Atheist Pilgrim

 Mont St. Michel

Took the long country walk up to Mont St. Michel, that ancient abbey surrounded by water, built on a rock island on the northwestern coast of Normandy, France. A quiet, warmish day in late October, so pleasant for tourists and pilgrims though Normandy is in a serious drought. Whitish sheep grazing the green fields as you approach the ocean, the low-slung bridge causeway and the triangle pointing to the sky. Mont St. Michel is a religious lesson written in stone, brick and mortar.

It sits on a natural island about a half mile out at high tide. It dominates that rock, as if nature had to bow down before its rider. Mt. Saint Michel started in the 700s with the first small church. Over hundreds of years, through the Vikings (who conquered it in 900+), the Normans who were the descendants of Viking raiders and Danish Kings like Rollo, arose finally a massive Gothic edifice, with its steeple the highest point – pointing to heaven. The small island village below the Abbey grew as pilgrims flocked to the rock. It is a little like an Italian mountain town in the Cinque Terre near water, but French. The village is also crowned and dominated by the Abbey. Nature and civilians take second place to God - not unusual for medieval times, but still in the hearts of so many of our Evangelical Christians.

The Abbey was also a fortress that survived the 100 Years War without being taken by the English. It still has quite effective battlements.

What of the Abbey now? Well, to this atheist it is a great film setting for the next monk murder mystery – a maze of dark chambers, massive fireplaces, crypts, a torture wheel, winding passages, alters, the eating hall, a beautiful cloister, some gardens that were probably first used to grow vegetables and fruit, and the church sanctuary itself – under reconstruction. A good part of the edifice is under reconstruction, care of the French government, a process that probably never stops.

Is it a functioning religious institution? Only if you consider a library that no one visits for books, computers or films a functioning institution.

Nicest Party of the Dark Abbey - the Cloisters

What also didn't stop was the attempt to keep Mont St. Michel the way it is. A dam built long ago to keep the flat farm land from flooding was also silting up the area around the rock, as a strong river outflow could no longer wash away the silt. They estimated that in a number of years, trees and brush would be growing around the island instead of tides, silt and mud. So they reconstructed the dam, installing flood gates for the water to go both ways – stop the tide from flooding by opening the gates, closing them to hold the water, then releasing all that water to wash away the silt. In effect, two-way water gates. It is working to keep it as it was.

A visit to this towering edifice is not without travail. If you are not sweating at the top, you have not paid for your sins. It was purposely built like this to make the 'pilgrim' suffer the steep walk, a walk of martyrs, of Jesus, of Calvary and crucifiction Luckily, its flat once you summit the stone stairway to heaven. Did I see an actual 'pilgrim'? No, only mobs of French, English, Aussie, American and Chinese tourists and a rising street lined with tourist shops. Only one young woman covered her head in the Church, reminding us that nuns, orthodox Catholics, Muslims, orthodox Mormons and other ancient tribes do love to have women cover up.

I looked through the guide-books, asked some visitors I was acquainted with, and one of the information experts this question: “Who built this?” I did not mean what individual, what church, what government. I meant what workers? The answer was either nothing or 'monks.' Now the monks – who are back with a small contingent – would have to have a skilled and strong army of thousands over many years to get this monstrous stone citadel built. Did they impress the farmers and townsfolk around the Rock into forced labor or 'volunteer' labor like some religious Stakhanovites? Did they hire skilled stonemasons, carpenters and architects from all over France? They got many of the rocks from islands down the coast. How were these many massive stones raised except by labor resembling the building of the great pyramids? Now the work is done by helicopter and probably CGT union craftspeople. But the early, hardest work was done by unknown thousands.

Even the very real material question of how water was brought up hill was not answered. Evidently it levitated.

Mont St. Michel is a monument to human ingenuity, perhaps under the magical whip of God, but more likely the very real whip of a Monseigneur and his Royal friends. During the French Revolution it was turned into a prison, as many churches were shut down by the revolutionary government due to their support of Le Roi. It is common to see noses broken off religious statues. Today it receives 3 million visitors a year, has monstrous parking lots and a shuttle bus every 10 minutes if you don't want to take the walk to the Rock. But the walk is worth it.

The Cultural Marxist

October 31, 2022