Liber VI · Christianity · Chapter I: Angels, Demons & Exorcism
Archangel Michael: Bible, Cult and Legend in Christian Tradition
Archangel Michael in Christian tradition: his place in Daniel and Revelation, the shrines of Chonae, Gargano and Mont-Saint-Michel, Michaelmas and folklore.
The Archangel Michael is the angel whom Jewish and Christian scripture presents as the great prince and defender of God's people, the leader of the heavenly host who casts the dragon out of heaven in the Book of Revelation. In Christian tradition he became the most widely venerated of all angels: protector of the Church, guardian of souls at death, weigher of souls at the Last Judgment and patron of hilltop shrines from Anatolia to Normandy, honoured each year at the feast of Michaelmas.
Michael in the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism§
The name Michael (Hebrew Mi-kha-El) is a question: "Who is like God?" Christian interpreters later read it as a battle cry against the pride of Satan, who wished to be like God. In the Hebrew Bible Michael appears only in the Book of Daniel, a work most scholars date to the 160s BCE. There he is "one of the chief princes" who helps the angel speaking to Daniel against the "prince of Persia" (Daniel 10), and "the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people" who will arise in the time of trouble at the end of days (Daniel 12). The idea behind these verses is that each nation has an angelic patron and that earthly conflicts mirror battles in heaven.
Jewish writings of the Second Temple period developed this picture. In the Book of the Watchers, part of 1 Enoch, Michael is one of the archangels who report the crimes of the fallen Watchers and is sent to bind their leaders. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the War Scroll imagines the final battle of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, with Michael exalted among the angels. Later rabbinic literature makes him the advocate of Israel before God and pairs him with Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel (or Phanuel) as the four angels around the divine throne. Islam also knows him as Mika'il, one of the archangels named in the Qur'an, as described in Angels in Islam.
Michael in the New Testament§
The New Testament mentions Michael twice. The short Letter of Jude refers to "Michael the archangel" disputing with the devil over the body of Moses and declining to bring a railing accusation against him (Jude); the story seems to come from a lost Jewish work, often identified with the Assumption or Testament of Moses. The more famous passage is the war in heaven of Revelation 12: "Michael and his angels fought against the dragon," and the dragon, "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan," was cast down to the earth.
This scene, discussed further in The Book of Revelation, gave Christian art its defining image of Michael as an armoured warrior standing over a dragon or a fallen angel. Many readers also identified Michael as the unnamed archangel whose voice will sound at the resurrection of the dead (1 Thessalonians 4). Some early Christian writers, and later a few Protestant groups such as the Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, went further and identified Michael with the pre-existent Christ; mainstream Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant theology rejects this and treats Michael as a created angel.
The Cult of Saint Michael in Late Antiquity§
Devotion to Michael as a protector and healer took shape in Asia Minor. At Chonae, near ancient Colossae in Phrygia, a church grew up beside a spring believed to heal the sick through the archangel's power. A Greek legend tells how Michael split a rock to divert a flood that pagans had sent against the shrine and its hermit-guardian Archippus, an event the Orthodox Church commemorates on 6 September. Bishops were sometimes uneasy: a canon attributed to the Council of Laodicea (fourth century) forbids Christians to leave the church to "name angels", which many historians read as a warning against unregulated angel cults in this very region.
In the West the decisive event was the apparition on Monte Gargano in Apulia, southern Italy. According to the local foundation legend, usually placed in the 490s, Michael revealed a cave on the mountain as his sanctuary and later aided the people of Siponto in battle. The cave church became a major pilgrimage site, especially under the Lombards, who adopted Michael as a national patron. Another story, told of Pope Gregory the Great in 590, describes Michael appearing above Hadrian's mausoleum in Rome and sheathing his sword as a sign that a plague had ended; the building has been called Castel Sant'Angelo ever since, and a bronze statue of the angel still crowns it.
Mont-Saint-Michel and Medieval Devotion§
According to the foundation account, in 708 Michael appeared three times to Aubert, bishop of Avranches, commanding him to build a church on a rocky island in the bay between Normandy and Brittany. Mont-Saint-Michel grew into a Benedictine abbey and one of the great pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe. It belongs to a wider pattern: Michael was the angel of high places, and churches to him crown the Sacra di San Michele in Piedmont, Skellig Michael off the Irish coast, St Michael's Mount in Cornwall and countless hills where earlier sanctuaries may once have stood.
