
et sanctorum absque doctrina ullius hominis protuli et cantaui, cum
numquam uel neumam uel cantum aliquem didicissem.13
(In the same vision, I understood the writings of the prophets, evangelists
and of some of the saints and certain philosophers, without any human
instruction, and I explained things from them when I scarcely had an
acquaintance with literature, as an unlearned woman had instructed me.
And I even brought forth and sang chant with melody in praise of God
and the saints without the instruction of any mortal, although I had
never learned either notation, or any chant theory.)

The purpose of these protestations, denying any technical understand-

ing of grammar and music, was to heighten the sense of divine origin of
her literary and musical production; that is, whatever her actual technical
knowledge (and it is significant that she uses technical vocabulary in dis-
claiming it), it is clear that Hildegard was making the claim that both her
writings and music stemmed from her visionary gifts. Moreover, it may be
particularly significant that Hildegard mentions notation (neuma) at this
date, since all the surviving notation of her music can be dated to the late
1170s. She pairs this term with the more ambiguous term ‘cantus’. I have
translated it here as ‘chant theory’, because it would be absurd to think that
a Benedictine nun with many years of experience singing the office would
claim to have no knowledge of chant. Her use of technical music vocab-
ulary relating to notation may show a relatively new concern for writing
down not just words, but also the music, in order to preserve her visionary
210 William T. Flynn

experience more completely, since part of what she claimed to have heard
in her visions was the singing of the angels themselves. In her vision of
the angelic ranks in Sciuias, 1.6, the angels ‘echo those wonders which God
works in blessed souls in every kind of music with wondrous voices’ (in
omne genere musicorum mirabilibus uocibus miracula illa resonant quae
Deus in beatis animabus operatur).14 Moreover, the final vision of Sciuias,
3.13, contains the lyrics for seven pairs of songs about the saints and angels
as well as a short (unnotated) version of the Ordo Virtutum, in which the
angelic virtues themselves sing.15
Towards the end of her life, in 1178, Hildegard wrote her most closely
argued statement about the nature of music, in a letter (Ep. 23) to the prel-
ates of Mainz. This was written when her community was temporarily under
interdict and therefore banned from singing the offices. In it, she drew on
traditional thinking about the purpose of music developed largely from the
writings of Augustine, Gregory the Great and the Benedictine Rule to develop
a concept of music as a symbolic expression of heavenly praise, as a recollec-
tion of paradise and as an anticipation of angelic song. Through its symphonia
(sounding-together), music was credited with the power to reflect a unity of
soul, voice and deed, and through its harmonia (harmony), it was thought to
reflect a concord between heaven and earth. In her letter, Hildegard places
these well-known concepts within a narrative about the fall and redemption
of humanity. In this narrative, she describes music as a primal and redemp-
tive gift of God. The gift of music was given first to the angels, whose pur-
pose was to reflect the divine order in praise. Indeed, according to Hildegard,
both angelic and human song reflect the divine order and so (at least in para-
dise) were closely allied to each other. Moreover, in paradise, humanity had a
knowledge of angelic song, which was partially lost and obscured by the fall:

[Adam] adhuc innocens, non minimam societatem cum angelicarum lau-

dum uocibus habebat.... Simultudinem ergo uocis angelice, quam in para-
diso habebat, Adam perdidit, et in scientia qua ante peccatum preditus erat,
ita obdormiuit, sicut homo a somno euigilans de his, que in somnis uiderat,
inscius et incertus redditur, quando suggestione diaboli deceptus.16
(Adam, while still innocent, used to have not a little association with the
sounds of angelic praises.... Therefore Adam lost the likeness of an angelic
voice which he used to have in paradise, and in this way fell asleep to the
knowledge which he had possessed before his sin. When he was deceived
by the devil’s prompting, he was rendered unknowing and unsure, like
a man waking from a dream is unsure about the things that he had seen
in his dreams.)

Although this knowledge was dormant, Hildegard argued that the proph-
ets, inspired by the Spirit, had been able to recover something of the angelic
 Singing with the Angels 211

knowledge of music and its symbolic meanings, and thus she considered
musical inspiration to be a kind of prophetic inspiration:

Deus ero, qui animas electorum luce ueritatis perfundens ad pristinam

beatitudinem reseruat, ex suo hoc adinuenit consilio, ut quandoque
corda quamplurium infusione prophetici Spiritus innouaret, cuius inte-
riore illuminatione aliqua de scientia illa recuperarent, quam Adam ante
preuaricationis sue uindictam habuerat.
Vt autem etiam diuine illius dulcedinis et laudationis, qua cum angelis
in Deo, priusquam caderet, idem Adam iucundabatur, et non eius in hoc
exsilio recordarentur, et ad hec quoque ipsi prouocarentur, idem sancti
prophete, eodem spiritu quem acceperant edocti, non solum psalmos et
cantica, que ad accendam audientium deuotionem cantarentur, sed et
instrumenta musice artis diuersa, quibus cum multiplicibus sonis pro-
ferrentur, hoc respectu composuerunt, ut tam ex formis uel qualitatibus
eorundem instrumentorum quam ex sensu uerborum, que in eis recit-
antur, audientes ut predictum est, per exteriora admoniti et exercitati de
interioribus erudirentur.
(But God, who restores the souls of the elect to pristine blessedness, filling
them with the light of truth, devises by this his plan, that whenever he
renews the hearts of many with an outpouring of prophetic Spirit, they
might recover through his interior illumination something of that knowl-
edge which Adam had before the punishment of his transgression.
But indeed, Adam himself, before he fell, used to take delight in the
divine sweetness and praise of that same [knowledge] with the angels in
God. And since they may not remember it in this exile, and so that they
themselves might be called forth towards this, the same holy prophets,
taught by the same Spirit which they had received, composed not only
psalms and canticles, which might be sung to kindle the devotion of
hearers, but also constructed diverse instruments of the musical art, so
that (as much from the forms or properties of these same instruments
as from the meaning of the words which are sung with them), the hear-
ers, as said above, reminded and aroused by outward things, might be
instructed about inward things.)

In the next stage of her argument, which I take to be a discussion about

the music of her own time, she stated that music created by human skill in
imitation of the prophets might also contribute towards this recovery of
Adam’s knowledge of angelic music:

Quos, uidelicet sanctos prophetas, studiosi et sapientes imitati, humana

et ipsi arte nonulla organorum genera inuenerunt, ut secundum delecta-
tionem anime cantare possent; et que cantabant, in iuncturis digitorum,
212 William T. Flynn

que flexionibus inclinantur, adaptuerunt, ut et recolentes Adam digito

dei, qui Spiritus Sanctus est, formatum, in cuius uoce sonus omnis har-
monie et totius musice artis, antequam delinqueret, suauitas erat.
(Zealous and wise men imitated them, i.e. the holy prophets, and they
invented through human art many kinds of organa [probably poly-
phony], so that they could sing for the delight of the soul; and what they
were singing they fitted to the joints of the fingers [possibly a reference
to the Guidonian hand],17 which are inclined to bending, also recalling
that, before he failed, Adam, in whose voice was the sound of all har-
mony and the sweetness of the whole musical art, had been formed by
the finger of God, who is the Holy Spirit.)

In the final stage of her argument, Hildegard explained that this transfor-
mation towards the harmony of body and soul through music was possible
because it was founded in the incarnation:

Pensate itaque quoniam, sicut corpus Iesu Christi de Spiritu Sancto ex

integritate Virginis Marie natum est, sic etiam canticum laudum secun-
dum celestem harmoniam per Spiritum Sanctum in ecclesia radicatum
est. Corpus uero indumentum est anime, que uiuam uocem habet, ideo-
que decet ut corpus cum anima per uocem Deo laudes decantet.
(Therefore, know that just as the body of Jesus Christ was born from the
Holy Spirit out of the purity of the Virgin Mary, so also the song of praise
is rooted according to the celestial harmony through the Holy Spirit in
the church. Now, the body is the clothing of the soul, which has a liv-
ing voice, and thus, it is fitting that the body with the soul should sing
praises to God through the voice.)

For Hildegard, then, the transformative process of the Holy Spirit in the
church had produced a musical repertory that effectively, if incompletely,
mirrored the celestial harmony. Since all music was thought to reflect the
divine order to some extent, the essential purpose – praise of the creator –
was essentially the same for both human and divine music. However, since
this praise could be distorted or imperfectly realised on earth, human music
could reflect the angelic music only insofar as it was brought into concord
(symphonia and harmonia) with it.

Visions of the celestial song

In the last vision of Sciuias, 3.13, Hildegard described herself as hearing ‘a

different kind of music’ emanating from a resplendent cloud. Not only does
this music completely structure the vision and provide most of its verbal
content in the form of lyrics, it also reprises, in lyric form, the revealed
 Singing with the Angels 213

messages contained in all of the other visions of Sciuias:

Deinde uidi lucidissimum aerem, in quo audiui in omnibus praedictis
significationibus mirabili modo diuersum genus musicorum in laudibus
ciuium supernorum gaudiorum in uia ueritatis fortiter perseuerantium.18
(Then I saw a resplendent cloud, in which I heard, in a marvellous man-
ner, a different kind of music with all of the meanings mentioned before,
with praises of the joys of the heavenly citizens who are boldly persever-
ing in the way of truth.)
In the description of this heavenly symphonia that follows, Hildegard dis-
cusses the nature of heavenly music, treating the sound of song itself as the
principal agent, not identifying specific singers until the final part of the vision.
Nevertheless, it is clearly some kind of angelic song, as it emanates from light
and cloud and expresses the joys of the heavenly citizens (cives superni).
In the first section of the vision, the symphonia (described as if the sym-
phonia itself is doing the singing) has a sound like the voice of a multitude:

Et sonus ille, ut uox multitudinis in laudibus de supernis gradibus in har-

monia symphonizans, sic dicebat:19
(And that sound, like the voice of a multitude concording in harmony in
praise of the heavenly orders, was singing in this way:)

This is followed by several songs expressing the joy of the various ranks
of the denizens of heaven, the saints (already redeemed), and the angelic
host themselves (described in the two songs which will be taken up below).
Hildegard’s visions typically contain explanations of each of the visual
elements, which are discussed line by line. The explanatory comment on
‘joyful song’ states that the heavenly symphonia completes the work of rev-
elation by reconnecting the revealed word to the contemplation of heaven,
and the body to the spirit:

Quia symphonia in unanimitate et in concordia gloriam et honorem

caelestium ciuium ruminat, ita quod et ipsa hoc sursum tollit quod uer-
bum palam profert.
Sic et uerbum corpus designat, symphonia uero spiritum manifestat:
quoniam et caelestis harmonia diuinitatem denuntiat et uerbum human-
itatem Filii Dei propalat.20
(For the symphonia in unity and in concord calls to mind the glory and
honour of the heavenly citizens, in such a way that it also lifts up what
the word has openly offered.
And thus, the word designates the body, but the symphonia makes the
spirit known: For as the heavenly harmony announces the divinity of the
Son of God, so the word makes his humanity manifest.)
214 William T. Flynn

In the second section of the vision, the symphonia sings with the para-
doxical sound of a harmonious lament to the redeemed orders about those
still struggling with their calling:

Et iterum sonus ille, ut uox multitudinis in querelis de reuocatis ad eos-

dem gradus in harmonia sic querebatur dicens:21
(And again that sound, like the voice of a multitude in laments about those
called back to these same orders, was thus lamenting in harmony, singing:)

This is followed by the text of a lament for those still contending with
temptation and a song in praise of the ‘living font’ (fons uiuens), which will
rescue them from ‘those drawn down by the angelic fall’ (ei de angelico casu
abstraheres) and from the ‘writhing serpent’ (tortuosus serpens).
Hildegard’s explanation of this passage states that the heavenly sympho-
nia prefigures the restoration of humanity to its place as denizens of heaven,
alluding to the parable of the lost sheep. Thus, in the gloss, even the harmo-
nious lament prefigures an eventual song of exultation:

Quia symphonia non solum in unanimate exsultationis in uia rectitudi-

nis fortiter persistentium gaudet, sed etiam in concordia resuscitationis
de uia iustiae lapsorum et tandem ad ueram beatitudinem erectorum
exultat: quoniam et pastor bonus ouem quae perierat cum gaudio repor-
tauit ad gregem.22
(For the symphonia not only rejoices in the unity of joy of those boldly
persisting in the way of uprightness, but it also exults in the concord of the
rekindling of those who have fallen from the way of justice, and, at last, of
those who have been raised up to true blessedness: For the Good Shepherd
has joyfully carried even the sheep which he had lost back to the flock.)

In the third section of the vision, the symphonia encourages the angelic
virtues themselves to come to the aid of the struggling soul, the symphonia
itself providing counter-arguments to the deceits of the devil:

Itemque sonus ille, ut uox multitudinis, in exhortatione uirtutum in

adiutorium hominum et in contradictione repugnantium diabolicarum
artium, uirtutibus uitia superantibus et hominibus tandem diuina inspi-
ratione ad paenitentiam redeuntibus, in harmonia sic clamabat:23
(And again, that sound was singing out like the voice of a multitude
in exhortation of the virtues to the aid of humankind and in counter-
argument to the opposition of devilish tricks. And as the virtues over-
come the vices, and at length as humankind returns to penitence through
divine inspiration, it was singing out in harmony in this way:)
 Singing with the Angels 215

The content of this part of the symphonia is a short version of the Ordo
Virtutum in which the personified virtues, in dialogue with the soul and the
devil, help the soul turn back towards heaven. Hildegard’s explanation of
this passage states that it is part of the nature of the heavenly symphonia to
soften the heart and move hearers to penitence:
Nam et symphonia dura corda emollit et ipsis umorem compunctionis
inducit, ac Spiritum sanctum aduocat.24
(For the symphonia softens even hard hearts, and induces in them the
dew of remorse, and summons the Holy Spirit.)
The vision concludes with a description of the singing of the virtues, to
which Hildegard attributes her ability to understand what the virtues said to
the sound of the symphonia, rather than to any non-musical or even visual
insight:
Et uoces istae erant ut uox multitudinis, cum multitudo uoces suas in
altum extollit. Et sonus earum ita pertransiuit me, quod eas absque dif-
ficultate tarditatis intellexi.25
(And those [the virtues’] voices were like the voice of a multitude, when
the multitude raised up its voices on high. And their sound so pierced me
through, that I understood them without any trouble of slowness.)
Thus the key features of the heavenly symphonia described by Hildegard
are its ability to call to mind heavenly joy, to move the hearer to compunc-
tion, to revive the spirit of someone who is struggling, and to soften the
hard of heart. All of these features are mentioned in standard encomia to
music that are found in psalm commentaries, liturgical rules and liturgical
commentaries, and are used within them not only to justify psalm-singing,
but indeed all singing of the liturgical repertory.26 In claiming that these
features are present in the music she heard, Hildegard not only establishes
its authority but also implies that the song she heard constituted a pecu-
liarly faithful representation of the heavenly symphonia. Although she
wrote down only the words in Sciuias, she emphasised that the music itself
completed her understanding of what was being sung, thus creating a real
need for its preservation in notated sources.

Context for two songs in praise of the angels

Hildegard’s songs for the angels first appear as part of the ‘joyful song’ sung
by the ciues superni in the final vision of Sciuias discussed above. They are
also preserved with notation in two manuscripts stemming from Hildegard’s
scriptorium, one of which must have been in existence by 1175 and the other
which may also have been copied while Hildegard was still alive.27 There is
216 William T. Flynn

one significant textual difference among the sources, which will be taken
up at the end of this section, that suggests either that the text was slightly
adapted to make one longer poem in Sciuias or that the notated versions
were slightly adapted to make an antiphon and responsory for liturgical use.
I will first treat the songs as they appear in the notated manuscripts.
Hildegard’s first song to the angels alludes both to Lucifer’s and to
humanity’s fall, and hints at some kind of restoration of humanity in its
final lines:

O gloriosissimi lux uiuens angeli, O most glorious angels, O living light,

qui infra divinitatem
diuinos oculos
cum mistica obscuritate
5 omnis creature aspicitis
in ardentibus desideriis,
unde numquam potestis saciari:
O quam gloriosa gaudia illa
uestra habet forma,
10 que in uobis est intacta
ab omni pravo opere,
quod primum ortum est
in uestro socio,
perdito angelo,
15 qui uolare uoluit
supra intus latens
pinnaculum Dei,
unde ipse tortuosus
dimersus est in ruinam,
20 sed ipsius instrumenta casus
consiliando facture
digiti Dei instituit. 28
who, lower than divinity,
catch sight of the divine eyes
with the mystical indistinctness
of every created thing,
in burning longing,
ence you can never be quenched:
O how glorious are the joys
your beauty holds,
which in you are undefiled
by every distorted action,
which first arose
in your companion,
the lost angel,
who wanted to fly above,
within the concealing
wing of God,
whence he, writhing,
was plunged into ruin,
but he established the instruments
of his overthrow through his counsel
to the handiwork of the finger of God.

The first third of this song identifies the angels as created beings (l. 5) whose
role is to gaze at the divine with a boundless burning desire (ll. 6–7). Then
the text contrasts the continuing joys and beauty of the faithful angelic host
with Lucifer (without identifying him by name), his ‘distorted action’ and
his ‘ruin’ (ll. 8–19). The final lines (20–22) use very ambiguous language
that, as will be demonstrated below, refers to the temptation of Adam and
Eve, through which Satan established a need that was fulfilled by Christ’s
incarnation, death and resurrection.29
As noted above, Hildegard states that she heard within this symphonia ‘all
the meanings mentioned before’ (omnes praedictae significationes), and so
directs the reader to the other visions in Sciuias. This first song has impor-
tant intertextual material in Sciuias, 1.2, and in many ways lines 14–22 pro-
vide a poetic summary of this vision’s contents and explanation. Many parts
of the song text that are obscure are fully treated in Hildegard’s explanation
 Singing with the Angels 217

of the related vision. For example, in the explanation to the vision, the
unnamed ‘lost angel’ (perdito angelo) of the song text (l. 14) is named as
Lucifer and ‘the joys your beauty holds’ (gaudia illa uestra habet forma, ll.
8–9) are more clearly linked to the faithful angels’ persistence in divine love
and to their function of praising God:

Nam ipsi igneum fulgorem accipientes ita serenissimum splendorum adepti

sunt: quia cum Lucifer cum suis superno creatori rebellare conaretur, isti
zelum Dei in casu illius et sibi consentientium habentes uigilantiam diui-
nae dilectionis induerunt.... In casu diaboli in illis angelicis spiritibus qui
cum Deo in rectitudine perseuerauerunt maxima laus exorta est.30
(For they, receiving a fiery radiance thus gained the brightest splendor: For
when Lucifer, with his followers, tried to rebel against the heavenly creator,
they in concord, retaining a zeal for God in his and the others’ downfall,
put on the vigilance of divine love.... At the devil’s fall, the greatest praise
arose in those angelic spirits who persevered with God in righteousness.)

Moreover, the obscure reference to the ‘instruments of his [the devil’s]

overthrow’ (mentioned in line 20 of the song text) can be shown (in the
vision text) to recall Hildegard’s teaching about Christ’s redemption, as well
as to the pattern of obedience demonstrated by him and personified by the
angelic virtues, who in turn lead the elect to heaven:

Et sic homo liberatus fulget in Deo et Deus in homine, consortium homo

habens in Deo, fulgentiorem scilicet claritatem quam prius haberet pos-
sidens in caelo. Quod non fuisset, si idem Filius Dei carnem non induis-
set; quoniam si homo in paradiso permansisset, Filius Dei in cruce passus
non fuisset. Sed cum homo per callidum serpentem deceptus est, Deus
in uera misericordia tactus est, ita quod Vnigenitum suum in integerrima
Virgine incarnari constituit. Et sic post ruinam hominis eleuate sunt
plurimae uirtues in caelo fulgentes, uelut est humilitas regina uirtutum,
quae in uirgineo partu floruit, et ut etiam ceterae uirtutes quae electos
Dei ad caelestia perducunt.31
(And thus liberated, man shines in God and God in man, man, having a
participation in God, possessing a more brilliant brightness than previ-
ously he held in heaven. And this would not be so if the Son of God had
not put on flesh; for if man had remained in paradise, the Son of God
would not have died on the cross. But when man was deceived by the
cunning serpent, God was touched by true mercy, and so he decreed that
his own only-begotten Son be made incarnate in the wholly untouched
Virgin. And so after man’s destruction, more virtues were raised up shin-
ing in heaven; just as Humility is queen of the virtues, which blossomed
218 William T. Flynn

in the virginal birth, so too there are the other virtues, who lead God’s
elect to the heavens.)

The second song names each of the nine angelic ranks and gives a (some-
times cryptic) summary of their function:

O uos angeli O you angels,

qui custoditis populos,
quorum forma fulget
in facie uestra,
5 et o uos archangeli
qui suscipitis
animas iustorum,
et uos uirtutes,
potestates, principatus
10 dominationes et troni,
qui estis computati
in quintum secretum numerum,
et o uos cherubin et seraphin,
sigillum secretorum Dei:
15 Sit laus uobis,
qui loculum antiqui cordis
in fonte asspicitis.
Videtis enim
interiorem vim Patris,
20 que de corde illius spirat
quasi facies.
Sit laus uobis,
qui loculum antiqui cordis
in fonte asspicitis.32
who watch over the peoples,
whose beauty shines forth
in your countenance,
and O you archangels
who receive
the souls of the just,
and you virtues,
powers, principalities,
dominions and thrones,
who are counted
in the secret number of five,
and O you cherubim and seraphim,
seal of the secrets of God:
Praise be to you,
who catch sight of the place
of the ancient heart in the fountain.
For you see
the inner power of the Father
which breathes forth from his heart
like a face.
Praise be to you,
who catch sight of the place
of the ancient heart in the fountain.

In her seminal article on this text, Gunilla Iversen has discussed

Hildegard’s division of the angelic ranks, pointing out that it follows the
one transmitted by Notker’s sequence Omnes sancti and ultimately has its
source in Gregory the Great’s Homily 34:

Nouem uero angelorum ordines diximus, quia uidelicet esse testante

sacro eloquio scimus angelos, archangelos, uirtutes, potestates, principa-
tus, dominationes, thronos, cherubin atque seraphin.33
(Now we have spoken of nine orders of angels, since from the testimony
of sacred eloquence we know them to exist, namely: angels, archangels,
virtues, powers, principalities, dominations, thrones, cherubim and sera-
phim.)

The subdivision of the ranks into 2 + 5 + 2 also stems from Gregory’s

discussion in this sermon, since he orders the ranks according to the places
 Singing with the Angels 219

one finds them in scripture: he states that angels and archangels are found
everywhere, then searches the Pauline corpus for virtues, powers, princi-
palities, dominations (Eph.1.21, although the order is Gregory’s), with the
addition of thrones (Col. 1.16), and mentions that cherubim and seraphim
are most commonly found in the Prophets.34
The same ordering and subdivisions are found in the Hildegard vision that is
most clearly related to this song: Sciuias, 1.6. As before, the specific descriptions
of the angels in this second song both summarise the material found in the
vision and also add new details to the vision’s description and commentary.
In the song, Hildegard addresses the angels as ‘you who watch over the
peoples’ (qui custoditis populos), and although the verb ‘custodio’ is ambigu-
ous, the vision text emphasises the action of observation more than guardi-
anship, as it states that the angels ‘pay close attention to God’s will regarding
men and display in themselves the deeds of them [men] to him’ (... ipsi
uoluntatem Dei in hominibus attendunt et actus eorum illi in semetipsis
ostendunt).35 The song describes angels as having a beauty that ‘shines forth
in their countenance’ (l. 2), which summarises the fuller description in the
vision, which stresses their brightness, but also states that they have a some-
what human appearance ‘on which, men’s faces are also visible as though in
pure water’ (in quibus et uultus hominum quasi in pura aqua apparent).36 To
the archangels, the song text assigns the function of receiving the souls of
the just (l. 5–7), a function not treated in the vision, which emphasises (as
does Gregory’s Homily) their representation of mysteries of God (especially
of the incarnation): ‘displaying in themselves the beauty of rationality, they
most purely magnify God’s incarnate Word’ (decorem rationalitatis in se
manifestantes, incarnatum Verbum Dei purissime magnificat).37
The song text clearly groups the virtues, powers, principalities, domina-
tions and thrones together (ll. 8–10), stating only that they ‘are counted
in the secret number of five’ (ll. 11–12). The vision text not only provides
individual glosses for each of these ranks, but also more fully explains the
importance of their number as an indication of their function, which is to
redirect the body and soul towards God:

Quod autem hae acies alias quinque acies secundum modum coronae
cingunt: hoc est quod corpus et anima hominis quinque sensus hom-
inis uirtute fortitudinis suae comprehendentes per quinque uulnera
Filii mei emundatos ad rectitudinem interiorum mandatorum dirigere
debent. 38
(Now these ranks [of angels and archangels] encircle five other ranks in
the manner of a crown: the reason for this is that the body and soul of
man, embracing the five senses of man by virtue of their own power,
must guide them, cleansed by the five wounds of my son, towards an
uprightness of inner commands.)
220 William T. Flynn

Although Hildegard’s explanations of the particular ranks do not always

line up these five ranks with specific functions, they always mention their
symbolic significance and relate this to how humanity should be purified
and made fit for celestial life. The few functions that Hildegard mentions
in her explanation of the vision stress a function common to all of these
ranks, the representation of the human soul and body to God. In treating
the virtues, she states that they not only arise in believers, but also display
their struggles to God:

Qui uirtutes sunt, in corda credentium ascendentes et in ardente caritate

excelsam turrim in eis aedificantes, quae opera ipsorum sunt.... et cer-
tamina illa quae ipsi hoc modo contra diabolicam turbam habent uirt-
utes istae mihi creatori ipsorum incessanter demonstrant.39
(And these virtues are rising up in the hearts of believers and with burning
charity are building a high tower in them, i.e. their works.... And the virtues
continually present those mortal contests [of the elect] to me their Creator,
which they [the elect] hold in this manner against the devilish throng.)

The powers, on the other hand, display God’s power and thereby cre-
ate a brightness that ‘no intellectual weakness of sinners’ mortality can
comprehend’ (nulla imbecillitas mortalitatis peccatorum apprehendere
poterit).40 Principalities foreshadow the ‘pure strength of justice’ (sin-
ceram iustitiam) that those who are called to rule must assume, while
dominations reveal the redemption of human rationality (rationalitatem
hominum) in Christ, ‘so that the faithful may imitate him ... placing their
hope in heavenly things and strengthening themselves with a strong
desire for good works’ (ita ut fideles ipsum ... imitentur, spem suam ad
caelestia ponentes ac forti desiderio bonorum operum se munientes). The
thrones, who have no trace of a human form, represent ‘that divinity
bent down toward humanity, when the Only Begotten Son of God put on
human flesh for the salvation of men’ (‘quod diuinitas ad humanitatem
se inclinauit cum Vnigenitus Dei humanum corpus pro salute hominum
induit).
The vision text states that these five ranks encircle two further ranks
(cherubim and seraphim), and the explanation for this emphasises the con-
nection among the five Pauline ranks, the five senses and the five wounds
of Christ, while explaining that their correct orientation is directed to two
goals: love of God and love of neighbour:

Quod autem et acies istae alias duas in modum coronae circumdant: hoc
est quod fideles illi qui quinque sensus corporis sui ad superna dirigunt
scientes quia per quinque uulnera Filii Dei redempti sunt, ad dilectionem
Dei et proximi sui omni annisu et circuitione mentis suae perueniunt, cum
uoluptatem cordis sui neglegunt et spem suam ad interna ponnunt.41
 Singing with the Angels 221

(Now these ranks encircle two others in the manner of a crown: the rea-
son for this is that the faithful who direct the five senses of their body
to heavenly things, knowing that they have been redeemed by the five
wounds of the Son of God, arrive at the love of God and of their neigh-
bour in every effort and turning of their mind, since they ignore the
pleasure of their heart and place their hope in eternal things.)

In the song text, the cherubim and seraphim are grouped together as
the ‘seal of the secrets of God’ (ll. 13–14). The vision text makes it clear
that cherubim represent God’s knowledge and therefore ‘foresee those who,
knowing the true God, direct the intention of the desires of their heart
toward him’ (praeuident, qui uerum Deum cognoscentes intentionem desi-
deriorum cordis sui ad ipsum). The seraphim burn with love of God and
‘display marked out, as if in a mirror, all the orders of ecclesiastical institu-
tion’ (quasi in speculo omnes ordines ecclesiasticae institutionis insignitos
demonstant), thus revealing ‘as much the secular as the spiritual offices
which flourish in ecclesiastical mysteries’ (tam saeculares quam spiritales
dignitates quae in ecclesiasticis mysteriis uigent).
In the vision, it is the angelic host who sing, praising ‘those wonders
which God works in blessed souls’ (miracula illa resonant quae Deus in bea-
tis animabus operatur). The song text reverses the direction of this praise in
its repetendum and verse (ll. 15–21), which give praise to the angels them-
selves, specifying their contemplative functions. Moreover, repetendum and
verse specifically describe what the angels contemplate in language that is
characteristic of Hildegard’s own writings.42 The frequent cross-referencing
of these images suggests that the ‘Father’s inner power’ (interiorem vim
Patris) and the ‘font’ (‘fonte’) are ultimately trinitarian images describing
the processions of the Son and Spirit and their work in creation.
The illumination cycle accompanying a lost manuscript of Sciuias, which
has a modern diplomatic copy, is particularly helpful in investigating the
visual cross-references among Hildegard’s visions that are also carefully
described in her texts. The original manuscript was produced around 1165
in Hildegard’s own scriptorium, and presumably under her direction.43 In
the illumination of the angelic host accompanying the vision in Sciuias, 1.6,
the angelic ranks are arrayed in a circle surrounding a clear space. This is
appropriate, since the vision (unlike the song) does not describe what the
angels gaze at. However, this clear space may be filled in by the visions of
the Godhead, which have close connections to the song text. For example,
the illumination accompanying Sciuias, 2.2, illustrates that text’s descrip-
tion of a vision of the Trinity, where the Trinity is represented as a circu-
lar arrangement of a bright light infused by a glowing fire with a sapphire
human figure at its centre. In the following vision (2.3), an abstract ver-
sion of this element (a circular arrangement of gold around silver around a
blue centre), is depicted as cleansing souls at baptism. While the text of the
222 William T. Flynn

accompanying vision indicates that she saw the trinity in the same ways as
in the previous vision (with a sapphire human figure at the centre) the illu-
mination reduces this element to a central pool of blue colour, reminiscent
of a pool of water, and appropriate to this vision as a symbol of the baptis-
mal font. It is also striking that these two illuminations together serve as
an effective illustration of the two parts of the song text that describe what
the angels contemplate: at the centre of the first illumination, coming forth
from the ‘heart’, is a human form with ‘a face’, and in the centre of the sec-
ond illumination, coming from that same ‘heart’, is ‘a font’.
The identification of the angels as the singers praising the elect in Sciuias,
1.6, and the fact that the song text praises the angels, reinforce the idea
noted above (pp. 212–13) that in the final vision of Sciuias, 3.13, the singers
now comprise the whole of the heavenly citizenry: While the song is the
angelic symphonia, it is a symphonia restored to redeemed humanity even
as they struggle with their earthly lives. A small detail from the text as it
appears in Sciuias supports this interpretation. In Sciuias, 3.13, the second
song starts with a very strange use of the causal conjunction ‘Nam’ fol-
lowed by the opening vocative invocation: ‘Nam, o uos angeli’ (For, O you
angels).44 Through this tiny change, the text reinforces the idea that both
songs taken together form a single connected narrative about the angels,
and this narrative not only recapitulates the sequence of the visions that
the songs most heavily draw upon (Sciuias, 1.2 and 1.6) but also follows the
larger structure and argument of a source already mentioned, Gregory the
Great’s Homily 34.
Gregory’s sermon was based on the lection Luke 15:1-10, parables of the
Good Shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to seek one lost sheep, and of
a woman who had ten coins (drachmae) but seeks one that she lost. Both
the shepherd and the woman call their friends together to rejoice when they
find what they have lost, and the final line of the lection makes the analogy
with God’s seeking repentant sinners: ‘Thus, I say to you there will be joy in
the presence of the God’s angels over one sinner doing penance’ (Lk. 15:10).
In his sermon, Gregory interprets each of these parables in turn, first plac-
ing Christ in the role of the shepherd and then treating Christ (as Sapientia)
in the role of the woman. Moreover, he interprets the lost sheep as the loss
of humanity through sin: when humanity is restored it will make up the
perfect number of 100. Next, he interprets the lost coin as fallen human-
ity, which was created to, and will eventually, comprise the tenth order of
angels. It is this last statement that then launches his long discussion of the
orders of angels, their functions, and the corresponding virtues that those
who make up the tenth order of angels will display.45
The structure of Gregory’s homily is fully mimicked by the structure of
Hildegard’s two songs when they are read as a connected narrative. Hildegard
not only follows Gregory’s narrative and argumentative structure in the
song, but also explicitly comments on each of these parables in the body of
 Singing with the Angels 223

Sciuias, interpreting them both along lines clearly influenced by Gregory’s

homily. Towards the end of her explanation of her vision in Sciuias, 1.2
(which provided material for the first song), Hildegard treats the parable of
the Good Shepherd, but focuses her interpretation on Christ as redeemer by
weaving in the imagery of Christ as Lamb of God:

In hanc foeditatem cecidit ouis huius domini.... Sed ouis haec eidem
domino non propter ignauiam eius, sed per consensum eiusdem ouis
ablata est; quam postea idem dominus in multo studio et iustitia requisi-
uit. Quapropter tunc chorus angelorum in maximo honore illuminatus
est, cum hominem angeli in caelo uiderent....
Cum innocens agnus in crucem suspensus est, elementa tremuerunt,
quia nobilissimus Filius Virginis de manibus homicidarum corporaliter
occisus est, in cuius morte perdita ouis ad pascua uitae reportata est. Nam
antiquis persecutor postquam uidit quod ouem illam propter sanguinem
innocentis agni, quem idem agnus in remissionem peccatorum homi-
num effuderat, demittere debuit, tunc primum cognouit quis agnus ille
esset....
Idem enim persecutor in initio creationis suae in flatu superbiae erexit
se in mortem se ipsum deiciens et hominem de gloria paradisi expel-
lens, cui Deus in potestate sua resistere noluit, sed eum in humilitate per
Filium suum superauit.... Nam Deus hominem creavit, sed ipse diabolica
persuasione in mortem corruit, de qua eum Filius Dei per sanguinem
suum eripuit et eum ad caelestem gloriam gloriose perduxit.46

(Into this filth [humanity’s sinfulness] this master’s lamb fell.... But this
sheep was separated from that master not because of its master’s idleness,
but by his consent. Afterwards that same master sought it with great zeal
and justice. Whereby, the choir was then illuminated with the greatest
honour, since the angels saw a human in heaven....
When the innocent lamb was hung on the cross, the elements trem-
bled, for the most noble Son of the Virgin was killed in body by the
hands of murderers. Through his death, the lost sheep was carried back
to the pastures of life. For the ancient persecutor after he saw that he
had to lose that sheep, because of the innocent blood of the lamb, which
that same lamb had poured out, then he first understood who the Lamb
was....
For, the same persecutor, at the beginning of his own creation had
raised himself up in the arrogance of pride, hurling himself towards
death and expelling humankind from the glory of paradise. God refused
to oppose him with his power, but overcame him with humility through
his Son.... For God created man, but he fell towards death through devil-
ish temptation, from which the Son of God rescued him through his own
blood and wonderfully led him to celestial glory.)
224 William T. Flynn

Hildegard treats the second parable in a related vision (Sciuias, 3.2). She
leads up to her explicit treatment with a passage that accepts Gregory’s
interpretation that the restoration of humanity entails their taking a place
as a redeemed tenth order of angels:

quoniam homo ualde carus est Deo ... eum ... fecit ... ita ut in perfec-
tione sanctitatis operaretur omnes uirtutes ... et ut etiam impleret oper-
ando in humillima oboeditione et in opere uirtutum subministrationem
laudis gloriosorum angelicorum ordinum, quatenus in hoc beatitudinis
culmine adornaret laudem eorundem supernorum spirituum qui assidua
deuotione sunt laudantes Deum, atque ut in eadem beatudine sua hoc
adimpleret quod perditus angelus in presumptione sua ruens euacuauit.
Ideoque est homo plenus denarius numerus, qui haec omnia per uirt-
utem Dei perficit.47

(Since man is very dear to God, God ... made ... him ... in such a way that
in the perfection of holiness he might devote himself to all the virtues
... and that he indeed might fulfill the giving of praise of the glorious
angelic orders by toiling in humble obedience and in the work of the
virtues, since in this height of blessedness he might adorn the praise
of those same supernal spirits, who with constant devotion are prais-
ing God, and so that within their very same blessedness, he might sup-
ply what the lost angel emptied out, falling through his presumption.
And therefore man is the full tenfold (denarius) number, which through
God’s power completes all these things.)

She thus supplies context relevant to both of the songs and identifies the
function of this tenth order: restored humanity is called to fulfill and adorn
the angels’ giving of praise, supplying the deficit in angelic praise created by
the fall of the rebel angels.48 Thus, the symphonia described in Sciuias, 2.13,
includes not only the song of the angels, but also the song of the redeemed,
who have not only restored humanity’s knowledge of angelic song, but who
also perfect that song by participating in it.

Liturgical placement and musical difficulty

Hildegard’s songs recapitulating and summarising her visions in Sciuias

would find their most likely uses in the monastic hours in Hildegard’s con-
vent. However, the exact placement of them is often difficult to determine.
In the two manuscripts where they occur with musical notation, O gloris-
simi lux uiuens angeli and O uos angeli are marked with a main liturgical
rubric indicating a feast De angelis. This could signal a use in a votive office
that would replace the ferial office or be added to a ferial office as an extra
devotion. It could also indicate that the items are to be inserted within the
 Singing with the Angels 225

offices for the Feast of St Michael and All Angels (29 September). The manu-
scripts also indicate the liturgical genres of each song: O glorissimi lux uiuens
angeli is identified as an antiphon in the ‘Riesenkodex’. Its length would sug-
gest occasions or points in the liturgy where longer statements are needed,
for example, as a votive antiphon (perhaps accompanying a procession) or
as an antiphon to the gospel canticle (at lauds or vespers). O uos angeli is
identified as a responsory by rubrics in both notated manuscripts, as well
as by its poetic form. This suggests a use either as a festal substitute for the
normal short vespers responsory or for the last matins responsory, which
would comment on the Gospel reading (or patristic commentary on the
Gospel) that made up the last nocturn. It, too, may have found a use as part
of a processional liturgy, since processional liturgies often used responsories
taken from festal offices.
As Iversen points out in her source study of O uos angeli there are good
reasons for thinking that the material is especially destined for the Feast
of St Michael: not only was Gregory’s Homily 34 used widely for the mat-
ins readings for that day, but there are close parallels with sequences and
tropes used in the mass of that day in Hildegard’s geographic area (including
Mainz, where her brother was cantor).49
However, any practical use of O uos angeli might at first glance seem to be
unlikely. Its extraordinary range of nineteen diatonic steps is wider than that
of most professional singers. However, there is good reason to believe that the
range is a direct response to Hildegard’s theory of angelic music described above.
An intriguing passage from Cause et curae, a medical compilation attributed
to Hildegard, but in its present form more safely described as ‘Hildegardian’,
describes Adam’s knowledge of music before the fall as follows:

Adam quoque ante preuaricationem angelicum carmen et omne genus

musicorum sciebat et uocem habebat sonantem, ut uox monochordi
sonat. In preuaricatione autem illius de astutia serpentis intorsit se in
medullam et in femur eius quidam uentus, qui etiam nunc in omni hom-
ine est. Et de uento illo splen hominis inpinguescit, et inepta letitia et
risus atque cahinni in homine excutiuntur.50
(Now, Adam, before his treachery, used to know angelic song and every
kind of music, and he used to have a voice sounding like a monochord
sounds. But in his treachery, from the cunning of the serpent, a certain
wind of his [of the serpent] twisted him in the marrow and the thigh,
and this [wind] is indeed now in every man. And from that wind, man’s
spleen has grown fat, and foolish joy and laughter and even jeers are
shaken out of man.)

The medical language of the passage is of interest, but fairly traditional:

anything influencing the spleen would have an effect on the humour that
226 William T. Flynn

it produces, and some of these effects would be adverse. What is more

remarkable is the claim that Adam’s prelapsarian voice was similar to the
monochord (a single-stringed instrument used in monastic institutions for
teaching singing), since the monochord was not designed to have a par-
ticularly resonant sound. However, the monochord could easily represent
the fullness of music: it was typically constructed by marking its sound-
board with proportional divisions from which one could derive the notes of
the diatonic scale (including b-flat).51 It became not only a useful teaching
instrument for the practice of music, but also for the theory of the harmonic
proportioning and ordering of both microcosmos and macrocosmos, of
both humanity and creation. Indeed, it was through marking- out the mon-
ochord that many medieval students would have encountered this remnant
of Pythagorean philosophy for the first time. The range of the monochord
became relatively stable because it was connected with a standard technique
for memorising the scale (the gamut) by thinking of each note as being
placed on one of the nineteen loci of the hand (the fourteen joints and the
fingertips),52 and this also became considered symbolic of the continuity
between human and cosmic proportioning.
Thus the monochord could represent every kind of music: the music of
instruments, the music of the human voice, and even Hildegard’s ‘instrument
of the universe’.53 The unprecedented range of O uos angeli exactly matches
the standard range for the monochord, and must have been intended to
reinforce this whole set of symbolic meanings. The range of this responsory
would have taxed even a well-trained schola practiced in singing the old
and new repertory of a twelfth- century convent. However, a schola that
could master it would certainly create an especially effective representation
of the singing of redeemed humanity that underpinned Hildegard’s whole
matrix of visions and teachings about the heavenly symphonia. It would
demonstrate, anticipate and, even to some extent, fulfill a monastic singer’s
intention to participate in the heavenly choir by becoming a member of the
tenth rank of the angelic host.

