MONT-SAINT-MICHEL, mfin-sia-me shel, France, a famous seat of leirning and pilgrimage resort of Normandy as early as the 12th century, now an equally celebrated tourist resort. It consists of a collection of medieval houses, hostelries, ecclesiastical buildings, and fortifications, grouped on a conical rock in the Bay of Cancale or Saint Michel, at the mouth of the Couesnon River, here forming the bound ary between Normandy and Brittany, 15 miles southeast of Granville. Anciently a lofty hill in the forest of Scissy which was submerged in the 7th century by a tidal cataclysm, the rock in prehistoric times was crowned by a Celtic temple; it was the Roman Mons Tumba, and the "mons in pericido maris"— the mount in danger of the sea — of the monastic chroni clers. The Bay of Saint Michel, 15 miles wide at its mouth, and 8 miles long from north to south, is nearly dry at low water, but fills with treacherous rapidity at flood tide. In 1880 a dyke nearly a mile long was completed which connects the Mont with the mainland. Ram parts, towers and bastions of the 16th century encircle the base of the rock which has a circuit of about two miles, and the entrance is through a gate which opens on the single, narrow, wind ing street of a small village (pop. 250) built around the southern slope and leading by sev eral flights of stone steps to the fortified abbey on the summit. Crowning the abbey is a superb 15th century Gothic basilica, a fine statute of the Archangel Michael capping the spire, which towers conspicuously 250 feet above the wide expanse of sandy bay and low-lying country around. Saint Aubert, bishop of
Avranches, founded the abbey in 709 and his first chapel, restored, is on a rocky projection on the north side of the Mont. In 1203 the abbey was destroyed by Philip Augustus, and the present buildings date from that period. It was an important fortified post during the English and religious wars and was successfully de fended against all assaults by the Knights of the Order of Saint Michael. At the Revolution it was converted into a prison for political of fenders, and now ranks as one of the protected historical monuments of France. An elaborate process of restoration since 1863 has renewed its ancient strength and beauty. Among the chief features of the Mont are the abbey church, elaborately decorated cloisters, La Merveille, the marvel' or massive north wall of the abbey, the Salle des Chevaliers, the Chatelet or guardhouse, the crypts with their remarkable columns, the cellars, the dungeons, the mediaeval elevator with its enormous hoist ing wheel formerly operated by a donkey, etc.; and in the village the ancient parish church, a museum, the famous Porte du Roi and Duguesclin's Tower.