Feast of St Michael and All Angels
Today
is a Christian feast derived from the old pagan Autumn
Equinox feasts. This Christian
saint, Prince of All Angels, is an archangel
who was the leader of the army of God during the Lucifer
uprising, casting Satan out of Paradise. He is one of only two angels named in the Bible, the
other being Gabriel. He is associated with the planet Mercury. Muslims, Christians and
Jews all express devotion to him, and there are writings about him in all
three religions. Considered the guardian angel of Israel, Michael’s name means in Hebrew, ‘Who is like
God?’.
His name was the war-cry of the good angels
in the battle fought in heaven
against the enemy
and his
followers.
Only four times is his name is to be found in Christian Scripture:
§
Daniel 10:13 ff;
Daniel 12 (the Angel speaking of the end of the world with
the Antichrist
saying: “At that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who
standeth for the children of thy people.”);
§
In the Catholic Epistle of St Jude:
(“When Michael the Archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about
the body of Moses …”);
§
Revelation 12:7
(“And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought
with the dragon”). St John speaks of the great conflict at the end of
time, which reflects also the battle in heaven at the beginning of time.
When the Temple of
Jerusalem was sacked in 70 CE,
Michael’s loud voice of was heard from it, saying “let us depart
hence!”, and then an invisible army was heard leaving. Or, so it is said.
The patron saint
of warriors and police is also guardian of the souls of the dead, weighing
their good and bad deeds in his scales, according to Christian tradition. Michael is also the patron of grocers, paratroopers and
radiologists, among many others*. St Michael also guards the body of Eve, according to the
apocryphal Revelation of Moses.
Churches on
hilltops were often named after St Michael. The Prince of All Angels is the
bringer of the gift of prudence. St Michael is represented in religious art
as a handsome youth with wings and armour; he has a stern face and, like St
George, bears a dragon-slaying sword and shield. He might carry scales as
well, to weigh the good and bad deeds of the dead. He might be depicted as
an angelic warrior, fully armed with helmet, sword, and shield (often the
shield bears the Latin inscription: Quis ut Deus), standing over the
dragon, whom he sometimes pierces with a lance. He also holds a pair of
scales in which he weighs the souls of the deceased, or the book of life, to
show that he takes part in the judgment.
Angel of
healing springs
Tradition has it that St Michael in ancient times caused a medicinal spring
to spout at Chairotopa near Colossae, where all the sick who bathed there
and invoked the names of the Trinity
and St Michael, were cured.
St
Michael is said to have created healing springs from the rock at Colossae
(Chonae, the present Khonas, Turkey, on the Lycus River – the springs are still enjoyed at Collosae). The pagans caused
a stream to flow against the sanctuary of St Michael to destroy it, but the
archangel split the rock by lightning to give a new bed to the stream, thus
sanctifying in perpetuity the waters that came from the gorge. (It might be
that in ancient times the natural roof over the river was intact and that it
has eroded away or been shaken down by earthquakes.) The Greeks claim that
this apparition took place about the middle of the first century and
celebrate a feast in commemoration of it on September 6. We note here that
the Apostle Paul
warned the Colossians against worshipping angels (Colossians
2:18).
Also at Pythia in Bithynia and elsewhere
in Asia, hot springs were dedicated to the archangel.
There was a miraculous
spring near Hierapolis in Phrygia. It had come forth after a prophecy at that place by
St. John the Theologian and St. Philip the Apostle that a healing spring
would be there and that Archangel Michael would appear there. Soon after
the spring gushed forth. Many came to be healed. A wealthy pagan in
Laodicea had a mute daughter. Michael urged him in a dream to take his
daughter to this spring. When he arrived there, he found a large
gathering of Christian people. He asked how she should be healed. They
told him: "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit, you must beg the Archangel Michael." He did this and
dipped his daughter in the water and she was healed. They were both
baptized and discipled in the Faith, along with his whole household. He
had St. Michael's Church built over the spring. Later, Archippus settled
there, as a young man. The pagans in the region did not like such power
from a Christian holy place and the pilgrims it attracted. They
constructed a dike to alter the course of a river to flood the church
and the spring. But Archippus prayed. The Archangel Michael appeared and
opened a fissure in the rock a the end of the church. The river plunged
through that rock and the church and spring were saved. That is how the
place got its name; Chonae means plunging.
