Archbishop Laurence O’Toole was canonized in 1225, and to the joyous ceremony when his relics were set above the high altar came the archbishop of Rouen—then building his cathedral, and Bishop Geoffrey, the “shining man of Eu by whom the throne of Amiens rose into immensity.” For eight days the throng pressed to pray near the relics of the canonized Irish prelate, and with the gifts that poured in the monks were able to finish their nave by 1230. It is a gem of Norman Gothic, sober, elegant, of perfect unity. The first plan called for tribunes over the aisles, as in the choir. Before they were constructed, however, the idea was given up, but it was decided to keep the arches by which the tribunes would have opened on the middle church. The same effect of false tribunes had been used earlier in the nave of Rouen Cathedral.
In 1426 lightning caused the collapse of the central tower, and in the reconstruction of the transept and choir, undertaken after the invaders were driven from Normandy, Flamboyant work was set side by side with Primary Gothic. From 1511 to 1534 rose the transept’s florid south façade. After the Revolution the church of St. Laurent was restored by the Orléans family, who own the château and park at Eu.
MONT-SAINT-MICHEL[331]
Chaque peuple a son ange, disait Daniel le prophète. Le nôtre ne peut pas, même indignes nous délaisser.... Plus encore que Saint Jacques était le patron des espagnols, Saint Michel voulut être le Baron de France. Il mit les trois lys dans ses armes et fit passer sur le royaume l’éclair de son glaive. Avoir suscité Jeanne d’Arc et par elle libéré la France.... Voilà bien le plus beau miracle dû à l’archange. Il constitue pour le pays une promesse de perennité.—Joseph Lotte (born in Normandy, 1875; killed in the World War, 1914).
Surpassing all the abbeys of Normandy is the outpost of the archangel that lies offshore, at the junction of Normandy and Brittany, a conicle mass of “rock on rock, keep on keep, century on century,” sand-locked one hour, and the next rising from the Atlantic. Tremor immensi oceani is the motto of the Mount. Before the days of crusaders it was one of Europe’s chief points of departure for the Eastern pilgrimage. Like Jerusalem, it has been one of the sites of the earth that has impressed itself with historic signification on the imagination of mankind.
Many have felt the kindred spirit of the Chanson de Roland and the granite, military monastery. They are both of the same high lineage. To the paladin Roland, dying at Roncevaux, as he held up his right glove to God, his suzerain, there came, to fetch his soul to Paradise, the very special St. Michael of the Mount that stood in peril of the sea, in periculo maris.[332] Scholars think that the most virile, the most heroic of the chansons de geste, wherein already was la douce France loved beyond the regional cradle, was composed by a Norman who lived in the marches within the cult of the Angel of the Peril.[333]
Alas, in our day Mont-Saint-Michel-au-péril-de-la-Mer is in very deadly peril of the land, for it looks as if the covetousness of financiers was to defraud France of this rock of glory “qui s’émeut et s’achève en prière.” Dikes and dams, to reclaim coast lands, will before long cause the historic crag to rise from green woods as it did some geological periods ago.
Citadel, palace, cloister, church, and town, the Mount is a thing of romance that not all the vulgarity of daily tourist crowds can tarnish. Charlemagne himself chose its tutelary archangel for the national patron saint, and the cowled guardians here were in truth through long centuries what the great emperor called monks: “Knights of the Church, of the willing vassalage and chivalry of Christ.”