Posted by Will Patrick
5 January 2023By Verity Bruce
University of Exeter
This paper offers a brief examination of conceptions of angelic gender in the Latin West, particularly in the thirteenth century, though I also examine some twelfth- and fourteenth-century sources. I will first address the question of ‘what is an angel’, examining aspects of their nature particularly relevant here. I will then examine beliefs about angelic incorporeality and lack of gender, where I will argue that the two concepts were linked in certain theological thought. Following this, I will examine two visual depictions of angels to demonstrate how their gender could be depicted in different ways in this period before concluding by discussing why angels and constructions of their gender are important for my wider thesis.
What is an angel? The celestial figures that appear in the Bible and other Christian texts, angels were believed in this period to be ‘ministering spirits’ to humanity, particularly in a role as messengers.[1] Isidore of Seville noted in his Etymologies that ‘Angels (angelus) are so called in Greek … they are malachoth in Hebrew, but translated in Latin as “messengers” (nuntius), because they announce (nuntiare) the will of God to people’.[2] Theologians frequently discussed the nature of the angels. The two aspects of angelic nature of particular importance to this paper are the angels’ lack of gender and their incorporeality.
As historians such as David Keck and Thomas De Mayo have noted, in the thirteenth century angels were considered to be agender beings: they were believed to be entirely without gender.[3] Two quotes from William of Auvergne (d. 1249) demonstrate this well. William asserts that ‘If someone should say similarly that the male sex has no place among sublime and blessed spirits, I respond that it is true’, and that ‘Truly, passive power, infirmity, debility and womanly dispositions are in all ways incompatible with good spirits’.[4] Thus, we can see that neither the masculine nor the feminine gender suited the angels, marking them out as agender. William does, however, suggest that ‘a virile appearance is appropriate to [good spirits], but not because of its sex’.[5] Thus, while he denies angels gender, he assigns them a nominal masculinity. I will return to this concept later. For now, it stands that, in the thirteenth century, angels were believed to be agender beings.
Angels were also believed to be incorporeal. While early Christian writers assigned angels a kind of ‘spiritual body’ which persisted into the twelfth century, Dyan Elliott has argued that belief in angelic bodies started to wain in the twelfth century and was ‘compellingly rejected’ by the thirteenth; angels became entirely incorporeal.[6] It was not, of course, a consensus – Bonaventure, for instance, still maintained that angels had ethereal bodies.[7] However, we can assert that, for the most part, angels were considered to be incorporeal beings in the thirteenth century.
I argue that these two concepts – angels’ incorporeality and their lack of gender – can be seen to be linked in theological thought. To examine this, I turn to two major works of theology. The first is Peter Lombard’s Sentences, particularly Book Two, written in the mid-twelfth century, which remained influential for centuries after as a university textbook.[8] The second is Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, composed in the later thirteenth century, partially in response to Lombard’s work.[9] Like the Sentences, the Summa was of major influence.[10] Both works discuss the creation of the angels, and I believe we can find evidence in both works that the angels’ lack of corporeality was thought to contribute to their lack of gender in the thought of these theologians.
Phillip Rosemann notes that Peter Lombard makes no explicit commitment as to whether he considers angels to be entirely incorporeal or not.[11] However, examining Lombard’s work, I believe we can infer that he held angels to be incorporeal, or at least that he was more inclined to this position. In Distinction 1, Chapter 4 of Book 2, Lombard writes that ‘the rational creature was distinguished into the incorporeal and the corporeal’ (incorpoream et corpoream) and that ‘the incorporeal is called angel’ (et incorporea quidem Angelus … vocatur).[12] It seems reasonable from this to conclude that Lombard did, to an extent, consider angels to be incorporeal beings, which aligns with Elliott’s argument that the twelfth century saw the beginning of a shift towards belief in angelic incorporeality.
Indeed, Lombard again suggests angels are incorporeal when he compares them to human beings:
‘And so God made the rational creature … And he distinguished it in the following way, so that part would remain in its purity and not be united to a body, namely the angels; part would be joined to the body, namely souls.’[13]
Here Lombard asserts that while both angels and the human soul were initially incorporeal, the soul has been ‘joined to the body’ while the angels have not, again suggesting that angels are incorporeal. It is in this comparison with humans that I believe we can find evidence that the angels’ incorporeality is linked to their lack of gender. To understand this, we must examine what Lombard says about the creation of the first woman, Eve.
