ANGELUS, a Roman Catholic devotion in memory of the Annunciation. It has its name from the opening words, Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae. It consists of three texts describing the mystery, recited as versicle and response alternately with the salutation "Hail, Mary!" This devotion is recited in the Catholic Church three times daily, about 6 A.M., noon and 6 P.M. At these hours a bell known as the Angelus bell is rung. This is still rung in some English country churches, and has often been mistaken for and alleged to be a survival of the curfew bell. The institution of the Angelus is by some ascribed to Pope Urban II., by some to John XXII. The triple recitation is ascribed to Louis XI. of France, who in 1472 ordered it to be thrice said daily.
ANGELUS SILESIUS (1624-1677), German religious poet, was born in 1624 at Breslau. His family name was Johann Scheffler, but he is generally known by the pseudonym Angelus Silesius, under which he published his poems and which marks the country of his birth. Brought up a Lutheran, and at first physician to the duke of Württemberg-Oels, he joined in 1652 the Roman Catholic Church, in 1661 took orders as a priest, and became coadjutor to the prince bishop of Breslau. He died at Breslau on the 9th of July 1677. In 1657 Silesius published under the title Heilige Seelenlust, oder geistliche Hirtenlieder der in ihren Jesum verliebten Psyche (1657), a collection of 205 hymns, the most beautiful of which, such as, Liebe, die du mich zum Bilde deiner Gottheit hast gemacht and Mir nach, spricht Christus, unser Held, have been adopted in the German Protestant hymnal. More remarkable, however, is his Geistreiche Sinn-und Schluss-reime (1657), afterwards called Cherubinischer Wandersmann (1674). This is a collection of "Reimsprüche" or rhymed distichs embodying a strange mystical pantheism drawn mainly from the writings of Jakob Böhme and his followers. Silesius delighted specially in the subtle paradoxes of mysticism. The essence of God, for instance, he held to be love; God, he said, can love nothing inferior to himself; but he cannot be an object of love to himself without going out, so to speak, of himself, without manifesting his infinity in a finite form; in other words, by becoming man. God and man are therefore essentially one.
A complete edition of Scheffler's works (Sämtliche poetische Werke) was published by D. A. Rosenthal, 2 vols. (Regensburg, 1862). Both the Cherubinischer Wandersmann and Heilige Seelenlust have been republished by G. Ellinger (1895 and 1901); a selection from the former work by O. E. Hartleben (1896). For further notices of Silesius' life and work, see Hoffmann von Fallersleben in Weimarisches Jahrbuch I. (Hanover, 1854); A. Kahlert, Angelus Silesius (1853); C. Seltmann, Angelus Silesius und seine Mystik (1896), and a biog. by H. Mahn (Dresden, 1896).
ANGERMÜNDE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Brandenburg, on Lake Münde, 43 m. from Berlin by the Berlin-Stettin railway, and at the junction of lines to Prenzlau, Freien-walde and Schwedt. Pop. (1900) 7465. It has three Protestant churches, a grammar school and court of law. Its industries embrace iron founding and enamel working. In 1420 the elector Frederick I. of Brandenburg gained here a signal victory over the Pomeranians.
ANGERONA, or ANGERONIA, an old Roman goddess, whose name and functions are variously explained. According to ancient authorities, she was a goddess who relieved men from pain and sorrow, or delivered the Romans and their flocks from angina (quinsy); or she was the protecting goddess of Rome and the keeper of the sacred name of the city, which might not be pronounced lest it should be revealed to her enemies; it was even thought that Angerona itself was this name. Modern scholars regard her as a goddess akin to Ops, Acca Larentia and Dea Dia; or as the goddess of the new year and the returning sun (according to Mommsen, ab angerendo= ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀναφέρεσθαι. τὸν ἥλιον). Her festival, called Divalia or Angeronalia, was celebrated on the 21st of December. The priests offered sacrifice in the temple of Volupia, the goddess of pleasure, in which stood a statue of Angerona, with a finger on her mouth, which was bound and closed (Macrobius i. 10; Pliny, Nat. Hist. iii. 9; Varro, L. L. vi. 23). She was worshipped as Ancharia at Faesulae, where an altar belonging to her has been recently discovered. (See FAESULAE.)
