This book examines early medieval ideas about the origin, nature and function of angels as they appear in the Bible, patristic literature, art, poetry and ecclesiastical writings, and their place within the divine pattern of creation and redemption. Like Gabriel, angels were clearly God's messengers, and St Michael's position as leader of the heavenly host and champion against evil was well known. But at what point in the (two) Genesis stories – in one of which their creation is not mentioned at all (Genesis i; ii.1–3), even though they were around when Adam fell (Gen. ii. 4–25; iii) – did they actually come into existence? If one appeared, how would you recognise him? Are angels role models for mankind in a moral sense? Can you pray to angels? And what of guardian angels – will they speak up for us against Satan and his demons at the Last Judgement, and guide us on our terrifying journey to the Otherworld? Concentrating on sources chiefly dating from St Augustine until the late eleventh century, Sowerby reflects minutely upon the way in which the very varied answers to such questions changed (or not) the way in which angels were viewed in Anglo-Saxon Britain, especially in the north after c.700 ad. He also notes how those views did not necessarily tally with those of their Frankish counterparts. He illustrates written evidence with rare and spectacular surviving examples taken from contemporary tomb sculpture (St Cuthbert's tomb, for instance, was adorned with eight angels, all originally named), and with wondrous tenth- and eleventh-century illustrations of the creation and the fall of the angels (pp. 18, 43). He then reflects upon the way in which earlier writings on the subject were used to advantage by King Edgar and Bishop Aethelwold in the tenth century as a direct precedent in order to promote the cleansing of the Old and New Minsters at Winchester. Gregory the Great – actually relying on Pseudo-Dionysius – had contended in a sermon of 591 that God originally created ten orders of angels in heaven. When one of these orders fell, through Lucifer's pride, it was ultimately replaced by the creation of mankind to make up the number and eventually to triumph over Lucifer through Christ's two-fold restoration of the original heavenly order. Similarly, argued Aethelwold, the monastic reform movement of the tenth century aimed to demolish what was faulty in, and subsequently to reconstruct, the Anglo-Saxon Church. Finally, Sowerby shows how by the end of the period, when the world was in flux, the influence of angels gradually waned, in men's minds, in favour of the saints, as the latter came to be seen as less nebulous and more useful in everyday life.

Meticulously researched, beautifully written and sensitively argued, many phrases will stay in the mind. St Dunstan's guardian angel, for instance, ‘entering into the saint's dreams with the brisk manner of a choirmaster rather than the warmth of a friend’ (p. 174); Bede's opinion of the spiritual significance of Tobias's dog (p. 149); and one of St Pachomius' hagiographers, speaking of the last judgement, who starkly contrasted the gentle death of pious souls with ‘the violent extraction of evil men's souls, which would be undertaken by “merciless angels” with the assistance of a fish-hook and a spirit-horse’ (pp. 115–16). Perhaps the striking differences between the chronologically earlier ‘J’ and later ‘P’ creation stories in Genesis might have been stressed, but this is to split hairs. This book is a treasure trove for its subject, and a pleasure to read.