Thank you!
Are you familiar with St. Michael's Santuario in Italy? Here is the history behind it.
In Apulia, on Monte Gargano, the town of Monte Sant’Angelo contains the most famous shrine of the Latin West dedicated to the Archangel Saint Michael. Placed on top of the mountain this singular Basilica made up of a complex of constructions around the grotto from various eras, gives evidence of a good fifteen centuries of history. From remote times this is a place of pardon and prayer, famous in the entire Christian world. An anonymous writer, who lived more than a thousand years ago, describes it thus:
“The shrine of Saint Michael is known and extolled everywhere not for the splendour of its marble, but for the prodigious events that took palce here; of modest form, it is nevertheless, rich in celestial virtue, because the Archangel Michael himself deigned to set up and consecrate it, who being mindful of human frailty, came down from heaven so that men could participate in things divine in that temple”.
We hope you will have an interesting and fruitful visit in this holy place, born through the inscrutable will of Our Lord on the high peak of the rugged and suggestive Gargano and as if suspended between the sky and the sea, between the divine and the human.
The origin of the shrine
The origin of the shrine goes back to the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century. Some old written documents give evidence to this: a letter sent by Pope Gelasio I in 493 - 494 to Giusto, Bishop of Larino, another letter from the same Pontiff to Herculentius, Bishop of Potenza, (492 - 496) and a note dated 29 September reported by the martyrologer Geronimiano.
But it is the Liber de apparitione sancti Michaelis in Monte Gargano, which was drafted, in the 8th century, which reconstructs with precision and evocation the miraculous events, which gave origin to the cult of the Archangel Michael on the Gargano.
This is connected with the memory of four apparitions that have taken place in the course of the centuries. They are related with extraordinary and moving vivacity and they testify to the miraculous events that took place there.
The first traditionally dated 490 is the most astonishing and is called the episode of the bull.
You can visit the Santuario online at this link.
