Saint Michael
de los Santos
Trinitarian Priest
(1591-1624)

Saint Michael was born in Spain in 1591 of parents notable both for their piety and their probity. Their son from his early childhood made a vow of perpetual chastity; his father, when he heard of it, one day with a smile proposed to him, to test him, a fine marriage. The child began to weep and hurried to an altar of the Blessed Virgin to renew his vow. At the age of six he fled to a cave to meditate on the Passion of Our Lord. When his father sent out a search party, he was obliged to return, but continued to live only for heaven, keeping himself constantly in the presence of God. He chose Saint Francis of Assisi for his model and practiced extreme mortifications to imitate Jesus crucified.

At the age of twelve he presented himself at the novitiate of the Trinitarians of Barcelona, who admitted him. He made his perpetual vows in 1607, and assisted in the reform of the Order, in progress at that time. He never ceased to practice the primitive rule of the Institute. Saint Michael never had more than one tunic; beneath it he wore rude hair shirts. He practiced a perpetual fast and imposed constant disciplines on his flesh.

He was ordained a priest, and then it was at the altar that he received the most signal favors from heaven and inspired in those in attendance a most remarkable devotion. Twice Saint Michael was named Superior of the houses where he resided, yet he never became inflated with pride; on the contrary he believed himself worse than the demons. It seemed that heaven envied the earth in the possession of this Saint; he died at the age of thirty-three. Miracles followed at his tomb, and he was canonized in 1862 by Pope Pius IX.

Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 8