Along conventional theological lines, Lombard writes that ‘… the body of the woman was derived from the body of the man’, referring to the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib.[14] It is especially important that Lombard states that it was from the ‘body of the man’ that woman was created. I believe we can infer from this that, in Lombard’s thinking, it is the creation of the corporeal body that enables binary gender to exist: if woman was to be made from the body of the man, it is the body of man that enables the creation of gender binaries. I have argued that Lombard believes angels to be incorporeal. Thus, if angels have no corporeal body, they cannot have gender in the way humans do. We can argue, then, that Lombard’s Sentences link the angels’ lack of gender to their incorporeality.
We see something similar in Aquinas’ Summa. Aquinas is explicit in stating that angels are incorporeal: he states that it is ‘impossible for an intellectual substance to have any kind of matter’, ‘intellectual substance’ here referring to the angels.[15] Like Lombard, he also compares the angels to humanity regarding their corporeality:
‘Although the intellectual soul, like an angel, has no matter from which it is produced, yet it is the form of a certain matter; in which it is unlike an angel.’[16]
Aquinas uses Aristotelian notions of matter and form, which I cannot discuss in detail here. Briefly, Aquinas follows Aristotle in understanding the human soul to be the form of the body i.e., the determining principle that shapes the body’s matter into what it is.[17] This ‘form’ is incorporeal. Thus, Aquinas states, like Lombard, that the angels are entirely incorporeal while human beings are corporeal because their souls have been joined to physical matter i.e., the body. Furthermore, Aquinas addresses the creation of woman and writes that ‘it was more suitable for the woman to be made from man’ – it was appropriate for Eve to be made from Adam’s body.[18] As with the Sentences, I believe we can infer from this that it is once again the creation of the corporeal human body that enables binary genders to be created. Therefore, I argue that in certain theological thought in this period, the angels’ incorporeality was directly linked to their status as agender beings.
Angels were believed to be agender, but what did this look like? Returning to William of Auvergne’s assertion that a ‘virile appearance’ suited the angels, it must be recognised that angels were assigned a nominal masculinity in this period due to beliefs in the inferiority of women and women’s spirituality. However, a masculine appearance was not the only one assigned to the angels, and they were also depicted with feminine attributes, giving them an ambiguous gender presentation. To discuss this, I will examine two depictions of the Annunciation of the Virgin, where the angel Gabriel visits the Virgin Mary to announce she will bear Christ.
Matthew Kuefler notes that images of the annunciation show us that angels were imagined for the most part to be male.[19] Indeed, in both images I examine here Gabriel is depicted as a ‘man’. However, placing Gabriel directly next to Mary, who was held up as ‘the ideal of medieval womanhood’, also allows us to see the feminine aspects of angelic appearance.[20]
My first image, a thirteenth century altarpiece (c. 1275-1285) from Siena (Fig. 1) is a good example of Gabriel being depicted in a particularly masculine way.[21] Mary’s hair is fully covered, as was expected of women in the New Testament (1 Cor. 11:5-10), while Gabriel’s hair is short, which St Paul wrote was appropriate to men, and that for a man to have long hair was a ‘shame unto him’ (1. Cor. 11:14). Further, Gabriel is positioned in an active pose, bending forward as though in motion, compared to Mary’s passive, stationary stance that conveys the feminine virtue of meekness.[22] I believe these poses demonstrate the masculine/active vs feminine/passive gender roles that were held in this period. Thus, Gabriel’s gendered appearance here is particularly masculine. However, he is also depicted without a beard. Beards were a key masculine gender marker in the thirteenth century, and a lack of facial hair in human men signalled a lack of virile heat and a colder body, closer to that of a woman.[23] Gabriel’s lack of beard, then, could be taken as a feminine attribute in an otherwise masculine appearance. It is also true, however, that monks shaved their beards to signal their chastity.[24] Thus, Gabriel’s beardless face in the altarpiece could represent both femininity and a chaste masculinity. Overall, though, I believe the altarpiece is an excellent example of angels being depicted as masculine.
Fig. 1. Anon., Altarpiece (34 1/4” x 65”), Sienna: Gall.
The opposite is true of my second image: two statues from Pisa paired together to depict the annunciation: ‘The Archangel Gabriel’, made in 1325, and ‘The Virgin Annunciate’, from 1325/50 (Fig. 2-4).[25] At first glance, Gabriel and Mary are nearly identical; their figures are strikingly similar. They are, however, differentiated. Mary’s hair is covered, and she holds a book – it was extremely common for Mary to be represented reading in depictions of the annunciation, and from the twelfth century on she was usually shown reading Isaiah’s prophecies of the Incarnation.[26] Mary’s facial features are also more ‘feminine’ than Gabriel’s; her eyebrows, for example, are straight, considered a sign of femininity, where Gabriel’s are not.[27]
Yet, while Gabriel might still be shown as a ‘man’, he is also remarkably feminine. His silhouette is very similar to Mary’s, and is hair is in the same style and long like hers, compared to the shorter style considered more ‘masculine’. As with the altarpiece, he is beardless, which we can again read as feminine. What I think is most important, though, is the poses the artist has rendered the statues in.
