was born at Domfront, just beyond Avranches, and the Abbot was asked to be godfather.  In 1158, just one hundred years after Duke William’s visit, King Henry and his whole suite came to the Abbey, heard mass, and dined in the refectory.  “Rex venit ad Montem Sancti Michaelis, audita missa ad magis altare, comedit in Refec-torio cum baronibus suis.”  Abbot Robert of Torigny was his host, and very possibly William of Saint-Pair looked on.  Perhaps he recited parts of his “Roman” before the King.  One may be quite sure that when Queen Eleanor came to the Mount she asked the poet to recite his verses, for Eleanor gave law to poets.

One might linger over Abbot Robert of Torigny, who was a very great man in his day, and an especially great architect, but too ambitious.  All his work, including the two towers, crumbled and fell for want of proper support.  What would correspond to the cathedrals of Noyon and Soissons and the old clocher and fleche of Chartres is lost.  We have no choice but to step down into the next century at once, and into the full and perfect Gothic of the great age when the new Chartres was building.

In the year 1203, Philip Augustus expelled the English from Normandy and conquered the province; but, in the course of the war the Duke of Brittany, who was naturally a party to any war that took place under his eyes, happened to burn the town beneath the Abbey, and in doing so, set fire unintentionally to the Abbey itself.  The sacrilege shocked Philip Augustus, and the wish to conciliate so powerful a vassal as Saint Michel, or his abbot, led the King of France to give a large sum of money for repairing the buildings.  The Abbot Jordan (1191-1212) at once undertook to outdo all his predecessors, and, with an immense ambition, planned the huge pile which covers the whole north face of the Mount, and which has always borne the expressive name of the Merveille.

The general motive of abbatial building was common to them all.  Abbeys were large households.  The church was the centre, and at Mont-Saint-Michel the summit, for the situation compelled the abbots there to pile one building on another instead of arranging them on a level in squares or parallelograms.  The dormitory in any case had to be near a door of the church, because the Rule required constant services, day and night.  The cloister was also hard-by the church door, and, at the Mount, had to be on the same level in order to be in open air.  Naturally the refectory must be immediately beneath one or the other of these two principal structures, and the hall, or place of meeting for business with the outside world, or for internal administration, or for guests of importance, must be next the refectory.  The kitchen and offices would be placed on the lowest stage, if for no other reason, because the magazines were two hundred feet below at the landing-place, and all supplies, including water, had to be hauled up an inclined plane by windlass.