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...the cave, down some steps, is hallowed by the miraculous apparition
of the Archangel Michael... you go in through a metal door: on the
altar behind some iron railings is the statue, covered in flowers and
crowned with jewels, of the celestial spirit who slew the Dragon from
Hell... It is said that in the silence of the night angels may sometimes
be heard singing, symphonies from paradise.
G B Pacichelli, “Il Regno di Napoli in Prospettiva”
DEVOTION, FIRST PAGAN and then Christian, created the shrine of Monte Sant’ Angelo. The mountain is inland, where the inhabitants were famous for their secretiveness and savagery, even among those whom Gregorovius called “the wild men of the Gargano.” The cave of St Michael has an eerie atmosphere, and after his visit here during the 1680s the Abate Pacichelli wrote of dread mingling with reverence. In ancient times it was the home of the Oracle Calchas, once a Greek soothsayer, whose ghost appeared in dreams. Those consulting him slept outside, wrapped in the fleeces of black rams.
In 493 AD a nobleman searching for a lost bull found it hiding in the cave. The bull refused to emerge, so he shot at it, but the arrow turned in flight, wounding him. The Bishop of Siponto was informed and, according to “The Golden Legend”, had a visitor soon after. “The man was hurt on my account”, he told the bishop. “I am Michael the Archangel and I want this place held in reverence. There must be no more shedding of bull’s blood.” Michael is commander of the Heavenly Host, thrusting down to Hell Satan and all wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.
The bull in the story is significant. Gregorovius, who rode up here in 1874, suspected that devotion to St Michael had been superimposed on a bull-cult. Ninety years later, a mithraeum (caves of worship used by the followers of the ancient religion, Mithraism) was discovered beneath the floor, where once the blood of bulls was sacrificed to the sun-god Mithras.
Not until Michael had been seen three times did Monte Gargano become his shrine. Shortly after his first appearance he came to save the citizens of Siponto from a barbarian army. The third vision was to the bishop at the moment when he was about to consecrate the cave. Michael announced that he had already done so, and an altar was found inside, covered by a vermilion cloth with the archangel’s footprint on its altar stone.
The archangel in armour who escorted souls to Heaven through swarms of ravening demons, and frightened even the Devil himself, was venerated throughout medieval times with the dread felt by Pacichelli. Over the shrine’s entrance are the words: “Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est, et porta coeli” – “This place is fearsome: here is the house of God, and the gate of Heaven.” Even today, you feel in the grotto that you are in the presence of some overwhelming, elemental force.
The Byzantine Emperor Constans II came in 683 with rich gifts, lost after the Emir of Bari sacked the shrine two hundred years later. When the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II prayed here in 1022, not only St Michael but Christ appeared in a blaze of light, the archangel presenting a missal to the Lord. Kissing the book, Christ told Michael to give it to the terrified Henry. Having lifted the emperor up to kiss the missal, the archangel threw him to the ground, laming him for life.
In 867 Bernard the Wise, monk of Mont St Michel in northern France, saw the shrine just before its destruction by Saracens. His own monastery was on a rock, where a bull had been discovered in a cave by a bishop, whom the archangel then ordered (this time in a dream) to build a sanctuary. This very similar story helps explain why Norman pilgrims started coming to Monte Sant’ Angelo.
Bernard says that in his day the ground above the shrine was covered by oak trees. In 1274, however, a great white campanile (bell tower) was built. After going down fifty-five steps cut in the rock, you are confronted by jade-green doors of bronze inlaid with silver, bearing panels with scenes from the Bible; they were made at Constantinople in 1076 and paid for by Pantaleone, merchant of Amalfi. Inside the cave church, the names of pilgrims down the centuries are scratched on its walls and floors, some written in the earliest runes known in Italy. During the Crusades, pilgrims often drew a hand or a foot before leaving for the Holy land, vowing to draw its pair on returning safely. Holy water said to cure anything is still distributed in a little silver bucket from a well behind Michael’s statue.
Keppel Craven, who came in 1818, writes “The cave... is low but of considerable extent, branching out into various recesses on different levels, so that the steps are frequent, and the surface is rugged, irregular, and very slippery, from the constant dripping of the vaults... A few glass lamps, suspended from the rock, which have replaced the silver ones of richer times, cast a faint glimmer of uncertain light.” Even Craven was impressed by the pilgrims moving like shadows in the darkness and the hum of prayer.
“The men walked with the air of conquerors”, wrote Janet Ross of the pilgrims who she saw in 1888: “Their dress was jaunty and picturesque – short brown velveteen jackets, brown cloth waist-coats with bright buttons, black velveteen breeches, and black worsted stockings tied under the knee with a bunch of black rib-bons; while round their waists were dark blue girdles. This costume was crowned with a dark-blue knitted cap, with a sky-blue floss-silk tassel worn quite on the back of the head.”
As for the cavern itself, “When we saw it the irregular rock above the high altar was lit by hundreds of wax candles, whose flickering light seemed to make the statue of St Michael, about three feet high with pink cheeks and flaxen curls, move its large white wings, tipped with gold. A priest told me it was a wonderful work of art; he could not remember whether Donatello, Raphael or Michelangelo made it, but probably the latter, ‘because of the name’.”
