St Michael
- roystoncave
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
The feast day of St Michael is often observed on the 29th September, especially in western church traditions. This is the date of the dedication of the Basilica of St Michael, Monte Gargano in Rome by Pope Boniface IV in 610. The date also coincides with when the sun is in Libra, the zodiac sign of justice, when the hours of light and dark are evenly balanced.
But who was St Michael, and why may he have a connection with Royston cave?
Sainthood is a formal status for a person usually earned after death, through the process of canonisation by the church. As one of the three Archangels, alongside Gabriel and Raphael, Michael is a heavenly being, and not a human. He is therefore not formally canonised but is revered by the church as a celestial being with immense significance.
In Hebrew, Michael means ‘who is like God?’, and he is mentioned in early Jewish writings, the Old and New Testament as well as the Qur’an texts. There are four main roles associated with this angel.
He is seen foremost as the leader of the army of God who threw Satan from paradise and will achieve ultimate victory during the final battle.
In the last hour of death, he is present to offer comfort and protection and gives each person the chance to redeem themselves before passing.
He is also a psychopomp, a spiritual guide who assists souls to the afterlife. The souls would be weighed, and their merits and judgments, based on their deeds during their time on earth, would tip the scales towards heaven or hell. He is often shown in iconography holding a flaming sword in his right hand to defend souls from demons that may try to attack them on their journeys.
St Michael is also seen as the guardian and defender of the church, the angel of the Blessed Sacrament and guardian angel of the pope.
St Michael supplanted older Greco-Roman gods and the Celtic sun god Bel and inherited many of the sites previously associated with Apollo and Hermes who were also considered to be psychopomps and were conductors of souls into the afterlife.
The popularity of St Michael grew during the Middle Ages and there were many visions that inspired the building of churches that were dedicated to him.
In 590 the plague of Rome was apparently eased after Pope Gregory, who was a canon at the time, organised a procession to beg God to withdraw the pestilence. Above the tomb of Emperor Hadrian, he saw a vision of St Michael, holding aloft his burning sword. The epidemic ceased and was seen as a sign that God’s wrath had abated. The tomb is now called the Castel Sant’Angelo, the Castle of the Holy Angel.
He also appeared three times to St Aubert, the bishop of Avranches in Normandy in 708, who declared he was instructed by St Michael to build a church on an island, now known as the Mont Saint-Michel.
On the other side of the Channel, St Michael’s Mount off the coast of Cornwall, a similar conical, tidal island, was also the scene of various visions of the saint. Fishermen were forewarned by St Michael of the dangers of the treacherous rocks and were subsequently guided safely to shore. A religious community was soon established, and it later transformed into a Benedictine abbey.
Skellig island, which sits of the western tip of Ireland, was dedicated to St Michael after he had appeared and aided St Patrick in casting out the last of the snakes from Ireland.
The prevalence of shrines and holy places dedicated to St Michael, following these visions, resulted in pilgrimages from all over Europe. These routes became established, and the alignments have now interconnected to form two ley lines attributed to St Michael. The Sword of St Michael line starts in Israel, and passes through Italy, France, England and Ireland, while the separate St Michael ley line is wholly within England.
Dowsers investigating earth energies have discovered that old, scared sites emanate powerful forces that connect with others within the landscape. This practice is an intuitive practice and subjective, however it has been shown that if a tolerance of 500m is allowed either side of the St Michael line in England, 63 churches fall within the boundary. Of these, 10 churches are dedicated to St Michael or St George (his earthly counterpart) and 23 to St Mary (another ley line that meanders and weaves around the St Michael line).
In Royston it has been suggested that the St Michael line passes through the alter of St John’s Church and changes direction at the 13th century font, then heads off towards the cave. The St Michael and Mary currents apparently then cross within the cave and create a node.
On the southern wall of the cave there is a carving of a military figure, and was first attributed to being King Henry II, by both William Stukeley and Joseph Beldam, then in the last few decades it has been generally regarded as being St George. However, it has also been suggested that it could instead be a portrayal of St Michael. The sword that rises from his right hand, has balanced on its point a row of 13 figures. The central figure is thought to be Jesus, with the twelve disciples divided either side. Could this have been a simple device for demonstrating the role of St Michael weighing souls? The concentric circles next to the carving have also been suggested as being a possible representation of the place where the St Michael ley line enters the cave.
He was venerated by the Knights Templar, and other similar orders, and is still the patron saint of the military, police officers and firefighters. The association with the scales and balance means he is also the patron of bakers, grocers and lawyers.
© Royston Cave
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References
Beamon, S.P. (1992). Royston Cave: Used By Saints or Sinners? Baldock: Cortney Publications.
Beldam, J. (1898). The Origin and Use of the Royston Cave. Fourth Edition. Royston:Warren Bros.
Houldcroft, P.T. (2008). A Medieval Mystery at the Crossroads. Royston: Royston and District Local History Society.
Electronic reference
Romain Doucet, "Romain Doucet, Sous les ailes de l'archangel. Saint Michael to the Test of History (France, xv e-xviie siècle)", Perspectives médiévales [Online], 45-46 | 2024, published online on 31 December 2024, consulted on 01 September 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/peme/61193; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/13biy
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