Other Archangels

The seven angels who stand before the glory of God are mentioned twice in the Catholic Bible, yet only three of them are ever named. Raphael, in the Book of Tobit, identifies himself as “one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord.” The Book of Revelation speaks of “the seven angels who stand before God” and who are given trumpets. From those two passages Christian readers have long inferred a distinct company of archangels, messengers entrusted with missions of special weight. Scripture itself, however, supplies personal names for only three members of that company: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. The others—Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, Remiel, Phanuel, and the additional figures honored in Eastern Christian lists—enter the historical record through Jewish writings of the Second Temple period that the Catholic Church does not receive as inspired Scripture. Their stories, the meanings of their names, and the Church’s refusal to authorize devotion to them form a coherent chapter in the history of angelology.

The restraint is not a denial that other archangels exist. The number seven is biblical. The restraint is a judgment about revelation: God has made three names known, and the Church does not invent or adopt the rest for public worship. That judgment can be traced from the formation of the canon through a synod in the eighth century to a Vatican directory issued in 2001. Between those markers lies a rich body of ancient literature whose angelic rosters are fascinating precisely because they were never made binding.

The principal source is 1 Enoch, a composite Jewish apocalypse assembled between the third century before Christ and the first century after. Aramaic fragments found among the Dead Sea Scrolls show that parts of the book were already being copied in the late third or early second century BCE. A Greek translation circulated in antiquity and was known to some early Christian writers. The only complete version that survives is in Geʿez, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church regards the book as canonical. Everywhere else it remained outside the Bible. Within 1 Enoch the angelic lists are not perfectly stable, which is itself instructive. Chapter 20 of the Book of the Watchers, in the Greek form, names seven holy angels who watch and calls them archangels: Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Sariel, Gabriel, and Remiel. Many Ethiopic manuscripts omit Remiel and stop at six. Earlier, in chapters 9 and 10, only four angels intercede over the sins of the fallen Watchers and are sent to act: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and either Uriel or Sariel. In the later Parables of Enoch a different quartet stands before the Lord of glory: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Phanuel. The variation shows that Second Temple writers shared a conviction about a small circle of chief angels without possessing a single fixed roster.

A second major witness is the apocalypse known as 2 Esdras or 4 Ezra, usually dated to the end of the first century CE. It is not part of the Catholic canon. It appears in an appendix to some editions of the Latin Vulgate and is accepted in certain Eastern churches whose Bibles include it. In that book Uriel is the interpreting angel who answers Ezra’s anguished questions about divine justice, the fate of the righteous, and the delay of the end. Jeremiel, a form of the name Remiel, is mentioned as the angel set over the souls of the righteous who wait in their chambers. Scattered references to the same figures appear in the Testament of Solomon, the Sibylline Oracles, and later rabbinic and mystical texts, but 1 Enoch and 2 Esdras remain the foundations.

Uriel is the most frequently discussed of the non-canonical names. The Hebrew ʾÛrîʾēl means “God is my light” or “fire of God.” In 1 Enoch he is appointed over the world and over Tartarus. He guides Enoch through the prison of the fallen angels and the stars that transgressed their orders, and he is associated with the warning given to Noah before the flood. In 2 Esdras his role is didactic rather than punitive: he explains visions, rebukes Ezra’s presumption gently, and insists that the ways of the Most High cannot be fully grasped by human measurement. Later Eastern iconography sometimes shows him with a flame or an open book, emblems of illumination. Medieval Latin and occult writers added elemental and directional correspondences—earth, north, autumn—that have no basis in the ancient apocalypses. Variant spellings and possible overlaps include Suriel, Auriel, and, in some scholarly discussions, a partial functional resemblance to Phanuel. None of these later elaborations alters the textual fact that Uriel’s name and duties are confined to books the Catholic Church does not treat as Scripture.

Raguel, also spelled Reuel, means “friend of God.” In the roster of 1 Enoch 20 he takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries. The phrase is obscure, but the context suggests oversight of the heavenly bodies and punishment of any disorder among them. He appears once more in the narrative, explaining a fire in the west that pursues the luminaries. He has no role in the binding of the Watchers and no presence in the canonical Bible. Later tradition sometimes casts him as a general enforcer of discipline among the angels, an extension that goes beyond the brief Enochic notices.

Sariel—also Saraqael, Saraqiel, or Zerachiel—is commonly taken to mean “prince of God” or “God’s command.” In the Aramaic fragments from Qumran he is one of the four angels who look down, see the violence wrought by the Watchers, and bring the report before God. In the Greek chapter 20 he is set over the spirits who sin in the spirit. Some subsequent lists assign him lunar or mortuary duties; those assignments are secondary. Eastern Christian tradition occasionally equates or replaces him with Selaphiel, illustrating how names migrated and were reinterpreted once they left their original literary settings.

Remiel, with the variants Ramiel, Jeremiel, and Jerahmeel, carries a sense of mercy or of raising up. The Greek text of 1 Enoch 20 places him over those who rise, a charge widely understood as care for the resurrection of the righteous. In 2 Esdras he answers a question about the souls of the just who are stored in chambers until the number of their companions is complete. Because he is missing from many Ethiopic copies of Enoch, his membership in the seven is less secure than that of Uriel or Raguel. The uncertainty is a reminder that even the pseudepigrapha do not speak with one voice.

Phanuel, or Penuel, means “face of God.” The name echoes the place where Jacob wrestled until dawn and declared that he had seen God face to face. In the Parables of Enoch, Phanuel is the fourth presence-angel, set over repentance and over the hope of those who will inherit eternal life. He does not appear in the chapter 20 list. Scholars have noted that across different texts the roles of Phanuel, Sariel, and Uriel sometimes brush against one another; the names are not simple aliases, but the literature is theological storytelling rather than systematic doctrine. Phanuel’s distinctive note, where he is present, is restorative: he is linked to turning back and to the expectation of life, not primarily to punishment or to cosmic geography.

