The medieval world’s awareness of and interest in angelic realities is unlike anything I’ve seen in modern Christianity. Why is this the case? How did medieval angelology develop into such a rich and pervasive aspect of daily, scholarly, and spiritual life?
Thank you for your article! This medieval reality—that people were imbued with scripture—has really struck me today in light of recent conversations with my young adult children who have been getting into discussions about Catholic Church teaching with friends. They comment that the friends seem more conversant with Church documents and numbers in the Catechism than with Scripture. In our house, we have not done extensive Bible studies or apologetics, but we have prayed the Liturgy of the Hours as a family for more than a decade. And most of that has been using the Divine Office from the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter—with its more extensive readings from the Bible and its beautiful translation, especially of the Psalms. My kids have a much better internal scripture sense than I ever got studying for my MA in theology back in the day.
Also, my daughter commented that she noticed, when reading stories about early American pioneers, such as Little House on the Prairie, the Ralph Moody books, and Louis L’Amour novels, often the families would have only a few books, the Bible being the most common, Shakespeare also, and even Plutarch’s lives or some other classic historical source. Though the world view of those families was decidedly Protestant, I wonder if their grasp of language and literature was just that much better than our modern understanding—with our academic approach to those texts.
This is a wonderful and insightful comment, thank you for writing it.
"...the friends seem more conversant with Church documents and numbers in the Catechism than with Scripture": YES, this is a generalized condition, and it grieves me.
"My kids have a much better internal scripture sense than I ever got studying for my MA in theology back in the day": I fully believe it. Some people are called to study theology, but Scripture—especially the Gospels and the cherished narratives and poems of the Old Testament—are for *everybody*.
"I wonder if their grasp of language and literature was just that much better than our modern understanding": In general, yes, it absolutely was. Instead of jumping from novel to novel (or worse, but let us not speak of such things as tele_____), they gradually united their minds and hearts to works of the highest literary and rhetorical merit. There is no one on the earth today—no one—who can craft language like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or Herman Melville or George Eliot or Alfred Tennyson did. There's a reason for that.
I have been pondering this ever since reading "Does text change the perception of time?" On Maintaining the Realm. How is it that when most people could not read or write, could they be so shaped by the Book of Books? Did they really know the Bible so well from public art in churches and homelies? I certainly believe it, but I wonder how that looked like on a day-to-day basis? I read the whole Bible once so far, and it took a long time, and surely was an effort. I wish I say that is my main source of formation, but at this moment in time that would probably be a stretch. One day!
The other thing I've been considering is the natural silence and peaceful line of vision that medieval people would have experienced, without loud cars, adverts, on-demand streaming of music, films, podcasts, TV, constant news, industrial infrastructure. I am partly answering my question; perhaps people were just much less distracted and could really internalise the one main source of information they had, besides personal conversations, the Bible (art, homelies, and oral retellings) without all the other distractions we have today, but instead, with chirping birds and crackling fires, and so it would have struck their souls more deeply. I was inspired to cut some noise out of my life while I do housework, namely audio books and podcasts, and feel much more settled for it.
If education is truly the formation of a whole person, mind and soul, and people were more grounded and formed by the Bible in the past, were they then not better educated than we are today? Should we go back to more spoken word and images (and nature!), and less of everything else? Less splitting of hairs. I very much look forward to Sunday's post.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. You packed so many good thoughts into this comment that it's difficult for me to acknowledge them all, but they deserve to be acknowledged.
With regard to the formative power of the Bible in a time of widespread illiteracy: visual art, liturgical experiences, homilies, communal celebrations, and folk drama definitely played a part in this, and I suspect that the fundamental answer lies in something that the great linguist Ferdinand de Saussure recognized: "every literary language, as a product of culture, becomes cut off from the spoken word, which is a language's natural sphere of existence." There is a power in *hearing* Scripture that we cannot fully understand (because the arts of speaking and listening are in grievous decline) and to which we are not fully sensitized (because we were raised in a reading-centric culture and began reading at a young age).
With regard to noise and distraction: absolutely, yes. The key word that you used is "internalize." Again, our lifestyle and culture make it difficult for us not only to internalize poetic truth but to *even comprehend* how intensely and naturally people of the pre-industrial past internalized poetic truth.
With regard to education: I would say that many, not all, were better educated than we are, but the two types of "education" are so different that it's almost impossible to compare the two. But in any case, YES, we need more authentic speaking and listening, much more authentic engagement with nature, and much less scientific hair-splitting. As Dickens recognized even in the 19th century, modern education is fundamentally about dissection. It should be about wholeness.
