Mont Saint-Michel of Normandie

From St. Malo we took to the lonely road, through villages of dilapidated elegance in brick and stone, and then beyond, to the flat, bleak featureless coast of Brittany, low tides leaving clay silt stretching toward a void of white sky, stern dark red houses facing the sea. But there was relief in the intensity of this habitat unspoiled by commerce.

And then Mont St. Michel loomed, a spectre of holy fortification, a medieval village cradled high in a bleary sky. The French Jerusalem lording over all. We parked at the far edge of green fields that border the immense stretch of silt, imagining Coeur de Leon conducting his brutal military games on a beach like this, of sea and sky. He came to mind since his father, Henry II of England, had made this pilgrimage three times, as had a long register of kings. It began to rain as we and many pilgrims approached the Mont. As we entered the Porte du Roi, barefoot travelers in the wet cold trooped in on either side of us. Distant little figures dotted the silt flats. The tide, which was low, can rise up to 15 meters, and as legend has it, at the speed of a galloping horse. Many the pilgrim has drowned. And many the legend has sprung from this environment at the mercy of sea and sky.

The abbey's cloister

But in fact, St. Michael's protection has been unerring: the Vikings somehow spared it in the second half of the 9th c., and in later centuries the English never could take Mt. St. Michel, though they surrounded it during the Hundred Years' War. They merely taxed the pilgrims who continued to travel to the Archangel whose reputation continued to intensify. The cult of the archangel gave Michael new powers--like Egyptian deities, he conducted souls to heaven, and weighed their virtues.

Michael conducting Christ to Heaven

Built over a millennium, Mt. St. Michel rises in a patchwork of hard, military stone to the Abbey, where beauty emerges from the stern history of power and majesty. Somehow it is the perfect setting for the Archangel. It had been a little church, constructed after visions of the Archangel himself, by the Bishop of Avranches in 708. Two centuries later the Normans installed their own clerics, the Benedictines, and eventually built one of the greatest Norman cathedrals and one of the most astounding architectural feats of all time, La Merveille, an abbey wrapped around a mountain, completed in 1228. The Benedictines there equipped three ships for the 1066 conquest, and participated in all Norman politics and warfare of the time.

Refectory

Today, aided by much restoration, La Merveille is at once formidable and delicate. Open to the sky are the delicate 13th c. cloisters, in perfect rhythm of arches and vaults, resting on top of the equally delicate refectory, with its narrow leaded windows, that rests on ever sturdier chambers below.

Guest hall for patrons

A more robust hall lies below for entertaining patrons and hangers on, and then the moving hall for the intellectual works of the monks, renowned since the 8th c.

Monks have been copying and producing manuscripts since the Benedictines arrived in 966, reaching a peak in the 11th c. With elegant handwriting and harmonious inks, the Mt. St. Michel monks developed signature innovations in their illuminated manuscripts in the decoration of the enlarged initial letter. But when France came in possession of Mt. St. Michel, this work was transferred to Parisian workshops and no longer took place in the monastery. In fact, Mt. St. Michel began to transition into its next role, as a prison, which explains why so much has had to be restored in the last few centuries.

Astronomer in Scientific Treatise, decorated "O"

We moved through these halls, surrounded by Japanese tour groups with their discrete, respectful elegance, absorbing a history of brutal power, intellectual dominance, and painful servitude, but always the glory of this indomitable and exalted part of France.

View from the cloister

Then we dined on galettes, overlooking the foggy silt--hauntingly beautiful, austere, hopeless of relief. We had crossed into Normandy for the glory of Mt. St. Michel and we would return to the smaller people of Bretagne, who cultivate their own gardens with such vigor.