Mihtige Weardas & Fyrne Englas: Angels and Their Place in Anglo-Saxon Art

Angels have often occupied a liminal space in Christianity, standing between demigod and human. Thousands of years of writing, both canonical and apocryphal, have expanded on their nature and relationship with the followers of God, but only in recent decades have these texts been considered alongside the depictions of angels, whether byregion or an individual angel’s identity. This thesis is an examination of the extant surviving images of angels from Anglo-Saxon England (c.500-1066 CE), contextualised with the source materials from which initial ideas about angels were formed, and the vernacular writings of Anglo-Saxon poets and theologians, in an effort to better understand how audiences in this time and place understood and interacted with angels in their religious and devotional practices through art and literature