"A fairy castle set in the sea. A grey shadow set against the misty sky. The craggy abbey, pushed out there, far from land, like a mansion in a fantasy, remained almost black in the crimson of the dying day...," wrote Guy de Maupassant (La Légende du Mont-Saint-Michel, "The Legend of Mont-Saint-Michel", 1882). A thousand years after the foundation stone of the present-day abbey was laid, the "fairy castle set in the sea," aka Mont-Saint-Michel – France's leading tourist destination outside Paris – is still a source of fascination.
On the occasion of Emmanuel Macron's visit on Monday, June 5, in celebration of the abbey's millennium, Le Monde takes a look back at the origins of this architectural wonder, from history to legend.
The three apparitions of Archangel Michael
According to tradition, during the reign of King Childebert – probably Childebert III (695-711) – the Archangel Michael appeared in a dream to Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, ordering him to build a church in his honor. The designated site was Mont Tombe, the original name of Mont-Saint-Michel, meaning both tumulus and tomb.
An early 9th-century text written by a local canon – Révélation Concernant l'Église de l'Archange Saint Michel ("Revelation Concerning the Church of the Archangel Michael") – maintained that it took the archangel three visits to overcome the bishop's incredulity. On the third visit, he is said to have perforated the bishop's skull with his finger. Thereby convinced of the divine origin of his dreams, the bishop had a church built to the west of the tip of the rock, a replica of the Italian sanctuary on Mount Gargan in Puglia, where St. Michael is said to have appeared as early as the end of the 5th century.
For the safekeeping of the new sanctuary, Saint Aubert called in a community of twelve monks, probably regular canons – both monks and priests. Mont Tombe soon became a place of pilgrimage for the faithful wishing to place themselves under the protection of Saint Michael, the privileged intercessor between men and God. In Christian tradition, the archangel's mission is to slay the dragon, the symbol of evil, but he will also weigh souls at the Last Judgment, and lead the elect into paradise.
In the 10th century, Abbot Odon of Cluny (d. 942) first referred to Mont Tombe as Mont-Saint-Michel. In 965 or 966, the canons were replaced by a community of twelve Benedictine monks who built a new monastery. Today, however, all that remains of this pre-Romanesque abbey is the church of Notre-Dame-sous-Terre, a venerable sanctuary built on the site of the one consecrated by Saint Aubert.
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