Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo

The Gargano promontory

The Gargano is an isolated limestone massif jutting into the Adriatic, in northern Apulia, separated from the rest of the Apennines by the great Tavoliere plain. Covered with the ancient Umbra Forest (Foresta Umbra), riddled with karst caves, overlooking the gulf of Manfredonia, this promontory was very early perceived as a place apart, a threshold between earth and heaven.^[8][9]

It was on its flank, on the site of a grotto already laden with sacredness, that the sanctuary was born. The town that grew up around it took the name of Monte Sant'Angelo — "the Mount of the Angel" — and still bears today, engraved in its very place-names, the memory of the apparition that brought it into being.^[10]

A grotto instead of a basilica

The most singular feature of the sanctuary is that it was not first built: it was received. Its nucleus is a natural cavern, the Sacra Spelonca, in which seeps a water reputed miraculous (the stilla). All the architectural genius of the following centuries — stairways, naves, portals, campanile — merely laid out access to this cavity and protected it, never claiming to replace it.^[11][12]

This reversal — the grotto before the church, Heaven before the hand of man — explains the particular devotion attached to the place. People do not come here to admire a building, but to cross a threshold: to go down beneath the earth, towards the rock that tradition says was touched by the Archangel.

The founding story of the sanctuary is handed down by a medieval source, the Liber de apparitione Sancti Michaelis in monte Gargano ("Book of the Apparition of Saint Michael on Mount Gargano"), probably written between the 8th and the 9th century. This text records the memory of three primitive apparitions, to which later tradition added a fourth, that of the plague of 1656.^[13][14] These accounts are not a matter of obligatory belief, but they constitute the birth certificate of the place: it is through them that the grotto became a sanctuary, and to ignore them would be to understand nothing of Monte Sant'Angelo.

The apparition of the bull (c. 490)

Tradition relates that a rich landowner of Siponto, named Elvio Emanuele, lost his finest bull. He found it kneeling at the bottom of an inaccessible Gargano cave. Angered, he shot an arrow to kill it: but the shaft turned back against the archer and wounded him. Troubled, the man told the bishop of Siponto, Saint Lawrence Maiorano (Lorenzo Maiorano), about it.^[15][16]

The bishop ordered three days of prayer and penance. At the end of this fast, Saint Michael appeared to him and revealed the meaning of the prodigy:

"I am the Archangel Michael, and I stand ever in the presence of the Lord." — Saint Michael to the bishop of Siponto, according to the Liber de apparitione (first apparition)^[17][18]

What follows in the same passage — summarised here in paraphrase, not quoted word for word — has the Archangel declaring in substance that he has taken this place and its inhabitants under his protection, of which he makes himself the watcher and the guardian.

The apparition of the victory (492)

A second apparition is connected with the defence of Siponto, then threatened by attackers. While the city prayed, the Archangel is said to have promised and granted victory, a storm of sand and hail scattering the besiegers. The identity of the besiegers varies according to the versions of the story; but the idea remains constant: Saint Michael, prince of the heavenly hosts, protects the city that invokes him.^[19][20] It was this warlike and protective side that would later captivate the Lombards.

The dedication of the grotto (493)

For the third time, Saint Michael intervened at the decisive moment. The bishop, wishing to act prudently, consulted Pope Saint Gelasius I (492–496), who ordered the grotto to be consecrated for Christian worship. But the Archangel appeared anew to announce that he had already consecrated it himself: there was no need for the hand of man to do it. A church was then laid out at the entrance of the cavern, and the dedication was celebrated on 29 September 493 — a date that would remain the great feast of the sanctuary.^[21][22][23]

From this third apparition comes the most striking title of the place: the grotto is "the church that no human hand consecrated". Saint Michael is said to have left in the rock the imprint of a footstep and a red altar. It is this unbuilt character, received from above, that founds the spiritual singularity of the Gargano.

The apparition of the plague (1656)

More than a millennium later, a fourth apparition was added to the file. In 1656, while the plague was ravaging the kingdom of Naples, the archbishop of Manfredonia, Giovanni Alfonso Puccinelli, turned to Saint Michael. On 22 September 1656, the Archangel appeared to him, as Joachim Bouflet relates, assuring him that the scourge would disappear as soon as a triduum had been celebrated in his honour — which came to pass^[24]. The Archangel is also said to have ordered stones from the grotto engraved with the letters "M. A." (Michael Archangelus) to be blessed: the town was, according to tradition, spared the scourge. These "stones of Saint Michael", distributed to pilgrims, remain one of the most characteristic sacramentals of the sanctuary.^[25][26]

