JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Medieval Academy of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Speculum.The cyberpilgrim may tour the Shrine of St. Michael on Monte Gargano at http:// www.gargano.it/sanmichele/. A few clicks of the mouse bring into view the thirteenth-century octagonal bell tower with its mullioned windows set within Gothic arches. The nave, contemporary with the tower, appears with its portico of 1395 and its famous epigraph: "Impressive is this place. Here is the house of God and the gate of heaven (terribilis est locus; iste hic domus dei est et porta coeli)." The terracotta roof tiles of the surrounding town of Monte Sant'Angelo crowd about the base of this "Gate of Heaven" found in Apulia. Among the untold numbers of visitors to the mountain Pope John Paul II, Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, and St. Francis of Assisi have traversed the area on the Garganic promontory in southeastern Italy so as to marvel at a numinous grotto encased within the sacred architecture. According to tradition, around 500 C.E. the "blessed archangel Michael who always stands in view of the Lord" visited the cavern just north of the port town of Sipontum, today Manfredonia. The king of Naples and Sicily, Charles I of Anjou (1266-85), honored Michael with the nave and bell tower found there today. Lombard kings in Pavia and dukes in Benevento had sponsored earlier building projects in the seventh century, throwing up a monumental colonnaded ingress and portal for the throngs of pilgrims who climbed the mountaintop. The Lombard architects in turn had enhanced an existing sixth-century church, the construction of which apparently the imperial court in Constantinople had subsidized. This architectural palimpsest adorned a hole in the earth from which a fiery gust of wind had revealed Michael's presence. From the sixth century onward, religious travelers journeyed to Apulia from Rome to revere the victor over Satan (Rev. 12.7), then departed Sipontum to continue on to Palestine.1 Such I thank the anonymous readers of Speculum for their useful and helpful suggestions and comments. I also wish to thank Professor Lynda Coon of the University of Arkansas for her friendship, unflagging support, and tireless editing, all of which made this article possible. 1 Francois Avril and Jean-Rene Gaborit, "L'Itinerarium Bernardi monacbi et les pelerinages d'Italie du Sud pendant le haut moyen-age," Melanges d'arcbhologie et d'bistoire 79 (1967), 269-98, details the development of the site as a stage in the journey to the Holy Land. The appellation "sanctus Domini archangelus" occurs in the Liber de apparitione Sancti Micbaelis in Monte Gargano 2: see Acta sanctorum (henceforth cited as AASS), Sept. 8:...
