Le Mont Saint Michel, a World Heritage Site, its location is an ideal natural prison. And she was for many years.
Mount St. Michael illuminated (source: Ben Liu Song www.wikipedia.fr )
A place of pilgrimage exceptional
According to legend, one night, 708, the Archangel Michael appeared to be Aubert, bishop of Avranches, and he was ordered to build a sanctuary on Mount Tomb, an island in the bay. In the tenth century, the dukes of Normandy to build a new church and in 966 the Benedictine monks settled there. In the eleventh century, the Romanesque abbey is built. The work lasted sixty years. It was rebuilt in the thirteenth century with the help of the king, Philip Augustus, after a fire responsible for significant damage. This construction takes a new style that leads ever upwards towards the sky: the Gothic style. This period marks the peak of Mont Saint Michel. His spiritual and intellectual influence extends throughout Christendom. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a set of architecture Military defense is built on Mt. It consists of ramparts, walls thick, towers and bastions. Le Mont Saint Michel is also involved in the Hundred Years War in particular resistant to a seat held by the English for thirty years. In tribute to this achievement, King Louis XI founded the Order of the Knights of St. Michael in 1467. Often attacked, Mont Saint Michel is never taken. It became the symbol of French resistance.
The prison of the fifteenth century to the Revolution
It was then that Mont Saint Michel increases in these vocations, becoming more a prison. In 1472, Louis XI returns to the site to bring an iron cage in which he likes to lock up his political opponents. According to Stephen Dupont, Mont certainly served prison since the twelfth century, but no document gives us information about this practice before the fifteenth century. Mont Saint Michel is indeed a strategic site for holding prisoners. Isolated by the sea, the Mount is attached to the mainland until the late nineteenth century by a causeway. In the eighteenth century, is nicknamed the "Bastille of the seas." In the seventeenth century, the prison serves as a reformatory where young noblemen were locked up for bad behavior. But until the French Revolution, the prisoners are mostly pamphleteers and Jansenists. In general, it appears that detainees are treated fairly well. Religious ensure that detainees do not lack anything. The famous iron cage that scares a lot back then and which was destroyed in 1777, is made of wood and the prisoners there are held for a short duration. That's what we said Stephen Smith in his book in 1908 Prisons Mont Saint Michel. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the prison is in a considerable state of disrepair, has been reworked. In the years preceding the Revolution, the prison has few prisoners. They are only eighteen in 1776 locked in the dungeons or the iron cage.
Map Mount from the late eighteenth century - early nineteenth century (source: www.wikipedia.fr )
An abbey converted into a prison to the chagrin of the Romantics
In 1790, while the monks were expelled from the abbey, the prison that caters more refractory priests to the new Civil Constitution of clergy. From 1792 to 1799, three hundred priests are held in the abbey. They are all released in 1799. From 1796, the Mont Saint Michel is used to imprison political prisoners but also to common law, which increases considerably the number of inmates. Then, under the empire, Napoleon Mont Saint Michel a house of correction for sentenced to hard labor. Nearly 15,000 inmates of both sexes will be locked on the island until 1863, with 800 to 1 000 prisoners per year. In early 1830, Adolphe Thiers, Secretary of State for Commerce and Works, in charge of prisons, create a new sentence: fortress imprisonment for perpetrators of political crimes. Mont St. Michel becomes part of these fortresses. Many revolutionary leaders including French are locked Armand Barbes, François Vincent Raspail, Martin or Bernard Louis Auguste Blanqui.
Many romantic writers of the nineteenth century, like Victor Hugo, denounce the use of the monastery as a prison. Indeed, significant improvements are made to receive detained individuals. Prisoners are installed in the old quarters of the abbot. Twenty small rooms with two or three prisoners are taken in the Grand and Petit Exile. Partitions are added and the number of floors is changed. For forced labor, many rooms of the abbey are transformed into workshops for spinning cotton, printed cotton, to-weaving or making hats. Up to seven hundred convicts worked in these parts. A floor is even willing to create stories in the church and save space. The two floors in the nave to serve as dormitories while workshops are placed in the choir.
The choir of the abbey church where were workshops in the nineteenth century (source: vinz1966.free.fr )
The Today nave floor once cut by the nineteenth century acueille dormitories (source: vinz1966.free.fr )
The Scriptorium former knights' hall used as a workshop for prisoners in the nineteenth century (source: vinz1966.free.fr )
A global tourist
In 1863, the prison is suppressed by Napoleon III. Some monks re-move in the scene but not for long. While the threat abbey ruins, Mont Saint Michel is listed as a historic monument in 1874. The monks are expelled again but this time it's for good reason. Declining since the sixteenth century, the restoration announce the renewal of Mont Saint Michel. The restoration is being undertaken by the architect Edward Corroyer. In 1897, the statue of Saint Michael on the summit of Mont is located at 188 meters above sea Through its connection to the mainland by a causeway, Mont Saint Michel is fast becoming the first French cultural attraction. In 1969, the religious site is reborn with the installation of a community of Benedictine monks in the abbey. In 1972, UNESCO inscribed the Mont Saint Michel on its heritage list World. Today, more than three and a half million tourists visit the site each year.
Sources:
based study of images entitled The area of political prisoners in Mont Saint Michel (1832-1834): histoireimage.com
Etienne Dupont, Prisons Mont Saint Michel , Nantes, L. Durance, 1908 digitized on www.le-mont-saint-michel.org
sheet on the website of Unesco: whc.unesco.org
Official site of Mont Saint Michel: www.lemontsaintmichel .
Info Website of a rather successful amateur : vinz1966.free.fr
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