Michael

Also Known As: Hebrew Mikha’el, “Who is like El?”; Greek Michael; Arabic Mika’il, in the Qur’an Mikal; also Saint Michael the Archangel, Michael the Taxiarch, Mikha’el Sar Yisrael
Region/Culture: West Asia/Middle East
Mythos: Jewish Mythology, Christian Mythology, Islamic Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is the first of the archangels, commander of the armies of heaven, and the advocate who argues his people’s case in the court where it is heard.
Role in Mythos: He fights the celestial patrons of hostile nations, throws the dragon out of heaven, and stands at the gate of the heavenly Jerusalem deciding who goes through.
Relation to Humans: He acts on behalf of mortals rather than among them, carrying their prayers upward, pleading for them at judgement, and turning aside disasters they never find out about. On the rare occasions he shows himself it is in a dream or a vision, and usually to tell someone to build him a church.

A wealthy man named Garganus lost a bull on the mountain above the Adriatic. His servants tracked it for days and found it standing at the mouth of a cave near the summit, unhurt and unbothered, and Garganus in his temper shot at it with a poisoned arrow. The arrow turned in the air and came back and hit him. The Latin account of the oldest Michael sanctuary in western Europe opens on that image, and it is a fair summary of how the archangel operates. He does not arrive. He simply makes it impossible to go on pretending he is not there. The town fasted for three days before anyone dared ask what had happened, and then Michael came to their bishop in a vision and explained that the cave was his, the arrow had been a signature, and the people of that mountain were now under his protection.

His name is a question rather than a title. Mikha’el asks who is like El, and the rabbis heard the phrasing echoed in the song at the Red Sea and in the blessing at the end of Deuteronomy, stitching the two half-verses together to find it. Simeon ben Lakish took a cooler view and said the Jews had brought the names of the angels back with them from Babylon. Either way he enters the written record already in uniform. In the tenth chapter of Daniel he is one of the chief princes, arriving to break a deadlock because the celestial patron of Persia has pinned another messenger down for twenty-one days; two chapters later he is the great prince who stands watch over Daniel’s people, and he will stand there through a time of trouble such as never was. There is no description of him anywhere in that book. There is only a rank and a job.

That silence is worth sitting with, because almost everything a modern reader pictures was added centuries afterwards. Jude gives him a line of dialogue and nothing else. Revelation gives him a battle and no face. The scales in which he weighs the dead do not appear in Christian art in any quantity until after the eleventh century, and the earliest examples grow out of Byzantine models that have not survived. The man in bronze plate with the boot on the dragon’s neck is a medieval creation laid carefully over a figure the sources describe only by what he does.

What he does, in the older Jewish material, is serve. The fourth heaven is called Zebul, and it holds the Jerusalem above and its Temple, and in that Temple stands an altar where Michael offers sacrifice as high priest. The Talmudists could not agree on what is burning there. One opinion says fiery sheep. The other, which the kabbalists preferred and which explains a great deal about his later career, says the souls of the just. Set him at that altar in the smoke, working the night shift of the world, and the whole later apparatus of scales and gates and the trumpet at the resurrection follows without anyone needing to invent it.

He is also, relentlessly, a defence lawyer. The rabbinic tradition puts him behind almost every narrow escape in Genesis: pulling Abraham out of Nimrod’s furnace, bringing him the news that Lot has been taken, keeping Abimelech away from Sarah, swapping in the ram at the last second on Moriah. He is the one who wrestles Jacob at the ford, and the Midrash Abkir tells that scene with an unexpected note of panic. As the sky lightens the other angels call up that the hour of the morning chorus has come, and Michael starts pleading with Jacob to let go, frightened that his colleagues will burn him for missing his cue. When he finally strikes the hip he is scolded by God for putting a blemish on a priest, and has to fetch Raphael to heal the man he has just injured.

Then there is the dragon. Revelation stages a war in heaven, Michael and his angels against the dragon and his, and the great serpent thrown down to the earth with everything that follows him. It is the most reproduced image of any angel in Western art. It is also, on the Jewish side, an outgrowth rather than an inheritance: the older story is his long feud with Samael, the accuser of Israel, who grabbed at Michael’s wings on the way down out of heaven and very nearly took him along. The dragon is what that feud turned into once it passed into Christian hands.

