Mont-saint-Michel
Spiegel-online today has a piece on the proposal to build wind-turbines close enough to Mont-saint-Michel that they could spoil the view from the spectacular site, causing it to lose its World Heritage Status. Two paragraphs explain how and why it gained that status:
Mont-Saint-Michel, located in a bay between the coast of Brittany and the Contentin peninsula in Normandy, is a symbol for the entire region. It is cut off from land twice a day at high tide and is one of France’s biggest tourist destinations, attracting 3 million visitors a year, tourists and pilgrims.
UNESCO, the United Nations’ culture and education agency, designates this unique place as a World Heritage Site. Mont-Saint-Michel and the bay were included in the prestigious list of places of global special cultural and physical significance in 1979. The judges as the time lauded the “unprecedented union of the natural site and the architecture” and fated it as an “unequalled ensemble, as much because of the co-existence of the abbey and its fortified village with the confined limits of a small island, as for the originality of the placement of the buildings.” Mont-Saint-Michel, they said, was one of the most important sites of medieval Christian civilization.
Here is the official tourist website, which includes a photo-gallery.
I visited it once with a friend. We went by train, departing very early from Paris and arriving around noon. Having decided to eat lunch before starting on a tour, we sat overlooking the bay and had the thrill of a watching a violent thunderstorm explode around us, a perfectly Gothic moment.
It used to be cut off twice a day, but the bay progressively filled with sand, and last time I visited, it was only surrounded by water during the highest tides of the year, in the Fall and in the Spring. There was an ambitious project going on to change the course of the river that flows into the bay so that it would flow in faster and thus clear some of the sand (or flow in more slowly and thus deposit fewer sediments, I have forgotten which.) Otherwise we were trending towards Mont Saint-Michel being permanently clear of water.
The web site says that it is accessible by the connecting road year round, so the road, at least, is never covered by tide at any point during the year.
I’m a big fan of Mont Saint-Michel. Here’s what I like about it.
They now have monks and nuns staying in the abbey – Fraternite de Jerusalem. Vespers are open to the public. Awesome music and a unique environment.
It’s possible to walk across the bay; depending on the route, it’s 3 to 7 miles. At low tide (a couple of streams must be crossed, ankle-deep at low tide.) A guide is needed to avoid quicksand, or so they claim. Last time I went there, the guide took us to a bank of quicksand and we tried going in and sinking in slowly, all the way to our thighs, then extracting ourselves from the sand. Weird and fun.
There are also pilgrims who walk from inland to the bay, across, and to the abbey, as part of a weekend pilgrimage.
I have been there at a period of high tide and, from the mount, watched the tide come in; vast surfaces of water silently but rapidly creeping up towards the walls. Fascinating and creepy!
On the minus side, if you merely take the bus and walk the touristy narrow street up the mount, then the enormous crowds of tourists, the tacky souvenir shops, and the indifferent but expensive food, might spoil your visit, especially if it’s not tied to the time of the tide.
I am told that it’s possible to stay overnight (there’s accommodation for pilgrims), that the place is quiet in the evening after the last tourist bus has left, and that watching sunrise over the bay is unforgettable, but I don’t know.
And about the wind turbines: they’re planned 10 miles away from the mount. What impact that would have on the scenery, I’m not sure.
Everybody is green except when it counts. :(
Actually in my far less romantic setting in northwestern Ontario, there is a proposal to build wind turbines on the small norwesters south of the city. It is being met by opposition as well.
200 kilometers away westward, a coal generating plant that would have created employment for a lot of people in a completely economically devestated small town was shut down and not permitted to run by the Ontario government as part of their green policy.
So we end up sticking with the tried and true hydro-electric which disfigured the falls as well.
The city of Toronto’s electric grid was almost shut down this summer during the heat wave.
I read The Angel’s Promise last year, about an archaeologist uncovering a mystery hidden at Mont Saint Michel. Atmospheric’s were great, as the story moved from the present to the inaccessible past like crossing over to the mountain when the tide was out. The contrast of archaeology and religion in the lives of the characters. Even the outrageous moments — like the monk who got a secret from a brother whose uncle had known a monk who had learned from an exile from the mont at the time of the French Revolution who had known the archivist… back to the 11th cent. without ever garbling the information — served to tell the history of the mountainous monastery that stood while the world swirled in and around it. By Frederic Lenoir and Viollette Cabesos.