Miracle
at Chonae (pictured, above
right) Source
At Constantinople, St. Michael was known as the
great heavenly physician. The Michaelion, at Sosthenion, about 80 kilometres
(50 miles) south of Constantinople, was his principal sanctuary where the
sick would sleep and wait for an apparition of the saint. They kept a feast
every June 9. The archangel is said to have appeared to the Emperor Constantine at the Michaelion. Another famous
church was within the walls of the city, at the thermal baths of the Emperor
Arcadius, where the synaxis of the archangel was celebrated on November 8. The archangel was also
associated with miraculous healing waters at the ancient sites of Germia (Yürme,
Turkey), where fish inhabited the healing pool.
The Christians
of Egypt placed their life-giving
river, the Nile, under the archangel’s protection. They adopted the feast
as kept by the Greeks and kept it on November 12. On the twelfth of each
month they celebrate a special commemoration of St Michael, but on June 12,
when the river starts to rise, they keep as a holiday of obligation the
feast of St Michael “for the rising of the Nile”: euche eis ten
symmetron anabasin ton potamion hydaton.
And an angel of the
Lord descended at certain times into the pond; and the water was moved.
And he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the water,
was made whole, of whatsoever infirmity he lay under.
John 5:4
Although we have no evidence from the Bible that the angel
who agitated the water of the Pool of Bethesda was the Archangel Michael,
the story suggests an early Christian recognition of angelic agency in
healing waters. In the early Church, angels were widely venerated all across
western Asia Minor for their healing powers.
*Patronage
includes:
Against temptations, ambulance drivers,
artists, bakers, bankers, banking, battle, boatmen, Brussels Belgium,
coopers, Cornwall England,
danger at sea,
dying people, England, fencing, Germany, greengrocers, grocers, haberdashers, hatmakers, hatters,
knights, Papua-New Guinea,
paramedics, paratroopers, police officers,
radiologists, sailors,
security forces,
security guards,
Sibenik Croatia,
sick people, soldiers, storms at sea, swordsmiths, watermen Source
Of saints and serpents*
Many Christian saints known to have been
associated with dragons; some are dragon-slayers, while some are depicted
in art with dragons for various other reasons, such as a representation of
Satan (dragons
and serpents are quite numerous in the Bible).
They include: Saints Anatolia and Audax,
Andrew
Abellon, Adelphus,
Armel
(Armagillus) of Brittany, Armentaire (Armentarius
of Antibes) of Draguignan, Attracta, Barlaam, Cadoc, Catherine, Celestine I, Clement, Columba, Donatus, Dometius of Phrygia, George,
Germanus, Gilbert of
Caithness, Godehard
of Hildesheim, Guthlac,
Hilarion of Gaza,
Hilary of Poitiers,
John the Divine,
John of Reomay,
Julian of Le Mans,
Juliana of
Nicomedia, Keyne,
Liphardus (Lifard) of Orléans,
Magnus of Füssen,
Marcellus of
Avignon, Marcellus (Marceau)
of Paris, Margaret
of Antioch, Margaret
of Scotland, Martha,
Michael, Paul the Apostle,
Perpetua, Philip, Samson of Dol,
Brittany, Simeon
Stylites, Sylvester,
Theodore Sratelates,
Theodore Tiro, Victor of
Marseille, Virgin
Mary.
Saints associated with snakes or snakebite: Dominic of Sora, Hilary of Poitiers,
Magnus of Füssen,
Patrick, Paul the Apostle,
Pirmin, Vitus.
Michaelmas lore
Michael's feast day,
Michaelmas (September
29 –
pron. 'mikulmus), is traditionally one of the English quarter days, for settling rents and accounts, a custom that is
rarely observed today. Because this was also the
time of the ‘geese harvest’, farmers often settled their landlords’
accounts with a brace of plump birds from spring hatchings.
