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St. Michael the Archangel

Scripture puts him at the head of the angels who fight the dragon. The Church asks him to fight the devil, to guard people at the hour of death, and to bring souls to judgment.

Feast September 29Phrygia and Monte Gargano, the earliest centres of his cult

Canonized

THESE FIELDS ARE NOT UNKNOWN. THEY DO NOT APPLY. Michael is an angel, not a human being: he was not born, he did not die, he was not converted, and he had nothing to overcome. born, died, age_at_death_exact, convert and struggles are therefore all null in this record — not because the sources are silent, and not because nobody has looked, but because there is nothing of that kind to find. DO NOT FILL THEM IN. If a future reader finds a date attached to him anywhere, it will belong to a shrine, an apparition or a feast, and it belongs in the summary or the source notes, never in these fields. The one date in this record is his feast, and that is a date in the Church's calendar rather than in a life.

Michael is an archangel, not a man, and his name is a question rather than a description: it means "Who is like God?" — which is what the good angels are said to have cried in the battle against the enemy.

Scripture names him four times. Twice in Daniel, where he is "one of the chief princes" and then "the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people." Once in the letter of Jude, disputing with the devil over the body of Moses. And once in Revelation, where "there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon." That is the whole of what Scripture says about him by name.

Out of those passages the Church gave him four jobs: to fight Satan, to rescue people from the enemy at the hour of death, to defend God's people, and to bring souls to judgment. Where he ranks among the angels has never been settled — some of the Greek Fathers put him above all of them, and Thomas Aquinas put him at the head of the lowest choir.

The surprise is what he was first asked for. The earliest Christians who honored him, in Phrygia, did not go to him for victory in war; they went to him for their sick, and hot springs across Asia Minor were dedicated to him as a healer. The soldier came later, with the shrine on Monte Gargano.

He keeps 29 September with Gabriel and Raphael. In 2013 Francis consecrated Vatican City State to him.

Patron of

  • Vatican City Stateformal

State of life

archangel

Themes

protection · courage under pressure · spiritual battle · trust

St. Michael the Archangel (Catholic Encyclopedia)

