A treatment of angels in early modern England would not be complete without an examination of their place in Catholic cultures, a much neglected aspect of English Reformation studies. A survey of the Counter-Reformation (and the Marian Church, as its spiritual forebear) not only engages with an intrinsically important area of study, but given its position as an oppositional and persecuted movement, can also offer insight into the mentalities of the majority on the other side of the confessional divide. Although angels were certainly recruited as supporters of the established status quo, we have seen how the angelic motif continued to be utilized by those endorsing competing confessional identities. This was nowhere more true than when it came to the English Catholic community. There are a number of reasons why a closer investigation of this minority makes sense at this juncture. The abundance of works refuting Catholic doctrines and traditions, some of which have been discussed above, and the propensity to identify popery in all aspects of daily life, are a reminder that hostility to Catholicism was a formative influence on the English Protestant identity, a fact acknowledged by many scholars. Before the first decades of the seventeenth century, a consensus had emerged among English clergymen that the Pope was antichrist, a fact that united occasionally fractious reformers in opposition to a common enemy.