Overview

Ellen Muehlberger explores the diverse and inventive ideas Christians held about angels in late antiquity. During the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began experimenting with new modes of piety, adapting longstanding forms of public authority to Christian leadership and advancing novel ways of cultivating body and mind to further the progress of individual Christians. Muehlberger argues that in practicing these new modes of piety, Christians developed new ways of thinking about angels.The book begins with a detailed examination of the two most popular discourses about angels that developed in late antiquity. In the first, delineated by Christians cultivating certain kinds of ascetic practices, angels were one type of being among many in a shifting universe, and their primary purpose was to guard and to guide Christians. In the other, articulated by urban Christian leaders in contest with one another, angels were morally stable characters described in the emerging canon of Scripture, available to enable readers to render Scripture coherent with emerging theological positions. Muehlberger goes on to show how these two discourses did not remain isolated in separate spheres of cultivation and contestation, but influenced one another and the wider Christian culture. She offers in-depth analysis of popular biographies written in late antiquity, of the community standards of emerging monastic communities, and of the training programs developed to prepare Christians to participate in ritual, demonstrating that new ideas about angels shaped and directed the formation of the definitive institutions of late antiquity. Angels in Late Ancient Christianity is a meticulous and thorough study of early Christian ideas about angels, but it also offers a different perspective on late ancient Christian history, arguing that angels were central rather than peripheral to the emergence of Christian institutions and Christian culture in late antiquity.

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9780199931934

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<br> An engaging study of how the discourse on angels both differentiated and linked diverse groups of Christians-desert ascetics and urban bishops-in late antiquity. Muehlberger argues persuasively for the importance of these discourses in the construction of late ancient Christianity and for the ways in which they differed from the angelologies of later eras. --Elizabeth A. Clark, John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion, Duke University<p><br> Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, John Milton, and now Ellen Muehlberger have said, among them, most of what there is to be said about angels. Dionysius and Milton relied on scripture and imagination, but Muehlberger has the advantages of broad erudition, a keen intellect, and a habitual insistence on rooting what can be said about angels in history and fact. Her angels manage to be, if anything, more fascinating-and certainly more diverse-than those of the old orthodoxy. They are indebted to Ellen Muehlberger for rescuing the most exciting and exotic years of their history from historical oblivion. Her study shows how they became a fixed and surprisingly important part of the Christian imagination in the early centuries of Christianity's triumph. --James O'Donnell, author of Augustine: A New Biography<p><br> Ellen Muehlberger explores the role that thinking about angels played in the development of early Christian doctrine and practice. Muehlberger shows that Christian views about these beings changed in many ways in late antiquity. She uses the role that conceptualizing angels played in the early Christian communities as a lens through which to see how and why the theology of the church evolved as it did, how various institutions were justified, and how social roles were construed. In this way Muehlberger is able to offer a unique and important perspective on how the once-persecuted Christian community became an established presence in the late Roman world. --Elizabeth Digeser, Chair, Department of History and Professor o

This is a valuable contribution to a generally neglected area of Christian study, particularly in its stress on the importance of taking historical context into consideration. Rosemary A. Arthur, The Journal of Theological Studies This elegantly written book will benefit those interested in asceticism, the history of biblical interpretation, and early Christian culture and theology .. Recommended. H. Vela, CHOICE

Author Information

Ellen Muehlberger is Associate Professor of Christianity in late antiquity in the Near Eastern Studies and History Departments at the University of Michigan.

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