Angels In Early Medieval England

This study examines the place of angels in the religious culture of Anglo-Saxon England with particular attention to individual devotion.

In the modern world, angels can often seem to be no more than a symbol, but in the Middle Ages men and women thought differently. Some offered prayers intended to secure the angelic assistance for the living and the dead; others erected stone monuments carved with images of winged figures; and still others made angels the subject of poetic endeavour and theological scholarship. This wealth of material has never been fully explored, and was once dismissed as the detritus of a superstitious age. Angels in Medieval England offers a different perspective, by using angels as a prism through which to study the changing religious culture of an unfamiliar age. Focusing on one corner of medieval Europe which produced an abundance of material relating to angels, Richard Sowerby investigates the way that ancient beliefs about angels were preserved and adapted in England during the Anglo-Saxon period. Between the sixth century and the eleventh, the convictions of Anglo-Saxon men and women about the world of the spirits underwent a gradual transformation. This book is the first to explore that transformation, and to show the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons tried to reconcile their religious inheritance with their own perspectives about the world, human nature, and God.

Examines the rise of popular religious currents in the later Middle Ages, and studies a range of texts, composed largely between 1100 and 1400, to illustrate how the emergence of charismatic public 'prophets' unsettled the established church and presented a contest over rival images of public spirituality.

Over six hundred years before John Milton's Paradise Lost, Anglo-Saxon authors told their own version of the fall of the angels. This book brings together various cultural moments, literary genres and relevant comparanda to recover that version, from the legal and social world to the world of popular spiritual ritual and belief. The story of the fall of the angels in Anglo-Saxon England is the story of a successfully transmitted exegetical teaching turned rich literary tradition. It can be traced through a range of genres - sermons, saints' lives, royal charters, riddles, devotional and biblical poetry - each one offering a distinct window into the ancient myth's place within the Anglo-Saxon literary and cultural imagination.

An exploration of how Æthelwold and those he influenced deployed the promotion of saints to implement religious reform.

This volume explores the role of belief in the existence of angels in the early modern world.

Angels have made a remarkable comeback in the popular imagination; their real heyday, however, was the Middle Ages. This text offers a study of angels and angelology in the Middle Ages, seeking to discover how and why angels became so important in medieval society.

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