Understanding the Feast of Michaelmas
And Why Matins and Evensong are Important in Anglicanism
This Sunday we come to our special annual observance of the Feast of Michaelmas when, by tradition, the full choir returns. In addition, the day will feature a Solemn High Mass at 10 am bringing together our two congregations that normally convene for the Sung High Masses at 9 and 11 am. And there will be a special celebratory reception to follow.
The combined service will also allow us to have Choral Matins at 9 am this Sunday, which means that music from the wonderful and rich Anglican repertory composed for that service can be heard once again – which is important at a time when Matins has sadly become all rare in the contemporary Episcopal Church.
With all this in mind, my note today will touch on two topics: namely, why do we celebrate Michaelmas; and secondly, what is so special about Matins and Evensong for Anglicans?
The St. Michael’s Mass, from which the word Michaelmas derives, is the Western Christian feast in honor of the Archangel Michael. This feast has a rich history, one which brings together biblical angelology, late-antique liturgical development, medieval devotion, and a grand theological vision of the whole of creation as ultimately ordered toward the worship of God.
It expresses an understanding of the angels as personal, spiritual servants and messengers of God. Hebrews refers to them as “ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation” (Heb. 1:14) and this frames the entire celebration of angels as important, but always in themselves point towards the God whom they adore, obey, and serve – just as we are called to do as well.
Michael is the principal biblical figure, and our understanding of him is shaped by several key scriptural passages:
- Daniel 10:13, 21 and 12:1 portray Michael as “one of the chief princes” and as the great prince who protects God’s people, texts that have long been seen as foundational for seeing Michael as a guardian and defender of the covenant community.
- Jude 9 is difficult to interpret but depicts Michael disputing with the devil over the body of Moses. And here, what has been seen as important to note, is that he does not condemn by his own authority but explicitly states that “The Lord rebukes you.” A point that seems to indicate that Michael’s authority is delegated and exercised in entire obedience to God.
- Revelation 12:7–12 presents perhaps the most significant Christian image for later iconography, saying “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.” The dragon—identified as “that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan”—who is defeated and cast down. Hence the angel Michael, therefore, came to be associated with the victory of heaven over demonic accusation and rebellion.
- John 1:51,where Jesus speaks of angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, and thus places angelic ministry within a clear Christological context. Once again angels are not presented as an independent spiritual realm or as anything remotely suggestive of polytheism; their activity is clearly ordered to the incarnate Word, and to the reconciliation of heaven and earth in Christ.
The liturgical commemoration of Michael therefore celebrates triumph but does not romanticize spiritual warfare: it confesses that evil is real but not ultimate, that creaturely rebellion cannot overthrow God’s reign; and that victory belongs ultimately to God’s truth, holiness, mercy, and judgment. This means that the “war” we hear of Revelation is, at its deepest level, a conflict between worship and idolatry, humility and pride, fidelity and revolt, and this can rightly speak to us at a profound level.
Why Matins Matters for Anglicans
The morning and evening services of Matins and Evensong are the Anglican forms of the Daily Office: the Church’s ordered offering of psalmody, Scripture, creed, intercession, and praise that open and close the day. But it is important to know that they are not simply survivals of medieval worship, but rather a distinctively Anglican achievement: Thomas Cranmer’s reconstitution, in English of the older monastic and cathedral hours of prayer comprise a very special part of the uniquely Anglican liturgical heritage offered to the wider church.
The underlying concept of a daily cycle of common prayer is, of course, far older than Anglicanism. Christian prayer at fixed hours emerged from Jewish patterns of regular prayer and from the Church’s early habit of sanctifying the day through psalms, biblical readings, hymns, and intercession.
Over time, the Western Church developed a sequence of what came to be known as canonical hours with their respective liturgical offices: Matins and Lauds during the night and early morning – Prime at daybreak – Terce, Sext, and None during the day – Vespers at evening – and Compline before sleep. By the early Middle Ages, this rhythm had become a central feature of monastic, cathedral, and clerical worship.
The medieval office was neither merely private devotion nor a sequence of clerical obligations detached from the people. In monastic houses, it organized the whole day; in cathedrals and collegiate churches, it sustained a public liturgical round; and in parish life, certain major offices—especially the morning and evening services—were familiar occasions of worship. Nevertheless, the full observance of all the hours was demanding. Originally, it was usually undertaken in Latin, and it was governed by what became a rather complex body of rubrics, seasonal variations, commemorations, and devotional accretions. All of this meant that over time it became very difficult for ordinary laypeople to follow the full pattern of daily worship in its entirety.
In late medieval England, the Sarum Use—which is to say the liturgical use associated with Salisbury and widely influential across England—provided the most immediate liturgical inheritance for the reformers.
