22 – At the church doors…

The clergy

It is hard to pinpoint just where the ambience of Mont St Michel begins to alter, but there is a definite change of feeling and mood as you ascend from the town towards the abbey. It is in part fostered by the architectural changes I have mentioned before and obviously also by the changing purpose of the buildings from commercial, to residential and finally to the three storied Marvel, centre of the mount. Somehow conversation becomes quieter and less intrusive. There are no signs requesting this, it simply seems to be a universal reaction to the space.  I am not a deeply religious person myself, certainly not in a conventionally ecclesiastical way but here I finally understood the spiritual use of the word celestial. Mont St Michel is that – celestial.

At the door to the church a trio of a priest and two nuns were engaged in one of those hushed conversations - a certain indication that we were close to the entrance to the Abbey. Perhaps they are resident members of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, the incumbent Catholic order resident on Mont St Michel.  You will notice the careful reconstruction work on the masonry at the base of the pillars, and once again the splendid ironwork of the door hinges.

The main part of the tour was about to commence.

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.