Many thanks for your charitable reply. It's a shame that such an oral culture just cannot be replicated easily, if at all. It is ironic that the earlier childen learn literacy, the worse things just seems to get for them. It's not surprising though given that *speaking* generally seems to be on decline.
That's fascinating that Dickens thought this about hair-splitting. The best I have in my arsenal is the educator Charlotte Mason who in late 19th century, after Dickens' death, emphasised synthetic thinking in education instead of analytical (which anyhow arises in students naturally at a later stage). And she deployed narration, oral and written, as the main and most natural method of 'examination'. This is how I try to homeschool. And, may I add, my boys and I loved learning 'Caedmon's hymn'and 'Merry it is while Summer Lasts', so thank you for bringing these gems to light.
Charlotte Mason is a wonderful resource for homeschoolers; I really marvel at how right she was about many things. It can be a little difficult to fully translate her methods and theories into the modern homeschooling context, but nonetheless, for a typical homeschooling family, Mason's ideas are the best place to start.
I'm so glad you liked Caedmon's Hymn and Merry It Is. It is so deeply meaningful to me that Caedmon's Hymn is the oldest surviving work of English-language poetry. I love learning foreign languages, but I love my native language even more!
Wonderful article…Your explanation of the way our understanding of scripture changed and recent meditation on medieval Marian iconography has helped me see the Immaculate Conception in a different light. It seems we have gone from understanding Mary’s purity through rich visual metaphors to approaching the immaculate conception through confusing arguments which use lots of double negatives.
That's well said, and it's so interesting that you would mention the Immaculate Conception, since for me that is a prime example of the theological approach leading me into confusion and uncertainty—especially given that the current understanding of the Immaculate Conception was opposed, on theological grounds, by St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and others, and is still opposed by the Eastern Orthodox. However, when I think of Mary as the God-bearer whom the Ark of the Covenant prefigured, as the living fulfillment of the Holy of Holies, as the blue-robed Virgin whose purity is like the endless clarity of the sky or the perfect smoothness of the sea, the Immaculate Conception makes sense, and I can *feel* its truth.
This is an interesting comment—I'm curious in what sense you mean "Promethean spirit," as this spirit is understood in both positive and negative ways.
The idea of snatching the scriptures from the church itself and running around as if the Holy Spirit is a Promethean fire every “believer” can appropriate for themselves without any safeguards. Truly, a way to get burned in this life and certainly the next.
Interesting -- Cardinal Ratzinger used the "Apollonian/Dionysian" contrast when speaking of liturgical music. His idea fits in with this article's emphasis on not grasping the experience/truth/matter, and with your idea of the Promethean fire.
<<Here Ratzinger offers a brilliant device for understanding the divide, the immense gulf, between the conception of music as an expression of something above man and the view of music as an tool of the Will, which the modern era has buried within man and ultimately, found as not separable from him. This view devolves into feelings and ultimately, degradation.
And that device is what he calls “the Apollonian/Dionysian alternative” which “runs through the whole history of religion and confronts us again today. Not every kind of music can have a place in Christian worship. It has its standards, and that standard is the Logos.” (P. 151)
Earlier on page 150 he explains the analogy:
Plato ascribes, in line with mythology, [music] to Apollo, the god of light and reason. This is the music that draws senses into spirit and so brings man to wholeness. It does not abolish the senses, but inserts them into the unity of this creature that is man… uniting them with the spirit. Thus this kind of music is an expression of man’s special place in the general structure of being.
But then there is the music… that we might describe, in terms of [liturgical] history, as “Dionysian”. It drags man into the intoxication of the senses, crushes rationality, and subjects the spirit to the senses.
When we think of the divine realm, we must understand that the music is already going on!>>
Interesting; I've never come across that book. I see the author's analogy and recognize that Prometheus is an ambivalent figure, but I must say that I find his choice rather surprising, as Prometheus was historically understood as a benefactor, whose theft of fire elevated man above the beasts and made human culture—especially architecture, astronomy, writing, medicine, etc.—possible. And also, in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Prometheus is portrayed as a noble victim tormented by a tyrannical (pagan) deity.
