Andreas of Caesarea, on Rev 12:7

“And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels:”

“These words can refer to the first fall of the devil from his angelic rank because of his pride and envy, or it can refer to his destruction through the cross of the Lord, when, as the Lord says, "the ruler of this world is judged," cast out of his ancient tyranny. It is probable that the holy angels, together with their chief leader, Michael, could not tolerate the pride of the devil and previously threw him out of any association they had with him, since they found in him a lack of righteousness. As Ezekiel says, he was cast out by the cherubim "from the midst of the stones of fire," that is, as I think, from the angelic ranks. When Christ came, they served him after the temptation, since the slave, although dishonored, was once more being loathsome. We should note that, as the fathers thought, after the creation of the physical world, [the devil] was thrown down because of his arrogance and envy, although he had at first been entrusted as the prince of the air, as the apostle says. Papias also speaks of this passage: "To some of them, clearly the holy angels of that time, he gave dominion over the arrangement of the earth, and he commissioned them to exercise their dominion well." And then he says, "But it happened that their arrangement came to nothing."”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.