... For he had learn’d
Both this and much beside of these our orbs
From an eye-witness to Heaven’s mysteries.
Dante, Par. 28.
The first three choirs receive their glory immediately from God, and transmit it to the second; the second illuminate the third; the third are placed in relation to the created universe and man. The first Hierarchy are as councillors; the second as governors; the third as ministers. The Seraphim are absorbed in perpetual love and adoration immediately round the throne of God. The Cherubim know and worship. The Thrones sustain the seat of the Most High. The Dominations, Virtues, Powers, are the Regents of stars and elements. The three last orders, Princedoms, Archangels, and Angels, are the protectors of the great Monarchies on earth, and the executors of the will of God throughout the universe.
The term angels is properly applied to all these celestial beings; but it belongs especially to the two last orders, who are brought into immediate communication with the human race. The word angel, Greek in its origin, signifies a messenger, or more literally a bringer of tidings.
In this sense the Greeks entitle Christ ‘The great Angel of the will of God;’ and I have seen Greek representations of Christ with wings to his shoulders. John the Baptist is also an angel in this sense; likewise the Evangelists; all of whom, as I shall show hereafter, bear, as celestial messengers, the angel-wings.
4 Greek Seraph; wings of gold and crimson (Ninth century)
In ancient pictures and illuminations which exhibit the glorification of the Trinity, Christ, or the Virgin, the hierarchies of angels are represented in circles around them, orb within orb. This is called a glory of angels. In pictures it is seldom complete: instead of nine circles, the painters content themselves with one or two circles only. The innermost circles, the Seraphim and the Cherubim, are in general represented as heads merely, with two or four or six wings, and of a bright-red or blue colour; sometimes with variegated wings, green, yellow, violet, &c. This emblem—intended to shadow forth to human comprehension a pure spirit glowing with love and intelligence, in which all that is bodily is put away, and only the head, the seat of soul, and wings, the attribute of spirit and swiftness, retained—is of Greek origin. When first adopted I do not know, but I have met with it in Greek MSS. of the ninth century. Down to the eleventh century the faces were human, but not childish; the infant head was afterwards adopted to express innocence in addition to love and intelligence.