20 – Going up, going down …

On the stairs

I believe there are some nine hundred stairs on the way up to the abbey. I never counted - but recalling climbs up the Arc de Triomphe and Pantheon in Paris (where I did) this seems entirely plausible. In addition there are the ascending streets and ramps, there is the Grand Outer Staircase and the Grand Inner Staircase, and then there are just the ordinary stairs those in the towers and on the ramparts. In other words – you will need a bit of stamina getting to the top.

The abbey and church of Mont St Michel remain Roman Catholic, so it was no surprise to encounter nuns and priests along the way to the abbey. For over a century these would have been of the Benedictine order, but today (and since 2001) the resident clergy on the Mont are of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem. Driven out of the abbey at the time of the Revolution and with much property of the church seized by the atheistic government of the day, the island was used as a prison from around 1793 for some seventy years. Amongst the first inmates were around 300 priests refusing to renounce their vows to God. Ironically the early hermit monks would have chosen this retreat for its isolation and solitude – something they wouldn’t get much of today with the Mont’s annual turnout of some three and a half million visitors.