Abstract

Angels were created but do not experience death, though transformation is not fully alien from their nature. Vincenzo Cicogna’s c. 1587 Angelo rum et daemonum nomina et attributa… (Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute MS 86-A866) analyses Lucifer’s transformation at the Fall of the Rebel Angels, and interprets the fallen angel’s separation from his Creator as a fate worse than death. In a Church historical context, the manuscript echoes concerns of the Church reformer Bishop Gian Matteo Giberti, who was the decisive force on the author’s intellectual development. The way separation replaces death as the hardest possible punishment in the mind of the Catholic reformer author bears, at the same time, considerable reminiscences to the psychological condition identified as Separation Anxiety Disorder (SAD).