Saint Michael, patron of the Lombard warriors

In the 7th century, the Gargano passed under the control of the Lombards of the duchy of Benevento. This Germanic people, recently converted, recognised in Saint Michael — the fighting archangel, leader of the armies of Heaven, conqueror of the dragon — a figure that echoed their own warrior imagination, hitherto attached to the god Wotan. Saint Michael thus became the national protector of the Lombards, and his Gargano sanctuary their dynastic shrine par excellence.^[27][28]

Lombard tradition connects with the Archangel a great military victory won on an 8 May (the sources place here the battle of 663, which secured Lombard control of the Gargano against the Byzantines). Hence the feast of 8 May, the "Apparition on the Gargano", which was added to that of 29 September and is still celebrated.^[29][30]

The duke-builders and the pilgrims' graffiti

The Lombard dukes made the sanctuary a veritable building site: to them are owed, from the 7th to the 8th century, a monumental stairway descending towards the altar, a long corridor of about 40 metres to shelter pilgrims, and the laying out of access to the great grotto.^[31] The famous Lombard crypts, now brought to light, date from this period.

Above all, the walls of the access corridor preserve an exceptional epigraphic treasure: nearly two hundred inscriptions engraved from the 6th to the 9th century, in Latin, Greek and Germanic characters, including at least 97 names of Germanic origin. Runic inscriptions have even been identified there — one of the major epigraphic discoveries of recent decades — proving that pilgrims came from very far away, from northern Europe, to pray in the grotto of the Archangel.^[32]

UNESCO listing (2011)

In recognition of this Lombard memory, the sanctuary of San Michele Arcangelo was listed in 2011 as a UNESCO World Heritage site, within the serial property "The Lombards in Italy: Places of Power (568–774)", which brings together seven monumental ensembles spread across the peninsula. The Gargano figures there as the great sanctuary of Lombard civilisation, a witness to its faith and its art.^[33][34]

The sanctuary as seen today is a stratification of fifteen centuries: to the primitive grotto were added, layer upon layer, the Lombard layout, the 11th-century portal and Byzantine doors, the 13th-century Angevin campanile, and modern alterations. The whole reads like a book of stone.

The Sacra Spelonca and the Celestial Basilica

The heart of the sanctuary remains the grotto itself. One goes down into it by a great stairway; there are found the altar of Saint Michael, the spring of the stilla collected by pilgrims, a marble episcopal throne of the 12th century, and numerous ex-votos. The irregular, dark cavity forms the nave of a "basilica" that no architect ever designed: it is the Celeste Basilica.^[35][36]

At the back of the grotto stands the marble statue of Saint Michael slaying the demon, the work of Andrea Sansovino (1507), in which the Archangel brandishes the sword, image of divine power over evil. It is before it that pilgrims pray today.^[37][38]

The monumental stairway and the Gothic portal

From the upper town, the sanctuary is reached by a monumental stairway plunging towards the grotto. Its entrance portal, topped by two Gothic arches, opens onto the descending corridor. A Latin inscription sums up the whole meaning of the place: "Terribilis est locus iste" — "This place is awesome [it is the house of God and the gate of Heaven]", taken from Jacob's dream at Bethel (Genesis 28).^[39][40]

"How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." — Genesis 28:17, inscription of the sanctuary^[41]

The bronze doors of 1076

The corridor opens onto the famous bronze doors closing the entrance of the grotto. Cast in Constantinople in 1076, they were commissioned and offered by a rich Amalfitan merchant, Pantaleon (Pantaleone), whose family had already endowed other sanctuaries with Byzantine doors. Their twenty-four panels of inlaid silver depict biblical episodes in which angels intervene, in the Old and the New Testament.^[42][43]

An inscription engraved on one of the horizontal bands dates and locates the work with a precision rare for the period:

"This work was completed in the royal city of Constantinople, through the care of the noble Pantaleon, who had it made in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1076." — Inscription of the sanctuary's bronze doors^[44]

The Angevin campanile (1274)

The silhouette dominating the town is not a dome, but a tall octagonal tower: the Angevin campanile, raised from 1274 on the orders of Charles I of Anjou, king of Naples, in thanksgiving for his conquest of southern Italy. The work of the masters Giordano and Maraldo of Monte Sant'Angelo, its octagonal form is inspired by the famous Castel del Monte of Frederick II. It is one of the great landmarks of Apulian Gothic architecture.^[45][46]

Neighbouring buildings: crypts, baptistery and Santa Maria Maggiore

The sanctuary is not limited to the grotto. The complex includes the rediscovered Lombard crypts (long called the "ruins of the Palace"), today integrated into the TECUM museum and its Lombard gallery of more than two hundred sculptures.^[47] Nearby survive the baptistery of San Giovanni in Tumba (damaged in 1942) — where tradition places the tomb of Rothari — and the Romanesque church of Santa Maria Maggiore (11th century), built by Archbishop Leo, witnesses to the medieval wealth of the holy town.^[48][49]

