Oil on canvas painting of Archangel Michael defeating Satan by Guido Reni, c.1636. A fair-haired angel wearing an armored breastplate and holding a sword in one hand and a chain in the other places its foot on the head of a prone Satan.
14 November 2022
Being a Christian religious term, it is no surprise that angel traces back to Old English. The Old English word comes from the Greek ἄγγελος (angelos), literally messenger, via the Latin angelus, reinforced in Middle English by the Anglo-Norman aungel. The Old English engel appears some 2,250 times in the extant corpus, one such occurrence coming from Ælfric of Eynsham’s sermon for Christmas, written in the late tenth century:
Ðreo þing synd on middanearde, an is hwilwendlic, þe hæfð ægðer ge ordfrumman ge ende, þæt synd nytenu and ealle sawullease þing þe ongunnan þa þa hi god gesceop and æft geændiað and to nahte gewurðaþ. Oðer þing is ece swa þæt hit hæfð ordfruman and næfð nenne ende; þæt synd ænglas and manna saula, þe ongunnen ða þa hi god gesceop, ac hi ne geendiað næfre. Dridde þing is ece swa þæt hit næfð naðor ne ordfruman ne ende, þæt is se ana ælmihtiga god on þrynesse and on annysse æfre wuniende unasmeagendlic and unasæcgendlic.
(There are three things on this earth: one is transitory, that has both a beginning and an end; such are beasts and all soulless things which began when God created them and afterward end and turn to nothing. The second thing is eternal, so that it has a beginning and does not have an end; such are the angels and the souls of humans, which began when God created them, but they never end. The third thing is eternal, so that it has neither a beginning nor an end; such is the one almighty God in trinity and unity, who continues forever inconceivable and indescribable.)
The figurative sense of angel meaning a virtuous person is in place by the fifteenth century. It appears in William Caxton’s translation from the French of Raoul Le Fevre’s History of Jason, in the passage where Medea kills her son Jason, who is named after his father:
“Ha. a Iason my dere sone thy figure & semblaunt. and thy faders entresemble & ben lik. Thou art moche fayr if thou mightiest come to thaage of a man / certes thou sholdest ensiewe and folowe the maners of thy fader the most double & leest trew knight of the worlde. hit is moche better that thou deye an angel in thy yongth / thenne a deuill in thy olde aage” / and wythoute more speking or other bewaillyng she drew out a sharp knyf in the presence of the norices that wyste not what to saye. and smote him with the knif vnto the herte. And after departed at that oure that men might not see her.
(“Ah, Jason my dear son, your figure and countenance resembles and is like your father’s. You would be very handsome if you would come to the age of a man; it is certain that you would ensue and follow the manners of your father, the most double and least true knight in the world. It is much better that you die an angel in your youth than a devil in your old age,” and without any more speaking or bewailing, she drew out a sharp knife in the presence of the nurses who did not know what to say and smote him with the knife into the heart. And afterward, she departed at that hour so that men might not see her.)
In traditional Christian theology, angels are immortal beings that predate the creation of the world and of humanity. The idea that humans, at least those with God’s grace, become angels when they die is a much more recent one, dating to the late eighteenth century. Here is an example from Elizabeth Helme’s 1787 novel Louisa:
I composed my features as well as possible, that they might not be an index of the contending passions that dwelt within, and obeyed my summons to the drawing room, where I was repossessed, like Mary, in favour of the stranger, who was a likely man, seemingly about the age of thirty-eight. He rose at my entrance—“Ah! Madam, said he, it is indeed the daughter of my friend, the living image of her angel mother;” and he embraced me with a fatherly affection.
And the sense of angel meaning a financial backer of some venture, got its start in theater circles in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Here is an example from the New York Sunday Mercury of 31 May 1885 that is the earliest citation of this sense in the Oxford English Dictionary:
Actors and authors tempt their “angels” with new plays which are sure to make all concerned Goulds and Vanderbilts.
It would take capitalism to equate robber barons with immortal, heavenly beings.
Sources:
Ælfric. “De natiuitate Christi” (Regarding the Nativity of Christ). Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, vol. 1 of 2 (originally published in 4 volumes) (1881). Early English Text Society O.S. 76. London: Oxford UP, 1966, 12. London, British Library, Cotton MS Julius E.vii.
Dictionary of Old English: A to I. University of Toronto, 2018, s.v. engel, n.
Helme, Elizabeth. Louisa; or, the Cottage on the Moor, vol. 1 of 2. London: G. Kearsley, 1787, 81–82. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Le Fevre, Raoul. The History of Jason (1477). William Caxton, trans. John Munro, ed. Early English Text Society, E.S. 111. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1913, 192–93. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2019, s.v. angel, n.
Image credit: York Project (2002). Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.
