Angels & Saints: With a Guide to the Illustrations by Mary Wellesley

by Eliot Weinberger, Mary Wellesley (Editor)

Angels have soared through Western culture and consciousness from Biblical to contemporary times. But what do we really know about these celestial beings? Where do they come from, what are they made of, how do they communicate and perceive? The celebrated essayist Eliot Weinberger has mined and deconstructed, resurrected and distilled centuries of theology into an awe-inspiring exploration of the heavenly host.

From a litany of angelic voices, Weinberger’s lyrical meditation then turns to the earthly counterparts, the saints, their lives retold in a series of vibrant and playful capsule biographies, followed by a glimpse of the afterlife.

Threaded throughout Angels & Saints are the glorious illuminated grid poems by the eighteenth-century Benedictine monk Hrabanus Maurus. These astonishingly complex, proto-“concrete” poems are untangled in a lucid afterword by the medieval scholar and historian Mary Wellesley.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Religion, Theology, Art, History, Spirituality

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2020

About the author

Eliot Weinberger is a contemporary American writer, essayist, editor, and translator. His work regularly appears in translation and has been published in some thirty languages.
Weinberger first gained recognition for his translations of the Nobel Prize winning writer and poet Octavio Paz. His many translations of the work of Paz include the Collected Poems 1957-1987, In Light of India, and Sunstone. Among Weinberger's other translations are Vicente Huidobro's Altazor, Xavier Villaurrutia's Nostalgia for Death, and Jorge Luis Borges' Seven Nights. His edition of Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn’t an ideal point of entry to Weinberger. The work begins with a taxonomy of the attributes and classification of angels (and demons). Aquinas, Luther and Milton sort of lead the way. The second two are certainly unpleasant people, maybe not of a Schopenhauer standing but unpleasant nonetheless. This continues with the occasional reference to the (second) Iraq War or the poetry of HD. It then pivots slightly. Dozens of saintly biographies, many thumbnails.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I enjoy most about Eliot Weinberger is not only his passion for the intricate detail, but the rare wit behind it. His essays are a collage of extracts or periphrases on a certain subject, juxtaposed and compressed into a critical moment of appreciation. Here he trains his talent on the bewildering subject of angelology, one of those areas in which a religion relents to imagination, inventing precise distinctions, hierarchies, quantities and qualities, assigning a history to celestial catastrophes. One of the long-standing jokes about scholasticism recounts the argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (although I’ve also read a writer who argued that such a question is deliberately preceptive, inverting our categories and transforming our sense of reality). Weinberger keeps a straight face throughout.

That is, until he gets to the saints, at which point the sacred head starts spinning. Saints are the celebrities of the Middle Ages, and about as interesting as our own. At this point the book invites parody, except that you can’t parody these athletes of masochism and improbability in their quest for the savage god. They’ve outdone themselves.

Genesius of Arles
(France, d. 303 or 308)
A decapitated martyr, his body was buried in France but his head was transported “in the hands of the angels” to Spain, where he is invoked as a protection against dandruff.

Such flash fictions just have to be savored for themselves alone.

Interspersed with the texts are the grid poems of the 9th century poet Hrabanus Maurus, which as commentator Mary Wellesley points out (almost) look like word searches for schizophrenics. After I made out a Latin phrase or two I gave up trying to make sense of them. Fortunately she provides a guide at the end of the book, and I can only imagine Weinberger’s delight in what she describes, numerological and theological constructions as daedal as his own. Some are illuminated palindromes in which Hrabanus was a master. ORO TE RAMUS ARAM ARA SUMAR ET ORO. (“I pray, O cross and altar, to be saved through you.” Well, you would.) She concludes her guide with the observation of an earlier scholar: “the satisfaction Hrabanus describes finding in the act of writing is seldom shared by his readers.” Maybe you just have to be in the mood.

An extra star for this review just because New Directions has created a beautiful book (hardback edition with illustrations).

