Virtues

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite ranked the Virtues fifth overall and second within the second triad in The Celestial Hierarchy (5th–6th century CE) (De Coelesti Hierarchia — CCEL; Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite — New Advent), assigning them the task of carrying out the directives passed down from the Dominions above them (Summa Theologica I, Q.108 — New Advent). Christian tradition subsequently credited the Virtues specifically with executing miracles on earth and overseeing the order of nature — the seasons, the elements, and the motions of the heavens — while also granting believers courage, grace, and valor in the face of hardship. The apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve (Life of Adam and Eve — Wikipedia) describes two virtues accompanying the archangel Michael to encourage Eve during the birth of her first child. In later Christian interpretation, the two unnamed "men in white" who address the disciples immediately after Christ's ascension (Acts 1:10–11) have sometimes been identified as Virtues, on the reasoning that an event demonstrating God's power over nature and death was fittingly attended by the angelic order most closely associated with power itself.

More than any other choir, the Virtues illustrate how the Dionysian hierarchy grew out of ordinary vocabulary rather than distinct visionary appearances. Dynamis is one of the most common words in the New Testament, used well over a hundred times for everything from Christ's healing power to the "mighty works" of the apostles; only a handful of those uses plausibly refer to a class of being at all; most are as flexible as the English words "power" or "might." The angelic order of Virtues is, in effect, the personification of a word the New Testament writers mostly used as an abstract noun — which is also why the folk tradition surrounding the Virtues (governing seasons, granting valor to martyrs, performing miracles) draws so heavily on inference from what "dynamis" does elsewhere in scripture, rather than from any passage that describes the Virtues as beings in their own right.