Mont Saint-Michel – Photograph in Stone of the Mentality of an Angel

Standing before Mont Saint-Michel, we stare in amazement at this stone giant rising from the rocky depths to rend the skies. From above, a gleaming statue of the Archangel Michael presides over the edifice. A synthesis of delicacy and strength, he impassively views both the threat of sea storms and the reappearance of the green and tranquil plains.

Such grandeur attracts crowds from all over the world. Everyone wants to see the historic monastery surrounded by walls and towers, the magnificent fortress inhabited by monks. They come marvelling not only at the grandeur of the building, but also because the whole atmosphere gives “a supernatural impression that makes us feel the presence of St Michael.”¹ In other words, if we wanted to define the construction as a whole, we could say metaphorically, to paraphrase Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira,² that it is a photograph in stone of the mentality of an Angel.

Like everything that comes close to the sacred, this mount and its history are a real mystery. How have its structures – whose origins date back to the barbarian invasions – been able to withstand all kinds of winds, rains and earthquakes, situated on the embattled line between France and England, so often enemy nations, and desecrated by the hideous fury of the French Revolution?

Questions like these prompt us to search the local chronicles for an explanation. However, while human intelligence ponders political and geological problems, faith urges our spirits soar to higher ground. What drove the first hermits to isolate themselves from civilization in this then-inhospitable and wild place?

Why did they take St. Michael as their protector?³

In a dream, an angelic announcement

Let us start with this last point. Analysing the intimate relationship between the Archangel Warrior and the abbey’s history seems to be the most effective way to gain an in-depth understanding of the succession of events that took place over the course of a millennia.

The early dawn of this long epic date backs to the beginning of the year 708. While regions of Europe were being violently disputed by barbarians who wanted to establish their territories, the small town of Avranches – situated on the north-west coast of France – remained a safe land. Not far from the village, a hill could be seen. Separated from the town by a dense forest,⁴ it had been a place of worship for Celts and Romans, later becoming home to a few hermits who, from the 5th century onwards, embraced a life of complete solitude there.

A pious man of great virtue, St. Aubert, was the spiritual guide of the small village. When he was elected bishop, he made a habit of frequently going up to the mountain to pray.

One night, he received a message from St. Michael in a dream, ordering him to build a temple in his honour in the remote refuge. Perhaps frightened by the perilous task, the bishop waited sceptically for a sign. On another day, the Angel appeared to him again in his sleep, still to no avail. Yet a third time, the heavenly spirit urged him to fulfil the mission, this time with more vigour, touching the prelate’s head with his finger. When he woke up, he noticed an indent in his skull… Finally convinced, Aubert hurried to fulfil the angelic mandate.

Two clerics were sent to Mount Gargano in Italy. This was the site of an apparition of St. Michael in 492, from which two miraculous souvenirs were preserved: the marble of the floor, which held the Angel’s footprints, and a red cloak left by the heavenly visitor. After travelling for six months, the envoys returned with fragments of both relics. The bond between St. Michael and his mount was thus established.

An oratory was soon built in fulfilment of the Archangel’s request, a tender shoot which, watered by the robust faith of a man who believed in the unexpected, began to attract pilgrims. Their names – including that of Emperor Charlemagne – were recorded by the monks throughout the 9th and 10th centuries.

Now, we might say that the first “flowering” of the mount came about with the arrival of the Benedictines in 966. Under the leadership of Abbot Maynard, the sons of the Patriarch of the West settled there and augmented the existing buildings. A real monastery was built, capable of housing between forty and sixty monks. Following the custom of the Order, religious and pilgrims did not occupy the same space. There was an upper chapel reserved for the singing of the Office and another, on a lower level, which was open to visitors.

Intellectual and political high point

In the midst of the routine determined by the rule of St. Benedict, an event changed the history of the monastery.