“A wretched morning was disclosed as I drew open the shutters – gusts of rain and sleet beating again the window-panes”, wrote Norman Douglas, recalling how he set out to visit Monte Sant’ Angelo from Manfredonia, just before the Great War. “I tried to picture to myself the Norman princes, the emperors, popes, and other ten thousand pilgrims of celebrity crawling up these rocky slopes – barefoot – on such a day as this. It must have tried the patience even of St Francis of Assisi, who pilgrimaged with the rest of them and, according to Pontanus, performed a little miracle here en passant [in passing], as was his wont.”
No friend to the Catholic religion, he was less than charitable about the shrine and its pilgrims:
Having entered the portal, you climb down a long stairway amid swarms of pious, foul clustering beggars to a vast cavern, the archangel’s abode. It is a natural recess in the rock, illuminated by candles. Here divine service is proceeding to the accompaniment of cheerful operatic airs from an asthmatic organ; the water drops ceaselessly from the rocky vault on to the devout heads of kneeling worshippers that cover the floor, lighted candle in hand, rocking themselves ecstatically and droning and chanting. A weird scene, in truth... It is hot down here, damply hot, as in an orchid-house. But the aroma cannot be described as a floral emanation: it is thebouquet, rather, of thirteen centuries of unwashed and perspiring pilgrims... in places like these one understands the uses, and possibly the origin, of incense.
Douglas’s pilgrims sound little different from those seen by Mrs Ross: “travel-stained old women, understudies for the witch of Endor; dishevelled, anaemic and dazed-looking girls; boys too weak to handle a spade at home, pathetically uncouth, with mouths agape and eyes expressing every grade of uncontrolled emotion – from wildest joy to downright idiocy... And here they kneel, candle in hand, on the wet flags of this foetid and malodorous cave, gazing in rapture upon the blandly beaming idol, their sensibilities tickled by resplendent priests reciting full-mouthed Latin phrases, while the organ overhead plays wheezy extracts from ‘La Forza del Destino’.”
“The way down the great flight of steps was... lined with the lame, the maimed, and the afflicted, all of whom exhibited their wounds with a dreadful and almost brutal insistence which was more than one could bear”, shuddered Edward Hutton in the early 1900s. “But the scene in the church beggars description. The mere noise was incredible. Mass was being sung at the high altar, but all around us other devotions were in progress, litanies and prayers were being chanted, and moans and groans rising on all sides. It was impossible to remain for long. Our curiosity seemed more shameful than any superstition.”
None of the travellers really understood why the pilgrims had come. “Their existence is almost bestial in its blankness”, was Norman Douglas’s opinion. “For four months in the year they are cooped up in damp dens, not to be called chambers, where an Englishman would deem it infamous to keep a dog – cooped up amid squalor that must to be seen to be believed; for the rest of the time they struggle, in the sweat of their brow, to wrest a few blades of corn from the ungrateful limestone. Their visits to the archangel – these vernal and autumnal picnics – are their sole form of amusement.” But this does not tell us what brought them to the shrine.
The pilgrims saw him as intercessor and defender. At his feast-days on 8 May and 29 September the choir sang “Holy archangel Michael, be our shield in battle; so we shall not be lost at the dread Day of Judgement.” First among the archangels, he was greater than the saints; after God and the Holy Virgin, they were accustomed to confessing their sins to him when seeking absolution. Night and day he defended them against the onslaught of the Devil and his demons, giving patience to bear trials and sorrows. They also firmly believed that St Michael could save them from natural disasters – from droughts, crop-failures, cattle-murrains and earthquakes, from famine and pestilence. He would protect them too against wicked landlords and their cruel stewards, against brigands and house-breakers; they hung a picture of this ultimate guardian angel in their homes to ward off burglars – many of them still do. And, understandably, in that eerie, awe-inspiring cave they felt closest to him.
During his visit to Monte Sant’ Angelo, Norman Douglas dis-covered the potent local red wine that, two centuries earlier, Pacichelli had called “vino esquisito” (exquisite wine), Douglas and his hired coachman getting very drunk indeed. “Gloriously indif-ferent to our fates, we glided down in vertiginous but masterly vol-plane from the somewhat objectionable mountain town.” But, whatever Douglas may have thought, it is a most attractive place and must always have been one, even when it was just a mere cluster of shacks or cave dwellings during the Dark Ages. There are some lovely old houses here, especially in the Junno quarter.
From the ramparts of the Tower of Giants on the summit, built by the Norman Robert Guiscard, you have a wonderful view over the Gulf of Manfredonia, or inland, as Norman Douglas says, “of Lesina with its lakes, and Selva Umbra, whose very name is suggestive of dewy glades.” During the thirteenth century the Emperor Frederick II enlarged the castle, giving its castellan authority over all others in the area. Frederick bequeathed it to his son Manfred who, until he became king, called himself “Prince of Tàranto and Count of the Honour of Monte Sant’ Angelo”. The paranoiac King Ferrante added three bastions as a defence against gunfire and a gateway bearing his initials with the date 1493. Sadly, in the early nineteenth century the Prince of Sant’ Antimo used it as a quarry, reducing it to Douglas’s “proud aerial ruin”.
However, Monte Sant’ Angelo remains the shrine of the Captain of the Hosts of Heaven, who will one day slay the Antichrist on the Mount of Olives, whose voice will summon the dead to arise. This is the heart of the Gargano, the pilgrims still making their way here in May and September.