And
when the tenauntes come
To paie their quarter’s rent,
They bring some fowle at Midsummer,
A dish of fish in Lent,
At Christmas a capon,
At Michaelmas, a goose,
And somewhat else at New-yere’s tide
For feare the lease flie loose.
George
Gascoigne, English
poet, 1577
As early as 1014, the laws of England's King Æthelred (Ethelred)
prescribed a three day fast for all Christians before the feast. In the Middle Ages,
Michaelmas was celebrated as a holy day of obligation, but along with
several other feasts
it has been gradually abolished since the 18th Century.
Michaelmas also used to be the day in England for choosing magistrates and
bailiffs, whereupon the people used to go into the streets and throw cabbage
stalks at each other, in a ritual called the lawless hour, following which the
bailiffs paraded through the town. Local rulers were esteemed in a way
similar to angels, and as Michael was the leader of angels, it was deemed
appropriate to choose leaders on this day.
Election of
the Lord Mayor of London
According
to Anneli Rufus (The
World Holiday Book: Celebrations for every day of the year, Harper
San Francisco, 1994), traditionally the Lord
Mayor is elected not by the populace but by the liverymen of London’s
eighty-one guilds, eg gunmakers, skinners, grocers, needlemakers, mariners,
musicians, and so on. They vote at the Guildhall while beadles with maces
guard the door. The proceedings have been minutely prescribed for centuries,
many of them back to the 1190s when the office commenced. The floor is
strewn with aromatic herbs (formerly to prevent disease). The official
swordbearer places the City Sword on a bed of rose petals to show that the
voting is sub rosa, ie in secret. The symbol of the rose is also associated
with Masonic and Templar traditions.
Michaelmas daisy
“The aster has delighted generations at least as far back as Virgil, who, in mellifluous verse, described its beauty and recounted how aster wreaths were used by the gods and goddesses on temple altars. Perhaps antedating Virgil’s poetry is the ancient Greek legend of Cirgo weeping. As he gazed down from heaven, his tears mixed with stardust and asters were created. The Aster is the same as the Greek word meaning "star," and refers to the flower’s star-like appearance. The ancient Greeks are also said to have used asters to drive away snakes and as an antidote for snake bites and poisons.
“In the late 1600s, asters were mixed into ointments thought to cure the bite of mad dogs. The Shakers used the plant to clear their complexions. In Germany, the Aster is plucked petal by petal to decide if a love is returned or not.”
Source
Michaelmas goose, Michaelmas fairs
It was a day for the eating of geese
(hence ‘Michaelmas goose’), probably because geese are plentiful and
plump in this season. Throughout the
Celtic regions, the end of September marked the end of the harvest
when rural people would have to decide which of their beasts they would feed
over winter, according to their own budget, and which would be preserve as
salted, dried or pickled meat. This was a time of livestock fairs, and also
hiring fairs where farm labourers presented themselves almost as commodities
on show, to gain winter employment after the harvest.
An important English Michaelmas fair was the
Tavistock Goosey Fair held at Tavistock
on Dartmoor, where the
song (in full at foot of this page) was sung:
Te jist a
month cum Vriday nex’
Bill
Champernown an’ me
Us druv a-crost
ole Dartymoor
Th’ Goozey
Vair to zee.
The story was long
told that the reason that people eat goose at Michaelmas is that when Queen
Elizabeth I was dining with Sir Neville Umfreyville on September 29, 1588,
she heard news that the Spanish Armada had been defeated. The queen is said
to have exclaimed “ Henceforth shall a goose commemorate this great
victory”. The problem with this tradition is that the Armada was defeated
in July.
In Ireland, where Michaelmas marked the end of
the fishing season, the beginning of the hunting season, the traditional
time to pick apples and also the time to make cider, St Michael’s feast was a joyful day of celebration.
It used to be the custom for each Irish family to slaughter a sheep on St
Michael’s Day, in commemoration of a miracle once performed by St Patrick
with St Michael’s aid. Irish farmers also gave geese as
gifts to the poor and sold the down as filling for mattresses and pillows.
In Ireland’s County Waterford, this being the end of the tourist season, a
quaint custom rose up that was observed by workers in the holiday trade:
they held a procession to the beach and cast an effigy of the archangel into
the sea, symbolically protesting against loss of earnings.
