Mont St Michel 1300 years of history - plus.

A World Heritage Site, one of the modern Seven Wonders of World, Mont St Michel in Normandy near Avranches was first used as a Christian site 1300 years ago. In fact, it was also a religious site before the arrival of Christianity. One of the very successful policies of the early church was to take over existing religious places as soon as they gained enough power. By so doing, they created an impression of continuity, and used the familiarity with the site of the local people. Plus of course it made it much harder for the original religions to carry on.

Many of these takeovers are identifiable today, because most of them were dedicated to St Michael (St Michel), the slayer of the dragon, a metaphor for the old faiths. The early Celtic religions often used hill tops and other prominent locations for their shrines and meeting places, and if there is a church on a hill, it is most likely to be the Church of St Michael.

The Abbey and church on Mont St Michel, built in various stages during those 1300 years, is spectacular and overwhelming; the highest part is known as La Merveille (The Marvel). Not just a church, but an entire small town, and enormous, and above all in the most striking location imaginable. It is in fact so complex that when I went on a guided tour I lingered a litle too long in one part, and the tour had vanished; it took an hour to find a way back out. There are several of my photographs of the place in the gallery at the top of this blog, which can also be found here. Every time I visit the Mont, or go near it there is a different view, or different lighting, and I probably have hundreds of pictures.

A few years ago I visited Egypt, and went to Giza to see the Pyramids. Having seen so many pictures of the iconic group of three overlapping triangles, seeing the real things was somehow very weird. That familiarity of the image made it seem as if that is all there is, an image. It was as if having seen all the Left Turn road signs over the years, I was one day to encounter the 200 metre high original Left Turn of which all the signs were copies. It is the same with Mont St Michel: the outline is so familiar, a jagged triangle that is easy to draw freehand from memory, sitting in the sea or miles of wet sand, that the real thing becomes unreal.

The village where I live is about 30 miles from Mont St Michel in a direct line, but 50 miles by road because of the Bay. Of course, whenever we have visitors they want to visit the Mont, and even the most wonderful of places can be seen too often, so these days we tend to provide them with guide books, itineraries, and ideas on all the other nearby interesting places.

We were driving out of our village with one visitor, an old friend from Canada, and she suddenly squeaked 'I can see Mont St Michel!'. We told her she was mistaken, we are far too distant, and there is at least one range of hills in the way. Every time we saw her over the next couple of years, we would suddenly point, whether we were in London or anywhere, and say 'Look – Mont St Michel', and laugh. Very unfair.

Then, one very clear day in winter, we saw Mont St Michel from the same place. With a very detailed map we discovered that our village is on the top of a range of hills that is slightly higher than the range between us and the Mont. At one specific place, it is just possible to make out a little grey triangle, apparently hovering in the air, in the far, far distance, if the light is right, and you find the gap in the trees. Most embarrassing.

One of our neighbours then told us that the musician Jean Michel Jarre had a huge concert and light display on the Mont, and quite a few villagers gathered in a particular field to watch, and listen on their radios to the simultaneous broadcast. Apparently, so many people wanted to go to the concert that the roads were jammed for miles in all directions, and most of those with tickets missed it.

Like St Iago de Compostela, in Spain, Mont St Michel was a major pilgrim site, and indeed one of the stops on the way to Compostela. There is a little village, not far from us, called St Michel de Montjoie (Joie means, unsurprisingly, joy), which grew up at the first point where pilgrims from Paris caught a glimpse of the Mont. It is also the site of a Museum of Granite, and part of the Route du Granit walk. Much of the granite used in Paris came from here.

For some reason, quite a lot of British people either know nothing of Mont St Michel, or think it a minor attraction, like the Cornish St Michael's Mount, which is like comparing the parish church of St Pancras with Westminster Abbey. If you ever go to Normandy, or Brittany because it is effectively on the border, not to stop off at the Mont would be a dreadful loss.

Avranches and London

Avranches should be an appealing town: in existence for over 2,500 years, perched on a promontory overlooking the Bay of Mont St Michel, and the abbey itself, politically and religiously important for many centuries. But I have never really taken to it, primarily because most of it was destroyed by American bombing in1944. Only a small part of the ramparts and a few small corners with old buildings survived, and the 19c large church.

There used to be a medieval cathedral right on the edge overlooking the bay, which really stood out and was visible for miles. Unfortunately, it fell down early in the 19c. It was replaced by a huge Gothic thing at the top of the town, on a sort of plateau, so that it really has no great visibility. And as with most other Victorian gothic churches, it doesn't really work. Medieval gothic soars out of the earth, with scale, activity and huge power, for example Coutances, Mont St Michel itself, or indeed Salisbury and Exeter. The Victorians made gothic buildings that were either absurdly overdecorated and defiantly false, such as the Houses of Parliament and the Natural History Museum, or solid, grumpy things that squat on the ground. Avranches is the latter.

Recently, the medieval manuscripts and books from the Abbey were moved to a specially built museum – the Scriptorial – built into the remains of the ramparts, which turns about to be well worth a visit. Going there with a friend from Canada and therefore being a tourist, I also discovered a few buildings in a corner nearby that dated back to the 12c. I also discovered a slight connection with London that I hadn't known about. 

I used to work in the heart of the City, and about 100 yards from the office, there is a blue plaque stating that Thomas a Becket was born in a house on that site. Just one of the sudden historical resonances that one comes across throughout the City. The Avranches connection is that Henry II who was held responsible for the murder of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral eventually received a pardon from the Pope, in 1172 in Avranches. On the corner of the site of the old cathedral, there is a plaque in the ground recording the details, in exactly the spot where Henry knelt down and asked forgiveness. The building where he and his retinue stayed has also survived, but is hard to see because of later construction on one side, and on the other is has been severely modified over the centuries; it is still occupied.

Henry was the great grandson of William the Conqueror (Guillame le Conquerant (conquering) as they call him here) and apart from being King of England, was also Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, Duke of Aquitaine (he was married to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who has already been the wife of the King of France)), and Duke of Gascony, amongst others. He was the first king of the Plantagenet dynasty (plant a genet, broom twig, being the family symbol). This goes to reinforce the reminders that Normandy and England have a huge amount of shared history.

My other connection with Avranches is more personal. My father joined the RAF in 1939, and didn't come home again until he had a week's leave in December 1944. In August 1944 he landed near St Tropez in the D-Day of the South, and over the next few weeks made his way through France, arriving at Avranches. The town was unexpectedly full of American troops who made it difficult to do the things the British army and air force were supposed to do. On enquiry by the British senior officer, it turned out that the large contingent of Americans had been ordered to go to Arromanches, to help with unloading materials and supplies, but had ended up in the wrong town because they couldn't understand maps, and just decided to stay there.