Early in the fifteenth century Abbot Jolivet surrounded the town with fortifications. The English, at this time invading France, besieged Mont Saint-Michel, but were repulsed by the brave d’Estouteville and his companions-in-arms, one hundred and twenty-nine in all, who successfully defended the post entrusted to them when the greater part of France had submitted to the conquerors.
During the religious wars Mont St. Michel was several times attacked by the Protestants. On the Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, July 22, 1577, a number of them, habited as pilgrims and concealing their weapons, were admitted without suspicion into the church, where, after hearing several Masses with great show of devotion, they divided into small groups, and, with an air of calm indifference, occupied different parts of the buildings, until, secure of their position, they murdered such of the guards as did not escape by flight or concealment, and then fell not only upon the garrison but on the monks, even massacring the priests who had been saying Mass for them.
This noble abbey had for more than a thousand years an existence worthy of its origin. Mingling in the religious and warlike history of France, it was simultaneously or by turns occupied by knights and monks; the abode of faith and courage; an advanced sentinel in the direction of England, and thus affording protection against the foes of this world and of the next, defending alike with the cross and with the sword, and held in veneration by the whole of Christendom.
During the ages of faith pilgrims came hither by thousands, from all lands, braving the danger of these treacherous sands, to invoke in this his sanctuary the prince and leader of the armies of heaven.
The sacrilegious impiety of modern times could no more spare St. Michael’s Mount than so many other holy and beautiful relics of the past which it has seen fit to mutilate or destroy. The First Republic suppressed the monastery, drove out the monks, demolished a portion of their church, changed the name of Mont Saint-Michel to that of le Mont Libre, or the Free Mount, and turned it into a prison!—doubtless in order to prove the suitability of its new appellation.
The first prisoners there were the priests of Brittany and Normandy. Prayer was thus at least not yet banished from its ancient abode. In 1811 Napoleon made of it a Maison de Réclusion, which, in 1818, became a Maison de Détention, and it was at the same time also a state prison. Rarely has any place seen more sad and strange vicissitudes. The chosen dwelling-place of those called to serve God in a religious life became the sink of every crime pursued and punished by society, and the population of Mount St. Michael was now recruited not from men who had received a holy vocation, but from courts of assize.
A decree of 1863, however, relieved it from this unworthy fate, alike saddening to Christians, archæologists, and poets, and Mont Saint-Michel, which now belongs to the see of Coutances, has been confided by the ecclesiastical administration to the charge of twelve priests of the Congregation of Pontigny in the diocese of Sens, who carry on the services in its church, receive the visitors drawn thither by the sanctity or historical interest of the place, and fulfil the office of preachers and missionaries to all the parishes of the Channel Islands. An orphanage for boys is now flourishing in the old barracks, and by its side are ateliers where painting on glass is carried on—a kind of painting (or staining, rather) which, more than any other, has a religious object. All this is, so far, a return to a better state of things, but the solicitude of its diocesan does not find it enough, feeling that, though much has been done, still the present is too unlike the past, and earnestly desiring to restore the abbey to its former splendor. And he will do it yet. Already the pilgrimages thither are renewed with a fervor worthy of ancient days.
Few things can be more beautiful and edifying than the holy festivities of which the most recent of these pilgrimages has just been the occasion, and which have left so deep an impression on those who took part in them, and who followed the imposing order of the successive religious ceremonies, stamped as they were with the character of dignity and grandeur which the Catholic Church has impressed upon her liturgy and worship.
From earliest dawn long bands of pilgrims, conducted by the priests of their respective parishes and preceded by their banners, began to enamel with picturesque groups the white monotony of the sands. On arriving at the Mount they formed into regular columns and slowly ascended the steep acclivity to the church. Towards nine in the morning the Mount presented a singular aspect, not unlike a gigantic ant-hill: the flights of steps disappeared under the long processions mounting them, while the ramparts were as if crenellated with the heads of the crowds watching for the arrival of the Bishop of Coutances and Avranches and the Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux. An involuntary delay on the part of the bishops was for a time the cause of extreme anxiety. Anything may be feared from this dangerous bay, whose shifting sands change their direction after every tide, and engulf the late or unwary traveller in an abyss of mud. The first carriage had passed safely on to terra firma, but the wheels of the second were perceived to be sinking, and the horses, terrified at no longer finding any footing, were becoming so unmanageable that a fatal catastrophe would have been almost inevitable, had not the men of the place hastened to the rescue and succeeded by their prompt energy in dragging the carriage out of danger.
The two prelates presented themselves at the entrance gate as the clock of the great tower began to strike eleven, and were saluted by acclamations so enthusiastic that it seemed as if the whole Mount were bidding them welcome. They proceeded up the steep lane that winds upward between houses that look as if piled almost one upon another, and which date from three or four centuries back, low, square, and solid, and having for the most part only one story, plunging their foundations into the rock, and wedged, as it were, against each other, the better to resist the force of hurricanes and tempests. Here and there trees of thick foliage overshadow the narrow, winding ascent, which at intervals through some unexpected opening shows a vast horizon over the waters of the Channel, with its lovely islands, and the coast of France.