On the climactic day

But first, for three days, the groups stayed at their assigned churches, singing Psalms with prayer and weeping. On the climactic day, at about nine in the morning, they came out in procession, chanting the Greek prayer for mercy, Kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy.” A deacon who was there reported that no fewer than eighty of the faithful fell down dead within one hour, no doubt exhausted by the fasting and prayer and affected by the crowding of the populace.

Gregory’s papacy

In later times, the story of this dramatic opening of Gregory’s papacy was improved with the report that as the procession passed Hadrian’s tomb, the archangel Michael appeared, sword flashing in hand, atop the great hulk—never mind that for such a spectacle the goal surely must have been Saint Peter’s church across the Tiber and that does not match what we know of the actual procession. A few years after Gregory’s papacy, a chapel in honor of Michael was established high up in the tomb, so the story must be very early. Today the angel, cast in bronze in more modern times, brandishes his sword atop the tower once again.

Let’s let them have their story. What happened when the lamenting procession looked up to see the angel there, dazzling, brilliant, beggaring description, standing at the pinnacle of a glowering stone tomb? What did people think? In his right hand, a fiery sword slashed the air. So Apollo had brought plague to the Greeks at Troy on the first page of the Iliad:

[Apollo] came down furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot his arrow in the midst of them . . . and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.

In Michael’s moment, before gaping onlookers, the dealer of death paused, then plunged his sword deep in a bright scabbard that hung at his belt. A gasp, then exhalation ran through the crowd as the people realized that the warrior from the court of heaven was showing them that mercy had been decreed and the plague would come to an end.

That story was enough for the tomb to be called to this day the Holy Angel’s Castle (Castel Sant’Angelo). The rooftop would be fortified to defend the medieval city, a tunnel would run from there to the Vatican, and Giuseppe Verdi in the nineteenth century would make it the setting for the climax of Tosca.