Abstract
The conversation with angels of this chapter is a collective one: an extended dialogue between the culture of English Protestantism and one of the keynote ideas of medieval angelology, a conversation that was pursued sporadically, 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 reformers 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 admonition 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.
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Notes
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.
Keck, Angels and Angelology, 162–63; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. W. Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton NJ, 1993), 2: 207–09.
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.
Richard Baxter, The Certainty of the World of Spirits (London, 1691), 233.
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 )
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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.
C. A. Patrides, ‘Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy: the Decline of a Tradition’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959): 155–66.
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.
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.
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.
Andrew Willett, Synopsis Papismi, that is, a generall viewe of papistry (London, 1592), 294–95.
Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 269–70; W. Maskell, ed., Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 3 vols. (2nd edn, Oxford, 1882), 3: 289–92.
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584), 505–06.
Urbanus Rhegius, An Homely or Sermon of Good and Euill Angels, trans. R. Robinson (2nd edn, London, 1590), 30.
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.
William Perkins, A Golden Chaine: Or the Description of Theologie (Cambridge, 1600), 231–35 at 234.
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.
John Salkeld, A Treatise of Angels (London, 1613), 251–80, quotations at 248, 251, 252.
J. M. Blom, ‘The Adventures of an Angel- Guardian in Seventeenth- Century England’, Recusant History, 20 (1990–91): 48–57.
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.
Richard Montagu, Immediate Addresse vnto God Alone (London, 1624), epistle dedicatorie, 95–99.
Richard Montagu, A Gagg for the New Gospell? (London, 1624), 189, 203–5, 199– 200.
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.
Thomas Taylor, Iaphets First Publique Perswasion into Sems Tents (Cambridge, 1612), 98.
John Prideaux, The Patronage of Angels. A Sermon Preached at the Court (Oxford, 1636), 19.
John Bayly, Two Sermons. The Angell Guardian. The Light Enlightning (Oxford, 1630), sig. A2r, 7–10, 14–15.
Henry Lawrence, An History of Angells, Being a Theologicall Treatise of Our Communion and Warre with Them (1646; London, 1649), 19–20, 25.
Robert Dingley, The Deputation of Angels, or, The Angell- Guardian (London, 1653),
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Robert Gell, A Sermon Touching Gods Government of the World by Angels (London, 1650), 17.
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.
Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, in The Major Works, ed. C. A. Patrides (Harmondsworth, 1977), 99, 101.
Joseph Hall, The Invisible World, Discovered to Spirituall Eyes (London, 1651), 113–16, 148.
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R. Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester, 1997), 46.
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Matthe Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (London, 1685), sig. Qqq1v.
Richard Saunders, Angelographia sive pneumata leiturgika: Or a Discourse of Angels: their Nature, Office and Ministry (London, 1701), 121–24.
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.
George Hamond, A Modest Enquiry into the Opinion Concerning a Guardian Angel (London, 1702).
Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (2nd edn, London, 1709), 154.
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Edward Ward, The World Bewitched: A Dialogue Between Two Astrologers and the Author (London, 1699), 15.
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Marshall, P. (2011). The Guardian Angel in Protestant England. In: Raymond, J. (eds) Conversations with Angels. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230316973_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230316973_13
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