Notes
1. A. Führkötter, ed., Hildegardis Sciuias. Corpus Christianorum: continuatio medi-
evalis, 43 (Turnhout, 1978), 2.1. Introduction, 111: ‘Et audiui ex praefato uiuente
igne uocem dicentem mihi’ (And I heard from the aforementioned living fire, a
voice speaking to me.) 2.1, 112: ‘Nam ille lucidissimus ignis quem uides designat
omnipotentem et uiuentem Deum’ (For the brightest fire, which you see, denotes
the omnipotent and living God). ‘Noli ergo timida, sed dic ea quae intellegis in
spiritu, quemadmodum ea loquor per te’ (Do not be afraid, but say those things
which you understand in the Spirit, just as I speak them through you).
2. L. Van Acker, ed., Hildegardis Bingensis: Epistolarium, Pars Secunda. Corpus
Christianorum: continuatio medievalis, 91A (Turnhout, 1993), Ep. 103R, pp.
261–62.
 Singing with the Angels 227

3. Hildegard, Ep. 103r ll. 84–102, 110–14.

4. For a concise summary of the tradition, see Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 11.7–9.
5. A. Derolez and P. Dronke, eds, Hildegardis Bingensis Liber diuinorum operum.
Corpus Christianorum: continuatio medievalis, 92, 2.1, p. 286: ‘lux, quae num-
quam obscurabitur, fulminabat, cui etiam uiuentes sperae scilicet angeli, adher-
ebant’. See ‘Introduction’, p. xxvii, where Dronke lists three similar phrases
used by Avencebrol in similar contexts: sphaerae superiores et inferiores, sphaerae
intelligibiles et sensibliles, sphaerae spirituales et corporales, and points out that
Avebcebrol argues that the bodily spheres have been brought down from the
spiritual spheres.
6. For this description and the following quotation see Hildegard, Sciuias, 3.4,
pp. 401–2.
7. P. Dronke, ‘Introduction’, in Hildegard, Liber diuinorum operum, p. lxxiv.
8. Hildegard, Liber diuinorum operum, 3.3, p. 379.
9. Ibid., p. 380.
10. Ibid., p. 381.
11. Hildegard, Sciuias, Protestificatio, pp. 3–4.
12. Angela Carlevaris, ed., Hidegardis Bingensis, Liber uite meritorum, Prologus, 8.
13. Monika Klaes, ed., Vita Sanctae Hildegardis Virginis. Corpus Christianorum: con-
tinuatio medievalis, 126 (Turnhout, 1993), 2.2, ll. 88–91.
14. Hildegard, Sciuias, 1.6, p. 101.
15. Hildegard, Sciuias, 3.13, pp. 615–31.
16. This and the following three quotes are from L. Van Acker, ed., Hildegardis
Bingensis: Epistolarium, Pars Prima. Corpus Christianorum: continuatio medi-
evalis, 91 (Turnhout, 1991), Ep. 23, pp. 61–66. See also W. Flynn ‘ “The Soul is
Symphonic”: Meditation on Luke 15:25 and Hildegard of Bingen’s Letter 23’, in
Music and Theology: Essays in Honor of Robin A. Leaver, ed. D. Zager (Lantham, MD,
2007), pp. 1–8.
17. Other translators have interpreted this passage as speaking about instruments
and instrumental playing. However, it is just as likely that Hildegard, who was
in contact with many monasteries noted for their musical knowledge, means
the relatively recent methods discussed in music theoretical treatises, which
describe improvised polyphony and teach the gamut (medieval scale) by organis-
ing its nineteen diatonic steps on the nineteen loci of the hand. This translation
makes the best sense of Hildegard’s peculiar word choice: ‘adapting what they
were singing to the joints of the fingers’. For the significance of this possibility,
see the last section of this paper below.
18. Hildegard, Sciuias, 3.13, p. 614.
19. Ibid., pp. 615, 620–21.
20. Ibid., pp. 630–31.
21. Ibid., p. 620.
22. Ibid., pp. 631–32.
23. Ibid., p. 621.
24. Ibid., p. 632.
25. Ibid., p. 629.
26. Gunilla Iversen has traced these fundamental monastic aesthetic expectations
for liturgical music in liturgical commentaries and repertories in Chanter avec
les anges: poésie dans la messe médiévale, interprétations et commentaires (Paris,
2001), ed. J. Flynn, trans. W. Flynn as Laus Angelica: Poetry in the Medieval Mass
(Turnhout, 2010). Chapter 10 correctly characterises Hildegard’s oeuvre as one
228 William T. Flynn

that is essentially in line with Benedictine aesthetics, while displaying an indi-

vidual poetic voice.
27. Dendermonde, St. Pieters & Paulusabdij Cod. 9, fol. 159r–v, and Wiesbaden,
Hessichen Landesbibliothek, Hs. 2 (‘Riesenkodex’), without music on fol. 132,
and fully notated on fol. 468r–v.
28. The most recent critical edition of the text may be found in Hildegardis Bingensis:
Opera Minora. Corpus Christianorum: continuatio medievalis, 226, Symphonia
armoniae celestium revelationum, ed. Barbara Newman (Turnhout, 2007), 413–14.
29. Hildegard, Symphonia, 413. Stephen D’Evelyn’s source commentary cites
Augustine’s Enchiridion ad Laurentium de fide et spe et caritate, ed. E. Evans, CCSL
46 (Turnhout, 1969), 9.29, p. 65, for comparison: ‘alia uero creatura rationalis,
quae in hominibus erat ... ex eius parte reparata quod angelicae societati ruina
illa diabolica minuerat suppleretur’ (But another rational creation which was in
men, was restored from a portion of it, and what had diminished through that
devilish fall, was supplied to the angelic company).
30. Hildegard, Sciuias 1.2, p. 14.
31. Ibid., p. 34.
32. Hildegard, Symphonia, 40. I have altered the lineation according the musical
phrases and have included the repetendum’s repeat (ll. 22–24), which is clearly
signalled by its incipit in the notated manuscripts (though omitted in Sciuias).
33. Gunilla Iversen, ‘O vos angeli, Hildegard’s Lyrical and Visionary Texts on the
Celestial Hierarchies in the Context of Her Time’, in R. Bernt, ed., Im Angesicht
Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst. Hildegard von Bingen 1098–1998 (Berlin, 2001),
pp. 87–113 at p. 106. R. Etaix, ed., Gregorius Magnus, Homiliae in euangelia. Corpus
Christianorum Series Latina, 141 (Turnhout, 1999), (2.34, pp. 299–319); 2.34.7,
p. 305.
34. Gregory, Homiliae, 2.34.7, p. 305.
35. Hildegard, Sciuias, 1.6, p. 100.
36. Ibid., p. 100.
37. Ibid., p. 101; Gregory treats the archangels in Homelia, 2.34.8–9, pp. 306–8.
38. Hildegard, Sciuias, 1.6, p. 103.
39. Ibid., p. 103.
40. Ibid., p. 104.
41. Ibid., pp. 105–6.
42. In Hildegard, Symphonia, p. 415. In a fuller apparatus from his forthcoming edi-
tion and translation of Hildegard’s Symphonia, S. D’Evelyn has provided the
following cross-references for comparison (my lineation is supplied): For l. 17
compare (1) Hildegard, Epistolae 103R, p. 261: ‘et que tunc in eadem uisione uideo
et audio, hec anima mea quasi ex fonte haurit, sed ille tamen semper plenus et
inexhaustus manet’ (and what I then see and hear in the same vision, my soul
drinks them as if from a font); (2) Hildegard, Sciuias, 2. 6, p. 261: ‘per speculum
fidei in fonte uiuentis aquae’ (through the mirror of faith in a font of living
water); (3) Hildegard, Sciuias, 3. 6, p. 461: ‘Qui autem acutas aures interioris intel-
lectus habet, hic in ardente amore speculi mei ad uerba haec anhelet’ (And let
him who has keen ears of the interior intellect, cling to these words in burn-
ing love of my reflection (lit. mirror)); (4) Hildegard, Symphonia 35, p. 421: ‘O
speculum columbe/.../ qui inspexisti misticam largitatem/in purissimo fonte’ (O
mirror of the dove ... you who gaze at mystical abundance in the most pure font).
For ll. 19–21 compare (1) Hildegard, Liber diuinorum operum, 3.2, p. 355: ‘Ego qui
pater omnium sum, manifeste ostendo quod ante omnem creaturam eructauit
 Singing with the Angels 229

interior uis mea uerbum bonum’ (I, who am the father of all, openly show what
the inner force, my good word, brought forth before all creation); (2) Hildegard,
Epistolae, 84R, p. 190: ‘Angeli ... inspirationem spiraculi illius quod Deus in hom-
inem misit, Deo renuntiant’ (The angels ... report to God the breathing in of his
inspiration, which God sent into man.)
43. Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs. 1 (lost in 1945) survives in a photo-
reproduction dating from 1927 at Eibingen, Bibliothek der Abtei St. Hildegard;
moreover, a diplomatic parchment copy, produced from 1927–33, survives in the
same library. The images in the modern copy are frequently reproduced and the
entire cycle can be examined in Hildegard, Sciuias.
44. This is not reported in Newman’s edition, but is reported in Hildegard, Sciuias,
p. 616.
45. Gregory, Homeliae, 2.34.5–12, pp. 303–12.
46. Hildegard, Sciuias, 1.2.32, pp. 35–37.
47. Ibid., 3.2, pp. 364–65.
48. After the parable, the explanation takes up the connections already made in
Sciuias, 1. 6, between the central five ranks of angels, the five senses, and their
cleansing through the five wounds of Christ, and depicts the building up of faith
as ascending from virtue to virtue.
49. Iversen, ‘O vos angeli’, 95–108.
50. Laurence Moulinier, Beate Hildegardis Cause et Curae, 2, p. 318. Moulinier now
regards the ‘work’ itself as an opus dubium, but maintains that the first two books
are incontestably ‘hildegardiennes’, suggesting a core comprised not so much of a
written work left by Hildegard, but notes that were never assembled in a coherent
form during her life. The quotation comes from this material, and coheres with
all of Hildegard’s other statements about angelic music, going beyond it in invok-
ing the monochord. It may well be a statement of Hildegard’s or that of someone
who knew her work intimately, including the musical structure of ‘O uos angeli’.
For Moulinier’s full discussion see ‘Hildegarde ou Pseudo-Hildegarde?: Réflexions
sur l’authenticité du traité “Cause et cure”‘, in R. Bernt, ed., Im Angesicht Gottes
suche der Mensch sich selbst. Hildegard von Bingen 1098–1998 (Berlin, 2001), pp.
115–46.
51. The most widespread method for marking out the monochord can be found in
Guido d’Arrezzo’s Micrologus. Corpus scriptorum de musica, 4, ed. J. Smits van
Waesberghe (Rome, 1955), pp. 96–102.
52. This method was attributed, but not securely, to Guido, possibly because his
monochord measurements provide the same range, while earlier treatises do
not include the last four diatonic steps. Manuscript illustrations of the hand are
fairly late in general but some survive from Hildegard’s lifetime.
53. A term Hildegard used to refer to the created universe; see Sciuias, 1.3, p. 40.
10
‘And the angel said ...’: Conversations
with Angels in Early Modern Music
Jessie Ann Owens

Composers in early modern Europe encountered angels at every turn. At

every mass, they sang the angelic hymn ‘Glory be to God on high and in
earth peace, good will to men’, and joined the heavenly host in singing the
Sanctus: ‘Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company
of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee
and saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of
thy glory’. No surprise, then, that angels figure prominently in many musi-
cal repertories.1
I want to explore a particular subset of compositions, namely, those in
which composers seek to represent ‘conversations with angels’.2 One par-
ticular conversation – between the angel Gabriel and Mary – stands out
for its importance. The Gospel of Luke (1:26–38) is the only source for the
story of the Annunciation, as well as for two other interactions between
humans and angels: it is immediately preceded by Gabriel’s annunciation to
Zechariah that his aged wife Elizabeth would bear a son, John the Baptist,
and followed by the appearance of angels to the shepherds, telling them to
worship the newborn child. Luke’s angels must be terrifying: in all three
stories the angel reassures the frightened humans, Ne timeas or Nolite timere
(‘fear not’).3
The familiar story of the Annunciation employs a carefully structured
dialogue.4 The opening sets the scene and introduces the players.5

In mense autem sexto missus est angelus
Gabrihel a Deo in civitatem Galilaeae
cui nomen Nazareth ad virginem
desponsatam viro cui nomen erat Ioseph
de domo David et nomen virginis Maria.
And in the sixth month, the angel
Gabriel was sent from God into a city
of Galilee, called Nazareth, to a virgin
espoused to a man whose name was
Joseph, of the house of David: and the
virgin’s name was Mary.

230
 Angels in Early Modern Music 231

The next section begins the conversation as Gabriel speaks to Mary.

Et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit: Have And the angel being come in, said unto
gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta tu her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with
in mulieribus. thee: blessed art thou among women.

Mary’s response was silent reflection.

Quae cum vidisset turbata est in sermone Who having heard, was troubled at his
eius et cogitabat qualis esset ista salutatio. saying and thought with herself what
manner of salutation this should be.

Gabriel’s next words are the first description of Jesus.

Et ait angelus ei: ne timeas Maria
invenisti enim gratiam apud Deum.
Ecce concipies in utero et paries filium
et vocabis nomen eius Iesum.
Hic erit magnus et Filius Altissimi
vocabitur et dabit illi Dominus Deus
sedem David patris eius et regnabit in
domo Iacob in aeternum et regni eius
non erit finis.
And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary,
for thou hast found grace with God.
Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb
and shalt bring forth a son: and thou
shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great and shall be called the
Son of the Most High. And the Lord God
shall give unto him the throne of David
his father: and he shall reign in the house
of Jacob for ever.

And now Mary answers with a question.

Dixit autem Maria ad angelum: quomodo And Mary said to the angel: How shall
fiet istud quoniam virum non cognosco? this be done, because I know not man?

Gabriel provides a second, long explanation, alluding to the birth of John

the Baptist, which he had announced to Zechariah.

Et respondens angelus dixit ei: Spiritus
Sanctus superveniet in te et virtus
Altissimi obumbrabit tibi ideoque et quod
nascetur sanctum vocabitur Filius Dei.
Et ecce Elisabeth cognata tua et ipsa
concepit filium in senecta sua et hic
mensis est sextus illi quae vocatur sterilis
quia non erit inpossibile apud Deum
omne verbum.
And the angel answering, said to her:
The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee
and the power of the Most High shall
overshadow thee. And therefore also
the Holy which shall be born of thee
shall be called the Son of God.
And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she
also hath conceived a son in her old
age: and this is the sixth month with
her that is called barren.
Because no word shall be impossible
with God.
232 Jessie Ann Owens

Mary’s response ends this part of the story.

Dixit autem Maria: Ecce ancilla Domini. And Mary said: Behold the handmaid
Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. Et of the Lord: be it done to me according
discessit ab illa angelus. to thy word. And the angel departed
from her.

There is extensive documentation, both north and south of the Alps,

beginning as early as the thirteenth century, of a staging of the Annunciation
scene during the reading of the Gospel. The dialogue was literally enacted
when this passage was read as the Gospel for the Feast of the Annunciation
on March 25 and on Ember Wednesday in Advent, at the service known as
the Missa aurea or the Missus mass from the first word of the Gospel, ‘Missus
est’.6 Cleric-actors, dressed as the angel and Mary, sang antiphons, short
melodies in plainchant drawn from the liturgy, at the appropriate moments,
while the deacon functioned as narrator. Not uncommonly, a dove would
descend into the folds of Mary’s cloak at the words ‘Spiritus Sanctus super-
veniet in te’.7
Many composers would have been familiar not only with these dramatic
performances but also with the visual representations that adorned altars
and walls of churches. In some cases, the representations themselves capture
elements of performances. For example, Laura Jacobus makes a compelling
case for reading Giotto’s Annunciation on the arch in the Scrovegni Chapel
in Padua in this way: ‘the mise- en-scène, body language, and costumes seen
in the fresco are all unusual in the context of the narrative cycle, and ... they
all correspond with known staging practices of the liturgical dramas dur-
ing the Middle Ages.’8 The two figures of Mary and Gabriel are members of
the clergy functioning in this drama as costumed actors. Mary is in a little
room that recalls the aedicula or stallagia built especially for the drama; a
curtain has been pulled to reveal her at the appropriate moment in the
reading of the Gospel. The passivity of her gesture contrasts with Giotto’s
usual portrayal of human figures and reflects the conventions of acting,
where characters assume poses as if in a tableau vivant until it is their turn to
speak. Jacobus suggests that the panels on Mary’s costume evoke the world
of clerical garments, the alb and dalmatic in particular, which were useful
for a man playing a woman. Giotto’s depiction of a costumed cleric playing
Mary extends to showing her hair as a braided hairpiece, with a typical male
haircut visible underneath.9
It is no surprise, given the widespread evidence for staged performances of
the Annunciation, to find other representations with the tell-tale elements
of the drama.10 Painters, like composers, found distinctive ways of drawing
on this tradition. One of the most striking is Jan van Eyck’s Washington
Annunciation, which Carol Purtle reads as a portrayal of a Missa aurea.11 The
two figures are in the interior of a church rather than on a set constructed
for a performance, but they hold the poses prescribed for the characters in
 Angels in Early Modern Music 233

several of the dramatic scenarios. Gabriel, holding a scepter and wearing an

elaborate cope, is portrayed at the moment of his entrance, with his words:
‘Ave Maria gratia plena’. Mary, with her hands in the priestly pose (expansibus
manibus), speaks the words of acceptance, ‘Ecce ancilla domini’. Her words,
shown backwards and upside down, can be interpreted as being addressed to
God; the act of speaking captures the moment of conception.12
Like painters, composers had a vivid sense of the dialogue inherent in
this story. The challenge, in setting this story to music, either in the actual
words of the Gospel or with words drawn from the liturgy, was to capture
the dramatic action. As we will see, by examining a small sampling of com-
positions dating from the beginning of the fifteenth to the beginning of
the seventeenth centuries, composers, as part of the practice of Marian
devotion, found ingenious ways to give voice to the conversation between
Gabriel and Mary.13

Pietro Rosso (c. 1393–1449)14

The earliest of the four examples to be examined was composed by Pietro

Rosso (Petrus Rubeus), a little-known northern Italian composer who served
at the Treviso cathedral in various capacities (singer, canon, master of the
choirboys) from 1414 to 1449.15 Rosso composed the three-voice motet
Missus est Gabriel angelus, probably for devotional or para-liturgical use as
part of the celebrations for the Feast of the Annunciation. While the year
of its composition is unknown, a dating of c. 1420 is plausible on stylistic
grounds.16 Rosso, as we learn from a 1438 document, was responsible for
teaching the choirboys who sang ‘the song of the angel and Mary’ (‘miser
pré Piero Rosso calonigo e magister scolarum in domo per so fadiga de inseg-
nar a i puti el canto del angol e de la Maria segondo uxanza’).17 This could
be a reference to his motet, which could plausibly be described as ‘the song
of the angel and Maria’, or to some other performance associated with the
Feast of the Annunciation in Treviso. Another document from Treviso sug-
gests that the motet was still being performed as late as 1445, only four years
before Rosso’s death: ‘misser prè Pietro Rosso fé el canto [che] se canta in
Crosedevia: missus est angelus Gabriel’.18
We don’t know the precise circumstances in which Missus est Gabriel ange-
lus was performed. R. M. Nosow believes that it ‘likely was performed in a
confraternal environment’, and notes the sponsorship of Annunciation fes-
tivities by the confraternity of Santa Maria dei Battuti.19 David Rothenberg
speculates that it could

function well as an introduction – a sort of overture – to the Annunciation

drama in Treviso. It sets the scene of the drama, describing how the angel
was sent to Mary, has solo treble voices sing the words of praise that
Gabriel bestows upon Mary, and with the rest of the text urges Mary to
234 Jessie Ann Owens

accept the announcement that Gabriel brings. Yet it would have worked
equally well as part of the procession, or even later during the mass, when
motets were frequently performed.20

Rosso is not working directly with the words of the Gospel but rather with
liturgical texts that tell the essence of the story. Nosow was the first to rec-
ognize that the composer was using a pair of responsories, rather than anti-
phons, as had previously been thought.21

R. Missus est Gabriel angelus ad Mariam R. The angel Gabriel was sent to the
virginem desponsatam Joseph, nuntians Virgin Mary, espoused to Joseph,
ei verbum; et expavescit Virgo de announcing the word to her, and the
lumine: Ne timeas, Maria, invenisti Virgin became frightened by the light.
gratiam apud Dominum; ecce concipies Don’t fear, Mary, for you have found
et paries, et vocabitur Altissimi Filius. grace with God. Behold you shall
conceive and carry, and he will be called
the son of the highest.
V. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus V. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is
tecum. with you. (CAO 7170)
R. Suscipe verbum, Virgo Maria, quod R. Receive the word, Virgin Mary, which
tibi a Domino per angelum transmissum is sent by the messenger from God. You
est: concipies per aurem, Deum paries will conceive through the ear and give
et hominem, ut benedicta dicaris inter birth to one who is both God and man,
omnes mulieres. so that you will be called blessed among
all women.
V. Paries quidem Filium, et virginitatis V. You will bear a son and you will not
non patieris detrimentum; efficieris suffer the loss of your virginity, you will
gravida, et eris Mater semper intacta. be with child, and you will be a mother
forever a virgin. (CAO 7744)22

Rothenberg shows the ingenious ways in which Rosso combines the two
responsories to form a coherent narrative. (Figure 10.1 is an analysis, sec-
tion by section, of the texts and the performing forces.) He writes for three
parts, two in a higher register (cantus I and II) with words, and one in a
lower register (tenor) without words; the upper lines would have been sung
by a small ensemble of voices, except where solo passages are specified, and
the lower voice could either have been sung without words or played on an
instrument. Rosso deploys these performing forces to create a unified text
from two separate responsories; he has the upper voices alternate in a kind
of call and response, or present different words at the same time, or sing the
same words.
Rosso brings out the idea of dialogue or conversation in several different
ways. He opens with a pair of duets by having cantus I sing the first two
words, ‘Missus est’, immediately answered by cantus II, singing the next two
words, ‘Gabriel angelus’, to the same melody. This echo establishes from the
 Angels in Early Modern Music 235

First section (forces shift phrase by phrase)

Text: Missus est Gabriel angelus ad Mariam virginem desponsatam Joseph,
Sung by: Can I + Ten Can II + Ten [echo] Can I + Can II [no Ten] Can I + Can II + Ten

Second section (two texts declaimed at the same time, with untexted tenor)
Text sung by Can I: nuntians ei verbum; et expavescit Virgo de lumine:
Ne timeas, Maria, invenisti gratiam apud Deum; ecce concipies et paries
filium, et vocabitur Altissimi Filius.

Text sung by Can II: Suscipe verbum, Virgo Maria, a Domino

transmissum est: concipies et paries filium, deum et hominem, ut
benedicta dicaris inter omnes mulieres.

Ten (no text)

Third section (two solo voices declaiming the same text, without tenor)
Text: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Sung by Can I (unus) + Can II (unus) [no Ten]

Fourth section (the same text declaimed by the entire ensemble)

Text: Paries quidem Filium, et virginitatis non patieris detrimentum;
efficieris gravida, et eris Mater semper intacta. Sung by Can I (chorus) +
Can II (chorus) + Ten

Figure 10.1 Text and Performing Forces in Rosso, Missus est Gabriel angelus
Can I=cantus primus Can II=cantus secundus Ten=tenor

outset a musical symmetry that recalls the spatial symmetry of Annunciation

scenes in paintings and in drama.23 At the words ‘ad Mariam virginem’, the
musicians performing the two cantus parts sing by themselves, as the tenor
remains silent; thus, only high sounds are heard. This texture – the two
vocal lines singing the same words without accompaniment – denotes a
special moment; it occurs only one other time, significantly, at the words
‘Ave Maria gratia plena’, thus making an explicit link in sound both times
Mary’s name is heard. The first section concludes by bringing back the tenor
for the final phrase ‘desponsatam Joseph’.
The second section moves to narration. The two upper parts, sung by
small ensembles of singers, continue the story, simultaneously present-
ing two texts: ‘nuntians ...’ (‘announcing ...’) and ‘suscipe ...’ (‘receive ...’).
Then, in the third section, at the dramatic heart of the composition, two
soloists (the parts are marked ‘unus’) sing ‘Ave Maria gratia plena domi-
nus tecum’ (‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you’), without tenor
accompaniment, a return to the sound first heard at the words ‘ad Mariam
236 Jessie Ann Owens

virginem’. The piece ends with the ensemble singers (‘chorus’) presenting
text drawn from the second responsory: ‘Paries quidem Filium’ (‘You will
bear a son ...’).
Rothenberg points out the unusual rhetorical effects that Rosso employs
in the motet.

The brief solo section in the middle of the composition is thus set in
sharp relief from what comes before and after it, lending rhetorical
emphasis to the text of the Ave Maria, which from the mouth of Gabriel
would have been a central moment in any dramatic presentation of the
Annunciation scene, including those at Treviso.24

It is clear that Rosso intended Gabriel’s words to stand out. By using two unac-
companied treble voices, he finds a way of representing angel speech.25

Johannes Regis (c. 1425–c. 1496)26

A second example comes from Johannes Regis, a major composer who spent
his entire career at St. Vincent in Soignies, near Mons, in the diocese of
Cambrai. Probably in the 1470s, he composed a mass known as Missa Ecce
ancilla, which is based, as M. Jennifer Bloxam has shown, on seven anti-
phons for the Feast of the Annunciation.27 Figure 10.2 gives the antiphons,
with Bloxam’s labels (A–G). These texts are partly drawn from the Gospel
(quotation or paraphrase), partly created for this liturgy. (Only F is not
derived from the Gospel.)28

A Ecce ancilla Domini fiat michi secundum verbum tuum.

B I. Ne timeas Maria invenisti gratia apud Dominum; II. ecce concipies [in
utero] et paries filium.
C I. Beata es Maria quae credidisti; II. perficientur in te quae dicta sunt tibi
a domino.
D Beatam me dicent omnes generationes quia ancillam humilem respexit
dominus.
E Spiritus sanctus in te descendet Maria, ne timeas habens in utero filium
dei.
F Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae et concepit de spiritu sancto.
G Missus est Gabriel angelus ad Mariam virginem desponsatam Joseph.
Figure 10.2 Antiphons in Regis, Missa Ecce ancilla
Source: Bloxam, ‘A Survey of Late Medieval Service Books’, 244.
 Angels in Early Modern Music 237

Regis composed this mass for four parts; we can imagine a performance
by either a small group or a soloist on each line. The top two voices present
the text of the mass ordinary (e.g., Kyrie, Gloria). The bottom two voices
present the words and melodies of the antiphons.29 Regis’s composition
is an extraordinary tour de force on many different levels. It is massive in
scale (the Credo is over 12 minutes in performance). But most remarkable,
as Bloxam has demonstrated, is Regis’s acumen as theologian and exegete,
weaving together pairs of antiphon tunes and placing their texts at theologi-
cally significant positions.
Figure 10.3 uses the Credo to show the way the mass ordinary, in roman
type, interacts with the antiphons that Regis has added, in italics. The move-
ment begins with the standard text of the Creed (‘I believe in God the father
almighty ... and in one lord Jesus Christ ...’). At the first mention of Christ’s
birth – ‘born of the father’ – come two parts of the conversation: Mary’s
acquiescence at the end of the scene, ‘Behold the handmaid’, and Gabriel’s
reassurance from the beginning, ‘Fear not’. Regis stays astonishingly close
to the text of the creed in placing the antiphons; notice, for example, the
detail of juxtaposing ‘patri’ and ‘dominum’.
As Bloxam notes, each reference to Christ’s incarnation is underscored by
the addition of the new texts. ‘Who for us men and for our salvation came
down from heaven’ is realized by the continuation of Mary’s acceptance,
‘be it done to me according to thy word’, and Gabriel’s specific statement of
what will happen, ‘Behold thou shalt conceive ...’
The third reference to the incarnation brings out the role of the Holy
Spirit – ‘and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary’. Mary’s
words, from the Magnificat, the song she sang to Elizabeth – ‘all generations
will call me blessed because the Lord has regarded his lowly handmaid’ –
indirectly allude to the Holy Spirit, but Gabriel’s again bring specificity:
‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High
shall overshadow thee’. Mary’s words come from the next scene in Luke’s
account, and Gabriel’s are a very loose paraphrase of the Gospel. This part
of the conversation is newly created from elements of the Gospel and the
liturgy.
The fourth component of the conversation again focuses on the Holy Spirit,
as the main text of the Creed shifts to the third member of the Trinity: ‘And
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the
Father and the Son, who with the Father and Son’. Now the conversation is
not between the principals but between two onlookers or narrators speak-
ing in the third person, both describing the actions of the angel: ‘The angel
of the Lord announced to Mary and she conceived from the Holy Spirit’ and
‘The angel Gabriel was sent to the virgin Mary betrothed to Joseph’. Bloxam
notes that the way these texts are set, as a series of short phrases, the two
antiphons merge into a single narrative.
Credo in unum Deum (chant)
[3v] Patrem omnipotentem, factorem coeli [ 2v] et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Et in unum dominum
Jesum Christum, filium dei unigenitum.
[4v] Et ex patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de deo, lumen de lumine, deum verum de deo vero. Genitum, non
factum,
Mary: A Ecce ancilla Domini:
Gabriel: BI Ne timeas, Maria invenisti…
[3v] consubstantialem patri: per quem omnia facta sunt. //
Gabriel: B …gratia apud Dominum.
[4v] Qui propter nos homines, et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis. //
Mary: A fiat michi secundum verbum tuum.
Gabriel: BII Ecce concipies et paries filium.
[2v] Et incarnatus est [4v] de spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine: et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: sub Pontio
Pilato passus, et sepultus est.//
Mary: D Beatam me dicent omnes generationes, quia ancillam humilem respexit Dominus.
Gabriel: E Spiritus sanctus in te descendet, Maria, ne timeas habens in utero filium Dei.
[2v] Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum scripturas. Et ascendit in coelum: sedet ad dexteram patris. Et iterum venturus
est cum gloria, [4v] judicare vivos etmortuos: //
[2v, alternating pairs] Cujus regni non erit finis. Et in spiritum sanctum, dominum et vivificantem: qui ex patre filioque
procedit. Qui cum patre et filio
Narrator: F Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae, et concepit de Spiritu Sancto.
Narrator: G Missus est Gabriel angelus ad Mariam virginem desponsatam Joseph.
[varying textures, 2-4v] simul adoratur et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per prophetas. Et unam, sanctam, catholicam
et apostolicam ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum.
Gabriel: (in T1 and T2) C Beata es, Maria, quae credidisti II perficientur in te quae dicta sunt tibi a Domino.
[4v] Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.
Mary: (in T1 only) A Ecce ancilla domini: fiat michi secundum verbum tuum.
Figure 10.3 Juxtaposition of Antiphons and Mass Ordinary in Regis, Missa Ecce ancilla, Credo
key: T = tenor; A-G = antiphons listed in Figure 10.2; // = end of a musical section; 2 (3 or 4) v = number of parts
240 Jessie Ann Owens

The final part of this conversation is again between Gabriel and Mary, but
this time the words are successive, not simultaneous. Tenor and bass declaim
the same text: could this be a pun on the three references to unity: ‘simul
adoratur’, ‘unam ecclesiam’, ‘unum baptisma’? The words, which I imagine
in this context to be spoken by Gabriel, recall his remarks to Zechariah;
the actual words are a paraphrase of what was spoken by Elizabeth. Mary’s
response, ‘Behold the handmaid’, repeats her opening words and closes the
composition just as they closed the account in Luke’s Gospel. As Bloxam
notes, Regis ends each major section of the mass ordinary in this way. I
would add to Bloxam’s account only the observation that the deployment of
the antiphons makes it possible to see three players in this drama – Gabriel,
Mary and a narrator.30
Strohm and others have imagined that Regis composed this mass to be
sung at celebrations of the Golden Mass.31 What is striking, given what we
know of dramatic readings of the Missus est Gospel, is Regis’s crafting of the
antiphon cantus firmi to create the same kind of dialogue between the two
principal characters as the congregation had just heard in the Gospel.

Jean Mouton (before 1459–1522)32

A third example, from the tradition of setting the entire Gospel reading
(Luke 1:26–38), is by the French composer Jean Mouton.33 Jeffrey Dean sug-
gests on stylistic grounds that it dates from about 1480:

No other of his motets reflects so clearly the influence of Antoine

Busnoys and Johannes Regis, composers a generation older. At the same
time it is a pathbreaking work, perhaps the earliest surviving motet to
set an extended passage from one of the gospels: Luke 1:26b–38a, the
entire gospel lesson for the votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin. ... Mouton’s
symbolically apt combination of the gospel text (telling the story of the
Annunciation) with the long-note cantus firmus drawn from the second
stanza (stating the Atonement and Mary’s perpetual virginity) of the
Marian hymn Virgo Dei genetrix shows the influence of Regis’ five-part
tenor motets. The melodic designs, the momentary use of canon, the
partial imitations and the asymmetrically changing textures, however,
all recall the style of Busnoys. Especially notable is the nervous rhythmic
text of the first large section of the motet, written in note-values half
the usual length. Such a notation appears only in one other motet, an
anonymous work from Busnoys’s circle in the 1470s. Missus est Gabriel is
probably the product of Mouton’s time in Nesle around 1480.34

This portion of the Gospel is a long text and poses particular challenges
for a musical setting. Mouton divides the motet into three parts, in a
conventional- enough division. Braas writes:
 Angels in Early Modern Music 241

The I. pars in tempus perfectum concludes with Mary’s asking, in aston-

ishment, for the meaning of the mysterious salutation. In the II. pars, in
tempus imperfectum diminutum, Gabriel elucidates the prophecy. The III.
pars begins with Mary’s question: ‘How shall this be, since I know not
man?’. This seems to me a quite logical division.35

Mouton, like Regis, introduces a cantus firmus drawn from the liturgy: the
second strophe of the Marian hymn Virgo dei genetrix (the text also occurs as
an antiphon in Marian feasts):

Vera fides geniti The true faith of the begotten

purgavit crimina mundi has purged the crimes of the world
Et tibi virginitas and your virginity
inviolata manet.36 remains inviolate.

It is noteworthy that Mouton deploys the cantus firmus, divided into two
parts corresponding with the two halves of the hymn stanza, four times
across the three parts. Figure 10.4 illustrates the juxtaposition of Gospel text
(sung by superius, contratenor, tenor I and bassus) and the cantus firmus
(sung by tenor II).
Perhaps Mouton is attempting to highlight the important players in this
drama. The first part focuses on Mary: he brings out the name with a long,
drawn- out cadence at the midpoint of this part. The second, consisting
almost entirely of Gabriel’s second speech, draws attention to Jesus, whose
name receives a musical treatment analogous to Mary’s. The third part has
a more complex structure: it begins with the Holy Spirit, whose actions
result in the birth of Jesus and of Elizabeth’s son John, who is not named. It
ends with God the Father, manifest in the word – ‘because no word shall be
impossible with God’. The power of ‘omne verbum’ is highlighted in Mary’s
final words, ‘be it done to me according to thy word’. The text that underlies
this Gospel setting, like the antiphons in Regis’s mass and the responsories
in Rosso’s motet, focuses on Mary.
Mouton has relatively few musical means within the stylistic conventions
he adopts for reflecting actual conversation. Braas observes that Mouton can
create the sense of a dramatic entrance by contrasting low and high voices.37
Thus, the introductory ‘et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit’ is placed in the
two lower voices, and then the angel’s words, ‘Ave gratia plena’, are in the
two upper voices, suggesting the beginning of a speech. The fact that he uses
this strategy two more times – Gabriel’s ‘Ne timeas’ and Mary’s ‘Quomodo
fiet’ – shows intentionality. Mouton’s overall strategy in the placement of
the segments of the cantus firmus is subtle, and perhaps even barely audible.
Indeed, it is possible that other rationales drive the large-scale structure of
the motet. At the very least, we see his desire to suggest speech through con-
trasts in register (low versus high) as well as the transformation of the gospel
into a celebration of Mary.
242 Jessie Ann Owens

I. Missus est Gabriel angelus a deo in civitatem Galilaeae cui nomen

Nazareth ad virginem desponsatam viro cui nomen erat Ioseph de domo
David et nomen virginis Maria //
Et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit ave Maria gratia plena dominus tecum
benedicta tu in mulieribus quae cum audisset turbata est in sermone eius et
cogitabat qualis esset ista salutatio.

II. Et ait angelus ei ne timeas Maria / invenisti enim gratiam apud dominum
ecce concipies in utero et paries filium et vocabis nomen eius Iesum //
hic erit magnus et filius altissimi vocabitur et dabit illi dominus deus sedem
David patris eius et regnabit in domo Iacob in aeternum et regni eius non
erit finis.

III. Dixit autem Maria ad angelum quomodo fiet istud quoniam virum non
cognosco et respondens angelus dixit ei / spiritus sanctus superveniet
in te et virtus altissimi obumbrabit tibi ideoque et quod nascetur sanctum
vocabitur filius dei //
et ecce Elisabeth cognata tua et ipsa concepit filium in senectute sua et hic
mensis est sextus illi quae vocatur sterilis quia non erit inpossibile apud deum
omne verbum. //
dixit autem Maria ecce ancilla domini fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.

Figure 10.4 Placement of Cantus firmus in Relation to the Gospel

Key: Light gray: Vera fides geniti purgavit crimina mundi; Dark gray: Et tibi virginitas inviolata
manet

Alessandro Grandi (1586–1630)38

A final example is the setting of the entire Gospel passage by the north
Italian composer Alessandro Grandi, published in 1610 in his first book of
motets.39 Grandi described himself on the title page as ‘maestro di capella
del Spirito santo’, chapel master at the church and confraternity known as
the Accademia dello Spirito Santo in Ferrara. While we do not know the spe-
cific circumstances for which this piece was composed or the precise date,
we can be certain that it was for a Marian feast, since Grandi, like the other
composers whose music we have examined, introduced elements associated
with Mary.40
Grandi’s stylistic world enables a musical realization of the dramatic ele-
ments in the Annunciation story in a way that resembles the dramatic read-
ing of the Gospel with clerics in the roles of the angel and Mary.41 Writing in
the new melody and figured bass style of the early seventeenth century, he
creates solo roles for three singers, with organ accompaniment. The narra-
tor (‘texto’) is sung by a bass, the angel by a tenor, and Mary by an alto. The
 Angels in Early Modern Music 243

narrator’s simple declamation contrasts with the somewhat more structured

and heightened speeches of the angel and Mary. The angel, for example,
begins by repeating the opening words: ‘Ne timeas, ne timeas Maria’.
Grandi sets all of the words of the Gospel account but adds texts drawn
from the liturgy. One, which functions like a refrain, repeated some eleven
times, is the text of an antiphon used for several Marian feasts and drawn
ultimately from the Song of Songs: ‘Tota pulchra es Maria et macula non est
in te’ (‘You are fair, Mary, and there is no blemish in you’). He assigns these
words to two sopranos, which he describes as ‘voce celeste’ (heavenly voice),
and specifies their placement as ‘lontano e ascosto’ (far away and hidden) – a
kind of ethereal, even angelic, commentary on the story unfolding below.
This refrain punctuates or highlights important moments. For example,
each section of Gabriel’s long speech about Jesus is concluded with ‘Tota
pulchra es’, functioning as a refrain or ritornello (Figure 10.5).

Angelo:
…et paries filium et vocabis nomen ejus Jesum. REFRAIN
Hic erit magnus et filius altissimi vocabitur REFRAIN
et dabit…non erit finis. REFRAIN
Figure 10.5 ‘Tota pulchra es’ as a Refrain

The next time we hear ‘Tota pulchra es’ is during Mary’s reply, and now it
floats over the top of her melody like a kind of descant (Figure 10.6).

{ ‘Voce celeste’: Tota pulchra es, Maria…

Madonna: Quomodo fiet istud quoniam virum non cognosco?
Figure 10.6 ‘Total pulchra es’ as a Descant

The second half, continued after the end of her speech, becomes a kind of
commentary: ‘et macula non est in te’. The refrain recurs at theologically
significant moments, nowhere more dramatically than as a counterpoint to
Mary’s final speech, intoned solemnly in long notes ‘Ecce ancilla ...’
The motet concludes with the same Matins responsory that Rosso had
used (with slight differences in the text). A section for full choir is fol-
lowed by a section for the two soprano lines, reminiscent of the texture of
the refrain, and by a final section for full choir: ‘ut benedicta dicaris inter
omnes mulieres’.
Grandi called his composition ‘mottetto’ (motet); Smither’s term – ‘sacred
dramatic dialogue’– captures its essence. Writing, in effect, a small-scale
opera, Grandi created characters and combined the Gospel with portions of
the liturgy to comment on and develop the story.
244 Jessie Ann Owens

Conclusion

These four examples, chosen randomly from a much larger repertory of

music for Catholic observance, show that composers are finding ways to
portray the interaction between humans and angels, and specifically, the
conversation between Mary and Gabriel. Rosso combined two responso-
ries into a narrative that imitates the Gospel account, placing ‘Ave Maria
gratia plena’ at the center. Regis transformed the Creed in his Mass Ecce
ancilla domini by employing seven antiphons used for the Annunciation to
represent the dialogue between Gabriel and Mary and to change an essen-
tially trinitarian text into one that celebrates Mary. Mouton worked with
the actual Gospel text but added a hymn to the Virgin to serve as the can-
tus firmus; like Regis, he used both placement of the cantus firmus as well
as specific musical gestures to emphasize a particular reading of the text,
one that highlights the characters of Mary, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God
the Father. Finally, Grandi, also working with the Gospel text, created a
small-scale drama, with characters playing well- defined roles; Grandi, too,
is attentive to Marian theology, introducing texts from the liturgy to com-
plement the Gospel.
In these settings, we can hear the aural counterparts to the dramatic
enactments of the Gospel and to the visual accounts of the Annunciation
found on altarpieces and chapel walls throughout Europe. These musical
representations of ‘conversations with angels’ demand to be read, in addi-
tion, as theological statements and reflections of Marian devotion.

Notes
I am indebted to M. Jennifer Bloxam for her assistance at several stages in the prepa-
ration of this article; she shared unpublished work on Regis, Missa Ecce ancilla and
offered very helpful comments on the article. I am grateful also to Margaret Bent,
Sarah Caissie, Herbert Kellman, Robert Kendrick, David Rothenberg, Jeffrey Ruda,
Richard Sherr and Alexandra Walsham as well as for comments received from
audiences at Williams College, UC Davis, Catholic University and the CRASSH
conference.

1. One database, covering the period from 1475 to 1600, yields 500 hits just for
motets that have the word angelus in the first line; see The Motet Database
Catalogue Online (Jennifer Thomas, project director) <http://www.arts.ufl.edu/
motet>. The scholarship on angels and music includes: R. Hammerstein, Die Musik
der Engel: Untersuchungen zur Musikanschauung des Mittelalters (Bern, 1962); K.
Meyer-Baer, Music of the Spheres and the Dance of Death: Studies in Musical Iconology
(Princeton, 1970), which includes a chapter on musician angels and an explora-
tion of the place of angels in the cosmos; H. M. Brown, ‘Trecento Angels and the
Instruments They Play’, in E. Olleson, ed., Modern Musical Scholarship (Stocksfield,
1980); R. Rastall, ‘The Musical Repertory’, in C. Davidson, ed., The Iconography of
Heaven (Kalamazoo, 1994); R. Rastall, Music in Early English Religious Drama, vol.
 Angels in Early Modern Music 245

1: The Heaven Singing, vol. 2: Minstrels Playing (Cambridge, 1996), esp. 176–193;
J. Montagu, G. Montagu and C. R. Nicewonger, Minstrels & Angels: Carvings of
Musicians in Medieval English Churches (Berkeley, 1998); G. Iversen, Chanter avec les
anges: poésie dans la messe médiévale, interprétations et commentaries (Paris, 2001);
K. Powers, ‘Music-Making Angels in Italian Renaissance Painting: Symbolism and
Reality’, Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography, 29 (2004). One
further study came too late to be included: I thank Oliver Huck for sending me
a typescript of ‘The Music of the Angels in 14th and 15th Century Music’, forth-
coming in Musica disciplina, and David Rothenberg for bringing the work to my
attention.
2. I will not attempt in this brief study to address possible differences among the
various confessions, but instead confine the investigation to music composed
for Catholic observance. The essays in Angels in the Early Modern World, ed. P.
Marshall and A. Walsham (Cambridge, 2006), give a sense of the wide range of
beliefs across various regions, periods and religious groups; most pertinent for
this investigation is J. Raymond’s essay, ‘ “With the Tongues of Angels”: Angelic
Conversation in Paradise Lost and Seventeenth- Century England’.
3. The canonic Gospels contain only two more instances of interactions between
angels and humans. In one, which occurs only in Matthew, an angel appears to
Joseph in his sleep, warning him when to flee and to return; neither Joseph nor
the angel actually speaks. The other, which occurs in all four Gospels, with sig-
nificant differences among the versions, takes place at the empty tomb of the res-
urrected Christ. See K. P. Sullivan, Wrestling with Angels: A Study of the Relationship
between Angels and Humans in Ancient Jewish Literature and the New Testament,
(Leiden, 2004), esp. 66–71. See also F. Buranelli, Between God and Man: Angels in
Italian Art, ed., R. C. Dietrick (Jackson, 2007); particularly useful for discussion of
theology and iconography are the brief essays by Marco Bussagli and Cecilia Sica.
Bussagli has written extensively about angels, including most recently, Angeli:
origini, storie e immagini delle creature celesti (Milano, 2006; English trans., 2007).
4. I am using the Vulgate as found in <http://artfl.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/
getobject.pl?c.41:1:0.vulgate> (capitalization and punctuation added) and the
Douay-Rheims translation, in the Challoner revision (1749–1752), as found in
<http://www.ccel.org/c/challoner/douayrheims/Luke/01.html>.
5. Concerning Gabriel, see G. Davidson, A Dictionary of Angels, Including the Fallen
Angels (New York, 1967).
6. Scholarship on the Missa aurea includes B. Kruitwagen, ‘De Gulden Mis’, De
Katholiek, 130 (1906): 438–66; 131 (1907): 158–88, 394–420, 464–90; C. J. Purtle,
The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck (Princeton, 1982); R. Strohm, Music in Late
Medieval Bruges (Oxford, 1985); M. J. Bloxam, ‘A Survey of Late Medieval Service
Books from the Low Countries: Implications for Sacred Polyphony, 1460–1530’,
Ph.D dissertation (Yale University, 1987); R. Strohm, The Rise of European Music,
1380–1500 (Cambridge, 1993); A. W. Robertson, ‘Remembering the Annunciation
in Medieval Polyphony’, Speculum, 70 (1995): 275–304; M. B. McNamee, Vested
Angels: Eucharistic Allusions in Early Netherlandish Paintings (Leuven, 1998);
L. Jacobus, ‘Giotto’s Annunciation in the Arena Chapel, Padua’, The Art Bulletin, 81
(1999): 93–107; D. J. Rothenberg, ‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs in Medieval
Polyphony: Studies in Musical Symbolism’, PhD dissertation (Yale University,
2004).
7. See, for example, the ending of the version performed in fourteenth- century
Padua, cited by Jacobus, ‘Giotto’s Annunciation’, 106: ‘Finita antiphona, diaconus
246 Jessie Ann Owens

ultra prosequitur Et respondet angelus dixit ei; et Angelus iterum incipiat infras-
criptum versum: Audi, Maria, Cristi Virgo, Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te, et vir-
tus Altissimi obumbrabit tibi. Sed cum pervenerit ad locum, scilicet Spiritus Sanctus
superveniet in te, tunc columba aliquantulum ostendatur. Finito versu, iterum
diaconus prosequatur usque Dixit autem Maria ad angelum. Hoc finito, Maria [se]
elevet, et stando brachiis apertis alta voce incipiat Ecce ancilla. Ante finem dicte
antiphone columba dimittatur, et Maria recipiat dictam sub clamide. Antiphona:
Ecce ancilla Domini; fiat michi secundum verbum tuum’. Another description can
be found in Purtle, Marian Paintings, Appendix C. See also B. D. Palmer, ‘Staging
the Virgin’s Body: Spectacular Effects of Annunciation and Assumption’, in C.
Davidson ed., The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages (New York, 2005), 155–72.
8. Jacobus, ‘Giotto’s Annunciation’, 95.
9. Maurice McNamee, in Vested Angels, 134–35, offers a similar interpretation of
Giotto’s Annunciation, and adds an important detail drawn from unpublished
work by Mark Weil: at the top of the arch is a door through which a dove
representing the Holy Spirit was released during performances of the drama.
Jacobus’s article should be read in conjunction with Robertson’s ‘Remembering
the Annunciation’, which adds important information concerning music associ-
ated with the dedication of the chapel, and E. Beck, ‘Marchetto da Padova and
Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel Frescoes’, Early Music, 27 (1999): 7–24.
10. McNamee (Vested Angels, ch. 7, ‘Eucharistic Allusions in Annunciation Scenes’)
cites a number of examples. Most salient in this context is the Master of the Aix-
en-Provence Annunciation (figs 60 and 63); a representation of the reading (or
chanting) of the Gospel is the literal and figurative background to the interac-
tion of Gabriel and Mary.
11. Purtle, Marian Paintings; C. J. Purtle, ‘The Iconography of Prayer, Jean De Berry,
and the Origin of the Annunciation in a Church’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly
for the History of Art, 20 (1990–91): 227–39; C. J. Purtle, ‘Van Eyck’s Washington
Annunciation: Narrative Time and Metaphoric Tradition’, Art Bulletin, 81 (1999):
117–25.
12. For a discussion of Italian antecedents, including the use of reversed writ-
ing, see P. H. Jolly, ‘Jan van Eyck’s Italian Pilgrimage: A Miraculous Florentine
Annunciation and the Ghent Altarpiece’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 61 (1998):
369–94. M. Schapiro (Words, Script, and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language (New
York, 1996), 179–81, cited by Bloxam) suggests as a possible explanation for the
reversed writing found in a 13th century Tuscan relief sculpture the conceit that
Mary, with the Incarnation, is reversing the sin of Eve (EVA/AVE). See, for exam-
ple, H. D. Austin, ‘The Arrangement of Dante’s Purgatorial Reliefsí’, PMLA, 47
(1932): 1–9.
13. Not surprisingly the universe of musical compositions that are in some way related
to this story is vast. They include settings of the actual speeches (Ecce ancilla, Ne
timeas, Benedicta tu, etc.), extracted from the Gospel narrative; or settings of the
entire Gospel passage, narration as well as speeches. For an important study of
polyphony associated with the Annunciation in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, see Robertson, ‘Remembering the Annunciation’. See also Bloxam,
‘A Survey of Late Medieval Service Books’, 232–52; D. J. Rothenberg, ‘Angels,
Archangels, and a Woman in Distress: The Meaning of Isaac’s Angeli Archangeli’,
Journal of Musicology, 21 (2004), and Rothenberg, ‘Marian Feasts. Seasons, and
Songs’.
 Angels in Early Modern Music 247

