Mont Saint-Michel

the worship of Saint-Michel

The circumstances in which the worship of Saint Michel came to be identified with the rock are only to be found in old chronicals, written by monks and containing as many legends as history. It can be read in these strange stories that the Archangel Saint Michael appeared one night in the year 708 to Bishop Aubert, who oversaw the town of Avranches and who slept peacefully in his palace near the cathedral. The Archangel gave Aubert instructions to build a church on Mont-Tombe (the earlier name of Mont-Saint-Michel). To ensure that worship was possible and that pilgrims could be accommodated, Bishop Aubert started up a first community of twelve monks who were to occupy the place for two and a half centuries. The small oratory of 708 very quickly became insufficient. Rapidly, the Dukes of Normandy realized the strategic and political importance of Mont-Saint-Michel, this gigantic post on the boundary of Brittany. In 966, the small religious community was replaced by Benedictine monks who came from large Norman abbeys. For several centuries, their generosity was what allowed the monks to build one of the most magnificent monuments of the Middle-Ages.


  The cloister of the Abbey of the Michaelmas Mount