Eastern Orthodox churches, and Eastern Catholic churches of the Byzantine tradition, preserve a different completion of the seven. On 8 November they celebrate the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers. The names regularly depicted are Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jegudiel (or Jehudiel), and Barachiel, with Jeremiel sometimes added as an eighth. Selaphiel is understood as “prayer of God” and is shown in an attitude of intercession. Jegudiel, “praise of God,” bears a crown and a three-thonged whip, symbols of reward and of zeal. Barachiel, “blessing of God,” holds roses. These three names are not taken directly from 1 Enoch’s chapter 20; they belong to Byzantine liturgical and iconographic custom. Uriel’s presence is easier to explain where 2 Esdras is read, as it is in some Slavic biblical traditions. The Ethiopian Church, accepting 1 Enoch, naturally retains the Enochic set. The difference between East and West on this point is therefore real: it is a difference of received texts and of liturgical memory, not a difference about the existence of angels.

The Catholic Church’s official stance is narrower and has been consistent for centuries. Public worship and encouraged devotion use only the names that appear in the canonical Scriptures. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 2001, states the rule in paragraph 217: the practice of assigning names to the holy angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael, whose names are contained in Holy Scripture. The same paragraph warns against reading ordinary life as a schematic battle between named spirits in which human freedom and moral effort disappear. The rule is pastoral as well as doctrinal. Once a name is treated as known, devotion quickly supplies patronages, colors, days of the week, and requests that have no warrant in revelation.

An earlier and sharper precedent is the Roman synod of 745, held under Pope Zachary. A Frankish preacher named Aldebert had been circulating a prayer that invoked eight angels: Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Michael, Inias, Tubuas, Sabaoc, and Simiel. The synod examined the prayer and declared that, with the sole exception of Michael, the names were found neither in the canonical books nor in the Fathers. It rejected the prayer and forbade its further use. The language of the acts is severe: the unapproved names were judged not to be those of angels of God. Later popes in the nineteenth century likewise declined to authorize public veneration under the extra names that had become popular in some private circles. The Church’s position does not require the claim that no other archangels exist. It requires the claim that their names have not been revealed and therefore should not be invented or borrowed for cult.

The reasons for the caution are several and reinforcing. In the canonical books angelic names are few and transparent. Michael asks who is like God; Gabriel speaks of the strength of God; Raphael announces that God heals. The names disclose something of the divine action rather than satisfy speculative curiosity. The books that supply the other names, however valuable for historians of Second Temple Judaism, were not received by the Church as inspired; they contain doctrinal difficulties and internal inconsistencies. Popular use of the names has repeatedly attracted esoteric systems that assign the angels to planets, elements, sacraments, or magical hours. From the standpoint of Catholic teaching those systems are unreliable, and the risk they pose is not trivial. Ancient Christian writers already worried that counterfeit spiritual claims could mask something opposed to God. The synod of 745 gave that worry institutional form.

Modern interest in the wider list owes more to the recovery of 1 Enoch by European scholars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and to subsequent esoteric and internet literature, than to any continuous Latin devotional tradition. Readers who encounter Uriel or Raguel today are usually meeting a modern composite: a few verses from Enoch or 2 Esdras, expanded by centuries of mystical speculation and recent spiritual marketing. Eastern Christian veneration stands on a different footing. It is public, iconographic, and centuries old within those churches. The Latin Church simply does not share it, and the Directory of 2001 restates the older boundary for Catholic popular piety.

None of this diminishes the biblical witness that is actually given. Michael contends for the people of God and casts down the accuser. Gabriel announces the births of John and of Jesus and interprets visions. Raphael guides, heals, and reveals himself as one of the seven. The Church celebrates the three together on 29 September and commends the faithful to their protection under the names Scripture has made known. It also teaches, in the Catechism, that angels are spiritual creatures of intelligence and will, that Christ is the center of the angelic world, and that each believer has a guardian angel—unnamed. The number seven remains part of the revealed picture. The other personal names, on the Catholic reading, have not been given.

The figures themselves can still be studied as historical and literary facts. Uriel the interpreter and guide of Enoch and Ezra, Raguel the overseer of the luminaries, Sariel among the angels who reported the Watchers’ crimes, Remiel charged with those who rise, Phanuel linked to repentance and hope: each belongs to a particular text and a particular imaginative world of late Second Temple Judaism. Selaphiel, Jegudiel, and Barachiel belong to a later Byzantine synthesis. Knowing where the names come from, and where they do not come from, is the difference between curiosity and cult. The Catholic Church has drawn that line clearly: three names for public invocation, seven angels acknowledged in Scripture without further identification, and a standing discouragement of every other personal name assigned to the holy angels.

References

Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines. Vatican City, 2001, paragraph 217.

Book of Tobit 12:15; Revelation 8:2; Daniel 8–12; Luke 1; Jude 9.

1 Enoch, especially the Book of the Watchers chapters 9–10 and 20, and the Parables chapter 40. Translations include R. H. Charles and E. Isaac in James H. Charlesworth, editor, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, volume 1. Aramaic fragments: Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q201–4Q202 and related manuscripts.

2 Esdras (4 Ezra), chapters 4–5 (Uriel) and 4:36 (Jeremiel).

Roman Synod of 745 under Pope Zachary. Acts in J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, volume 12, columns 379–385.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 328–336.

George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).

Eastern liturgical tradition: Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers, 8 November; standard iconographic types of Uriel, Selaphiel, Jegudiel, and Barachiel.