Rebel Angels: Space and Sovereignty in Anglo-Saxon England by Jill Fitzgerald (review)

The story of the rebellion and fall of the angels appears many times across the vernacular and Latin writings of early medieval England, providing a ready narrative for framing issues of obedience and disobedience, punishment and reward. In Rebel Angels, Jill Fitzgerald surveys this enduring tradition in order “to explore how the story of the angelic rebellion can illuminate other areas of the Anglo-Saxon imagination and social word: namely, perceptions of territory, dissent, power, and popular belief” (p. 2). Reminiscent in many ways of Nicholas Howe’s work on the migration myth, Fitzgerald provides an intellectual history of the fall of the angels as an ideological narrative that proved remarkably adaptable for writers and artists in early medieval England. The book surveys a range of texts from the eighth through the early eleventh centuries, bringing a welcome situational awareness to its critical analyses. This practice calls attention to variation and contingency, rather than broadcasting a sense of a static tradition; consequently, Bede’s use of the motif looks much different than that of Archbishop Wulfstan, as the two ecclesiastics wrote from different historical moments and motives. Fitzgerald also actively engages the work of other scholars (especially Nicholas Howe, David Johnson, Fabienne Michelet, and Scott T. Smith), which securely situates her work in critical conversations within the field. Accordingly, Rebel Angels offers many valuable contributions to ongoing scholarship on the literature and culture of early medieval England.

Chapter 1 examines practices and documents of land tenure in relation to the presentation of the rebellious angels in the poem Genesis A, with specific attention to issues of space and sovereignty. The poem, Fitzgerald argues, envisions the expulsion of the angels as a form of forfeiture in which dispossession leaves spaces open for more obedient and deserving tenants. Likewise, charters themselves enact an earthly version of replacement when kings use forfeiture as a form of punishment. Both earthly and eternal spaces, then, are subject to the same mechanisms of right possession and due obedience. Chapter 2 next considers how the poem Genesis B dramatizes tensions between “territorial ambitions and the threat of disinheritance” (p. 76). Both Genesis poems measure the territorial consequences of disobedience against the rewards for obligations met and maintained. The first two chapters together show how early authors explored and amplified connections between Biblical history and current social practices “as a way to understand contemporary issues and challenges and to establish common myths of origin” (p. 103).

Chapter 3 considers how the Winchester refoundation and confirmation charters (S 745 and 821) use the motif of the rebellious angels to legitimize the expulsion of clerics and the establishment of monks in their place. Fitzgerald situates this iteration of the doctrine of replacement within the larger context of the Benedictine Reform movement and its own ideological identification with the age of Bede. This is an exceptionally rich topic that exceeds the bounds of a single chapter, however, which leads to occasional generalizations in analysis. That said, Fitzgerald’s close reading of the New Minster Charter is especially discerning in its discussion of that text’s intersection with other texts, both patristic and contemporary. It is at moments like these that Rebel Angels is at its best.

Chapters 4 and 5 take Old English poetry as their primary focus. Chapter 4 examines several hagiographical poems (Elene, Andreas, Guthlac A, and Juliana) in which a saint recites or names the fall of the angels as a protective ritual, enacting a process much like that of a charm. Such cases, Fitzgerald argues, demonstrate the flexibility that the narrative motif held for Old English authors, as it functions in these poems as a magical utterance that blends forms of popular and institutional belief. Chapter 5 turns to Christ and Satan, the latecomer to the compilation of Biblical verse in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11. Fitzgerald considers the [End Page 124...