Medieval Christians gave Michael several roles at once. He was the signifer, the standard-bearer who leads souls into the holy light, as the old Latin offertory for the dead puts it. He was the weigher of souls (psychostasis), shown in countless Last Judgment portals and paintings holding scales while demons try to drag down the pan; the motif has roots in ancient Egyptian and Greek images of judgment, but Christian art made it Michael's own. He was the patron of knights and later of soldiers and police, and the protector of the dying against the devil at the hour of death. The thirteenth-century Golden Legend collected the stories of his apparitions for preachers and readers across Europe.
Michaelmas and Michael in Church Practice Today§
In the Western calendar, 29 September has been Michael's feast since at least the sixth century, when it marked the dedication of a basilica to him on the Via Salaria near Rome. In England, Michaelmas became a quarter day on which rents fell due and servants were hired, and it gave its name to the autumn term at Oxford and Cambridge and to sittings of the law courts. After the Roman calendar reform of 1969, Catholics celebrate Michael, Gabriel and Raphael together on that day; Anglicans and Lutherans keep it as the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. The Orthodox commemorate the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the other Bodiless Powers on 8 November, the "eighth" referring, in one traditional explanation, to the nine orders of angels described in Angels, Demons and Exorcism.
In 1886 Pope Leo XIII added to the prayers said after Low Mass a short prayer asking Saint Michael to "defend us in battle" against the wickedness and snares of the devil. Its recitation after Mass lapsed in the 1960s, but John Paul II recommended it again in 1994 and many parishes have revived it. The prayer is also connected with exorcism: Leo XIII published a longer exorcism text addressed to Michael, and in the rite revised in 1999 the archangel is still invoked as defender. Michael is a patron of the sick, of soldiers, paratroopers and police, and of the dying; in popular Catholic and Orthodox piety he is often portrayed alongside Guardian Angels as the protector of individual believers.
Michael in Folk Belief and Western Esotericism§
Folk custom attached many sayings to Michaelmas. In Britain it was believed that blackberries should not be picked after 29 September because the devil, cast out of heaven on that day, had landed in a bramble bush and spoiled the fruit; a goose was the traditional Michaelmas dinner, and in the Hebrides a special bannock, the struan Micheil, was baked for the feast. Charms and healing prayers in many parts of Europe invoke Michael against fever, storms and evil spirits, as described in Folk Christianity.
Learned magic drew on the same figure. Medieval and Renaissance texts on angels made Michael the ruling angel of the Sun and of Sunday; this system, found in the Heptameron attributed to Peter of Abano and in Agrippa, is traced in Planetary Angels in Agrippa and the Heptameron. In the nineteenth-century Golden Dawn, Michael is one of the four archangels named in the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, assigned in that system to the south and to fire. These are modern esoteric attributions rather than church teaching, and Christian theologians have generally regarded them with suspicion; the wider history is traced in Angel Magic.
Frequently asked questions§
Is Michael an angel or a saint?§
Both terms are used. Michael is an angel, not a human being who was canonised, but churches call him "Saint Michael" because "saint" means holy one and the Church venerates him in its calendar. His title "archangel" means chief or ruling angel.
When is the feast of Saint Michael?§
In the Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran calendars his feast, Michaelmas, falls on 29 September, shared since 1969 in the Catholic calendar with Gabriel and Raphael. Orthodox churches celebrate the Synaxis of the Archangels on 8 November and the miracle at Chonae on 6 September.
Why is Michael shown weighing souls?§
Medieval Christians believed Michael would assist at the Last Judgment and accompany the souls of the dead. Artists showed this with a pair of scales, an image with ancient Egyptian and Greek precedents that became one of the most common features of Romanesque and Gothic judgment scenes.
What is the Prayer to Saint Michael?§
It is a short Catholic prayer composed under Pope Leo XIII in 1886, asking Michael to defend the faithful against the devil. It was said after Low Mass until the liturgical changes of the 1960s and remains a popular private and parish devotion.
Sources and further reading§
- The Golden Legend — Jacobus de Voragine, c. 1260
- Saint Michael the Archangel in Medieval English Legend — Richard F. Johnson, 2005
- Michael and Christ: Michael Traditions and Angel Christology in Early Christianity — Darrell D. Hannah, 1999
- Subtle Bodies: Representing Angels in Byzantium — Glenn Peers, 2001
- Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages — David Keck, 1998
- Angels: A History — David Albert Jones, 2010