The first church dedicated to the Archangel in Rome, or rather in its neighbourhood, seems to have enjoyed great veneration. The oldest Roman sacramentary, which goes by the name of Leo the Great, gives no less than five masses for the anniversary of its dedication; in three of them St Michael is mentioned by name in the prayers or prefaces. From the fact that in the other masses the angels in general are spoken of without special mention of St Michael, we must not conclude, as many liturgical writers have done, that they deal with the cultus of the angels in general. The church was situated, according to subsequent information, on the Via Salaria at the sixth milestone from Rome; but beyond this nothing further is known about it. These masses for the day of the Consecration of the Basilica of the Holy Angel in the Via Salaria[703] are placed on the 30th September in the _Leonianum_. As regards later Roman sacramentaries, the prayers for a mass in honour of St Michael are given in the _Gelasianum_ on the 29th September. The _Gregorianum_ gives on the same day the dedication of the basilica of St Michael without the addition “in via Salaria.”[704] It is probable that another church of St Michael is meant here whose dedication took place on the 29th and not the 30th September. The day of this church’s dedication has continued to our own time to be kept as the Festival of St Michael the Archangel. In the city itself there was also a church erected in honour of St Michael, the date and founder of which are both unknown. Among the ecclesiastical buildings of Pope Symmachus (498-514) in the city of Rome, the _Liber Pontificalis_ says that he enlarged and beautified the basilica of St Michael.[705] A church of St Michael was also built by a pope of the name of Boniface near the Circus Flaminius,[706] and, in the ninth century, the Church of St Michael _in Sassia_ was also erected. The Churches of the West accepted the Roman date, the 29th September, for the Feast of St Michael,[707] and in the Middle Ages it ranked as a holy day of obligation, especially in England, where King Ethelred in 1014 provided it should be observed with a vigil and a preparatory fast of three days.[708] In Germany the Council of Mainz (813) in its thirty-sixth canon established it as a festival; and the imperial banner, to be carried in battle, bore the figure of St Michael. In France the feast was established by the sixty-first canon of the diocesan Synod of Tours in 858. In Constantinople the feast was observed on the 8th November; it is marked in the menology as the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael, while in the _Basilianum_ the same day is called only a Synaxis of the Archangel. In the later Coptic Calendar of Calcasendi, St Michael occurs no less than six times (7th April, 6th June, 5th August, 9th September, 8th November, and 8th December). In the Syrian lectionary he is set down in the 6th September.