Catholic Encyclopedia - St. Michael the Archangel (2024)

(Hebrew Who is like God?).

St. Michael is one of the principal angels; his name was the war-cry of thegood angels in the battle fought in heaven against the enemy and his followers.Four times his name is recorded in Scripture:

(1) Daniel 10:13 sqq., Gabriel says to Daniel, when he asks God to permit theJews to return to Jerusalem: The Angel [D.V. prince] of the kingdom of thePersians resisted me … and, behold Michael, one of the chief princes, came tohelp me … and none is my helper in all these things, but Michael your prince;

(2) Daniel 12, the Angel speaking of the end of the world and the Antichristsays: At that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth forthe children of thy people.

(3) In the Catholic Epistle of St. Jude: When Michael the Archangel,disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, etc. St. Judealludes to an ancient Jewish tradition of a dispute between Michael and Satanover the body of Moses, an account of which is also found in the apocryphal bookon the assumption of Moses (Origen, De principiis, III, 2, 2). St. Michaelconcealed the tomb of Moses; Satan, however, by disclosing it, tried to seducethe Jewish people to the sin of hero-worship. St. Michael also guards the bodyof Eve, according to the Revelation of Moses (Apocryphal Gospels, etc., ed.A. Walker, Edinburgh, p. 647).

(4) Apocalypse 12:7, And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and hisangels fought with the dragon. St. John speaks of the great conflict at the endof time, which reflects also the battle in heaven at the beginning of time.According to the Fathers there is often question of St. Michael in Scripturewhere his name is not mentioned. They say he was the cherub who stood at thegate of paradise, to keep the way of the tree of life (Genesis 3:24), theangel through whom God published the Decalogue to his chosen people, the angelwho stood in the way against Balaam (Numbers 22:22 sqq.), the angel who routedthe army of Sennacherib (IV Kings 19:35).

Following these Scriptural passages, Christian tradition gives to St. Michaelfour offices:

• To fight against Satan.
• To rescue the souls of the faithful from the power of the enemy, especiallyat the hour of death.
• To be the champion of God's people, the Jews in the Old Law, the Christiansin the New Testament; therefore he was the patron of the Church, and of theorders of knights during the Middle Ages.
• To call away from earth and bring men's souls to judgment (signifer S.Michael repraesentet eas in lucam sanctam, Offert. Miss Defunct. Constituiteum principem super animas suscipiendas, Antiph. off. Cf. Hermas, Pastor, I,3, Simil. VIII, 3).

Regarding his rank in the celestial hierarchy opinions vary; St. Basil (Hom.de angelis) and other Greek Fathers, also Salmeron, Bellarmine, etc., place St.Michael over all the angels; they say he is called archangel because he is theprince of the other angels; others (cf. P. Bonaventura, op. cit.) believe thathe is the prince of the seraphim, the first of the nine angelic orders. But,according to St. Thomas (Summa Ia.113.3) he is the prince of the last and lowestchoir, the angels. The Roman Liturgy seems to follow the Greek Fathers; it callshim Princeps militiae coelestis quem honorificant angelorum cives. The hymn ofthe Mozarabic Breviary places St. Michael even above the Twenty-four Elders. TheGreek Liturgy styles him Archistrategos, highest general (cf. Menaea, 8 Nov.and 6 Sept.).

VENERATION

It would have been natural to St. Michael, the champion of the Jewish people,to be the champion also of Christians, giving victory in war to his clients. Theearly Christians, however, regarded some of the martyrs as their militarypatrons: St. George, St. Theodore, St. Demetrius, St. Sergius, St. Procopius, St.Mercurius, etc.; but to St. Michael they gave the care of their sick. At theplace where he was first venerated, in Phrygia, his prestige as angelic healerobscured his interposition in military affairs. It was from early times thecentre of the true cult of the holy angels, particularly of St. Michael.Tradition relates that St. Michael in the earliest ages caused a medicinalspring to spout at Chairotopa near Colossae, where all the sick who bathed there,invoking the Blessed Trinity and St. Michael, were cured.

Still more famous are the springs which St. Michael is said to have drawnfrom the rock at Colossae (Chonae, the present Khonas, on the Lycus). The pagansdirected a stream against the sanctuary of St. Michael to destroy it, but thearchangel split the rock by lightning to give a new bed to the stream, andsanctified forever the waters which came from the gorge. The Greeks claim thatthis apparition took place about the middle of the first century and celebrate afeast in commemoration of it on 6 September (Analecta Bolland., VIII, 285-328).Also at Pythia in Bithynia and elsewhere in Asia the hot springs were dedicatedto St. Michael.

