Mont St. Michel

This granite mountain peak was originally connected with the mainland by a wooded isthmus, and was a sacred place of the Druids until the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul and built a pagan temple here, and pagan priests here worshipped "the god of high places." Then came the Franks, and with them the monks, and for two hundred years a Christian church and Benedictine convent occupied the Mont. But the ravages of the sea isolated the rock, and the monks departed. In the early days of the eighth century, when the Northmen began to descend upon Southern Europe, tradition says that the Archangel, St. Michel, appeared three times in a vision to Bishop Aubert of Avranches and bade him reclaim the Mont as a sanctuary of the Christian faith. The Bishop obeyed, and built a round church here in 708, appointing twelve canons for its service, providing for their sustenance himself. He died in 725, and was buried beneath "the altar of the Church of St. Michel of the Mont." Alleged miracles were soon wrought at his tomb, and relics began to multiply upon the shrine of St. Aubert. Four pilgrims brought from Ireland the sword and shield which the Archangel had left in their country after overcoming a terrible dragon there, and as a consequence the Mont immediately became a place of sacred pilgrimage. In the year 800 Charlemagne presented himself among its devotees, and from this date exact history becomes interwoven with the old fables and traditions. In 912 the pagan warrior Rollo, as a thank offering for his baptism, gave to the church a great estate out of his conquests; his sons and successors in the duchy of Normandy, which he founded, were liberal in their donations. The youngest son of William the Conqueror, Henry Beauclerc, was besieged on the Mont by his older brothers, and in King John's reign it was forever served from the English Crown. Without following its later history, or its mediaeval fame, when it was called the "City of Books," owing to the number of its valuable MSS. and its learned abbots; during the great Revolution the Abbot and the Monks were ruthlessly ejected, and scarce had their unwilling footsteps ceased to echo in its vast halls and its stately church than the rabble of "Liberty" rushed in with hammer and ax and fire, burned the charters and records, broke the mosaics and stained-glass windows, threw down the statuary and desecrated the tombs within the ancient sanctuary. Napoleon came, and, recognizing the Mont as a monument of national greatness, ordered repairs, and then converted it into a great State prison. In 1834 a fire destroyed all the interior decorations that had escaped the vandalism of the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration. But under the Second Empire it ceased to be a prison, and the church has been most beautifully restored under the Bishop of Avranches, the successor of its ancient Diocesan. The Church of St. Michel of the Mont is again a pilgrim shrine. These monastic buildings have been compared to a book of Gothic architecture of every epoch and style from 1060 to 1523. The Church of the Archangel, which towers above them all, is Flamboyant. No architraves or capitals interrupt the soaring lines and curves of this great work of the Benedictines commenced in 1450 and completed in 1523. The central tower, which is now only a truncated pyramid, had originally an exquisite spire and a peal of nine bells, the most musical and silver-toned in all Normandy or Brittany. The spire was surmounted by a gilded statue of St. Michel transfixing with his sword a dragon at his feet; all this was destroyed by lightning in 1594. There is a legend, still faithfully believed, that the angels were heard to sing in the lofty spire after the monks had ceased in the church beneath. It certainly seems near enough to heaven for the angels to rest and sing upon its many spires now. But the Basilica, which rises so grandly towards heaven, is the superstructure of two churches beneath it. The earliest is founded in the rock at various levels, and is in many parts interrupted by enormous masses that the builders have not hewn away. How old the rock-hewn sanctuary is, no one can tell. Above this is the subterranean church, called the sanctuary, begun by the good Duke Richard II. of Normandy in 1020, restored in the fifteenth century. It is a marvel of grand simplicity and strength. The enormous columns which support the upper Basilica are 14 and 15 feet in circumference. Thirteen of them form a semicircular Apse, from which radiate five chapels. The nave of the substructure forms the catacombs and also the dungeons of the convent buildings. Many a tale of horror they might tell of the early Christianity of this century, when, as a place of penal servitude, criminals of both sexes were gathered here, from 7000 to 8000 at a time. The Monastic buildings were utterly desecrated for the housing of prisoners. But a better government now rules in France and every trace of desecration has been removed, and the Church's authority restored. All comparison with other castle-crowned places fail. It is a conical granite rock, of which the entire circuit is less than a quarter of a mile, and its utmost height above the sands is 400 feet. On the west, the cliff is left in its wild state, plunging down to the sands; bare and inaccessible on the north the slope is more gradual and is covered with brushwood, hidden in which is the fountain of pure water called St. Aubert, after the original founder of the church. The little town, which in its best days did not contain more than 500 or 600 people, including the soldiers, has now not more than 150 inhabitants. It climbs up and around the eastern and southern declivities of the rock, and has a most picturesque appearance with its one street of quaint weather-stained houses, built upon various levels. The old thick machicolated walls, with twelve embattled towers, rise from the sea on the south, ascend the mount on the east, and connect the citadel with the convent. Six hundred and sixty-five steps lead to its highest lookout, and from here can be realized that, for its isolated position in the beautiful bay between Brittany and Normandy, for its ancient glory, for the strength of its fortifications and the grandeur of its crowning Basilica, it is worthy of its fame as one of the chief treasures of mediaeval France.