“Archangel Michael defeats Satan” painting by Guido Reni at some time between 1630 and 1635

(6) ANGELS & SAINTS

Well, you simply can’t feature a list of mythological heroes without featuring angels and saints, even if they aren’t always straightforward as heroes.

That’s particularly the case for angels – even in the Biblical text, they can be as ineffable as the God for whom they serve as supernatural intermediaries or messengers. All too often they are agents of His wrath. Not to mention they are literally looking like some sort of eldritch abomination:

“Six wings, four faces, a wheel of fire with eyes lining the rim — you name it. Benevolent or not, these angels were the stuff of nightmares. They didn’t traditionally introduce themselves with “Fear not!” for nothing. Those that were winged tended to stay in heaven or looked… different”.

Of course, angels were also depicted as appearing human, defaulting to the modern archetype of winged (and haloed) humans. Careful with those wings, though – bird wings good, bat wings bad. It’s interesting how the wings of fallen angels seem to transform from good bird wings to evil bat wings – insect wings tend to be reserved for fairies. (Some works also transform angelic halos to something more sinister when they fall).

Also interestingly – and somewhat surprisingly – there are only a few named angels, most notably Michael and Gabriel, demonstrating the usual -el suffix for angel names although there are exceptions.

Michael is the archetypal heroic angel – or is that angelic hero? – famously as the warrior of God and leader of Heaven’s host of angels against Satan, in which role he doubles up as dragonslayer, albeit he casts down rather than slays Satan in the latter’s form as dragon.

Michael also demonstrates some other angelic features. Firstly, that angels have been depicted as a hierarchy of different ranks or types – Michael himself is an archangel. Secondly, Michael has been canonized as a saint as well as an angel – Saint Michael – such that he offers a nice segue into featuring saints as heroes.

Saints of course are almost always depicted as human, at least originally, with a few exceptions of angels characterized as saints or the singular case of Mary, rendered semi-divine through her own immaculate conception. However, saints transcend their humanity to partake of divine or semi-divine nature – becoming saints – by the power of their faith or grace, “having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness, or closeness to God”.

As such, they are heroic by nature, albeit usually of a gentler or more pacific nature than other mythic heroes – very often, the only violence is of a self-sacrificial nature, as martyrs. However, there are warrior saints – even at least one dragonslayer saint in the form of Saint George, the archetypal heroic saint.

Really, angels and saints could well be the subject of their own top ten list – indeed, many such top ten lists, including their various elements, tropes, and types, not least angelic hierarchies and patron saints. They came very close to having their own entry in the special mentions for my Top 10 Mythologies, except that they primarily appear in Biblical mythology and associated religions – although there are analogies and counterparts in other mythic or religious traditions such as Buddhism.

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)