It is interesting that in the Middle Ages the Archangel Michael should have been believed in as the celestial champion of Christendom, against the Saracens at Roncesvalles and again when the orders of German knights were engaged in their long struggles against the barbarians on the eastern frontier. Faith assumes strange forms and so, when we read in chapter I I of the Book of Daniel what the history of several centuries looked like to this Jewish observer, we may be glad that he saw a meaning in it which enabled him and those who accepted his message to come through one of the great crises of history, in however bizarre a way he expressed his faith.