| The island of MONT ST-MICHEL was once known as the "Mount in Peril from the Sea", as many pilgrims in medieval times drowned or were sucked under by quicksand while trying to cross the bay to the eighty-metre-high rocky outcrop. The Archangel Michael was its vigorous protector, the most militant spirit of the Church Militant, with a marked tendency to leap from rock to rock in titanic struggles against Paganism and Evil. The abbey dates back to the eighth century, when the archangel supposedly appeared to a bishop of Avranches, Aubert, who duly founded a monastery on the island poking out of the Baie du Mont St-Michel. Since the eleventh century – when work on the sturdy church at the peak commenced – new buildings have been grafted onto the island to produce a fortified hotch-potch of Romanesque and Gothic buildings clambering to the pinnacle of the graceful church, forming probably the most recognizable silhouette in France after the Eiffel Tower. Although it was such a prominent religious community, there were never more than forty monks resident on the Mont up to the time of the Revolution, when it was converted into a prison. In 1966, exactly a thousand years after Duke Richard the First originally brought the order to the Mont, the Benedictines were invited to return; today, a dozen nuns and monks from the Monastic Fraternity of Jerusalem maintain a presence. For many years now, the Mont has no longer, strictly speaking, been an island – the causeway (digue) that leads to it is never submerged, and is continuing to silt up to either side. Current plans envisage that the causeway will be cut away from 2003 onwards, and replaced by a bridge, with trams ferrying visitors across from car parks on the mainland. That should not only make tourist numbers easier to control, but also enable the sea to wash away much of the accumulated silt.
Pages in section ‘Mont St-Michel’: Practicalities, Visiting Mont St-Michel, Abbey, Beyond the Abbey.
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