This means that Cranmer did not begin from scratch. The language, sequence, psalmody, antiphons, canticles, and ceremonial logic of the Prayer Book offices all stand in (a quite complicated) relation to this medieval English tradition. And this brings out Cranmer’s genius which was to transform that inheritance, with immensely skilful structural and theological integrity, into something everyone could follow – something that in turn became a decisive act of the English Reformation.
The first Book of Common Prayer of 1549 reduced the many medieval hours to two principal offices. It combined Matins, Lauds, and Prime into a morning office called Matins, and united Vespers with Compline in form Evensong. The daytime “little hours”—Terce, Sext, and None—were omitted from the public daily structure. Thus, a dispersed and elaborate clerical cursus became a form intended to be said publicly, intelligibly, and habitually by the Church as a whole.
This was an act of compression, but not of simple abbreviation. Cranmer’s skill was within this to preserve the fundamental architecture of the ancient office with:
- Scripture as the principal material of worship.
- The Psalter as the Church’s recurrent language of praise, lament, penitence, and trust.
- Gospel canticles as the climactic response to the biblical lessons.
- The Lord’s Prayer, Apostles’ Creed, suffrages, collects, and intercessions as a shared rule of faith and prayer.
- A responsive format in which the minister, choir, and congregation all participate.
The Prayer Book’s two offices were also designed to make Scripture more continuously available to ordinary worshippers.
The 1549 book provided a consecutive monthly reading of the Psalter and substantial readings from both Testaments at Morning and Evening Prayer. In the classic pattern, Morning Prayer placed the Te Deum or Benedicite after the first lesson and the Benedictus after the second; Evening Prayer set the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis after its readings. This is one of the most consequential features of the Anglican Office; it makes the Church’s daily prayer a sustained encounter with the scriptural narrative, rather than a succession of isolated devotional texts.
The 1552 Prayer Book altered the official names from “Matins” and “Evensong” to “Morning Prayer” and “Evening Prayer,” terms retained in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The older names, however, never disappeared from English usage. “Matins” remains common particularly for sung Morning Prayer, while “Evensong” has become the customary name for the sung or choral celebration of Evening Prayer.
In its mature Prayer Book form, the Office as Anglicans have received it, follows a disciplined movement from repentance through praise and hearing toward confession and intercession.
The exact rites differ among Anglican provinces and Prayer Book traditions, but the classical 1662 pattern remains paradigmatic down to the present day and has over time come to be adorned with an immensely rich musical tradition – along with a wide range of compositions that we do well to retain and celebrate. Hence the importance of the services of Choral Matins and Evensong which this parish continues to sustain as part of our rich liturgical tradition.
More About the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel
Devotion to Michael emerged early and strongly in the Greek-speaking East, it should noted, and not just the West. Thus by the fourth century, sanctuaries and liturgical observances dedicated to Michael had become significant features of Christian life quite widely. The Eastern feast most closely analogous to Michaelmas was, however, called the “Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers,” and was celebrated on 8th November. Eastern tradition relates it to the Council of Laodicea’s rejection of angel-worship: as it sought to make clear that angels may be honored as God’s servants, but worship belongs to God alone.
The symbolism attributed to the Eastern date is, itself, theologically rich. November was counted as the ninth month, when March began the civil year, recalling the traditional “nine ranks” or orders of angels; the eighth day points toward the eschatological “Eighth Day,” the new creation and final judgment, when the Son of Man comes in glory with the holy angels. All of which illustrated just how angelic feasts were integrated with Christian eschatology rather than treated merely as private devotional events.
In the Latin West, the 29th September observance is associated with the dedication of a basilica of St. Michael near Rome, on the Via Salaria. Sources commonly place the growth of Michael’s Western cult in the fifth century, while the Roman date became fixed through the commemoration of that church’s dedication. The feast was subsequently received across Western Europe, acquiring a special importance in Italy, France, the British Isles, and the German-speaking lands.
A distinction should be maintained, however, between the origin of the feast and the later stories that arose – that sought to deepen its popular character. The cult of St. Michael was advanced by celebrated sanctuaries—especially Monte Gargano in southern Italy, associated with a late-antique or early-medieval apparition tradition, and later Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy.
These shrines gave significant public and social form to this devotion, but the feast’s theological core remained biblical and liturgical: God’s angelic servants praise him, defend his people, and participate in the final triumph of his kingdom. (In terms of the calendar, the 8th May observance, historically associated with Monte Gargano, remained distinct from the wider Western September feast).
