In the medieval religious world, preachers were angels who existed on a lofty level but had to descend to lower levels in order to communicate and preach to `earthly creatures'. This study draws on saints' lives, religious treatises and artes praedicandi (preachers' manuals) to examine the instruction of preachers in their angelic role, the ways in which they united a mortal body with a heavenly mind and with what eyes they regarded the world around them. The study also asks what role, if any, women preachers could have had in this vision.