At Constantinople likewise, St. Michael was the great heavenly physician. Hisprincipal sanctuary, the Michaelion, was at Sosthenion, some fifty miles southof Constantinople; there the archangel is said to have appeared to the EmperorConstantine. The sick slept in this church at night to wait for a manifestationof St. Michael; his feast was kept there 9 June. Another famous church waswithin the walls of the city, at the thermal baths of the Emperor Arcadius;there the synaxis of the archangel was celebrated 8 November. This feast spreadover the entire Greek Church, and the Syrian, Armenian, and Coptic Churchesadopted it also; it is now the principal feast of St. Michael in the Orient. Itmay have originated in Phrygia, but its station at Constantinople was theThermae of Arcadius (Martinow, Annus Graeco-slavicus, 8 Nov.). Other feasts ofSt. Michael at Constantinople were: 27 October, in the Promotu church; 18 June,in the Church of St. Julian at the Forum; and 10 December, at Athaea.

The Christians of Egypt placed their life-giving river, the Nile under theprotection of St. Michael; they adopted the Greek feast and kept it 12 November;on the twelfth of every month they celebrate a special commemoration of thearchangel, but 12 June, when the river commences to rise, they keep as a holidayof obligation the feast of St. Michael for the rising of the Nile, euche eisten symmetron anabasin ton potamion hydaton.

At Rome the Leonine Sacramentary (sixth century) has the Natale BasilicaeAngeli via Salaria, 30 September; of the five Masses for the feast threemention St. Michael. The Gelasian Sacramentary (seventh century) gives the feastS. Michaelis Archangeli, and the Gregorian Sacramentary (eighth century),Dedicatio Basilionis S. Angeli Michaelis, 29 Sept. A manuscript also here addsvia Salaria (Ebner, Miss. Rom. Iter Italicum, 127). This church of the ViaSalaria was six miles to the north of the city; in the ninth century it wascalled Basilica Archangeli in Septimo (Armellini, Chiese di Roma, p. 85). Itdisappeared a thousand years ago. At Rome also the part of heavenly physicianwas given to St. Michael. According to an (apocryphal?) legend of the tenthcentury he appeared over the Moles Hadriani (Castel di S. Angelo), in 950,during the procession which St. Gregory held against the pestilence, putting anend to the plague. Boniface IV (608-15) built on the Moles Hadriani in honour ofhim, a church, which was styled St. Michaelis inter nubes (in summitate circi).

Well known is the apparition of St. Michael (a. 494 or 530-40), as related inthe Roman Breviary, 8 May, at his renowned sanctuary on Monte Gargano, where hisoriginal glory as patron in war was restored to him. To his intercession theLombards of Sipontum (Manfredonia) attributed their victory over the GreekNeapolitans, 8 May, 663. In commemoration of this victory the church of Sipontuminstituted a special feast in honour of the archangel, on 8 May, which hasspread over the entire Latin Church and is now called (since the time of Pius V)Apparitio S. Michaelis, although it originally did not commemorate theapparition, but the victory.

In Normandy St. Michael is the patron of mariners in his famous sanctuary atMont-Saint-Michel in the Diocese of Coutances. He is said to have appeared there,in 708, to St. Aubert, Bishop of Avranches. In Normandy his feast S. Michaelisin periculo maris or in Monte Tumba was universally celebrated on 18 Oct.,the anniversary of the dedication of the first church, 16 Oct., 710; the feastis now confined to the Diocese of Coutances. In Germany, after itsevangelization, St. Michael replaced for the Christians the pagan god Wotan, towhom many mountains were sacred, hence the numerous mountain chapels of St.Michael all over Germany.

The hymns of the Roman Office are said to have been composed by St. RabanusMaurus of Fulda (d. 856). In art St. Michael is represented as an angelicwarrior, fully armed with helmet, sword, and shield (often the shield bears theLatin inscription: Quis ut Deus), standing over the dragon, whom he sometimespierces with a lance. He also holds a pair of scales in which he weighs thesouls of the departed (cf. Rock, The Church of Our Fathers, III, 160), or thebook of life, to show that he takes part in the judgment. His feast (29September) in the Middle Ages was celebrated as a holy day of obligation, butalong with several other feasts it was gradually abolished since the eighteenthcentury (see FEASTS). Michaelmas Day, in England and other countries, is one ofthe regular quarter-days for settling rents and accounts; but it is no longerremarkable for the hospitality with which it was formerly celebrated.Stubble-geese being esteemed in perfection about this time, most families hadone dressed on Michaelmas Day. In some parishes (Isle of Skye) they had aprocession on this day and baked a cake, called St. Michael's bannock.

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