14. R. Nosow: ‘Rubeus, Petrus [Rosso, Pietro]’ Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy
(Accessed 5 August 2007), <http://www.grovemusic.com>.
15. In the discussion that follows, I draw heavily on Rothenberg, ‘Marian Feasts,
Seasons, and Songs’, 115–21. For studies of music in Treviso, see G. D’Alessi, La
cappella musicale del duomo di Treviso (1300–1633) (Treviso, 1954); L. Pesce, La
chiesa di Treviso nel primo Quattrocento (Rome, 1987); L. Pesce: Ludovico Barbo,
vescovo di Treviso (1437–1443) (Padua, 1969); D. Bryant e M. Pozzobon, Musica
devozione città la Scuola di Santa Maria dei Battuti (e un suo manoscritto musicale)
nella Treviso del Rinascimento (Treviso,1995), 49–52. For a study of the role of
confraternities in Treviso, see D. M. D’Andrea, Civic Christianity in Renaissance
Italy: The Hospital of Treviso, 1400–1530 (Rochester, 2007).
16. Nosow, ‘Rubeus, Petrus [Rosso, Pietro]’, dates the composition ‘1410s and 20s’;
M. Bent (personal communication) dates it ‘1420 or a little earlier’; Rothenberg,
‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs’, 115, dates it ‘early fifteenth century’.
Edition: Early Fifteenth- Century Music, ed. G. Reaney, CMM 11, vol. 5 (AIM, 1975),
96–98; preserved only in Bologna, Civico museo bibliografico musicale, Q.15 (see
Bologna Q.15: The Making and Remaking of a Musical Manuscript. Introductory Study
and Facsimile Edition by Margaret Bent, 2 vols [Lucca, 2008]).
17. Pesce, La chiesa di Treviso, 2: 597.
18. ‘Crosedevia’ refers to ‘croce di via’, an important intersection of four streets in
the center of Treviso. See A. Marchesan, Treviso Medievale (Treviso, 1923), 1: 3
and frontispiece (map). Pesce (La chiesa di Treviso, 1: 76) writes ‘non va escluso
che il Rosso, cantore e poi canonico, fosse l’autore della musica’. In fact, the use
of ‘fé’ confirms composition. Nosow, citing this document, reminds us: ‘If not
a performance of the motet itself, the document may refer to a fresh proces-
sional antiphon setting, with the confraternal and ecclesiastical authorities of
Treviso all in attendance’. R. M. Nosow, ‘Du Fay and the Cultures of Renaissance
Florence’, in D. Pesce ed., Hearing the motet: Essays on the motet of the Middle Ages
and Renaissance (Oxford, 1997), 104–21 at 116.
19. Nosow, ‘Du Fay and the Cultures of Renaissance Florence’, 116.
20. Rothenberg, ‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs’, 120–21.
21. Ibid.
22. Text and translation from Rothenberg, ‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs’, 118.
See Cursus: An Online Resource of Medieval Liturgical Texts <http://www.cursus.uea.
ac.uk/>, which provides critical editions of chants in the Corpus antiphonarum
officii (CAO). There are small differences between the published (CAO) form of the
responsories and Rosso’s text. For example, Rosso excludes ‘per aurem’ (through
the ear), the curious anatomical solution for the virgin birth, about which see L.
Steinberg, ‘How Shall This Be?’ Reflections on Filippo Lippi’s “Annunciation” in
London, Part I’, Artibus et Historiae, 8 (1987): 25–44.
23. I am following Rothenberg in seeing a symbolic significance in the choice of this
opening, but there is reason to be cautious: Julie Cumming offers evidence sug-
gesting that it was a common technique. See J. E. Cumming, The Motet in the Age
of Du Fay (Cambridge, 1999), 72–73, 80.
24. Rothenberg, ‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs’, 120.
25. Jeffrey Ruda quite correctly pointed out that a strand of research that I have not
pursued here could investigate scholastic and other writings on the nature of
angels to provide the conceptual and theological background for Rosso’s com-
positional choices. See, for example, M. Bussagli and M. d’Onofrio, eds, Le ali di
248 Jessie Ann Owens

dio: Messaggeri e guerrieri alati tra oriente e occidente (Cinisello Balsamo (Milano),
2000). See also Huck, ‘The Music of the Angels’.
26. S. Gallagher, ‘Regis, Johannes [Leroy, Jehan]’, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy
(accessed 26 August 2007), <http://www.grovemusic.com>.
27. For this discussion, I am indebted to the work of Bloxam, ‘A Survey of Late
Medieval Service Books’, 240–52. The dating of ‘1470s’ is given in Grove Music
Online. For a detailed account of its origin and juxtaposition with Du Fay’s
last mass, see Bloxam, ‘A Survey of Late Medieval Service Books’, 242–43; and
‘Reflections on the Missa Ecce ancilla Domini by Regis: Function, Content,
Meaning’, paper read at the Regis Study Day, Cambridge 2007. I am grateful to
Professor Bloxam for sharing this paper as well as portions of her forthcoming
book with me. Rothenberg (‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs’, 121–36) also
discusses the Ecce ancilla masses; he suggests (127) a somewhat earlier dating of
1460–62, based on biographical connections between Du Fay and Regis.
28. A composer would of course be very familiar with the chants sung in his church
and diocese, preserved in liturgical books such as the one readily available on the
Medieval Music Database at LaTrobe University <http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/
MMDB/>.
29. Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, Manuscript 5557. For a facsimile edition, see
Choirbook of the Burgundian Court Chapel: Brussel, Koninklije Bibliotheek, MS. 5557,
intro. R. C. Wegman (Peer, 1989). Edition: Johannes Regis, Opera omnia, ed. C.
Lindenberg, CMM 9 (Rome, 1956), vol.1, 36–48. For a recording, see Johannes
Regis, Missa Ecce ancilla Domini; Missa Dum sacrum mysterium, Schola Discsantus,
conducted by Kevin Moll, recorded 1997, LEMS 8044, 2000, compact disc.
30. In her 2007 paper, Bloxam observes that these statements in the third person
and past tense (F and G) underscore the Spirit’s role in the Annunciation and
Incarnation.
31. Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 158; Bloxam, ‘A Survey of Late Medieval
Service Books’, 251–52.
32. H. M. Brown/T. G. MacCracken: ‘Mouton [de Holluigue], Jean’, Grove Music Online
ed. L. Macy (accessed 5 August 2007), <http://www.grovemusic.com>.
33. The only edition is in Josephine M. Shine, ‘The Motets of Jean Mouton’, PhD
diss., New York University, 1953, 514–39. For a recording, see Nesciens Mater:
Choral Works of Jean Mouton, The Gentlemen of St John’s, conducted by Graham
Walker, recorded 14–16 July 2000, QUIL402, 2002, compact disc.
34. Dean’s dating for the composition of the motet is given in the liner notes to the
recording cited in n. 30; Richard Sherr wonders if it isn’t somewhat later. The
motet survives in a single source, Rome, Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, Capella
Sistina 42, copied probably about 1510; see R. Sherr, ‘Notes on Two Roman
Manuscripts of the Early Sixteenth Century’, The Musical Quarterly, 63 (1977)
48–73 at 61 (‘copied 1507–12’). For Gospel settings, see W. Krebs, Die Lateinische
Evangelien-Motette des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing, 1995); for settings of Missus est
angelus and related texts see pp. 509 and 576, and The Motet Database Catalogue
Online. Settings include those by Josquin (4v), anonymous (attributed to Josquin
and Mouton) (5v), Spataro, Lasso, and Morales. On the (different) five-voice set-
ting attributed to both Josquin and Mouton, see Rothenberg, ‘Marian Feasts,
Seasons, and Songs’, 140–46.
35. T. Braas, ‘The Five-Part Motet Missus est Gabriel angelus and Its Conflicting
Attributions’, in Willem Elders and Frits de Haen, eds, Proceedings of the
International Josquin Symposium, Utrecht 1986 (Utrecht, 1991), 171–83 at 177.
 Angels in Early Modern Music 249

36. CAO 5448; see <http://cursus.uea.ac.uk/ed/c5448>. Also Analecta Hymnica (1905),

49: 362; see Rothenberg. ‘Marian Feasts, Seasons, and Songs’, 146.
37. Braas, ‘The Five-Part Motet’, 178.
38. J. Roche/R. Miller, ‘Grandi, Alessandro (i)’, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy
(accessed 5 August 2007), <http://www.grovemusic.com>.
39. For an edition, see H. E. Smither, ed., Oratorios of the Italian Baroque, vol. 1:
Antecedents of the Oratorio: Sacred Dramatic Dialogues, 1600–1630 (Laaber-Verlag,
1985), 26–40. For a recording, For a recording, see Alessandro Grandi, Vulnerasti
cor meum, Schola Cantorum Basilensis, conducted by René Jacobs, 05472 77281
2, 1993, compact disc. I thank Robert Kendrick for suggesting that I investigate
Grandi’s setting.
40. The official records of the confraternity have not survived. D. Mele is nonethe-
less able to sketch its history and function from other kinds of evidence; see his
L’accademia dello Spirito Santo: un’istituzione musicale ferrarese del sec. XVII (Ferrara,
1990), and especially 49–50 regarding Grandi.
41. For an overview of the strategies of Grandi and his contemporaries in setting the
Annunciation, see F. Noske, Saints and Sinners: The Latin Musical Dialogue in the
Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1992), 57–61.
11
Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel
Ingrid D. Rowland

A mid-seventeenth- century painting by Pietro da Cortona in Rome’s Palazzo

Barberini (Figure 11.1) shows two guardian angels at work: the larger angel
in the foreground takes a young child by the hand along a wooded path,
whilst in the background his colleague guides a mature man through a
dark and stormy night. The sensibility of the scene somehow seems more
Victorian than Baroque, and it reveals an unexpectedly sentimental side to
one of the great patrons of Baroque Rome, Pope Alexander VII, the former
Fabio Chigi, who commissioned this painting of Pietro in the first years of
his pontificate.
Chigi harbored an abiding faith in guardian angels. He credited his own
with seeing him through an excruciating two-step operation for kidney
stones in 1642, and then through the no-less- excruciating negotiations to
end the Thirty Years’ War, in which Chigi represented the papacy’s desper-
ate case as best he could, earning respect and lasting friendships on all sides,
and terms so unfavorable that he ultimately refused to sign his name to
the resulting Peace of Westphalia.1 In a subsequent poem, he thanked his
angel,in the words of the 23rd Psalm, for taking him safely through many
years in the valley of the shadow of death.2 Pietro da Cortona’s painting
must have been commissioned in the same spirit of gratitude, a gratitude
that, by that time, also included Chigi’s steady advancement upward within
the Vatican hierarchy, from cardinal, to Secretary of State, to the moment
in the conclave of 1655 when a division of cardinals called the ‘Flying
Squadron’ decided to sweep Fabio Chigi into the office of Pope.3
An angel of an entirely different order accompanied Chigi’s close friend
Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit he had first met in Malta in 1637.4
On that small island in the middle of the Mediterranean, it was inevitable
that they should have met. Chigi’s duties as Apostolic Delegate and head
Inquisitor consisted mostly in scolding people for telling fortunes and mix-
ing love potions, both the local Maltese and the Knights Hospitallers of St.
John, who had controlled the islands of Malta and Gozo for a century. Kircher

250
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 251

Figure 11.1 Pietro da Cortona, painting of two guardian angels, Palazzo Barberini,
Rome
252 Ingrid D. Rowland

had arrived in the entourage of Friedrich, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, a

twenty-two-year- old recent convert to Catholicism whose sojourn among
the stern, celibate knights was designed to groom him for an eventual car-
dinal’s biretta hat, just as Kircher’s position as father confessor was intended
to improve the Landgrave’s veneer of erudition.
None of these optimistic plans worked quite as they were supposed to:
not every knight lived up to his vows, and, in fact, Chigi had his hands and
his inquisitorial prison full with knights who brawled, duelled, blasphemed
and, as his records so delicately put it, violated celibacy, and did so as enthu-
siastically as any other seventeenth-century swains.5 The Landgrave, lodged
among the German knights at their Auberge in Valletta, soon found a band
of merry companions, while Kircher, lodged with the Jesuits in the same
city, found Inquisitor Chigi in his palace at Birgu, on the opposite side
of Malta’s Great Harbor. As the Landgrave swaggered and drank with the
knights, Chigi and Kircher explored the wonders of the Maltese islands: the
troglodytes of Malta and Gozo, the ostrich farms that popped up among the
olive groves, the fossils and the imposing ruins of megalithic temples.
Neither man, as it turned out, was destined to spend much time on
Malta. A bit of Jesuitical intrigue on the part of the Landgrave’s tutor, Lukas
Holstenius, sent Father Athanasius back to Rome in 1638 to resume his posi-
tion as a professor of mathematics at the Jesuits’ Roman College.6 Shortly
thereafter, Chigi, too, returned to the Vatican to await a new posting; later
that same year, he set forth for Germany.7 They were finally reunited again
in Rome ten years later, in 1648, upon Chigi’s return from Germany, and
remained friends for the rest of their lives. The conversations they had begun
on Malta continued over the ensuing decades on a variety of fronts, for both
men nourished an astounding range of interests. Furthermore, thanks to
Chigi’s continued support, Kircher was able to write with an unusual degree
of freedom about subjects that many contemporaries avoided for fear of
rousing the interest of the Inquisition.
Nowhere is Kircher’s freedom more clear than in a book that went to press
in 1656, Itinerarium Extaticum Coeleste, ‘The Ecstatic Heavenly Journey’. Its
subject, the structure of the heavens, could not have been more volatile for
a professor at the Roman College of the Society of Jesus: in June of 1633,
shortly before Kircher first arrived in Rome, Galileo Galilei had been con-
demned as a heretic by the Inquisition and sentenced to life imprisonment
for upholding the Copernican cosmos in his Dialogue on the Two Chief World
Systems of 1632.8 One of Kircher’s responsibilities at the Jesuit College upon
his arrival in October of 1633 was the teaching of mathematics, a subject
that included astronomy and carried with it the legacy, the tools and the
laboratory of the great Christoph Clavius, head of the commission that
reformed the calendar for Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.9 Clavius had been
the first person to invite Galileo to lecture in Rome, but in the aftermath
of Galileo’s condemnation, Kircher, unlike his predecessor, worked under
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 253

extraordinary pressure to present an orthodox Aristotelian view of the

universe.
This pressure may have been the reason that Kircher hesitated for more
than twenty years to write a book on astronomy, although by that time he
had held forth on a host of other subjects, including the ancient Egyptians,
magnetism, music, optics and the ingenious mechanical inventions he had
produced in Malta and in his laboratory at the Roman College. Two forces
probably conspired to change his mind. One was the arrival in 1652 of his
former student Father Gaspar Schott, who had studied under Kircher in
Würzburg until Swedish troops overran the city in 1631.10 Schott had then
moved to Sicily, where he met Kircher again during the latter’s trip to Malta,
but it would be another fifteen years until the two were reunited in the
Roman College.
Schott was a bold thinker, unafraid to express his opinions even when
they deviated from caution or orthodoxy. He was also energetic, inventive
and nearly as inexhaustible a writer as Kircher. To judge from the books
the two of them produced from 1650 to 1656, his presence in Rome must
have proved an irresistible stimulus to his former teacher. By the time
of Schott’s arrival at the Roman College, Kircher had moved beyond the
chair of mathematics. For years, Father Athanasius had assembled a col-
lection of natural and mad-made wonders that he called his Musaeum.11
Initially he kept the collection in his own chamber, but as it grew, he was
allowed to expand to a second room. In 1651, the secretary of the Roman
Senate, Antonio Donnini, donated his own collection of antiquities to the
Society of Jesus with the stipulation that it be properly displayed, the per-
fect excuse to merge it with Kircher’s Musaeum and move the whole enter-
prise to spacious quarters on the first floor of the Roman College (now
the Sala della Crociera of the Ministry of Culture in Rome). Kircher was
appointed curator. Thanks to his voluminous books and a gift for show-
manship, the Musaeum had already become one of the city’s chief tourist
attractions. Schott, however, spurred his mentor to still greater activity,
especially in the area of technology, which was the younger man’s own
particular interest.
Technology, in fact, guided their investigation in 1653 of a Frenchman,
Jean Royer, who had been vomiting flowers, scented oil and colored waters
for money in Piazza Navona. Summoned to investigate whether Royer per-
formed his feats with the help of the Devil, Kircher and Schott brought him
back to the Musaeum – Schott boldly calls it ‘our Musaeum’– where Royer
taught the Reverend Fathers his peculiar skills, convincing Schott in the
process that the human body could be regarded as a hydraulic system.12
In the meantime, Schott pressed Kircher relentlessly for a book on cos-
mology. By the time, his mentor fulfilled that wish, however, Father Gaspar
had been abruptly transferred from the Roman College to the Jesuit house
in Ingolstadt; the Society of Jesus looked askance at what it termed ‘special
254 Ingrid D. Rowland

friendships’, and the collaboration between Kircher and Schott may have
been too exclusive for the Order’s rule.13
In many respects, therefore Kircher’s Itinerarium Extaticum stands as a trib-
ute to Schott and their time together in Rome.14 In 1660, Schott himself
would put out a second edition with his own extensive commentaries to the
text (including a preface that ascribed chief credit for the book’s emergence
to his own relentless pressure on Kircher). It was only one, although by far
the longest, of several works by Kircher that Schott would re-edit and bring
out in the German press.15 To this second edition of Kircher’s Itinerarium
Schott would also apply the more melodious title Iter Exstaticum Coeleste,
and it is by this later name that the book is usually identified today.
In addition to his friend’s encouragement, Kircher must also have counted
on support in high places, including his longtime friend Pope Alexander
VII and the Order’s German-born head, Goswin Nickel, because his book,
rather than supporting Aristotle (or, indeed, any other standard cosmol-
ogy), proposed an entirely new vision of the universe. He would need all the
guardian angels he could muster.
Producing a doctrinally correct, but scientifically outdated, study was
never an option that Kircher considered. Despite his Order’s nominal com-
mitment to Catholic orthodoxy, members of the Society of Jesus had been
engaged in cosmological research ever since the days of Christoph Clavius,
inducted into the Jesuits by Ignatius Loyola himself. Clavius taught math-
ematics at the College in Rome for forty-eight years, shaping generations of
Jesuit astronomers, including the China-bound missionaries Matteo Ricci
and Adam Schall von Bell (who rose to the position of court astronomer in
Beijing). As the sole astronomer on the commission that revised the calendar
for Pope Gregory XIII, Clavius also became the project’s public spokesman.16
He was the first person to invite Galileo to lecture in Rome, in the Great Hall
of the Roman College. In the early seventeenth century, the College housed
two of Galileo’s most strenuous adversaries: Christoph Scheiner, who tan-
gled with him on sunspots, and Orazio Grassi, who debated him on float-
ing bodies, but another of their colleagues, the shy Christoph Grienberger,
remained, as Clavius had been, a quiet supporter.17
The Jesuits’ official curriculum, the Ratio Studiorum, required professors to
teach Aristotelian cosmology, but the actual content of their courses clearly
ranged far more widely.18 Even if they eventually rejected Copernicus and
his sun- centered cosmos, as Clavius did for much of his career and Scheiner
did in print, the students and professors of the Roman College made their
objections only after carefully reading De Revolutionibus. Furthermore,
despite insistent declarations that its members should speak, write and
act with one mind, the Society of Jesus, by training its recruits to become
self-sufficient missionaries, also encouraged them to preserve an inward
independence no matter where they found themselves: in Goa, Canada,
Nagasaki or Rome.
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 255

In private, therefore, or under a pseudonym, sometimes even in public,

many Jesuits harbored thoughts that diverged significantly from the stric-
tures of their Ratio Studiorum, and devised a variety of ways to resolve the
conflict between their inner convictions and the official positions of their
order. Surprisingly, one of their most intransigent figures, the Tuscan Robert
Bellarmine (Roberto Bellarmino), had been attracted as a young man by
the idea that space was a fluid rather than a nest of crystalline spheres.
Bellarmine resolved his own conflicts by abandoning cosmology altogether
to concentrate on theology (not without running into controversy in this
field as well: he managed to conflict directly with Pope Sixtus V, and was
prevented only by the latter’s death in 1590 from facing the Inquisition).19
In 1598, however, cosmology reared its head again, when Bellarmine was
appointed Cardinal Inquisitor, the first Jesuit ever to hold the office, in
order to handle the case of Giordano Bruno, the itinerant philosopher who
proclaimed a universe of infinite dimensions containing infinite numbers
of solar systems.
Bruno, a former Dominican from southern Italy, had been arrested in
Venice for heresy in 1592 and extradited to Rome in 1593. Because the
accused had traveled so widely, from Naples to Geneva, France, England,
a variety of German states, Prague and Zurich, evidence for the case had
been difficult to assemble, and the trial, begun in 1592, had dragged on for
years.20 Bellarmine, as ordered by Pope Clement VIII, brought the case to a
conclusion, but that conclusion was far from satisfactory: in the first place,
Bruno, fortified by his Dominican education, put up a tremendous battle
before being condemned to burn alive at the stake in February of 1600.
Rather than repenting, moreover, he held his ground, responding to his
condemnation by declaring, ‘Perhaps you are more afraid to read me that
sentence than I am to receive it’ and refusing the comforts of organized reli-
gion to the fiery end.21 Furthermore, the violence of Bruno’s punishment
(most people burned at the stake were strangled beforehand, not immo-
lated alive) did nothing to stop the growing violence between Catholics
and Protestants that would eventually plunge Europe into the Thirty Years’
War. The Inquisition, in any case, had acted too late; Bruno’s ideas about an
infinite cosmos had already circulated freely for years before his writings
were finally banned by an edict in August of 1603 and placed on the Index
of Prohibited Books.22
The trial and execution of Giordano Bruno did, however, change the
terms in which professors and students, including Galileo Galilei, could
discuss cosmology in Italy.23 Rather than focusing explicitly on the radical
Bruno and his infinities (still, inter alia, a difficult, if not insurmountable,
challenge to mathematics), debate concentrated on the more restricted chal-
lenge, daunting enough, of Copernicus and his heliocentric system.
In addition to Copernicus, the specters of both Bruno and Bellarmine
continued to haunt Galileo’s trial in 1633, helping – along with the old
256 Ingrid D. Rowland

astronomer’s public abjuration – to secure him a sentence of life impris-

onment that he served, for the six months that it lasted, in a cardinal’s
villa in the heart of southern Tuscany. (It was then commuted to house
arrest in his own, less luxurious villa, outside Florence.) Yet, in August of
1633, two months after Galileo’s sentence had been leveled in Rome, the
young Athanasius Kircher, a refugee narrowly escaped from the ravages of
the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, told a group of scholars in Avignon that
many Jesuits actually sympathized with the Copernican position. The man
who reported this anecdote, the antiquarian Nicolas- Claude Fabri de Peiresc,
would be a crucial force in securing Kircher his position at the Jesuit College
in Rome two months later. If we are to believe what Peiresc reports of Father
Athanasius, many Jesuits had begun to lead complicated intellectual lives,
including, one suspects, Kircher himself:24

The good father Athanasius ... could not restrain himself from telling
us, in the presence of Father Ferrand, that Father Malaperti and Father
Clavius themselves in no way disapproved the opinion of Copernicus –
indeed they would have espoused it openly had they not been pressed
and obliged to write according to the premises of Aristotle – and that
Father Scheiner himself did not comply except under compulsion and
by obedience.

The compulsion and obedience imposed by his order would recur as a

constant theme in Kircher’s writings, usually, as on this occasion, after he
had outlined the alternative way of thinking with sufficient clarity to con-
vey it in full. The degree of compulsion that individual Jesuits experienced,
moreover, was inconsistent. Most of his colleagues at the Roman College,
like Kircher himself, preferred Tycho Brahe’s cosmological scheme, in which
the sun revolved around the earth, and the planets revolved around the
sun, to the Aristotelian system they were ostensibly directed to profess. But
because the Tychonian system did not directly contradict the Biblical verses
that referred to the sun’s motion, it posed a less evident threat to doctrine
than the unmoved sun of the Copernican system.25
We can only guess about what really went on in the astronomy classes at
the Collegio Romano, but the evidence is provocative: among the institu-
tion’s surviving scientific instruments (it is now a public high school, the
Liceo Visconti, but its laboratories preserve instruments from Kircher’s time
and objects from Kircher’s Musaeum) is an armillary sphere with inter-
changeable centres, one Aristotelian, one Copernican.26
There were reasons, then, for Kircher to test the cosmological waters in
1656. His skills as a writer, showman and participant in the international
Republic of Letters were at their peak. Robert Bellarmine and Galileo were
no longer living; the reigning pope was a friend, and Kircher had lived long
enough within the Church to know that it was a complex organization, full
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 257

of fault lines, tensions and slow, but steady, changes. Before going to press,
Kircher, like every member of his order, was required to submit his manu-
script to the five-man Board of Revisores that subjected every Jesuit publica-
tion to peer review, judging a work’s objective merits (all publications had
to ‘exceed mediocrity’) as well as doctrinal content.27 Kircher received their
endorsement without any particular difficulty.28 Thanks to his inexhausti-
ble output, he was already a well-known quantity in Rome and to the Board.
They admonished him, as always, to temper his boasting (iactantia) and to
correct some factual errors.
All the same, Kircher used a series of literary ploys to absolve himself of
full responsibility for the content of his Itinerarium Extaticum. He wrote the
work as a dialogue, adopting Plato’s ancient trick of putting every statement
into the mouth of a character rather than asserting it as a truth on the
writer’s own authority. Plato often insisted in addition, as in the Symposium,
that the conversations he reproduced were uncertain recollections of con-
versations rather than accurate records. Kircher, for his part, asserted that
his dialogue had all taken place in a dream, inspired by a lute concert at
the Roman College. This performance, he wrote, sparked an after- concert
conversation with the three lutenists about musical microintervals; and
indeed, one of the performers was the composer Michelangelo Rossi, whose
boldly chromatic compositions still strike modern ears as surreal and must
have sounded all the more eerie to seventeenth- century listeners. Kircher
credited the strange vibrations of these microintervals with transforming
his slumbers into an ecstatic state. (One of the Revisores would note that ‘on
page 14 [of his manuscript] he says “my intention in this little work”; this
should be omitted because he is supposedly in a trance, and consequently
not yet concerned with publishing a book’.)29
During his cataleptic seizure, Theodidactus (‘taught by God’), a pro-
tagonist who looks, acts and speaks exactly like Athanasius Kircher, is
visited by an angel named Cosmiel, who announces that he has been sent
to guide the entranced Jesuit through the cosmos (Figure 11.2). For all its
playful, dreamlike elements, Kircher’s introduction makes several power-
ful, subtle appeals for the authority of what he will reveal in the course
of the book: ecstatic states, after all, signal direct divine intervention. His
protagonist is named Theodidactus, after all, a man ‘taught by God’, who
is to be instructed by an angel. And angels do not lie. Despite the air of
solemnity that surrounds Cosmiel’s epiphany, it also presents more than
a trace of tongue-in- cheek humor – Theodidactus, describing the angel’s
fabric- covered wings, seems to think at first that Cosmiel must be headed
for a fancy- dress ball:

And suddenly a man of most unusual appearance was at my side; his

head and face shone with some marvelous glow, his eyes glittered like a
diamond, his body swathed in clothing exotic and hitherto unseen, and
258 Ingrid D. Rowland

adorned with some remarkable fabric in the form of complicated wings,

so that that there was no color that could be mentioned or conceived in
the mind that his feathers did not give off; his hands and feet exceeded
the brilliance of any precious stone. He held a sphere in his right hand,
in which all the globes of the planets could be seen, each one inlaid in
precious stones of different colors, a work wondrous to behold. In his
left hand he held a measuring stick prepared by the jeweler’s art, and
arranged with wondrous skill. At the sign of this unusual sight, hitherto
unseen by human eyes, nearly fainting, clinging to the ground, I fell
silent, my hair stood on end, and my voice halted in my throat. I heard a
voice, soft, sweet and gentle, resounding in these words: Cosmiel: Arise,
fear not, Theodidactus, behold, your wishes have been granted, and I
have been sent to you, so that you may see the supreme majesty of God
Supreme and Almighty shining forth in his worldly works, at least to
the extent that that is permitted to human eyes in this mortal flesh. I
answered: who are you, my Lord? And what is that unusual costume you
have on? He answered, I am Cosmiel, minister of the Most High God, and
Genius of the world.30

Cosmiel goes on to explicate his costume for Theodidactus, all of it deeply

allegorical, after which the good father hops a ride on the angel’s back. Soon
he and Kircher’s readers discover that Cosmiel, minister of the Most High
God and Genius Mundi, has none of the disposition we might expect of an
angel. He has a sharp tongue and a penchant for practical jokes, and, unlike
the bumbling Theodidactus, he commands all the latest research on cos-
mology. Kircher’s telling precedent for this work, Galileo’s Dialogue on the
Two Chief World Systems of 1632, put its new information in the mouth of
the character who represented Galileo himself, the quick-witted Salviati,
whereas Galileo’s adversaries were embodied as the dullard Simplicio, whom
Salviati and his thoughtful companion Sagredo attempt to bring up to date,
step by excruciating step. Kircher, on the other hand, has cast Cosmiel in
the Salviati role, with all of Salviati’s rapier wit, while Father Athanasius
himself, as Theodidactus, plays Simplicio with the same stubborn unwill-
ingness to learn.
This reversal of roles allows Kircher several liberties: he is able to main-
tain the modesty his order encouraged in its members; furthermore,
Theodidactus always supplies the orthodox interpretation of the phenom-
ena he sees, vexing Cosmiel’s none-too-angelic patience. The Revisores and
other readers could not quite say that Kircher himself, in or out of his role
as Theodidactus, had strayed from right doctrine. All the same, despite the
dialogue’s clever casting of parts, there is a good deal of Athanasius Kircher
in Cosmiel, especially the angel’s delight in pranks. Yet, Cosmiel’s jokes,
wit and biting repartee may contain still more of Gaspar Schott, the bold,
impatient younger man who looks on his mentor with a mix of affection
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 259

Figure 11.2 Athanasius Kircher, Itinerarium Extaticum Coeleste (1656)

260 Ingrid D. Rowland

and exasperation, and who was, for Kircher’s intellectual life in the 1650s,
undoubtedly a kind of angel.
The terms of the relationship between Cosmiel and his charge are estab-
lished early, when the angel flies a quaking Theodidactus up to the moon.
The Reverend Father trembles as he anticipates impact with the crystalline
sphere in which, a good Aristotelian, he supposes the moon is embedded,
and is shocked to learn from Cosmiel that space is fluid.
‘What is that dark patch on the face of the Moon?’ he asks. Cosmiel
answers by dropping him into a lunar sea.
‘Why, this is water!’ Theodidactus exclaims, treading lunar water in his
black robes, and pushing Cosmiel’s never-abundant patience over the edge.
At this point, the angel imparts a lesson on natural philosophy as it is prac-
ticed in the thoroughly modern seventeenth century:31

You are mistaken, and greatly so, if you persuade yourself that Aristotle
has entirely told the truth about the nature of the supreme bodies. It is
impossible that the philosophers, who insist upon their ideas alone and
repudiate experiments, can conclude anything about the natural consti-
tution of the solid world, for we [angels] observe that human thoughts,
unless they are based on experiments, often wander as far from the truth
as the earth is distant from the moon.

In order to keep up with the pace of research in the rest of Europe,

seventeenth- century Jesuits – and certainly Kircher – were reading the lat-
est literature on every aspect of natural philosophy, and forming opinions
on the basis of natural-philosophical rather than theological criteria. Their
problems arose when they tried to teach or write about these ideas, but
here Kircher, through Cosmiel, openly challenges Aristotle; he must have
thought that was now possible to do so in Jesuit circles, no matter what the
Ratio Studiorum might enjoin.
Seven planets later, slow-learning Theodidactus is still cringing when they
approach the realm of the fixed stars, bracing for the eighth time for the
impact with celestial crystal and once again encountering fluid space. Now
Cosmiel takes his passenger into a region of space so deep that all the stars
seem equidistant from each other, just as they do on earth – but earth is par-
asangs away. (The angel, with his timeless perspective, favors this ancient
Persian unit of measure.) The fixed stars, as Cosmiel explains, are an optical
illusion caused by the unfathomable depth of the universe:32

My Theodidactus, now I truly see that you are excessively simple of mind,
and more gullible than average when it comes to believing anyone else’s
opinion. The crystalline sphere you are looking for cannot be found in
nature, and there is no basis for the idea that the stars are fixed on such a
sphere. Look around, examine everything around you, wander the whole
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 261

Universe, and you will find nothing but the clear, light, subtle breeze of
the great ethereal Ocean, enclosed by no boundaries, that you perceive
all around us.

This universe, moreover, is nearly infinite in its variety. As Cosmiel

explains:33

Because the supreme Archetypal mind is so full of ideas for possible

things, he wanted to establish this universe, to the extent that the capac-
ity of its passive potential permits, with a numberless variety of spheres,
differing in all their powers, properties, brightness, shape, color, light,
heat, influences, and content of latent seminal principles according to
the ineffable plan of the archetype.

Only one writer in the previous half century had described a uni-
verse of such immensity and changeability: the heretic Giordano Bruno.
Gaspar Schott, in his annotated 1660 republication of the Iter Extaticum,
would cite Bruno openly and favorably in discussing the moon, but the
connection to Bruno’s thought is also evident in Kircher’s more careful
description. 34
Eventually, no matter how much literary maneuvering had gone into dis-
guising them, statements like this could not escape attention, in Rome and
elsewhere. The Itinerarium Extaticum may have passed examination by the
Revisores before it went to press and received an imprimatur directly from
the Society’s General, Goswin Nickel, but the book, once published, caused
an uproar, especially within the order itself.
As Harald Siebert has shown, Kircher’s Jesuit opponents belonged to two
groups: the Revisores, who had examined the work before its publication
and went along with its publication in spite of misgivings, and the irate
readers, who reacted to the book in its published form.35 The most virulent
of these latter opponents is an anonymous writer who accused Kircher of
secret Copernican convictions in a letter to Goswin Nickel:

To be sure, Kircher on occasion reproves the condemned opinion of

Copernicus about the motion of the earth, lest [he says on p. 28] he
be seen to assert anything contrary to the decrees and institutions of
the Holy Roman Church: nonetheless, throughout his entire book he
carefully constructs all the evidence that Copernicus first brought in to
establish and defend the motion of the Earth, and he weakens all the
arguments by which that error is usually refuted under a great weight
of reasoning. From whom, if not from Copernicus and his followers, did
Kircher accept that immensity of the firmament that he inculcates ad
nauseam, and that error about the distance of the fixed stars from the
earth?36
262 Ingrid D. Rowland

Another outraged critic came from within the Board of Revisores. François
Dunel had bowed to his colleagues’ pressure to approve Kircher’s book for
publication, but the subsequent uproar led him to write his own indignant
letter to Nickel:

Not a few people took it extremely badly when the Itinerarium Extaticum
of Father Athanasius Kircher was published last year, given that many
things are contained in it that are abhorrent to the common opinion of
scholars, so that the author seems to put forth his dream without any
foundation whatsoever, rather than to give his readers something based
on true, sound reason; I thought I should warn Your Fatherhood that I
assented only grudgingly to its publication, for no other reason than that
two Revisores who were my colleagues consented to permit its publication
if several things were omitted or corrected. Now, however, when many
sober and learned men who say that they have read the book accuse the
Father Revisores of some kind of special treatment, or certainly an exces-
sive connivance with the author, and some ... say that they marvel that
these kinds of things are approved in Rome.37

In effect, however, these criticisms from without and within came to noth-
ing. As Siebert has shown, Kircher’s dialogue proposed a new cosmic system
that resembled no other of his time, neither Copernican, Ptolemaic, nor the
infinite universe envisioned by the fifteenth- century cardinal Nicholas of
Cusa and the sixteenth- century heretic Giordano Bruno. It was a universe
centered on the earth, but of nearly infinite immensity (infinite to human
perception, finite in the eyes of God), and it was not quite clear to Kircher’s
contemporaries how orthodox or unorthodox the system might actually
be.38 It was certainly a far cry from Aristotle; Kircher was right, at least, to
suppose that Jesuit astronomy had moved well beyond the restrictions of its
Ratio Studiorum.
It was also clear that the author of the Itinerarium Extaticum had protec-
tion. Dunel mentions ‘special treatment’ and ‘connivance’, but, tellingly,
his letter to General Nickel ends with the explicit declaration: ‘otherwise, I
praise the man highly’.39
The revised Iter Extaticum of 1660 contains a long rebuttal to the anon-
ymous censure, written by Schott on Kircher’s behalf, an act of open
defiance (not to mention the citation of Giordano Bruno) that again pre-
supposes protection in high places. This second edition also contains
a sequel to the celestial adventure of Cosmiel and Theodidactus. Once
again, Theodidactus has fallen into a deep sleep, this time occasioned by
the soothing gurgle of a fountain he has discovered in the center of an
elaborate garden. In his stupor, he seems to see the jets of water turn into
a human figure:40
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 263

The little boy was chubby, and moist in substance; in his right hand he
carried a bucket, and in his left, a globe of the earth. His eyes, mouth,
nostrils, and ears seemed to drip gemlike drops of liquid dew.

‘And who are you, you sweet little boy?’ asks the solicitous Theodidactus.
‘What is your name? Where do you come from?’41 The child replies:42

My name is Hydriel, and I personify that great element they call Water,
and even though I am matter without life, I nonetheless give life to all;
lacking a soul, all spirit, I stand here in the form of the living boy you see
at the order of my creator, to answer all your questions about the works
of Divine Wisdom, which I am about to reveal to you.

Hydriel seems prone to the same kinds of harsh practical jokery as

Cosmiel; perhaps this was the humor of God as Kircher saw it. Certainly
the Creator who made Leviathan for the sport of it must have enjoyed the
spectacle of Hydriel and Theodidactus propelling their little boat into the
belly of a whale, although typically it takes Theodidactus some time to
realize that the cavern in which they find themselves belongs to a living
creature.
Their watery tour is not enough, however, to satisfy Theodidactus. He has
many more questions about the earth, and thinks fondly of his guide to the
heavens:

In the meantime remembering my gentle Cosmiel, I called on him with

fervent insistence in my prayers, and hoped, fortified with incredible
faith, that he who had shown me the supreme kingdom of the universe
and the arrangement of the heavenly bodies with such a commitment of
love and humanity, would not disdain likewise to show me the subterra-
nean realms of the Geocosmos for the sake of his ready affection for me,
and its secret sacraments.43

Soon Theodidactus grows sleepy, and this time when Cosmiel comes to
him, it is directly from heaven, which has split open in a flash of electrum-
colored clouds. Once again, the ever-stylish angel has chosen a remarkable
costume for his epiphany, and a new set of attributes:

O my Cosmiel! O Cosmiel, solace of my heart, companion in ancient

friendship, faithful interpreter of the heavenly mysteries! Why the
strange outfit? What do the symbols mean that load you down? Tell me,
mate, I beg you, remembering your former care of me, what is the reason
for your coming?44
264 Ingrid D. Rowland

The real reason for the visit, which Cosmiel cannot possibly confess, is
to advertise Kircher’s newest book, the magnificent Mundus Subterraneus,
finally published five years later, in 1665. Now, however, having seen the
first edition of Itinerarium Extaticum successfully defy the censors, Kircher
lets Theodidactus take on something of Cosmiel’s impertinence with regard
to slow-witted Aristotelians:

I see, and not without disgust, and I read almost every days that our ter-
restrial world, which I like to call the Geocosmos, is put last among the
bodies of the universe by many of the Philosophers of our time, as if it
is the last dregs of the universe, the filthy leavings of the elements, the
ballast of the elements’ excrement, defiled by the perpetual exchange
of generation and corruption, which is so far from what I feel; rather, I
regard it as the most outstanding of all the bodies of the universe.45

Mundus Subterraneus, in fact, marked a milestone in Kircher’s career. The

tone of the work was that of a confident master, and with Alexander VII still
enthroned as pope, it was ensured a safe reception despite its many bold
assertions, including what geoologists now acknowledge as the first formu-
lation of plate tectonics. In 1660, Kircher’s geological observations are still
largely entrusted to the safely ethereal Cosmiel, but the end of Iter Exstaticum
encourages Theodidactus to stand on his own authority. In a real sense, the
leavetaking of Cosmiel and Theodidactus also indicates to his readers that
Athanasius Kircher will write his next book under angelic guidance.46

Cosm. But it’s time for me to go back to administering the world that has
been committed to me.
Theod. O Cosmiel, Cosmiel, if ever I found favor in your eyes, carry off
my soul, so that I can pass my time in eternal blessedness with you,
freed from the burden of this body. In any case, your departure seems
worse to me than death itself.
Cosm. Did I not tell you to conform your will in every way to God’s?
Have you forgotten my words already?
Theod. Then let God’s will be fulfilled in every way, but I ask this one
thing of you, never to desert your servant after this, but stand by me
forever in all my needs, so that at last I can enjoy your company,
welcome beyond imagination, in our heavenly homeland.
Cosm. Do not doubt, my son, I shall always be with you, I shall protect
you, and I shall sustain you in all your works.

After a few more formalities, Cosmiel vanishes back into the empyrean,
a drowsy Theodidactus awakens from his dream, and Athanasius Kircher,
encouraged and sustained by Gaspar Schott through every page of this
revised Iter Exstaticum, drew the book, their book, to an end. They would
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 265

never see each other again. Kircher tried strenuously to procure an appoint-
ment for Schott at the Roman College but without success. In 1666, the year
after Mundus Subterraneus appeared, Gaspar Schott died in Germany.
Both Mundus Subterraneus and Iter Extaticum show the impact of another
guardian angel: Pope Alexander VII, the former Fabio Chigi. During Chigi’s
papacy, Kircher would enjoy special esteem, both as a public figure and
as a personal friend of the Pontiff. The price of this privilege was a steady
stream of small assignments on the Pope’s behalf, from decipherment of
inscriptions to the vetting of books to the designing of a suitable display for
the obelisk that was discovered in 1666 on the grounds of the Dominican
convent at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.47
Chigi’s special interest in the Society of Jesus also helped to secure
Kircher’s position within his own organizations. Without the Pope’s author-
itative sponsorship, carefully acknowledged in the dedication to Mundus
Subterraneus, this ambitious work, like the Iter Extaticum before it, might
have incurred much more serious criticism.
In 1656, still in his first year as Pope, Alexander watched an outbreak of
the plague strike Europe. It is no wonder, then, that a man who believed so
fervently in guardian angels should have commissioned Pietro da Cortona’s
Guardian Angel at precisely this moment: Chigi may have hoped to maintain
the innocence of a child in his office, but in fact he more resembled the
mature man in the background who goes forth into the tempest.
Alexander’s response to the plague was novel for the time in its aggres-
siveness. He set up strict quarantines around the city (the manuscripts
showing the locations of the various barricades still exist in the Vatican
Library), convinced – by his friend Father Kircher – that the plague was
spread by creatures too small to see with the naked eye. (Kircher called
them ‘worms’.)48 As the disease raged around them, Kircher wrote a book
describing how contagion worked. The volume was held up by the Board
of Revisores for two years because it dealt with medicine, a field in which
the Jesuits were not normally trained; the Revisores (including the watchful
Dunel, who wrote the final report) wanted to be certain that Kircher made
no mistakes.49 When ‘An Examination of the Pernicious Disease Known as
the Plague’ Scrutinium pestis, was finally printed in 1658, it marked the first
time that the plague was traced to microbes.50 One of the factors that may
eventually have convinced the Revisores to release the book was the effec-
tiveness of the papal quarantine that had been set up on the basis of his
theories in 1656. In effect, and more than once, the Pope and his longtime
friend were each other’s literal guardian angels.