Across the Irish Sea, on the Isle of Skye in
western Scotland, a cavalcade was held in each parish on St Michael’s Day,
with every person eating a piece of cake known as St Michael’s bannock. In Scotland, parishioners attended the local kirk for a service of thanksgiving for
the good fruits of fields and flocks. During this service, both a lamb and a
bannock were blessed, following which baskets were filled with cakes and
pieces of roast lamb and distributed to the poor. Then the fun began: horse
racing along a beach, with pieces of sun-dried seaweed being used instead of
whips to spur on the horses, which were ridden without saddles or bridles by
their barefoot jockeys.
Ganging day and Taffy on a goose
Michaelmas was
typically a playful time. Once every seven years, St Michael’s Day in
Britain was known as a ganging day,
on which young men went through the parish, jokingly bumping into everyone
they met. Women used to stay at home today, except some girls who used to
drink with the youths and sleep out with them in the fields. Local publicans
were obliged by custom to provide them all with alcohol and plum-cake. In a
Norwich, England, tradition that was unfortunately obsolete by World War II,
vendors sold ritual biscuits, each called Taffy on a goose, in the form of a
man riding on a goose. Throughout Britain and Ireland it was a great time of
feasting, replete with folklore, much like Christmas. For example, finding a ring hidden in a Michaelmas pie meant that one would
soon be married.
St Michael’s apparition
King Louis XI of
France instituted an order commemorating St Michael, because an apparition
of the saint had been seen on a bridge at Orleans when that city was
besieged by the English in 1428. The Feast of the Apparition of Saint Michael commemorates
the 6th-Century appearance of the archangel on Mount Gargano near Manfredonia
in southern Italy.
Michael requested a church built in his honour at the site. Today, Catholic
medals or holy cards with ‘relics’ of St Michael are usually chips of
rock from the cave, or pieces of cloth that have touched it.
Angelic silences
Today being the feast of St Michael and All
Angels, it is timely to note a bit of folklore about those strange silences
that sometimes befall a group engaged in conversation. It used to be said
that an angel had passed by on such an occasion, taking off the conversation
to record in a heavenly tome, to bring out on Judgement Day as evidence
either in favour of or against the speakers.
Michaelitag, Germany
Since 813, St
Michael has been the patron saint of Germany. The German equivalent of
England’s John Bull and America’s Uncle Sam is the German Michael, (deutscher
Michel), who wears a nightcap with a pompom. Today is regarded as
Winter’s beginning and is marked with celebrations, markets and bonfires.
In Germany, St Michael is known as the Angel of Death, so many cemetery
chapels are named for him.
Mikaeli,
Sweden
Mikaeli Day is a magic-filled
seasonal festival. Traditionally, in the evening when taking the animals in for the
night, it was important that one maintain total silence. Nothing should be
said to those one meets and even the jingle of the bell-cow must be silenced.
If one managed that, it promised safeguard against witchcraft during the coming winter.
Bachelors could sit up for wake at a well during this
night, and they might see their future wives. The girls should be observing their dreams; their future
husbands might appear. However, if a girl was to dream that she fell into water,
it means that she is pregnant and will deliver a baby before next Mikaeli Day.
Ghosts and spooks were out tonight, visiting their living relatives. In some
parts of Sweden it was said that there are witches around
St Michael’s Chair
This is an old
beacon turret atop the chapel at St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall (St Michael
is the patron of high places). In an old tradition, whoever of a
newly-married couple first sits on the site will gain the supremacy in the
marriage.
Michaelmas, Italy
Barolini (Barolini, Helen, Festa: Recipes and Recollections of Italian
Holidays, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988) refers to a yellow sponge cake called ‘Margherita’ (daisy) made on Michaelmas.
She records a rhyme of the day, about sleep:
Nature requires five,
Custom gives seven,
Laziness takes nine
And Michaelmas eleven.
National Day of Remembrance for Policeman
Killed
On the Feast of St
Michael, patron saint of police, Australian police officers commemorate
their comrades killed in the line of duty.
