Angelus Silesius
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Angelus Silesius (December 25?, 1624 – July 9, 1677), a German mystic-poet, was born in Breslau, Silesia. 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. His father moved from Krakow in 1618 and became a citizen of Breslau, Johann was brought up a Lutheran and educated as scientist and physician. He was at first physician to the duke of Württemberg-Oels, where he came into contact with Abraham von Franckenberg, who was later to influence him greatly and whose library he would inherit on Franckenberg's death in 1652. With the imperial Habsburg rulers pushing for re-Catholicisation, Silesius joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1652. In 1654 Silesius received from the emperor the imperial-kingly (kaiserlich-königlich) court physician status. In 1661 he took orders as a priest, and became coadjutor to the Prince-bishop of Breslau. He died at St. Matthias monastery in Breslau, on July 9, 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 ("The Cherubic Pilgrim")(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 also 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.
The Catholic Encyclopedia defends Silesius from the charge of pantheism. His prose writings are orthodox; "The Cherubic Pilgrim" was published with the ecclesiastical Imprimatur, and, in his preface, the author himself explains his "paradoxes" in an orthodox sense, and repudiates any future pantheistic interpretation.
Silesius also wrote prose, notably a series of tracts against Protestantism, published under the title Eccleciologia.
[edit] Quotation
"Die Rose ist ohne warum; Sie blühet, weil Sie blühet..."
["The Rose is without an explanation; She blooms, because She blooms..." This was held by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges to be the definition of poetry.]
In the Martin Scorsese remake of the movie Cape Fear, Robert De Niro's character Max Cady quotes a verse of Silesius, notably "I am like God and God like me. I am as large as God. He is as small as I. He cannot above me nor I beneath him be."
[edit] Bibliographical references
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 biography by H. Mahn (Dresden, 1896).
This article incorporates information from the public domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
