September 24

Praepositus paradisi
The cult of St. Michael in the Latin world up to the 13th century
 

Patrick Henriet
Professor and director programs of study at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section des Sciences Historiques et Philologiques, Paris.

Between 1261 and 1266, in his famous Golden Legend, Jacob of Voragine dedicates a chapter to St. Michael on September 29. He begins by recalling that the meaning of Michael in Hebrew is "Who is like God", Quis sicut Deus. This was a widespread etymology in the average Ages and appears already in St. Jerome. Thus, Michael is, agreement to what Gregory the Great writes in a homily, the one who does what only God can do.

1. Stages of the extension of a universal cult.

In the West, the true beginnings of the cult of St. Michael are linked to the sanctuary of Mount Gargano, located in Apulia. Subsequently, Mount Tumba, located in Normandy and known as Mont Saint-Michel, ensured the spread of the cult of the archangel in northern Europe. Today, after some discussions on the origins of the cult of St. Michael in Europe, Italy has established itself as the initial focus of the cult.

Mount Gargano 

The sanctuary of Apulia dedicated to St. Michael is already active, it seems, in the first half of the fifth century and its appearance is certainly not unrelated to the privileged ties that this region, which at that time depended on Constantinople, maintained with the Eastern world. The legend of Mount Gargano was not written down until the end of the 8th or beginning of the 9th century with the Liber de apparitione Sancti Michaelis in monte Gargano, which recounts three apparitions of St. Michael. In the second, after a victory against the Neapolitans, two footprints of the archangel are found at the entrance of the cave entrance By the time the Liber de apparitione was written, the troglodyte church had already become an important place of pilgrimage.

Mont-Saint-Michel

We know that since the 6th or 7th century there were two oratories on "Mount Tomb". The church was rebuilt in the 11th century with the support of the Dukes of Normandy and completed in 1085. Mont-Saint-Michel, which had been an important pilgrimage site since the 9th century, then became one of the great monasteries of the Western world. In the 9th century or in the first half of the X century, a foundation legend was written, the Revelatio ecclesiae sancti Michaelis, which took several elements from that of Mont Gargano. Mont Saint-Michel claims however its perfect independence from the Italian sanctuary, since the feast of the archangel will be celebrated on October 16, while the feast of Michael, Gabriel and Raphael was celebrated on September 29 and that of Mont Gargano had been fixed for May 8.

A third sanctuary dedicated to St. Michael has tried to acquire a fame comparable to that of the two places of pilgrimage whose origins have been briefly mentioned. This is La Sacra di San Michele, in Piedmont, with construction begun at the end of the X century. A foundation legend written between 1058 and 1061 explains how the archangel chose three privileged places in the West: Mount Gargano, Mont-Saint-Michel and this one.

2. Warrior, psychopomp, judge: a saint with multiple functions.

In connection with the twelfth chapter of Revelation, Michael has always been perceived as a warrior and/or victorious saint. He is sometimes depicted with a shield, as on Lombard coins, but only gradually began to be shown in the posture that would become traditional, that is, piercing the dragon with his spear. The earliest known image of this subject dates from around 800. It is found on an older ivory consular diptych, now preserved in Leipzig. Victorious over the dragon and depicted in military garb, Michael also appeared in numerous battles and can be considered in this sense as one of the main military saints along with St. George and St. James. 

However, if St. Michael was a warrior saint, he was also linked to death and the Last Judgment. He is often called "psychopomp" because he was in charge of transferring souls to the afterlife. This topic is ancient, but only belatedly developed in iconography. In the Revelatio, the text that relates the origins of Mont Saint-Michel, the archangel is described as paradisii praepositus, an expression that I have used in the degree scroll of this communication. Michael is in position of paradise, he is the praepositus. This expression is found in different liturgical texts on May 8.

However, the famous attribute of the scales used to weigh the souls during the Last Judgment appears only belatedly, in Ireland in the X century X cross of Muiredach). It became the rule in the twelfth and especially thirteenth centuries. It has been hypothesized that the multiplication of representations of St. George fighting the dragon may have favored the images of St. Michael in charge of weighing souls.

3. A very particular "saint

To begin with, the transformation of an angel into a saint was not at all obvious, since saints are normally deceased human beings, while angels have never been men and have never died. The cult of angels, in fact, was not something obvious and a series of warnings are known about it, both in Antiquity and during the High average. 

On the other hand, for a long time, although there was a cult of St. Michael, he was perhaps represented more as an allegory of the victory of good over evil than as a true saint. It has been proposed to see in a miniature of the year 1000 the first representation of Michael as a saint. In one of the first codices that was composed and illuminated at Mont Saint-Michel, a certain Gelduinus offers the book to Saint Michael. The latter plunges his spear into the mouth of a diabolical character who perhaps personifies heresy. No scene of dedication of this subject was yet known. Michael thus becomes the person to whom a work can be dedicated because he protects a monastery that bears his name: he has become, in a way, a saint among others.

Insofar as he was considered closer to God, Michael was also closer to heaven than the other saints. For this reason, the custom was established of dedicating to him places located at high altitude, such as the sanctuary on Mount Gargano. When these places of worship were not located on mountains, they were often found, especially since the Carolingian period, in towers or, for the Germanic world, in the porticoes of churches, and even on walls. 

As can be seen, St. Michael was never assimilated to a man and was probably perceived in the average Ages as superior to the vast majority of saints, except perhaps the apostles. In fact, he was often associated with the Virgin, both in texts and in art. 

St. Michael, it was said, was "like God", sicut Deus. The study of his universally diffused cult plunges us, therefore, into the heart of medieval Christianity. The latter, however, was incarnate, based on faith in the Son of God made man. From this point of view, the cult of a disincarnated angel, a creature so far removed from the human condition, could pose a problem. The footprints of Michael's foot on the rock of Mount Gargano made it possible to remedy this problem. In fact, they showed that an archangel could also, if not incarnate, at least participate in the materiality of the world. In a Gnostic text of the second century, the conference proceedings of John, it is said, on the other hand, that Jesus did not leave footprints on the ground when he walked. In this civil service examination between the Gnostic Christ and the medieval Christian St. Michael, lies the difference between a religion of dualistic subject , which radically opposes the material and the spiritual, and an incarnated Christianity that never completely separates the heavenly from the earthly.