Notes
1. Konrad Repgen, Diarium Chigi 1639–1651, Part I: Text, ed. Fabio Chigi (Münster,
1984); Acta Pacis Westphalicae, Serie III: Protokolle, Verhandlungsakten, Diarien,
266 Ingrid D. Rowland

Varia, Abteilung C: Diarien, 1/1. Chigi’s thanks to his guardian angel were pub-
lished in Fabio Chigi (Pope Alexander VII), Philomathi Musae Iuveniles (Paris,
1656), 199: ‘In die anniversaria curationis periculosae’.
2. Fabio Chigi (Pope Alexander VII), Philomathi Musae Iuveniles (Paris, 1656),
200–01. A critical edition of the Musae Juveniles has been published by Hermann
Hugenroth, Fabio Chigi, Philomathi Musae Juveniles: Des Philomathus Jugendgedichte
(Cologne and Weimar, 1999).
3. Marie-Louise Rodén, Church Politics in Seventeenth- Century Rome: Cardinal Decio
Azzolino, Queen Christina of Sweden, and the Squadrone Volante, Acta Universitatis
Stockholmensis/Stockholm Studies in History, vol. 60 (Stockholm, 2000).
4. For the meeting of Chigi and Kircher in Malta, see Ingrid D. Rowland, ‘Etruscan
Inscriptions from a 1637 Autograph of Fabio Chigi’, American Journal of
Archaeology, 93 (1989): 423–28; eadem, ‘Kircher Trismegisto,’ in Eugenio Lo Sardo,
ed., Athanasius Kircher: Il Museo del mondo, trans. Giancarla Bruno (Rome, 2001),
112–21.
5. See Carmel Cassar, ‘1564–1696: The Inquisition Index of Knights Hospitallers of
the Order of St. John’, Melita Historica, 11.2 (1993): 157–96; Alexander Bonnici,
‘Superstitions in Malta towards the Middle of the Seventeenth Century in the
light of the Inquisition Trials’, Melita Historica 4.3 (1966): 145–83.
6. Holstenius disparaged Kircher in along letter to Cardinal Francesco Barberini,
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Barb. Lat. 6488, 36r-38r, 7 September 1637.
7. See the diary of Fabio Chigi cited in n.1.
8. For Galileo’s trial and verdict, see the documents published in Maurice
Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (Berkeley and Los Angeles,
1989).
9. Ugo Baldini, Legem impone subactis: Studi su filosofia e scienza dei Gesuiti in Italia,
1540–1632 (Rome, 1992); Ugo Baldini, ed., Christoph Clavius e l’attività scientifica
dei gesuiti nell’ età di Galileo, Atti del convegno internazionale (Chieti, 28-30 aprile
1993) (Rome, 1995); Michael John Gorman, The Scientific Counter-Revolution:
Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Experimentalism in Jesuit Culture, 1580 – c.
1680, European University Institute PhD thesis (Fiesole, 1998), 15–77.
10. Harald Siebert presents intriguing suggestions about the relationship between
Schott and Kircher in Die Große Kosmologische Kontroverse (Stuttgart, 2006),
39–48.
11. Two early catalogues of the Musaeum were published: Georgius de Sepibus,
Musaeum Kircherianum (Amsterdam, 1678), and Filippo Buonanni, S. J., Romani col-
legii Societatis Iesu musaeum celeberrimum (Rome, 1709). An extensive reconstruc-
tion of the Musaeum was undertaken by Eugenio Lo Sardo at Palazzo Venezia
in Rome in the year 2001, Eugenio Lo Sardo, ed., Athanasius Kircher: il Museo del
mondo. See also Ingrid Rowland, ‘Il geroglifico del mondo: Athanasius Kircher e
il suo Museo’, for Il Rinascimento Italiano e l’Europa, Vol V, Le Scienze (Angelo Colla
Editore, 2008), 218–32 (trans. Francesco La Nave); in press; English version online
in Humanist Art Review, III (2008), <http://www.humanistart.net>.
12. Gaspar Schott, Mechanica Hydraulico-Pneumatica, (Würzburg, 1658 [1657]),
311–12.
13. Martha Baldwin notes the abruptness of Schott’s departure, ‘Reverie in Time of
Plague: Athanasius Kircher and the Plague Epidemic of 1656’, in Paula Findlen,
ed., Athanasius Kircher, The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York and London,
2003), 68–69, but the ascription of that departure to an excessively exclusive
friendship is my own.
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 267

14. Siebert, Die Große Kosmologische Kontroverse, 39–48.

15. Schott also republished Kircher’s Specula Melitensis, written in Malta in 1637,
as part of his own Technica Curiosa, sive mirabilia artis (Würzburg, 1664), vol. 1,
423–77. However, Kircher attributed authorship of the Specula’s original edition
(Naples, 1638), to the General of the Society of Jesus in Malta, Salvatore Imbroll,
and it is under Imbroll’s name, rather than Kircher’s, that this rare book is to
be found in the National Library of Malta in Valletta. Schott also arranged to
publish Kircher’s Pantometrum Kircherianum; Pantometrum Kircherianum, hoc est,
instrumentum geometricum novum (Würzburg, 1660).
16. Ugo Baldini, ‘Christoph Clavius and the Scientific Scene in Rome’, in George
V. Coyne, M. A. Hoskin and O. Pedersen, eds, Gregorian Reform of the Calendar:
Proceedings of the Vatican Conference to Commemorate its 400th Anniversary, 1582–
1982 (Vatican City, 1983), 147–69.
17. For Clavius’ life and career, see James M. Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo:
Christoph Clavius and the Collapse of Ptolemaic Cosmology (Chicago, 1994); Baldini,
Legem impone subactis; Baldini, ed., Christoph Clavius e l’attività scientifica dei
gesuiti.
18. See Gorman, Scientific Counter-Revolution, 15–77.
19. See Baldini, Legem impone subactis (see note 9), 285–46; Peter Godman, The
Saint as Censor: Robert Bellarmine between Inquisition and Index (Leiden, 2000);
Richard J. Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine and the Bible (Notre Dame, IN, 1991). For
Bellarmine’s views about space, see Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible,
40–45; Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo, 213–16.
20. See Ingrid D. Rowland, Giordano Bruno, Philosopher/Heretic (New York, 2009),
251–62.
21. The report about Bruno’s reaction to his sentence (‘Maiori forsan cum
timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam’) comes from a letter of
the Catholic convert Gaspar Schoppe to his former professor, the Lutheran
Konrad Rittershausen. Schoppe was apparently an eyewitness both to Bruno’s
sentencing and to his execution. The text is transcribed in most editions of
Bruno’s trial records, e.g., Luigi Firpo, ed., Giordano Bruno, Oeuvres Complètes,
Documents, I, Le Procès, with translation and notes by A.-Ph. Segonds (Paris,
2000), 499–515.
22. See the edict of the Master of the Sacred Palace, Giovanni Maria Guazelli, 7 August
1603, published in Firpo, ed., Giordano Bruno, Oeuvres Complètes, Documents, I, Le
Procès, 527.
23. See Edward A. Gosselin and Lawrence S. Lerner, ‘Galileo and the Specter of
Bruno’, Scientific American (November 1986), 116.
24. Kircher’s statement is found in a letter from the French scholar Claude-Nicolas
Fabri de Peiresc to the French royal astronomer, Pierre Gassendi, 27 August 1633,
Nicolas- Claude Fabri de Peiresc, Lettres, IV (Paris, 1893), 1626–27: ‘27 Aoust *
1633. Et toutefoys le bon P Athanase que nous avons veu passer icy bien à la
haste, ne se peult tenir de nous advoüer, en presence du P Ferrand, que le P
Malapertius [Charles Malapert, French Jesuit who worked in Poland and Douai]
et le P Clavius mesmes n’improuvoient nullement l’advis de Copernicus, ains
ne s’en esloignoient guieres, encores qu’on les eusse pressez et obligez d’escrire
pour les communes suppositions d’Aristote, que le P Scheiner mesmes ne suyvoit
que par force et par obediance aussy bien que luy qui ne faict pas de difficulté
d’admettre au corps de la lune, non seulement des montaignes, des vallées et des
mers ou estans, mais des arbres et des plantes, et mesmes des animaulx, pourveu
268 Ingrid D. Rowland

qu’on en veuille excepter et exclure les plus parfects et d’admettre aussy que la
terre face une reverberation sur le globe de la lune, de la lumiere du soleil, qui
responde à celle que faict la lune sur la nostre’.
25. Especially Joshua 10:12, ‘Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the
LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the
sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley
of Ajalon.’ For the issue of Copernican and Tycho Brahe at the Collegio Romano,
see Lattis, Between Copernicus Galileo, 202–16.
26. Alessandro Orlandi, ‘Le collezioni scientifiche del Liceo E. Q. Visconti e l’eredità
del Museo Kircheriano’, in Eugenio Lo Sardo, ed., Athanasius Kircher, S.J.: il museo
del mondo (Rome, 2001), 257–60; picture on p. 258.
27. Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, (hereafter ARSI), MS 661, Censurae
Librorum.
28. ARSI MS 661, 29r–31r.
29. Ibid., 29r: ‘Pag. 14 dicit Intentio mea in hoc Opusculo. Videtur omittendum
cum supponatur esse in raptu, et consequenter nondum agere de imprimendo
opusculo.’
30. Athanasius Kircher, Iter Exstaticum (1660), 73–74: ‘Et protinus mihi insolitae con-
stitutionis vir adstiti: caput eius faciesque miro quodam fulgbat jubare, oculi car-
bunculum instar coruscabant, habitus totius corporis exotico et inviso hucusque
vestimento constituebatur, siquidem admiranda quadam in forma alarum
complicatarum [t]extura ita adornabatur, ut nullum fere colorum genus, quod
pennae eius non esprimerent, concipi aut animo fingi possit; manus pedesque
omnem lapidum pretiosorum nitorem superabant, dextra sphaeram gestabat,
in qua quot vagantium siderum orbes, tot ex lapidibus pretiosis diversi coloris
sphaerulae eidem insertae spectabantur; mirum visu opus; sinistra mensorium
baculum gemmeo artificio apprime elaboratum, et miram arte distributum ger-
ebat. Ego ad inusitatam et prorsus humano oculo in hunc usque diem invisam
speciem pene exanimatus, affixusque humi, obstupui, steteruntque comae, et
vox faucibus haesit ... audivi vocem, supra quam disci potest, blandam, suavem,
et amabilem, hoc verborum contextu resonantem. Cosmiel: Surge, ne timeas
Theodidacte, ecce exaudita sunt desideria tua; et ego ad te missus sum, ut tibi
summam Dei Optimi Maximi Maiestatem, quantum humano oculo in hac
mortali carne constituto permissum est in operibus suis mundanis eluscentem
monstrarem .... repondi: quis es tu, Domine mi? et quinam est insolitus ille,
quo adornaris, habitus? Is respondit, ego sum Cosmiel, minister Dei altissimi, et
Mundi Genius.’
The differences between the three published versions of the Iter Extaticum have
been detailed by Harald Siebert, Die große kosmologische Kontroverse, 13, 39–48;
citations for the present article have been taken from the 1660 Würzburg edi-
tion, edited and annotated by Kircher’s former student and associate, Gaspar
Schott, S. J.
31. Iter Exstaticum, 97–98: ‘Erras tu summopere, si Aristotelem de iis rebus, quae ad
supernorum corporum natura pertinent, omnia vera locutum esse tibi persuad-
eas ... fieri enim non potest, ut Philosophi, solis suis cogitatis insistentes, repu-
diatisque experientiis, quidpiam solidi circa naturalem Mundi constitutionem
concludere possint; conceptus enim hominum, nisi experimentis fulciantur,
tanto saepe numero a vero aberrant longius, quanto hunc globum Lunarem a
terreno longius distare videmus’.
32. Ibid., 341: ‘Mi Theodidacte, iam vere video, te nimis simplicis ingenii esse, et ad
quorumvis sententias amplexandas plus aequo creduli. Sphaera illa crystallina,
 Athanasius Kircher’s Guardian Angel 269

quam quaeris, in rerum natura non reperitur; stellas autem huiusmodi sphaerae
infixas esse, nullo prorsus fundamento nititur. Gyra oculos, lustra omnia in cir-
cuitu, perambula singula, totum Universum peragra, neque aliam tamen, pra-
eter hanc, quam sentis, limipidissimam aetherei Oceani nullis finibus conclusi,
volubilem, subtilissimamque auram reperies’.
33. Ibid., 361: ‘Et quoniam supremus ille Archetypus intellectus infinitis omnium
possibilium rerum ideis foetus est, ita mundum hunc, quantum passivae eius
potentiae capacitas permisit, innumera globorum, qui omnes viribus, proprieta-
tibus, claritate, figura, colore, luce, calore, influentiis, latentibusque seminalium
rationum foeturis different, varietate iuxta inexplicabilem archetypi rationem
constitutum voluit’.
34. See, most recently, Ingrid Rowland, ‘A Catholic Reader of Giordano Bruno in
Counter-Reformation Rome: Athanasius Kircher, SJ and Panspermia Rerum’, in
Henning Hufnagel and Anne Eusterschule, eds, Turning Tradition Upside Down:
Giordano Bruno’s Enlightenment, Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin (in
press), which takes Siebert’s work into account.
35. Siebert, Die große kosmologische Kontroverse, 25–39, 305–12.
36. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Rome, Fondo Gesuitico 1331, fasc. 15, c. 207v–
208r: ‘Tertio licet aliquoties ille [sc. Kircherus] damnatam Copernici de telluris
motu sententiam reprobat, ne quid (inquit pag. 28) sacrae Romanae Ecclesiae
decretis et Institutis contrarium asserere videatur: passim tamen toto suo
libro, et penitus adstruit omnia, quae ad statuendum, propugnandumque tel-
luris motum primus invexit Copernicus; argumentaque enervat omnia, quibus
error illi magno rationum pondere solet refelli. A quo enim, nisi à Copernico,
eiusque sectariis illam Kircherus [208r] ipse accepit, quam ad nauseam inculcat
firmamenti immensitatem, et enormem stellarum fixarum à terra remotionem?’
Siebert discusses this attack in Die große kosmologische Kontroverse, 30–38.
37. ARSI, MS 661, c. 30r:
‘Cum itinerarium extaticum Patris Athanasii Kirker anno superiore in lucem
editum fuisse non pauci graviter tulerint, eo quod in illo quam plurima con-
tineantur a communi scholarum sensu abhorrentia, ita ut author somnia sua
potius absque ullis probationibus in medium proferre, quam aliquid vera soli-
daque ratione nixum lectoribus proponere videatur; Nunc vero cum multi
viri graves et docti qui se librum illum legisse testantur, Patres Revisores osci-
tantiae cuiusdam, aut certe nimias erga authorem conniventia incusaverint,
atque ex Patribus Assistenibus non nemo ex Theologiae Professoribus duo,
Provincialis ipse alique mirari se dixerint quod ista Romae probantur, ...
In Collegio Romano, 7 Maii 1657.
Admodum Reverendae Pietatis Vestrae
Servus in Christo et filius indignus
Franciscus Dunellus’
38. Siebert provides a detailed reconstruction of Kircher’s system in Die große kos-
mologische Kontroverse, 67–207.
39. ARSI, MS 661, c. 30r: ‘virum aliunde magnifacio’.
40. Iter Extaticum, 530: ‘Puellus erat crassisculus, et humidiusculae substantiae; dex-
tra situlam, sinistra terraqueum gerebat globum; oculi, os, nares, auresque gem-
mascentes liquidissimi veluti roris guttas stillare videbantur.’
41. Ibid., 530: ‘Et quisnam es tu, dulcissime fili? Quod tibi nomen? Unde venis?’
42. Ibid., 530: ‘Ego vocor Hydriel, et magni illius elementi, quam Aquam vocant,
personam gero, et tametsi corpus sim omnis vitae expers, omnibus tamen vitam
largior; anima carens, omnia animo, imo conditoris mei jussu modo me tibi sub
270 Ingrid D. Rowland

vivi puelli quam intueris, forma sisto, ut quaesitis tuis circa divinae Sapientiae
opera, quae mox tibi aperiam, quovis modo satisfiat.’
43. Ibid., 554: ‘Interim suavissimi Cosmielis mei memor, eum ferventi precum
instantia sollicitabam, atque incredibili fiducia fretus futurum sperabam, ut
qui supremam mundi monarchiam, coelestiumque corporum apparatum, tanto
charitatis humanitatisque officio mihi demonstrarat, is pariter pro insita in me
affectus pronitate, subterrestria Geocosmi regna, et arcana eiusdem sacramenta,
porro demonstrare non esset dedignaturus.’
44. Ibid., 555: ‘O mi Cosmiel! O Cosmiel, cordis mei solatium, antiquae familiaritatis
consors coelestiumque mysteriorum fidelis interpres? Quod sibi vult tam insoli-
tus habitus? Quid mira illa symbolorum schemata, quibus gravaris, protendunt?
Dic, rogo, compar, veteris tutelae memor, quaenam tui sit adventus causa?’
45. Ibid., 558–59: ‘Theod. Video, et non sine stomacho quotidie paene lego, terrestrem
mundum, quem Geocosmum, appello, a plerisque nostri temporis Philosophis,
omnibus mundi corporisbus postponi, et tanquam ultimi mundi faecem, sor-
didam elementorum amurcam, elementarium excrementorum saburram, per-
petua generationis et corruptionis vicissitudine summe deturpatam aestimari;
cum etsi tantum abest ut id sentiam, ut eum potius omnium mundanorum cor-
porum praestantissimum existimem.’
46. Ibid., 682: ‘Sed iam tempus est, ut ad mundi mihi commissi admnistrationem
revertar. Theod. O Cosmiel, Cosmiel, si inveni gratiam in oculis tuis, tolle ani-
mam meam, ut una tecum molesta huius corporis sarcina sublata, in aeternis
beatitudinis atriis degam. Tua enim mihi morte ipsa durior discessio videtur.
Cosm. Nonne dixi tibi, voluntatem tuam in omnibus Divinae esse conforman-
dam? Anne subito verborum meorum oblitus es?...
‘Theod. Voluntas itaque Dei in omnibus compleatur; sed hoc unicum a te con-
tendo, ne servum tuum imposterum deseras, sed mihi semper in omnibus neces-
sitatibus assistas, ut tandem dulci tuo, et supra quam concipi potest, iucundo
consortio in patria fruar. Cos. Ne dubites fili, tibi semper assistam, te protegam,
tibi, uti petisti, in omnibus operibus tuis subveniam.’
47. Athanasius Kircher, Ad Alexandrum VII Pont. Max. Obelisci Aegyptiaci, nuper inter
Isaei Romani rudera effossa, interpretatio hieroglyphica (Rome, ex typ. Varesii,
1665).
48. Athanasius Kircher, Scrutinium physico-medicum contagiose Luis, qua Pestis dicitur
(Rome: typis Mascardi, 1658), passim.
49. ARSI, MS 661, 31r.
50. Kircher, Scrutinium physico-medicum contagiose Luis, qua Pestis dicitur.
Part IV
Reformations
12
Catholic Reformation and the Cult of
Angels in Early Modern England
Alexandra Walsham

In 1601, an angel was sighted upon an altar in England bearing a naked

sword, which it ‘glitteringly brandished up and down, foyning sometimes,
and sometimes striking; thereby threatning ... an instant destruction to this
Kingdome’.* Disseminated orally and scribally at home, the story of this
strange apparition soon travelled across the Channel to Catholic Europe,
where it was recorded by the Italian cardinal and church historian Cesare
Baronius and subsequently recounted by other Tridentine writers as a sign
of divine anger at the infection of the English nation by heresy. The vision
of this avenging angel was a clear warning that the Lord would very soon
intervene to punish the country for abandoning the faith of its forefathers
in favour of a false, new-fangled and upstart religion. It gave vivid expres-
sion to a vein of militant anti-Protestant defiance that made it a powerful
emblem of the ongoing polemical and pastoral struggle of the Church of
Rome and its agents to resist and reverse the Reformation. But it also made it
a focus for the mocking contempt of the Anglican bishop Joseph Hall. Hall
listed it, along with ‘a thousand more [tales] of the same branne’, as evidence
of the foolish credulity of the papists and the fraudulent devices by which
the Catholic clergy kept them in subjugation.1
This episode provides a convenient point of entry into an essay that seeks
to investigate the ways in which angels were implicated in the campaign to
restore Catholicism to political dominance in England, to boost the morale
and intensify the piety of its loyal and stalwart adherents, and to win fer-
vent converts to it. It would be a mistake to imply that these sublime and
mysterious celestial creatures were a major catalyst for the bitter theological
controversies that divided the Protestant reformers and their Catholic oppo-
nents. They were not leading protagonists in a drama that revolved around
the contested doctrines of salvation, purgatory, transubstantiation and the
cult of saints, but they were nevertheless significant supporting actors and
accessories to it. They were involved in a series of skirmishes on the edges
of the main battlefield that augment our understanding of the dissemina-
tion and reception of the Counter Reformation as a European movement,

273
274 Alexandra Walsham

as well as the nature and influence of the missionary endeavours in which

it engaged in territories where Protestantism reigned. A flourishing feature
of medieval devotion, in the course of the later sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries Catholic devotion to angels acquired a distinctly confessional
edge. It became one of an array of offensive weapons and proselytising tools
employed by the community and its priests to combat the official attempt
to persecute them into extinction. As we shall see, however, instances of
angelic intercession in the earthly realm often proved to be as much of a
liability as an asset, as much a source of anxiety and scandal as a useful
evangelical resource to a Church under the cross.
Early modern Roman Catholics were the heirs of a rich and elaborate leg-
acy of angelology. Sifted and synthesised by Augustine in the early fifth cen-
tury, the seam of Judeo- Christian belief about angels embedded in the Bible
was augmented around 500 by Pseudo-Dionysius’s treatise On the Celestial
Hierarchy. This defined the role of nine ranks or orders of these heavenly
creatures in the working of the universe and exerted a decisive and forma-
tive influence on later medieval thought. The study of angels as a theologi-
cal and metaphysical problem flowered in the thirteenth century, when the
Dominican Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan Bonaventure (later chris-
tened the Seraphic Doctor) dedicated much intellectual energy to delineat-
ing their activities and to resolving intricate questions about their nature
and existence as spirits, together with the extent and limits of their remit as
instruments of divine will.2
Yet, if angels were the subject of rarefied speculation by scholars, they
also played an important part in shaping popular piety. Striking instances
of angelic intercession in the lives of the saints, monks and laypeople filled
the pages of liturgical and devotional texts like Jacobus Voragine’s famous
Legenda aurea (c. 1260) and Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum
(c. 1220–35). Apparitions of them defending orthodox dogma and uphold-
ing conventional morality featured prominently in collections of edifying
exempla and sermons such as the English priest John Mirk’s well-known
Festial.3 Angels were also firmly embedded in the annual liturgical cycle
and the regular round of sacramental devotion. They were thought to be
present during the celebration of the mass and at the death bed, where they
strenuously wrestled with demons to ensure that the soul of the departed
did not perish in hell, an image firmly fixed in the collective imagination
by the prolific literature of the ars moriendi. Their role in the Annunciation
linked devotion to them with the burgeoning cult of the Virgin Mary and
the words of Gabriel to this most highly favoured lady formed the basis of
one of the most familiar prayers uttered by the late medieval laity, the Ave
Maria. They were celebrated in the Church’s calendar on 29 September, the
feast of St Michael and All Angels. The cult of the Archangel Michael, the
great weigher of souls and captain of the Lord’s host against the fiends of
hell, had particular resonance in the era of the crusades. It also engendered
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 275

many church dedications and pilgrimage shrines associated particularly

with mountain peaks and high places, including Mont- Saint-Michel off the
coast of Normandy and St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, which commemo-
rated a vision seen there in the eighth century.4 By the end of the Middle
Ages, however, Michael’s pre- eminence was being challenged by the heal-
ing Archangel immortalised in the book of Tobit, Raphael. Edmund Lacy,
bishop of Exeter, wrote an office in honour of Raphel and instituted a festi-
val in his diocese in 1443.5
The same period also witnessed a surge of devotion to the guardian angels
it was believed God appointed to preserve each human being from birth, if
not from conception in the maternal womb. The Parisian divine and con-
ciliarist Jean Gerson wrote a collation on the topic in the late fourteenth
century; votive masses addressed to them began to appear in missals; and
an independent feast in their honour was introduced in Austria, Spain and
Portugal in the early 1500s.6 Although the latter was not officially adopted
in England, the fashionable cult of guardian angels had made considera-
ble inroads here on the eve of the Reformation. Reflective of a wider trend
towards personalised devotion, specific prayers requesting their protection
were incorporated into the profusion of primers commissioned by fifteenth-
and early sixteenth- century laypeople in both Latin and the vernacular.
A surviving book of hours of the Guardian Angel presented to Elizabeth
Woodville, queen consort of Edward IV, dating from c. 1475–83, provides
evidence of royal support for this avant garde strand of piety, which may
fruitfully be paralleled with the more successful cult of the Holy Name pat-
ronised in the next generation by Lady Margaret Beaufort. Devotion to these
celestial custodians and keepers was closely connected with the Bridgettine
house of Syon Abbey: in the mid- 440s, Henry VI laid the foundation stone
of a chapel dedicated to the Virgin and the Nine Orders of Angels on the
lands of the Abbey in Isleworth, which was later extended to a hospital
and guild of brothers and sisters. The practice of invoking and worshipping
guardian angels was also strongly endorsed by the humanist John Colet in
his paraphrase of Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchy. Representative of a devel-
oping quest for more intimate communion with the divine, it reflected a
capacity to absorb and accommodate new and revitalising religious tenden-
cies that defies older claims that the pre-Reformation Church was in a state
of terminal decline.7
One of these tendencies was late medieval mysticism. Angelic visions
were a constituent feature of the revelatory experiences of figures like Henry
Suso, Hildegard of Bingen, St Catherine of Siena and St Bridget of Sweden,
and the intense and contemplative brand of spirituality they espoused
found English counterparts in the writings of figures like Walter Hilton
and Richard Rolle.8 Mystical raptures and ecstasies could be, and were, fre-
quently directed into orthodox channels, but they also had the potential
to shade into dissident pieties. As the trial and execution of Joan of Arc
276 Alexandra Walsham

in 1431 revealed, the hearing of celestial voices could easily be interpreted

as a sign of demonic possession, witchcraft or heresy.9 The discernment of
spirits was fraught with danger for its recipients, especially women, since
it bestowed upon them an aura of authority that threatened the stability
of the established ecclesiastical hierarchy.10 At a lower level, claims to have
had contact with angels and other inhabitants of the occult realm could
lead to allegations of dabbling in the ‘superstitious art’ of sorcery. A Suffolk
maiden called Marion Clerk was indicted before the church court in 1499
for alleging that she derived her power to heal from fairies, through whose
mediation she had also talked with St Stephen and the Archangel Gabriel.11
The Church had long looked askance at the summoning of angels by name,
which, in its eyes, smacked of forbidden forms of magical divination, if not
of pagan adoration.12 Nevertheless, the line between acceptable prayer and
dubious spell was often blurred in texts compiled for private use by devout
laypeople. Supplications and charms intermingle in the commonplace book
of the late-fifteenth- century Norfolk yeoman Robert Reynes, which includes
a formula for conjuring three angels onto a child’s thumbnail, while a col-
lection drawn up for Sir John Astley a few decades later included invocations
of Oriel, Ragwell, Barachiell, Pantalion, Tubiell and Rachyell, appellations
ultimately rooted in the Jewish cabbala.13 Such sources offer a glimpse of
facets of traditional religion that eluded canonical control and troubled dili-
gent bishops and reform-minded clergymen anxious to purge away super-
fluous and non-Scriptural accretions.
Angels thus occupied a rather ambiguous place in late medieval piety.
Devotion to them was an index of the dynamism, adaptability and vibrancy
of Catholicism in the years prior to the Henrician schism, but they also
fostered religious beliefs and practices that hovered uncomfortably close to
the margins of respectability and which exposed angelic piety to increas-
ingly overt expressions of concern and criticism from both without and
within. These were first articulated in humanist circles. In his satirical col-
loquy, ‘A Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake’ (1526), Desiderius Erasmus poked
fun at the venerable tradition of a heavenly letter engraved or delivered by
an angel (‘to prevent suspicion of fraud, you shall see the very autograph’),
while Sir Thomas More voiced more restrained disquiet about faked miracles
involving these celestial creatures in his Dialogue concerning heresies (1529).
He cited the novice of Leominster Priory who became the focus of a cult of
holy anorexia after she enclosed herself in the rood loft and claimed she was
sustained only by angels’ food and by pieces of the host that flew through
the air from the altar directly into her mouth. She later confessed that this
deceptive illusion designed to dupe pilgrims was achieved by an ingenious
device involving fine threads of her own hair.14 The case of Elizabeth Barton,
the notorious nun of Kent executed for treason in 1534, also involved allega-
tions of feigned visions of angels, many of them contrived to demonstrate
divine opposition to Henry VIII’s controversial religious policies. Thus, she
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 277

revealed how one such messenger had commanded her to tell a certain
monk to burn his copy of the New Testament in English and how another
had bade her to go to the king, ‘that infidel prince of England’, to warn
him against usurping the pope’s authority and patrimony and to prophesy
divine vengeance if he carried out his plan to marry Anne Boleyn. Partly
modelled on the revelations of St Catherine of Siena, Barton’s trances gave
potent expression to a body of conservative resistance to the Reformation
that was rapidly building.15 Angels were also involved in other manifesta-
tions of this nascent protest movement: in August 1538, it was reported
that an angel had appeared to the monarch at Portsmouth and urged him
to go to St Michael’s Mount on pilgrimage, a practice that successive sets of
injunctions curtailed and then prohibited.16
Such episodes served not only to politicise visible interventions of these
celestial creatures; they also supplied ammunition to evangelical propagan-
dists, for whom such apparitions were further evidence of the fraudulence
and forgery that underpinned the false Catholic religion. The biblical tenet
that the Devil regularly disguised himself as an angel of light helped them
to identify these as modern examples of the spurious Antichristian wonders
by which the Pope and his minions had seduced mankind for so many
centuries.17 Thomas Cranmer contemptuously retold the tales of the holy
maids of Leominster and Kent in his Confutation of Unwritten Verities of 1547
with this aim in mind, along with the story of the cripple who came to St
Albans with a key given to her by an angel that opened the shrine contain-
ing the saint’s bones, upon which her lameness was miraculously cured.18
Protestantism uncompromisingly dismissed such supernatural intercessions
as blatant fabrications. Hallowed objects and images said to have been con-
veyed from heaven by angels fell into the same category and a number were
casualties of the purges launched by the Henrician commissioners in the
mid-1530s. Thus, John London proudly reported to Thomas Cromwell that
he had confiscated ‘the principall relik of idolytrie within thys realm’, a
seraph with one wing which had reputedly conveyed the head of the spear
that had pierced Christ’s side at Calvary to the church at Caversham.19 In
various ways, then, angels were seriously compromised by their close asso-
ciation with the discredited cult of saints and integrated into an apocalyptic
polemic that accused the Catholic hierarchy of collaborating with Satan to
extinguish the light of the Gospel.
Unlike several other prominent aspects of traditional piety, however,
Protestants were unable to eject them from their mental universe com-
pletely. Sanctioned by Scripture and deeply rooted in early Christian tra-
dition, reformed theology was obliged to find room for them. Angels
remained a vital presence in God’s providential plan for the world, and
especially in the lives of the tiny remnant He had predestined to salva-
tion. Nevertheless Luther, Calvin and their disciples in England did delib-
erately distance themselves from elements of medieval devotion to these
278 Alexandra Walsham

heavenly intermediaries. They dissociated themselves from the Dionysian

hierarchy and expressed caution, agnosticism, if not outright opposition
to the concept of angelic guardianship, at least in the first generation after
the Reformation. Even those who later sought to redeem the doctrine from
being ‘clogged and branded with the odious name of Popery’ were reluctant
to admit that the reprobate as well as the elect had been bestowed with
personal bodyguards to protect them from visible and invisible perils.20 A
more emphatic and unequivocal feature of Protestant thinking was insist-
ence that angels were not to be venerated or invocated directly. A succession
of divines from William Tyndale onwards warned that to adore or place too
much trust in these subordinate celestial creatures was implicitly to dero-
gate from the omnipotence of the Almighty and to fall into the abominable
sin of idolatry. This was all too reminiscent of the ‘paultring mawmetrie
and heathenish worshipping’ of familiar angels by ancient pagans and here-
tics.21 No less striking was the repeated claim made by reformed writers that
angelic apparitions had ceased, along with other miracles and prophecies,
when the apostolic Church cast off its swaddling bands. It became a com-
monplace that no such spectacles could now be expected and that any new
sightings were almost certainly diabolical contrivances designed to lead the
unwary astray. The operations of angels, most sixteenth- century Protestants
declared confidently, were not now discernible by human eyes.22
Such statements sowed the seeds for a subtle, but significant, bifurcation
between the Catholic and Protestant cultures of angels. In the short term,
the scorn that the early reformers poured upon counterfeit visions and won-
ders performed by angelic intermediaries seems to have encouraged some-
thing of a temporary retreat from these and other aspects of enthusiasm
for the supernatural. A desire for damage limitation seems to have been
the dominant note of the Catholic response to the Reformation in the mid
Tudor period as it reeled from the shock of these stinging assaults. In the
preface to his 1565 translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, for instance,
Thomas Stapleton was distinctively defensive about passages of this kind
that might seem ‘vaine, fabulous, or uncredible’ to his readers, and the same
wariness can be detected in the works of several Louvain exiles published
during that decade.23 A sense of vulnerability on this front never evaporated
entirely. Gradually, however, hesitation and circumspection gave way to a
mood of rehabilitation and renewal, which was buttressed by the bullish
decrees and pronouncements of the final sessions of the Council of Trent.
Flourishing precisely those features of traditional Christianity of which
Protestantism had self- consciously disarmed itself, the agents and patrons
of Counter Reformation in Catholicism’s heartlands on the Continent reas-
serted the validity of devotion to angels, along with other members of the
glorious company of heaven, and further elaborated the cycle of liturgi-
cal solemnity surrounding them.24 Paul V proclaimed a universal feast and
office of the Holy Guardian Angels in 1608, new confraternities dedicated
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 279

to them sprang up, and their iconography was given a boost by a Church
eager to harness the arts to enrich and enhance the experience of worship.25
The seventeenth century also saw a spirited resurgence of neo-scholastic
angelology, notably in the guise of the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez’s
commentaries on Aquinas. Robert Bellarmine’s writings also contained
detailed discussion of the portfolio of roles fulfilled by these creatures, as
messengers, protectors, supplicants, ambassadors and warlike avengers, and
he was a vigorous and valiant defender of devotion to them.26
The leading part played by the Society of Jesus in reinvigorating the cult
of angels in general, and of guardian angels in particular, has been expertly
dissected by the late Trevor Johnson. Inflecting an older current of piety
with distinctive new priorities, Ignatius Loyola and his followers found in
angels an ideal model for the curious mixture of contemplation and action
that characterised the spirituality of the order they founded. The Spiritual
Exercises provided a template for interpreting the subtle, but decisive, inter-
positions of these benevolent spirits in the interior struggle of the individ-
ual against worldly temptation and greatly influenced how leading Jesuits
interpreted their own lives. Pedro Ribadeneira claimed that Loyola himself
had enjoyed the privilege of protection by no less than an archangel. The
medieval idea that angels were perfect exemplars for those who chose a
monastic or mendicant vocation underwent a notable revival, and figures
like St Aloysius Gonzaga, who died aged twenty-three tending victims of
the plague in 1591, were upheld as the embodiment of the seraphic virtue
of chastity. Treatises by later writers like Francesco Albertini and Cornelius
a Lapide proved no less decisive in entrenching acknowledgement of the
part angels played in guiding the soul towards salvation within the popu-
lar religious culture of Tridentine Europe. Prayers for precisely the kind of
celestial mediation with the Almighty that Protestants deplored, pervaded
the devotional works that poured from Catholic presses in the seventeenth
century.27
English Catholics were by no means isolated from these developments.
The vigorous campaign of publication and translation that was a vital arm
of the mission launched by Cardinal Allen and his seminary priests in 1574,
and strengthened by the arrival of the Jesuits in 1580, made many of the
new spiritual classics emanating from Italy, Spain and France available to the
faithful. Gaspar Loarte’s Exercise of a Christian Life (1579) urged Christians to
make regular supplications to these heavenly intermediaries throughout the
day, as they woke, before they went out of doors, and as they prepared for
bed: ‘O holy Angel, the guardian of my soule, to whom I am especially com-
mitted, have thou continually a diligent and careful eye upon me’.28 Francis
de Sales’s Introduction to a Devout Life (1613) made many similar recommen-
dations. Meditating on the path to paradise, he wrote: ‘Give thy hand to
thy good Angel, that hee may guide thee thither, and encourage thy soule,
to make this choise’. ‘O my good Angel, present me unto this glorious and
280 Alexandra Walsham

sacred assemblie, and abandon me not, untill I arrive to this societie of this
blessed companie ...’. Against the backdrop of Protestant claims about the
evils of praying to them, he stressed that ‘since God doth often times send
downe to us his holie inspirations by Ministrie of his Angels: we should like-
wise be diligent, to send up unto him our devout aspirations by the self same
heavenlie messengers’.29 Robert Persons made the point more polemically in
his Warn-word against a tract by Sir Francis Hastings, stating that ‘they may
piouslie be prayed unto for their assistance to their Lord & maister, without
any derogation of his divine honor, but rather with much encrease therof’.30
The notion that they were ‘rightly’ and ‘profitably invocated’ was reiterated
by Thomas Worthington in his Anker of Christian Doctrine (1618), together
with the tenet that angels deserved to be honoured with latria, a ‘spiritual
religious honour farre more excellent then civil, but infinitely lesse them
[sic] divine’.31 Nor did English Catholics lack access to the neo-scholastic
angelology of Suarez, though ironically this was disseminated by a treatise
composed by his erstwhile assistant at the University of Coimbra, the recent
Protestant convert John Salkeld.32
Meanwhile, the new office of the Guardian Angels had reached England
via John Wilson’s edition of the Jesus Psalter, The Key of Paradise, in 1623
and in 1669, a year before Clement X reassigned the festival to 2 October, it
was incorporated in the English primer.33 At the Jesuit church in Watten in
Flanders, where many English exiles congregated, the feast was celebrated
with grand and solemn ceremony in 1694 in the presence of the earl of
Castlemaine, an exquisitely carved and decorated silver statue of an angel
taking pride of place in the procession.34 By then, devotion to the cult
was apparently already widespread back at home, thanks largely to Henry
Hawkins’s 1630 translation of the Bavarian court preacher and Jesuit Jeremias
Drexelius’s Angel Guardian Clock, first published in Latin nine years before.
Part of a deliberate Counter Reformation project to introduce the works of
the German author into this country, Drexelius’s popular devotional text was
an anthology of meditations and reflections on the multiple offices which
angels carried out in the earthly realm. It described the tender love they bore
to those under their custody, defending them from mortal dangers and the
assaults of the devil, inciting them to virtue, and protecting their souls in
the last combat that was the prelude to death. It emphasised the special rev-
erence that Christian people owed to these creatures and encouraged daily
recitation of litanies and prayers (including the Angelical Salutation), the
performance of pious and ascetic works, the visitation of churches dedicated
to them and diligent observance of their sacred feast days. Dedicated (under
the cover of cryptic initials) to the prominent Wiltshire recusant Lady Anne,
Countess of Arundell of Wardour, ‘an eminent Patronesse’ of the sodality
of Our Lady and ‘in this distressed countrie, a cherisher of the whole cause’,
this was a text that reflected the insatiable thirst of the Catholic community
for literary sustenance from the Continent, and the extent to which it kept
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 281

abreast of the latest Counter Reformation trends in personal devotion. The

piety of such noblewomen was not merely a survivalist residue of the Old
Faith; assisted by the influence exerted by their Jesuit chaplains and con-
fessors, it was infused with a distinctly Ignatian spiritual intensity.35 Mary
Ward, who founded the unenclosed order of the English Ladies as a female
counterpart to the Society of Jesus after hearing ‘an interior voice’, was her-
self deeply devoted to angels and archangels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael
in particular. She charged one of the twenty- eight celestial guardians to
whom she prayed daily ‘to have a care of her Letters’, another to protect
her during her journeys and a third ‘to prevent the misservices of God by
the indiscretions of ours’. After witnessing another hovering over the bed
of an endangered priest ‘in posture of deffence’, she employed an artist to
paint the marvellous vision she had experienced.36 The renewed fascination
of early modern Catholics with guardian angels epitomised ‘an optimistic
anthropology whereby divine grace allows the human will to co- operate
with it for salvation’; it embodied a soteriology antagonistic towards the
Calvinist doctrine of double predestination.37
To Protestant readers, the direct invocations of angels and archangels
that the book contained were a hallmark of the superstition that lay at the
heart of the popish religion: the original owner of one surviving copy of
Drexelius’s Angel Guardians Clock systematically crossed out these supplica-
tions and reinstated God and Christ as the sole recipients of human suffrag-
es.38 In a sermon printed in 1636, the Oxford divine John Prideaux warned
Romanist ‘votaries’ and ‘angel-worshippers’ to take heed of their mistakes
in this regard, ‘least in their unwarrantable devotions, instead of an Angel
of light, they meet sometime with a worse commodity’ – i.e., the Devil in
one of his many Machiavellian guises. ‘It may perchance so fall out, that
when ... they have the familiarity of their guardian Angel, they bee fitted
with a familiar, they would faine be ridde of’.39
There was indeed a darker and more dubious side to the resurgence of
devotion to angels in Counter Reformation Europe. The anxieties about
angelic visions that had periodically arisen in the medieval period resur-
faced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leaving their mark in a
trail of cases that came before ecclesiastical courts and tribunals. Claims to
have communicated with these creatures continued to be surrounded with
suspicion, and many aspiring saints who believed they had achieved this
were dismissed as the victims of demonic delusion or as wily imposters.
Once again, women were especially vulnerable to denunciation. Initially
treated with mistrust, the ecstasies of the Spanish Carmelite nun Teresa of
Avila were eventually acknowledged to be of divine origin, though only
after extensive investigation by the authorities. All too frequently, similar
mystical experiences, especially when they occurred outside the cloister,
led either to prosecutions for heresy or to the summoning of exorcists.
The angelic visitations and instructions that Cecilia Ferrazi received in the
282 Alexandra Walsham

