Footprints in stone: Saint Michael the Archangel as a medieval saint, 1000--1500

My dissertation focuses on the devotional cultures of three shrines dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel during the eleventh through fifteenth centuries: Monte Gargano in Apulia, Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, and Saint Michael's Mount in Cornwall. This study traces the transmission of a specific set of cultic traditions from Monte Gargano to Mont-Saint-Michel and in turn to Saint Michael's Mount, considering the significance of subsequent transformations of the archangel's cult at the latter two communities within their local contexts. Although these shrines have often been described as “copies” of one another, the manifestations of Michael's cult at each site were in fact quite different. Furthermore, I argue that Michael's unique status as an archangel-saint, whose angelic nature meant that he could not be venerated through either physical relics or a vita, actually enabled Michael's communities to shape his cult creatively in ways that shrines with human patrons were unable to do. This study emphasizes the unstable and flexible nature of medieval saintly identity; not only did each of these three shrines consciously develop its own unique version of its saintly patron, but the persona of Saint Michael as presented at a single community might undergo dramatic changes over time. My findings suggest that even “universal” medieval saints such as Michael were subject to variation on a local level, and that innovation was valued as highly as inherited tradition in the construction of saintly identity within medieval religious communities.