Norman Excursion

This weekend, the Institute of Touraine made its longest excursion, traveling all the way North to Normandy and Brittany, to visit the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel, and the ruins of Saint Malo. I slept almost the entire way from Tours to Mont Saint-Michel, as well as from Mont Saint-Michel to Saint-Malo, which is excellent, because we were apparently stuck in traffic for nearly an hour.

How to describe Mont Saint-Michel? An enormous tortoise flopping in the English channel, with a toy castle planted on its back? Until I upload my photos, that will have to do. Maupassant, in his far less prosaic description, calls the monastery a "monstrous jewel, tall like a mountain, chiseled like a sculpture, and as vaporous as sheer silk" (my loose translation). Close to the border between Normandy and Brittany, Mont Saint-Michel is very much a product of both provinces. While the land and most of its historical residents have been Norman, a great deal of the stone derives from Brittany; some even originates in Great Britain. Large loads of Irish granite were shipped, very slowly, across the Channel, Ireland being famous for its granite quarries.

When the island of Mont Saint-Michel became an abbey in the 8th century, both the isle itself and its two smaller sisters had already long been occupied, and used for as sites of worship dedicated to the Greco-Roman Gods, notably Artemis. A sight of the island will immediately clarify why it has (almost) always been a religious nexus: it is situated between the water and the sky, floating free from the Earth, and its fiercely jutting terrain has a Babel-esque defiance to it. Many religions associate height with holiness, and Mont Saint-Michel indeed towers above the rest of the landscape. According to legend, in 708, St. Aubert met the angel Michael in a vision. The angel commanded Aubert to build a monastery on the isle, and left three proofs of the truthfulness of the vision: a footprint, a feather, and a hole in Aubert's skull. Although the former two pieces of evidence no longer exist, a skull with a hole around an inch in diameter remains to bear witness to the angel's command.

This myth is one of many, many, which hang around Mont Saint-Michel like a coat. Another, for example, takes place in the early days of the monastery, when a lone donkey daily carried supplies to the monks in residence. One day, the donkey was devoured by a wolf; the wolf, however, hoisted the donkey's load onto its own back, and meekly carried them the rest of the way; from that day forward, the wolf was meek and obedient. This was probably a vast improvement over the donkey in question, seeing as donkeys are typically rather stubborn. It would have been an even greater improvement if the wolf had eaten a mule, instead. The most recent story, it would seem, would be the case of the flying statue. The statue of Saint Michael, constructed in the 19th century, and perched triumphantly atop of the abbey, makes an excellent target for lightning-bolts. When the statue needed to be replaced after such an incident, it flew back to its place atop the steeple: admittedly, it was being hoisted by a helicopter at the time, but nonetheless, nobody can doubt that the statue flew.

Mont Saint-Michel has always suffered from logistical difficulties, lacking in particular any nearby terrestrial source of fresh water (the English Channel is a bit salty for human consumption). For this reason, there is an enormous stone water-tank, open to collect falling rainwater, an architectural trick the Romans had already perfected. The architectural history of Mont Saint-Michel is one of constant disasters: twelve fires have ravaged the building, as well as countless structural collapses. Every time the previous edifice was destroyed, the occupants rebuilt upon its ruins, hoisting the palimpsest ever skyward. The earliest standing ruins exist from the 11th century, but the building is a whole is a complete mishmash. For instance, when standing in the nave, facing the apse, of the main cruciform church, the transept arch to my left dated from the 11th century; the transept arch to my right dated from the 12th; and the apse itself dated from the 15th. I could not see much difference, but this apparent homogeneity hides a crisis-ridden history. The most recent stonework dates from the 18th century; meanwhile, the cyclopean outer walls took a mere 20 years to erect. The entire construction is built around four central pillars, each one several feet in diameter, and unlike most features of the abbey, standing upon solid ground, rather than the ruins of an older structure. The whole building is heavy, heavy Gothic, bearing the inherent architectural weakness of the Gothic style: the tendency of the walls to slowly lean outward. Flying buttresses were invented for this very reason, to prevent buildings from collapsing outwards. At Mont Saint-Michel, the walls were already slipping by the time necessary precautions were taken, and keen-eyed architectural enthusiasts can still perceive a slant. Or so I hear: I'm trusting the guide that such a fault exists, but even when it was pointed out to me, I couldn't see it.

Mont Saint-Michel welcomed literally millions of pilgrims, though pilgrimages tapered off in the 13th century. The church was not abandoned, however: a 17th-century list still exists, for instance, of the ninety-nine knights sworn to protect the abbey. When the French Revolution resulted in the seizure of all church-lands in France, in order to pay off government debts, the abbey became a prison, until the middle of the 19th century. It has since become an abbey again, and still welcomes millions of pilgrims, although these pilgrims now go by the name of "tourists." The winding path up through the fortifications is clogged with jostling tourists. "Trop de monde" is how the French put it. There are restaurants, creperies, souvenir-shops, and all the other capitalist by-products of tourism. Naturally, many of them assume medieval rusticity, with pre-weathered wooden signs, and names with English equivalents such as "Ye Olde Inne." After I strolled around the beaches, trying to shoot a quality photograph of the island-monument (I failed), I followed the directions given to me by my professor, and found myself ascending Mont Saint-Michel nearly alone. There are, in fact, two different ways to ascend: one I have already described, in all of its bustle and sham; the other is steeper, wilder, entirely without merchandise, and nearly without people.

After I successfully slept to Saint-Malo, the bus delivered us to more drizzle (it had been raining all day). Saint Malo is an old fortified port city, and it owes its name to the French mispronunciation of the 6th-century Scottish bishop, the monk Maclow, who presided elsewhere in the see; only in the 12th century did the bishop transfer his seat to what is now Saint-Malo. Throughout the middle ages, the port was distinguished by the quality of its sailors, and in the Age of Discovery, it participated heavily in the European exploration of the New World. Sadly, World War II destroyed 80% of the walls of the old city, and now all that exists of the old "Intra-Muros" (Latin for "inside the walls") are a few ramparts, and a single tower. There is, unfortunately, very little history offered to visitors, crepes and ice cream being far more lucrative products. To be fair, I suspect that the primary reason we visited Saint-Malo was to find a place to feed the students, who are a fairly whiny lot. The shops in the Intramuros were bursting with so-called traditional Norman foods; personally, I highly recommend the doughnuts, the best I've ever tasted, and way better than the ones available around Chanukah time on Cornell campus, either at the lighting of the Ice Menorah, or at 104 West!

The trip would not be complete if I didn't do something at least somewhat stupid. This time, I boarded a different bus at Saint-Malo than I had been riding, previously. This held us up for several minutes. In my defense, there had been no mention of the necessity to board the same bus, and the buses looked virtually identical (I think there might have been different upholstery); but if I had known that I was supposed to ride the same bus back, I would have made an effort to make certain that I had boarded the correct one. In any case, I was in no danger of being left behind.

I was not impressed by this tour: the history-to-price and history-to-crowd ratios were both far, far lower than on the previous excursions.

~JD

"Un point de depart incontestablement economique, disette et pain cher, domine les revendications des femmes parisiennes" [One point of departure incontestably economic, that of food-shortage and the high price of bread, dominated the grievances of the Parisian women] (Vovelle, Chute de la monarchie, p. 201).