St. Michael the Archangel
Updated: 2d
St. Michael the Archangel is revered in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. He’s also an important figure in British folklore, celebrated at Michaelmas. Dr. Orton explores the mythology, miracles and sacred geography associated with him.
ST. Michael the Archangel
St. Michael appears in the Old Testament in Daniel 10 and Daniel 12, where he named as a chief prince. In the New Testament, he is named an archangel in the book of Jude.
Late fifth/early sixth century Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius wrote in his Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy that archangels are one of the nine ranks of the intelligible realm and that “the Word of God has assigned our Hierarchy to Angels, naming the distinguished Michael as Ruler of the Jewish people, and others over other nations...”
He is also associated with miracles. St. Michael appeared to Pope Gregory in the sixth century when a plague was ravaging Rome. Gregory organised a huge procession around the city, led by an image of the Virgin Mary, with the chanting of litanies. When the Pope looked at the Mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian, he saw St. Michael wiping his bloody sword. There is now a statue of St. Michael at Sant’Angelo. Gregory of Tours describes the plague in his sixth century History of the Franks and Jacobus de Voragine’s thirteenth century Aurea Legenda (“The Golden Legend”) describes the apparition of St. Michael.
There have been many other miracles attributed to St. Michael. The Miracle of Chonae (also called the Miracle at Colossa in Phrygia in Asia Minor) is remembered in the Orthodox Church. St. Michael appeared to a man in a dream and told him that his mute daughter would be able to speak after drinking from the water of a certain spring. The father built a church dedicated to St. Michael in gratitude for the miracle and many visiting pagans were converted. Later, pagans sought to destroy the church, which was then under the care of St. Archippus. The pagans redirected the rivers Lykokaperos and Kufos to try to flood the church. St. Michael appeared, creating a fracture in a rock with his staff so that the water would flow into it. The pagans fled and the miracle is celebrated on September the 19th (September the 6th in the Julian calendar) every year.
From a Catholic perspective, St. Michael’s roles include heavenly warrior, herald of the final resurrection, protector of the Church and escort of souls (psychopomp). Catholics also pray the Chaplet of Saint Michael (devotional prayer using beads), which was revealed to an eighteenth-century Portuguese Carmelite nun called Antónia d’Astónaco. The chaplet includes nine salutations to the Nine Choirs of Angels.
Michael the Warrior
Michael’s name means “Who is Like God?”: a Hebrew rhetorical question, implying that answer is “no-one.” St. Gregory the Great, in his sixth century Homily on the Archangels of Scripture for the Feast of the Archangels, explains that Michael is sent whenever some act of wondrous power must be performed, “so that his action and his name may make it clear that no one can do what God does by his superior power.” The Devil made the mistake of thinking he could be like God, which is why he will fight Michael in a battle at the end of the world.
The battle between Michael and Satan is described in the book of Revelation: “And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail…the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
This is why Michael is often depicted as a warrior in art. Bartolomé Bermejo’s Saint Michael Triumphs Over the Devil (1468) is a good example. But there are many other depictions of this, famously Guido Reni’s The Archangel Michael defeating Satan (1635) at the Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini in Rome and a mosaic of the same at Jasna Gora Monastery in Poland. The Church of St. Andrews in Carlton, Leicestershire, has a stained glass window by Theodora Salusbury (1920) featuring archangels Gabriel and Michael to commemorate the men from the village who died in the First World War. Michael is depicted with armour and a sword, with a dragon lying beneath his feet.
Michael’s role as a warrior is reflected in Pope Leo XIII’s Saint Michael prayer (1890), which he wrote after experiencing a vision of demonic spirits converging on Rome:
Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in battle,be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil;may God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou,O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God,cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl through the worldseeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
There is a longer version of the St. Michael prayer, but this is reserved to bishops and authorized priests because it counts as a minor exorcism.
