The legend of the line. A popular modern story says these seven sanctuaries form a perfect line, the stroke of Michael's sword as he drove the devil into hell, and that it lines up with the summer-solstice sunset. It's a lovely image, but it is folklore, not history. On a globe the sites don't sit on a single straight (great-circle) line; they only look aligned on flat Mercator-style maps, with gaps of tens of kilometres, and the solstice claim doesn't hold up either (analysis, Italian study).