AN INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

Understanding
Angels

A multilingual resource for students exploring angels across history, theology, literature, and visual culture.

✧♱✧

Understanding Angels brings together texts, images, timelines, bibliographies, and a global map to make the history of angelology accessible across disciplines and languages.

LEARN

Explore angelology

What Are Angels?

Introduction to angelic nature, functions, and traditions.

Angelic Hierarchies

Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, and the celestial orders.

Angels in Literature

Angelic figures from antiquity to the modern period.

Angels in Art

Visual representations, iconography, and material culture.

DISCOVER

Angels around the world

Click a country to explore its texts, traditions, authors, images, and bibliography.

Select a country

Country entries can be expanded in WordPress with texts, images, sources, and links.

A history of angelology

c. 500 BCEAncient angelic traditions

1st-5th c.Late Antiquity and early Christian thought

c. 500Pseudo-Dionysius and the celestial hierarchy

13th c.Scholastic angelology

14th c.Angels in Dante and medieval literature

15th-17th c.Renaissance and early modern transformations

DEFINE

Glossary

Accommodation

The adaptation of transcendent realities to human modes of perception.

Angelology

The study of angels, their nature, hierarchy, and functions.

Celestial Hierarchy

The ordering of angelic beings into distinct ranks or choirs.

Seraphim

The highest order in the Dionysian hierarchy, associated with divine love.

READ

Selected bibliography

Primary sources

Pseudo-Dionysius. The Celestial Hierarchy.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae.

Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy.

Secondary scholarship

Placeholder entries – replace with your curated bibliography in WordPress.

UnderstandingAngels