Mont St Michel Images of our Visit

Mont St Michel Images is my collection of photos from our visit to Le Mont Saint Michel. We spent the night in one of the hotels on the island. I highly recommend doing this!

The afternoon of our arrival we wandered the streets and shops and had an early dinner before walking the beach.

After the shops and Abbey closed, virtually all of the tourists except those of us actually spending the night on the island vanished. I highly recommend this because the next morning we were able to enjoy the peaceful beauty of the abbey before the tour buses started arriving. We were the first to arrive when the abbey opened which made for a wonderful visit and I made sure to take more Mont St Michel images.

Cloister Garden

Black Madonna and Child: Notre Dame du Mont Tomb

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Hall of the Promenoir

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The Scriptorium

Here is a fascinating bit of information about the Scriptorium:

“The scriptorium produced seventy manuscripts, most of them between the late tenth century and the twelfth century, with a flourishing period in the eleventh century, particularly between 1050 and 1080, when William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, brought peace and prosperity to the Anglo-Norman Kingdom. Britain had become part of Normandy after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. (Normandy would become French only in 1204.) Thirty-three manuscripts were produced between 1050 and 1080.

The Saint-Michel scriptorium became one of the most productive monastic scriptoria in Europe. Fifteen scribes transcribed thousands of pages in silence, in perseverance and in prayer, with extreme care to their work, and with a constant search for perfection and harmony. The illuminations were added then, often by the scribes themselves, with illuminated initials and full-page paintings.

The scriptorium created its own style, with original creations. The interaction between images and texts was so dense that specialists now talk about “illuminated script”. Adorned with scrollwork and foliage, illuminated initials had a simple design, which would become a specific style of Romanesque illuminations in Europe.”
[Mont-St-Michel Manuscripts Through the Ages]