CHAPTER IV

FORTIFIED ABBEYS

The monasteries built throughout the twelfth century were provided with outer walls, by means of which the claustral buildings, offices, workshops, and even farms of the community were enclosed. Thus all the necessaries of life were produced within the precincts, and all communication with the outside world was avoided.

But by the end of the century the great abbeys had become feudal castles; and fortified walls were raised around them, often embracing the town which had grown up under their protection and shared their fortunes. This was the case at Cluny, and the town acknowledged its obligations to the monks by the payment of tithes.

In the reign of Philip Augustus and St. Louis the abbots were not only the heads of their monasteries but feudal chieftains, vassals of the royal power, and as such obliged to furnish the sovereign with men-at-arms in time of war, and to maintain a garrison when required.[52]

[52] See Part III., "Military Architecture," Abbey of Mont St. Michel.

The Abbey of Tournus was, like Cluny, surrounded by walls connected with the city ramparts.

The Abbey of St. Allyre, in Auvergne, near Clermont, was defended by walls and towers, which seem to have been added to the original structure of the ninth century at some period during the thirteenth, when such fortification of religious houses became necessary.

In many other monasteries a system of defence more or less elaborate was adopted; but the most famous of all the abbeys built by the Benedictines was unquestionably Mont St. Michel, which, for boldness and grandeur of design, is unique among military and monastic monuments from the eleventh to the close of the fifteenth century.

The Abbey of Mont St. Michel was founded in 708 by St. Aubert, according to tradition. At the close of the tenth century it was restored by Richard Sans Peur, third Duke of Normandy, with the help of the Benedictine monks from Monte Casino, whom he had installed at St. Michel in 966. It increased greatly in wealth and extent in the eleventh century, and by the end of the twelfth was in the full tide of its prosperity. Its buildings, however had not yet that importance to which they attained in the following century.[53] In the twelfth century they consisted of the church, which was built between 1020 and 1135[54] and the monastic buildings proper (_lieux réguliers_), with lodgings for servants and guests to the north of the nave, at G, G´, and F on the plan, Fig. 152. To these, which were restored or reconstructed in a great measure by the Abbot Roger II. at the beginning of the twelfth century, additions were made on the south and south-east by Robert de Thorigni from 1154 to 1186.

The monastery was not then fortified.

[53] _Description de l'Abbaye du Mont St. Michel_, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, 1877. This work was crowned by the Institute in 1879, at the _Concours des Antiquités Nationales_.

[54] See _L'Architecture Romane_, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, Maison Quantin, 1888.

Built on the summit of a rock, the impregnable steepness of which provided a natural rampart north and west, it depended solely upon the advantages of its position for defence. Its situation in the midst of a treacherous sandy plain--a position which gave rise to the mediæval name, _Le Mont St. Michel au Péril de la Mer_--secured it against attempts at investiture, and even to a great extent against sudden assaults. Enclosures of stone or wooden fences surrounded it at those points on the east where the less rugged nature of the surface rendered access comparatively easy, and where stood the entrance, with the various habitations which had grouped themselves round it. The so-called _town_ had been founded in the tenth century by a few families decimated by the Normans, in their raids upon Avranches and its neighbourhood after the death of Charlemagne. In the thirteenth century it consisted of a small number of houses which, by way of security against the vagaries of the sea, were built upon the highest point of the rock to the east.

In 1203 the greater part of the abbey, the church excepted, was destroyed during the wars between Philip Augustus, King of France, and John, King of England.

Historic records prove conclusively that the abbey had no defensive works properly so-called in the twelfth and early part of the thirteenth century.

From this period onwards abbeys, more especially those of the Benedictine orders, were transformed into regular fortresses capable of sustaining a siege. The abbots, in their character of feudal lords, fortified their monasteries to ensure them against disasters such as had marked the early years of the thirteenth century. Mont St. Michel is one of the most curious examples of such fortification.

The original architects of the abbey seem to have been unwilling to diminish the height of the mount by levelling. Resolving to detract in no degree from the majesty of so splendid a base for their church, they set about their work on the same principle as the pyramid builders. Our illustrations show how the buildings were raised partly on plateaux circumscribing the apex of the mount, partly on that apex itself. The result is that the monastery, as we see it, has a core of rock rising at its highest point to the very floor of the church. The ring of lower stories rests upon walls of great thickness, and upon piers united by vaults, the whole forming a substructure of perfect solidity.

The section made through the transept (Fig. 153) gives an exact idea of the portion which dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and of the buildings which gradually grouped themselves round this nucleus, such as the so-called _Merveille_ (Marvel) to the north, and the abbot's lodging to the south.

[55] _Description de l'Abbaye du Mont St. Michel et de ses Abords_, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, 1877.

