Until the mid-13th century, the abbey alone was fortified. In 1256, with financial help
from St. Louis, walls were built to circle the town, but the present fortifications are
largely 15th-century, a product of the Hundred Years’ War. The abbey played a heroic
role in the early years of the 15th century, holding out against the English for over thirty
years, in spite of Abbot Robert Jolivet’s capitulation in 1419. During the French
Revolution, the abbey was secularized, and it was used as a prison from 1793 to 1863.
Recognized as a public monument in 1874, the abbey church and other buildings were
restored.
Stacy L.Boldrick
[See also: PILGRIMAGE; ROBERT DE TORIGNY]
Adams, Henry. Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913.
Alexander, J.J.G. Norman Illumination at Mont-St-Michel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Froidevaux, Yves-Marie. Le Mont-Saint-Michel. Paris: Hachette, 1969.
Gout, Paul. Le Mont-Saint-Michel. 2 vols. Paris: Colin, 1910.
Hunt, Edward Francis. The Architecture of Mont-St-Michel (1203–1228). Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1928.
MORAL TREATISES
. The 13th century saw a considerable production of vernacular moral treatises tailored
both to the laity and to those in religious life. Edmond of Abingdon’s Mirour de seinte
Eglyse (1230–40) is a series of prose sermons compiled into a treatise intended to guide
religious in meditation in the mode of Hugh of Saint-Victor. The French version of the
English Ancrene Riwle and the Vie de gent de religion, both written near the end of the
century, are theological treatises intended to instruct religious.
From the middle of the 12th century, the Elucidarium inspired a series of treatises
aimed at the laity. Gillebert de Cambres’s verse Lucidaire was the earliest, followed by
the Lumere as lais (1266–67) of Peter of Peckham, a much longer work that also relies on
the Quattuor libri sententiarum of Peter Lombard. More elementary in tone, despite its
learned source, is the slightly earlier Dou pere qui son filz enseigne. The anonymous
Miroir du monde, sections of which antedate 1279, consists of four parts: a treatise on
virtue, another on the Seven Deadly Sins, ten paragraphs on the precepts of wisdom, and
a confession manual. The first two parts were used by Laurent d’Orléans in his Somme le
roi, composed in 1280 at the request of Philip III the Bold. Jean de Journy’s Dime de
penitence is a confession manual written in 1288.
The few surviving treatises in Occitan are similar and roughly contemporaneous. The
Repentir du pécheur, written in the second quarter of the 13th century, introduces its
confession of sins with a prayer to the Virgin. Raimon de Castelnou’s Doctrinal, from the
second half of the century, is a poetical catechism intended for public recitation. Matfre
Ermengaud’s Breviari d’Amor (1288) is an encyclopedic work broader in scope than the
others mentioned here, but its section on the love of God treats the works of mercy, the
articles of the creed, and the petitions of the Pater Noster, as well as confession.
Maureen B.M.Boulton
The Encyclopedia 1205