Plate 95. Mount St. Michael.
On the approach from Pontorson.
Religion, history, poetry, and painting, have all united in giving celebrity to St. Michael's Mount. The extraordinary sanctity of its monastery, the striking peculiarities of its form and situation, and the importance acquired by the many sieges it supported, or the almost endless pilgrimages it received, have so endeared it to the man of taste and the philosopher, that scarcely a spot is to be found in Europe, more generally known, or more universally interesting.
The legendary mist with which St. Michael's Mount is now densely involved, has continued, from a period of remote antiquity, to float around its summit. Tradition delights in relating how, in times prior to the Christian æra, it was devoted to the worship of the great luminary of heaven, under his Gallic name of Belenus,[213] a title probably derived from the Hebrew Baal, and the Assyrian Belus. The same tradition recounts how, at a more recent epoch, it reared its majestic head, embosomed in a spacious tract of woods and thickets, while the hermits who had fixed themselves upon its summits, received their daily bread from the charity of the priest of the neighboring parish of Beauvoir; an ass spontaneously undertaking the office of conveying it to them, till on the road he fell a prey to a wolf, who was then constrained by Providence to devote himself to the same pious labor.
At length, about the year 709, it was decreed that the rock should at once change its designation and its patron. To the clouds of Paganism, succeeded the sun of Christianity; and the original heathen appellation, Tumba, was replaced by one of the most elevated names of holy writ. St. Michael, “the chief of the angels and of the host of heaven, the protector of the Hebrew synagogue of yore, as now of the Catholic church, the conqueror of the old serpent, and the leader of souls to heaven,” condescended to be worshipped here upon the western coast, as on Mount Garganus in the east, and with this view appeared to St. Aubert, then bishop of Avranches, commanding him to erect a church to his honor upon the mount. Another legend relates, how there had previously existed upon the same spot, a religious edifice, which had passed under the name of the Monasterium ad duas Tumbas, being equally appropriated to the adjoining rock of Tombeleine. However this may have been, it is admitted on all sides that a church was built, and that the hill knew thenceforth no other name than that of St. Michael's Mount; though Aubert, tardy in his belief, had refused to obey the injunction, till it had been repeated three several times, upon the last of which, the archangel touched the head of the saint, and left imprinted in his skull the marks of his fingers, which the author, here quoted, relates that he himself saw, to his great delight, in the years 1612 and 1641.
To the miraculous vision, succeeded other occurrences of similar import. A tethered bull pointed out the spot where the holy edifice should be erected, and at the same time circumscribed its limits; a rock, that opposed the progress of the workmen, and was immoveable by human art, spontaneously withdrew at the touch of an infant's foot; and the earth opening, on being struck with St. Aubert's staff, gave birth to a spring of water, at once of the utmost use to the inhabitants, and gifted with the most sanative powers. At about the same period also, the sea ingulphed the neighboring forests,[214] insulating the rock; so that three messengers, who had been dispatched to Mount Garganus, thence to bring a portion of red cloth, the gift of St. Michael, together with a fragment of the stone on which he himself had sate, found on their return the aspect of things so changed, that “they thought they must have entered into a new world.”
History, from this period, assumes a character of comparative authenticity. The Norman conquest threatened for awhile the extinction of Christianity: the baptism of Rollo, rekindling its dying embers, made them blaze forth with a light and warmth unknown before. The duke himself, on the fourth day after he had presented himself at the holy font, endowed the monastery of St. Michael, then styled “ecclesiam in periculo maris supra montem positam.”—No further mention occurs of the convent, during the reign of this monarch, or of his son, William Longue-Epée; but their immediate successor, Richard I. amply atoned for any neglect on their part. He built, according to Dudo of St. Quentin, a church of wondrous size, together with spacious buildings, for a body of monks of the Benedictine order, whom he established there in 988, displacing the regular canons, whose irregular lives had been the subject of much scandal. This munificence on the part of Richard, has even caused him to be regarded by some writers as the founder of the convent.—His son and successor, of the same name, selected St. Michael's Mount, as the favored spot, where, in the beginning of his reign, he received the hand of the fair Judith, sister to Geoffrey, one of the principal counts of Brittany. An opportunity was almost immediately afterwards afforded him of testifying at once his liberality and his devotion, as well as his love; for, on the first year of the eleventh century, the church, which had then been completed only five years, was burned to the ground. The prince, however, appears to have been somewhat tardy on the occasion; no attempt was made towards replacing the loss, till Hildebert II. succeeded as abbot. During his prelacy, in 1022, the foundations of a new church were laid, upon a still more extensive scale.—Twenty-six years more were suffered to elapse, and the abbatial mitre had adorned the brows of four successive abbots, when Ralph de Beaumont witnessed the completion of the work.
The church then built is expressly stated by the authors of the Gallia Christiana, to be the same as was in existence at the time of the publication of that work;[215] and M. de Gerville confirms their remark by his own personal observation, at least as far as relates to the nave. This indeed has been shortened of late; but he is persuaded, that whatever still remains is really of the architecture of the days of Duke Richard.—Robert, the following duke, repaired to St. Michael's Mount, to superintend his forces, upon the occasion of the revolt of Alain, Count of Dol; and it was hither, also, that the archbishop of Rouen brought the humbled count, to make his peace with his offended sovereign.—At the period of the conquest, the monks of St. Michael furnished six transports towards that eventful expedition; and when, after the death of William, the dominion over the mount passed by purchase from Robert to Henry, they distinguished themselves by their attachment to their new sovereign, who here supported a siege on the part of his two elder brothers, and was finally driven to surrender only by famine. The elder of these brothers, at an advanced period of his life, re-visited the church in a far different guise; and, to discharge his vows to the archangel for his safe return from the crusade, prostrated himself before the shrine which he had erst assaulted with the fury of his arms.—The year 1158 was, almost above every other, memorable in the history of St. Michael's Mount. Henry Plantagenet, who, two years before, had there received the homage of his subjects of Brittany, then returned in pilgrim weeds, accompanied by Louis VII. whose repudiated wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, he had married; and the two monarchs, attended by a numerous throng of secular nobility, as well as by several cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, kneeled in amity at the holy altar.
During the reign of the ill-starred John, St. Michael's Mount passed, in common with the rest of Normandy, under the sceptre of France, and suffered severely upon the occasion. Guy of Thouars, then in alliance with Philip-Augustus, advanced against it at the head of an army of Britons; and, experiencing on the part of the inhabitants but a feeble resistance, set fire to the palisades, the principal defence of the place. The flames communicated to the houses; and the church also fell a prey to them. To use the words of Brito,
“vis ignea sursùm
Scandit, et ecclesiæ decus omne, locumque sacratum,
Resque monasterii cremat insatiabilis omnes.”