1650s and 60s, for instance, led to her denunciation and imprisonment by
the Venetian Inquisition for pretence of holiness. Investigated by the Holy
Office in 1680, Christina della Rovere of Palermo yielded under relentless
interrogation and admitted that her visions were feigned and induced by the
Devil: thereafter, the handsome young man with blond hair and dressed in
white, who had appeared to her in the past, was replaced by a large black dog
breathing fire and threatening her. In seventeenth- century France, claims
of divine illumination were subjected to equally intense scrutiny: a rash of
possession cases, notably those at Loudon, reflected the profound ambiva-
lence of the Catholic hierarchy about instances of visionary charisma and
its determination to redefine them as diabolical illusions. The Tridentine
Church on the Continent was no less, if not more troubled by the problem
of the discernment of spirits than its predecessor. In a process that Ottavia
Niccoli has called ‘the end of prophecy’, across Catholic Europe it sought
to exert ‘repressive control over direct relationships with the supernatural
that showed signs of escaping ecclesiastical mediation’. Acutely conscious of
the reformers’ sarcasm about the cult of visions and living saints, it endeav-
oured to eliminate disorderly interactions with angels that might taint it
with the brush of superstition and sorcery.40
How far can similar patterns be detected within early modern English
Catholicism? Affective and mystical piety flourished anew in the hothouse
atmosphere of the convents in the Low Countries, and here, too, some women
had spiritual experiences that imbued them with charisma and power, but
also greatly worried their clerical confessors and mentors. The interior visions
vouchsafed to Catherine Burton during a series of adolescent illnesses in the
later seventeenth century, which confirmed her vocation to take the veil,
included several apparitions of celestial creatures. One took the form of a
beautiful child holding a richly adorned crown, which she understood to be
a symbol of the eternal reward she would enjoy after patiently enduring her
sufferings; another advised her to offer up her prayers for the recently ban-
ished King James II rather than her own health. Clothed as Mary Xaveria in
1693, the young Carmelite described her continuing ecstasies to her priestly
director, who treated them with the utmost distrust, chiding her ‘grievously’,
asking her whether she had pretended them, and commanding her to ‘resist
all these motions and feelings of devotion, to neglect and slight them ... [as]
fancies and imaginations which might do me much harm’. Mary Xaveria’s
acute conflict between her duty of obedience to a male clerical superior and
her overwhelming desire to achieve intimate union with the divine was
ultimately resolved in her own favour. Revered as a recipient of miraculous
blessings, she became Mother Superior of her house, and her holy life was
celebrated in a manuscript tract by Father Thomas Hunter after her death.
Nevertheless, a strong undercurrent of anxiety remained. Hunter felt it nec-
essary to stress in the preface that raptures of this type were ‘always to be
suspected as dangerous, never to be desired or sought for, and not easily to
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 283

be relied upon, unless accompanied with certain effects and signs which may
secure a director of souls that they are the operations of the Divine Spirit’. The
tenor of his message was clear: angels that appeared in the eye of the mind
were more likely than not to be the artifices by which Satan led the unwary
to damnation in hell. Tobie Matthew struck the same negative chord in his
biography of the Benedictine nun Lady Lucy Knatchbull, who was also privi-
leged with special visitations from her guardian angel, as well as Christ and
the Blessed Virgin, ‘sent her by the hand of Heaven’. He warned his readers
not ‘to itch after such extraordinary advantages as those’: to desire them was
to display ‘a strange kind of secret Pride’ and a spiritual pretension that might
well be diabolical in origin. Only a chosen few of impeccable virtue had true
encounters with God’s supernatural messengers.41
Meanwhile, in England, the circumstances of Catholicism’s mission-
ary condition have conspired against the survival of evidence of strug-
gles to supervise and subdue destabilising apparitions of this kind. In the
absence of a settled episcopal hierarchy backed by the arm of the state,
it was forced to rely on informal mechanisms for internal discipline that
have left little mark on the historical record. Moreover, here, there was
arguably a strong incentive for the clergy to hush up such cases, lest they
play into the hands of their Protestant adversaries. Ever conscious of the
danger of interception, they were circumspect about what they chose to
commit to writing, while the reports they sent to their superiors abroad
tended to be upbeat assessments of the impact of their endeavours, from
which they probably edited out such troublesome episodes. The silences of
our sources may therefore be pregnant ones, hiding heterodox tendencies
that strained the image of heroic unity and purity that priests sought to
paint of the community.
At the same time, there were some occasions on which the clergy were pre-
pared to endorse celestial visions. Spiritual communication was surrounded
by hazards, but in a context where Catholicism was oppressed and down-
trodden, it could paradoxically also be turned to polemical and pastoral
advantage. Here the case of Elizabeth Orton of Flintshire is highly sugges-
tive: in February 1580, this fourteen-year-old girl saw a series of apparitions
confirming the disputed doctrines of purgatory and the mass, together with
the intercessory powers of the Virgin and saints. As well as various other
members of the company of heaven, these involved angels. One took the
form of ‘a goodly faire birde’ with a human face, which covered her with
its wings and touched her on the forehead, breast and lips before declaring
that it was a messenger from God. A second assumed the guise of an elderly
man dressed in white, who comforted her and led her to an upper chamber
lit with candles, where she saw Christ and His mother. In the course of her
trances, which were witnessed by a crowd of local Catholics, she endorsed the
necessity of refusing to attend Protestant churches and cried ‘fie uppon the
naughtie Religion now used, fie uppon their wicked and accursed Churche,
284 Alexandra Walsham

moste abominable in Gods sight’. Although she herself initially feared that
they might come from evil spirits or goblins, in this instance her concerns
were not shared by those around her. Orton’s confessionally charged visions
were a propaganda gift to a persecuted Church, and an account of the inci-
dent was soon being circulated widely in manuscript and sent across the sea
to France, Rome and Ireland. The power of her apparitions to sway public
opinion in favour of the Catholic religion was, however, short-lived. Arrested
and investigated by the bishop of Chester, under duress she confessed to hav-
ing faked them, coached by a former schoolmaster turned seminary priest,
who was also responsible for penning the tract about them. Setting aside
the distracting question of whether Elizabeth Orton was a genuine seer or a
pious fraud, it is clear that an active attempt was made to utilise her experi-
ences as a weapon in the ongoing war against Protestantism. In a climate in
which writers like Richard Bristow were defending miracles and visions as
‘infallible marks’ of the true Church, they offered opportunities for vindicat-
ing the faith that the missionaries could ill afford to ignore, especially since
their enemies insisted that such spectacles were now a thing of the past. But
they simultaneously created various hostages to fortune. Drawing inevitable
parallels with the disgraced nun of Kent, polemicists like Barnaby Rich leapt
upon the episode as further proof of the precept that popery was nothing
more than a tissue of fictions and lies. The scurrilous pamphlet he published
in 1582 exposed the pitfalls of seeking to transform such supernatural intru-
sions into a proselytising tool, even as it revealed the depth of Protestant
fears about the effectiveness of this very strategy.42
Other apparitions of angels also proved to be a double- edged sword. The
Denham demoniac Richard Mainy claimed that the Madonna and attend-
ant choirs of angels had appeared to him and fixed a date for his translation
to paradise, and two Catholic maids exorcised at the Gatehouse in London
around 1616 were possessed by the spirits of St Michael the Archangel, as well
as the Virgin Mary, and various martyrs. The former was famously exposed
by Samuel Harsnet as an ‘egregious popish imposture’, while the latter was
listed along with various other ‘muddie Forgeries and Dog-tricke Inventions’
in John Gee’s vicious Foot out of the Snare (1624).43 Gee returned to the theme
later the same year in his New Shreds of the Old Snare, which provided addi-
tional evidence of how priests used ‘the engine of personated Apparitions’
to seduce young women to enter convents abroad and to convince wavering
laypeople to convert to the faith. The ‘pretended divine inspirations’, ‘vis-
ible messengers’, and ‘sweet insinuations ... imitating in some sort the Angell
Gabriell’ by which these ‘Jesuiticall Fowlers’ lured ‘female Partridges into
their Nett’ were theatrical devices fit for the playhouse, stage- effects con-
trived using disguised voices, ‘Paper Lanthornes’, ‘transparent Glasses’, and
boys cloaked in white sheets.44 James Wadsworth lifted the lid on the story
of a gentleman from Yorkshire who had been induced to enter the Society of
Jesus after two fathers garbed as angels approached his bedside and scourged
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 285

him, declaring that they had been sent to chastise him for his offences and
for resisting the orders of his superiors. The deception had been revealed to
him four years later by one of these priests, who ‘blushed not’ to acquaint
him with the truth of it.45 A similar device designed to effect the conversion
of a Lutheran shepherd in Germany was published for the edification of
Protestants in 1676: in this instance, two monks had dressed up ‘in strange
and wonderfull shapes; the one very gay and beautiful, with a brave pair of
wings, and other Accoutrements, fit to represent him as a good Angel; the
other in a horrid and frightful Habit, personating the Devil’.46 Whether or
not we take Protestant allegations of clerical legerdemain at face value, these
tales still offer insight into the manner in which visions of angels could be
harnessed to serve the ends of Catholic evangelism.47
Despite the risk they carried of attracting reformed mockery and ridi-
cule, leading Catholic divines continued to incorporate edifying and
inspiring examples of angelic intervention in the lives of both medieval
and contemporary saints, priests and laity in the devotional writings they
produced for the community. Persons’s Book of Resolution or Christian
Directorie contained a number of passages from Augustine, Gregory and
Bede ‘concerning apparitions of certain angels to godly people’, which,
he declared, were ‘permitted for our sake which doe yet live, and maye
take commoditie by the same’. It is telling that Edmund Bunny censored
these from the bowdlerised version he prepared of the text for the ben-
efit of Protestant readers.48 Drexelius’s Angel Guardian’s Clock included an
account of the two celestial spirits of the rank of archangel that had regu-
larly attended the recently canonised Italian saint Francesca Romana in
garments of white, ‘partly inclining to the coulour of the heavens, their
armes ... placed upon their breast in forme of a crosse ... their haire shining
like gold; their countenance most bright and resplendent with a comely
majesty’. It also told the story of the young Jesuit Joannes Carrera, whose
guardian angel became his intimate friend and daily companion, rousing
him from bed each morning in order to say his prayers.49 The favours that
Loyola’s companion Pierre Favre had been vouchsafed by angels, whom he
‘sensiblie perceaved’ to have preserved him ‘from the ambushments of the
heretiks’ as he travelled around Germany, were recounted by Francis de
Sales, while the deliverance of the Oratorian Philip Neri by an angel, who
plucked him from a ditch by the hairs of his head, was another miracle
recorded in Baronius that enjoyed wide circulation.50 Other visions were
reported in letters sent from Rome and Douai, including that of the aged
Capuchin Franciscus de Bergamo, who had been privileged with the assist-
ance of an angel in human shape for eight years before his death each time
he recited the canonical hours. Protestants like John Gee and Joseph Hall
might scoff at the ‘fondly credulous’ papists who soaked up such tales,
but to the faithful they provided compelling evidence that the resurgent
Church of Rome was divinely sanctioned.51
286 Alexandra Walsham

These continental cases of angelic intercession were supplemented by

recent instances witnessed within their own country. Mentioned in the
Jesuit Annual Letters, internal memoranda and missionary memoirs, often
these bear clear traces of clerical embellishment. The story of the venerable
old man who appeared to a servant in a puritan household surrounded by
an aura of brilliant light in 1608 is just one example of how personal expe-
riences were transformed into didactic conversion narratives and invested
with an overtly confessional agenda: the girl remained speechless for three
or four days before speaking at length in praise of the Catholics, to the evi-
dent horror of her master.52 On other occasions, angels were instrumental in
inspiring the wavering to stand fast to the faith and prophesying the pun-
ishment of apostates: James Douglas, the earl of Morton, was admonished
by a vision of angel that if he signed a set of Protestant articles, he would
lose his right hand and perish miserably. He stoically resisted the persua-
sions of his relatives and Calvinist ministers and in commemoration of the
benevolent spirit’s timely visit had an angel depicted on his coat of arms.
Subsequently, however, he gave way to the temptation of high office offered
to him by the king in return for his compliance, only to meet with the des-
perate end foretold by the celestial messenger.53 A case dating from the end
of the seventeenth century, by contrast, underlined the special care these
creatures exercised towards the Jesuits: the curses uttered by the thwarted
suitor of a young lady who entered the order of St Clare at Gravelines against
her confessor resulted in him being flung from a horse into the mud, but he
escaped serious hurt after his guardian angel stepped in to help.54
Other anecdotes incorporated into the Latin manuscript autobiographies
of John Gerard and William Weston illustrated angelic support for beliefs
about death and purgatory fiercely disputed by Protestants. One woman was
warned by mysterious knocks on her door made by an angel to pray for her
husband’s soul, while another was favoured with a vision of celestial spirits
and the blissful sounds of heavenly harmony as she lay dying. After she
departed, a perfect white cross appeared in the midst of her featherbed.55 A
Scottish gentleman who saw a frightful fiend standing by his side as he lay
dying recovered his confidence after a Catholic neighbour told him that his
sins were blotted out by sacramental confession and penance. He described
how St Michael the Archangel and his former confessor, the Jesuit John
Leslie, had appeared and driven the demon away before it whisked his soul
off to hell.56 Such apparition stories were skilfully adapted by the missionary
clergy to teach theological lessons, though the extent to which they were
internalised by ordinary laypeople remains an open question. The form in
which they have come down to us is the end-product of a process by which
they were moulded to fit with clerical priorities and directed into orthodox
channels.
Similar visions were vouchsafed to imprisoned missionaries and recu-
sants suffering desperate persecution and facing up to imminent execution.
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 287

Nicholas Horner, whose gangrenous leg had to be amputated after he was

incarcerated in a foul dungeon for harbouring priests, was said to have told a
devout gentlewoman how his cell had been mysteriously illuminated before
the arrival of an angel sent to comfort him.57 Other martyrs were consoled
and encouraged by angelic guardians: Stephen Rowsham saw ‘a most sweet
and most pleasant light’ and felt three gentle strokes on his right hand dur-
ing his time in gaol and an eye-witness to the death of Robert Ludham in
1588 reported that he, too, had been privileged with an apparition of angels
just before he was tipped off the ladder.58 Echoing ancient biblical and hagi-
ographical motifs, such stories attest to the spontaneous sanctification of
those put to death by the Elizabethan and Stuart state as traitors. Shaped
by the laypeople who recorded, preserved and lovingly recopied them for
posterity, they bolstered the morale of a beleaguered community eager for
evidence that God and the angels were on their side. Anxious to deflect
gratuitous taunts from their enemies, as Anne Dillon has shown, accounts
of the deaths of the English martyrs prepared for public consumption by
an international audience typically excluded details of such supernatural
occurrences. The martyrological material that the clergy helped to circulate
secretly in manuscript, by contrast, was replete with signs and wonders.59
The potential for embarrassment that stories of angels and other miracles
carried with them was counterbalanced by the reassurance and resilience
they could instil in the loyal supporters of an embattled religion and by the
possibility that they might just persuade heretics themselves to embrace a
faith endorsed by startling interventions from heaven.
One other feature of the wider Counter Reformation revival of devotion
to angels deserves our attention, and that is the emergence of St Michael the
Archangel as a symbol of crusading militancy against the forces of heresy.
Michael’s traditional role as the Lord’s chief warrior in the battle against
Satan and pagan infidels made him a natural patron of the confessional
struggle to vanquish Protestantism. Bellarmine and others presented him as
the head and keeper of Christ’s Church and a celestial counterpart to the
Pope on earth. A fresco painted by Domenichino in the treasury of Naples
Cathedral depicted him furiously trampling the heresiarchs Luther and
Calvin underfoot.60 Reflecting the precept that every province and king-
dom was designated a holy angel to protect it, in Bavaria Wilhelm the Pious
adopted the archangel as the mascot of his campaign to revitalise Catholicism
in the region during the 1580s and 90s. He built a magnificent church in
Munich dedicated to him and commissioned art, sculpture and plays depict-
ing him in battle with Lucifer.61 Although there was little scope for such new
foundations or representations in England, it is striking that in 1676 Clement
X issued a new plenary indulgence for those who made a pilgrimage to the
ruined chapel of St Michael on top of a mountain near Abergavenny in Wales
and prayed fervently for ‘the extirpation of heresies’.62 It is also telling that
when the Jesuit mission in the district of Yorkshire was formally instituted
288 Alexandra Walsham

into a college, it flew under the banner of the same archangel.63 Even more
than their brethren abroad, English Catholics had special need of the protec-
tion of the prince of all angels in heaven. Champion of the chosen people of
God, Israel, in the book of Daniel, it is hardly surprising that they looked to
him as the potential saviour of their own nation.
A final story reported in the Jesuit annual letter for 1605 exemplifies the
sense of optimism and hope in the midst of adversity that the apparition
of angels could serve to focus and crystallise in this society. It told how the
Jesuit Julius Mancinelli was implored by an English father to beg God ‘to
intimate to him the future state of the Church in England, and the final
results of the persecution then raging’. After many entreaties, he promised
to implore the Lord for a revelation. Following days of prayer, fasting and
other bodily austerities, his guardian angel appeared to him and revealed to
him a terrifying, but ultimately glorious, vision:

He beheld regions laid waste by all kinds of tempests, and so desolated

by thunder, lightning, rain, hail, hurricanes, and dreadful earthquakes,
that their wretched inhabitants knew not whither to flee for safety; even
the caverns of the earth afforded them no refuge. Being thus beyond all
human help, the Father saw them at length with one accord prostrate
and crying to God for mercy; he next heard this voice from Heaven: “It
is not so much your sins as the enormities of your kings and rulers that
have brought you to this condition, and subjected you to such severe
punishments. But now know ye that I will deal with you in mercy, and
raise your Church to a dignity it has never heretofore attained. You shall
win over the Turks and heretics under My protection, and with mani-
fest prodigies from Heaven such triumphs and victories that will aston-
ish the rest of Europe. Lastly, the central sanctuary of the world, which
I first established in Jerusalem, and which at present hallows the city
of Rome, shall be placed in your midst, so that all surrounding nations
shall congratulate you on your happiness. These special blessings shall
be bestowed upon you for the sake of the eminent merits of the saints of
this kingdom, and the hardships and sufferings they have undergone for
My sake”.64

Tested and tried in the crucible of fire for several generations, soon England
would be restored to the true faith and exalted to a position of dominance.
She would fulfil her apocalyptic destiny to lead the Catholic world into its
next triumphant era of history.
Angels, then, have provided a lens through which to examine some of the
roots and ramifications of the Catholic Reformation in Protestant England.
A longstanding feature of traditional piety, on the eve of the Henrician
schism devotion to them was developing in innovative directions. The
growing cult of guardian angels reflected a trend towards introspective
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 289

and quasi-mystical devotion that suggests English Catholicism was already

undergoing renewal from within. But they were also implicated in strands
of religious belief and practice that humanists and reformers regarded as
unseemly and dubious, bordering on magic and conducive to superstition.
Both elements in this equation were to become critical in the course of sub-
sequent decades. Protestantism’s acknowledgment of many tenets of medi-
eval angelology prevented angels from becoming a major flashpoint in the
theological disputes that rocked the mid-sixteenth century. Ubiquitous in
the pages of Scripture, they could not be peremptorily ejected into the wil-
derness of invented ‘popish’ traditions. The godly, no less than their recu-
sant neighbours, often displayed a deep attachment to them. Nevertheless,
angels were both caught up in, and contributed to, the process by which
mutually antagonistic confessional cultures emerged. Reverence for them
was not in itself a distinguishing token of loyalty to Rome; it was, rather,
the flavour and texture of their veneration that facilitated its evolution
into a symbol of commitment to it.65 The presence of angels in post-
Reformation Catholic sources alerts us to the diffusion of Tridentine and
especially Jesuit spirituality in the mission field of England. It also illumi-
nates the various ways in which visions of them were harnessed to voice
opposition to the official religion, to stiffen the resistance and strengthen
the resolve of laypeople and to convince a new generation that Rome was
the single true Church. Yet, the enthusiasm of the clergy for unveiling the
workings of angels in the world was always tempered by a degree of trepida-
tion about the instability and scandal that their appearances might bring
to their religion. Apparitions of them were manifestations of an unruly
spiritual enthusiasm, which their counterparts on the Continent were
treating with increasing scepticism and branding as forms of diabolism.
The allegations of forgery and fraudulence to which such ecstatic experi-
ences had exposed Catholicism in the 1530s and 40s periodically resur-
faced, threatening its integrity and transforming it into a subject for farce
and an excuse for corrosive Protestant laughter. Angels cast light on the
ingenuity and vitality of the Counter Reformation in England, but they
also reveal its inner vulnerabilities and Achilles’ heel. Supernatural inter-
ventions by these celestial creatures were powerful weapons, but they also
had the potential to unleash unpredictable forces and to backfire badly
against those who deployed them without proper caution.

Notes
*In memory of Trevor Johnson (d. 25 June 2007).
1. Joseph Hall, The Great Mystery of Godliness ... Also, the Invisible World (London,
1652), 55–56.
2. See David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York and Oxford,
1998) and the extracts from various writers in Steven Chase, ed., Angelic Spirituality:
290 Alexandra Walsham

Medieval Perspectives on the Ways of Angels (New York, 2002). For a brief over-
view of the medieval background, see Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham,
‘Migrations of Angels in the Early Modern World’, in idem, eds, Angels in the Early
Modern World (Cambridge, 2006), 1–40 at 3–13.
3. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William
Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton, 1993), 2: 201–11; Caesarius of Heisterbach,
The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. H. von Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland (London,
1929); Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies, ed. Theodore Erbe, Early English
Text Society, extra series 96 (1905).
4. Keck, Angels and Angelology, ch. 8 and pp. 201–03. On St Michael, see David Hugh
Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford, 1992 edn), 338–39; R. F. Johnson,
Saint Michael the Archangel in Medieval English Legend (Woodbridge, 2005).
5. R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215 – c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995),
171; Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 413.
6. Swanson, Religion and Devotion, 171–72; Jean Gerson, Collatis de angelis, in Opera,
pars IV (Paris, 1960); Acta Sanctorum September VIII (Antwerp, 1762), 7–8; Farmer,
Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 219.
7. Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-
Century England: An Hours of the Guardian Angel Presented to Queen Elizabeth
Woodville’, in Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor, eds, Women and the Book:
Assessing the Visual Evidence (London and Toronto, 1996), 230–65. For Colet, see
ibid., p. 258 n. 30. For the cult of the Holy Name of Jesus, see Susan Wabuda,
Preaching During the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2002), ch. 4.
8. Keck, Angels and Angelology, 196–201. For angels in English mystical writings,
see R. N. Swanson, ed., Catholic England: Faith, Religion and Observance before the
Reformation (Manchester, 1993), section IV, esp. 99, 138, 146–47.
9. John Shinners, ed., Medieval Popular Religion 1000–1500 (Peterborough, Ontario,
1997), 56–60. See also Dyan Elliott, ‘Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment
of Spirits, and Joan of Arc’, American Historical Review, 107 (2002): 26–54.
10. Keck, Angels and Angelology, 189–96; Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and
Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY and London, 2003).
11. Christopher Harper-Bill, ed., The Register of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury
1486–1500, vol. 3: Norwich Sede Vacante, 1499, Canterbury and York Society
(Woodbridge, 2000), 215–16.
12. For the earlier medieval attempts to define and police the boundary between
acceptable and unacceptable angel invocation, see Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of
Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1991), 157–72; Bernadette Filotas, Pagan
Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature
(Toronto, 2005), 99–105. See also Sophie Page’s essay in this volume.
13. Shinners, ed., Medieval Popular Religion, 337–38 and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of
the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven and London,
1992), 71–74, and ch. 8, esp. pp. 269–71; M. J. Swanton, ‘A Fifteenth- Century
Cabalistic Memorandum Formerly in Morgan MS 775’, Harvard Theological Review,
76 (1983): 259–61. The will of John Botewright, rector of Swaffham, Norfolk,
and master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (d. 1474) also indicates his
devotion to a named guardian angel (Swanton, ‘Fifteenth-Century Cabalistic
Memorandum’, p. 260).
14. Craig R. Thompson, ed., The Colloquies of Erasmus (Chicago and London, 1965),
289; Thomas More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, in The Complete Works of St
Thomas More, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler, G. Marc’hadour and R. C. Marius (New
Haven and London, 1981), vol. 6, pt 97.
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 291

15. Thomas Wright, ed., Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of the
Monasteries, Camden Society, 1st series, 26 (London, 1843), 14–16. See Ethan H.
Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge, 2003), ch. 2.
16. J. S. Brewer et al, eds, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry
VIII, 1509–47, 21 vols (1862–1932), vol. 13, pt 2, p. 23.
17. On this theme, see Peter Marshall, ‘Forgery and Miracles in the Reign of Henry
VIII’, Past and Present, 178 (2003): 39–73.
18. Thomas Cranmer, A Confutation of Unwritten Verities, in John Edmund Cox, ed.,
Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury,
Martyr, 1556 (Cambridge, 1846), 63–67.
19. Wright, ed., Three Chapters of Letters, 225–26.
20. For Protestant attitudes to angels, see the survey in Marshall and Walsham,
‘Migrations of Angels’, 13–21 and Philip M. Soergel, ‘Luther on the Angels’, in
ibid., 64–82. For Calvin, see Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. H. Beveridge,
2 vols. in 1 (Grand Rapids, MI, 1989), 144–50, and Susan E. Schreiner, The Theater
of his Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin (Grand
Rapids, MI, 1991), ch. 2. Quotation from Robert Dingley, The Deputation of Angels,
or the Angell- Guardian (London, 1654), 100, and see 147–55. See Peter Marshall’s
chapter, following, for the complexity and shifting character of Protestant
thought on this topic.
21. See, for example, William Tyndale, Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of
the Holy Scriptures, Together with The Practice of Prelates, ed. Henry Walter, Parker
Society (Cambridge, 1849), 169–70; The Decades of Henry Bullinger, Minister of
the Church of Zurich, trans. H. I., 4 vols, Parker Society (Cambridge, 1849–52),
344–48; Andreas Gerardus, The True Tryall and Examination of a Mans own Selfe,
trans. Thomas Newton (London, 1587 edn), 35–37, quotation at 36. See also the
comprehensive discussion of points of difference in Andrew Willet, Synopsis
Papismi (London, 1614), 385–97.
22. See my ‘Invisible Helpers: Angelic Intervention in Post-Reformation England’,
Past & Present, 208 (2010), 77–130. In the second half of the seventeenth cen-
tury, some Protestants relaxed their insistence on the cessation of angelic appari-
tions.
23. The History of the Church of Englande. Compiled by Venerable Bede, trans. Thomas
Stapleton (Antwerp, 1565), 5 and 4–12.
24. H. J. Schroeder, ed., The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford,
IL, 1978), p. 215. For increasingly willingness to endorse and exploit miracles
and the supernatural, see my ‘Miracles and the Counter Reformation Mission to
England’, Historical Journal, 46 (2003): 779–815 and Philip M. Soergel, Wondrous
in his Saints: Counter Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley, 1993). For these
trends in relation to angels, see Marshall and Walsham, ‘Migrations of Angels’,
21–31.
25. On the feast, see Acta Sanctorum Septembris VIII (1762), 7–8; for confraternities,
see Louis Châtellier, The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the
Formation of a New Society, trans. J. Birrell (Cambridge and Paris, 1987), 18, 264.
26. Francisco Suárez, Summa Theologiae de rerum omnium creatore, II De angelis (Lyon,
1620); Robert Bellarmine, Spiritual Writings, trans. and ed. J. P. Donnelly and R.
J. Teske (Mahwah, NJ, 1989), 143–53.
27. Trevor Johnson, ‘Guardian Angels and the Society of Jesus’, in Marshall and
Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early Modern World, 191–213; John O’Malley, The First
Jesuits (Cambridge, MA and London, 1993), 42–43. For Ignatius’s directions on
the discernment of spirits, see The Text of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius
292 Alexandra Walsham

(London, 1913 edn), 111–14. For angels as models of the monastic and mendicant
life, see Keck, Angels and Angelology, ch. 6 and Conrad Leyser, ‘Angels, Monks,
and Demons in the Early Medieval West’, in Richard Gameson and Henrietta
Leyser, eds, Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2001), 9–22.
28. Gaspar Loarte, The Exercise of a Christian Life, trans. I. S. [Stephen Brinkley]
([London, 1579]), ff. 12r, 218v, 221v. The Spanish Dominican Luis de Granada
composed many similar prayers and thanksgivings to angels, many of which
were incorporated in popular and profitable Protestant editions despite reformed
repudiation of direct invocations of them: see, e.g., A Paradise of Prayers Containing
the Purity of Devotion and Meditation [trans. Thomas Lodge?] (London, 1614), 4,
17–19 and passim.
29. Francis de Sales, An Introduction to a Devoute Life, trans. Iohn Yaxley ([St Omer],
2nd edn, 1617 [1622]), 81, 83, 158.
30. Robert Persons, The Warn-word to Sir Francis Hastinges Wast-Word (1602), f. 37v.
31. [Thomas Worthington], An Anker of Christian Doctrine (Douai, 1622 edn), 417–22
at 418.
32. John Salkeld, A Treatise of Angels (London, 1613); see Marshall’s discussion, pp.
296–97 below.
33. The Key of Paradise Opening the Gate to Eternal Salvation, ed. John Wilson (St Omer,
1675 edn), 245–54. This was first inserted in the 1623 edn. The Primer More Ample,
and in a New Order (Rouen, 1684 edn), 225–29.
34. Henry Foley, ed., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 vols in
8 (London, 1877–83), vol. 7, pt 2, 1228–29. (The final volume is split into two
parts, with each bound separately.)
35. [Jeremias Drexelius], The Angel Guardian’s Clock (Rouen, [1630]), quotations at
7–8. The identification of the translator and dedicatee are made in J. M. Blom,
‘The Adventures of an Angel- Guardian in Seventeenth- Century England’,
Recusant History, 20 (1990): 48–57.
36. Christina Kenworthy-Browne, ed. Mary Ward (1585–1645): A Brief Relation ... with
Autobiographical Fragments and a Selection of Letters, Catholic Record Society 81
(Woodbridge, 2008), 98–99.
37. Johnson, ‘Guardian Angels and the Society of Jesus’, 211. As Peter Marshall
shows in his essay, however, Calvin himself was ambivalent on the subject and
other Protestants also found ways of accommodating the concept of the guard-
ian angel.
38. British Library copy, shelfmark 4408.a.57.
39. John Prideaux, The Patronage of Angels. A Sermon Preached at Court (Oxford, 1636),
23.
40. For an overview, see R. Po- Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770
(Cambridge, 1998), ch. 9. For Spain, see Mary Elizabeth Perry, ‘Beatas and the
Inquisition’, in Stephen Haliczer, ed., Inquisition and Society in Early Modern
Europe (Totowa, 1987), 147–68; Andrew W. Keitt, Inventing the Sacred: Imposture,
Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain (Leiden,
2005), esp. ch. 3. For Cecilia Ferrazi, see Anne Jacobson Schutte, ed., Autobiography
of an Aspiring Saint (Chicago, 1996), and idem, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness,
Inquisition and Gender in the Republic of Venice 1618–1750 (Baltimore, MD, 2001),
13–15, and 51–52, 67, 89–90, 162, 193–94 for other examples. For Christina della
Rovere, see Ottavia Niccoli, ‘The End of Prophecy’, Journal of Modern History,
61 (1989): 667–82, at 680 and 682. For France, see Moshe Sluhovsky, ‘A Divine
Apparition or Demonic Possession? Female Agency and Church Authority in
 Catholic Reformation and the Cult of Angels 293

Demonic Possession in Sixteenth- Century France’, Sixteenth Century Journal,

27 (1996): 1039–55; M. Sluhovsky, Believe not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism,
and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago and London, 2007); Sarah
Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France (London, 2004).
Such difficulties find a striking parallel within the Protestant world: see my
‘Invisible Helpers’.
41. See Claire Walker, Gender and Politics in English Convents in France and the Low
Countries (Basingstoke, 2002), ch. 5, esp. 147–63. Thomas Hunter, An English
Carmelite: The Life of Catharine Burton, Mother Mary Xaveria of the Angels, of the
English Teresian Convent at Antwerp, ed. H. J. C. (London, 1876), 53–56, 66, 116,
119–36, and xiii; Tobie Mathew, The Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull, ed. David
Knowles (London, 1931), ch. 5, 57–69.
42. Barnaby Rich, The True Report of a Late Practise Enterprised by a Papist, with a Young
Maiden in Wales (London, 1582), sigs. D1r, C1v, D1v–2r and passim. For priestly
endorsement of visions as marks of the true church, see Richard Bristow, A Briefe
Treatise of Divers Plaine and Sure Waies to Finde out the Truth (Antwerp, 1599 edn.;
first publ. 1574), ff. 32v–39v; Thomas Hill, A Quartron of Reasons of Catholike
Religion (Antwerp, 1600), 37–39.
43. John Gee, The Foot out of the Snare (1624), ed. T. H. B. M. Harmsen (Nijmegen,
1992), 131–32, 133; Samuel Harsnett, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures
(London, 1603), 273–76.
44. John Gee, New Shreds of the Old Snare (London, 1624), 1, 16–17, 23 and passim.
45. James Wadsworth, The English Spanish Pilgrime (London, 1629), 20–21.
46. A True Relation from Germany, of a Protestant Shepherd’s Killing a Counterfeit Devil
(London, 1676), 2.
47. For more on visions, see Walsham, ‘Miracles and the Counter Reformation
Mission’, 805–8.
48. Robert Persons, A Christian Directorie Guiding Men to their Salvation (Rouen, 1585),
f. 14v and pp. 433–36. See also Robert McNulty, ‘The Protestant Version of Robert
Parsons’ The First Book of Christian Exercise’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 22
(1959): 271–300 at 298.
49. Drexelius, Angel Guardian’s Clock, 237, 284. On Francesca Romana, see Lyndal
Roper and Guy Boanas, ‘Feminine Piety in Fifteenth- Century Rome’, in Jim
Obelkevich, Lyndal Roper and Raphael Samuel, eds, Disciplines of Faith: Studies in
Religion, Politics and Patriarchy (London, 1987), 177–93.
50. Francis de Sales, Introduction, 160, as recorded in his Mémorial. For Neri, see Gee,
Foot out of the Snare, ed. Harmsen, 137.
51. Hall, Great Mystery of Godliness, 54.
52. Foley, ed., Records of the English Province, vol. 7, pt 2, p. 992.
53. William Forbes-Leith, ed., Narratives of Scottish Catholics under Mary Stuart and
James VI (Edinburgh, 1885), 356–58.
54. Foley, ed., Records of the English Province, vol. 7, pt 2, p. 1229.
55. John Gerard, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, ed. Philip Caraman (London,
1951), 179; William Weston, The Autobiography of an Elizabethan, ed. Philip
Caraman (London, 1955), 53, 55.
56. William Forbes-Leith, ed., Memoirs of Scottish Catholics during the XVI and XVIIth
Centuries, 2 vols (London, 1909), 1: 169.
57. Different reports of this episode can be found in Philip Caraman, ed., The
Other Face: Catholic Life under Elizabeth I (London, 1960), 243–44 (from Grene’s
Collectanea), 247–48 (Robert Southwell to Claude Aquaviva, 8 March 1590);
294 Alexandra Walsham

Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. J. H. Pollen (London,

1924), 161.
58. Challoner, Memoirs, 124, 131. On Rowsham, see also Foley, ed., Records of the
English Province, 4: 340.
59. Anne Dillon, The Construction of Martyrdom in the English Catholic Community,
1535–1603 (Aldershot, 2002), ch. 2. Cf. the similarly ambivalent attitude of the
Catholic priesthood to stories of the apparition of ghosts: Peter Marshall, Beliefs
and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2002), 242–45.
60. Bellarmine, Spiritual Writings, 152. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s
House Divided 1490–1700 (London, 2003), 640 and plate 22.
61. Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic
Reformation in Germany (Princeton and Oxford, 2002), 58–59, 68–75, 92–94. John
Patrick, Reflexions upon the Devotions of the Roman Church (London, 1674), 427,
mentions the dedication of churches to St Michael as being ‘now a common
practice’. On angels as protectors of countries and kingdoms, see Worthington,
Anker, 418.
62. M. R. Lewis, ‘The Pilgrimage to St Michael’s Mount: Catholic Continuity in
Wales’, Journal of Welsh Ecclesiastical History, 8 (1991): 51–54.
63. Foley, ed., Records of the English Province, vol. 3, 135–67.
64. Foley, ed., Records of the English Province, vol. 7, pt 2, pp. 992–33.
65. The Rosary and associated devotions linked with the Virgin Mary were much
clearer badges of Catholic commitment: see Anne Dillon, ‘Praying by Number:
The Confraternity of the Rosary and the English Catholic Community, c. 1580–
1700’, History, 88 (2003): 451–71.
13
The Guardian Angel in
Protestant England
Peter Marshall

The conversation with angels of this chapter is a collective one: an extended

dialogue between the culture of English Protestantism and one of the key-
note ideas of medieval angelology, a conversation that was pursued sporadi-
cally, but sometimes vigorously, over the century and a half following the
accession of Elizabeth I. The suggestion that every Christian was watched
over by an individual guardian angel was a patristic idea and one that had
become firmly rooted in both scholastic teaching and popular devotion of
the high and later Middle Ages. From a Protestant perspective, its realisation
epitomised many of the worst aspects of pre-Reformation religion. In the
first place, guardian angels were the focus of iconography and the object
of votive masses; they were the recipients of a veneration that the reform-
ers insisted could never be given to any created being. Like the saints, they
were the gracious receivers of petition: prayers addressed to the guardian
angel abound in late medieval primers and manuscript collections.1 Such
invocation was anathema to Protestants: ‘we must call neither upon Angel,
nor yet upon Saint, but only and solely upon God’ was the stern admoni-
tion of the Elizabethan homily on prayer.2 Medieval guardian angels were
not simply the distant object of veneration: they communicated with the
humans in their charge, and intervened in many aspects of their daily
lives. Occasionally, this could be through the direct agency of a vision, but
more commonly it was by an unseen influence on the conscience and the
will. Guardian angels could, for example, shape the decisions that averted
personal folly or disaster, and more broadly they stepped in to help men
and women choose good over evil.3 In doing so, they did not override free
will, but they did draw humans towards co- operation with the divine offer
of grace – something that looked like a prop of that ‘works righteousness’
whose inversion was the preferred theological definition of the Reformation
itself. The prominent role allotted by late medieval texts to the guardian
angel at the deathbed underlined the point. To Catholics, this was a place
where salvation could be won or lost through the exercise of the will, but to
Protestants it was a site for the validation of a divine decree of election.4

295
296 Peter Marshall

A very great deal of the medieval understanding of angels in general was

tarnished and tainted to the Protestant mind. But Protestants could hardly
do without them. As one seventeenth- century English reformer pointed out,
‘above 260 times are Angels mentioned in Scripture’.5 Thanks to the work
of Deborah Harkness, Joad Raymond, Laura Sangha, Alex Walsham and
others, we have become aware that ‘Protestant angelology’ is very far from
being a contradiction in terms.6 The protective ministry of angels resonated
in the reformed imagination. But Protestant theologians had few qualms
about ditching whatever seemed to them to be unscriptural accretions. The
nine-fold angelic hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius, for example, an idea foun-
dational to much medieval angelology, received extremely short shrift in
nearly all Protestant surveys.7
What then of the Christian’s guardian angel – was this a ‘popish opinion’
to be drummed out of the heads of the people, an invitation to idolatry? Or
was it a notion that could be shown to be compatible with scripture, and
with Reformed theodicy and soteriology? In this chapter, I intend to track
some long-term responses to those questions through a range of vernacular
Protestant texts. It will be a somewhat circuitous journey, but one that I
hope will take us to some interesting places and offer some fresh perspec-
tives on patterns of religious and intellectual change.
Reformation begins with Martin Luther, and Luther, in so many ways
a man of the late Middle Ages, was rather keen on guardian angels.8 In
Elizabethan England, however, the theological lodestar was not Luther, but
Jean Calvin, and any survey of the place of the guardian angel in English
Protestant thought would do well to start by considering what Calvin had
to say about the matter. In his discussion of the issue in the Institutes,
Calvin began from a position of studied scepticism: ‘whether or not each
believer has a single angel assigned to him for his defence, I dare not posi-
tively affirm’. Two passages from the New Testament had traditionally been
seen as providing support for the doctrine: Christ’s commendation of the
children, whose ‘angels do always behold the face of my Father’ (Matthew
18:10), and the disciples’ mistaking the escaped Peter for ‘his angel’ (Acts
12:15). But, Calvin suggested, the former might be read to imply a merely
collective guardianship, and the latter could refer to ‘any one of the angels
to whom the Lord might have given the charge of Peter at that particular
time, without implying that he was to be his perpetual guardian’. There
were, moreover, several texts showing that ‘each of us is cared for, not by
one angel merely, but that all with one consent watch for our safety’. The
angels in general rejoice for ‘one sinner that repenteth’ (Luke 15:7), and
angels (plural) had carried the soul of Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham
(Luke 16:22). Without closing the question down completely, Calvin con-
cluded that those ‘who limit the care which God takes of each of us to a
single angel, do great injury to themselves and to all the members of the
Church’.9
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 297

In the main, Elizabethan theologians borrowed this tone of agnostic aver-

sion; their resolve was stiffened by the fact that the marginal annotations to
the Catholic Rheims New Testament of 1582 resolutely upheld the doctrine
of angelic guardianship. In their gloss on Matthew 18:10, the ‘Rheimists’
noted how it was ‘a greate dignitie and a marvelous benefite that every
man hath from his Nativitie an Angel for his custodie and Patronage ... and
the thing so plaine that Calvin dare not deny it, and yet he will needes
doubt of it’. In one of several Protestant critiques of the Catholic transla-
tion, William Fulke protested that Calvin had no doubts about the protec-
tion of God’s angels, but that there was nonetheless no place of scripture
to prove that ‘every one hath a severall Angell’.10 The Presbyterian activist
Thomas Cartwright was considerably more forthright, asserting that Calvin
had rejected the notion, and that this passage of scripture ‘hath no one
word, which tyeth the Angelicall attendance upon the faithful to one onely
Angell’. Dismissively, Cartwright described the doctrine as one that ‘coming
first from Plato, afterward received some strength of the testimony of the
Fathers’.11
Angelic guardianship was yet more explicitly identified as a papist error in
the puritan controversialist Andrew Willet’s Synopsis Papismi (1592), a mas-
sive compendium of anti-popish argument. Willet considered in turn three
passages of scripture regularly deployed by the papists: Jacob’s reference to
‘the Angell that hath kept mee from my youth’ in Genesis 48:16; the mistak-
ing of Peter for ‘his Angel’ in Acts 12:15; and the children’s angels of Matt.
18:10. Jacob’s angel was, in fact, Christ himself, and ‘other proper Angell
Iacob had none’. The angels of the children of God exercised a collective,
rather than a particular, commission, and if Peter was delivered from prison
by one angel, ‘it followeth not, that therefore he was his proper Angell’.
Like Calvin, Willett regarded Luke 16:22, the parable of the rich man and
Lazarus, as a telling proof text against angelic guardianship. Lazarus was
carried by angels, not one angel, into the bosom of Abraham. Surely, Willet
argued, ‘if he had one Angel appointed to be the president of his life from
his nativitie, it had beene also parte of that Angelles charge, to have con-
veyed his soule into Heaven’?12 The argument was a shrewd one, not least
because much pre-Reformation devotion to the guardian angel was predi-
cated upon a central role in the negotiation of death, and prayers directed to
the ‘proper angel’ often explicitly beseeched him to lead one’s departed soul
to paradise.13 The fact that it was not ‘one onelie angel’ that transported the
soul of Lazarus was similarly noted by the lay anti-papal writer, and notable
sceptic, Reginald Scot. Scot’s main concern was to ridicule reports of angelic
apparitions, an absurdity that the belief in guardian spirits might poten-
tially feed. Scot could find ‘no reason in nature, nor authoritie in scripture’
for the doctrine, though he was compelled to admit that ‘it hath beene long,
and continueth yet a constant opinion, not onelie among the papists, but
among others also’.14
298 Peter Marshall

In fact, the opinion that God ‘hath appointed and given unto every one
his Angell, which may protect and direct him, even from his mothers womb’
was aired in a Protestant work first published just before Scot’s Discoverie: a
translation of a sermon by the Saxon reformer Urbanus Rhegius.15 Rhegius
had died in 1541, so his might already seem the voice of a past generation,
as well as of a Lutheran religiosity that carried a limited charge with the
opinion-makers of the Elizabethan Church. Yet, even within the contem-
porary Reformed camp, there was an important exception to the approach
indicated by Calvin. The Heidelberg reformer Girolamo Zanchi posed and
answered in the affirmative the question of ‘Whether a created angel has
been appointed to every man’.16 An awareness of divided opinion may
have prompted the highly circumspect approach we can discern in some
quarters. Remarkably, Elizabethan England’s leading Calvinist theologian,
William Perkins, managed to include an extended discussion of angelic pro-
tection in his A Golden Chaine of 1600, without addressing at all the ques-
tion of whether when angels ‘abase themselves to become guardians and
keepers unto sinful men’ they did so on the basis of individual allocation.17
Here Perkins might have been taking his cue from the Reformed continen-
tal theologian who, alongside Calvin, enjoyed the greatest prestige in the
Elizabethan Church. The Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger’s collection of
sermons known as the Decades contained a homily on ‘the holy angels of
God’ and their ministrations towards mankind. Yet, despite expounding
one of the key texts for individual guardianship (Acts 12), Bullinger entirely
evaded the issue itself.18
There was thus a broad functional consensus among Elizabethan theolo-
gians that belief in guardian angels was, at best, a very uncertain opinion;
at worst, a toxic relic of popery. This, however, was to be rudely disrupted
in the following reign with the publication in 1613 of the first full-length
English Protestant angelology. The title page of John Salkeld’s A Treatise of
Angels, dedicated to James I, announced its unusual provenance. The author
was ‘lately fellow of the Iesuites Colledges in the Universities of Conimbra,
Corduba, and Complutum. Assistant in studies to the famous Iesuites Francis
Suarius, and Michael Vasquez’. Salkeld had fully conformed to the Church
of England after his capture on the English mission the previous year. But
the blazoning of this exotic pedigree, and in particular the linking of his
name with the leading Counter-Reformation theologian and renowned
angelologist Francisco Suárez, carried the implicit message that the proper
study of angels was a Catholic specialism, and Salkeld’s own text involved
much discussion of the kind of scholastic subtleties that Protestants usually
preferred to leave well alone. With respect to guardian angels, Salkeld began
his discussion echoing the words of Calvin: ‘whether every man hath his
peculiar Angell, I dare not certainely affirme’. But the fact that he devoted
the longest section of his treatise, nearly thirty pages of text, to amassing
support for the doctrine from the Greek and Latin Fathers leaves little doubt
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 299

about his own position. The provision of guardian angels seemed to Salkeld
a natural expression of ‘the bounty and love of God towards man’, and he
did not hesitate to point out that that ‘many, even Protestants, thinke the
affirmative part to be the truth’. There was little effort on Salkeld’s part to
distinguish Protestant from papist approaches to the topic. He observed that
‘in the Church of Rome this is ordinarily accounted as a thing so clearly
deduced on the holy Scripture, as who should deny that every man hath his
particular Angell, keeper, and guard, should be censured’, and that among
Protestants, ‘it is not thought a matter of such moment and certaintie’. But
there was no definite declaration that the latter had the right of it.19
Informed readers could hardly have been unaware that at the time Salkeld
was writing, the Church of Rome was vigorously promoting the cult of the
guardian angel. In 1608, Paul V instituted a universal feast and office dedi-
cated to the ‘Holy Guardian Angels’. The following half century witnessed
a renewed flowering of the devotion across the Catholic world, with wide-
spread iconographic representation, numerous confraternity dedications
and a plethora of treatises on guardian angels emerging from counter-
reforming, especially Jesuit, pens.20 One of these, the Horologium Auxiliaris
Tutelaris Angeli (1622) of Jeremias Drexel, was published in an English
Catholic translation at Rouen in 1630.21 In such a context, any expres-
sions of enthusiasm for guardian angels might give pause for thought, and
indeed did sometimes seem to emanate from suspicious-looking quarters.
In 1616, for example, their importance was asserted in a printed sermon by
a chaplain of the Catholic queen, Anne of Denmark. Godfrey Goodman
bemoaned that ‘we scarce heare any mention of the good Angels, of our
guardian Angels ... If any extraordinary good doe befall us, we will rather
choake it up with unthankfulnesse, or attribute it to some secret and hidden
cause in nature’. Although promoted to the bishopric of Gloucester in 1625,
rumours of Goodman’s conversion to Catholicism were circulating in the
1630s and were eventually confirmed by his will of 1656.22
Still more of a splash was created by another cleric on the ceremonial-
ist wing of the Jacobean Church. Guardian angels featured prominently
in two works of 1624 by the pugnacious Arminian Richard Montagu: his
notorious New Gagg for an Old Goose (which argued that Rome was a true,
though flawed, Church) and his treatise on the invocation of saints. The
latter was in part composed to refute claims being made by the Catholic-
turned-Anglican-turned- Catholic again, Marcus Antonius de Dominis, that
he had heard Montagu preach before the king that there was no reason why
a man might not turn to his guardian angel and say, ‘Holy Angell keeper,
Pray for me’. But Montagu went on to argue that the sentiment itself was
not an absurd one, and in no way validated Romanist invocation of angels
and saints. The latter was ridiculous because saints and angels simply could
not hear the prayers of people on earth. But ‘the case of Angell Guardians
is farre different, being ever in procinctu, nigh at hand unto us, continually
300 Peter Marshall

and never abandoning us all our dayes’. There could therefore be no more
impiety in turning to say, ‘sancte Angele custos ora pro me’, than in ask-
ing one’s friend or brother to do the same.23 Similar assertions were made
in the New Gagg, where Montagu provocatively took as his starting point,
not Calvin’s judgement, but that of the Jesuit author Vasquez: ‘wee cannot
deny without very great rashnes, that every man hath his Angell-keeper’.
Montagu himself declared assent to the notion of angel-keepers, adding
somewhat disingenuously, ‘as most doo, as the Church of England doth’.24
To Montagu’s critics – and they were many – this seemed like the thin
end of a wedge, an invitation to resurrect full-scale veneration of saints and
angels in the Church of England. Indeed, charges were later brought against
a number of minor Laudian clergy that they had defended praying to saints
and angels in the 1630s.25 A collective denunciation of Montagu in 1629 by
some self-styled ‘orthodox ministers of the Church of England’ accused him
of promoting the false notion that it was no impiety to believe ‘that some
saints have a peculiar patronage, custody, protection and power, as angells
also have over certain persons and countries by especiall deputation’.26
It would appear, then, that by the early Stuart period, guardian angels had
opened themselves to charges of guilt by association with the agenda of the
Arminian faction within the Church. It is not surprising, therefore, to find
some Jacobean Calvinists continuing to express the reserve or hostility char-
acteristic of earlier Elizabethan discussions. Preaching in Cambridge, the
puritan minister Thomas Taylor insisted that God ‘hath many good Angels
to pitch about a godly man’, and denied that ‘the scripture speake[th] of one
speciall Angel, assigned to every speciall man’.27
The issue was further addressed in a series of sermons published in 1616
by the London rector Thomas Adams, a conformist Calvinist and dedicated
anti-papal controversialist. Adams mocked the Romanists for allotting ‘a
particular tutelar Angel to every Colledge and Corporation: yea to the gen-
eration of flies, fleas and ants’. Yet, Adams could not but admit that whether
every man had a particular angel for his guardian was ‘a question much
disputed’, the case in favour having been made by many of the fathers, most
of the schoolmen, ‘and some Protestant Divines’. Adams announced that
‘I will not dispute it, yet I must doubt it; because I see no cleare ground in
the Scriptures to prove it’. Like earlier authors, he expounded the Matthean
text to mean that ‘all the Angels take care of all God’s little ones’. The cog-
nate passage in Acts usually proved trickier for opponents of the doctrine,
but Adams took a no-nonsense approach to it: ‘I answere that the Disciples
amazed at the strange report, spake they knew not what’. Rather in contra-
diction to this, he went on to concede that they may have spoken ‘after the
common opinion of men in that age’. But his readers were to reflect that ‘all
are not Christian truths, that true Christians have spoken’.28
A similar note of cool circumspection was adopted in a sermon by the
royal chaplain and renowned Calvinist theologian John Prideaux, who
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 301