It was the beginning of the 11th century, around the year 1010. During some renovations at the abbey, the monks found a skeleton in a box. Analysing it more closely, they noticed something unique: a notable orifice in the skull. The numerous miracles that ensued at the time attested to the fact that it was an authentic relic of Abbot Aubert. And the mark of the Archangel’s invisible finger was proof that he continued to guide events in that mythical place.

With this discovery, the fame of the holy place spread throughout Europe and the number of pilgrims grew admirably. Its renown began to demand larger buildings. In 1023, the monks began the construction of a Romanesque church eighty metres high, thereby doubling the height of the land’s natural elevation.

If in the 8th century, with the work of St. Aubert, the mount was a land alien to civilization, in the 12th century it reached its apogee and became an intellectual centre of Christian Europe.

From the Mount Tomb, as it was known when dominated by the Celts, it came to be called the City of Books. With the impetus of Robert de Thorigny, elected abbot in 1154, a library of around one hundred and forty works was produced by the religious – and some say it was the largest in the West during the medieval period. With their marked artistic flair, the monks copied and illustrated works not only on religion, but on various areas of knowledge, such as geometry, mathematics, astronomy and history.

With its unrivalled science, which predated the flourishing of the great universities, the Saint-Michel monastery continued to grow in power and influence until it earned the attention of many sovereigns. In 1158, for example, the king of England, Henry II, and Louis VII of France, who were at war, met at the monastery to settle the boundaries of their territories and sign a peace treaty.

However, although the symbolic abbey already possessed great intellectual and political splendour, we could not say that it had reached its peak. It still lacked the mark of heroism.

Trials, clashes and triumphs

St. Michael, as the archetype of the warrior Angel, wanted his small stronghold to win the crown of glory through arms. Thus, clashes and sieges formed the next page of this story – in many ways, the most beautiful.

The determination and courage of these men, essential qualities for triumph in war, had been proven before. Between the 11th and 12th centuries, the monastery had seen half of its buildings collapse at least three times, as the fragility of the terrain left it vulnerable to any earth tremor. As if that were not enough, it had also suffered devastating fires. These adversities served as a gradual training ground for the inhabitants of the citadel of St. Michael.

In 1066, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and aspirant to the throne of England, crossed the English Channel to claim his sovereign rights over the great island. The abbot of the time helped him by sending six equipped ships, and the mount was then annexed to the English kingdom under the rule of the victorious monarch.

After about a hundred and fifty years, as the nations of Europe increasingly established their identity, the Archangel began to fear that his beloved possession would never again belong to the Firstborn Daughter of the Church… However, certainly thanks to his intercession, in the early years of the 13th century, Guy de Thouars, allied with King Philip Augustus, reconquered Normandy, and the mount once again became French.

Nevertheless, the victory left serious scars on the building. Flames had consumed part of the edifice and restoration was urgently needed. It was up to Abbot Jourdain, with the help of the King of France, to start repairing the damaged parts.

At the same time, a monumental forty-metre wall was erected to protect the monastery from further attacks. At a time when the practical and the beautiful habitually walked hand in hand, the huge defence wall also became a masterpiece of Gothic architecture. Within it were large halls, a refectory and a cloister, closed off from human view and open only to the heavens. When the work was finished, the abbey’s magnificence earned it the name The Wonder.

Always concerned about the possible clashes that the future would bring, the abbots who succeeded one another from the 13th century onwards gradually transformed Saint-Michel into a veritable fortress. A powerful new wall, interspersed with thick towers, was built around the perimeter of the hill to protect the village established at its foot, while a small fort controlled the upper part.

In fact, new attacks were unleashed upon the monastery with the advent of the Hundred Years’ War. Slow and bloody, it ravaged French soil without mercy and once again the island of St. Michael found itself surrounded by iron and fire.

