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.

Recently angels have made a remarkable comeback in the popular imagination; their real heyday, however, was the Middle Ages. From the great shrines dedicated to Michael the Archangel at Mont-St-Michel and Monte Garano to the elaborate metaphysical speculations of the great thirteenth-century scholastics, angels dominated the physical, temporal, and intellectual landscape of the medieval West. This book offers a full-scale study of angels and angelology in the Middle Ages. Seeking to discover how and why angels became so important in medieval society, David Keck considers a wide range of fascinating questions such as: Why do angels appear on baptismal fonts? How and why did angels become normative for certain members of the church? How did they become a required course of study? Did popular beliefs about angels diverge from the angelologies of the theologians? Why did some heretics claim to derive their authority from heavenly spirits? Keck spreads his net wide in the attempt to catch traces of angels and angelic beliefs in as many portions of the medieval world as possible. Metaphysics and mystery plays, prayers and pilgrimages, Cathars and cathedrals-all these and many more disparate sources taken together reveal a society deeply engaged with angels on all its levels and in some unlikely ways.

This book examines the role of angels in medieval and Renaissance art and religion from Dante to the Counter-Reformation.

"A collection of essays examining medieval and early modern texts aimed at performing magic or receiving illumination via the mediation of angels. Includes discussion of Jewish, Christian and Muslim texts"--Provided by publisher.

This book studies medieval theories of free will, including explanations of how angels - that is, ideal agents - can choose evil.

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

The nature and properties of angels occupied a prominent place in medieval philosophical inquiry. Creatures of two worlds, angels provided ideal ground for exploring the nature of God and his creation, being perceived as 'models' according to which a whole range of questions were defined, from cosmological order, movement, and place, to individuation, cognition, volition, and modes of language. This collection of essays is a significant scholarly contribution to angelology, centred on the function and significance of angels in medieval speculation and its history. The unifying theme is that of the role of angels in philosophical inquiry, where each contribution represents a case study in which the angelic model is seen to motivate developments in specific areas and periods of medieval philosophical thought.

This book considers the early history of Jewish-Christian relations focussing on the fallen angels.

Fear grips those who doubt that their existence has meaning, and the prevailing notion that humans are situated on a dot in the middle of a dark, cold universe leaves people shivering in cosmic insignificance. Many would argue that science and technology have separated individuals from God while others would say that people have lost their faith, and some would assert that God is dead. Many simply do not know what to believe. Today’s self-help industry is a testament to the search for meaning in an age of uncertainty and faltering religious structures. The truth is that technology and science now answer many of the questions that used to be left to God. This development has confounded people’s ability to integrate what is known today with what was once thought. The disparity between past and present beliefs may be observed in the concept of the angel. There are many who claim that any lingering belief in angels is merely the residue of imaginary or wishful thinking, and there are others who hold that angels (wings, halos, and harps) literally exist. How is one to reconcile such contradictory beliefs? C. G. Jung’s theory of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence) provides a vehicle for the exploration and possible reconciliation of such questions. Rather than echoing the skeptic who says angels cannot exist or the religious enthusiast who affirms their immanence, one might reframe the entire discussion. Like the biblical concept of annunciation, in which an angel delivers a heavenly message to an earthly individual, synchronicity defines the moment at which the eternal touches the temporal.