By "the Prayer to Saint Michael" is usually meant one particular prayer
among the various ones that are addressed to Michael the archangel. This
is the Prayer to Saint Michael that was directed to be said after Low Mass in
the Catholic Church since 1886. Other prayers to Saint Michael have also
been officially approved. In the Leonine Prayers
In 1886, Pope Leo XIII added a Prayer to Saint Michael to the Leonine Prayers,
which he had directed to be said after Low Mass two years earlier.
The English translation that was used in Ireland is quoted in Ulysses of James
Joyce. Variant English translations have "Holy Michael", "Saint Michael", "defend
us in battle", "malice and snares", "may God rebuke him", "all evil spirits",
"prowl through the world seeking the ruin", and other differences.
The prayer's opening words are similar to the Alleluia verse for Saint
Michael’s feasts on 8 May and 29 September in the Roman Missal of the
time, which ran, "Sancte Michael, defende nos in proelio ut non pereamus
in tremendo iudicio". = History=
The 'Leonine Prayers' originated in 1884, when Pope Leo XIII ordered certain
prayers to be said after Low Mass, in defence of the independence of the Holy
See. God's help was sought for a satisfactory solution to the loss of the
Pope's temporal sovereignty, which deprived him of the evident independence
required for effective use of his spiritual authority. The prayer to St
Michael described above was added to the Leonine Prayers in 1886.
The Pope's status as a temporal leader was resolved in 1929 by the creation of
the State of Vatican City, and in the following year, Pope Pius XI ordered
that the intention for which these prayers should from then on be offered
was "to permit tranquillity and freedom to profess the faith to be restored to
the afflicted people of Russia". The practice of reciting this and the
other Leonine prayers after Mass was officially suppressed by the 26
September 1964 Instruction Inter Oecumenici which came into effect on 7
March 1965. Removing the obligation to recite the
prayer after Low Mass did not mean forbidding its use either privately or
publicly in other circumstances; indeed, in his Regina Caeli Address on Sunday 24
April 1994, Pope John Paul II recommended its use, saying:
"May prayer strengthen us for the spiritual battle that the Letter to the
Ephesians speaks of: 'Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might'.
The Book of Revelation refers to this same battle, recalling before our eyes
the image of St Michael the Archangel. Pope Leo XIII certainly had this picture
in mind when, at the end of the last century, he brought in, throughout the
Church, a special prayer to St Michael: 'Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us
in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil...'
Although this prayer is no longer recited at the end of Mass, I ask
everyone not to forget it and to recite it to obtain help in the battle against
the forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world."
An exorcism prayer = Original version=
On 18 May 1890, twenty years after the capture of Rome had deprived the Pope of
the last vestige of his temporal sovereignty, and the papal residence at
the Quirinal Palace had been converted into that of the King of Italy, Pope Leo
XIII granted indulgences to bishops and to priests lawfully authorized by their
ordinaries who each day would devoutly recite a formula of exorcism against
Satan and the rebel angels. The formula of exorcism, which was then
inserted into the Roman Ritual, contained within it a quite different
prayer to Saint Michael, of which the following is an English translation:
This formula was not meant as a rite for exorcising a particular person but "for
general use - to combat the power of the evil spirits over a community or
locality". The prayer to Saint Michael that was
included in this general exorcism had in fact been published and indulgenced two
years earlier, in 1888, two years after the insertion of the more familiar
Prayer to Saint Michael into the Leonine Prayers.