Thank you for your article! This medieval reality—that people were imbued with scripture—has really struck me today in light of recent conversations with my young adult children who have been getting into discussions about Catholic Church teaching with friends. They comment that the friends seem more conversant with Church documents and numbers in the Catechism than with Scripture. In our house, we have not done extensive Bible studies or apologetics, but we have prayed the Liturgy of the Hours as a family for more than a decade. And most of that has been using the Divine Office from the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter—with its more extensive readings from the Bible and its beautiful translation, especially of the Psalms. My kids have a much better internal scripture sense than I ever got studying for my MA in theology back in the day.
Also, my daughter commented that she noticed, when reading stories about early American pioneers, such as Little House on the Prairie, the Ralph Moody books, and Louis L’Amour novels, often the families would have only a few books, the Bible being the most common, Shakespeare also, and even Plutarch’s lives or some other classic historical source. Though the world view of those families was decidedly Protestant, I wonder if their grasp of language and literature was just that much better than our modern understanding—with our academic approach to those texts.
This is a wonderful and insightful comment, thank you for writing it.
"...the friends seem more conversant with Church documents and numbers in the Catechism than with Scripture": YES, this is a generalized condition, and it grieves me.
"My kids have a much better internal scripture sense than I ever got studying for my MA in theology back in the day": I fully believe it. Some people are called to study theology, but Scripture—especially the Gospels and the cherished narratives and poems of the Old Testament—are for *everybody*.
"I wonder if their grasp of language and literature was just that much better than our modern understanding": In general, yes, it absolutely was. Instead of jumping from novel to novel (or worse, but let us not speak of such things as tele_____), they gradually united their minds and hearts to works of the highest literary and rhetorical merit. There is no one on the earth today—no one—who can craft language like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or Herman Melville or George Eliot or Alfred Tennyson did. There's a reason for that.
I have been pondering this ever since reading "Does text change the perception of time?" On Maintaining the Realm. How is it that when most people could not read or write, could they be so shaped by the Book of Books? Did they really know the Bible so well from public art in churches and homelies? I certainly believe it, but I wonder how that looked like on a day-to-day basis? I read the whole Bible once so far, and it took a long time, and surely was an effort. I wish I say that is my main source of formation, but at this moment in time that would probably be a stretch. One day!
The other thing I've been considering is the natural silence and peaceful line of vision that medieval people would have experienced, without loud cars, adverts, on-demand streaming of music, films, podcasts, TV, constant news, industrial infrastructure. I am partly answering my question; perhaps people were just much less distracted and could really internalise the one main source of information they had, besides personal conversations, the Bible (art, homelies, and oral retellings) without all the other distractions we have today, but instead, with chirping birds and crackling fires, and so it would have struck their souls more deeply. I was inspired to cut some noise out of my life while I do housework, namely audio books and podcasts, and feel much more settled for it.
If education is truly the formation of a whole person, mind and soul, and people were more grounded and formed by the Bible in the past, were they then not better educated than we are today? Should we go back to more spoken word and images (and nature!), and less of everything else? Less splitting of hairs. I very much look forward to Sunday's post.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. You packed so many good thoughts into this comment that it's difficult for me to acknowledge them all, but they deserve to be acknowledged.
With regard to the formative power of the Bible in a time of widespread illiteracy: visual art, liturgical experiences, homilies, communal celebrations, and folk drama definitely played a part in this, and I suspect that the fundamental answer lies in something that the great linguist Ferdinand de Saussure recognized: "every literary language, as a product of culture, becomes cut off from the spoken word, which is a language's natural sphere of existence." There is a power in *hearing* Scripture that we cannot fully understand (because the arts of speaking and listening are in grievous decline) and to which we are not fully sensitized (because we were raised in a reading-centric culture and began reading at a young age).
With regard to noise and distraction: absolutely, yes. The key word that you used is "internalize." Again, our lifestyle and culture make it difficult for us not only to internalize poetic truth but to *even comprehend* how intensely and naturally people of the pre-industrial past internalized poetic truth.
With regard to education: I would say that many, not all, were better educated than we are, but the two types of "education" are so different that it's almost impossible to compare the two. But in any case, YES, we need more authentic speaking and listening, much more authentic engagement with nature, and much less scientific hair-splitting. As Dickens recognized even in the 19th century, modern education is fundamentally about dissection. It should be about wholeness.
Many thanks for your charitable reply. It's a shame that such an oral culture just cannot be replicated easily, if at all. It is ironic that the earlier childen learn literacy, the worse things just seems to get for them. It's not surprising though given that *speaking* generally seems to be on decline.
