In this captivating double life, Adam Gopnik searches for the men behind the icons of emancipation and evolution. Born by cosmic coincidence on the same day in 1809 and separated by an ocean, Lincoln and Darwin coauthored our sense of history and our understanding of man’s place in the world. Here Gopnik reveals these two men as they really were: family men and social climbers, ambitious manipulators and courageous adventurers, grieving parents and brilliant scholars. Above all we see them as thinkers and writers, making and witnessing the great changes in thought that mark truly modern times.

Recently angels have made a remarkable comeback in the popular imagination; their real heyday, however, was the Middle Ages. From the great shrines dedicated to Michael the Archangel at Mont-St-Michel and Monte Garano to the elaborate metaphysical speculations of the great thirteenth-century scholastics, angels dominated the physical, temporal, and intellectual landscape of the medieval West. This book offers a full-scale study of angels and angelology in the Middle Ages. Seeking to discover how and why angels became so important in medieval society, David Keck considers a wide range of fascinating questions such as: Why do angels appear on baptismal fonts? How and why did angels become normative for certain members of the church? How did they become a required course of study? Did popular beliefs about angels diverge from the angelologies of the theologians? Why did some heretics claim to derive their authority from heavenly spirits? Keck spreads his net wide in the attempt to catch traces of angels and angelic beliefs in as many portions of the medieval world as possible. Metaphysics and mystery plays, prayers and pilgrimages, Cathars and cathedrals-all these and many more disparate sources taken together reveal a society deeply engaged with angels on all its levels and in some unlikely ways.

The only author already in print discussing the history of higher angels appears to be Mother Alexandra, an Orthodox nun who wrote The Holy Angels. This presentation also concentrates on those higher angels but also briefly reviews those lower less dramatic guardian angels. After studying angel apparitions in the Old Testament, the Christian era presents a dramatic increase in angel activities. Joining the older traditional Michael and Gabriel, we are introduced, at the Transfiguration, to Moses and Elijah, those two giants of Judaism These latter have, somewhere in time, become new archangels. On that Mount Tabor, Jesus also acquires archangel status, when the mighty spirit of David, the third giant, completes exactly one thousand years of penance, and is transfigured into this carpenter from Nazareth. Mary, the Mother of Angels in the Roman Catholic tradition, receives archangel status upon her death. Also emerging in that first Christian century is Satan, the Fallen Archangel. A serious consideration of Satan is vital, because each one of us must overcome Satan’s earthly temptations in order to reach the Promised Land. Thereafter, Mary and Jesus appear in angel form over the Christian centuries – sometimes together, more often alone - in their attempt to bring peace to a troubled world..

Angels have made a remarkable comeback in the popular imagination; their real heyday, however, was the Middle Ages. This text offers a study of angels and angelology in the Middle Ages, seeking to discover how and why angels became so important in medieval society.