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Updated: November 19, 2024
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. Brought up a Lutheran, and at first physician to the duke of Württemberg-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.
This may sound a hard thing to say; but even Angelus Silesius, with all his Christian feelings of gentleness and love, was obliged to admit the truth of it. However painful solitude may be, he says, be careful not to be vulgar; for then you may find a desert everywhere: Die Einsamkeit ist noth: doch sei nur nicht gemein, So kannst du überall in einer Wüste sein.
Valentin Weigel, Pastor of Zschopau in Saxony, a man of wit, even of excessive wit, although people would have it that he was a visionary, was perhaps to some extent of that opinion; as was also a man known as Johann Angelus Silesius, author of certain quite pleasing little devotional verses in German, in the form of epigrams, which have just been reprinted.
More remarkable, however, is his Geistreiche Sinn-und Schluss-reime , afterwards called Cherubinischer Wandersmann . 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 delighted specially in the subtle paradoxes of mysticism.
Since that time, he says, we have taken leave of society, preferring the path of seclusion; for there is safety in solitude. Angelus Silesius, a very gentle and Christian writer, confesses to the same feeling, in his own mythical language.
He died at Breslau on the 9th of July 1677. In 1657 Silesius published under the title Heilige Seelenlust, oder geistliche Hirtenlieder der in ihren Jesum verliebten Psyche , 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.
Lutherans enshrine it in their inmost souls because it is the receptacle of treasures of meditation and devotion with which their forms of worship have been enriched for four hundred years. To ignore Angelus Silesius, Paul Gerhardt, Albert Knapp, Philip Spitta and their glorious compeers, would be to silence a choir that sang the praises of the Lord "in notes almost divine."
It was in this sense that the mystic Angelas Silesius declared that God could not live for a moment without him, and that if he were to be annihilated God must of necessity give up the ghost: Ich weiss dass ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben; Werd' ich zunicht, er muss von Noth den Geist aufgeben.
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