The feast of the Archangels: who celebrates on 8 November

On 8 November the Orthodox Church keeps the Synaxis of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel and of the other Bodiless Powers, one of the most crowded name days of the autumn. Men and women named after Michael and Gabriel celebrate, along with names taken from the word “angel”, and for Stamatis, Stamatia and Rafail it is a second name day.

What the feast commemorates

According to the Synaxarion text on saint.gr, Scripture shows the angels, invisible good spirits who stand close to God, being sent in visible form at great turning points of history, whenever some great purpose of God is about to be revealed or carried out. The feast of 8 November, saint.gr explains, was set to honour these missions and the angels' ministry.

The same text presents Michael and Gabriel as the leaders of the angelic powers. A synaxis is a “gathering” (see what is a name day); here the whole host of angels is gathered around its two best-known names. A saint.gr page on the monastery of Panormitis lists the nine angelic orders: angels, archangels, thrones, powers (dynameis), principalities (archai), dominions (kyriotites), authorities (exousiai), cherubim and seraphim.

The apolytikion, the main hymn of the day, as printed on saint.gr, calls Michael and Gabriel the Archistrategoi, the supreme commanders, of the heavenly armies and the Taxiarchs of the powers on high. Michael in particular is often called by these two titles, Archistratigos and Taxiarchis.

Michael and Gabriel

[Archangel Michael](saint:archangelos-michail). The Hebrew name means “Who is like God?”, a question that, Behind the Name explains, implies that no one is. In the Bible he is the protector of Israel in the Book of Daniel and, in Revelation, the leader of heaven's armies against Satan; Behind the Name notes that he is the only angel the Bible itself calls an archangel. The saint.gr Synaxarion also sees him at many moments of the Old Testament, from Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and the rescue of Lot to the exodus from Egypt.

[Archangel Gabriel](saint:archangelos-gavriil). saint.gr interprets the name as “man of God” and, in its note on the name, as the man and instrument of God; Behind the Name renders the Hebrew Gavri'el as “God is my strong man”. saint.gr counts one appearance in the Old Testament and two in the New. To the prophet Daniel he explains the meaning of a vision. In the Gospel of Luke he tells the priest Zechariah that his wife Elizabeth will bear John the Baptist, and he brings the Virgin Mary the news that she will conceive and give birth to Christ.

Who celebrates on 8 November

• Michalis (formally Michail, also Michalakis) and Michaela: the names of the Archangel Michael. For both, 8 November is the only name day in this calendar.
• Gavriil (Gabriel) and Gavriela (Gabriella): the names of the Archangel Gabriel. Gavriil also celebrates on 26 March, the Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel.
• Angelos (also Angelakis) and Angeliki (Angelina, Kiki): names taken from the feast itself rather than from a particular archangel. They come from the Greek ἄγγελος, which Behind the Name glosses as “messenger”.
• Stamatis and Stamatia: 8 November is their second name day; the main one is 16 August, with Saint Stamatios the new martyr.
• Rafail (Raphael): also a second date, next to his main name day on the Tuesday after Easter.

So many names meet on this day because the feast honours not one person but all the angels: the two archangels in its title, the other angelic orders and the very word angel. See also the biggest name days of the year.

Stamatis and “Let us stand well”

Why Stamatis and Stamatia celebrate with the archangels is explained by a tradition recorded on saint.gr. When Lucifer, the first and most radiant of the angels, rebelled against God out of pride and dragged many angels down with him, the heavenly orders gathered and the Archangel Michael, standing in their midst, cried out «Στώμεν καλώς, στώμεν μετά φόβου Θεού», “Let us stand well, let us stand in the fear of God”. At that cry, the tradition says, the faithful angels held firm and the fall came to a stop.

From that “stopping”, σταμάτημα in Greek, saint.gr explains, come the names Stamatis and Stamatina. The archangel's words are still heard in every Divine Liturgy, just before the Holy Anaphora, calling the faithful to stand with reverence.

Raphael, the archangel of Tobit

Raphael is not named in the feast's title. Behind the Name explains the Hebrew Rafa'el as “God heals”, and saint.gr's note calls the name “the healer from God”. In the Book of Tobit the archangel, disguised as a man called Azarias, travels with the young Tobias to Media and in the end cures Tobias's father, Tobit, of his blindness; the New Testament does not mention him by name.

The main name day of Rafail is a movable one: the Tuesday after Easter, with Saints Raphael, Nicholas and Irene, martyrs of Lesvos from the years just after the fall of Constantinople. In 2027 the feast falls on 4 May; how that date is found is explained in how Orthodox Easter is calculated.

The other days of the archangels

• [25 March](date:3-25), the Annunciation: the feast of the message Gabriel brought to the Virgin Mary. It is the name day of Vangelis and Evangelia and also Greek Independence Day; see names from the feasts of the Virgin Mary.
• [26 March](date:3-26), Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel: the day after the Annunciation, and Gavriil's second name day.
• [13 July](date:7-13): saint.gr lists a further Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel; in this calendar it is not a name day.
• [6 September](date:9-6), the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae (or Colossae): in the tradition summarised by OrthodoxWiki, the archangel, carrying a cross, sent the rivers underground and so saved the church, and the spring that remained is said to heal. This is not a name day in the calendar either.

One archangel, many titles

Besides the main feast, saint.gr lists for 8 November separate synaxes of the Archangel Michael under eight local titles, from Taxiarchis and Panormitis to Roukouniotis, Avlakiotis and Kokkimidis. Some name particular shrines: Kourkouniotis and Kokkimidis, for instance, appear in Symi lullabies quoted on saint.gr among the archangel's names in the island's monasteries and chapels. On Symi, the same page says, eight more monasteries besides Panormitis are dedicated to the Taxiarch, nine in all, one for each angelic order.

Panormitis, Symi

The Monastery of the Taxiarch Michael Panormitis on Symi is, in saint.gr's description, one of the great pilgrimage sites of the Dodecanese, known throughout Greece and the Orthodox world. A folk tradition tells that a devout woman, Mario of Protenios, found a small icon of the archangel at the root of a mastic bush while digging her field. She took it home, but it vanished and turned up again in the same spot; when it vanished a second time, the archangel appeared to her in her sleep and said he wished to stay at Panormos, and on her confessor's advice she built a chapel there.

Its large miraculous icon was covered in silver in 1724 at the expense of the island's captains, clergy and community, an inscription records. The monastery also holds a second feast at Pentecost. Among the stories saint.gr tells is that of the silver goose in the monastery museum: by tradition, a ship could not get out of the harbour until its crew, who had killed and eaten one of the monastery's geese, promised a goose of silver.

Mantamados, Lesvos

The Monastery of the Taxiarchs at Mantamados on Lesvos is a Byzantine foundation of unknown date, which saint.gr places around the 9th century. Local tradition explains its icon: Saracen pirates broke into the monastery some time around 1000–1100 and slaughtered the monks. A 17-year-old novice, Gabriel, hid on the roof, and when the pirates climbed up after him the roof turned into a stormy sea with the Taxiarch standing in it, sword flashing, so that they fled.

The novice then mixed earth with the blood of the slain monks and modelled the archangel's figure in relief, as he had seen it. The clay, the story goes, ran short, which is why the body is so small next to the face. OrthodoxWiki, too, notes that the icon breaks the usual rules of iconography, its upper body worked in three dimensions.