His limits are as well attested as his powers, and they are more interesting. At the Exodus, when Uzza the patron angel of Egypt hauled Michael into court to answer for Israel, Michael said nothing at all and God had to conduct the defence in person. Before the destruction of the Temple he tried again. Michael, your nation has sinned, God tells him in the tractate Yoma, and Michael answers, save them for the sake of the good men they still have, and God replies that he will burn Israel and its good men together. The Temple burned. One tradition goes further and has Michael and Gabriel set the fire themselves. Even against the devil, quarrelling over the body of Moses in the passage from Jude, he does not presume to pass sentence and can only manage, the Lord rebuke you. He commands the armies of heaven and he cannot overturn a verdict. Everything he achieves he achieves by asking.

In the Qur’an he appears exactly once, in the second sura, named alongside Jibril in a warning that whoever is an enemy of God’s angels will find God an enemy in return. The commentators read the verse against the Jewish community of Medina, who held Michael in high regard as the lord of Israel while treating Gabriel as a bringer of war. Al-Baydawi preserves an account of Umar walking into the synagogue to ask about it and being told that Michael sits at God’s left and Gabriel at his right and the two are enemies, at which point Umar informed them that an enemy of either is an enemy of God. Islamic tradition hands Mika’il the running of the material world. He administers rizq, the provision God allots to every creature, and with it the rain, the growing things, the weight of water in the air. He and Jibril were the first to bow before Adam and the pair who opened Muhammad’s chest before the night journey. He fought at Badr. And it is said that when hell was created he looked at it once and never laughed again.

The cult travelled fast, and it travelled along water. Constantine is credited with the Michaelion at Sosthenion on the Bosphorus, where Sozomen in the fifth century recorded the healings and dream-visions people received sleeping in the precinct. At Chonae in Phrygia the spring became one of the great pilgrim cures of the eastern church. On Gargano the Lombards took him up within a generation of seizing the peninsula, partly because a warrior in the sky was a shape they already knew from Wotan, and the sanctuary now sits inside a UNESCO listing of Lombard places of power. In 708 he came three times in dreams to Aubert, bishop of Avranches, who kept ignoring him until the archangel burned a hole in his skull; the rock Aubert then consecrated is Mont-Saint-Michel. The prayer most Catholics associate with him is far younger than any of that. Leo XIII composed it after a vision in 1884 and ordered it said after low Mass from 1886, which makes the best known Michael devotion in the world roughly the same age as the safety bicycle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the archangel Michael?

Michael is the chief of the archangels in Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition, first named in the Book of Daniel as one of the chief princes and the guardian of Israel. He commands the armies of heaven, argues his people’s case at judgement, and in Christian tradition throws the dragon out of heaven. His Hebrew name, Mikha’el, is a question meaning “Who is like El?”

Does Michael appear in the Qur’an?

Michael appears in the Qur’an once, as Mikal in sura 2, verse 98, named beside Jibril in a warning that an enemy of God’s angels is an enemy of God. Islamic tradition gives Mika’il charge of rizq, the provision allotted to every living creature, and with it rain and the growth of plants. He is also said to have fought at the Battle of Badr and to have helped purify Muhammad’s heart before the night journey.

What does Michael look like?

No source that introduces Michael describes his appearance. Daniel, Jude and Revelation all report what he says and does and give nothing about his body. The armour, wings, spear and scales familiar from religious art are later additions, and the scales in particular only become common in Christian imagery after the eleventh century.

Why is Michael shown fighting a dragon?

The image comes from Revelation, where Michael and his angels fight the dragon in heaven and cast it down to the earth. In Jewish sources there is no dragon; the equivalent story is Michael’s long enmity with Samael, the accuser of Israel, who clutched at Michael’s wings as he fell from heaven and nearly dragged him down as well. The dragon is what that feud became after it passed into Christian tradition.

Where is Michael venerated?

The oldest Michael sanctuary in western Europe is the cave on Monte Gargano in southern Italy, where a Latin account describes a poisoned arrow turning back on the man who fired it. Other major sites include the Michaelion on the Bosphorus near Constantinople, the healing spring at Chonae in Phrygia, and Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, founded in 708 after Michael appeared three times in dreams to Bishop Aubert of Avranches.