Although medieval devotion often focused on Michael as a heavenly “captain,” Western liturgical development gradually widened the scope of the feast and the Roman Catholic calendar now celebrates Michael, with Gabriel and Raphael, together on 29 September. This grouping is deliberate: thus, Gabriel’s ministry culminates, in the annunciation to Mary; he announces the incarnation of the Son. Raphael’s name means “God heals,” and the Book of Tobit portrays him as guide, healer, protector, and finally a fellow-worshipper who directs all praise to God. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael thus form a kind of liturgical triad: God defends, speaks, and heals. The feast gives thanks not for angelic power in abstraction but for the manifold ways in which God’s saving purpose is disclosed and enacted.
Anglican liturgical usage has its own distinctive feature in that it often adds the phrase “and All Angels,” making explicit the wider ecclesial theme. This includes the angelic host of biblical worship—especially the heavenly liturgy of Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4–5—and may also be held to evoke the Church’s confession of the communion of saints.
All this helps us to remember also that Christian worship is never imagined as an exclusively human event. In the Sanctus, the congregation joins the seraphim’s “Holy, holy, holy”; in eucharistic worship, earthly praise participates sacramentally in the worship of heaven.
The feast thereby corrects two opposite errors. On one side lies angelolatry: treating angels as independent powers to be manipulated, worshiped, or sought apart from God. On the other lies a reductive materialism that denies the spiritual dimension of creation. Classical Christian theology holds together the goodness of embodied creation, the reality of the invisible creation, and the absolute primacy of the triune God.
It is also worth noting that Michaelmas became exceptionally important in medieval England and the British Isles.
This was not merely because of devotion, but because the date fell near the conclusion of the agricultural year. Harvest was substantially complete, winter approached, servants could be hired, rents and debts settled, and new legal and commercial terms begun. It became one of the traditional English quarter days, alongside Lady Day, Midsummer, and Christmas.
Medieval Christianity did not sharply divide “religious observance” from economic time, legal time, educational time, and seasonal time. The calendar formed a public theology: human labor, contracts, harvest, risk, and civic order were situated within a sacred temporal frame. Michaelmas was not simply an ecclesiastical interruption of ordinary life; it gave ordinary life an eschatological horizon.
Its proximity to the autumnal equinox also made it a feast of transition. As daylight diminished in the northern hemisphere and the agricultural year turned toward winter, Michael’s protective role acquired heightened popular resonance. Customs involving geese, rents, fairs, and tenure are not themselves the theological substance of the day, but they demonstrate how a liturgical feast became embedded in communal memory. The feast named a season of vulnerability—darkness, cold, uncertain provision, and economic reckoning—and answered it with the confession that the world remains under God’s providential rule.
The academic legacy survives in the names of Michaelmas Term at Oxford, Cambridge, and other institutions shaped by the older English calendar. Here too the pattern is revealing: study and intellectual work begin not in a supposedly secular vacuum but under the sign of divine wisdom, creaturely humility, and the ordered harmony of truth.
Viewed theologically then, Michaelmas has enduring theological power because it gathers several central Christian claims into a single feast.
First, it is a feast of theocentric humility.
Michael’s very name repudiates the primal temptation: the desire to be “like God” in the sense of self-exaltation and independence. The angelic captain’s name answers the dragon’s rebellion with a question that restores the distinction between Creator and creature: “Who is like God?”
Second, it is a feast of Christ’s victory.
Michael is never the savior in competition with Christ. In the New Testament’s theological grammar, angelic victory derives from God’s victory in Christ: Revelation declares that the accuser is overcome “by the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11). Michael’s warfare is therefore subordinate to the crucified and risen Lord’s definitive conquest of sin, death, and the devil.
Third, it is a feast of spiritual realism without superstition.
The Christian tradition recognizes evil as personal, structural, and spiritual, yet it refuses fatalism. Evil has force but no final sovereignty. Michael’s defeat of the dragon represents the judgment of the accuser and the ultimate instability of every power founded upon falsehood, violence, or pride.
Fourth, it is a feast of divine providence and creaturely ministry.
Angels are signs that God’s care is not remote or impersonal. They “serve” those who are being brought to salvation; they announce, guide, heal, protect, and worship. Pope Benedict XVI summarized the traditional understanding by describing Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael as messengers who “illumine, guide, defend, comfort and help,” each bearing a distinct mission within salvation history.
Finally, Michaelmas is a feast of eschatological hope, for the angelic host points forward to the consummation of all things in the eschaton – in which all creation is gathered in praise before God.
The solemnity is not principally about private protection, picturesque medieval folklore, or celestial hierarchy. It is a proclamation that the visible and invisible creation alike belong to God, that the Church’s worship participates in heaven’s praise, and that no rebellious power can finally defeat the kingdom of the Lamb and we do well to celebrate it! “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah” (Rev. 12:10).