  • FIVE FIELDS IN THIS RECORD ARE INAPPLICABLE RATHER THAN UNSOURCED, AND THE DIFFERENCE MATTERS. born, died, age_at_death_exact, convert and struggles are null because Michael is not a creature with a life, not because the search came up empty. An unsourced field invites someone to go and find the source; an inapplicable one has nothing to find. date_note says this in terms so that a reader who has never seen this note still understands why the fields are empty. The corpus already had one case of this shape — John the Baptist carries convert: null because the category does not fit him — and Michael is that problem across five fields at once.
  • THREE FIELDS WHERE THE SCHEMA HAS NO RIGHT ANSWER FOR AN ANGEL, AND WHAT WAS DONE. (1) status: the enum offers only canonized or beatified, and Michael was neither — he was never a human being put through a process. He is recorded as canonized with status_basis pre_congregation and a null year, which is exactly the treatment Peter, Paul, Joseph and John the Baptist already receive for the same underlying reason: the Church venerates them as saints without any act having made them so. (2) era: he has no era. 'early' records when his cult is first attested, not when he lived. (3) region: an angel has no native place. The field names the two earliest centers of his cult rather than a birthplace, so that it cannot be read as one.
  • HISTORICITY IS 'documented', AND THAT WORD IS DOING AN UNUSUAL JOB HERE — see historicity_note. It is not claiming biographical records. It is recording that his scriptural attestation is fixed and that his cult is traceable to the fourth century. The alternative values would both mislead: 'legendary' would read as doubt cast on Scripture, and the field's own docstring warns that the rating is a statement about surviving sources rather than about the saint.
  • THE HOLINESS LINE STRETCHES ITS FIELD AND THIS IS THE FLAG. That field asks what a person DID that made them a saint, in concrete actions. Michael did not become a saint by doing anything, and there are no deeds to report. The line therefore gives the four offices Christian tradition assigns him, which the Catholic Encyclopedia sets out as a list: 'To fight against Satan. To rescue the souls of the faithful from the power of the enemy, especially at the hour of death. To be the champion of God's people... To call away from earth and bring men's souls to judgment.' That is what he is asked to do rather than what he is recorded as having done, and no other record in this corpus is written that way.
  • Catholic Encyclopedia (Herbermann, 1907-1913), 'St. Michael the Archangel' by F. Holweck — source of the Hebrew 'Who is like God?', 'his name was the war-cry of the good angels', the four scriptural passages quoted in the summary, the four offices, the disagreement over his rank ('Regarding his rank in the celestial hierarchy opinions vary'), and the whole of the cult history: the medicinal spring at Chairotopa, the springs at Colossae, the Michaelion at Sosthenion where 'the archangel is said to have appeared to the Emperor Constantine', the Egyptian feast for the rising of the Nile, the Roman basilica on the Via Salaria, and Monte Gargano. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10275b.htm
  • THE HEALER CAME BEFORE THE SOLDIER, WHICH IS THE MOST SURPRISING THING IN THE ARTICLE AND IS WHY THE SUMMARY CARRIES IT. Catholic Encyclopedia: 'The early Christians, however, regarded some of the martyrs as their military patrons... but to St. Michael they gave the care of their sick. At the place where he was first venerated, in Phrygia, his prestige as angelic healer obscured his interposition in military affairs.' The warrior image most people arrive with is the later one, restored at Monte Gargano, 'where his original glory as patron in war was restored to him'.
  • Francis, address at the blessing of the new statue of St Michael the Archangel in the Vatican Gardens, 5 July 2013. It supplies the patronage carried above and the gloss on his name: 'Michael — which means: "Who is like God?" — is the champion of the primacy of God, of his transcendence and power.' IT IS ONE OF TWO PAPAL DOCUMENTS HELD FOR HIM, and the other is cited below: Benedict XVI's homily at episcopal ordinations on the feast of the Archangels, 29 September 2007, which treats all three archangels in turn and gives Michael two roles from Scripture. Between them they are the whole of the modern papal material held here; the encyclopedia article is the third document and is from 1911. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/july/documents/papa-francesco_20130705_statua-san-michele.html
  • Benedict XVI, homily at episcopal ordinations on the feast of the Archangels, 29 September 2007 — ADDED AFTER THIS RECORD WAS FIRST WRITTEN, when it was fetched for Gabriel and Raphael and turned out to treat all three in turn. It gives Michael two roles: the champion of the primacy of God against the enemy, and, 'according to Scripture', 'that of protector of the People of God'. Nothing in this record was changed to accommodate it; it corroborates what the encyclopedia and Francis's address already carried. https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20070929_episc-ordinations.html
  • THE HOLINESS LINE STATES AN OFFICE RATHER THAN A DEED, AND THAT IS NOW A NAMED CARVE-OUT IN THE FIELD'S DOCSTRING RATHER THAN AN UNRESOLVED STRETCH. When this record was written it was the only case of its kind and the stretch was simply flagged. Gabriel and Raphael arrived in the next batch, the question was decided, and the docstring now carries the exception with an explicit trigger: the subject has NO BIOGRAPHY AT ALL. Thin sources on a human being do not qualify.
  • HE HAS NO FEAST OF HIS OWN. The current calendar gives 29 September to all three archangels together — it prints 'Ss Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels' — and the celebration is a FEAST, a higher grade than the memorials most saints in this corpus carry. Universal Calendar, Liturgy Office of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Calendar/Universal/SepUC.shtml
  • 8 MAY IS A TRAP AND IS NOT IN THIS RECORD — THE FIFTH INSTANCE OF THIS FAILURE MODE IN THE CORPUS, after Catherine of Siena's 30 April, the 17 September stigmata commemoration under Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi's pre-reform dating, and Monica's 4 May. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes a second feast at length: 'a special feast in honour of the archangel, on 8 May, which has spread over the entire Latin Church and is now called (since the time of Pius V) "Apparitio S. Michaelis"', commemorating the Lombard victory at Sipontum in 663. It is pre-1969 and is gone. Scope: the held May calendar file was searched for an entry on the 8th; there is none for Michael.
  • No patronage of soldiers, of police or of the sick is recorded, though all three are widely attached to him. All three documents held for him were searched for 'patron' when this was checked, in August 2026. Benedict XVI's homily of 29 September 2007 does not use the word. Francis's address of 5 July 2013 uses it once, for the patronage of Vatican City State carried above. The Catholic Encyclopedia uses it four times and NOT ONE OF THE FOUR IS AN ACT OF DESIGNATION. It says 'he was the patron of the Church, and of the orders of knights during the Middle Ages' — past tense, describing medieval devotion. It says that at Monte Gargano 'his original glory as patron in war was restored to him'. It says 'In Normandy St. Michael is the patron of mariners in his famous sanctuary at Mont-Saint-Michel in the Diocese of Coutances' — present tense, but an encyclopedia reporting what a place and a trade have long honored him as, with no instrument named and no date given, which is the same kind of statement that leaves Nicholas's field empty. And the fourth belongs to other saints altogether: 'The early Christians, however, regarded some of the martyrs as their military patrons: St. George, St. Theodore, St. Demetrius, St. Sergius, St. Procopius, St. Mercurius, etc.; but to St. Michael they gave the care of their sick.' That last clause is where the sick come in, and giving someone the care of your sick is what people asked of him, not a title conferred on him.
  • Vatican City State was consecrated to him by Francis on 5 July 2013, at the blessing of the new statue in the Vatican Gardens, in the sentence the whole address builds to: 'In consecrating the Vatican City State to St Michael the Archangel, let us ask him to defend us from the Evil One and cast him out.' The same address consecrates it to St Joseph in the same breath — 'Dear brothers and sisters, let us also consecrate Vatican City State also to St Joseph, the guardian of Jesus, of the Holy Family' — so both consecrations happened on one day, in one address.