The longitudinal section (Fig. 154) shows the crypt, or lower church. This was not, as has been frequently asserted, actually hollowed out of the rock; it was, however, very ingeniously contrived in the fifteenth century over the ruins of the Romanesque church in the space between the declivity of the mount and the artificial plateau of the earlier architects. The substructures of the Romanesque church which were enlarged by Robert de Thorigni in the thirteenth century are indicated in this diagram. They are of gigantic proportions, especially towards the west.

Fig. 155 shows the so-called _Galerie de l'Aquilon_ (Gallery of the North Wind), one of the upper stories of the claustral buildings to the north of the church constructed by Roger II., eleventh abbot (1106-1122).

After the fire of 1203, when the abbey had become a feof of the royal domain, the Abbot Jourdain and his successors rebuilt it almost entirely, with the exception of the church.

As the peculiarities of the site made it impossible to adhere strictly to the Benedictine system of direct communication between the main buildings and the church, the _lieux réguliers_, or accommodation reserved for the monks, were disposed above the magnificent building to the north of the church, which, from the time of its foundation, was known as _La Merveille_ (the Marvel).

This vast structure fairly takes rank as the grandest example of combined religious and military architecture of the finest mediæval period.

The _Merveille_ consists of three stories, two of which are vaulted. The lowest contains the almonry and cellar; the intermediate story the refectory and the knights' hall; the third the dormitory and cloister. The building consists of two wings running east and west; the apartments are superposed as follows:--In the east wing the almonry, the refectory, and the dormitory; in the west the cellar, the knights' hall, and the cloister.[56]

[56] _Description de l'Abbaye du Mont St. Michel et de ses Abords_, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, 1877.

This splendid structure is built entirely of granite. It was carried out by one continuous effort, under the inspiration of an incomparably bold and learned design of the Abbé Jourdain, to which his successors religiously adhered.

The undertaking was entered upon in 1203 and finished in 1228, the final achievement being the cloister, the architects or sculptors of which are commemorated by an inscription in the spandril of one of the arcades in the south walk.

To fully appreciate this stupendous monument, we must realise the extraordinary energy which enabled its architects to complete it in the comparatively short space of twenty-five years. We must take into account the conditions of its growth, its situation on the very summit of a rugged cliff, cut off from the mainland at times by the sea, at other times by an expanse of treacherous quicksand. We must consider the enormous difficulties of transporting materials, seeing that all the granite used was quarried by the monks from the neighbouring coast. It is true that an unimportant quota of the stone was dug from the base of the rock itself. But though the passage across the sands was by this means avoided, the difficulties of raising great masses of stone to the foot of the _Merveille_, the foundations of which are over 160 feet above the sea-level, had still to be met. It seems certain that the east and west buildings of which the _Merveille_ consists were built at the same time, for though certain differences are perceptible in the form of the exterior buttresses, they evidently result from the interior formation of the various apartments. A study of the plans, sections, and façades of the buildings is convincing on this head, and the general arrangements, notably that of the staircase, all point to the same conclusion. This staircase is a spiral in the thickness of the buttress which, with its crowning octagonal turret, forms the point of junction between the two buildings. It winds from the almonry of the eastern ground-floor to the knights' hall on the west, passing through the dormitory of the eastern block to terminate in the northern embattlement above.

The eastern and northern façades of the _Merveille_ are models of severe and virile beauty; a massive grandeur characterises them, especially striking and impressive in the northern front as viewed from the sea. The vast walls of granite (the material used throughout, save in the inner walk of the cloister) are pierced with windows varying in shape according to the character of the rooms they light. Those of the dormitory are very remarkable. They are long and narrow, and affect the aspect of loopholes, deeply splayed outwards; the peculiar form of the honeycombed window-heads suggests a reminiscence of Arab types seen by the French Crusaders in Palestine. The thrusts of the interior vaulting are met on the exterior by massive buttresses, the vigorous profiles of which contribute greatly to the nobility of the general effect.

These formidable façades were practically fortifications, but the _Merveille_ was further defended to the north by an embattled wall, flanked by a tower which served as a post for watchmen, to which the covered ways running round the base of the western buildings converged.

In the middle, on a level with the north-west angle of the _Merveille_, a _châtelet_, or miniature keep, now destroyed, guarded the rugged passage between embattled walls which led to the Fountain of St. Aubert, and was known as the _Passage du Degré_ (passage of the stairway).

The various buildings of the abbey which were added in the fourteenth century, after the construction of the _Merveille_, are: the abbot's lodging, with its offices on the south, and certain military works which completed the defensive system. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries these were gradually extended to the walls of the town, as we shall see in Part III., "Military Architecture."