Michaelmas
Michaelmas—or the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels—falls on the 29th of September and is an important feast in the Christian calendar. Catholics celebrate this by going to Mass or Vespers. St. Michael's Abbey in Silverado, California, is designed so that the sun from the rose window falls on the high altar during Vespers on St. Michael’s Day!
It was one of the great quarter days of the year: Lady Day (March), Midsummer (June), Michaelmas (September) and Christmas (December). There were hinge points of the year that marked legal, academic and farming events. Many universities still call the first term of the academic year the Michaelmas Term.
Historian Ronald Hutton explains that Michaelmas in medieval and Tudor England “was a day for holding courts, paying rents, and enjoying a good meal—traditionally of goose” and was part of seasonal celebrations of harvest suppers (known as “wakes”).
Michaelmas in England continued to be the day for collecting rents, or beginning and ending a tenancy. For this reason, Jane Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice is bookended by the festival, mentioned by Mrs. Bennet. The book begins with Mr. Bingley’s arrival: “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England… he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.” Near the end of the book, Mr. Bingley returns, among speculation that Michaelmas would see him leave the neighbourhood for good: “I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People did say, you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas; but, however, I hope it is not true.”
Goose, fattened on the stubble left from the harvest, was a popular Michaelmas meal. There is a legend that Elizabeth I was eating goose when she heard that the English had defeated the Spanish Armada, so she decreed that everyone should eat goose at Michaelmas. Graham Jones describes Michaelmas goose fairs in Saints in the Landscape as well as the traditional oat cakes called St. Michael’s bannocks.
Sacred Places
There is also a sacred geography associated with St. Michael. The Michael Line is the alignment of seven Michael shrines from Skellig Michael in County Kerry in Ireland to Mount Carmel in Israel. In between are St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, Sacra di San Michele, Val de Susa, Italy, Monte Sant’Angelo in Gargano in Italy and the monastery of St. Michael on the Greek Island of Delos.
Catholic writer Isabella Stroud says that these shrines have in common the fact that they sit on thresholds, they are tied to monastic stability and they are public memory rather than private cult.
Many of these locations are associated with apparitions of St. Michael. For instance, St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall is a tidal island upon which an apparition of St. Michael appeared to local fishermen in the fifth century and again in 1275 during an earthquake.
St. Michael also appeared four times at Monte Sant’Angelo in Italy and declared the cave to be sacred. Reverend Francis Casey points out, “Crucially, the Archangel declared that the cave required no further consecration—it has been hallowed by his own presence. This is unique in the history of Catholic shrines: no bishop’s consecration, no relic, no martyr’s blood—only the foot of an angel, pressed into the living rock. The faint impression of that foot, preserved beneath the altar, has been venerated ever since.”
St. Michael, Blackberries and Rain
St. Michael is also remembered in British folklore. There is a warning against picking blackberries after Michaelmas, because the Devil is said to have stamped or spat on them after St. Michael cast him from Heaven. This is recorded in sources like Caleb Threlkeld’s Synopsis stirpium Hibernicarum alphabeticae dispositarum (1727) and William Henderson’s Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1813-1891).
St. Michael is also associated with the rain. Richard Freeman Johnson credits the fourth or fifth century Greek Apocalypse of Paul with the development of St. Michael’s legendary role in the medieval period, notably “as a guarantor of rain and by extension agriculture.”
In the Apocalypse of Paul, the souls of the earth whom Christ has not raised cry out for mercy. Michael comes down and takes pity on them. The archangel entreats God to send dew and the rain so that the earth will yield fruits.
In Islamic tradition, hadith (report of the Prophet) also links Michael to the rain.
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Dr. Orton also explores other religious figures in Secrets of St. Cuthbert, Durham’s Patron Saint and Woden, leader of the Wild Hunt. If you’d like to learn more about the history of medieval England, take a look at our intellectual and cultural history course, The Medieval Period. Alternatively, if you’re interested in religion and folklore, take a look at our Anthropology or Religious Studies courses.
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