ANGELO SILESIO. – Literary name (Angelus Silesius) assumed upon his conversion to Catholicism by Johann Scheffler, German poet and controversialist,
b. in Breslau to a Lutheran father in December 1624, d. there on 9 July 1677. At the age of 19 he was studying medicine at the University of Strasbourg, which he almost immediately exchanged for that of Leiden and, two years later (1647), for that of Padua, where on 9 July 1648 he obtained his doctorate in philosophy and medicine. He was personal physician to Duke Silvius Nimrod von Oels until 1652. Returning to Breslau, he converted to Catholicism on 12 June 1653 and, receiving confirmation immediately afterward, changed his name. His conversion did not result from a sudden enthusiasm, but was the outcome of long meditations and readings, to which he could readily devote himself on account of his intimate friendship with Abramo von Franckenberg (d. in 1652), a disciple of Jakob Böhme, who had assembled a rich library of ancient and modern mystics. Scheffler did not limit himself to studying the mystics, but deepened his theological knowledge, as is demonstrated by the writing published fourteen days after his conversion, in which he set forth the reasons for his return to the Catholic Church. He attained a high social position through his appointment as court physician to Emperor Ferdinand III; but he lived ascetically, devoted to prayer. On 29 May 1661 he was ordained a priest; shortly afterward he held important offices in the episcopal curia of Breslau. But A. preferred the silence of the Franciscan cloister of S. Mattia in Breslau, where he died in holiness.
Literary history has concerned itself with A. as a controversialist and as a poet. From 1663 to 1675 he published 55 writings against the Protestants (later he collected 39 of them in his extensive Ecclesiologia, 1677), in which he displays a character so different from that revealed by his poetry that some have been led to attribute them to another author. The violence of the language of certain pamphlets is understandable if one takes into account the polemical practices of the period, especially in Breslau, where the struggle was particularly fierce. A.’s fame is linked to his collections of spiritual poems, several of which were also accepted into Protestant books of sacred songs, with attribution to a « Giovanni Angelo » or to an uncertain author.
His Cherubinischer Wandersnau (1657), a collection of moral, philosophical, and mystical aphorisms in Alexandrian couplets (perhaps inspired by the Seccenta Monodistica Sapientum [ca. 1647] of Daniel Czeplo [d. in 1660], whose « mystical » circle in Breslau A. frequented), teaches the mystical way to attain union with God; in these concise and profound maxims, whose form is highly effective and often paradoxical, some have discerned pantheistic and Quietist tendencies. But C. Seltmann, in his Angelus Silesius und seine Mystik (Breslau 1896), also gave this part of A.’s poetic work a completely orthodox interpretation. « In the convert from Breslau, deference to Catholic dogma certainly did not restrain, as was claimed, either speculative daring or imaginative boldness » (L. Vincenti). The collection Heilige Scelulisti (1657) consists of spiritual pastoral songs of the soul in love with Jesus, and the influence of the idyllic manner of the Jesuit Friedrich Spee can be noted in II. The soul (Psyche), abandoning every earthly thing, follows the Divine Bridegroom along the way of suffering and triumph. In Sinnliche Beschreibung der vier letzten Dinge (1675) he describes the Novissimi with vivacity and serenity.