From the early Middle Ages onward, authors and poets whispered cryptic stories about the fate of the “craven angels.” These were the angels who took no side in Satan’s war against Heaven. While they did not participate in the Devil’s conspiracy of sin, they also failed to declare their loyalty to God. As a result, they fell from Heaven with the ancient enemy and his minions, but their fate was open to question.
According to an eighth-century text known as the Voyage of Saint Brendan, which recounted the seaborne journey of an Irish holy man and his brethren, these neutral angels wandered the world as incorporeal spirits, but on feast days and Sundays they took the form of birds and sang praises to God on a remote island.
Moreover, when they had sailed near the island where they had been three days earlier, and came to its furthest end on the western side, they saw another island joined next to it, very grassy and wooded and full of flowers, with a small strait lying in between, and they began to seek a place to make land while sailing around the island. Then, making their way toward the southern shore of the island, they found a little river emptying into the sea, and there they landed their ship. When they had disembarked from the boat, Saint Brendan ordered them to drag the ship along the bank of the river with ropes, as far as they could. The river was just as wide as the width of the boat. The holy father remained sitting in the boat, and they pulled him along for a mile until they came to the source of the river. Saint Brendan then said, “Behold, our Lord Jesus Christ gave us this place to stay for Easter.” And he added, “If we did not have any other supplies except this river, it would suffice, I believe, for our food and drink.”
There was, moreover, a tree near the river’s source with a circumference of incredible size, and no less wondrous in height, covered with very white birds. They covered it so much that they almost seemed to be its very leaves and branches. When the man of God saw them, he began to think to himself and ponder what this might be or what the cause of this had been, that so great a multitude of birds could be gathered in one place. And his grief over this was so great that he shed tears on bended knee and beseeched God, saying: “God, knower of the unknown and revealer of all that is hidden, you know my heart’s distress. I beseech your majesty that through your great mercy you should see fit to reveal to me your secret, which I see now before my eyes. I do not presume to ask from my own merits or dignity, but from your immense clemency.”
When he had said these things to himself and sat down again, behold, one of the birds flew from the tree toward the ship where the man of God was sitting, and its wings sounded like little bells. It alighted on the tip of the prow, stretched forth its wings like a sign of joy, and regarded the holy father with a peaceful expression. Immediately the man of God knew that God had heard his prayer, and he said to the bird, “If you are a messenger of God, tell me where these birds are from or for what reason they flock here?”
The bird said to him at once: “The great ruin of the ancient enemy brought us here, even though we did not participate in his conspiracy of sin. After our creation, Satan’s fall with his minions resulted in our ruin as well. But our God is just and true. In his great judgment, he sent us to this place. We do not suffer punishment. Here we can see the presence of God, but he has separated us from the fellowship of those who remained loyal to him. We wander through different parts of the air and the firmament and the earth, just as other spirits who have been sent forth. But on holy days and Sundays we receive the bodies that you now see and we gather here and praise our creator. You and your brethren have spent one year on your journey, but six still remain. Where you celebrate Easter today, there you will celebrate it every year, and after that you will find what you have set in your heart, that is, the land of the saints’ reward.” When he had said these words, the bird took wing from the prow and flew back to the other birds.
By the early thirteenth century, the fate of the craven angels had changed for the worse. In his poem recounting the Arthurian legends, Wolfram von Eschenbach (ca. 1160/80–ca. 1220) portrayed these exiles from Heaven as the special guardians of the Gral (the Holy Grail), a stone with wondrous powers. In this account, a pagan seer named Flegetanis had foretold that God would forgive them for their disloyalty, but the truth came out by the story’s end, when they were damned for their neutrality.
There was a heathen named Flegetanis who was highly renowned for his acquirements. This same physicus was descended from Solomon, begotten of Israelitish kin all the way down from ancient times till the Baptism became our shield against hellfire. He wrote of the marvels of the Gral…All humankind are affected by the revolutions of the planets. With his own eyes the heathen Flegetanis saw—and he spoke of it reverentially—hidden secrets in the constellations. He declared there was a thing called the Gral, whose name he read in the stars without more ado. “A troop left it on earth and then rose high above the stars, if their innocence drew them back again. Afterwards a Christian progeny bred to a pure life had the duty of keeping it. Those humans who are summoned to the Gral are ever worthy.” Thus did Flegetanis write on this theme.
When Lucifer and the Trinity began to war with each other, those who did not take sides, worthy, noble angels, had to descend to earth to that Stone which is forever incorruptible. I do not know whether God forgave them or damned them in the end: if it was His due He took them back. Since that time the Stone has been in the care of those whom God appointed to it and to whom He sent his angel. This, sir, is how matters stand regarding the Gral.
“God has many mysteries,” Trevrizent told Parzival. “Whoever sat at His councils or who has fathomed His power? Not all the Host of Angels will ever get to the bottom of it.”…I lied as a means of distracting you from the Gral and how things stood concerning it. Let me atone for my error—I now owe you obedience, Nephew and my lord. You heard from me that the banished angels were at the Gral with God’s full support till they should be received back into His Grace. But God is constant in such matters: He never ceases to war against those whom I named to you here as forgiven. Whoever desires to have reward from God must be in feud with those angels. For they are eternally damned and chose their own perdition.
Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265–1321) depicted the craven angels in the vestibule of Hell in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia). Unlike their sympathetic portrayal in the Brendan legend, Dante described them as expelled from Heaven, yet unwelcome in Hell. Bereft of God and yet having no hope of death, they were doomed to spend eternity in envy of every other fate.
“We have now come to the place, where I told you,
You will see the woeful people
Who have lost the good obtained by intellect.”
And then he put his hand on mine and
With a smile that comforted me
He led me in among secret things.
There sighs and groans and plaintive wailing
Resounded through the starless air,
Which caused me to well up with tears.
Diverse tongues, horrible dialects,
Words of agony, accents of anger
And voices high and hoarse, and the sound of hands,
Made up a tumult that goes whirling on
Forever in that air forever black,
Just like sand, when the whirlwind blows.
My head with horror bound, I said,
“Master, what is this that I hear?
Who is this, so overcome by pain?”
He said to me, “This miserable condition
Afflicts the melancholy souls of those
Who lived without infamy or praise.
They are commingled with that noisome choir
Of angels, who were neither rebels nor
Faithful to God, but only for themselves.
The heavens expelled them, for they were not beautiful;
Nor did the depths of Hell receive them,
In this way depriving the damned of their glory.”
And I, “Master, what is so grievous to them
That makes them lament so loudly?”
He answered, “I will tell you very briefly.
They have no hope of death;
And this blind life of theirs is so debased
That they envy every other fate.
The world allows them to have no glory;
Mercy and justice both despise them.
Let us not speak of them, but look and then pass by.”