Saint Michael on the heights: from the Gargano to the Mont, and yesterday's “line”

An archangel without a tomb

Michael is not a saint like the others: he never lived, he never died, he left neither body nor tomb. The Bible names him five times — in Daniel, where he is “the great prince” who watches over the chosen people, in the Epistle of Jude, where he contends with the devil for the body of Moses, and in Revelation, where “Michael and his angels” cast the dragon down from heaven. The Christians of the East were the first to honour him, at Chonai in Phrygia and near Constantinople; in Rome, the feast of 29 September, still the archangel's feast throughout the West, commemorates the dedication of a basilica on the Via Salaria in the 5th century. This cult is singular in that it attaches itself to no relic: where a bone cannot be shown, a place is shown. And because Michael is the angel who comes down and goes back up, the one who weighs souls and leads them, his places would be summits, caves, sea-beaten rocks — places where heaven touches earth.