In 1415, Henry V’s troops advanced on Normandy and took over almost all of northern France, with the exception of Mont Saint-Michel. For twenty years, the English tried in vain to seize this defiant symbol of resistance. The defence system was complete and, above all, the Archangel never abandoned his property. On one occasion, for example, a miraculous storm hurled most of the English ships against the rocks of the island.

Apparently, St. Michael did not want to see his bastion again in the hands of those who would become heretics a little over a century later.

Transformed into a prison

Another glory was added to the abbey’s history. Between 1446 and 1521, its church was ennobled by the construction of a new choir. The first, built in Romanesque style by monks in the 11th century, had been destroyed during the Hundred Years’ War and, in its place, an extraordinary Gothic construction was erected, which to this day impresses with its grandeur, clarity and ethereality.

Now, with the same patience with which it had withstood so many adversities, the glorious mountain would contemplate, impassively, the change in mentalities that determined the decline of Christian Civilization.

In the 17th century, France shone in the sky of Europe with the reign of Louis XIV. However, if the world rightly evokes him as the Sun King, we can say that during his reign a period of darkness began for the monastery. By royal order, the building had to hold political prisoners and the monks were given the task of jailers.

About a hundred years later, the French Revolution laid its claws on the mountain to stain it as much as it could. As a first measure, the Constituent Assembly of 1789 abolished the Religious Orders and expelled the Benedictines. That sacred place, which had brilliantly repelled the English attacks, was desecrated with the seal of tyranny… in the name of “liberty”.⁵ In 1793, all the premises were transformed into penitentiary cells, including the church. In it, many ate, worked, and slept… A devastating event mocked the Catholic Faith, the foundation that had supported the edifice for so many centuries: the first victims of the place of torment were three hundred faithful priests.

Tragedy, mourning and consternation. How would the defender of the Holy Church and faithful patron of the mountain react?

Restoration and new splendour

In His mysterious ways, inaccessible to any created intelligence, God often makes us face an apparent distancing on His part. Evil seems to triumph over those who are under the care of the Lord of Hosts. However, when we step back from the events, we realize that, behind that perplexing situation, an infinite wisdom was hidden.

Mont Saint-Michel is a living example of this reality. After the revolutionary desecrations, the mount was disfigured and the abbey unrecognizable. In a world where the faith of yesteryear no longer shone, the rebuilding of that monumental relic of the past seemed like a hopeless dream. However, between the 19th and 20th centuries, driven by a zeal for historical remembrances and no doubt impelled by a grace that they may not have perceived, archaeologists and architects embarked on this enterprise, in which professionals such as Édouard Corroyer, Victor Petitgrand and Paul Gout stood out.

Today, the abbey displays its true and beloved appearance. The splendour of the monastery is comparable to that of the glorious days of the Middle Ages, and even surpasses it, because what would have been considered daring by the those of the Middle Ages was realized: a spire rises above the towers, supporting a golden statue of St. Michael, the work of the sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet. The one who for centuries ruled the mount from “behind the clouds” is glorified and visible to all.

It might seem that the grand adventure begun by St. Aubert is over. However, let us not forget that the history of the mount is still an open book. The Holy Archangel will undoubtedly continue to write this epopee on the blank pages of future centuries! ◊

Notes

¹ CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. Conference. São Paulo, 16/10/1970.

² Cf. CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. Conference. São Paulo, 6/12/1980.

³ The historical information contained in this article was taken from: CHRIST, Yvan. Cent heures au Mont-Saint-Michel. Paris: Vilo, 1976; ENAUD, François. Le Mont Saint-Michel. Paris: Olivier Perrin, 1950; GUILLO, Lomig. Les secrets du Mont Saint-Michel. Enquête sur 1.300 ans d’histoire et de légendes. Paris: Prisma, 2017.

⁴ Although historians are not unanimous, some sources say that this forest located next to the mountain was submerged by a violent earthquake during the time of St. Aubert, leaving the mountain isolated as we know it today.

⁵ During this period, Mont Saint-Michel came to be ironically called Mont-Libre.