ANGERS, a city of western France, capital of the department of Maine-et-Loire, 191 m. S.W. of Paris by the Western railway to Nantes. Pop. (1906) 73,585. It occupies rising ground on both banks of the Maine, which are united by three bridges. The surrounding district is famous for its flourishing nurseries and market gardens. Pierced with wide, straight streets, well provided with public gardens, and surrounded by ample, tree-lined boulevards, beyond which lie new suburbs, Angers is one of the pleasantest towns in France. Of its numerous medieval buildings the most important is the cathedral of St. Maurice, dating in the main from the 12th and 13th centuries. Between the two flanking towers of the west façade, the spires of which are of the 16th century, rises a central tower of the same period. The most prominent feature of the façade is the series of eight warriors carved on the base of this tower. The vaulting of the nave takes the form of a series of cupolas, and that of the choir and transept is similar. The chief treasures of the church are its rich stained glass (12th, 13th and 15th centuries) and valuable tapestry (14th to 18th centuries). The bishop's palace which adjoins the cathedral contains a fine synodal hall of the 12th century. Of the other churches of Angers, the principal are St. Serge, an abbey-church of the 12th and 15th centuries, and La Trinité (12th century). The prefecture occupies the buildings of the famous abbey of St. Aubin; in its courtyard are elaborately sculptured arcades of the 11th and 12th centuries, from which period dates the tower, the only survival of the splendid abbey-church. Ruins of the old churches of Toussaint (13th century) and Notre-Dame du Ronceray (11th century) are also to be seen. The castle of Angers, an imposing building girt with towers and a moat, dates from the 13th century and is now used as an armoury. The ancient hospital of St. Jean (12th century) is occupied by an archaeological museum; and the Logis Barrault, a mansion built about 1500, contains the public library, the municipal museum, which has a large collection of pictures and sculptures, and the Musée David, containing works by the famous sculptor David d'Angers, who was a native of the town. One of his masterpieces, a bronze statue of René of Anjou, stands close by the castle. The Hôtel de Pincé or d'Anjou (1523-1530) is the finest of the stone mansions of Angers; there are also many curious wooden houses of the 15th and 16th centuries. The palais de justice, the Catholic institute, a fine theatre, and a hospital with 1500 beds are the more remarkable of the modern buildings of the town. Angers is the seat of a bishopric, dating from the 3rd century, a prefecture, a court of appeal and a court of assizes. It has a tribunal of first instance, a tribunal of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, a branch of the Bank of France and several learned societies. Its educational institutions include ecclesiastical seminaries, a lycée, a preparatory school of medicine and pharmacy, a university with free faculties (facultés libres) of theology, law, letters and science, a higher school of agriculture, training colleges, a school of arts and handicrafts and a school of fine art. The prosperity of the town is largely due to the great slate-quarries of the vicinity, but the distillation of liqueurs from fruit, cable, rope and thread-making, and the manufacture of boots and shoes, umbrellas and parasols are leading industries. The weaving of sail-cloth and woollen and other fabrics, machine construction, wire-drawing, and manufacture of sparkling wines and preserved fruits are also carried on. The chief articles of commerce, besides slate and manufactured goods, are hemp, early vegetables, fruit, flowers and live-stock.
Angers, capital of the Gallic tribe of the Andecavi, was under the Romans called Juliomagus. During the 9th century it became the seat of the counts of Anjou (q.v.). It suffered severely from the invasions of the Northmen in 845 and the succeeding years, and of the English in the 12th and 15th centuries; the Huguenots took it in 1585, and the Vendean royalists were repulsed near it in 1793. Till the Revolution, Angers was the seat of a celebrated university founded in the 14th century.
See L. M. Thorode, Notice de la ville d'Angers (Angers, 1897).
ANGERSTEIN, JOHN JULIUS (1735-1822), London merchant, and patron of the fine arts, was born at St. Petersburg and settled in London about 1749. His collection of paintings, consisting of about forty of the most exquisite specimens of the art, purchased by the British government, on his death, formed the nucleus of the National Gallery.
ANGILBERT (d. 814), Frankish Latin poet, and minister of Charlemagne, was of noble Frankish parentage, and educated at the palace school under Alcuin. As the friend and adviser of the emperor's son, Pippin, he assisted for a while in the government of Italy, and was later sent on three important embassies to the pope, in 792, 794 and 796. Although he was the father of two children by Charlemagne's daughter, Bertha, one of them named Nithard, we have no authentic account of his marriage, and from 790 he was abbot of St. Riquier, where his brilliant rule gained for him later the renown of a saint. Angilbert, however, was little like the true medieval saint; his poems reveal rather the culture and tastes of a man of the world, enjoying the closest intimacy with the imperial family. He accompanied Charlemagne to Rome in 800 and was one of the witnesses to his will in 814. Angilbert was the Homer of the emperor's literary circle, and was the probable author of an epic, of which the fragment which has been preserved describes the life at the palace and the meeting between Charlemagne and Leo III. It is a mosaic from Virgil, Ovid, Lucan and Fortunatus, composed in the manner of Einhard's use of Suetonius, and exhibits a true poetic gift. Of the shorter poems, besides the greeting to Pippin on his return from the campaign against the Avars (796), an epistle to David (Charlemagne) incidentally reveals a delightful picture of the poet living with his children in a house surrounded by pleasant gardens near the emperor's palace. The reference to Bertha, however, is distant and respectful, her name occurring merely on the list of princesses to whom he sends his salutation.