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Angel of Clouds,
who has no other name;

Forneus,
who causes men to be loved by their enemies;

Trgiaob,
who watches over creeping things;

Nathanael,
who guards hidden things;

Pahardon,
the angel or terror;

Maktiel,
who rules over trees;

Harbonah,
the donkey driver, an angel of confusion;

Jalula,
who carries the cup of oblivion,
so that a soul can drink,
and forget all that it has known


*

Devon


*

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Angels & Saints” is not the latest Dan Brown novel. But it is an assemblage of histories and anecdotes intending to draw a circle, however ragged, round its notoriously dodgy subject matter. Much of the first section is concerned with settling scores: what exactly are angels? I was somewhat astounded to learn the basis for the reams of syllogism produced by Aquinas in the pursuit of the answers to this very question. Which is that, for all their centuries-old cultural capital, for all the tonnage of canvases bearing up the various splendor of their likenesses, the scriptures in which we first find them rarely report them. And when they do it’s with a frustrating economy of detail, so that the angel in fact persists like a kind of UFO. Thus what amounts to the endless deducing, down through the ages, of all we don’t know by way of what little we do. (And Aquinas really is the Boss when it comes to the angelic; it is impossible to imagine Wender’s “Wings of Desire” without that 13th-century Dominican.) In the second section — more explicitly Weinbergian — Weinberger reveals the fruit of his plundering the Vatican basement: perhaps some 100 of the full 10,000 canonized saints are served forth from the hagiographical database. Penitent converts, in mantles of horsehair, step from the ruins of history alongside martyrs carrying their heads in the crooks of their arms. There’s some fun with the serendipity of repetition and rhyme: a dozen sainted “Hyacinths” rattle out in a series of thumbnail lives. Curiously, Weinberger strays, in his vast collating, from most of the Greats: no Francis of Assisi, for instance. In the second preface to a similar work, Jorge’s Luis Borges’ “Book of Imaginary Beings,” the author advises against a sustained and serial reading of his book — rather, to dip into it from time to time. No such disclaimer heads “Angels & Saints,” but if it did, I wouldn’t listen anyway.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highly enjoyable read that often felt like a meditation.

[Robert Reinhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The search engine libraries of google or microsoft or any other contain fewer pieces of knowledge than the mind and soul of Eliot Weinberger, certainly without any capacity to present the knowledge in the forms and styles and connection in this book. Weinberger first of all writes with no hint that the angels or saints do/did not exist and yet without himself making a particular belief statement other than in the unusual forms of story, poem, two line lives, multiple page lives. In 159 pages the reader encounters hundreds and hundreds of these creations. and set next to the unsolvable puzzle text illustrations of the monk Hrabnus Maurus. Certain phrases or characterizations of an angel or a saint might apply to Weinberger himself. I suspect if I had the time, but I dont, that Weinberger has also contruccted some secret numerological statement of his own in this book.

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

The eclectic little snippets of how angels were thought of through the centuries was fun - especially Aquinas’ debates over whether angels actually know anything or are just blank puppets.
The brief lives of saints was interesting and just goes to show how truly strange Christianity can get, with some saints describing how Jesus did their laundry, or how they one to Stalin who said he would be the enemy of God, or how some regular Nuns seemed to be turned into saints post-death for the sake of business / rose-related merchandise sales / Vichy France propaganda etc etc.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an enjoyable book—the essay on angels far more so than the mini-bios of saints, though many of those are likewise worthwhile.

[Jim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite books as a child was Lives of the Saints. I was mesmerized by the stories of people who lived so long ago and with such piety. Many suffered a martyrdom that was both grotesque and, like the violence in my comic books, thoroughly entertaining. Reading Angels and Saints reminded me of that book, but geared perhaps for a more cynical Christian. It’s both a testament to people’s faith and a humorous look at the absurdity of faith. Take the story of Spain’s St. Magdelana of the Cross, a nun who during her life was more famous than her contemporary Teresa of Avila. After 40 years of miracles, including having a virgin birth (!), she amassed fame and fortune for her convent. Then it was discovered that she had made a pact with a demon to possess her for 40 years and together they had been fooling everyone! Once she was exorcised by several priests, all her ruses were discovered, but she was allowed to remain in the convent and live out her long life, this time in solitude and piety. There is something wonderfully modern (a Flannary O’Connor story, perhaps?) about a con artist saint, who, once the con is up, becomes the person she once pretended to be! This is just one of the fascinating stories in this book. Some are so ridiculous that you laugh out loud and others are just heartbreaking (A Japanese saint who was beheaded as a Christian at age 2!). I found it equally disturbing and delightful. It’s also beautifully illustrated with medieval grid poems throughout.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book. It is elegantly designed. It has fascinating illustrations, which Mary Wellesley explains in an afterwards. It has a beautiful layout and perfect typeface.

