“And all about her neck and shoulders flew
A flock of little loves, and sports and joys
With nimble wings of gold and purple hue;
Whose shapes seemed not like to terrestrial boys,
But like to angels playing heavenly toys.”
Faerie Queen, Book x. cant. x. p. 153.
These must not, however, be confounded with the cherub and seraph of Scripture. It was a thoroughly pagan idea, borrowed from classic mythology, and unworthy of Christian Art. It soon degenerated into “earthly loves” and “cupids,” or amorini as they were termed and as we now understand them.
Cherubim and Seraphim of Scripture
In Ecclesiastical Art literal renderings of the descriptions contained in the Old Testament and the Apocalypse are not of unfrequent use. A more lengthened reference to these great Hebrew symbolic beings will not be considered out of place, as there is great doubt and uncertainty as to their forms.
These mystic symbolic beings were familiar to all the patriarchs—from Adam, who gazed upon them in Paradise, and against whom on his expulsion they stood with flaming sword, turning every way to bar his return—to Moses, who trembled before it on Mount Sinai; while to the Priests and Levites, the custodians of the Ark of the Covenant in the Tabernacle, the cherubim remained the sacred guardians in the Holy of Holies of the palladium of the national faith and liberties during the brightest and, as it has been termed, the most heroic period of Jewish history.
Angel crest of Tuite, Bart. co. Tip.
Josephus, the more effectually to excite respect for the great Hebrew symbol in the minds of his readers, purposely throws over it the veil of obscurity. He says: “The cherubim are winged creatures, but the form of them does not resemble that of any living creature seen by man.” In the works of Philo Judæus there is an express dissertation upon the cherubim. The learned Brochart and many others have attempted to elucidate the subject to little purpose. The ambiguity which always accompanies a written description of objects with which we are imperfectly acquainted applies with greater force to this mysterious being combining so many apparently conflicting attributes.
To the prophetic vision of Ezekiel, the description of which, in the opinion of competent critics, excels in grandeur of idea and energy of expression the most celebrated writers of ancient and modern times, the reader is referred, as it supplies at first hand almost all that can be known concerning the fearful form of the cherubim.