The Legend of
St Michael’s Mount, Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, UK
“Both the Giant's [sic] Cormoran, who built and
dwelt in the Mount, and a neighbouring giant named Trecrobben, were cobblers
at need, but they only had one hammer between them. When one wanted it he
would bawl ‘Borrer thammer,’ and the thing would hurtle through the air
from the opposite hill. One day, Cormoran was calling for it, his
unsuspecting and rather short-sighted spouse came to the doorway to announce
dinner, and she it was who received the hammer! Terrible was the Giant's
grief as he rolled her body into the sea, for she was the last of the
Giantesses, and – the pasties she baked were proper beauties!”
Source
Read
more about St Michael's Mount at our Sacred Wells, Springs
and Grottoes page
Feast
of the Apparition of St Michael is May 8.
Today’s
plant
Michaelmas
daisy, Aster
tradescanti
[Aster
spp], was designated today’s plant by medieval monks. It is
dedicated to St Michael.
Nottingham
Goose Fair
This Michaelmas fair held in Nottingham, England on
the first Thursday, Friday and Saturday in October has been celebrated since
1284 when the Charter of King
Edward I (June, 1239 -
July 7, 1307) makes the first recorded reference
to a fair on the Feast of St
Matthew the Apostle (September
21) as already being established in Nottingham. Other Goose Fairs and
Mop Fairs (because servants are being hired) take place in other towns
throughout the early weeks of October. In some places, Runaway Fairs were
held the following week for those servants who disliked their new
situations.
An old story said the name Goose Fair came about after an angler caught a
pike in the River Trent. "Perched high in the air a wild goose aspied
the fish, secured it and carried it off with rod, line and angler attached."
After the goose dropped the angler, uninjured, in the Market Place, the old
story goes that a holiday and the Fair were set up to celebrate.
More than 20,000 geese from the Lincolnshire
Fens would be sold to provide the traditional Michaelmas dish. The fens
are 400 square miles of low-lying salt and fresh water marshes, quicksands,
rivers and bogs. The Romans were the first to recognise the fertility of the
soils and the quality grazing on the fenlands, so constructed a drainage
system from Peterborough to Lincoln to stop upland water from flooding into
the fens each winter. After the Roman occupation ended, over centuries the
fens fell back to wilderness, and when the Viking raiders
during the eighth and ninth centuries, the fens became a refuge for the
Anglo-Saxons of Lincolnshire.
The Viking Danes had a settlement in Nottingham and it might be that they
established a market on the Fens, and this market might have become a fair.
When the calendar
was revised in 1752, omitting 11 days from September, the date of Goose
Fair was switched to October 2 and this remained the starting date until
1875. The fair is officially opened by the mayor ringing a pair of silver
bells after the proclamation has been read in the presence of Nottingham
civic dignitaries.
Nottingham
Goose Fair website
Michaelmas quotes
If you eat goose on Michaelmas Day, you will
not be short of money all year round.
Traditional English proverb
A Michaelmas rot comes ne’er in the pot.
Traditional English proverb
If St Michael brings many acorns, Christmas
will cover the fields with snow.
Traditional English proverb
Michaelmas chickens and parsons’ daughters
never come to good.
Traditional English proverb
Three things that never come to any good:
Christmas pigs, Michaelmas fowls, and parsons’ daughters.
Traditional English proverb
At Michaelmas time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core;
At Christmas time, or a little after,
A crab in the hedge,
And thanks to the rafter.
Traditional English proverb
So many days the moon is old on St
Michael’s day, so many floods after.
Traditional English weather marker
Harvest comes as long before Michaelmas as
dog roses bloom before Midsummer.
Traditional English weather marker
On Michaelmas Day the devil puts his foot on
the blackberries.
Traditional northern Irish proverb
St Michael’s rain does not stay long in
the sky.
Traditional French proverb
If it does not rain on St Michael’s and
Gallus [Oct 16], a dry spring is indicated for the next year.
Traditional English proverb
Roe hunting
season begins at Michaelmas, old England (ends on Candlemas, February 2)
Hare hunting
season begins, old England (until Midsummer)
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The
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How are other ancient gods like Jesus?
The Virgin Mary as Goddess
Sacred wells, springs
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St Michael
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Michaelmas
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