Angelus silesius biography definition

German mystic and churchgoing poet of the baroque period; b. Breslau, December 1624; rotation. there, July 9, 1677. Smartness was born Johannes Scheffler, illustriousness son of a Protestant householder who had emigrated from Polska for religious reasons. Johannes artificial philosophy and medicine at nobleness Universities of Strassburg, Leyden, dominant Padua and was appointed scan physician by Duke Sylvius Huntress of Württemburg in 1649.

Disgruntled by the court chaplain's holy intolerance, Johannes resigned his pass on in 1652 and became exceptional Catholic in 1653, taking illustriousness name Angelus Silesius; the transformation made him the target funding vicious attacks and ridicule. Rearguard six years in Vienna, whirl location he was court physician criticize Emperor Ferdinand III, he mutual to Breslau, entered the Franciscans, and was ordained in 1661.

From 1664 until his withdrawal in 1671, he held towering absurd positions in the service countless his friend Sebastian Rostock, honourableness prince-bishop of Breslau. Angelus thence lived in ascetic seclusion imminent his death at St. Matthias monastery.

While studying in Holland, Prayer had read and admired primacy writings of another Silesian miraculous, Jakob bÖhme, the cobbler ferryboat Görlitz.

But while Böhme, shuffle through uneducated, approached the object show consideration for his quest through intuition innermost an impressive poetic talent, Toll founded his ideas on precise continuation of early Christian holiness. In 1657 Angelus published probity five-volume Geistreiche Sinn-und Schlussreime. Hunger for his aphorisms (1665) he sentimental the verse form of position contemporary French drama, the Alexandrine, in which another Sile-sian, Prophet Von Czepko (1605–60), had foreordained his mystical-theosophical Monodisticha sescenta sapientium. With extraordinary creative power Toll molded the experience of Genius in mystical absorption into honourableness pointed and often paradoxical act of the epigram, in which he fused antitheses of visio and ratio, the mystical put up with the conceptual, since, to him, antithesis was the most frightening expression of the deity who reconciles and resolves all contradictions.

Angelus' theme was not thought on or adoration of high-mindedness suffering Christ or the raise of the soul to Genius, but rather God's descent tolerate the soul: "I am in that great as God, He enquiry as small as I am"; "I know that God cannot live a moment without me; if I perish, He be compelled needs give up the ghost."

Such ambiguous expressions made Angelus conjecture of pantheism, which probably money for the esteem in which he was held by romantics and such moderns as Concentration.

M. Rilke. But Angelus' spiritual-intellectual epigrams must be understood considerably a new variety of Christly mysticism, as the continuation noise a tradition that cannot carbon copy interpreted by more recent concepts. His censor, the Jesuit Parabolical. Avancini, dean of the energy of theology at the Academy of Vienna, not only gave permission for publication but wrote a highly commendatory preface make a victim of the work, which in hang over second edition (1674) and plonk the added sixth volume became known as Cherubinischer Wandersmann.

Heilige Seelenlust oder Geistliche Hirtenlieder pernickety in ihren Jesum verliebten Psyche, a collection of 205 songs (1657), revealed the zealous alternate who, in the spirit mimic the Song of Songs stream of contemporary bucolic poems, desirable to testify to his cherish for Jesus. Some of these poems are profoundly moving bid have become favorites in both Protestant and Catholic churches.

Apart be bereaved a number of apologetic leaflets or "Lehrtraktätlein," as he known as them, Angelus engaged also walk heavily spiteful religious polemics.

Spurred arrive at by his friend, the prince-bishop of Breslau, who was as well active in the counter renovation movement, and constantly provoked mass his own detractors, Angelus promulgated 55 pamphlets in which fiasco battled with Protestant theologians, much as Chemnitz, Strauch, Scherzer, current Alberti.

Two years before rule death he published Sinnliche Beschreibung der vier Letzten Dinge (1675), a phantasmagoria on the three last things, meant to frighten men into abjuring sin. On the contrary he is best remembered receive Cherubinischer Wandersmann and a occasional beautiful religious songs.

Bibliography: w.

kosch, Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon, v.3 (2d perpetual. Bern 1956), 2431, with bibliog. h. gies, "Ein Dichter diagram Mystiker des Barock," in Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft 4 (1929), 129–142. m. h. godecker, Angelus Silesius' Personality through His Ecclesiologia (Washington, D.C.

1938). w. stammler, Von der Mystik zum Barock: 1400–1600 (Stuttgart 1927; 2d illicit. 1950), with extensive bibliog.

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