That's fascinating that Dickens thought this about hair-splitting. The best I have in my arsenal is the educator Charlotte Mason who in late 19th century, after Dickens' death, emphasised synthetic thinking in education instead of analytical (which anyhow arises in students naturally at a later stage). And she deployed narration, oral and written, as the main and most natural method of 'examination'. This is how I try to homeschool. And, may I add, my boys and I loved learning 'Caedmon's hymn'and 'Merry it is while Summer Lasts', so thank you for bringing these gems to light.
Charlotte Mason is a wonderful resource for homeschoolers; I really marvel at how right she was about many things. It can be a little difficult to fully translate her methods and theories into the modern homeschooling context, but nonetheless, for a typical homeschooling family, Mason's ideas are the best place to start.
I'm so glad you liked Caedmon's Hymn and Merry It Is. It is so deeply meaningful to me that Caedmon's Hymn is the oldest surviving work of English-language poetry. I love learning foreign languages, but I love my native language even more!
Thank you for this wonderful article. It is a gift as it really helped contextualize my temptation to the vice of curiosity.
Thank you for this comment. It is a temptation with which I am well acquainted.
Wonderful article…Your explanation of the way our understanding of scripture changed and recent meditation on medieval Marian iconography has helped me see the Immaculate Conception in a different light. It seems we have gone from understanding Mary’s purity through rich visual metaphors to approaching the immaculate conception through confusing arguments which use lots of double negatives.
That's well said, and it's so interesting that you would mention the Immaculate Conception, since for me that is a prime example of the theological approach leading me into confusion and uncertainty—especially given that the current understanding of the Immaculate Conception was opposed, on theological grounds, by St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and others, and is still opposed by the Eastern Orthodox. However, when I think of Mary as the God-bearer whom the Ark of the Covenant prefigured, as the living fulfillment of the Holy of Holies, as the blue-robed Virgin whose purity is like the endless clarity of the sky or the perfect smoothness of the sea, the Immaculate Conception makes sense, and I can *feel* its truth.
The Reformation was the beginning of the ascent of the Promethean spirit.
This is an interesting comment—I'm curious in what sense you mean "Promethean spirit," as this spirit is understood in both positive and negative ways.
The idea of snatching the scriptures from the church itself and running around as if the Holy Spirit is a Promethean fire every “believer” can appropriate for themselves without any safeguards. Truly, a way to get burned in this life and certainly the next.
Interesting -- Cardinal Ratzinger used the "Apollonian/Dionysian" contrast when speaking of liturgical music. His idea fits in with this article's emphasis on not grasping the experience/truth/matter, and with your idea of the Promethean fire.
I wrote about it here (in a "book club" about his Spirit of the Liturgy): https://likemotherlikedaughter.org/2016/08/music-spirit-liturgy-book-club/
<<Here Ratzinger offers a brilliant device for understanding the divide, the immense gulf, between the conception of music as an expression of something above man and the view of music as an tool of the Will, which the modern era has buried within man and ultimately, found as not separable from him. This view devolves into feelings and ultimately, degradation.
And that device is what he calls “the Apollonian/Dionysian alternative” which “runs through the whole history of religion and confronts us again today. Not every kind of music can have a place in Christian worship. It has its standards, and that standard is the Logos.” (P. 151)
Earlier on page 150 he explains the analogy:
Plato ascribes, in line with mythology, [music] to Apollo, the god of light and reason. This is the music that draws senses into spirit and so brings man to wholeness. It does not abolish the senses, but inserts them into the unity of this creature that is man… uniting them with the spirit. Thus this kind of music is an expression of man’s special place in the general structure of being.
But then there is the music… that we might describe, in terms of [liturgical] history, as “Dionysian”. It drags man into the intoxication of the senses, crushes rationality, and subjects the spirit to the senses.
When we think of the divine realm, we must understand that the music is already going on!>>
https://angeluspress.org/products/prometheus
Interesting; I've never come across that book. I see the author's analogy and recognize that Prometheus is an ambivalent figure, but I must say that I find his choice rather surprising, as Prometheus was historically understood as a benefactor, whose theft of fire elevated man above the beasts and made human culture—especially architecture, astronomy, writing, medicine, etc.—possible. And also, in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Prometheus is portrayed as a noble victim tormented by a tyrannical (pagan) deity.
Thank you for another fine article!
Those interested in a brief Thomistic account of angels and their role in the traditional Roman Rite may find this article helpful:
https://onepeterfive.com/brief-introduction-angels/
I am enjoying getting to know YOU better through your writings. I love this: "cultivation of a poetic, wonder-filled relationship with reality.” Yes.