noted that many of the proofs brought forward in support of the doctrine
were ‘exceeding wavering’. Prideaux’s view was that ‘the Romanists dare say
anything that may backe their worshipping of Angels, and make way for
their Invocation of Saints’. Paul V’s recent proclamation of a feast in honour
of the Guardian Angel was an object lesson. Prideaux did not condemn
the existence of guardian angels outright, aware that Zanchi had thought
it agreeable to scripture. He speculated, however, that if there were such
protectors, they might operate in the manner of royal ambassadors and ‘be
removed from one negotiation to another’ rather than ‘keepe alwaies to the
same charge’. Ultimately, Prideaux would go no further than Calvin: ‘I dare
affirme nothing, for certainty’.29
In the end, however, positions with regard to guardian angels did not
neatly arrange themselves along confessional lines, or simply mirror the
main ideological fractures underway within the early Stuart Church. In the
middle decades of the seventeenth century, we can identify a strain of posi-
tive enthusiasm for the doctrine, not in crypto- Catholic, but within godly
Calvinist circles, and a growing number of texts directly addressing them-
selves to the theme. The first of these was a 1630 sermon on ‘the Angell
Guardian’, published by the Oxford anti-Laudian cleric John Bayly.30 Bayly
was the son of a famous father, the bishop of Bangor and best-selling devo-
tional writer, Lewis Bayly. A dedicatory epistle to the bishop called on ‘the
Angell of God which hath hitherto protected your Lordship from many
most knowne and imminent dangers, [to] tarry round about you’. Tackling
the core question of ‘whether there be one Angell Guardian only or more
assigned to attend us’, Bayly ranged widely, beginning with the ancient
Platonist teaching that each man had three special angels of this kind: his
sacer demon (inspiring good thoughts), genius (with charge of his outward
life), and spiritus professionis (helping him in his particular trade or calling).
While sensitive to the reservations of Calvin, Bayly found it nonetheless
‘not improbable’ that every man had his particular angel, and indeed went
so far as to claim that ‘the moderne learned doe subscribe unto Zanchius his
conclusion. That ther is one Angell ordinarily assigned unto every one man
as a Tutor or protector of him in all his waies’.
Bayly was conscious, however, that this starting point posed some weighty
subsequent questions – specifically, whether those who did not fear God had
angels to protect them, and whether those who did fear Him were invariably
attended by their angels. These were conundrums with distinct implica-
tions for Calvinist teachings about election and assurance. Bayly followed
traditional scholastic teaching in affirming that the ungodly did have their
own guardian angels: to bridle their malice, and restrain the power of the
Devil over them. But God had decreed this in order that ‘their wickedness
should not too much annoye the elect of God’. The guardian angels of the
godly meanwhile never ceased to preserve them from the Devil’s malice
‘and from those many casuall dangers wee are daiely subiect to’. But when
302 Peter Marshall

good men fell into sin, as they do ‘not once, but seaven times, not in a yeere,
but in a day’, it sometimes pleased God to withdraw their angels from them.
Nonetheless, ‘presently they come in againe to take us up’, and would never
finally forsake the righteous.31
If Bayly appears here to be skirting around the relationship between
angelic guardianship and the more existential aspects of Calvinist soter-
iology, other commentators were keen to tackle it head- on. In 1646, the
layman Henry Lawrence, returning from baptist exile in the Netherlands,
and taking up a seat in the House of Commons, published a treatise Of
Our Communion and Warre with Angels. The first comprehensive puritan
angelology, Lawrence’s work inevitably had to address the issue of whether
Christians were assigned an individual guardian. Aware perhaps that this
was a well-worn debate, Lawrence abbreviated the conventional discussion
of authorities: ‘not to trouble you with the dispute, some incline rather to
the negative’. He recognised the occasions in Scripture – such as the convey-
ance of Lazarus’s soul to paradise – where more than one angel was pressed
into service. Nonetheless, and partly on the basis of a rather traditional and
patristic reading of Matt. 18 and Acts 12, Lawrence came down firmly on
the other side, remarking that attempts to suggest that Peter’s angel was
but one of a multitude attending to him ‘lookes like an evasion’. There was,
however, a crucial qualification, implicit in much Protestant angelology up
to this point, but now made firmly explicit: ‘the tutelage of the good Angells
belongs only to the elect’. ‘The wicked have no Angells to looke to them’.32
From this perspective – stemming from a literalist reading of Hebrews 1:14’s
description of angels as ministering spirits to those ‘who shall be heires of
salvation’ – Lawrence’s understanding of guardian angels functioned as a
veritable grammar of puritan practical divinity.
Like Bayly, Lawrence wondered ‘whether the Angell keepers doe ever leave
men or no with whose guardianship they are ... trusted?’ Though it was pos-
sible that angels might withdraw to produce a time of affliction, they would
always return and never totally forsake their charge. This was powerfully
indicative of orthodox Calvinist teaching on the perseverance and inde-
fectability of the elect. Lawrence also considered an old and more scholastic
conundrum, that of when the angelic guardianship actually started. Either
because, or in spite, of his adherence to the concept of believers’ baptism,
Lawrence rejected the idea that association with the guardian angel began
at the time of christening; instead, he inclined to the view that it started
‘assoone as the soule is infused’.33
Lawrence’s emphasis on individual guardianship also served to deline-
ate and circumscribe the scope of angelic knowledge and agency. His text
displayed a characteristic Protestant revulsion against the idea of angelic
omniscience, a refusal to affirm that angels ‘know all the particular actions,
what ever is done, said, or suffered’. Yet, while this applied to angelic
knowledge on the macrocosmic level, ‘of those committed to their charge
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 303

there is no question’. This was not because angels could directly know
people’s thoughts, affections, and desires: ‘God is onely the searcher of
the hearts’. But like skilled physicians assessing the outward symptoms of
a familiar patient, ‘they are extremely ingenious in guessing’. 34 Moreover,
guardian angels were able to influence the internal senses, ‘to wit, the
fancy and imagination’, by appearing in dreams or visions. Though God
alone could enlighten the understanding and determine the will, angels
were able, through the imprinting of internal impressions, to influence
‘those sensitive passions which are in us’. There were limits to this facility:
angels could not ‘put in new species of things into the fancy, and such as
the senses never had any knowledge of’: a man born blind could not be
made to dream of colours, for example. Nonetheless, ‘they can in a very
great measure know our mindes and necessities, they can by the media-
tion of our fancies, and inward sences speake to us, almost what ever they
will’.35
These were deep waters, and on them Lawrence might seem to be drift-
ing away from the conventional Protestant patterning of angels as merely
external protective agents, and sailing closer to the medieval and scholastic
conception of the guardian as moral collaborator in the exercise of the will.
Lawrence was aware that some of his readers might wish matters of the
spirit to be left to Christ alone, but he insisted this was a false division of
labour: ‘if it be no prejudice to Christ that the Angells take care of our bod-
ies, which is also his care, what prejudice will it be that the Angells should
also have a care of our spirits’? Indeed, he did not scruple to assert that
‘things communicated to our inward man, is ordinarily the administration
of Angells’.36
Several of Lawrence’s themes were recapitulated (and, in fact, plagiarised)
in a 1653 treatise by Robert Dingley, congregationalist minister on the Isle
of Wight: The Deputation of Angels, or, The Angell-guardian. This was a con-
siderably less subtle piece of work than Of Our Communion and Warre with
Angels, but as the first full-length English treatise dedicated to demonstrat-
ing the existence of guardian angels, it deserves admiration for its thorough-
ness. By the time Dingley declares that he has ‘answered all the Objections
that I ever yet met withall, or can possiby think of’, the reader is in no mood
to disagree.37 In spite of Calvin, Dingley cited no fewer than twenty-three
‘godly and learned authors’ in support of the doctrine, excluding ‘such as are
tainted with Romish interest’. His tone throughout was combative, warning
critics that ‘in slighting this Doctrine, take heed least yee be found among
the slighters of Christ, who delivered it’.38 Dingley’s treatise proceeded in
quasi-scholastic fashion, identifying and addressing ‘twelve Questions or
Objections to be resolved and untyed, that are (or may be) raised against this
Point of Angellical Deputation’.
For Dingley, the question of why one angel should be deputed, when
so many attend on God, was conceived as a kind of problem in celestial
304 Peter Marshall

logistics. Angels could not be in more than one place at a time, and scripture
taught that most of them were in heaven. Moreover, the elect were scattered
across the earth, and their number was so great ‘as to passe alle the known
rules of Arithmatick’. In asking rhetorically, ‘whether it bear a face of prob-
ability that each one of so great a company have many troops of Angels still
to attend him?’, Dingley came perilously close to saying that there were
simply not enough angels to go around.39 Conversely, however, a problem
of potential underemployment was easily resolved: when their human ward
died, the guardian moved on to another assignment. Citing the authority of
Peter Lombard, Dingley pronounced that ‘wee may believe a Transmigration
of guardian Angels’.40
Lombard was soon cited again, in support of the guardian angel’s abil-
ity subtly to communicate with and influence the conduct of his earthly
charge: ‘Hortatur ad Bonum; He doth admonish and perswade us on all
occasions to that which is good’.41 In this tricky area, Dingley followed the
lead of Lawrence, alleging the ability of guardian angels to plant impres-
sions in the imagination during sleep, as well as their extraordinary ability
to fathom our thoughts, affections and desires: ‘if the Wife that hath been
forty years in thy bosome is able in great measure to know thee, to guess at
thy thoughts, and trace thee in thy wayes: And know when thy tongue and
heart do not agree, how much more thy Angel Guardian that hath ever been
with thee?’42 Other queries Dingley set out to resolve included the questions
of whether both Adam and Christ himself had guardian angels (yes, and
yes), and the role of the guardian at death. In blithe disregard of the usual
Protestant reading of the Dives and Lazarus story, he flatly affirmed that
‘the Angel guardian conveys the believing soul into Abrahams bosom’.43
Inevitably, Dingley also pondered the issue, which had divided both the
Fathers and the medieval schoolmen, of when precisely in the human life-
cycle the guardian began his duties. It was clear to Dingley that the very
youngest infants must have guardian angels: ‘Were it not so, into how many
dangers would they fall? They would be disfigured and lamed with bruises,
and fearfull miscarriages’. Indeed, like Lawrence, Dingley inclined to the
earliest possible assignment, at conception. There was, moreover, a specifi-
cally Calvinist rationale for this solution: ‘it may be the Mother is not Elect,
and so hath no angel to look to her’. Conversely, an elect woman carrying
twins would most likely have three angels ‘to attend her Motions and all
Occurrences’.44
These musings suggest how closely Dingley’s theological and emotional
investment in the concept of angelic guardianship was tied to a specifically
predestinarian divinity. He was emphatic that only the elect had guardians,
and that though their influence might at times be suspended, they never
left the presence of God’s chosen: ‘as a shaddow followeth the body without
leaving it or lagging behind, so do the Angels accompany Beleevers in all
their walks and wayes’. This also enabled him to deal with an objection he
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 305

anticipated receiving to the whole concept of angel guardianship – whether

it were not ‘a Popish and Antichristian point, maintained chiefly by Jesuites
and Papists, and rejected by Protestants and sober men?’ A fundamental
error of the Romanist was to suppose that ‘every man hath his Guardian-
Angel from God’. Yet, this did not stop Dingley from conjecturing (on the
basis of no scriptural evidence) that God might have permitted Satan to
place an evil angel over each of the reprobate.45 Through such refined spec-
ulations, the doctrine of angelic guardianship became nothing less than the
certification of the decree of election itself.
With the emergence by the 1650s of a fully-fledged puritan angelology,
configured around the concerns of experimental predestinarianism, it is
tempting to see attitudes towards guardian angels shifting significantly again
as a marker of variant churchmanships. Yet the demarcations are not entirely
straightforward. After all, Richard Montagu, no less, had berated the papists
for teaching that ‘every man living, good and bad ... hath an Angel-guardian
deputed to him’.46 We can see similar cross-currents in the work of another
unreconstructed Laudian polemicist, Peter Heylyn, who was emphatic as any
puritan angelologist that the privilege pertained only to God’s elect.47
Although the passionate advocacy of a Robert Dingley was decidedly
unusual, a number of mid-seventeenth- century sources suggest that a belief
in guardian angels could quite often be taken for granted, referred to in
passing as if it were an unexceptional opinion. Robert Burton’s Anatomy of
Melancholy, for example, contains a brief allusion to the ‘assisting Angells’
of Christians, an analogue to the Daemonium of Socrates.48 The relevant
patristic sources were cited, briefly but approvingly, in Thomas Heywood’s
eccentric and hugely long poem of 1635, The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels.49
In a sermon of 1650, the London minister Robert Gell similarly endorsed
‘the judgement of the ancient Fathers ... that every particular person hath
an Angel deputed to him’.50 In another 1650s sermon, the earl of Leicester’s
chaplain, John Gumbleden, announced it to be ‘not altogether improba-
ble, that every particular faithfull Man, hath his particular tutelar Angel
assigned him of God’.51 The same conclusion had been arrived at a few years
earlier by the mercurial physician and philosopher Thomas Browne, who
mused that ‘I could easily beleeve, that not onely whole Countries, but par-
ticular persons have their Tutelary and Guardian Angels’. It seemed to him
very likely that many prodigies, prognostications and premonitions, ‘which
more careless enquiries terme but the effects of chance and nature’, were in
fact the promptings of protective angels. If the doctrine was not manifestly
defined in scripture, ‘yet it is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in
the course and actions of a mans life’. Moreover, ‘it is not a new opinion
of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato’. The pagan
origins of the concept, which had seemed so objectionable to a previous
generation of Protestant divines, positively recommended it to the mind of
this late-renaissance polymath.52
306 Peter Marshall

But not all English Protestants under the Commonwealth were swept
along with an enthusiasm for the ministry of guardian angels. One notable
sceptic, despite his interest in angelic ministry in general, was the Calvinist
Bishop Joseph Hall. In marked contrast to Browne, Hall was dismissive of
‘this piece of Platonick Divinity’. Though the doctrine was ‘perhaps well
meant, and ... seconded with much reverent antiquity’, it seemed to Hall
to represent ‘some scanting of the bountiful provision of the Almighty’.53
Similarly, the Church of Ireland minister Nicholas Bernard was convinced
that the numbers of the elect being so few, and the numbers of angels so
innumerable, ‘it will not be necessary to limit each Christian to one tutu-
lary Guardian’.54 In a commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, the biblical
scholar and Presbyterian sympathiser John Lightfoot was decidedly scepti-
cal. If the task of angels was to attend individual men, what, he asked, ‘did
all the angells but Adams and Eves and a few more for many hundreds of
yeers, till the world was full?’55 That despite the best efforts of Dingley and
Lawrence the doctrine of angelic guardianship was still associated with
popery in some clerical minds is suggested by the conclusion to a sermon
cycle of Thomas Fuller’s, preached at St Clements, Eastcheap, and printed
in 1652. Fuller told his auditors that he knew that ‘if one of the Romish
perswasion were in my place, he would particularly consigne you to the
tutellage of such Guardian angels which he conceiveth most proper for
your several professions’. But in order to ‘shun all shadow of supervision’,
Fuller commended his congregation instead ‘to the Tuition of the God of
these Angels’.56
After the Restoration, a full spectrum of views about the probability of
guardian angels, and the nature and scope of their ministry to mankind,
continued to be expressed in print. The first angelogical treatise to appear
under the new dispensation was the work of the non- conformist minister
Isaac Ambrose: Ministration of, and Communion with Angels, first published
in 1661, and reprinted in 1673, 1682 and 1689. Ambrose upheld the stand-
ard puritan position that angels were appointed to the elect only, and that
their guardians were assigned to them in the womb. He confirmed that
angels could work on the imagination, typically in dreams, helping to
instil good motions and to prevent sin. In all of these areas, he had lit-
tle to add to what Lawrence had laid down a decade earlier.57 Strikingly,
however, Ambrose omitted any rehearsal of the scriptural, patristic and
modern authorities for and against the existence of guardian angels. The
soteriological centrality of angelical guardianship was further implic-
itly downplayed in a letter appended to the volume from the doyen of
Presbyterian divines, Richard Baxter. In marked contrast to the celestial
econometrics of Robert Dingley, Baxter asserted the number of angels to
be ‘incomparably more than all the men in the world’. This meant that
‘every Christian, even the weakest, hath one or more Angels deputed by
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 307

God to take a special care of him’, though ‘the same Angels may also take
care of others’.58
The issue of whether God’s plan involved an exclusive pairing of angel
guardian and human charge was more directly tackled in the next sub-
stantial angelogical treatise published in Restoration England. The
Leicestershire rector Benjamin Camfield’s A Theological Discourse of Angels
and their Ministries addressed a subject the author considered all ‘too suitable
to that Atheistical and degenerate Age we live in’.59 In traditional, if slightly
truncated, fashion, Camfield reviewed the relevant scriptural and patristic
texts, adopting a studiedly agnostic stance. He pointed out that the same
angel could be found bringing messages to diverse persons, with Gabriel
despatched to Daniel, Zacharius and the Virgin. Yet, from such instances, ‘I
dare not conclude, (as some have done) that it is contradictory to holy scrip-
ture, to assert some one Angel ordinarily attending every good man’. On the
other hand, diversity of opinions about precisely when the guardian angel
began his charge – to most earlier commentators a straightforward problem
to be solved – seemed to Camfield simply to render the whole notion ‘some-
what the more dubious’. In the end, Camfield inclined cautiously to the
view ‘that every man [at least every pious and good man] hath his Tutelar
or Guardian Angel’. The qualification was significant: there is no insistence
here that the ministry of guardian angels must be confined exclusively to
the elect. Indeed, Camfield’s own anti- Calvinist convictions are not long in
emerging: he was openly impatient with those arguing for ‘the absolute and
unconditional assurance of Salvation to any select number, or the absolute
certainty of their perseverance in a salvable state’.60
A breaking of the linkage between the ministry of the angels and the
indefectable perseverance of the elect is discernible in other sources from
this period. In 1667, an Irish Anglican could unselfconsciously declare that
God ‘appoints an angel for the guard of every individual person’.61 A few
years later, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, regarded
it as ‘most probable that Angels are often absent from grown men, especially
whilst they remain in ordinary circumstances’.62 A similar conclusion was
arrived at in an anonymous tract of 1695, attempting to prove ‘both from
nature and scripture the existence of good genii, or guardian-angels’. This
took the view that God allotted to every infant a particular guardian to keep
watch over him, ‘at least so long till vitious Habits confirmed or increased,
set this pure incorrupt Watcher at liberty to withdraw from his Charge’.
The ministration of guardian angels was thus ‘continued only to those who
improve by it’, an emphatically un- Calvinist way of looking at things or
representing the path to salvation.63
It seems clear that the attempt, never uniformly adopted by the spokes-
men of the godly, to make the guardian angel into an emblem of Calvinist
group-identity had by the end of the century largely run its course. Into
308 Peter Marshall

the 1700s, English Protestants were as divided as ever about the very exist-
ence of guardian angels, with some deploying against them the arguments
Calvin had supplied a century and a half before. Commenting on Acts 12,
the ejected Presbyterian minister Matthew Poole described ‘the opinion of
tutelary Angels’ as ‘not certain or needful’, though he conceded it was ‘to
this day thought probable’.64 The 1701 Angelographia of Richard Saunders
similarly rejected patristic interpretations of Matthew 18 and Acts 12.
Although the angel of the latter might indeed have been Peter’s, this did not
mean that it was on permanent secondment. One might just as well refer
to ‘the King’s Physician’ or ‘the King’s servant’ without denoting one par-
ticular person, ‘because the King hath many’. It seemed to Saunders highly
unlikely ‘that usually ‘tis the same Angel that attends a man from first to
last’.65 A series of sermons on angels by Thomas Shepherd, published in
1702, found no grounds for the opinion in either reason or scripture, and
regarded it as ‘brought out of Plato’s school into the Church by those, who
when they were become Christians, could not easily forget that they had
been Philosophers’.66 The minister Edward Young, a chaplain in ordinary to
William and Mary, likewise considered it ‘too Nice to say that every distinct
Man has his distinct Guardian Angel’.67
On the other side of the debate, self-consciously Anglican texts, like Robert
Nelson’s Companion for the Festivals and Feasts of the Church of England, envis-
aged guardian angels as ‘ready at hand to do all good offices to good men’,
a decidedly unpredestinarian gloss on the ministry to ‘heirs of salvation’ in
Hebrews 1:14.68 At the same time, there were still those in the ranks of non-
conformist Protestantism prepared to speak up loudly for the doctrine. The
octogenarian ejected minister George Hamond published a short defence of it
in 1702, ascribing opposition to those places ‘where prejudice hath forestalled
the Judgement, and confident ignorance incapacitated the Mind’.69 Guardian
angels also popped up in one of the more doleful ditties of Isaac Watts’s Hymns
and Spiritual Songs: ‘And must my Body faint and die? / And must this Soul
remove? / O for some guardian Angel nigh / To bear it safe above!’70
Although some tropes about guardian angels were endlessly recycled in
the period we have been surveying, speculation about their activities had
taken some rather heterodox turns by the close of the seventeenth century.
Hamond, for example, floated the suggestion that it was not necessarily the
same angel who would continue with a man throughout his life, ‘but that
as by the sincere and constant Practice of Virtue, he asserts himself under a
higher Providence, so there is an Angel of a higher rank and order appointed
to preside over him’. He also took the view that tutelary angels could exer-
cise their protective ministry ‘not only by externally applying themselves
to us, but by insinuating themselves into our very Bodies’, just as ‘the Imps
of Witches actually Enter into and possess their Bodies’.71 This latter con-
jecture was almost certainly taken from the writings of the Cambridge
Platonist, Henry More, whose idiosyncratic blend of natural philosophy,
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 309

supernatural reportage, and anti-atheistical advocacy exercised a magnetic

appeal for certain sections of the clergy in the later seventeenth century. In
addition to speculating about physical possession by guardian angels, More
had mused over whether every man was morally capable of ‘consociation
with these good Genii’, before concluding, with admirable self-awareness,
that an atheist reader might think he had ‘run a long division upon very
uncertain grounds’.72
So far, I have been tracing opinions about guardian angels through vari-
ous ‘magisterial’ texts without much attention to the role beliefs about them
may have played in wider religious culture. For some in seventeenth- century
England, however, the guardian angel was far from being an abstract, dog-
matic or merely assentient proposition. A belief in their active interven-
tion, and in how they might overtly manifest themselves to their charges,
seems, for example, to have been current in the circle gathered around the
Berkshire minister John Pordage in the 1650s. During proceedings against
him by the commissioners for ejecting scandalous ministers in October
1654, Pordage was accused of giving up preaching and the taking of tithes
after claiming to receive a command to that effect by his angel. More dra-
matically, he had talked of being defended by ‘his own angel ... in his own
shape and fashion’ against a great dragon ‘with a tail of eight yards long’
that attacked him in his chamber. Richard Baxter later lambasted Pordage
‘and his Family, who live together in Community, and pretend to hold vis-
ible and sensible Communion with Angels, whom they sometime see, and
sometime smell’.73
The idea of ‘sensible communion’ with angels was alien to orthodox
Protestant sensibilities, redolent of the promiscuous supernatural exchanges
characteristic of the pre-Reformation world. In his epistolary ‘afterword’ to
Isaac Ambrose’s treatise, Baxter put forward an interestingly paradoxical
claim: ‘it serves to take off the inordinate desires of visible and extraordi-
nary converse with Angels; when it is understood that they are appointed
to be ordinarily, and invisibly serviceable to us’.74 Yet, Baxter himself was
not immune to the temptation to believe that, on occasion, guardian angels
might make their presence known. His Certainty of the World of Spirits (1691)
included an account of a gentleman of his acquaintance who had fallen into
dissolute ways and who used to hear a knocking at his bed’s head every time
he fell asleep drunk and slept himself sober. Baxter mused whether it might
not be his guardian angel ‘that hath such a Care of this Man’s Soul’.75
Alleged interventions of guardian angels were by no means restricted to a
radical fringe but could emanate from the most orthodox Protestant circles.
A much-repeated story, originating during the Irish Rebellion in early 1642,
held that an angel had miraculously provided buttermilk for the starving
infant of the godly Church of Ireland minister Faithful Teate, during the
family’s flight from the island.76 The autobiography of the pious Anglican
Alice Thornton, composed around 1669, was prefaced with expressions of
310 Peter Marshall

gratitude to God for sending ‘His angeles to keepe and guard little children’.
In her own case, she was certain that ‘God hath sent His guardian angell to
watch over me and mine for my good preservation ever since I was borne’,
and went on to describe a dozen or so ‘miraculous deliverances’ from her
childhood and youth.77 Still further to the right of the theological spec-
trum, the Restoration biographer Izaak Walton, in his account of the death
of Richard Hooker, reported how Hooker’s ‘Guardian Angel seem’d to fore-
tell him, that the day of his Dissolution drew near’.78
Other stories concerning the proactive agency of guardian angels were
collected and disseminated by the angelologists themselves. A favourite was
an incident from Jean Bodin’s De la Démonomanie des Sorciers concerning a
man (whom scholars now believe to have been Bodin himself) who desired
the assistance of an angel, and was from the age of thirty-seven continu-
ally accompanied by a spirit that offered him ‘sensible manifestations’ – for
example, striking his right ear to indicate disapproval, his left for approval.79
Isaac Ambrose, in particular, liked to punctuate his expositions of angelic
doctrine with illustrations of ‘experiences of this truth’. In his section on
the role of angels in conversion, for example, he recounted the experience
of a man ‘labouring in the pangs of his New-Birth’ who had begun to con-
template suicide after despairing of his salvation. On his way to commit the
act, the phrase ‘who knows?’ shot suddenly into his mind. He took this to
mean that no- one knew God’s decree of predestination, and that he may
have been saved after all. This seems a classic instance of the guardian
angel implanting formative impressions on the imagination. Another case
involving pain and self- doubt in the process of conversion was recounted to
Ambrose directly by the woman concerned. In the process of bewailing her
sins, she ‘heard at last a voyce, plainly and distinctly saying to her ... If thou’l
forget, I’le forget, If thou’l forget, I’le forget’.80 George Hamond could offer simi-
lar second-hand testimony: a man of his acquaintance had been admon-
ished by ‘a small voice’ to visit a dying friend, and ten years later heard the
same voice urging him to attend to a business affair in London. Hamond
considered that if any man were to

review and call to mind the several remarkable passages and more notori-
ous Accidents that befel him in his past Life, wherein he either strangely
escaped an imminent Danger, or met with some lucky hit ... he will find
reason sufficient to attribute these things to the watchful care of some
Friendly and Tutelary Genius, which prevents those unlucky chances our
heavy and dull mortality cannot forsee.81

Noting the ways in which medieval writers were apt to identify the
unseen intervention of guardian angels in the aversion of crisis and in
the exercise of apparently random human choice, David Keck has spoken
of ‘the Christianization of Fortune’.82 In some ways, it might seem, little
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 311

had changed in the course of half a millennium. But we should remem-

ber that the clergymen registering interventions of guardian angels were
not chroniclers but advocates. Belief in such ministrations could not be
taken for granted. Writing in 1725, the Newcastle clergyman and proto-
folklorist Henry Bourne dismissively described the belief ‘that every Man
has his Guardian Angel’ as ‘that old opinion’ which the arrival of the feast
of Michaelmas would invariably bring into the minds and discourse of
‘country people’.83 Urban sophisticates, such as the readers of The Athenian
Mercury in the 1690s, may have had an open mind on the issue. One cor-
respondent wrote to the panel of self-styled ‘Athenians’ who ran the paper
enquiring ‘whether every man has a good and bad angel attending him?’84
Hamond’s treatise of 1702 was similarly composed in reply to a correspond-
ent, who had written requesting ‘my thoughts concerning this Question,
whether it may not be probable that every man hath his Guardian Angel’.85
Like those of Ambrose before him, Hamond’s anecdotes bring out a sense
of extraordinary intimacy between guardian and charge. In a revealing
phrase, he writes about the ‘charitable officiousness’ that characterised
their ministry.86 This raises the question of whether, in the conscious or
unconscious minds of ordinary lay people, the unceasing attendance of a
guardian angel was necessarily an unmixed blessing. Across the whole of
our period, one of the most recurrent themes of applied guardian angelol-
ogy was the insistence that Christians were never actually alone, that at
all moments ‘thy Angel stands by and beholds thee, and takes notice of
thy behaviour either for Virtue or Vice’. There was an inescapably minatory
aspect to this teaching, an intimation of the Panopticon. Robert Dingley
warned that angels were ‘exact and carefull observers, and eye-witnesses of
our Behaviour and Deportment’. ‘I ask thee’, intoned Thomas Adams, ‘when
thou pollutest the marriage bed, attemptest an homicide, plottest a treason,
forgest a writing, wouldest thou then have the Angels present with thee, or
absent from thee?’87
In the end, of course, it is quite impossible to say how ‘popular’ the belief
in guardian angels continued to be in seventeenth- century England, though
it is revealing that few of the authors I have looked at ever supposed that it
was in serious or terminal decline. What does seem safe to suggest is that
through the seventeenth century, and into the eighteenth, it remained a
ubiquitously familiar concept, part of the cultural wallpaper of English soci-
ety.88 As in our own day, the protection of guardian angels could be no more
than a joke. A humorous tract satirising astrology, and containing ‘infallible
predictions for the year 1699’, foretold that if Mars proved ascendant over
Venus a young woman foolish enough to purchase a charm to protect her
virginity might the next hour be ‘cheated out of her Maiden-head, in spight
of her Guardian Angel’.89 Even those clergymen to be found debating the
issue at the beginning of the eighteenth century did not always consider it
to be one of overweening importance. To Richard Sanders, the arguments
312 Peter Marshall

in both directions seemed ‘not very material’.90 Henry Bourne thought that
the balance of probabilities was against the existence of guardian angels,
though he saw ‘no fault in believing either the one or the other’.91
Yet, ironically, in some ways it is the very provisional and peripheral qual-
ity of the idea that gives it its considerable utility as a yardstick of religious
and cultural change. Across a century and more, the belief in individual
guardian angels was that rare thing in a profoundly propositional and
instinctively conformable age – a genuine matter of opinion. Even the most
enthusiastic proponents of the idea, with rare exceptions, did not try to
insist upon it as a matter of faith. As Richard Montagu had pointed out to
a Catholic opponent, the belief in guardian angels was ‘a thing not defined
in any Councell; no not in that last Conventicle of Trent, because free, and
in opinion every way’.92 Its ultimately non- dogmatic character prevented
it from ever becoming a fixed confessional shibboleth, and enabled it to
function as a vehicle for the advancement or containment of a variety of
individual and sectional concerns and agendas. Some aspects of this long
conversation – such as the necessity and methods of scriptural exegesis –
look remarkably constant over time. Yet, over the period as a whole, we
can also discern a broad pattern whereby discussions of the guardian angel
were becoming less a matter of theological probity or doctrinal correctness,
and more a means of exploring ideas about providence and fortune, human
physiology and personal psychology. I will try to resist the temptation to say
that guardian angels were ‘good to think with’ in early-modern England.
But they were certainly something that, implicitly or directly, people were
often invited to think about. The space for relatively unfettered enquiry
and speculation that they represented should be seen as a small, but solidly
placed, milestone on the road from Reformation to Enlightenment.

Notes
1. D. Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1998), 161–65; A. F.
Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Cult of Angels in late Fifteenth- century England:
an Hours of the Guardian Angel presented to Queen Elizabeth Woodville’, in L.
Smith and J. H. M. Taylor, eds, Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence
(London and Toronto, 1996), 230–65; M. Connolly, ‘A Prayer to the Guardian
Angel and Wynkyn de Worde’s 1506 Edition of Contemplations of the Dread and
Love of God’, Manuscripta, 45–46 (2001–02): 1–17; E. Duffy, The Stripping of the
Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven and London, 1992),
270; E. Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers 1240–1570 (New
Haven and London, 2006), 161; R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe,
c. 1215 – c. 1515 (Cambridge, 1995), 171–72. See also Alex Walsham’s essay in this
volume.
2. Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches (London, 1833), 223.
3. Keck, Angels and Angelology, 162–63; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans.
W. Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton NJ, 1993), 2: 207–09.
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 313

4. See P. Marshall, ‘Angels around the Deathbed: Variations on a Theme in the

English Art of Dying’, in P. Marshall and A. Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early
Modern World (Cambridge, 2006), 83–103.
5. Richard Baxter, The Certainty of the World of Spirits (London, 1691), 233.
6. D. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of
Nature (Cambridge, 1999); K. Harvey, ‘The Role of Angels in English Protestant
Thought 1580 to 1660’, PhD thesis (Cambridge, 2005); F. Mohamed, In the
Anteroom of Divinity: The Reformation of the Angels from Colet to Milton (Toronto,
2008); L. Sangha, ‘The Significance of Angels in English Religious Cultures,
c.1480–1700’, Ph.D thesis (Warwick, 2009); A. Walsham, ‘Invisible Helpers:
Angelic Intervention in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 208 (2010),
77–130; J. Raymond, Milton’s Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination (Oxford, 2010).
A useful earlier point of orientation is R. H. West, Milton and the Angels (Athens,
GA, 1955). See also P. Marshall and A. Walsham, ‘Migrations of Angels in the
Early Modern World’, in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early Modern
World, 1–40.
7. C. A. Patrides, ‘Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy: the Decline of a
Tradition’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959): 155–66.
8. See P. Soergel, ‘Luther on the Angels’, in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels in the
Early Modern World, 64–82.
9. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. H. Beveridge, 2 vols in 1
(Grand Rapids, MI, 1989), 1: 146–47. See also Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, ed.
T. Torrance, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1972), 3: 218.
10. William Fulke, The Text of the New Testament of Iesus Christ, translated ... by the
Papists of the Traiterous Seminarie at Rhemes (London, 1589), 36v. See also Fulke,
A Defence of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures into the English
Tongue, against the Cavils of Gregory Martin, ed. C. H. Hartshorne (Cambridge,
1843), 23.
11. Thomas Cartwright, A Confutation of the Rhemists Translation, Glosses and
Annotations on the New Testament (London, 1618), 91. Though not published in
his lifetime, Cartwright’s treatise was composed in response to an approach in
1583 from a group of eminent puritan divines, including Fulke and William
Whitaker: Peter Lake, Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge,
1982), 69–71.
12. Andrew Willett, Synopsis Papismi, that is, a generall viewe of papistry (London,
1592), 294–95.
13. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 269–70; W. Maskell, ed., Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae
Anglicanae, 3 vols. (2nd edn, Oxford, 1882), 3: 289–92.
14. Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584), 505–06.
15. Urbanus Rhegius, An Homely or Sermon of Good and Euill Angels, trans. R. Robinson
(2nd edn, London, 1590), 30.
16. ‘An cuique homini creatus angelus, qui eum curet, destinatus sit’: Zanchi, De
Operibus Dei, in Operum Theologicorum, 3 vols (Geneva, 1617–19), 3: cols 142–45.
17. William Perkins, A Golden Chaine: Or the Description of Theologie (Cambridge,
1600), 231–35 at 234.
18. Heinrich Bullinger, ‘Of Good and Evil Spirits; that is Of the Holy Angels’, in
The Decades: The Fourth Decade, trans. H. I., ed. T. Harding (Cambridge, 1851),
327–48. In 1586 Archbishop Whitgift ordered all of his non-preaching clergy
to study the Decades weekly: D. MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England,
1547–1603 (2nd edn, Basingstoke, 2001), 61.
314 Peter Marshall

19. John Salkeld, A Treatise of Angels (London, 1613), 251–80, quotations at 248, 251,
252.
20. See T. Johnson, ‘Guardian Angels and the Society of Jesus’, in Marshall and
Walsham, eds Angels in the Early Modern World, 191–213.
21. J. M. Blom, ‘The Adventures of an Angel- Guardian in Seventeenth- Century
England’, Recusant History, 20 (1990–91): 48–57.
22. Godfrey Goodman, The Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature (London, 1616),
58–59; P. E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and
Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, 1998), 72.
23. Richard Montagu, Immediate Addresse vnto God Alone (London, 1624), epistle ded-
icatorie, 95–99.
24. Richard Montagu, A Gagg for the New Gospell? (London, 1624), 189, 203–5, 199–
200.
25. A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English
Protestant Thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 207. Any notion of offering
prayer to angels was condemned by Richard Bernard, Rhemes Against Rome: Or,
The Remooving of the Gagg of the New Gospell (London, 1626), 187–89.
26. An Appeal of the Orthodox Ministers of the Church of England against Richard Montague
(Edinburgh [i.e. London], 1629), 10.
27. Thomas Taylor, Iaphets First Publique Perswasion into Sems Tents (Cambridge, 1612),
98.
28. Thomas Adams, The Happiness of the Church (London, 1619), 45–48. Cf. J. Sears
McGee, ‘Adams, Thomas (1583–1652)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford University Press, 2004 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/131>.
29. John Prideaux, The Patronage of Angels. A Sermon Preached at the Court (Oxford,
1636), 19.
30. For Bayly’s altercation with Laud as chancellor of Oxford, see T. F. Tout, ‘Bayly,
John (1595/6–1633)’, rev. Vivienne Larminie, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/
article/1765>.
31. John Bayly, Two Sermons. The Angell Guardian. The Light Enlightning (Oxford,
1630), sig. A2r, 7–10, 14–15.
32. Henry Lawrence, An History of Angells, Being a Theologicall Treatise of Our
Communion and Warre with Them (1646; London, 1649), 19–20, 25.
33. Ibid., 21–2.
34. Ibid., 30–32.
35. Ibid., 35–42
36. Ibid.,48–49.
37. Robert Dingley, The Deputation of Angels, or, The Angell- Guardian (London, 1653),
147.
38. Ibid., 59.
39. Ibid., 86–89.
40. Ibid., 117.
41. Ibid., 126.
42. Ibid., 118, 120–21, 123–24.
43. Ibid., 100–08, 127.
44. Ibid., 108, 113, 115–16.
45. Ibid., 33–34, 58, 98–99, 136–37, 148–49, 158–59, 174–75.
46. Monatagu, New Gagg, 189–95.
 The Guardian Angel in Protestant England 315

47. Peter Heylyn, Theologia Veterum, or, The Summe of Christian Theologie (London,
1654), 70–73.
48. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, eds T. C. Faulkner, N. K. Kiessling and
R. L. Blair (Oxford, 1989), 1: 175.
49. Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels (London, 1635), 372–73.
50. Robert Gell, A Sermon Touching Gods Government of the World by Angels (London,
1650), 17.
51. John Gumbleden, Two Sermons: First, an Angel, in a Vision, Appeareth to a
Souldier ... Second, a Saviour, in Mercy, Appeareth to a Sinner (London, 1657), 8.
52. Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, in The Major Works, ed. C. A. Patrides
(Harmondsworth, 1977), 99, 101.
53. Joseph Hall, The Invisible World, Discovered to Spirituall Eyes (London, 1651),
113–16, 148.
54. Nicholas Bernard, The Fare-well Sermons of Comfort and Concord Preached at
Drogheda in Ireland (London, 1651), 197.
55. John Lightfoot, A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (London, 1645),
324–25.
56. Thomas Fuller, A Comment on the Eleven First Verses of the Fourth Chapter of S.
Matthew’s Gospel (London, 1652), 187–88.
57. Isaac Ambrose, Ministration of, and Communion with Angels (London, 1673), 116,
124–25, 128, 129–30.
58. Ibid., 168.
59. Benjamin Camfield, A Theological Discourse of Angels, and their Ministries (London,
1678), sig. A3r.
60. Ibid., 70–75, 117.
61. R. Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester,
1997), 46.
62. Thomas Tenison, Of Idolatry (London, 1678), 206. Tenison was thus dismissive
towards Richard Montagu’s suggestion that it was legitimate to pray to the guard-
ian angel: ‘he supposeth them to be ever in propinctu, nigh at hand to men, and
in attendance on them all their days’ (207).
63. Scala Naturae: A Treatise Proving Both from Nature and Scripture the Existence of Good
Genii, or Guardian-Angels (London, 1695), 37–38.
64. Matthe Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (London, 1685), sig. Qqq1v.
65. Richard Saunders, Angelographia sive pneumata leiturgika: Or a Discourse of Angels:
their Nature, Office and Ministry (London, 1701), 121–24.
66. Thomas Shepherd, Several Sermons on Angels (London, 1702), 85–86.
67. Edward Young, Sermons on Several Occasions (2nd edn, London, 1706), 219–20.
The marginal annotations which the Welsh MP Sir John Salusbury (c. 1640–
1684) made to his copy of the translation of Drexler’s treatise also seem to imply
a scepticism about guardian angels: Blom, ‘Adventures of an Angel- Guardian’,
52–55.
68. Robert Nelson, A Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England
(2nd edn, London, 1704), 290–91. See also The Holy- days, or the Holy Feasts and
Fasts, as They are Observed in the Church of England (London, 1706), 54.
69. George Hamond, A Modest Enquiry into the Opinion Concerning a Guardian Angel
(London, 1702).
70. Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (2nd edn, London, 1709), 154.
71. Hamond, Modest Enquiry, 24.
316 Peter Marshall

72. Henry More, An Antidote against Atheisme (London, 1653), 148–51.

73. John Pordage, Innocencie Appearing Through the Dark Mists of Pretended Guilt
(London, 1655), 14–15, 27, 68; Ariel Hessayon, ‘Bromley, Thomas (bap. 1630,
d. 1691)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
<http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40437>. See also Chapter 14, below.
74. Ambrose, Communion with Angels, 170.
75. Baxter, Certainty of the World of Spirits, 60–61.
76. R. Gillespie, ‘Imagining Angels in Early Modern Ireland’, in Marshall and
Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early Modern World, 214–32.
77. The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton, ed. C. Jackson, Surtees Society, 62 (1875),
3–32, quotes at p. 4.
78. Izaak Walton, The Life of Mr Rich. Hooker (London, 1665), 47.
79. Lawrence, History of Angells, 47–48; More, Antidote against Atheisme, 140–44;
Camfield, Theological Discourse of Angels, 88–90; William Turner, A Compleat
History of the Most Remarkable Providences, Both of Judgement and Mercy, which
have Happened in this Present Age (London, 1697), 7–8; Hamond, Modest Enquiry,
17–20. See R. Briggs, ‘Dubious Messengers: Bodin’s Daemon, the Spirit World
and the Sadducees’, in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early Modern
World, 168–90. Also pp. 34–36, above.
80. Ambrose, Communion with Angels, 138–39.
81. Hamond, Modest Enquiry, 21–22, 12.
82. Keck, Angels and Angelology, 161–63.
83. Henry Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares: or the Antiquities of the Common People
(Newcastle, 1725), 219–20.
84. The Athenian Oracle. Being an Entire Collection, 4 vols (London, 1728), 1: 4–5. The
editors replied that it was certain that children had a particular angel, and likely
that adults ‘tho’ never so vicious’ did too.
85. Hamond, Modest Enquiry, 1.
86. Ibid., 21.
87. Ibid., 24; Dingley, Deputation of Angels, 191; Adams, Happiness of the Church, 52.
See also, Lawrence, History of Angells, 50, Increase Mather, Angelographia, or A
Discourse Concerning the Nature and Power of the Holy Angels (Boston, 1696), 94.
88. A full-text search for the phrase ‘guardian angel’ in Early English Books Online
produces around 100 hits for the period between 1660 and 1700, nearly all of
them passing, and usually metaphorical references from poetry or drama.
89. Edward Ward, The World Bewitched: A Dialogue Between Two Astrologers and the
Author (London, 1699), 15.
90. Saunders, Angelographia, 124.
91. Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares, 224.
92. Montagu, New Gagg, 189.
14
Radicalism and Mysticism in the
Later Seventeenth Century:
John Pordage’s Angels
Joad Raymond

In 1667, when Paradise Lost was published, John Milton’s nephew, pupil
and biographer, Edward Phillips, was working as tutor for Philip Herbert,
5th Earl of Pembroke. At the same time, the Earl’s steward was the little-
known author of a visionary and prophetic epic poem about angels, Samuel
Pordage. Were there discussions of their parallel projects? Unfortunately, we
do not know whether Milton and Pordage heard news of each other, or even
met. Their shared interests included not only poetry and angels, but radi-
cal religion: Samuel’s father, John, was a visionary who had conversed with
angels, rejected the moral law and founded a church. The circumstantial
associations deepen with another visitor to the Earl’s house in that same
year, 1667. This was Richard Bovet, author of Pandaemonium (1684), an anti-
Sadducist compendium of tales of witches and spirits, but also a dissenter’s
attack on Catholicism and on Restoration politics. Bovet was later involved
in plotting against the regime. Not only was there an element of politi-
cal sympathy between them, but Bovet’s title Pandaemonium derives from
Milton’s epic (which Bovet commends in the text). Perhaps all three writers
intersected in person as well as in spirit in 1667.1
Much of the electricity of Samuel’s poem, Mundorum Explicatio (1661),
derives from its origin in his father’s prophetic visions and angelic encoun-
ters, which Samuel had witnessed as a young man. Milton’s Paradise Lost,
I would argue, similarly derives from the coincidence between the imagi-
nary and the real, the latter based in Milton’s case on prophetic insight.2
In Samuel’s writings, and those of his father, spiritual vision and material
vision merge. There is a dialogue between the physical world of the senses,
and the inward world, and this dialogue informs both prophecy and poetic
composition. It explains, in part, how angels continue to be vital in the
world of the Restoration, despite – perhaps because of – experimental sci-
ence, and an unsympathetic, anti- enthusiastic religious culture. However,

317
318 Joad Raymond

there is a specific sense in which restraints are placed upon this dialogue,
through which the imaginary and the real become non-identical, though
still closely linked. Pordage passed from religious orthodoxy through exper-
imental divinity into an occult visionary period, thence to a revised spir-
itual vision that was finally accommodated in the Restoration to doctrinal
quietism, during which period he was midwife to the Philadelphian move-
ment. This chapter explores the story of the Pordage family as a means of
understanding the fortunes of religious radicalism and its shifting relation-
ship with angels in the later seventeenth century.
Looking back on the spread of heresy in 1650s England, Richard Baxter
identified five principal new sects: Vanists, Seekers, Ranters, Quakers and
Behmenists. Four of these (excluding the Quakers) had experimental rela-
tionships with angels, writing about them in innovative ways and seeking
closer communion with them. The radical speculation of the 1640s and
1650s, powered by political turmoil, apocalypticism, mysticism, fears and
anxieties about social change, spawned a more fervent interest in angels.
Angels seemed more immediate. In a sense, all mid- century religious radi-
cals can be described as Seekers, actively pursuing the spirit through inter-
nal paths, rejecting outward forms as a means of identifying the true God,
and for Seekers angels had a powerful valence as metaphors and a means
of reflecting upon society, and offered a language with which to reflect on
spiritual experience.
These angels were not only in the imagination, however. Of the
Behmenists, Baxter writes, ‘The cheifest of these in England are Dr. Pordage
and his Family, who live together in Community, and pretend to hold vis-
ible and sensible Communion with Angels, whom they sometime see, and
sometime smell, &c.’ Baxter had spoken to one of John Pordage’s commun-
ion, who did not know ‘whether it were with the Eye of the Body or of
the Mind’ that he saw angels.3 Baxter thought the former unlikely, as ‘God
hath not judged’ converse with angels ‘suitable to our Condition here in the
Flesh’.4 Few knew of Pordage’s angelic conversations, as he sought to keep
them within his spiritual family. However, resentment in the local commu-
nity, the personal animus of one Christopher Fowler, and envy over both
Pordage’s comfortable benefice and godly reputation, prompted accusations
and a hearing before church commissioners that resulted in ejection from
his living. The story of his conversations bubbled briefly in the pamphlet
press. Still, little would be known if his charismatic spiritual leadership had
not resulted in a trail of unpublished manuscripts in the Bodleian library
that make it possible to follow his subsequent spiritual journey.
John Dee’s conversations with angels (discussed in Stephen Clucas’ chap-
ter above) were infamous throughout the seventeenth century. Even before
Meric Casaubon published his unsympathetic and partial transcript, A True
& Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers Between Sr. John Dee ... and
Some Spirits (1659), rumours of unchristian practices circulated, and scholars
 Radicalism and Mysticism 319

sought to consult the manuscripts in the library of Sir Robert Cotton. They
have continued to fascinate scholars and are a symbol of the vitality of the
occult, and of its compatibility with Christianity and scholarship. While
the speech acts of Pordage’s angels cannot be reconstructed in any compa-
rable detail, his case is a reminder that Dee was not unique, and that com-
munication with the spiritual world could grow from religious enthusiasm
and antinomianism and was not the preserve of the learned.