= Abbreviated version= In 1902, a year and a half before the
death of Pope Leo XIII, a new edition of the Roman Ritual considerably shortened
the formula as a whole and in particular the prayer to Saint Michael within it,
making that prayer a sort of preface to the prayer of exorcism. The prayer was
shorn of the preceding version's paragraphs 2-6 and of the phrase "in
thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of this
world and of hell" in paragraph 7. In his English version of the Roman
Ritual, Philip T. Weller gives the following translation:
Anthony Cekada and Brian Kelly suggest that improved relations between the Holy
See and the Kingdom of Italy, which from 1900 was under a new king, lay behind
the 1902 excision of phrases such as "These most crafty enemies have filled
and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate
Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions", and "In the
Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the
Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of
the abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that, when the Pastor
has been struck, the sheep may be scattered." These phrases have been
interpreted as referring to the confiscation of Church property by the
government of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and to the occupation by the King
of Italy of the Quirinal Palace, which had been the Pope's residence and seat
of civil government. In 1999, the Vatican issued a revised
version of its Rite of Exorcism. The Latin text of the 1902 prayer to St
Michael was retained, unedited, in Appendix I. The Latin text of the 1886
prayer is also included, in Appendix II. A prayer of consecration
The Opus Sanctorum Angelorum presents the following prayer as an Act of
Consecration to Saint Michael the Archangel:
Oh most noble Prince of the Angelic Hierarchies, valorous warrior of
Almighty God and zealous lover of His glory, terror of the rebellious angels,
and love and delight of all the just angels, my beloved Archangel Saint
Michael, desiring to be numbered among your devoted servants, I, today offer
and consecrate myself to you, and place myself, my family, and all I possess
under your most powerful protection. I entreat you not to look at how little,
I, as your servant have to offer, being only a wretched sinner, but to gaze,
rather, with favorable eye at the heartfelt affection with which this
offering is made, and remember that if from this day onward I am under your
patronage, you must during all my life assist me, and procure for me the pardon
of my many grievous offenses, and sins, the grace to love with all my heart my
God, my dear Savior Jesus, and my Sweet Mother Mary, and to obtain for me all
the help necessary to arrive to my crown of glory.
Defend me always from my spiritual enemies, particularly in the last
moments of my life. Come then, oh Glorious Prince, and
succor me in my last struggle, and with your powerful weapon cast far from me
into the infernal abysses that prevaricator and proud angel that one
day you prostrated in the celestial battle. Amen.
Stories about the origin of the prayer An article in the Roman journal
Ephemerides Liturgicae in 1955 gave an account in Latin and Italian of how the
St. Michael prayer originated. Footnote nine of this account quotes an article
in another Italian journal called La Settimana del Clero in 1947 by Fr.
Domenico Pechenino who worked at the Vatican during the time of Leo XIII, in
which he said that after Leo XIII had celebrated a Mass he seemed to be
staring at something, then went to his private office, with his attendants
asking if he was well. Half an hour later he had written the St Michael
prayer. According to the same article in
Ephemerides Liturgicae, Cardinal Giovanni Nasalli Rocca di Corneliano
wrote in his Litteris Pastoralibus pro Quadragesima that according to Leo's
private secretary, Monsignor Rinaldo Angeli, Leo XIII had seen a vision of
demonic spirits who were congregating on the Eternal City; he wrote the St
Michael prayer, and often said it, in response. Leo XIII also personally wrote
an exorcism that is included in the Roman Ritual, and recommended that
bishops and priests read these exorcisms often in their dioceses and parishes. He
himself often recited them. Several variants of this story are told, e.g.,
that the pope was carried off by those around him to another room where he came
around, or a detailed conversation between a voice apparently of Satan, who
says he will destroy the Church, another attributed to God, who tells him to do
what he will. According to a Father William Saunders writing in the
Arlington Catholic Herald of 2 October 2003, Leo said that God gave Satan the
choice of one century in which to do his worst work against the Church, and the
devil chose the 20th century. The first variant of the story to appear
in print was in a 1933 German Sunday newspaper article, which stated that, as
a result of the vision, Leo XIII, shortly after 1880, ordered the prayer
to Saint Michael to be recited. In reality, it was only in 1884 that the
Pope instituted the Leonine Prayers, still at that time without the prayer to
Saint Michael. In 1934, a year after the appearance of
the earliest printed version of the story, a German writer, Father Bers,
tried to trace the origin of the story and declared that, though the story was
widespread, nowhere could he find a trace of proof. Sources close to the
institution of the prayer in 1886, including an account of a conversation
with Pope Leo XIII about his decision, say nothing of the alleged vision.
Father Bers concluded that the story was a later invention that was spreading
like a virus. The story is also found in Carl Vogl's 1935 Begone Satan: A
Soul-Stirring Account of Diabolical Possession in Iowa.
In a later version, the vision is said to have occurred, not in 1880, but on 13
October 1884, the year in which the Leonine Prayers were instituted but
without the Prayer to Saint Michael. And yet another date, 25 September 1888, two
years after Pope Leo XIII had added the prayer to the Leonine Prayers, was given
in a 1991 version. See also
Saint Michael Novena to Saint Michael
Chaplet of Saint Michael Leonine Prayers
Vade retro satana References
External links Russia and the Leonine Prayers
Pope John Paul II's Regina Coeli Address of 24 April 1994
The Vision Of Pope Leo XIII Bibliography
Georges Huber, Arrière Satan! le diable aujourd'hui, pp. 18–20; Spanish
translation.