For visuals, Mindwalk, has Liv Ullman, Sam Waterston and John Heard spending a day or two at M-s-M discussing politics, philosophy, science and other modern surrogates for religion. There are beautiful views as they walk around the monastery, go out into the bay at low tide, eat at an outdoor cafe, etc. And you don’t have to listen to the actors babble incoherently if you do not want to.
I spent a weekend there many years ago, staying overnight at the abbey. I had just finished reading Henry Adams’ Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartes, something I recommend to anyone who’s considering a visit.
It was so cold at night that when I went to breakfast, I was longing for something hot. My wish was granted. As we sat at long, simple wooden tables, each of us with a big bowl in front of us, two people came along behind us, each of them bearing a huge pot. One of them approached from my left side and half-filled my bowl with steaming coffee; the other came up from the right side and filled the other half with hot, sweetened milk. Couldn’t have gotten much better than that.
I attended Sunday mass at Mont-Saint-Michel on Epiphany, 2009.
We arrived early to give my 84-year-old traveling companion with a new knee time to make the full ascent to the Abbey church.
As a musician, I can tell you that the whole experience was etherial.
The monks and nuns knelt in rows on the stone floor (insulated by layers and layers of clothing) on either side of the santuary, facing the altar and hummed the 4-part accompaniment to the Eucharistic Prayer ‘a capella’ while the celebrant sang the prayer.
Typical of a French Mass there was organ music for prelude, offertory, communion and recessional – all other music was sung and chanted by all of us without organ.
On the morning we were there for Mass, the ambient temperature (in fahrenheit) was 18 degrees. There is, of course, no heat in the Abbey Church. The assembly sat on wooden benches just forward of the crossing.
The sermon was absolutely apt and very enlightening. But, as we approached the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the cold settled into my bones – I was shivering and my teeth were chattering, and from habit, I refused to don my knit cap.
Just prior to communion, I was so cold that I felt I needed to leave the Abbey church and seek out the sun which was shining brightly (though without heat) on the porch and through the clear windows.
As I sat there debating whether or not I could stand another minute of the cold (let me tell you, I now have a very good experience of the term ‘stone cold’) I thought back to the over 1000 years during this holy place had been a destination of the most ardent and hard-won pilgrimages – and literally how many millions (possibly) of faithful had made the same climb that we had made and sat or stood in this sanctuary on the mount, enduring many more hardships that a little cold.
Within a few minutes, I was comfortably warm, maintained my place in the church, received communion; not only for myself and my forebears from Normandy Haut but, indeed, in both the company of and the memory of all those holy pilgrims.
I left the Abbey church not only uplifted by the sublime beauty of the place and of the most wonderful liturgy, but by those few moments in which my little suffering was turned into an occasion for Joy and remembrance. (‘Whenever you do this, do this in Memory of Me’)
I suppose that from the heights of the porch on a clear day, the horizon may possibly show some indistinct fuzziness – but frankly, a clear day with a 10-mile clear view is something that is rare on the Normandy coast.
If you ever have the opportunity to visit Mont-Saint-Michel, please, please do so. Expect nothing, take in everything, and let the hearts and souls of 1000 years of faith-driven pilgrims make you feel at home – there is no place like it.
For more on the monks and nuns who have been there since 2001:
http://jerusalem.cef.fr/mont-saint-michel-abbatiale
Saint Michael has some of the finest shrines and occupies some of the best defensive spots in Europe. If they were located in the US they could be protected as a matter of national security.
We traveled to this one without making advance reservations, not realizing how popular it was. Afterwards we had to search far and wide for accommodations but finally found a tiny hamlet that had a room and also a small restaurant where the chef had just returned from spending 20 years at the Waldorf Astoria — apparently you can keep them down on the farm even if they’ve seen New York, as long as the farm is a charming place in Normandy.
I notice that the tourist site claims that the shrine attracts 3 million visitors a year. That’s the same number that visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral each year. There should be an official ranking of the saints to see who attracts the most visitors.
The Bayeux Tapestry is located not far from Mont Saint Michel.
Way back in 1973 I visited Mont-Saint-Michel during a summer bicycle tour of Europe, which was really a pilgrimage. I too had read Henry Adam’s Mont Saint Michel and Chartres and had bicycled from Chartres, through Coustances and Bayeux. Staying at a youth hostel near the bay, I bicycled to the Mont and walked up. No liturgies then, as far as I can remember. After I bicycled and stopped at the Benedictine abbey in Solesmes for a short retreat before continuing on.
One day I hope to return – probably not by bicycle – on pilgrimage. I am very pleased that there is now a monastic presence there.