Angels under the Protectorate

As Baxter recorded, John Pordage was influenced by the German mystic

Jacob Boehme, together with Trithemius, Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Hendrik
Niclaes and the mythical Solomon. These mystical authors encouraged radi-
cal speculation and the incorporation of occult beliefs and folklore and spir-
itual experimentalism into conventional Protestant angelology. Pordage’s
angelic communications also fit into an astrological-magical tradition. A
client of Elias Ashmole, it is likely that Pordage was in William Lilly’s com-
munity of angel- conversants, and, though he denied it, that his visions were
initially invoked using astrological-magical means. Lilly’s autobiography
reveals a community of astrologers who conjured angels. He learned sum-
moning from his tutors, the Welsh astrologer John Evans and Alexander
Hart; from Dee’s diaries; and from Simon Forman’s manuscripts. Pordage
may have borrowed from this tradition as much as from Behmenism.5
Pordage’s connections extended from the socially privileged down to the
shadows.6 He was thoroughly connected with an antinomian underground.
In 1634, a preacher denounced his mystical searching for spiritual regenera-
tion through communion with the divine; a 1645 pamphlet identifies him
as a member of the Family of Love, and one of a network of perfectionists
boldly promoting their doctrines in and around London.7 Pordage’s closest,
most influential relationship was perhaps with his wife Mary (née Lane),
whom he married in 1633. According to a later history of Philadelphianism,
the society arose from English mysticism, ‘& that w th a fresh Concurrence
& Holy Gale of a Divine Life & Power Opening first & Principally in
MrsPordage Wife of Dr John Pordage Doctor in Physick: who married her for
ye Excellent Gift of God he found in her; wch Gift he also became in a high
degree Partaker of’.8 The Philadelphians stressed the role of women in rev-
elation, women prophets were central to the society, and there may be some
exaggeration in this account.9 However, Mary and John’s household was an
enthusiastic and visionary one. They were inspired and persecuted together,
and after Mary’s death in 1668 John did not remarry.
In 1654, Pordage was called before the Berkshire Commissioners for
the Ejecting of Scandalous Ministers and accused of scandal and blas-
phemy. Several sets of articles were successively brought against him,
some gossipy, the most serious alleging his denial of the divinity of Christ.
320 Joad Raymond

Antitrinitarianism defined the limits of toleration during the 1650s, and

Sadducism and Socinianism were the most sensitive, heterodox and scan-
dalous (though often imaginary) theological positions.10 The proceedings
in September through December 1654 were pressed without remorse or
regularity.11 Pordage was not permitted to hear depositions, not allowed to
cross- examine, nor freely summon witnesses. Christopher Fowler, his main
persecutor, was both a prosecution witness and a Commissioner, and when
Pordage wrote a treatise describing the proceedings and vindicating himself,
Innocencie Appearing through the Dark Mists of Pretended Guilt (1655), Fowler
published his own account together with animadversions, Dæmonium
Meridianum. Satan at Noon (1655).
Though Pordage complained that his enemies were trying ‘to crucifie me
between transgressors, Hereticks, Familists, Ranters, Sorcerors’, his associations
with known radicals were extensive. Among his acquaintance in this period
were the Welsh Behmenist and alleged Ranter William Erbery, Abiezer
Coppe, Richard Coppin, a radical puritan associated with Coppe and with
Ranterism, the Behmenist Thomas Tany and the Digger, prophetic vision-
ary and alleged conjuror William Everard.12 Erbery, Pordage, Coppin, Coppe
and Tany were also associated through the radical bookseller Giles Calvert,
who published books by all of them (and by Everard’s perfectionist comrade
Gerard Winstanley). Calvert introduced to Coppe’s London radical group
‘My one flesh’ the Ranter Laurence Clarkson or Claxton, who trained in
astrology and physic, studied magical manuscripts and tried to summon
spirits (‘[I] aspired to the art of Magick, so finding some of Doctor Wards
and Woolerds Manuscripts, I improved my genius to fetch Goods back that
were stoln, yea to raise spirits, and fetch treasure out of the earth’).13 All of
these men, all Seekers in the broader sense, participated in a network that
admired Boehme, believed in spiritual visions, magic and astrology, and
sought spiritual communication. Though they may have denied the exist-
ence of a separate, material hell, and advocated mortalism and an inter-
nalised eschatology, they nonetheless pursued spiritual conversations and
angel magic.14
The witnesses at Pordage’s trial offer bizarre testimony: ‘at the said Doctors
house the face of God hath been seen; not as Moses saw him, but the very face,
as one man may see anothers’. This looks like a form of extreme anthropo-
morphism resembling that of Claxton and the Muggletonians.15 Mrs. Flavel,
in a trance, ‘saw the Philosophers stone, which she knew to be the Divinity
in the Humanity’. Pordage’s angelology was infused with Hermeticism; like
his patron Ashmole, he may have actively pursued both the philosopher’s
stone and the food of angels.16 Pordage declines to speak of ‘any thing con-
cerning the Mystical writings of the deep Hermetick Philosophers, or what
the judgement of some of them is concerning this secret’.17 His terse remark
illuminates a subsequent description of his family’s visionary experiences:
‘Our sense or faculty of tasting, was very pleasantly entertained, with those
 Radicalism and Mysticism 321

invisible dews which were sweeter then hony or the honycomb; and there-
fore deserve to be called the Dews of Haven, with which instead of food, we
were many times wonderfully refreshed’. (76) Pordage ate manna, the food
of angels. Fowler’s accusations include: that Pordage had ‘very frequent
and familiar converse with Angels’; that a dragon came into his chamber,
and that as he struggled with it he was assisted by ‘his own Angel ... in his
own shape and fashion, the same clothes, bands and cuffs, the same band-
strings’; that his chamber ‘hath sometimes been almost filled with spirits’;
that his angel commanded him to cease preaching; that a visitor to his
house in a trance saw ‘two Angels all in white, with Crowns’ floating over
the head of Pordage’s daughter, and other visions. (14–15, 16, 19) Margaret
Pendar, a neighbour, is converted by visions of angels. She sees a vision
of a man who promises to heal her, producing a book he calls ‘the book
of the Lamb ... a broad book with a parchment- cover, and I saw writing in
it’. A dark angel appears and tempts her to suicide. Pordage visits her and
prays ‘in a very strange language, she did not understand well what he said’.
(15) She implies that incantations and heresies formed part of Pordage’s
prayers.
Throughout his trial, Pordage cagily resists revealing his visions. To make
visible the invisible world could lead to accusations of heresy. To the allega-
tion that he had conversed with angels, he responds:

As this Article is presented in general terms, without expressing whether

the Communion be visible or invisible, I do not see how it can touch me,
though my enemies were my Judges, because every true Christian hath
frequent communion or converse with Angels, as you may see solidly
and clearly proved from Scripture by the Lord Lawrence, one very learned
and pious, now President of the Lord Protectors Councel, in his Book
Entituled, Our Communion and War with Angels.18

By citing Henry Lawrence’s formal treatise on angels (published 1646),

Pordage hopes to appear orthodox, and to point out that similar interests
were held by those now in power. Pordage understands that his enemies are
exploring the ground for accusations of cacodemology and conjuration. His
persecution, however, proves him a faithful servant of God:

If it can be proved that I ever so much as looked toward the unlawfull Art
of Black-Magick, or that any evil Spirit were raised up by any compact of
mine, explicite, or implicite, or that those evil apparitions were subdued
and overcome by any other means then by Gods blessing upon our fast-
ing and prayers, I shall judge myself worthy of punishment; but other-
wise it is hard measure to be prosecuted and prejudiced for the malice
of the Devil towards me, inflicting what I was passive in, and could not
help, especially by those who profess the Christian religion, and know
322 Joad Raymond

that the God of heaven rules over all, permitting and disposing of what-
ever comes to passe. (26)

He does not directly repudiate conversations with visible angels but

emphatically denies conjuring demons. Throughout the trial, his accusers
return to angels and Pordage’s ‘own angel’, and he is repeatedly and adroitly
non- committal on the subject. Eventually he admits in court, ‘that I had an
Angel of God that stood by me, assisted me, comforted me, and protected
me, when that dreadfull apparition was before me,’ though he signally does
not acknowledge it to be an individual guardian, and his phrasing permits a
metaphoric reading. (68) He does not wish to admit his belief in individual
guardian angels, while his enemies see it as an indicator of other, more nox-
ious doctrines. His caution was in vain: he was ejected from his rectorship
on 8 December 1654.
If Pordage had simply declared that he had seen evil angels, it would
have been scandalous, but real danger lay in any implication of a compact.
Under the 1604 Act against Conjuration and Witchcraft, this carried the
death penalty. In seventeenth- century Britain, bad angels appeared more
frequently than good, and though doubtless more terrifying they were also
more hermeneutically straightforward, because no good angel would dis-
guise itself as a bad. An apparently good angel, however, might be a bad
angel disguised (hence Pordage’s claim that he could smell the difference).19
If one claimed that an apparition was good, there were grounds for thinking
that one had honoured, spoken or otherwise held commerce with it, and
that if it was not a good angel, one was therefore guilty of demonolatry or
witchcraft. Consequently, it was more perilous to see a good angel than to
see the Devil.
Pordage published Innocencie Appearing in March 1655, including peti-
tions to Cromwell and various written submissions rejected by the court.
Among these is a document, apparently prepared late in the proceedings
but not presented, in which Pordage confesses to his visions. He conversed
with visible angels in 1649–50. He is threatened by a spirit in the shape of
Everard, then a giant and then a great Dragon, during which he is supported
‘by the Ministration of the Holy Angels’. (73) These visions, shared with
his family, disclose to him the existence of two worlds, Mundi Ideales, the
Mundus Tenebrosus and Mundus Luminosus, opened up to the inward senses
or ‘internal spiritual faculties’, though he describes the experience as a sen-
sual one, visual, olfactory, tactile and gustatory. He also saw the dark world,
prompted by the Devil:

We beheld innumerable multitudes of evil spirits or Angels, presenting

themselves in appearing distinctions of order and dignity, as powers,
principalities, dignities; my meaning is there seemed to be inferiority
 Radicalism and Mysticism 323

and superiority, Governors and governed, The Princes of this dark world,
and their subjects, which presented themselves as passing before our eys
in state and pomp; all the mighty ones appearing to be drawn in dark
ayers clouds, Chariots with six or at least four beasts, to every one, besides
every figured similitude of a Coach, was attended with many inferior
spirits, as servants to the Princes. But concerning the shapes and figures
of the spirits, you must know, they were very monstrous, terrible, and
affrighting to the outward man. Those that drew the clowdy Coaches,
appearing in the shapes of Lions, Dragons, Elephants, Tygers, Bears, and
such like terrible beasts; besides the Princes and those that Attended
them, though all in the shapes of men, yet represented themselves mon-
strously mishapen, as with ears like those of Cats, cloven feet, ugly legs
and bodies, eys fiery, sharp and piercing.... Now besides these appear-
ances within, the sperits made some wonderful impressions upon visible
bodies without: as figures of men and beasts upon the glass windows,
and the Cealings of the house, some of which yet remain: But what was
most remarkable, was the whole visible world represented by the spirits,
upon the Bricks of a Chimney, in the form of two half- Globes, as in the
Maps ... were but the eys of men opened to see the kingdom of the Dragon
in this world, with the multitudes of evil Angels which are everywhere
tempting and ensnaring men, they would be amazed, and not dare to be
by themselves, without good Consciences, and a great assurance of the
love and favour of God, in protecting them, by the Ministration of the
Holy Angels. (73–74)

His family is tortured by the noxious smells, ‘loathsome hellish tasts’, and
physical pains. (74–75) Though the spirits are seen with the inward eye,
they are also seen, projected onto surfaces, with the outward eye. Pordage’s
parishioners identify real sights and real smells.
The light world is more reticently described:

There appeared then to our inward sight multitudes almost innumerable,

of pure Angelical spirits, in figurative bodies, which were as clear as the
morning-star, and transparent as Christal, these were Mahanaim or the
Lords host, appearing all in manly forms, full of Beauty and Majesty,
sparkling like Diamonds and sending forth a tincture like the swift rays,
and hot beams of the Sun, which we powerfully felt to the refreshing of
our souls, and enlivening of our bodies.

The bodies are figurative but they are nonetheless highly colourful.
Pordage and his family hear ‘many musical sounds and voices’; their ‘spir-
itual joy and delight’ was ‘infused into our souls, uttered by the tongue’.20
These are angels’ tongues. The witnesses smell heavenly perfume and eat
324 Joad Raymond

the food of angels. An unutterable ‘pleasing impression’ is ‘sensibly felt in

the inward parts’. Pordage collapses inward sensations into outward. The
inward worlds are coextensive but discontinuous with the outward worlds.
Angels are ‘more immediately’ in the invisible world than ‘in this visible
air’, which implies that they are seen in this visible air, even if not immedi-
ately so. The prosecution witnesses testify that the visions were seen with
the bodily eye. (76, 67) These are inward worlds, but they make impressions
on outward senses.
Pordage describes the spiritual enlightenment that visions brought, con-
vincing him and his family of the merits of the life of virginity. His preach-
ing on virginity – a state of inward passivity – which could be interpreted as
antinomian, may paradoxically explain his reputation among the unsympa-
thetic for personal license. Following three or four weeks of intense visions,
his family live in joyful communion with this spiritual world for four years.
The occasion of his trial becomes both a providential occasion for him to
reveal what God had revealed to his family, and further evidence of the
persecution of the saintly by the Beast. (78–79) This is hermetic mysticism,
yet it is also Protestant theology, and Pordage is specific about his angelic
doctrine. Angels are ministering spirits; there are two sorts, good and bad;
elect humans are assigned a personal angel; angels can assume human form;
according to the witnesses, the iconography is also traditional, as they appear
in white and wear crowns. He also seems to endorse a hierarchy of angels,
perhaps the Pseudo-Dionysian orders that Protestants usually rejected as
uncertain.21 Fowler claimed that Pordage’s angelology was heterodox, and
his animadversions offer an avowedly orthodox account of angelic visita-
tion by means of contrast: angels appear infrequently and briefly, and they
appear with messages, for comfort, for deliverance, for direction. Nothing in
Lawrence, Fowler contends, supports visible converse with angels. Pordage
counters that Fowler’s scepticism about ‘heavenly converse’ suggests that he
does not believe in the continuing ministration of angels and thus denies
scripture and limits God.22
At one point, Pordage turns his angels to a worldly, political end. As there
are degrees among angels, there are governors and governed in this outward
world. Angelic hierarchies are evidence of the providential significance of
political hierarchies, and on this basis he appeals to superior magistrates
against the oppressive judgement of the Berkshire commissioners. Even a
visionary who communed with angels can use the exposition of conven-
tional angelic doctrine to make a political argument. Nonetheless, for all
of his pragmatic evasiveness, we hear in Pordage’s documents a genuine
voice of enthusiasm and honest indignation, as well as the inaccessibility of
one convinced of his personal enlightenment. What actually happened in
Pordage’s kitchen is beyond our knowing, and it seems cynical to reduce his
testimonies to a materialist, mechanical explanation.23 This was, for him,
both an inward and outward experience.
 Radicalism and Mysticism 325

Epic and angels

Twenty- one-year- old Samuel Pordage appeared briefly and testified on his
father’s preaching, his interest in Christology and condemnation of magical
practices.24 In his early years, Samuel was part of his father’s spiritual com-
munity, and his subsequent writings suggest a close relationship. He went on
to write some lightweight Restoration verse that, stylistically and intellectu-
ally, bears no relation to his most substantial work, Mundorum Explicatio or,
The Explanation of an Hieroglyphical Figure: Wherein are couched the Mysteries
of the External, Internal, and Eternal Worlds, shewing the true progress of a Soul
from the Court of Babylon to the City of Jerusalem; from the Adamical fallen state
to the Regenerate and Angelical. A Sacred Poem.25 The ‘Hieroglyphical Figure’,
which charts the universe of the poem, was drawn by John, while Samuel’s
poetry speaks of elaborate theology and angelic communications. The nar-
rator admits that the visions are not his own, but the poem can nonethe-
less illuminate the visions of Pordage’s spiritual community. Mundorum
Explicatio has little in the way of poetical felicities, and its spiritual subject
matter was unfashionable, but it merits attention as a risky and ambitious
poem that reveals much about the relationship among angels, spiritual radi-
calism and poetry in the seventeenth century.26
Mundorum Explicatio describes a soul’s journey through multiple universes.
Part discursive, part narrative, it is self- consciously modelled on Dante’s
Divine Comedy, occasionally echoes Homer and resembles John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) in its allegory. Its claims to visionary poetics, spir-
itual revelation, prophesy and divine inspiration bring it closer to Milton’s
Paradise Lost (1667). Invoking Urania as his Muse and declaring his theme
heavenly love, the narrator outlines the existence of four worlds: the exter-
nal and terrestrial world, the light or paradisiacal world, the dark or tartar-
ean world, and the (enveloping) eternal world. Samuel treats the journey
through the internal, spiritual worlds as an allegorical or accommodated
narrative, though doing so requires him to posit a real, material existence
supplementing the spiritual. He describes at length the corporeality and
senses of angels to show that they interact in the created world in ways
that can be rationally explained.27 They are, then, both spiritual allegories
and unambiguously real, just as his father’s account of angels collapsed the
inward into the outward.
The poem falls into three parts. Part one describes Creation, and offers a
Behmenist and Paracelsian account of the creation (from the first principle,
evil, and the second principle, love) and double Fall of man. Pordage’s didac-
tic narrative is dramatically interrupted as the narrator describes the dark
world by telling the story of the soul of a man who seeks illicit knowledge.
A devil guides this damned man to hell, where he encounters Lucifer and
is offered a pact: he is given necromantic skills in return for eating the fruit
of the Tree of Death. A descent into hell is less theologically daring than an
326 Joad Raymond

ascent into heaven, and Samuel’s relation exploits familiar literary elements,
though the narrative of the descent and the diabolical pact are intended to
recall John’s rejection of sorcery and necromancy, in the sermon to which
Samuel testified in the 1654 trial. The son seeks to exculpate his father from
unjust charges of sorcery. Later in the poem, an encounter with the ‘theam-
agical twelve fruits’ in Paradise, the twelve forms of knowledge, including
the gift of union and communion with spirits, the gift of the five internal
senses, and of divine magic (267–84) will offer a retrospective justification
of John Pordage’s interests, his spiritual communications and pursuit of
magic. True magic and theology are intertwined (274, 283–92).
Part Two shifts focus again and describes the journey of Pilgrim, led by
his guardian angel, to the light world; this is a hybrid between a spiritual
allegory and an Italianate epic romance, seasoned with didactic passages
of occult philosophy. Pilgrim’s spiritual transcendence brings the dramatic
turning-point of the poem. He is unwedded from this material world and
his senses unlocked: he beholds the angelic world, hears angelical voices,
smells paradisiacal odours, tastes the food of angels. Samuel captures in
imaginative form of John’s earlier, literal experience, his revelation of
the angelic world and the opening to inward sight of ‘multitudes of pure
Angelical spirits’.28 One of the temptations Pilgrim faces is the Imagination,
which creates perilous shadows that draw the reader from the real, spiritual
world. Pilgrim’s progress relies on affirming the value of the inner world.
The revelation that he undergoes, however, is not to be understood alle-
gorically: these are real angels, and real sensory stimuli. Allegorical poetry
is dangerous, Samuel intimates: it is for poets without divine inspiration.
Samuel’s angels, like John’s, are real.
Accompanied and protected by angels, Pilgrim travels through all four
worlds. He finds his eyes opened to a space between the worlds hitherto
obscured from his sight: purgatory. In one of several inset narratives and
songs, Pilgrim’s guardian angel affirms the reality of this place. The errors
that the devil introduces into the world – such as church ceremonies – are
mixed with truths. One must sift such doctrines before rejecting them, and
this is one, the angel avers, that over-zealous Protestants have discarded
as popish fiction before sufficient consideration. The impassioned angel
explains the necessity of an intermediate space through which imperfect
souls can be redeemed:

But tell me Man! what shall those Pilgrim’s do,

Who in Heav’ns Way have gone, but not come to
Be dead, and risen with the Lord, when by
The Way they lose their mortal Life, and dye?
They are not fit for Paradise: What then?
Must they be hurled to the Stygian Den?
 Radicalism and Mysticism 327

Must they be damn’d? with God’s great Mercy rather

Doth it not stand, to being their Spirits hither?
Where they may finish, what they had begun;
And to the end of Sion’s Race may run? (223)

The guardian’s indignation makes him more of a rounded character

than most seventeenth- century angels. Much as the theological position
is peculiar, the poetic impact of the argument is challenging: the allegory
of the narrative (purgatory becomes visible to a Protestant through revela-
tion) remains intact, but introduces literal meaning.29 Purgatory is real, and
Pilgrim sees it as he travels between the worlds. The extent to which the
richly-figurative episode is intended to represent an actual reality (and the
manner in which it does so) is left suspended, as in the anomalously allegor-
ical Limbo of Vanities in Paradise Lost (3: 444–97). It is one of the strengths
of imaginative writing that it is permitted to leave the status of such pas-
sages uncertain, suspended between imaginative speculation and rational
argument; but both Pordage and Milton seek to integrate these aspects of
their writing, so the narrative accords with doctrine, and doctrine is elabo-
rated through narrative.
Part two ends with a sublime silence as, through the protective veil of his
angel’s wings, Pilgrim meets Jesus. Part three is briefer and discusses the
principles of literary representation. The narrator claims that he is not writ-
ing with the imaginative fancifulness of a poet: this invisible world is real
and accessible to the soul’s eyes, though he has not himself been granted
this privilege. He has not been accounted worthy to see these sights. He does
not mention that his father described these worlds to him: his inspiration
is poetic, while the prophetic inspiration is his father’s. The poem stum-
bles to a conclusion in paradox, when Pilgrim enters the New Jerusalem
and encounters an unrepresentable God. ‘No Man, or Angel a Commission
has / To dive into this abstruce secret Place’, so he presents truths ‘darkly
shadow’d forth’, but nonetheless exhorts: ‘O Man destroy all Images / Of
God’ (330–32).
Mundorum Explicatio is one of a cluster of seventeenth- century epics
that are centrally concerned with angels, including Paradise Lost, Thomas
Heywood’s Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels (1635) and Lucy Hutchinson’s Order
and Disorder (written in the 1660s). There was a close connection between
English epic and the invisible world of angels: debates about the legitimacy
of representing angels captured the interest of poets, and shaped efforts to
give epic a Christian ethos and to establish vernacular poetic traditions.30
For the Pordages, however, epic held additional attractions: the form enabled
Samuel to describe a voyage through worlds discovered by John’s spiritual
inspiration. An imaginative narrative, not exactly fictional, was a means of
explicating spiritual truths.
328 Joad Raymond

Pordage in the Restoration

John Pordage retired from the glare of publicity during the 1660s, while
remaining the centre of a congregation, and an inspiring figure among
networks of religious enthusiasts. He divided his time between Bradfield
and London, before moving more permanently to London at some point
in the 1660s. His associates there would include Jane Lead, a founder of the
Philadelphian society, and Ann Bathurst, a visionary and Philadelphian.
Both women experienced angelic revelations influenced by Pordage’s teach-
ings. The community’s worship combined Pordage’s Behmenist theology
with an increasingly spiritualist dimension that mitigated its enthusiastic
accounts of the reality of multiple worlds. Pordage’s theology evolved in the
Restoration, increasingly encouraging the contemplation of angels rather
than communication with them.
Though he continued to write, Pordage did not publish. Following his
death, his followers sought to edit a series of manuscripts that had circu-
lated among them for some years, eight or more treatises constituting a
systematic theology. A pair were posthumously published in 1683 under
the title Theologia Mystica, with an address to the reader by Lead. The vol-
ume outlined a vision of the six worlds (or globes) contained within the
globe of Eternal Nature, itself within the Eternal World or Archetypal Globe:
‘the Angelical Heaven or the Love world’, the ‘Dark-fire world Hell, or The
wrath-world’, the ‘Fire-light-world or The severe world’, the ‘Light-Fire-world
or Paradise’, the ‘Four Elementarie world, or The outward visible world’, and
the ‘Fire-less world or the merciful world’. Each of these worlds had a corre-
sponding treatise, and the two outer globes are briefly described in Theologia
Mystica. No further volumes followed. An edition advertised in 1697 did
not appear, though German versions of some works were subsequently pub-
lished in Amsterdam.31
Pordage did not intend these works for publication, and the authority of
the extant texts is doubtful. A later manuscript, owned and perhaps writ-
ten by the ‘philadelphian and mystic’ Dr Keith, states that Pordage ‘did not
put his Manuscripts into that order which was necessary for publishing
them: but set them down only for his memory, & he wrote at several times
upon ye same subject in a different manner, & left some pieces imperfect’.32
The manuscript is entitled ‘A Preliminary Treatise which may serve for an
INTRODUCTION to the following Work’, though it is detached from the
promised work. The author notes that the published edition of Pordage’s
work on ‘The Eternal World & of Eternal Nature’ is only an epitome, written
by someone with a poor grasp of Pordage’s sense, and that he has based his
text on the original manuscripts. He adds that contradictions in Pordage’s
terminology probably derive from their composition over many years. He
himself remains faithful to Pordage’s ideas and words while necessarily sup-
plying ‘the Disposition of ye work & ye Connexion of ye parts’ to remedy
 Radicalism and Mysticism 329

the condition of the originals.33 Pordage’s post-restoration works were evi-

dently significantly altered in transmission. One English manuscript, ‘A
Tract of Christ’s Birth and Incarnation’, contains extensive interpolations
and has been resequenced. One transcriber introduces a series of responses
to Paradise Lost. This reader-rewriter admits to making free with Pordage’s
method while remaining faithful to his matter.34 Pordage was an influen-
tial authority, but his was a living tradition, and his readers took liberty to
revise his works.
What survives, however, enables us to reconstruct Pordage’s later beliefs
in angels. These were based upon his earlier journeys; direct revelation had
ceased.35 No longer communicating with angels, Pordage inserted them into
an elaborate cosmology, in which non-angelic spirits played a central role.
His writing adopted a systematic rather than a visionary approach; it is none
the less fantastic, but conforms more closely to the conventions of theologi-
cal writing.
The Angelical World is created in matter from Eternal Nature, out of the
three elements, salt, mercury and sulphur. Its form is framed by an idea or
principle, ‘the inmost framing spirit’ or Archæus brought forth by God out
of Eternal Natures Spirit. All worlds are so formed, except the Dark World
or Hell, made by Lucifer and fallen angels.36 Thus the universe is consistent
in matter, though differentiated in innate principle. This neoplatonic and
Behmenist account explains why these worlds are permeable to the travel-
ler, while nonetheless remaining entirely invisible to the uninspired. Angels
have freewill, and so Lucifer was free to fall: he exalted the fire- qualities
within himself and so fell into the fire- quality, ‘And by this means one
Region of the Angelical World thro’ ye sin of Lucifer & his fellow Angels was
turned into Hell’. Man was made to supply the fallen angels’ place, and God
created the celestial paradise and the visible world out of the matter that
Lucifer had corrupted.37
Pordage depopulates this Angelical World, however, by elaborating a
Behmenist account of middle spirits or genii distinct from angels.38 He also
focuses on the seven spirits that stand before the throne of God, or Throne
angels. These are adapted from the orthodox Angels of the Presence, the
seven spirits which witness the face of God (Rev. 1.4; also Tobit 12.15 and
2. Cor. 2.17). They proceed from the body of Holy Ghost and are thus co-
essential powers with him.39 They are not angels but part of a spirit world.
Here, and elsewhere in the philosophy of Pordage and the Philadelphians,
traditional angelology is imported into increasingly elaborate frameworks,
detached from conventional learning and practical worship. While the mid-
dle spirits have a use in natural magic, these seven spirits are beyond human
knowledge or communication. The effect is to restrict the role of angels in
Pordage’s later theology.
Pordage’s commitment to the immediate, sensible reality of angels weak-
ened. He did not, however, abandon angel doctrine: he suggested that angels
330 Joad Raymond

could not be mediators between God and man; that they have senses; they
need food; they are, unlike the seven spirits, corporeal; they do not need rea-
son.40 Two, heterodox and thoroughly creaturely statements about angels in
the manuscripts of his writings suggest an ongoing commitment to think-
ing about angels as discrete beings who participate in a cosmic drama. The
first, perhaps echoing the Byzantine Michael Psellus, is that angels may be
capable of a form of autochthonous reproduction: ‘Nay I see no reason to
doubt why Angels, good & bad, should not have that Powre, to form new
ideas in their imaginations, to impregnate by them a suitable matter, & so
to bring forth new compounded living Bodys; supposing God will permit
it or not hinder it’.41 The second doctrine is that at the end of time there
will be a Universal Restitution or Restoration, which even fallen angels will
enjoy.42 This second notion is associated with Lead’s post-1697 revelations,
and it is possible that both doctrines were added to Pordage’s writings by
later copyists.43
One of Pordage’s copyists, transcribing Pordage’s discussion of the
seven spirits, interjected: ‘I am not certain whether he speaks properly
or metaphorically’.44 (There is perhaps a significant historical shift from
Baxter’s witness who could not be sure whether Pordage’s angels were seen
with the eye of the body or of the mind, to this antithesis between the lit-
eral and the metaphorical.) It is an acute observation. Passages in these later
works suggest that Pordage was less unequivocally committed to the real
existence of these worlds witnessed through inspiration. His mysticism is
diluted. This may be the effect of scribal transmission and emendation, or
it may reflect his shifting theological position. Later Philadelphians sought
to distinguish their mentor of the 1670s from the religious enthusiast of the
1650s.45 However, Pordage’s earlier writings maintain a delicate relationship
between reality and allegory. His spiritual journey is allegorical while none-
theless depending on the reality of the worlds he describes; and the literary
mode of Mundorum Explicatio relies on the simultaneous allegory and the
reality that underpins Pilgrim’s journeys and ruptures the literary surface.
Some readers would have had difficulty understanding or accepting this
balance. Even Boehme, who heard the songs of the angelical world on his
deathbed, did not claim to have travelled through it.46

Jane Lead and Ann Bathurst’s ‘Transportations’

Lead met Pordage in 1663 and joined him in his ministry (and household)
some time after Mary’s death in 1668. The Philadelphians emerged from
the circle around them. Jane began to experience and record visions in
1670 (including visions of angels, which shape her divinity, though they
seldom have the immediacy of Pordage’s sensory encounters: they are
safely circumscribed visions, received in a particular state of mind and con-
veyed within the limits of a familiar genre.)47 Pordage died in 1681, and
 Radicalism and Mysticism 331

though the Philadelphian Society was not formally inaugurated until 1696
or 1697, something like the Society had existed within Pordage’s spiritual
community.48
Ann Bathurst, an acquaintance of Lead and of Pordage, had an extensive
series of visions of individual guardian angels. She conversed with them and
witnessed conversations between her guardian and the guardians of oth-
ers. Her ‘Transportations’ and ‘Visionall Dreams’ present a more developed,
familiar and conversational relationship with angels.49 Richard Roach, the
eighteenth- century historian of Philadelphianism and friend of Lead, records
that Bathurst, and her friend Joanna Oxenbridge, had ‘great & Wonderful
Experiences & Manifestations from ye Heavenly World’.50 In March 1679,
when she was sharing a house with Pordage and Lead, she received her first
vision of an angel. In her first ‘Transportation or Manifestation’, which took
place ‘either in the Body, or out of the Body ... I cannot tell’, she undertakes
a journey in which she sees first Paradise and then the Kingdom of Christ,
where

I appeared to my self (I mean my Angel appear’d to me, but I understood

it not) at wch being surprized, and the flesh shrinking at the greatness of
the Glory, I perfectly felt a Touch on the top of my head, wch drew my
spirit out of me, as you would draw a knife or sword out of a sheath, & it
cut as it was drawn forth, I felt it cut like a two- edged sword.

The journey continues: she sees the Father, the Dragon, the Beast and
Babylon. She asks to see angels, ‘and immediately there were several of them
compassing part of the Throne: They were like unto transparent Gold, w th
faces like Men, having two large golden Wings coming forth of each side
of their faces, wch was most glorious’.51 This vision is her starting point: it
is the most dramatic, most literary expression of her spiritual revelations.
However, her revelations continued until September 1696, and the records
comprise over 800 manuscript pages. They present many visible and speak-
ing angels and three distinct theories of the offices and nature of angels.
The angels appeared to her at prayer meetings and as she lay in bed. From
the first, she distinguishes between ‘outward Angel’ (sometimes ‘of this
Lower world’) and her ‘supreme Angel’ or ‘Angel in the Unity of Love’. The
former is visible both to herself and to her friends, and she can see her
friends’ outward angels. One day in 1680, she records in her spiritual diary,
‘I saw my friends Angel & mine put into scales in sight of the B. B. [Bright
Body, or Jesus] to be weighed in a higher center, & in other cloathing; My
Angel I thought to be wanting in weight ...’52 A few days later, she records a
systematic angelology:

) My ffriend & I read a Vision of our Three-fold Angel. Our supreme part
being an Angel that allwise abides in the Unity of Love, after we have
332 Joad Raymond

once become a little Child of that Center, & wch allwise beholds the face
of our Father in heaven: there’s also another Angel of ours, wch is our
Guardian, or souls-Angel that goeth up with our requests: I have some-
times seen it goe up like a white Cloud with my prayers, and my Angel of
the Unity of Love come to it to hear its requests, y t she might pray them
over again. So Now as my ffriend read the Vision to me, I saw my Angel
like a white Cloud go to the place of the Unity of Love, and my Angel of
ye U. of Love, wch was in a gold-garment & like a Child, run to the white
Cloud (wch was my Angel also) and say, what is your request? I’m come
to hear y t I may offer it up, for being near the Father & Son I know best
how to offer up according to his will, and know best his will and what
He requires of yow. Thus did I see both these Angels, as if one prayed
lying on its face, and the other praying the requests over again & bet-
ter; and when my spirits Angel understood what I wanted that I had not
asked for, she said to the other (my souls-Angel) y t I must ask for ffaith,
yrby declaring what great advantage it was for the (third Angel or) Angel
in the lower world to have great ffaith, what victory it gave us over our
selves, so as nothing could hurt us; that ffaith keeps everything without
us, and nothing without us hurts us; and y t I should assuredly beleive y t
no concerns in ye world should hurt our souls progress, and if they did, y t
we should be helped out of them. This was said as to us both, my friend
& me, ^and I received strength.53

Each human has three angels: an angel in the Unity of Love, or spirit’s
angel, who stands in the presence of the Trinity; a personal guardian angel,
or soul’s angel, who is a messenger between the individual and heaven; and
the angel in the lower world, a natural angel, who is equivalent to the this-
worldly part of the human soul of the person. The ‘Vision of our Three-fold
Angel’ that Bathurst reads with her friend may be the still-living Pordage’s.
The ‘Preliminary Treatise’ explains: ‘There is then in us a threefold Spirit; a
Natural one for this World; An Eternal angelical soul for ye Angelical objects,
that is, all that in ye Angelical Principle is manifested, & thus not onle ye
Angels, but even God too is introduced into ye World; & a Divine Spirit, for
ye enjoyment of God and his most sacred Influences with ye other Objects
of ye Eternal World’.54 This three-fold system, however, may have originated
with another and been retrospectively inserted into Pordage’s beliefs.
These angels serve traditional purposes: they are ministering spirits,
charged with human welfare; they are witnesses and messengers. They have
a mode of knowledge unlike ours and know God in ways unknown to us.
They sing beyond the expression of human tongue. In other respects, they
are heterodox. Bathurst’s angels are intensely personal: she identifies them,
and they offer a more active channel of communication with God than is
conventional within Protestantism. They are also sexed according to their
human: hers are feminine, while a male friend’s angel is masculine.55 In
 Radicalism and Mysticism 333

one vision, her soul is exalted, and the process is represented by the gift of
an edible book from Christ, an image rooted in Revelations, but particularly
significant in occult learning: ‘He gave my Angel ) a Book all of gold, &
said, read it; my Law and Love is written in it; Eat it, and let it be yor food,
and yow shall Live for ever, and yow shall not want my assistance. and
she (i.e. my angel) took the Book & eat it, and her Garment became very
rich and beautiful and shining’.56 In addition to personal angels, there are
angels and spirits that are independent of humans. Bathurst is sometimes
specific about the varied appearance of her angels: some wear transparent
gold garments, ‘Not in the figure of Cherubims as sometimes I have seen
them’. She can visually distinguish between Cherubim and other angels. In
1686, ‘A Glorious Angel like the Son of God appeared, girt about the paps w t
a Golden Girdle, like an Ephod; his breast full of Milk of Consolation ... his
Garment was most glorious’. Later she sees her soul, ‘like a Cherubim allwise
hovering on the Wing’.57 She has a clear visual iconography in her mind’s
eye, though she does not expound it. Angels have bright, transparent bod-
ies, wings, and wear golden garments.
Ann’s angel’s interaction with other angels can be interpreted allegori-
cally, but at times it turns into strange comedy. Ann’s friend A.B.’s Angel
in the Unity of Love spots Ann’s Angel wearing a warmer garment and
requests one from heaven, which she is granted; she then jealously spots
and requests a girdle, shoes, shoelaces. Ann concludes with a moral, ‘I take
all this Adorning to have great Signification; for they were not putt on, till
They themselves saw they had need of them,’ but the narrative suggests
good-natured competition among neighbours. Three days later:

I saw like a Garland of spring-flowers on AB’s head, then on her Angels

head in the U. of Love: and I had one on my head, y t seem’d ready to be
left off. A.B.’s Angel seeing my Garland sitt not like hers, complained to
me & said, hers was so low even over her eyes y t she could not see with it:
My Ang. told hers, it did well so low, to keep her from being hurt by falls:
it seem’d too big for her and so fell a little below her eye-briers; but mine
was half way on the back part of my head: I seem’d to be grown too big for
it, near to leave it off, and it went off, and I had a Crown putt on my head.
She lookt on my Angel & saw the Crown, but said nothing: and being
content she soon had a Crown putt on her own head ... S.F.’s Angel in ye U.
of Love had a Crown putt on her head also, we sitting all together.58

The involvement of angels in this competition over worldly fashions is

amusing, but Ann’s religious sincerity should not be doubted. The com-
edy is disarming and distracts the reader from the daring or presumptuous
premise: that she speaks with angels, and, through them, with God.
Bathurst’s angelology changes twice, and the effect is to move away from
the immediacy of these angels, to a spiritual version of angelical offices, in
334 Joad Raymond

which angels are less creaturely and less accessible to human interaction. In
November 1681, about a month before Pordage’s death, she describes see-
ing the Angel of ‘Mr B.st’ divide ‘into 12 Angels, all of them cloathed in
white cloudy raiment and in his figure seven of these angels were much
of his size, but the other five something lesser and brighter. The 7 Angels
were shown to me to be his souls Angels, being the 7 ruling Spirits of the
Soul’. Each of the seven has its own property (love, desire, will, faith, joy,
wisdom and patience), and all look like Mr B. The other five ‘were the Spirits
Angels, which went into a Light, and into Mr B’s head, where they all sate
as in a Glob of Light’. These five have a transcendent and divine spiritual
knowledge, the knowledge that the unfallen Adam had of nature.59 This
new angelology parallels Pordage’s account of the seven spirits. They are
distant from humankind, more allegorical in their conception. These are
angels Bathurst sees; once they draw her apart ‘to converse w t them, by
wch means I felt a divine strength communicated to me,’ but they do not
exchange words with her.60 Thereafter, she describes dialogues between her
spirit and soul, but angels have been removed from the exchange. Angels
are displaced by spirits who do not require explanation in the conventional
terms of angel-writing but have a purely abstract, allegorical existence. They
are figures, not creatures.
Shortly following this new dispensation of angels, Bathurst enters the
inner ring of heaven, where she witnesses the Trinity, and offers a more inti-
mate knowledge of angels. From the Trinity go forth ‘the Host of Heaven,
wch were astrums, and of Them there were Three Orders, even Thousands
of Thousands, and a Thousand times ten thousand, even and innumerable
order’. The first order of Astrum angels are closest to paradise and ‘are trans-
parent Figures of a light Gold colour . ... The Second order of the Astrums
was of a whitish Cloudy Colour; and the Third order was of a Graish Cloudy
colour’.61 She describes their colours and geometry. Tripartite divisions were
important to Pordage and Bathurst, and Bathurst borrows from Pordage the
practice of diagrammatically representing the geography of the universe:
here the Astrum angels are a semicircle underneath a dot that represents
paradise.62 These are less creatures than a set of mystical correspondences
drawn across spiritual life.
These three sets of propositions about angels – the three personal angels,
the twelve angels and the Astrum angels – are not exclusive, but increas-
ingly elaborate systems employing shared spiritual abstractions. These are
not the kind of angels with whom one would converse, any more than one
would seek to reconcile them with recent natural philosophy or summon
them with natural magic. Bathurst continues to see her personal angels and
even hears her own angel speak in a strangely archaic and stilted fashion:
‘And my Angel made such sad moane, that all the Centers [the senses of
other angels] seemed sadded thereat; and still my Angel said, I how soon is
my soul tied!, it has no sooner got its flight to thee, but there are, as it were
 Radicalism and Mysticism 335

Ropes flung to lay hold of me ...’ But angels as beings are increasingly rare in
her visions.63 Progressively, Christ directly fulfils the role of mediator, and
angels adopt an allegorical, symbolic or decorative role.
Were Bathurst’s angels subjectively real? Did she encounter beings
through the evidence of her bodily senses? Certainly the contrast between
her visions in 1679 and those after 1681 suggests so: there is an immediacy
and a vividness to the former that is replaced by self- conscious divinity in
the latter. The frequency and familiarity with which angels appear in the
earlier visions suggest not only a shift in conscious doctrine but a height-
ened sensibility, a feverish spiritual intensity. Moreover, in October 1680
she records the following:

I saw my Angel in the U. of L. with a very rich Neck-lace of large pearle,

such as I never saw any near so large in this World; and A. B.’s Ang. was
sitting by me & fixed her Eye on the beauty of the pearle, but said noth-
ing, only seem’d as if she hoped to have one also ... This since has been
opened to me to Signifie the Adorning we have when we putt on Christ,
wch indeed is our Rich Ornament.

