Pope Gelasius I allows worship in the cave on Mount Gargano

SIPONTO, Apulia, 493 AD — Rome has answered the bishop of Siponto about the cave near the summit of Mount Gargano, in Apulia: the grotto may be dedicated as a place of worship, and Pope Gelasius I has been up the mountain to it. People have been climbing the mule tracks from Siponto to pray there, and the cave is already in use for worship. According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, preserved in the Liber de apparitione sancti Michaelis in monte Gargano (the book of the apparition of St. Michael on Mount Gargano), there is an altar inside it that no bishop has consecrated.

St. Michael the Archangel appeared to Saint Lawrence Maiorano, bishop of Siponto, and told him to build a church in his honour on the mountain. But the people of Siponto could not agree on what should be done with the cave, or whether anyone ought to go into it at all, and St. Lawrence did not decide the question on his own authority. To dedicate a church is to set a building aside for God, and only a bishop performs the solemn rite. A place meant for divine worship in perpetuity must be at least blessed before Mass can regularly be said in it.

Some time after that vision the Neapolitans, still pagan, made war on Siponto and Benevento. On St. Lawrence’s advice the people of Siponto asked them for a three-day truce, so that they could fast and ask St. Michael’s protection. The pagans were routed and chased as far as Naples.

The people of Siponto went back up to the cave to give thanks. In the morning, beside its north door, they found small footprints like a man’s pressed hard into the stone, and knew that St. Michael had left them to show he had been there. A roof was put up over the mouth of the cave after that and the altar set inside, and the place was called Apodonias, from the marks.

The cave itself they left as it stood, and St. Lawrence sent messengers to Rome to ask what should be done about the place.

The answer came back with them, and it named a day. If a man was to dedicate the cave, it should be done on the day the people of Siponto had beaten the Neapolitans. If not, that was the day to ask God’s will about it. Until then Pope Gelasius I and St. Lawrence were each to keep a three-day fast with their people, and to pray that the Holy Trinity would bring to a settled end what it had begun to give them through St. Michael. The fast was kept in both cities as Rome had directed.

Pope Gelasius I settled the question. He gave his assent to the dedication of the grotto as a place of worship. Then he climbed Mount Gargano to the cave, his first visit there, and in the grotto he granted the indulgence known as the Angelic Pardon.