Fig. 2. Anon., The Archangel Gabriel, Sculpture, The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.).
Fig. 3. Anon., The Archangel Gabriel, Sculpture, The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.).
Fig. 4. Anon., The Virgin Annunciate, Sculpture, The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.).
Compared to the Siena altarpiece, I believe Gabriel is in a far more passive pose. His hands are close to his chest, and he looks on at Mary, perhaps with a kind of reverence. Mary’s pose, however, is more active. She does not look at Gabriel, instead looking forward. Indeed, she is not merely reading her book, but holding it open to the viewer in an invitation to devotion. I argue that we might see here an inversion of the masculine/active feminine/passive roles. Laura Sangha has argued that Gabriel’s identity was ‘intimately connected to his relationship with Mary’.[28] Not only does this liken him to the realm of the feminine and ideal womanhood, but by the thirteenth century Mary was considered ‘the Queen of the Angels’.[29] Mary assumes a higher rank than Gabriel, perhaps demonstrated in the statues by his more passive, ‘feminine’ pose. Thus, I believe the statues show that angels, while nominally masculine, could also be depicted with a significantly feminine appearance in this period.
Examining these two depictions of Gabriel show that angels could be shown with both masculine and feminine appearances, and often with a mix of both, while at the same time they were agender beings. I have also argued that the angels’ lack of gender was linked to their incorporeality. What, then, is the place of the angels in my wider thesis?
My research considers saints and demons and how they were constructed similarly along gendered lines – as ‘agender’ – in the thirteenth century in particular. Why, then, examine the angels? To begin, an understanding of the angels is important in understanding the demons. Demons were believed to be fallen angels; thus, they are similar beings.[30] Examining beliefs about angelic gender allows us to better understand demonic gender and to identify how the two differ.
Understanding the angels and their gender, however, is particularly important for understanding the saints. A key question my thesis will ask is whether saints, both ‘male’ and ‘female’, moved towards a state of spiritual agender identity; that is, whether, while their bodies maintained ‘sexed’ differences, they achieved a shedding of gender at a spiritual level. Examining the angels’ own agender state is thus important for investigating the saints’ spiritual agender states, particularly because Matthew 22:30 stated that humans would become ‘like the angels’ at the resurrection.
Finally, I have discussed that, while the angels were believed to be agender, they were attributed both masculine and feminine gender elements. I argue in my thesis that one of the marks of saints shedding binary gender at a spiritual level is how they might adopt believed attributes or behaviours of the ‘opposite’ sex. Understanding how the angels could appear as both feminine and masculine while also being without gender, then, is a useful foundation for understanding the saints’ shedding gender through taking on ‘opposite’ gendered attributes.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Anonymous. Altarpiece (34 1/4” x 65”). Siena: Gall., Pinacoteca Nazionale. Accessed 22/04/2022. https://library.artstor.org/asset/AWSS35953_35953_31692519.
Anonymous. The Archangel Gabriel. Sculpture. The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.). Accessed 22/04/2022. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ANGA_KRESSIG_10312336147.
Anonymous. The Archangel Gabriel. Sculpture. The National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.). Accessed 22/04/2022. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ANGAIG_10313972111.
Anonymous. The Virgin Annunciate. Sculpture. The National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.). Accessed 22/04/2022. https://library.artstor.org/asset/ANGA_KRESSIG_10312336149.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Second and Revised Edition 1920. New Advent Online, 2017. Accessed 22/04/2022. www.newadvent.org/summa/.
Lombard, Peter. The Sentences, Book 2: On Creation. Translated by Giulio Silano. Medieval Sources in Translation 43. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008, 2012.
Lombard, Peter. Libri IV Sententiarum. Second Edition, Volume 1. Rome: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1916.
Seville, Isidore of. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Translated by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
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Books and Edited Collections
Burton Russel, Jeffrey. Satan: The Early Christian Tradition. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981.
Burton Russel, Jeffrey. Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Cadden, Joan. Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages. Cambridge History of Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Elliott, Dyan. Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality and Demonology in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Graham, Daniel W. Aristotle’s Two Systems. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Keck, David. Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Kuefler, Matthew. The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity. The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
McGinn, Bernard. Thomas Aquinas’s ‘Summa theologiae’: A Biography. Lives of Great Religious Books. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014.