At first, she does not know what the vision means. She sees a picture,
an object that is in the first place visual rather than semantic. Only subse-
quently is the symbolism disclosed, and the image becomes an interpreted
allegory. The activity of mapping the heavens, of representing paradise on
a map with the Astrum angels, or drawing the circumference of Eternal
Nature within the Archetypal Globe, is one that occurs after the journey is
over; the narrative describes the process of seeing and learning, before it is
complete enough to be mapped.
Angels become less integral to the religious experiences of Ann Bathurst
and John Pordage, though the spiritual journey of both begins with angelic
revelations. Similarly, the tenor of the Philadelphians after Pordage’s death,
under the spiritual leadership of Lead and Francis Lee, is less vibrant with
experimental theology and visionary communication. It is less occult, more
socially respectable. Angels, though real, are objects of contemplation. They
remain a dimension of the spiritual, a spiritual world that coexists with the
real, material or lower world. But the theology becomes a great deal more
businesslike than Pordage ever was in the 1650s. Pordage’s enthusiasm made
way for Philadelphianism, which in turn made way for Pietism.64 The influ-
ence of Boehme then led to geometry and diagrams, not conversations and
journeys. Poems used angels to mediate the philosophy of Isaac Newton,
and these angels adopt a rhetorical demeanor, rather than a real, creature-
like face.65
In the spiritual community that formed and developed around Pordage,
angels were central to the seeking of spiritual understanding and enlight-
enment. Initially these were real, creaturely angels, while simultaneously
336 Joad Raymond

allegorical and symbolic. Increasingly, the real and the figurative ceased to
be identical, and the inward and outward senses parted: both persist, but
they no longer coincide. The fortunes of Pordage’s angels suggest a trajectory
within Behmenism and a broader shift in the relationship between religious
radicalism and angels. What it meant to be a mystic changed. Overall, enthu-
siasm may have shed much of its faith in the transformative power of worldly
action, as opposed to spiritual revelation and proselytising, and in doing so
facilitated its adaptation to the mores of eighteenth-century society.
It would be wise, however, to remember that the Muggletonians and Blake
maintained much of this febrile reality, and that visions of angels, albeit not
underpinned by alchemy and ritual magic, persisted in eighteenth- century
America.66 Behmenism and Seeking retreat, but they also survive and trans-
form. The ways in which angels were known did, eventually, change. A
general reconfiguration of knowledge, spiritual, political and natural philo-
sophical, meant that angels ceased to have such a powerful explanatory
force. Figures like Dee and Pordage do become unimaginable in later British
society, not because angels disappear but because revelation, and conversa-
tions with angels, pose less of a threat to the understanding of the world.

Notes
1. I am indebted to Jonathan Barry for making this connection, and for providing
me with a copy of his article on which this paragraph is based, ‘The Politics of
Pandaemonium’, in John Newton and Jo Bath, eds, Witchcraft and the Act of 1604
(Leiden, 2008), 181–206.
2. This essay is adapted from my Milton’s Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination
(Oxford, 2010), ch. 5; see the book for the wider argument concerning Milton.
3. Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae (London, 1696), 74, 77, 78.
4. Richard Baxter, The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits (London, 1691), 176–77.
5. Mr. William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times (London, 1715), 14, 24–25, 49–50,
54, 88, 100–102; Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels:
Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge, 1999), 218–20; C. H. Josten,
ed., Elias Ashmole (1617–1692), 5 vols (Oxford, 1966), 3: 1264–74. On Pordage’s
Behmenism see especially Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and English
Radical Religion 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1989), 205–10. Pordage denies conjuration in
Innocencie Appearing (London, 1655), 70, 91.
6. Ariel Hessayon, ‘John Pordage’, in ODNB; Josten, ed., Elias Ashmole, 1: 109;
Anthony Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses, 3rd edn, ed. Phillip Bliss, 4 vols (1813–20), 3:
110; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawl D 833, f. 63v; Désirée Hirst, Hidden Riches:
Traditional Symbolism from the Renaissance to Blake (London, 1964), 76–109.
7. Sheffield University Library, HP 29/2/40B, quoted in Hessayon, ‘John Pordage’ in
ODNB, and in David Como, Blown By the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of
an Antinomian Underground in Pre- Civil-War England (Stanford, CA, 2004) 71 and
n.95, 43–46, 445; John Etherington, A Brief Discovery of the Blasphemous Doctrine
of Familisme (London, 1645), 10; Peter Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge: ‘Orthodoxy’,
‘Heterodoxy’ and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (Manchester, 2001),
passim and 183.
 Radicalism and Mysticism 337

8. ‘An Acct. of ye Rise & Progress of the Philadelphian Society’, MS Rawl. D. 833,
ff. 63v–64r; Margaret Lewis Bailey, Milton and Jakob Boehme: A Study of German
Mysticism in Seventeenth- Century England (New York, 1914), 106.
9. See for a contrast Elizabeth Reis, ‘Otherworldly Visions: Angels, Devils and
Gender in Puritan New England’, in Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham,
eds, Angels in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2006), 282–96.
10. See Nigel Smith, ‘ ”And if God Was One of Us”: Paul Best, John Biddle and Anti-
Trinitarian Heresy in Seventeenth- Century England’, in David Loewenstein and
John Marshall, eds., Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture
(Cambridge, 2007), 160–84; and Sarah Mortimer, Reason and Religion in the
English Revolution: The Challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge, 2010).
11. On the local politics, see Manfred Brod, ‘A Radical Network in the English
Revolution: John Pordage and His Circle, 1646–54’, EHR 119 (2004): 1230–53.
12. John Pordage, Innocencie, 22; Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down:
Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (1972; Harmondsworth, 1975), 154–58,
284–86, 180–82; William Erbery, The Great Earthquake (London, 1654), sig. A2v;
William Erbery, The Great Mystery Of Godlinesse (London, 1649); John Tickell, The
Bottomless Pit Smoaking in Familisme (London, 1651), 49, 81; Christopher Fowler,
Dæmonium Meridianum. Satan at Noon (London, 1655), 60–61; The Ranters
Declaration (London, 1650); Pordage, Innocencie, 11–13, 62, 68; Smith, Perfection
Proclaimed, 320, 214–17; Richard Coppin, Divine Teachings (London, 1649); Brod,
‘Radical Network’, 1236–39; Ariel Hessayon, ‘Gold Tried in the Fire’: The Prophet
Theauraujohn Tany and the English Revolution (Aldershot, 2007).
13. Laurence Claxton, The Lost Sheep Found (London, 1660), 24–25, 32.
14. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
(Oxford, 1997), 384, 544.
15. See especially Laurence Claxton, A Paradisal Dialogue Betwixt Faith and Reason
(London, 1660), 6–7; also John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton, Joyful News from
Heaven (London, 1658), 15; for Pordage later on anthropomorphism, see J[ohn].
P[ordage]. M. D., Theologia Mystica, Or the Mystic Divinitie Of the Eternal Invisibles
(London, 1683), 36.
16. Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer,
Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford, 2005), 206n., 227–30.
17. Pordage, Innocencie, 29, 84. Subsequent references in text.
18. Pordage, Innocencie, 25; cf. Fowler, Dæmonium Meridianum, 80, 84.
19. Pordage, Innocencie, 66–67, 74; cf. S[amuel]. P[ordage]. Mundorum Explicatio
(London, 1661), 41.
20. Pordage, Innocencie, 75.
21. On guardians, see ch. 13, below; Pordage, Innocencie, 19, 90, 106–7. On hierar-
chies, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. and ed. Colm Luibheid, Paul
Rorem et al. (New York and Mahwah, NJ, 1987), 145–49; David Keck, Angels and
Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York, 1988), 53–69; Robert H. West, Milton and
the Angels (Athens, GA, 1955), 49; Feisal G. Mohamed, In the Anteroom of Divinity:
The Reformation of the Angels from Colet to Milton (Toronto, 2008); Raymond,
Milton’s Angels, 56–61.
22. Fowler, Dæmonium Meridianum, 100–1, 157–58; Pordage, Innocencie, 66–67.
23. Though cf. Brod, ‘Radical Network’, 1239.
24. Pordage, Innocencie, 52, 72.
25. The 1663 edition is a reissue of the same sheets with a different title-page and
title.
338 Joad Raymond

26. Though see Christopher Hill, The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some
Contemporaries (New York, 1984), 220–42; Harriet Spanierman Blumenthal, ed.,
Pordage’s Mundorum Explicatio (New York, 1991); William Poole, Milton and the
Idea of the Fall (Cambridge, 2005), 107–13.
27. For poet’s fancies, Mundorum Explicatio, 8; for the four worlds, see the hieroglyph
and my discussion below; for the encomium, sigs. a4r–a5v; for accommodation,
see below; for the spirit world, 32–40; for angelical corporeality, 40, 41, 43.
28. Pordage, Innocencie, 75–76; cf. p. 321, above.
29. Hill notes the theological similarity to Henry Stubbe, Experience of Defeat,
242 n.3.
30. See Raymond, Milton’s Angels, passim.
31. Jane Lead, A Fountain of Gardens, 2 vols (London, 1696[7]–1697), sig. *D4r–v;
Notes and Materials for an Adequate Biography of ... William Law (privately printed,
1854), 148. John Pordage, Theologia Mystica (Amsterdam, 1698); Vier Tractätlein
des seeligen Johannes Pordädschens (Amsterdam, 1704). See also Göttliche und wahre
Metaphysica (Franckfurt & Leipzig, 1715); Ein gründlich Philosophisch Sendschreiben
vom rechten (London, 1727).
32. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawl. A. 405, p. 230. See also MS Rawl. A. 404.
33. MS Rawl. A. 405, p. 232.
34. MS Rawl. A. 354, ff. 27r–v, 57v, 61v. It is possible that this reader-rewriter is
Dr Keith. See also MS Rawl. A 404; Roach’s miscellaneous papers are Bodleian
Library, MSS Rawl. D. 832–833; B. J. Gibbons, in Gender in Mystical and Occult
Thought: Behmenism and Its Development in England (Cambridge, 1996), 152–57;
and the manuscript notes, inscribed in a copy of Theologia Mystica, reproduced
in Hirst, Hidden Riches, 325–26.
35. J[ohn]. P[ordage]. M. D., Theologia Mystica, Or the Mystic Divinitie Of the Eternal
Invisibles (London, 1683), 16.
36. MS Rawl. A. 404, 144–47.
37. Ibid., 164–65. See also MS Rawl. A. 354, f. 27r.
38. MS Rawl. A. 404, 152; Pordage, Theologia Mystica, 74–75.
39. Pordage, Theologia Mystica, 71–73; see also MS Rawl. A. 354, f. 59r, 64r; MS Rawl.
A. 404, 145; cf. Jacob Boehme, trans. John Sparrow, XL. Questions Concerning
the Soule (London, 1647), 252; The Second Booke. Concerning the Three Principles
(London, 1648), 90.
40. MS Rawl. A. 354, ff. 37r, 66–67; Pordage, Theologia Mystica, 87, 89, 92, 129–30.
41. MS Rawl. A. 404, p. 118. See also MS Rawl. A. 405, 225, 228. West, Milton and the
Angels, 144–48; Andrew Willet, Hexapla in Genesin (Cambridge, 1605), 73; Henry
Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. J. F. (London, 1651),
453.
42. MS Rawl. A. 405, 201ff.
43. Jane Lead, The Enochian Walks with God (1694), 16–18.
44. MS Rawl. A. 404, 145.
45. Hirst, Hidden Riches, 168–69.
46. The Threefold World, in The Works of Jacob Behmen, 4 vols (London, 1764–81), vol.
2; Jacob Boehme (all trans. John Sparrow), Mysterium Magnum (London, 1654),
26ff.; XL. Questions Concerning the Soule (London, 1647), 83; The Second Booke.
Concerning the Three Principles (London, 1648), 31ff.; The Life of one Jacob Boehmen
(London, 1644), sig. A4v.
47. Lead, Fountain of Gardens 1: 17, 299; II, 73, 313, 470; Enochian Walks, 37; though
see Fountain of Gardens, 1: 58, 495.
 Radicalism and Mysticism 339

48. Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Behmenist Thought, 143–44; Sylvia Bowerbank,
‘Jane Lead’ in ODNB; Lead in Pordage, Theologia Mystica, 2; Julie Hirst, Jane Lead:
Biography of a Seventeenth- Century Mystic (Aldershot, 2005); Roach in MS Rawl. D.
833, ff. 82–88; Jane Lead, A Message to the Philadelphian Society (1696), internally
dated 1 January 1696[7?]; Paula McDowell, ‘Enlightenment Enthusiasms and the
Spectacular Failure of the Philadelphian Society’, Eighteenth- Century Studies, 35
(2002): 515–33.
49. ‘Transportations’ in MS Rawl. D. 1262, p. 9 ‘a Dream or Vision’ at p. 7; ‘Visionall
Dreams’ at MS Rawl. D. 833, ff. 89r, 92r.
50. MS Rawl. D. 833, f. 65r. Three, non-holograph manuscripts of Bathurst’s spiritual
diary are extant, two overlapping: Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawl. D. 1262,
MS Rawl. D 1263, MS Rawl. D. 1338. The first two are consecutive, and the first
is inscribed: ‘This Book belongs to Dr Keath’s Library at Mrs Brackley’s in Tufton
Street Westminster.’
51. MS Rawl. D. 1262, 9–13.
52. Ibid., 69, 79, 81, 83.
53. Ibid., 85–86.
54. MS Rawl. A 404, 14; underlining in original MS.
55. MS Rawl. D. 1262, 118–19, 170.
56. Ibid., 90; underlining, and pointing hand, in original MS.
57. MS Rawl. D. 1262, 143, 280, 386; see also the spirits (not angels) at p. 358.
58. MS Rawl. D. 1262, irregular pages e and f, which follow p. 96.
59. MS Rawl. D. 1262, 154–56, 177.
60. Ibid., 157.
61. Ibid., 174.
62. Ibid., 174, chart between pp. 170 and 171, 180.
63. MS Rawl. D. 1262, 185, 197, 228, 233, 235–36, 245, 348.
64. See Simon Schaffer, ‘The Consuming Flame: Electrical Showmen and Tory
Mystics in the World of Goods’, in John Brewer and Roy Porter eds, Consumption
and the World of Goods (London, 1993), 489–526, qu. at 494, and figure 24.8.
65. Jo Poppleton, ‘ ”Truth Cannot be an Enemy to Truth”: Natural Philosophy, Poetry
and Politics, 1680–1730’, Ph.D thesis (University of East Anglia, 2006), ch. 3.
66. Elizabeth Reis, ‘Otherworldly Visions: Angels, Devils and Gender in Puritan New
England’, 282–96, and Owen Davies, ‘Angels in Elite and Popular Magic, 1650–
1790’, 297–391, both in Marshall and Walsham, eds, Angels; E. P. Thompson,
Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (Cambridge, 1993);
Paula McDowell, ‘Enlightenment Enthusiasm’; Chapter 5, above.
Index
This index includes topics and names. Significant discussions and quotations in
the notes (which add to the text) have been included. I have not indexed scriptural
passages, nor God, as these are too diffuse and context-sensitive; they can be
accessed through other subject terms, or by reading the book. I have not indexed
internal cross references.
accommodation, theology of, 1
Adam, 9, 15, 39, 80, 86, 127, 131, 136,
155, 180, 183, 184, 210–12, 216,
225–6, 304, 306, 334
Adams, Thomas, 300, 310
Addison, Joseph, 95
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, 15, 38,
160, 166, 178, 179, 181, 182–3, 186,
191n, 319
Aguillon, François d’, 77
Albertini, Francesco, 279
Albigensians, 32
alchemy, 15, 93, 106, 108, 109, 127, 160,
175, 177, 179, 184, 185, 187, 188–9,
199n
Alexander VII, Pope, see Chigi, Fabio
Alfonso the second, of Ferrara, 36
Allen, William, 279
Almandel, 128, 130
Ambrose, Isaac, 306, 309, 310
Amsterdam, 328
Angel of the North (1998), 18
angels
bodies, 26, 39, 50–63 passim, 99, 103,
106, 107, 110, 323, 325, 331–5; see
also natural philosophy; putti
clothes of, 10, 35, 165, 257–8, 282,
283, 321, 333
communication with, 10, 15–16,
25–42 passim, 127–30, 140, 179,
188, 283, 285, 320, 321, 331–6
creation of, 32, 103, 188, 205, 329
and demons, 2, 4, 25, 28–33, 126,
155–6, 157, 183, 274, 322
disappearance of, 92, 336
Ezekiel’s vision of, 179, 185
fall of, 32, 68, 214
false apparitions of, 277, 285
341
food of, 276, 320, 321, 324, 326, 330
guardianship, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 34–6,
38, 42, 102, 130, 135–41, 167, 180,
189, 219, 250, 251, 265, 275, 278,
279, 281, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288–9,
295–312, 322, 326–7, 331–2; see also
Cosmiel; Trazo
heterodoxies, angelological, 6, 67 102,
113–15, 308, 324, 329–30, 332
hierarchy, 8, 9, 13, 213, 218–20, 224,
274, 275, 278, 296; see also angels:
ranks; pseudo-Dionysius
imitatio angelorum, 28
intermediary spirits, 93, 102, 107, 132,
138, 144n, 147n, 329, 331–5
invocation of, 14, 68, 125, 127, 128,
132, 139, 150–1, 154, 161, 166, 167,
177, 180–1, 182, 183, 276, 280, 281,
292n, 295, 299
knowledge and senses of, 302–3, 325
as light, 204–5, 208–9
magic, 6–7, 11, 15, 16, Part II; see also
magic (main entry)
mediation of, 5, 67, 92, 105, 107–8,
110, 111, 112–13, 138, 207, 208, 276,
279, 330
messengers, 1, 3, 27, 36, 42, 50, 52, 70,
84, 97, 102, 107, 112, 155, 183, 205,
277, 279, 280, 283, 284, 332; see also
Annunciation
office and feast of Holy Guardian
Angels, 278, 280, 299, 301
in popular culture, 2, 41, 42
prayers to, 125–6, 129, 138–9, 149n,
152, 166, 178, 180, 189, 193n, 263,
275, 276, 279, 280, 281, 288, 295,
297, 299, 300, 314n, 315n, 321
of the presence, 115, 329
342 Index
angels – continued
Protestant theology of, 13–14, 277–8,
281, 289, 295–312 passim, 324,
Part IV
ranks: angels, 218, 219; archangels,
103, 218, 219, 279, 285; cherubim,
10, 77, 94, 218, 220, 221, 333;
dominations, 218, 219, 220;
powers, 97, 115, 218, 219, 220, 332;
principalities, 218, 219, 220, 332;
dignities, 332; seraphim, 77, 218,
219, 220, 221; thrones, 218, 219,
220, 329, 331; virtues, 97, 203,
205–7, 214, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220,
224: Scientia, 206; Sapientia, 206,
207–8; Humilitas, 206, 217; Pax,
206; Caritas, 206–7
singing, 16, 28, 210, 212–21
passim, 323
visual representations and appearance
of, 9–10, 67, 72, 74, 77, 219, 221–2,
257–8, 283, 285, 309, 321, 323,
331–5
worship of, 9, 13, 14, 160, 179, 275,
278, 281, 301
writing, angelic, 152, 155, 159,
165, 166
see also Carmara; Cosmiel; Gabriel; Il;
Lundrumguffa; Madimi; Michael;
Raphael; Raziel; Saxon; Trazo; Uriel
Annunciation, 207, 230–44, 274
antitrinitarianism, 98, 100, 107, 319–20
Apocalypse, 93, 107, 108, 109–10, 1
12, 113, 155, 165, 166, 168, 277,
288, 318
Aquinas, Thomas, 3, 5, 11, 15–16, 25,
26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 50, 51, 53, 54,
62, 274
Arabic traditions, 15, 72, 125, 127, 130,
148n
Aretius, Theophilus, 179
Aristotelianism, 50, 51, 54, 56, 58, 59,
61, 80, 253, 254, 256, 260, 264
Aristotle, 32, 51, 54–5, 57, 60, 256, 260
Arminianism, 14, 299–300
Arnald of Villanova, 187
Ars Almadel, 182–3
ars moriendi, 274
Ars notoria, 127, 166, 182, 185
Ars Paulina, 182
Arundell of Wardour, Anne, Countess
of, 280
Ascymor, 132, 133, 137, 146n
Ashmole, Elias, 15, 154, 170n, 187, 188,
319, 320
Astley, Sir John, 276
astrology, 15, 85, 125, 126, 127, 311,
319, 320
astronomy, 68, 69, 71, 73, 74, 85,
91, 95, 98–9, 100, 101, 108, 109,
115, 252–3, 254, 256, 262; see
also Copernicanism; cosmology;
telescopes
Athanasius, 186, 196
atheism, 34, 36, 40, 47, 63, 93–4, 112,
156, 307, 309
Athenian Mercury, The, 311
Augustine, Saint, 25, 26, 52, 64n, 167,
205, 210, 274, 285
Auriol, Peter, 11, 56–8, 61, 62–3
automata, see machines
Avencebrol, 205
Avignon, 256
avvisi, 70, 71
Baconianism, 106
Baglioni, printer, 74, 75
baptism, 221–2, 239, 240, 302
Baronius, Cesare, 273
Barry, James, 115
Barton, Elizabeth, 276–7
Bathurst, Ann, 331–5
Baxter, Richard, 296, 306–7, 309, 318
Bayly, Lewis, 301–2
Beaufort, Lady Margaret, 275
Beaumont, John, 101
Behmenism, 318, 319, 320, 325, 329, 336
belief, as an historical phenomenon,
17–18
Bella, Stefano dell, 84
Bellarmine, Robert, 255, 279, 287
Bentley, Richard, 98
Bergamo, Franciscus de, 285
Bernard, Nicholas, 306
Bernard, of Clairvaux, 138
Bickham, George, 95
Blake, William, 11, 90–1, 115, 336
Bloomfield, William, 187
Bloxam, M. Jennifer, 236, 240
Bodin, Jean, 34–7, 45n, 46n, 310

Boehme, Jacob, 319, 320, 330, 335
Bonaventure, 6, 26, 27, 53, 54, 56, 61,
63, 274
Book of the Angel Raziel, 15, 39, 126–7,
128, 129, 131, 136
Bourne, Henry, 310, 312
Bovet, Richard, 317
Boyle, Robert, 63, 188
Braas, T., 240, 241
Brahe, Tyco, 256
Bristow, Richard, 284
Browne, Thomas, 305
Bruno, Giordano, 38, 255, 261
Bullinger, Heinrich, 298
Bunny, Edmund, 285
Bunyan, John, 325
Buridan, Jean, 62
Burnet, Thomas, 93
Burton, Catherine, 282
Burton, Robert, 305
Cabala, 175, 179, 181, 276
Caesarius of Heisterbach, 28–32, 41,
44n, 134, 140, 274
Calvert, Giles, 320
Calvin, 277, 287, 296–7, 298, 308
Camfield, Benjamin, 307
Campanella, Tommaso, 38
Campbell, Mary Baine, 98
Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da, 82–4
Cardano, Girolamo, 38
Carmara, 152, 165
Carrera, Joannes, 285
Cartesianism, 63, 93, 107
Cartwright, Thomas, 297
Casaubon, Meric, True & Faithful
Relation (1659), 16, 154, 155, 156–7,
161, 164, 318–19
Castlemain, Roger Palmer, earl of, 280
Catholicism, see Roman Catholicism
Chatton, Walter, 11, 52, 58–9, 60, 62
Chigi, Fabio, 250–2, 254, 264–5
Chillingworth, William, 49
Christ, 5, 8, 66, 110, 180, 181–2, 183,
185, 220, 222, 303, 333, 335
as angel, 297, 333
Christocentism, 186
five wounds of, 219, 220–1, 229n
incarnation, 37, 107, 207, 212, 216,
219, 237, 329
Index 343
Lamb of God, 223, 321
redemption, 217–18, 223
resurrection of, 107, 180, 186,
216, 239
as Son, 196n, 213, 217, 220–1, 223,
231, 237, 332
visions of, 283, 327
as Word, 181, 205, 207, 219
Christian Cabala, 180, 181, 185–6,
187, 192n
Cicero, 178
Clark, Stuart, 4
Clarke, Samuel, 93–4, 107
Clarkson, Laurence, 320
Clauder, Gabriel, 188
Clavius, Cristoph, 81, 252, 254, 256
Clayton, Charlotte, 99
Clement VIII, Pope, 255
Clement X, Pope, 280, 287
Clerk, Marion, 276
Clulee, Nicholas H., 6–7
coffee houses, 93, 99
Colet, John, 275
Colish, Marcia, 5–6
compass, 77
Conduitt, John, 94, 97, 113
continuity, 10–13, 14–15
conversation, 2–3, 15, 16, 25, 126
Copernicanism, 84, 98, 252, 256,
261, 262
Copernicus, 84, 254–6, 261
Coppe, Abiezer, 320
Coppin, Richard, 320
Corpus Hermeticum, 187
Cosmiel, 79, 257–64
cosmology, 25, 80, 84, 90–1, 92–105
passim, 108, 110–12, 113–15, 125,
253–5, 256, 258, 260–1, 329; see
also astronomy; Copernicanism;
Ptolemaic cosmology; telescopes
Cotton, Sir Robert, 319
Council of Trent, Tridentine theology,
38, 80, 273, 278, 279, 282, 289, 312
Counter Reformation, 14, 273–4, 278,
280–1, 287
Cranmer, Thomas, 277
Croll, Oswald, 189
Cromwell, Thomas, 277
Cross, Richard, 55
Cyprian, 175–7, 188, 190n
344 Index

Damascus, John of, 52 Epistola Jeroboam heremite, 139–40

Daneau, Lambert, 33, 45n Erasmus, Desiderius, 276
Dante, 36, 37, 325 Erbery, William, 320
Dastin, John, 187 Eremita, Marcus, 161–2, 163
de Sales, Francis, 279–80, 285 Eucharist, 66n
Dean, Jeffrey, 240 Evans, John, 319
Dee, John, 2, 4, 6–7, 15, 38, 150–68, 181, Eve, 9, 216, 306
187, 318–19 Everard, William, 320
and Christianity, 158–9, 167–8
historiography on, 6–7, 150–1, 167 Fabri de Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude,
stone, or shew-stone, 152–3, 159 256, 267n
Defoe, Daniel, 95, 100–5, 113 Family of Love, 319
Deism, 40, 105 Faustus, 15, 38
demonology, 2, 4, 29–32, 39–40, 126, Favre, Pierre, 285
166; see also magic: necromancy Ferrara, 36, 242
demons, 4, 15, 25–42 passim, 44n, 125, Ferrazi, Cecilia, 281–2
126–40 passim, 180, 185, 186, 274, Ficino, Marsilio, 38, 178
276, 286, 322; see also angels: and Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 98
demons; magic: necromancy Forman, Simon, 15, 16, 188, 319
Descartes, René, 95 Fowler, Christopher, 318, 320, 324
Devil, the, 1, 2, 25, 29, 41, 95, 103, 134, Frankfurt, 74
141, 253, 277, 281, 282, 285, 301, French, Peter, 6–7, 150
321, 322–3; see also Lucifer; Satan Friedrich, Landgrave of Hesse-
Dialogus miraculorum (1220s), see Darmstadt, 252
Caesarius of Heisterbach Froissart, Jean, Chronicle, 134
Dillon, Anne, 287 Fulke, William, 297
Dingley, Robert, 303–5, 311 Fuller, Thomas, 306
Domenichino, 287
Dominis, Marcus Antonius de, 299 Gabriel, 136, 159, 230–44 passim, 274,
Donnini, Antonio, 253 276, 281, 284, 307
Dorn, Gérard, 187 Gaffarel, Jacques, 80
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 41 Galileo Galilei, 67–86, 252, 254, 255–6
Douglas, James, earl of Morton, 286 Dialogo (1632), 68, 79, 84, 86, 252, 258
Dowsing, William, 9–10 Discorso delle Comete (1618), 85
drama, 15, 52, 232, 233–4, 235, Il Saggiatore (1623), 80, 84, 85–6
240, 241 Istorie e dimonstrazione (1613), 74, 77, 78
dreams, 26, 35, 38, 102, 129–30, 175–88 Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, 68
passim, 210, 257, 262, 264, 303, 306; Letters on Sunspots, 80
see also visions Sidereus Nuncius (1610), 68–71, 75, 76, 77
Drexelius, Jeremias, 280, 281, 285, 299 Geber, 187
Dronke, Peter, 205, 206 Gee, John, 284, 285
Duffy, Eamon, 5 Gell, Robert, 305
Duillier, Fatio de, 97 Gentleman’s Magazine, 94
Dunel, François, 262, 265 Gerald, of Wales, 134
Gerard, John, 286
election, 151, 157, 158–9, 162, 168, 211, Gerson, Jean, 275
220, 222, 278, 295, 301–7 passim, ghosts, 40, 41, 128, 157
324; see also predestination Giambattista della Porta, 73
Emerald Tablet, 187 Gilbert, Adrian, 160
Epicureanism, 34, 36 Gildon, Charles, 102

Giles, of Rome, 62
Gilly, Carolo, 178–9
Ginzburg, Carlo, 80
Giotto, 232, 246n
Glanvill, Joseph, 40, 106, 110, 111, 121n
Glover, Richard, 90, 94, 107
Gohorry, Jacques, 188
Gonzaga, Saint Aloysius, 279
Goodman, Geoffrey, 299
Gormley, Anthony, 18
Graham, Billy, 25, 27, 43n
Granada, Luis de, 292
Grandi, Alessandro, 242–3, 244
Grassi, Orazio, 70, 84–5, 254
Gregory XIII, Pope, 252, 254
Gregory, of Rimini, 63
Gregory, the Great, 210, 218–19, 222,
224, 285
Grienberger, Christoph, 254
Grillo, Angelo, 69
Guibert of Gembloux, 204
Guicciardini, Francesco, 38
Guidonian hand, 212
Gumbleden, John, 305
Hall, Joseph, 273, 285, 306
Halley, Edmond, 98, 103
Hamond, George, 308, 310, 311
Hansen, Ron, 42
Harkness, Deborah, 7, 150–1, 167, 296
Harsnet, Samuel, 284
Hart, Alexander, 16, 319
Harvey, Kate, 8
Harvillier, Jeanne, see Bodin, Jean
Hawkins, Henry, 280
Heilbron, John, 68, 77
Henry VI, king of England, 275
Henry VIII, 277
Herbert, Philip, 5th Earl of Pembroke, 317
Hermann, of Carinthia, 130
Hermes Trismegistus, 187
Hessayon, Ariel, 6
Heylyn, Peter, 305
Heywood, Thomas, 305, 327
Hildegard of Bingen, 203–26, 275
Cause et curae, 225, 229n
Liber diuinorum operum, 206, 207
Liber uite meritorum, 207, 209
O gloriosissimi lux uiuens angeli,
antiphon, 203, 216, 224
Index 345
O uos angeli, responsory, 203, 218,
222, 224, 225, 226
Ordo Virtutum, musical drama, 203,
210, 215
‘Riesenkodex’, 225
Sciuias, 204–5, 206–7, 208, 209, 210,
212–13, 215–17, 219, 221–4
Hilton, Walter, 275
Hobbes, Thomas, 93, 97–8
Holstenius, Lukas, 252
Holy Spirit, 207, 208, 210, 212, 215, 231,
237, 241, 244, 246, 329
Hooke, Robert, 80, 106, 108, 109
Hooker, Richard, 310
Horner, Nicholas, 287
Hughes, John, The Ecstasy (1720), 98
Hugolinus, of Orvieto, 63
humanism, 17
Hunnis, William, 163
Hunter, Thomas, 282–3
Hutchinson, Francis, 101
Hutchinson, Lucy, 327
Huygens, Christiaan, 98
Iconoclasm, 9–10
Il, 161–2, 163
Iliffe, Rob, 94
Index of Prohibited Books, 255
Iversen, Gunilla, 218, 225, 227n
Jacobus, Laura, 232
Jakobson, Roman, 27
James VI and I, 40, 298
James VII and II, 282
James, William, 27, 41
Jeanne ‘des Anges’, Soeur, 38
Jesuits, 68, 77, 79, 250–65 passim,
279–81, 284, 286, 287–8, 289, 298,
299, 305
Ratio Studiorum, 255–6, 260, 262
Jewish traditions, 15, 125–6, 128, 179,
180, 181, 276; see also magic
Joan of Arc, 275–6
Johannes de Rupescissa, 187
John the Baptist, 141, 230, 231
Johnson, Trevor, 279
Johnson, William, 187, 199n
Keck, David, 6, 27, 28, 310
Keith, Dr, Philadelphian, 328–9
346 Index

Kelley, Edward, 152–3, 154, 159–63, Low Countries, 71, 106, 282, 302
170n, 181 Loyola, Ignatius, 254, 279
Khunrath, Heinrich, 175–89 Lucifer, 2, 31, 95, 183, 216, 217, 287,
Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae 325, 329
(1609), 175–89 passim Lucretius, 77
Kieckheffer, Richard, 30 Ludham, Robert, 287
Kiesewetter, Carl, 150 Lundrumguffa, 164–5
Kircher, Athanasius, 77, 79, 250–65 Luther, Martin, 14, 277, 287, 296
passim
Itinerarium Extaticum Coeleste (also Iter MacCulloch, Diarmid, 5
Exstaticum), 252, 254, 257–65 machines, 72–3, 81, 95, 98
Mundus Subterraneus, 264, 265 Mack, John, 42
see also Cosmiel Madimi, 153–4
Knatchbull, Lady Lucy, 283 magic, 18, 175–89 passim, 319, 320
Kramer, Heinrich, 32; see also Malleus Hermetic, 125–6, 129, 130, 143n
maleficarum (1486) necromancy, 127, 129, 130–5, 179,
Krause, Virginia, 42 180, 183, 185, 193
rituals, 3, 23, 15, 38, 126, 127, 128,
Lacy, Edmund, 275 129, 131–3, 135, 136, 137, 139,
Lapide, Cornelius a, 279 140, 146n, 150, 157, 168, 179,
Lavin, Irvin, 84 181, 182, 186
Lawrence, Henry, 302–3, 304, 321 skrying, or crystallomancy, 152, 154,
Lazarus, 296, 297, 302, 304 158, 168n, 180, 181, 184, 188
Lead, Jane, 328, 330–1, 335 Solomonic, 125–6, 127, 128, 136, 166,
Lee, Francis, 335 180, 182, 319
Leibniz, Gottfried, 93–4 theurgy, 126, 155, 157, 160, 166, 178
Lestringant, Frank, 98 see also angels: magic
letters, 69, 70, 71, 73–4, 77, 80–1, 90, 95, Mainy, Richard, 284
106, 115n, 281, 285 Mainz, prelates of, 210, 225
Liber ale, 127, 136 Maldonado, Juan de, 33, 45n
Liber de essentia spirituum, 127, 129, 130 Malleus maleficarum (1486), 32, 34
Liber iuratus, 127, 131, 132, 133, 146n, Malta, 250, 252, 253
147n, 186, 194n Mancinelli, Julius, 288
Liber magice, 127, 130 Marlowe, Christopher, 15, 38
Liber Razielis, see Book of the Angel Raziel Marshall, Peter, 4, 14
Liber Sameyn, 127, 132, 147n mass, 31, 232–44 passim
Liber temporum, 127, 131 materialism, 40
Liber Theysolius, 137–8, 140, 148n Mather, Cotton, 39, 40
Lightfoot, John, 306 Mather, Increase, 39–40, 64n
Lilly, William, 16, 319 Matthew, Tobie, 283
liturgy, 16, 28, 52, 203, 215, 216, 224–6, Mayr-Harting, Henry, 16, 28, 43n
232, 233, 234, 236, 237, 241, 243, McGuire, J.E., 93
244, 274, 278 Mede, Joseph, 109, 110
Loarte, Gaspar, 279 Michael, 31, 165, 181, 274–5, 277, 281,
Locke, John, 80, 105–7, 108, 112, 113 284, 286, 287
Essay Concerning Human Feast of, 225, 274, 311
Understanding, 105–6, 112 Milton, John, 6, 11, 38, 90, 103,
Lombard, Peter, 5–6, 11, 27, 28, 50, 317, 327
52–3, 58, 304 Paradise Lost, 38–9, 90, 99, 100, 317,
London, John, 277 325, 327, 329

miracles and wonders, 14, 16, 86n, 94,
162, 210, 221, 276, 277, 278, 282,
284, 285, 287, 309–10; see also
Caesarius of Heisterbach
Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della, 186
Mirk, John, 274
Mögling, Daniel, 188
Mohamed, Feisal G., 8
monochord, 225, 226, 229n
Montagu, Richard, 14, 299–300,
305, 312
More, Henry, 40, 49–50, 63, 94, 109,
111, 308–9
More, Sir Thomas, 276
Motte, Andrew, 95
Mouton, Jean, 240–2, 244
Muggletonianism, 11, 320, 336
Muir, Edward, 71
music, 16–17, 74, 203–26 passim,
230–44 passim, 257, 323
antiphons, 28, 216, 225, 232, 234,
236, 237, 239, 240, 241, 243, 244,
247n
motets, 233–4, 236, 240, 241, 242–4,
244n
notation of, 209, 227n, 240
polyphony, 212, 227n
repertory of, 212, 215, 226, 227n,
230, 244
responsories, 216, 225, 226, 234, 236,
241, 243, 244
sound of, 213, 225
symbolic meaning of, 210, 211
theory of, 212, 225
see also angels: singing
Mystère de Daniel, 52
Napier, John, 16
natural philosophy, 10, 11, 18, Part
I, 49–63 passim; see also Galileo;
Newton, Isaac; telescopes
Nelson, Robert, 308
neoplatonism, 6, 7, 37, 129, 178,
305, 329
Neri, Philip, 285
news, 70, 71, 105, 113
Newton, Isaac, 11, 90–115, 335
Optice, 97, 112
Principia mathematica, 93, 94, 95, 99,
106–7, 108, 110, 112, 113
Index 347
Niccoli, Ottavia, 282
Nickel, Goswin, 254, 261, 262
Niclaes, Hendrik, 319
Nicolas of Cusa, 262
Nifo, Agostino, 38
Norton, Thomas, 187
Nosow, R. M., 233–4
Notker, Omnes sancti, sequence, 218
Ockham, William of, 11, 59–63
Orton, Elizabeth, 283–4
Ossola, Carlo, 38
Oxenbridge, Joanna, 331
Padua, 71, 232, 245n
painting, 232–3, 235, 250–1, 287
Pallavicino, Ferrante, 71
Paracelsus, 179, 187, 192n
Paracelsianism, 188, 325
Paris, 33, 54, 62, 134, 141
parliament of England, 9, 10, 109
Paul V, Pope, 278, 299, 301
Pemberton, Henry, 90, 94, 100, 107, 117n
Perkins, William, 158, 159, 298
Persons, Robert, 280, 285
Philadelphians, the, 8, 318, 319, 328,
330–1, 335
Phillips, Edward, 317
Philosophical Transactions, 98
Picart, Bernard, 95, 96
Picatrix, 15, 127, 129, 136–7
Pietro da Cortona, 250–1, 265
Pimander, 187
Plato, 257, 297, 305
plays, see drama
Poole, Matthew, 308
Pope, Alexander, 90, 99
Pordage, John, 4, 8–9, 15, 17, 97, 317–36
passim
guardian angel, 309, 322, 326–7
Innocencie Appearing, 320–4
Theologia Mystica, 328
Pordage, Mary, 319, 330
Pordage, Samuel, 317
Mundorum Explicatio, 317, 325–7, 330
possession, 29, 30–2, 38, 40, 42, 72–3,
92, 101, 106, 132, 140–1, 276, 292,
284, 308, 309
predestination, 13, 14, 84, 159, 277, 281,
304, 305, 310; see also election
348 Index
Prideaux, John, 281, 300–1
printing, 74, 95, 98–9
Priuli, Antonio, 71
prophecy, 16, 26, 27, 35, 92, 93, 99, 100,
108, 109, 113, 115, 136, 137, 155,
157, 161, 163, 165, 168, 177–8, 179,
183–4, 188, 203, 206–12, 239–41,
277, 282, 286, 317, 319, 325, 327
false prophets, 183
Psellus, Michael, 330
pseudo-Dionysius, 1, 8, 9, 13, 25, 26, 27,
186, 274, 275, 296, 324
Ptolemaic cosmology, 68, 262
purgatory, 273, 283, 286, 326, 327
Purtle, Carol, 232
putti, 10, 77, 79, 86, 92, 116
Pythagoras, 178, 191n, 226, 305
Pythagorean philosophy, 178
Quakers, 157, 318
Ranters, 318, 320
Raphael, 39, 52, 275, 281
Raymond, Joad, 296
Raziel, 15, 136, 180; see also Book of the
Angel Raziel
Redondi, Pietro, 80
Reformation, 8, 9–10, 13, 14, 16, Part IV
Regis, Johannes, 236–40, 244
Reuchlin, Johann, 181, 183, 185–6
Review, A, 95, 101
Reynes, Robert, 276
Reynolds, John, 101, 103
Rhegius, Urbanus, 298
Ribadeneira, Pedro, 279
Riccardi, Niccolò, 84
Ricci, Matteo, 254
Rich, Barnaby, 284
Ripley, George, 187
Roach, Richard, 97, 331
Rolle, Richard, 275
Roman Catholicism, 8–9, 13–14, 80, 86,
167, 244, 255, 273–89 passim, 295,
298–9, 301, 317
English Catholicism, 279–81, 283, 287–9
Roman College, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257,
265, 269n
Romana, Francesca, saint, 285
Rome, 250–7 passim, 261, 262, 284,
285, 288
Ronsard, Pierre de, 38
Rosicrucianism, 11
Rossi, Michelangelo, 257
Rosso, Pietro, 233–6, 244
Rothenberg, David, 233–4, 236
Rouen, 299
Rovere, Christina della, 282
Rowsham, Stephen, 287
Royal Society, 101, 107, 108, 115
Royer, Jean, 253
Rubens, Peter Paul, 77
Rudolph II, 73
Ruland, Martin, 187
Sadducees, 26, 40, 47n, 156, 317, 320
Saint Bede, 285
Saint Colomba, 130–1
Saint Patrick, 130–1
Saint Paul, 25, 29, 182, 195n
Saint Stephen, 276
saints, 10, 61, 74, 109–11, 113, 130, 209,
210, 213, 273, 274, 277, 281, 282,
283, 285, 288, 295, 299, 300, 301
Salem, 39, 40
Salkeld, John, 280, 298–9
Salusbury, Sir John, 315n
Sanders, Richard, 311–12
Sangha, Laura, 296
Sarpi, Paulo, 71
Satan, 34, 41, 109, 216, 277, 283, 287, 305
Saul, Barnabas, 154, 158, 164
Saunders, Richard, 308
Saxon, 130, 133, 135, 141–2
Scala Naturæ (1695), 9
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 189n
Schaffer, Simon, 4, 80
Scheiner, Christoph, 254, 256
Schiller, Julius, 80
scholasticism, 4, 28, 32, 33, 49, 63,
247n, 295, 301, 302, 303
Schott, Gaspar, 253–4, 258, 261,
262, 264
Scot, Michael, 131, 138
Scot, Reginald, 297
Scott, Kaspar, 77
Scotus, John Duns, 11, 54–6, 62, 186
Seekers, 318, 320, 336
Senex, John, 98–9
Shepherd, Thomas, 308
Sherman, William, 7
Siebert, Harald, 261, 262
Siebmacher, Johann, 188
 Index 349

Sixtus V, Pope, 255 vacuums, 49, 60

Society of Jesus, see Jesuits van Eyck, Jan, 232
Socinianism, 320 Van Helden, Albert, 68
Socrates, 34–5, 84, 85, 130, 305 Vasquez, Michael, 298, 300
Soergel, Philip, 14 Venice, 71–2
Spirit, see Holy Spirit Virgil, 183
Sprat, Thomas, History of the Royal Virgin Mary, 77, 212, 217, 230–44
Society (1667), 89, 107, 120n passim, 274, 275, 283, 284
Stapleton, Thomas, 278 visions, 26, 35, 38, 102, 129, 131, 141,
Steele, Richard, 99 146n, 152–4, 165, 168n, 175–7,
Stephens, Walter, 4 179, 185, 187, 203–24, 257, 273,
Strohm, R., 240 275–7, 278, 282, 285, 303, 306,
Suárez, Francisco, 279, 280, 298 330, 331–5
sunspots, 74, 80, 254 Vita Sanctae Hildegardis Virginis, 209
Surin, Father, 38 von Bell, Adam Schall, 254
Swedenborgianism, 11 Voragine, Jacobus de, 84, 274
Syőny, György E., 7, 151, 167
Wadsworth, James, 284–5
Talbot, Edward, 154, 165, 170n Walsham, Alexandra, 4, 296
Tany, TheaurauJohn or Thomas, Walton, Izaak, 310
6, 320 Warner, Marina, 40–1
Tasso, Torquato, 36–8, 39, 46n Watts, Isaac, 308
Tawney, R. H., 8 Weber, Max, 8
Taylor, Thomas, 300 Welser, Marcus, 69
Teate, Faithful, 309 Wesley, John, 40
telescopes, 68–9, 71–3, 74, 77, 80–1, West, Robert, 6, 13, 14, 92, 105
85, 106, 115 Weston, William, 286
Tempier, Etienne, 54 Whiston, William, 97–100, 103, 106,
Tenison, Thomas, 307, 315n 113–15
Teresa of Avila, 281 Wilhelm the Pious, of Bavaria, 287
theatre, see drama Willett, Andrew, 13, 297
Theosophy, 175, 177, 178, 179, 181–2, Wilson, A. N., 40
184–5, 188, 192n Wilson, John, 280
Thomas of Cantimpré, 199n Winstanley, Gerard, 320
Thomson, James, 94 witches and witchcraft, 1, 15,
Thornton, Alice, 309–10 32–3, 34, 37, 39, 40, 101, 165–6,
Trazo, 136 176, 322
Trenchard, John, 105 Woodville, Elizabeth, 275
Treviso, 71, 233, 236, 247n Worthington, Thomas, 280
Trinity, trinitarianism, 90, 201, 207,
221, 222, 237, 244, 332, 334; see also Xaveria, Mary, 282
antitrinitarianism; Socinianism
Trithemius, Johannes, 15, 38, 180, 182, Yates, Frances, 6, 150
193nn, 319 Young, Edward, chaplain, 308
Turba philosophorum, 188 Young, Edward, poet, 90–2, 99, 115
Tyndale, William, 278
Zanchi, Girolamo, 298, 301
Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Zechariah, 230, 231, 240, 307
Pleasure, 94–5 Zika, Charles, 181
Uriel, 153, 162, 164–5 Zosimus of Panopolis, 187