St. Michael on Mount Gargano

According to tradition, the worship of St. Michael on Mount Gargano started in the last decade of the 5th century, where the Archangel appeared in 490, 492 and 493. He appeared for the first time to mighty Gargano, the owner of a herd. He had shot a poisoned arrow to one of his bulls, which had come away from the herd and climbed on the top of the mountain, standing at the entrance of a cave. Michael changed the trajectory of the arrow, which went back and hurt Gargano, that decided consult Lawrence, the bishop of Siponto, on whose land the cave was. Then Lawrence called a three-day- fast; after that, the Archangel appeared to him in a dream and ordered him to build on that land- at that time strongly influenced by Hellenic culture- a sanctuary in his honour (492-493). That?s how Siponto citizens were revealed that Michael was the patron saint of the cave (ipsius loci inspector atque custos). When the Neapolitans (Greeks) made war to Siponto and Benevento citizens (Longobards), the latter won unexpectedly, and the victory, according to Grimoaldo, the duke of Benevento, was considered a sign of the fact that St. Michael protected and supported the Longobards, since the night before the battle he had appeared to the bishop of Siponto, to whom he had predicted the victory, and had left his footprints on the marble of the northern door of the sanctuary.
It was after this prodigious event that the Longobards took possession of the sanctuary, called by Paul Deacon ?oraculum? to designate that the ancient rite of incubatio was practised. The work finished, the new owners of the sanctuary went to the bishop of Siponto to ask him for the consecration; but the Archangel appeared to him for the third time, and told him to celebrate the Mass without consecrating the altar, for that place, had already been consecrated by his presence; briefly, he defined himself the patronus of the shrine.
Since then, the linking between the Longobards and Michael the Archangel got much stronger, and the former designated the latter as their protector, by celebrating the anniversary of the victory (8th May) as dies festus of the inventio, whereas the fest of 29th September, celebrated in Rome for ages, indicated the dedicatio of the very church. In the whereabouts of the sacred area a worship centre was built and named, as we previously said, Monte Sant?Angel. The veneration of the Archangel assume a range of meanings: it became the symbol of the belonging to the Longobard people, but it meant also a people?s passage from paganism to Christianity.
The worship of St. Michael was taken by Longobards to all the lands they had conquered. So throughout the Longobard kingdom a large number of churches and chapels was built and the sanctuary was restored and enlarged since the first half of the 7th century till the 8th century.
Under the rule of duke Romualdo I, the shrine dedicated to the Archangel and its site in Siponto went under the jurisdiction of St. Barbato, the bishop of Benevento, who, famous for his fight against superstition and idolatry- e. g. the worship of the tree and the viper- purified the worship of St. Michael, which was spreading amongst Longobards. It was also thanks to St. Barbato that the veneration for St. Michael played an important part in the religious unification of the Longobard people, split because of doctrinal and political reasons. ?The Archangel- writes Giorgio Otranto-, by regaining his nature of saint patron of a people, began to be considered the protector of Longobards, who looked on the cave on Mount Gargano as their national sanctuary. And the first proof of this renewed alliance, which would last very long over the centuries, is the fact that the nearly Catholic Romualdo I had the shrine restored?.
The Angevins- called by the Holy See in the second half of the 13th century to protect its lands in Southern Italy, encroached by the Swabian dynasty- are also very bound to St. Michael, as the large number of constructions and restorations in the area of the cave show. It was halfway between the 3rd and the 4th century that Angevins gave the sanctuary its present architectural structure, by opening the current entrance with the stairway leading into the cave, whereas it was previously located on the opposite side of the shrine.