A CHURCH named the Michalion near Constantinople was already a popular place of healings and pilgrimage in the days of fifth-century historian Sozomen, who testified to one miracle himself: a fellow barrister named Aquiline was cured of a life-threatening fever by a salve of honey, wine and pepper revealed to him during a vision of Michael inside the Michalion.*
At first, each local church had its own date for Michaelmas, but in time the East settled on November 8th, the patronal day of a late fourth-century church dedicated to St Michael in Constantinople itself; in the West it was September 29th, after a now lost Basilica of the Angels in sixth-century Rome.
Goose was the traditional Michaelmas fare in England, while in Scotland, scone-like cakes called Michaelmas struan were baked on Michaelmas Eve using grains of all kinds from the year’s harvest. After a blessing at the communion service next morning, they were given to the poor in memory of the absent or the departed.*
The doctors were horrified, because the spicy nature of the concoction (externally applied as a foot-bath) was according to their system totally wrong for the bilious nature of his complaint. As their medicines had all but killed him already, the learned Counsel was not disposed to heed their advice and ignore St Michael’s. Aquiline was a guest of Sozomen’s when he was writing this part of his history, so the authority could not be better.
The association of St Michael the Archangel with healing and the departed is reflected in St Bede’s history of the English Church and people. He tells us that John of Beverley (?-721) healed a dumb man while staying at a cottage by a graveyard dedicated to the Archangel Michael; and Michael appeared to the terminally ill Wilfrid of Hexham and York, to announce a four year extension on his earthly life courtesy of the Virgin Mary. See our stories The Bishop and the Chatterbox and St Wilfrid’s Debt.