Custody of the grotto has changed hands over the centuries, but has never been interrupted. Originally, the sanctuary fell under the bishops of Siponto, of whom Saint Lawrence Maiorano was the spiritual founder. Under the Lombards, dukes and abbots ensured its protection and enrichment. Through the Middle Ages and the modern era, a chapter of canons served the celestial basilica, then the diocesan clergy of the archdiocese of Manfredonia-Vieste-San Giovanni Rotondo.^[50][51]

Since 13 July 1996, pastoral care of the sanctuary has been entrusted to the Congregation of Saint Michael the Archangel — the Michaelite religious, a congregation of Polish origin devoted precisely to the cult of the Archangel. They are the ones who welcome pilgrims today, provide the celebrations and watch over the grotto.^[52][53]

The Via Sacra Langobardorum

In the Middle Ages, the Gargano was one of the great pilgrimage goals of the West, on a par with Rome, Santiago de Compostela and the Holy Land. Pilgrims climbed up to it by the Via Sacra Langobardorum, the "Sacred Way of the Lombards", the southern branch of the Via Francigena: pilgrims on their way to the Apulian ports to embark for Jerusalem made the detour by the grotto of the Archangel to place themselves under his protection before the crossing.^[54][55]

The Sacred Line of Saint Michael

The sanctuary is also held to be one of the links of the famous Sacred Line of Saint Michael (Linea Sacra di San Michele): an almost straight alignment of great Michaeline sanctuaries which, according to a devotional tradition, connects — from north-west to south-east — Skellig Michael (Ireland), St Michael's Mount (Cornwall), Mont-Saint-Michel (Normandy), the Sacra di San Michele (Susa Valley), Monte Sant'Angelo (Gargano), the monastery of Symi (Greece) and Mount Carmel (Holy Land). The Gargano is its central and oldest link: it was from it that the Western cult of the Archangel radiated northwards.^[56][57]

Popes, saints and crusaders

The list of the Gargano's illustrious pilgrims runs through the whole Middle Ages. Tradition brings there many popes — Gelasius I, Leo IX, Urban II, Alexander III, Gregory X, Celestine V, and much later John XXIII — and a crowd of saints: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bridget of Sweden, Saint Catherine of Siena. The crusaders, before embarking from the neighbouring ports, came to entrust their expedition to the Archangel.^[58][59]

The most famous episode is that of Saint Francis of Assisi. Coming on pilgrimage around 1216, the Poverello is said to have judged himself unworthy to enter the grotto: he stopped on the threshold, prayed, and engraved with his hand the sign of the cross (a tau) on a stone of the entrance, without crossing the threshold of the Sacra Spelonca.^[60][61] This restraint says, better than a long speech, the awesome character that the saints recognised in the place.

Padre Pio and modern pilgrims

The sanctuary has lost none of its power of attraction in modern times. Very close to San Giovanni Rotondo — some twenty kilometres away on the same promontory — it was a place dear to Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, a great devotee of the Archangel, who readily sent his spiritual sons to pray "at the grotto of Saint Michael".^[62] Many pilgrims still combine the two Gargano sanctuaries in a single itinerary today.

On 24 May 1987, Pope Saint John Paul II in turn came on pilgrimage to the sanctuary; his visit is commemorated among the great modern moments of the place, and is depicted on the panels of the contemporary bronze door on the left side.^[63]

The two great feasts

The sanctuary's calendar revolves around two major feasts. On 8 May, the "Apparition of Saint Michael on Mount Gargano" commemorates the Lombard origin of the cult and the first apparition; it is the Gargano's own feast. On 29 September, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel (today of the holy Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael in the Roman calendar) recalls the dedication of the grotto in 493. These two dates draw the greatest crowds.^[64][65]

Attendance and devotion

A place of uninterrupted worship for fifteen centuries, the sanctuary remains one of the great pilgrimages of Apulia and a goal of devotion for the faithful from all over Italy and Europe. In 2014, National Geographic magazine ranked it among the ten most beautiful sacred caves in the world.^[66][67] The complex also houses the TECUM museums and their Lombard gallery, which preserve the artistic memory of the site.

But the essential thing is not in the figures. What the pilgrim comes to seek on the Gargano is the immemorial gesture: going down beneath the earth, by the stone stairway, to the rock that tradition says was consecrated by the Archangel — and there, in the shadow of the Sacra Spelonca, standing for a moment at "the gate of Heaven".

• Saint Michael the Archangel — the figure of the Archangel, his theology and his place in Scripture.
• Padre Pio Shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo — the other great sanctuary of the Gargano, very close by.
• Mont-Saint-Michel — the great Norman Michaeline sanctuary, heir of the Gargano.