"Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story" - an old saying, of which we were reminded by our Mont St. Michel tour guide



Mont St. Michel is a monastery built in the middle ages on the very tip of a small mountain which is actually a tidal island just off the coast of France. Sound familiar? If you have been reading our blog, it might sound somewhat like Skellig Michael, and in some ways it is.

We got a guided tour of Mont St. Michel, and our guide was really excellent. He had also once visited Skellig Michael, and explaining the parallels between the two was part of his itinerary. Apparently the Hebrew word Michael translates to "Who is like God?", and in the book of Revelations the archangel Michael is the head custodian of heaven, responsible for the defeat and expulsion of Lucifer. To honour this strong connection to heaven, sanctuaries dedicated to Michael are often built on hilltops, and vice-versa.

The monks who built Skellig Michael in Ireland did so very soon after the arrival of Christianity, and apparently they still mixed bits of their old pagan religions into their faith. One example is their haircut: they decided to keep up the tradition of shaving the front of their heads like their druid predecessors (who, by the way, did not build stonehenge despite the popular misconception, as it predates their religion by centuries) instead of the top of the head like most Christian monks throughout history. Furthermore, they likely still encorporated some prayers to the moon, rivers, etc. into their worship of God.

There was a story our guide told us about Mont St. Michel: Once, after a dinner he had had with the Benedictine monks who lived there at the time, the abbot took our guide to the side. He opened a cupboard, and pulled out a silver box containing a plain-looking rosary. He challenged the guide to guess the significance of the rosary. Taking a stab in the dark, he guessed the pope had visited and had left it as a memento of that event. He was wrong, for it was no pope but rather an American named Alan Sheppard. Sheppard, a devout catholic, was one of the Apollo astronauts who visited the moon. He took 3 rosaries with him and left them out on the surface for the duration of his mission. He promised God and himself that if he got back to Earth safely, he would keep one of them for himself, give one to the pope, and leave one at a religious place on Earth that struck him particularly. So thus the third ended up at Mont St. Michel.

If you suspend disbelief for a second, you can kind of draw a parallel between the moon worshipping catholic monks who built a monastery on the tip of a rocky island in Ireland in the 6th century, and the moon visitor who left a gift for the catholic monks living in a monastery on the tip of a rocky island in France. Or not. It's up to you whether you choose to believe the facts or the legend (A side note... anyone read Life of Pi? If he read it, I think our guide would have enjoyed it very much).



That's all I'll say at this time regarding the parallels between Skellig Michael and Mont St. Michel. There are also a world of differences. Refer back to another photo here of the Skellig monastery. Whereas it was remote, simple, isolated, and had an eerie sense of space, Mont St. Michel was buzzing with tourists. The single road leading up to the ornate church at the summit was bulging was souvenir hockers trying to intice you with Mont St. Michel snowglobes (made in China). This street is refered to as "the village". In the church, our guide pointed out a statue of Michael with a balance in one hand. Since he is associated with judgement day, the balance is to weigh the souls of us men and women. The light souls will rise to heaven, while those weighed down with sin will fall down to hell. Or, in the peak tourist season of July and August, they need travel down no further than the village...