Newman, Barbara. God and the Goddesses: Visions, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Rosemann, Phillip W. Peter Lombard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Rosemann, Phillip W. The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Rethinking the Middle Ages, Volume 2. Ontario, Plymouth, Sydney: Broadview Press, 2007.
Saetveit Miles, Laura. The Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, and Devotion in Medieval England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020.
Sangha, Laura. Angels and Belief in England, 1480-1700. Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World Number 7. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012.
Edited Collection Chapters
Murray, Jacqueline. ‘One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?’. In Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, edited by Lisa M. Bitel, Felice Lifshitz, 34-51. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Radcliffe OP, Timothy. ‘Dominican Spirituality’. In The Cambridge Companion to the Summa Theologiae, edited by Phillip McCosker, Denys Turner, 23-33. Cambridge Companions to Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Articles
De Mayo, Thomas. ‘William of Auvergne and Popular Demonology’. Quidditas 28 (2007): 61-88.
Randles, Sarah. ‘Labours of Love: Gender, Work and Devotion in Medieval Chartres’. Emotions: History, Culture, Society 4 (2020): 347-97.
[1] Heb. 1:14 (Authorised (King James) Version).
[2] Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isiore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 160.
[3] David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 187; Thomas De Mayo, “William of Auvergne and Popular Demonology,” Quidditas 28 (2007): 82.
[4] De Mayo, “William of Auvergne,” 81.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Jeffrey Burton Russel, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981), 129; Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality and Demonology in the Middle Ages, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 129, 132.
[7] Jeffrey Burton Russel, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984), 172-3.
[8] Phillip W. Rosemann, Peter Lombard (Oxford University Press, 2004), 3.
[9] Phillip Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Rethinking the Middle Ages, Volume 2 (Ontario, Plymouth, Sydney: Broadview Press, 2007), 81.
[10] Bernard McGinn, Thomas Aquinas’s ‘Summa theologiae’: A Biography, Lives of Great Religious Books (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014), 120.
[11] Rosemann, Peter Lombard, 101.
[12] Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 2: On Creation, trans. Giulio Silano, Medieval Sources in Translation 43 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008, 2012), Distinction 1, Chapter 4, 5. Latin text taken from Peter Lombard, Libri IV Sententiarum, Second Edition, Volume 1 (Rome: Collegium S. Bonaventure, 1916), Distinctio I, Cap. IV, 309.
[13] Lombard, The Sentences, Distinction 1, Chapter 4, 5.
[14] Lombard, The Sentences, Distinction 18, Chapter 7, 80.
[15] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Second and Revised Edition, 1920 (New Advent Online, 2017), Prima Pars, Question 50, Article 2, accessed 25/05/2022, www.newadvent.org/summa/.
[16] Ibid., Prima Pars, Question 76, Article 2.
[17] Timothy Radcliffe OP, ‘Dominican Spirituality’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Summa Theologiae, ed. Phillip McCosker, Denys Turner, Cambridge Companions to Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 29-30; Daniel W. Graham, Aristotle’s Two Systems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 61.
[18] Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Question 92, Article 2.
[19] Matthew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity, The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History and Society (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 231.
[20] Sarah Randles, ‘Labours of Love: Gender, Work and Devotion in Medieval Chartres’, Emotions: History, Culture, Society 4 (2020): 391.
[21] Anon., Altarpiece (34 ¼” x 64”), Siena, Gall., Pinacoteca Nazionale, accessed 25/05/2022, https://library.artstor.org/asset/AWSS35953_35953_31692519.
[22] Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Visions, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 180.
[23] Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture, Cambridge History of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 181, 183.
[24] Jacqueline Murray, ‘One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?’, in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, ed. Lisa M. Bitel, Felice Lifshitz, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania: 2008), 44.
[25] Anon., The Archangel Gabriel, Sculpture, The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), accessed 22/04/2022, https://library.artstor.org/asset/ANGA_KRESSIG_10312336147; Anon., The Archangel Gabriel, Sculpture, The National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), accessed 22/04/2022, https://library.artstor.org/asset/ANGAIG_10313972111; Anon., The Virgin Annunciate, Sculpture, The National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), accessed 22/04/2022, https://library.artstor.org/asset/ANGA_KRESSIG_10312336149
[26] Laura Satveit Miles, The Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, and Devotion in Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020), 1, 10.
[27] Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, 169.
[28] Laura Sangha, Angels and Belief in England, 1480-1700, Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World, Number 7 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), 8.
[29] Keck, Angels, 170.
[30] Burton Russel, Satan, 209-10.