Mont-Saint-Michel, the abbey amid the tides of Normandy

On the border between Normandy and Brittany, in the bay where the tides reach some of the widest ranges in Europe, a granite islet supports an abbey, a village and a ring of walls. Mont-Saint-Michel appears to pilgrims as a vision suspended between sky and water, and for this reason in the Middle Ages it was also called Saint Michael in peril of the sea. Few places combine nature, faith and the military history of France so powerfully.

The dream of Bishop Aubert

According to tradition, in 708 the archangel Michael appeared in a dream to Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, asking him to build a sanctuary on the mount then called Mont Tombe. The bishop hesitated, and the angel had to repeat the request three times. At the third appearance, the legend says, he touched his head with his finger, leaving a hole in it. The basilica of Saint-Gervais in Avranches still keeps a pierced skull venerated as Aubert's.

The first sanctuary imitated the cave on the Gargano, from which some relics were brought: a fragment of the red cloak and a piece of the altar on which, according to Apulian tradition, the archangel had set his foot. In 966 Richard I, Duke of Normandy, installed a community of Benedictine monks there, who made the mount a centre of prayer and culture, famous for its scriptorium. The manuscripts produced and copied by the monks, including works of Aristotle in Latin translation, are now largely kept at Avranches, in the Scriptorial, the museum devoted to the mount's codices.

The Merveille and the fortress

Over the centuries the abbey grew upwards, adapting to the rock with crypts and foundations. Its masterpiece is the Merveille, a Gothic complex built on the north side in the early thirteenth century, after the King of France conquered Normandy. On three levels it stacks the almonry, the guests' hall, the refectory and the cloister, suspended high above the bay. At the foot of the abbey, along the single climbing street, grew the village that received the pilgrims, known in the Middle Ages as miquelots.

During the Hundred Years' War the mount withstood English sieges for decades, while almost all of Normandy was occupied. It thus became a symbol of French national identity and of the favour of the archangel, patron of the kingdom. The Bayeux Tapestry also recalls the place: it shows Harold rescuing soldiers from the quicksand of the bay during an expedition with William the Conqueror.

Prison, restoration and tide

With the Revolution the monks were expelled and the abbey was turned into a prison, a role it kept until 1863. Writers such as Victor Hugo denounced the decay of the monument, and in the second half of the nineteenth century the great restorations began. The spire with the gilded statue of the archangel, by Emmanuel Frémiet, was placed at the top of the church in 1897.

The causeway built in 1879 had joined the mount to the mainland, encouraging the silting of the bay. A long project replaced the causeway with a footbridge, opened in 2014, to give the island back its maritime character. Inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979 together with its bay, Mont-Saint-Michel is today one of the most visited places in France, and once again hosts a small religious community.