Theologically speaking, the stock of the angels in the Church has been falling pretty steadily since its Berkshire Hathaway-like peak in the 5th century, when the celestial hierarchy was outlined by Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite in an all-too-brief treatise.
It rallied, briefly, around 800 years later, with Dante and St Thomas before giving way to the heady quarrels of the Reformation, from which it never seems quite to have recovered. Nowadays angels are a somewhat tawdry subject. One thinks of the heavenly host, if at all, in connection with Roma Downey and John Travolta or that silly play about Aids made into an HBO programme years ago.
