Archangel Raphael

Section one

What this figure is

Raphael is one of only three angels the Church names with confidence, and he is the only one whose story is told at length as a story. Michael gets visions and battles; Gabriel gets announcements; Raphael gets fourteen chapters of what reads like a travel narrative with a medical subplot.

His name means God has healed, and the name is the job. He appears in the book of Tobit, a Jewish work of the second century before Christ, and in the older book of 1 Enoch, where he is one of the four named archangels. In Tobit he is one of seven — the verse in which he introduces himself is the reason Catholic devotion counts seven archangels while only venerating the three who are named.

The setting is the eighth century BC, in exile. Tobit is an old, pious and recently blinded man from the tribe of Naphtali, living in Nineveh. He has money deposited with a relative named Gabael in Media, far to the east, and he wants to send his son Tobias to collect it. Tobias does not know the road. Tobit, worried, wants a companion hired for the journey.

Raphael turns up, apparently by coincidence, and offers himself for hire. He gives a name that is not his — Azariah, son of Ananias, of your kinsmen — and he gives an account of the route that satisfies Tobit completely. Tobias sets out with an archangel he believes to be a man, and the entire book turns on the fact that his travelling companion is being read by the reader, and by nobody else in the story.

Section two

The moment in the sculpture

Look at what this figure is holding, because it decides what kind of image this is. In his right hand is a tall golden staff with a curved top; hanging from it is a small pouch. In his left arm, against his chest, he carries a fish.

The fish is the giveaway, and it is the reason this is not a portrait but a scene. Everything else about Raphael could be a generic angel — wings, halo, robe, sandals, staff. The fish dates the image to one specific afternoon, on the bank of the Tigris, and to one specific instruction from the book of Tobit.

The figure is dressed as a traveller rather than a warrior. Where Michael has armour and a raised sword, Raphael has a walking staff, a pouch and open sandals with straps up the ankle — the sandals are painted with real care here, because they are part of the point. This is the one archangel in Catholic art who is dressed for a long walk.

And then there is the base. A gold plate on the dark wooden pedestal reads Arcanjo Rafael — Archangel Raphael in Portuguese — with a second line naming the workshop, D'Angelo. The spelling and the maker mark together tell you where this piece comes from: a Portuguese devotional workshop, and by extension a Portuguese or Portuguese-influenced household. It is the same kind of object that would once have come to Goa or Kochi in a crate.

Section three

What the objects mean

Four elements identify Raphael, and three of them come from a single journey.

The fish is the most interesting, because the book gives it three distinct uses and this statue only shows you the animal. First it is caught, on the instruction of the companion, and it is a dangerous creature that leaps out of the river. Then its heart and liver are burned to drive off a demon. Then its gall is used to cure a blind man's eyes. One fish, three jobs, and every one of them a healing — which is what his name promises.

The halo, ringed and decorated

A circular nimbus with a silver and blue decorative rim, behind dark curly hair.

A halo marks a holy being. The decorated ring on this one — rather than the plain gold disc used for the human saints in this collection — is a way of saying angel rather than deceased person. Raphael is alive, in the way the word is used of angels.

The fish

Held against his chest in the left arm — dark bronze-brown, detailed and unmistakable.

Tobit 6 tells of a fish that leaps from the Tigris and is caught on instruction. Its heart and liver, burned, drive away the demon; its gall, applied to Tobit's eyes, restores his sight. A single animal performing one exorcism and one cure is why Raphael is the patron of healing and of eyes.

The staff and the pouch

A tall gold staff with a curved head, a small pouch hanging from it, sandalled feet beneath.

The gear of a man hired to walk to Media and back. The staff is Raphael's ordinary attribute and is the reason travellers take him along — he is the only archangel dressed for the road.

Arcanjo Rafael — and the workshop

A small gold plate with two lines of engraving on the front of the pedestal.

The first line names the figure in Portuguese; the second, D'Angelo, names the workshop that made it. Objects like this are almost always dated and located by their plaques rather than their style, and this one ties the statue to Portuguese devotional manufacture.

Section four

What Scripture says, and what it does not

Raphael's story is in the Bible, with one large caveat that shapes who actually knows him. The book of Tobit is deuterocanonical — it is in the Catholic and Orthodox canons and was in the Latin Vulgate, but it is not in the Protestant canon, and it is not in the Hebrew Bible. So a large part of the Christian world has never met him, which is why Raphael is far more familiar in Catholic and Orthodox households than in others. It is also why 1 Enoch, where he is named among the archangels, is not in any mainstream canon at all.

The story itself is domestic and specific. Sarah, the woman Tobias marries, has already lost seven husbands — each one killed on the wedding night by the demon Asmodeus. Raphael tells Tobias to burn the fish's heart and liver in the bridal chamber; the smoke drives Asmodeus off, and the demon flees to Egypt, where the text says he is bound. Later, Tobias returns with the money, and Raphael instructs him to apply the fish's gall to his father's eyes. Tobit's sight comes back.

Then the companion leaves. Tobit and Tobias try to pay him, and offer him half the money and the livestock. He takes them aside and tells them who he is: I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand in attendance and enter the presence of the glory of the Lord. Their reaction is to fall on their faces in terror. His closing instruction is that they should praise God and not him.

Two honest footnotes. First, despite the popular association, Raphael does not appear anywhere in the New Testament. The identification of him with the angel who stirred the waters at the pool of Bethesda in John 5 is a later tradition — the Gospel does not name that angel. Second, the book that features him is a story with a moral and theological purpose, not a chronicle; its value as evidence is about what second-century BC Judaism believed about angels and healing, which is considerable, rather than about a trip to Media that left no other trace.

I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand in attendance and enter the presence of the glory of the Lord.

Tobit 12:15

Section five

Why it sits on a shelf

Raphael is the figure people take with them. His primary patronage is travellers, which makes him the saint of the packed bag — the household figure that gets moved from a shelf to a suitcase when someone is flying, and back again afterwards. He is also patron of the young, of finding a spouse, of marriage itself, and of the sick.

His healing patronage is unusually specific. He is invoked for eye trouble, for illness generally, for mental health, and against nightmares. He is the patron of pharmacists, druggists, nurses and physicians — the only archangel with a professional association to medicine, and the reason his statues stand in hospital pharmacies next to the antiseptic.

The Portuguese plaque on the base is the last piece of the story. Devotion to the archangels in the Portuguese world is old and practical; figures like this one came out of workshops that supplied households, parishes and missions across Portugal, Brazil, Goa and the Malabar coast. Somewhere in Kerala there is a church with a Raphael on the wall that came from the same trade route as this statue, and the same instinct — an angel of healing, standing where people are actually ill — put it there.

In ordinary practice, he is often set beside Michael. Michael guards against evil; Raphael heals what evil and accident have already done. Households that keep the full set tend to arrange them as a pair without ever having been told to.