Le Mont St.-Michel, France
We said our good-byes this morning to Sophie and Adel and boarded a private bus More... for a trip to the island abbey of Mont St.-Michel (Saint Michael’s Mount). A local guide named Arielle met us at the entrance and gave us a tour of this remarkable structure.
This rocky tidal island is surrounded by the Bay of Mont St.-Michel, which turns into a mudflat with dangerous quicksand at low tide. The bay is fed by the Couesnon River, which marks the boundary between Brittany and Normandy. The river used to flow on the other side of the mount, making it part of Brittany, although both regions wanted to claim it. Today, Mont St.-Michel is just barely – but conclusively – part of Normandy.
On the top of the mountain, soaring 240 feet above sea level, is the Abbey of Mont St.-Michel. Hermits had been coming to the mountain since the sixth century in order to isolate themselves to seek holiness, but an abbey wasn’t built until 708. In that year, according to a local legend, the Archangel Michael appeared in a vision to a local bishop, Aubert of Avranches, and instructed him to build an abbey on the top of the mountain as a place where devout Christians could make pilgrimages.
Hermits and pilgrims came here for centuries, and a small town grew at the bottom of the mountain, outside the walls, to cater to the needs of the pilgrims. An order of Benedictine monks was installed in the abbey in the year 966. During the Hundred Years’ War, England made repeated assaults on the island. Although the English conquered all the rest of Normandy, they were never able to take the island because of its improved fortifications. Mont St.-Michel’s resolute resistance to the English made it a symbol of French national identity, and was said to have inspired Joan of Arc.
Pilgrimage to Mont St.-Michel declined after the French Revolution, so the abbey was closed and converted into a prison. The prison finally closed in 1863, and the mount was declared a historic monument in 1874.
In 2001, the Benedictines were replaced by a community of monks and nuns of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem. Unlike the Benedictines, this order is not cloistered and interacts with the local community and the pilgrims. They meet four times every day in the abbey church to recite the liturgical office, and are often joined by visitors and pilgrims.
Today, the town of Le Mont St.-Michel has only 50 residents (which includes 5 monks and 7 nuns), but entertains more than 2.5 million tourists a year. There are about 50 shops and hotels in the town to serve them.
Everyone is staying at the Pullman Paris Montparnasse Hotel, near Charles de Gaulle Airport. It’s a very nice ultra-modern hotel, and the only one with air conditioning on our entire trip! Some members of the group will be here for a week as part of VBT’s post-trip extension. Those of us who already saw Paris on our own are only staying here overnight before we catch our flight home in the morning.
Tomorrow we head home. It’s been the trip of a lifetime. . .
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