Mont Saint Michel, France September 8-9, 2014

Mont Saint Michel—from Julianne

 The Middle Ages fascinate me almost as much as the Roman Empire.  I am drawn to the artistic style of the era by contrast with the much more refined style of the later Renaissance.  Now, I am getting interested in the period between the Roman withdrawal in Europe and the rise of the Middle Ages.  How did we get from the largest, slickest government the world had known to date to the early Middle Ages in which communities and societies were beginning to recreate social order out of isolation and disorder?  Mont Saint Michel represents a symbol for me of the beginning of the order that emerged in Western Europe and the systems of thought which have become so widespread now.

I have spent a fair amount of time in the Middle East for the last several years and have had a chance to see how this period of time played itself out in that sphere.  While there was a significant decline in social order in the Eastern Roman Empire during the period between 400-1000, a central government held for the most part in Constantinople.  Not in what is now Europe.  Everywhere, population declined—east and west.  Some creative scholars note that the number of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean declined by 40% between 150-400, foreshadowing the crash of worldwide trade during the era that followed.  A terrible period of cooling in 535-6 prevented the crops from growing and massive starvation decimated the population everywhere but most seriously in northern Europe.  A series of terrible earthquakes in the Levant diminished cities, population and social order—my favorite Roman ruin is Jerash in Jordan, buried then and only uncovered recently.  In Europe, the previously thriving Gallo-Roman societies pulled back into self-sufficient farmsteads with serious defensive structures.  Towns declined or disappeared.  Population tanked.  Under Charlemagne, widespread order re-emerged for awhile but was not fully maintained.

But by 800, on this rocky island in the English Channel, people were beginning a giant building project which went on for centuries.  St Michael the Archangel was better known in the East before that.  I enjoyed his images in Ethiopia where he had a big presence.  But his fame spread and he appeared in a vision to the local bishop and required a shrine on the rocky island.   The bishop sent emissaries to Rome to get relics (they got a piece of Michel’s red cloak) and found some monks to manage the shrine.  It started small but they worked on it for centuries.  Now it is massive.

Not a simple task.  Quicksand.  High tides.  “Like a galloping horse, comes the tide to Mont Saint Michel.”  (A nursery rhyme—but that is the only part I know.)  If you are going to build a massive building on a pointy, rocky island, you have to get rock from elsewhere, get it there.  Hard work.  However, it became a place of pilgrimage for many and remains so today.

The early middle ages—the base of the current buildings are all Norman or Romanesque architecture.  Rounded arches, massive pillars.  The buttresses are massive and snake down the rock like jungle vines.  We do not have to get there by being guided across quicksand but some people do this still.  For some, it is an aspect of their religious pilgrimage, others a challenge.  We take navettes and walk on a causeway.  But the vision of the abbey on the rock is no less striking.  The land is flat as one approaches—it is visible from miles away.  Its immensity awes now as in 900.

The base of the rock is a town—we and the pilgrims and the school groups can sustain ourselves on the long climb up to the abbey by getting ice cream, galettes, cider and wine.  I am here to tell you that all those things are needed in order to climb to the top of the complex where you thin climb some more as you tour the abbey.  Well worth the effort in the 21^st C. as in the 9^th or 12^th.

I was not so aware of Mont Saint Michel as a French national symbol until visiting now.  When the French king invited a group of Norsemen to settle down in what is now Normandy, part of their deal was to protect Mont Saint Michel from other Vikings.  They did it well and improved upon the shrine with skilled building.  Eventually serious defensive structures ringed the island adding to the massive presence we now find there.  The defensive positions were breached by the French when they eventually subdued Normandy but their first act was to restore the shrine, worship there and incorporate it as a national icon.  The English tried to conquer France during the Hundred Years War, but Mont Saint Michel withstood their efforts and eventually the English were repulsed.  And on and on.  Victor Hugo extolled it as the essence of French identity as the pyramids are to Egypt.  Well.

From the strong Romanesque Norman base, subsequent builders added modern touches—the abbey is gothic. Part of the cloister is a superb use of gothic openings to create a sense of light and space in rooms constructed of 5 foot thick stone walls.  High Middle Ages—lots of trade and movement of peoples.  The abbey was a center of learning and had a scriptorium.  Benedictines maintained the religious edifices and townspeople supplied the needs of the visitors—as they still do.  (The religious order is not Benedictine now, it is an order which specialized in maintaining the religious nature of places like this, based in Jerusalem.)  One façade of the abbey church burned and was rebuilt in French classical style—touches of the renaissance.  Came the revolution, the whole thing was used as a prison—a symbol too.  Finally now--the French nation maintains it, sends school children and is managing some massive efforts to return the ecology of the island and tides to its original state by removing the causeway and managing the river flow.  It is one of the most visited tourist sites in France.