ANGELUS SILESIUS (1624-1677)

This article appears in Volume V02, Page 8 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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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

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

. Brought up a Lutheran, and at first physician to the duke of Wurttemberg-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, odes 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

PROTESTANT

hymnal. More remarkable, however, is his Geistreiche Sinn- and Schlussreime (16J7), afterwards called Cherubinischer Wandersmann (1674). This is a collection of " Reimspruche " or rhymed distichs embodying a strange mystical pantheism

drawn

DRAWN

mainly from the writings of

Jakob

JAKOB, LUDWIG HEINRICH VON (1759—1827)

Bohme and.his followers. Silesius delighted specially in the subtle paradoxes of

mysticism

MYSTICISM (from Or. µuety, to shut the eyes; µuorrts, one initiated into the mysteries)

. 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 (Sdmtliche 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

WORK

by O. E. Hartleben (1896). For further noticesof Silesius' life and

work

WORK

, see

Hoffmann

von Fallersleben in

Weimar

WEIMAR

'sches Jahrbuch I. (Hanover, 1854) ; A. Kahiert, Angelus Silesius (1853); C. Seltmann, Angelus Silesius and seine Mystik (1896), and a biog. by H. Mahn (Dresden, 1896).

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