Saint Michael the Archangel
Prince of the heavenly host, protector of the Church
Feast · September 29
- Where to pray
- Mont-Saint-Michel, Le Puy-en-Velay, Avranches
- Patron of
- Protector of the Church
Life
Michael is one of the three angels whom the Bible names, and his name means “Who is like God?” The book of Daniel calls him “one of the chief princes” and the great prince who has charge of the people of God (Daniel 10:13; 12:1). The Letter of Jude names him the archangel who contended with the devil over the body of Moses (Jude 9), and the book of Revelation shows Michael and his angels fighting the dragon, who is thrown down from heaven with his angels (Revelation 12:7–9).
The tradition of the Church honors him as the defender of the faithful against the power of evil and as a protector of the Church. Pope Leo XIII composed the well-known prayer to Saint Michael. Blessing a statue of the archangel in the Vatican Gardens in July 2013, Pope Francis said that Michael conquers “because in him it is God who acts.” The Church celebrates Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, archangels, together on September 29.
Sanctuaries of the archangel rose on high places. The oldest and best known in the West, Monte Sant’Angelo on the Gargano in southern Italy, dates from the fifth century and served as the model for later shrines.
The Carolingians and then the Capetians placed the kingdom and its army under his protection, kings such as Saint Louis, Philip the Fair, Charles VI and Louis XI went on pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel, and Louis XI founded the Order of Saint Michael in 1469. Saint Joan of Arc counted him among the voices that guided her. He was long the principal heavenly patron of France, until the vow of Louis XIII placed the kingdom under the protection of the Virgin Mary.
Further reading: Mont-Saint-Michel: A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Archangel’s Mount; Le Puy-en-Velay: A Pilgrim’s Guide to Our Lady of Le Puy; Joan of Arc in France: The Places of Her Life; Reading a Gothic Cathedral: A Guide for Pilgrims.
Cult and relics
According to the tradition of the Mount, Michael appeared in 708 to Saint Aubert, bishop of Avranches, who dedicated a church to him on the rock off the Norman coast on October 16, 709. About 966 Benedictine monks replaced the first canons, and from the thirteenth century the pilgrims to the Mount carried the shell, the horn and the staff as their insignia. Since June 24, 2001, the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem have kept the prayer of the abbey; the brothers are due to leave in the summer of 2027, while the sisters will stay. At Le Puy-en-Velay the chapel of Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe crowns a volcanic needle above the town, and the GR 300 path, planned as a European cultural route of about 560 miles, is meant to link it with Mont-Saint-Michel; for now it is marked from Le Puy to Ébreuil. At Avranches the basilica of Saint-Gervais keeps the skull of Saint Aubert, which the tradition says the archangel touched.
In art
Medieval art shows Michael as a warrior with a sword or a lance and the defeated dragon at his feet, and at the Last Judgment he weighs the souls of the dead and leads them to paradise. In France he weighs souls beneath the feet of Christ on the tympanum of Conques. Raphael’s Saint Michael Vanquishing Satan, painted in 1518 for King Francis I, hangs in the Louvre, and Emmanuel Frémiet’s gilded statue of the archangel has crowned the spire of Mont-Saint-Michel since the 1890s.
Patron of
Protector of the Church; long honored as protector of France and patron of Normandy; also patron of Germany, Belgium and Brussels, and, with Saint Joseph, of Vatican City State.
Where to pray
- Mont-Saint-MichelThe abbey on its rock, with the Office of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem from Tuesday to Sunday, the parish church of Saint-Pierre and the crossing of the bay with a guide.
- Le Puy-en-Velay, Saint-Michel d’AiguilheThe chapel of the archangel at the top of a volcanic needle above the town, reached by a long stair.
- AvranchesThe basilica of Saint-Gervais, whose treasury keeps the skull of Saint Aubert, founder of the Mount.
On our ways: Mont-Saint-Michel, Avranches, Le Puy-en-Velay.