The Archangel's Feast and the Turning of the Year

Michaelmas, on 29 September, is the feast of Michael the Archangel, in the Western calendar now kept together with Gabriel and Raphael as the feast of the Holy Archangels. The date derives from the dedication of a basilica of Michael on the Salarian Way near Rome in late antiquity; Michael, the "prince" who in Daniel and Revelation leads the heavenly host against evil, became one of the most widely venerated of the angels, with great shrines at Monte Gargano in Italy and Mont-Saint-Michel in France.

In northern Europe the feast acquired a large secular life. As one of the English and Irish quarter days it was a date for settling rents, hiring servants, and holding fairs and courts, and it gives its name to the autumn Michaelmas term in universities and the law. Popular custom attached the goose to the day, and a folk taboo against eating blackberries after Michaelmas, tied to a legend of the devil's fall. The feast thus sits at the join of angelology and the agricultural calendar, a saint's day that also organised the ordinary business of the year.