I know that seems like I am going to slam the contents of the book but I am not. My point is that the design of the book is part of the mystery of the book.

On the first level, this is a straightforward description of the traditional lore and stories in the Church about angels and saints. We get, for example, a section on the theories and explanations for angel's wings. Weinberger explains the various schools of thought about the place of angels in man's daily life. We get a long collection of short biographies of saints as set out in the ancient texts. Many of them are a single sentence.

On the second level, Weinberger is a sophisticated modern essayist who clearly doesn't believe in any of this. Even when he is reporting in a deadpan just-the-facts manner, you can feel his eyes rolling. For example, here is the complete entry about Saint Rumwold;

Rumwold of Brackley
(England, d. 650)
Only three days old, at his baptism he suddenly spoke and delivered a sermon on the Holy Trinity and the need for virtuous living, then died.

Weinberger makes no comment. He just moves on to the next saint.

He has a great section on patron angels. The Angel Shemael is the angel of Monday. The Angel Amarlia cures boils. The Angel Tubiel returns small birds to their owner. Again, all of this is reported in clear calm language. This section reads like a really well written seed catalog.

A few times he does slip in a note of wry amusement. He quotes the description of Saint Theresa as the "Emily Dickinson of Roman Catholic Sainthood."

The book is mysterious. What is he up to? As I said, it is a beautiful book which is clearly designed to be pondered over and appreciated. This is not religion bashing, except that to read that the Catholic Church actually believed this stuff is pretty devastating to the Church.

Weinberger clearly works hard to produce his simple prose. Each sentence has clearly been worked on and polished, without being showy.

This was a peculiar, clever, spiritual, fascinating one-off book. I enjoyed it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If we saw an angel clearly, we should die of pleasure.” Birgitta of Sweden

We all know about angels: we see them on Christmas cards, in religious paintings, nativity plays. They are God’s messengers, appearing to Noah, Isaac, and Mary and his warriors with Iophel driving Adam and Eve out of Eden and, of course, Michael battling the fallen Lucifer.
But actually, when you come down to it that’s not very much. Are they ephemeral or corporeal? Can they think or are they imbued with knowledge? I had much to learn about the hierarchies of angels - archangels, angels, seraphim, cherubim, standards, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers and principalities (the angelic order was primarily revealed by Dionysius the Areopagite in his book The Celestial Hierarchy where the word was invented). And according to Maimonides, they inhabit the celestial spheres and the Empyrean above, exactly 112,420,000 kilometres from Earth.
Then there was the wonderful list of angels hovering around: Teiazel, guardian of librarians; Hanum, the angel of Monday; Raduerierl, the angel of poetry; Anabiel, Hodniel and Kabniel, who can cure stupidity; and, would you believe, Machidiel, who can bring a man the maiden of his desire.
And this is just the celestial half of the book. In the second, we return to earth to look at the strange and astonishing stories of saints and almost saints whose stories of obsessive devotion, told in capsule biographies, beg belief.
Eliot Weinberger’s Angels & Saints is a wonderful essay that is a wonderful window on thinking in the Dark and Middle Ages. A delight to read, illustrated with the grid poems of Hrabanus Maurus’s (780-756 CE) explained by Mary Wellesley. I came upon this book by chance or might it have been the hand of Teiazel or another guardian angel at work here?

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weinberger usually does essays of varying shorter length - but this is a longer work on one subject. Kind of two subjects. Or three. Besides angels and saints, there are also the illustrated manuscripts, and explanations of them, of Hrabanus Maurus (who is an 8th C monk, not an 18th, as GoodReads and Amazon has him identified). They are fascinating (lots of Christian numerology), but don't really ever tie in to the text. The pages of the illustrated manuscript are also not complete (about half of the 28 pages), and for some unstated reason they are not in numerical order either. Odd.
This starts out a bit slow, going over angels in the Bible and what theologians have to say about them and their abilities. Surprisingly, angels are not mentioned very often in the Bible.
This is a more Christian-centric piece - little is said about angels in the Church of LDS (my late f-in-l, of the Reorganized Church of LDS [those that chose to stay in Independence, MO - now called The Community of Christ] was a wondeful man, who would share with you his 2 or 3 experiences with angels within 15 minutes of first meeting him).
In the same way, angels in Islam only get a brief mention.
The longer second section of the book, on saints, is the more interesting. Exposing the sexual nature of the relationships between the saints (mostly female in these cases) and Jesus/God. And the last 10 or so pages are very informative, a section that could be presented on its own as, "The Making (Selling) of a Modern Saint".
Perhaps Weinberger's schtick works better as a shorter essay, rather than as a longer extended work on one subject. Because of that, this does not completely tie together all that well. Although, as usual, he finds some grand nuggets of the oddities of human existence.
And, as always, is a joy to read.
4 out of 5.

[Paul Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

EXTRAORDINARILY FITTING THAT this strange and beautiful book has such strange and beautiful illustrations--the "grid poems" of Hrabanus Maurus (c. 780-856 CE). And thank you, New Directions, for including Mary Wellesley's note.

The angels and saints of Weinberger's new book seem worlds away from the dispatches from Trump-land he has been publishing in the London Review of Books in recent years, but they share a kind of deliberate dryness, a willingness to let things speak for themselves.

For instance, this from the LRB of June 4, 2020:

On his first trip in many weeks, the president flies to Arizona to inspect a Honeywell plant manufacturing masks, which he tours not wearing a mask while loudspeakers on the factory floor blare "Live and Let Die" by Guns N' Roses.

And this from the new book:

Eskil

(Sweden, d. c. 1038)

East of the village of Tuna, he disrupted a blood sacrifice, urging them to repent, and they stoned him to death.

That's the Weinbergian note--perfect abstention from commentary, while the right words are dropped in so well-suited an arrangement that commentary would be superfluous.

Now and then a high-frequency irony is just about audible (in the lives of Magdalena of the Cross, Philomena, and Thérèse of Lisieux, for instance), but by and large we are at some degree zero exactly equidistant from both G. K. Chesterton and Voltaire.

How does he do it?

[Dylan]

Despite having sat through countless sermons throughout my life, I can't really remember anything covering in any depth the nature of angels. This may be due to the CRC giving relatively little airtime to these issues in favor of focusing on the higher priority issues, but maybe it's because nobody really knows what to do with angels. Weinberger traces the history of Christian thinkers, from the early church fathers to Aquinas and Martin Luther, trying to come to some sort of understanding re: this whole angel issue. Some of the questions addressed include "Can angels lie?", "What are angels made of?", and "Can angels eat?"

The second part of the book is like a "Lives of the Saints" with a focus on the more obscure and idiosyncratic among them. Among many gems, I remember a story about a saint who was friends with a carp as particularly good. It's all fascinating stuff, and Weinberger's extremely dry delivery works in the best way possible.

[Lindsey Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it poetic not in the sense of form but in how it engages the subject matter, exploring a wide range of topics and ideas in a way that (while not particularly rigorous in an academic sense) inspires further reflection and investigation. The author has a great sense of scope and curation. There were occasional bits that struck me as a little overly sentimental, but those were rare. Overall a lovely quick read.

[Kevin Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dazed and confused

E W is a "celebrated essayist". This book does not strike me as a series of essays. It is a list of 1) a jumbled sequence of speculations about angels 2) short lives of unusual saints . Maybe there is some 'meta' message I'm not getting.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved everything about this.

[Mairwen Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thought provoking and just what I needed after learning of our new to be president. I can feel this being a re read when I need hope.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny.

[Velanna Dondina Doolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this one in about a single day.