had become an established pilgrimage center. After the period of Viking invasions, the
agreement of Saint-Clairsur-Epte (911) placed the site in Viking hands. In 965, Richard I,
duke of Normandy, replaced the canons with thirty Benedictines and appointed Maynard
of the abbey of Saint-Wandrille as abbot. Norman funds initiated several building
campaigns.
In 1023, Bishop Hildebert leveled the top of the mount to construct a larger church
upon the first cavernous structure and turned the earlier sanctuary into a crypt. The
earliest parts of the crypt include the north and south walls and two arches of the central
arcade and west wall. In order to support the northwest aisle wall and nave piers of the
Romanesque church, the antechamber to the west was built.
With granite from Brittany and the nearby Isles of Chausey, over the course of the
11th and 12th centuries and into the 13th the church came to completion. Its largely
Romanesque plan included a seven-bay nave with side aisles, bulky compound piers,
transepts with apsidal chapels, a large crossing tower, and a two-bay east end with simple
apse. The three-story elevation had a wooden roof. In the later 12th century, Abbot
Robert de Torigny added towers to the west front that totally collapsed in 1618; in 1780,
three of the seven bays of the nave were pulled down. The 1 1th-century choir fell in
1421 but was rebuilt in Flamboyant style later in the 15th century by Abbot Guillaume
d’Estouteville. An image of the 11th-century church prior to the demise of its east and
west ends can be found in the Très Riches Heures of John, duke of Berry (fol. 195v.).
In the early 11th century, Abbot Roger II (r. 1106–22) initiated the first set of
conventual buildings on the north side of the rock. Under Guy de Thouars, Bretons laid
siege to Mont-Saint-Michel and destroyed Roger’s buildings. Fears of future invasions
together with payment from Philip II Augustus led to the more strongly fortified
construction of the monastic buildings known as the “Merveille.” During the abbacy of
Jourdain (r. 1191–1212) the new monastic plan was initiated and made vertical. Over the
period from 1203 to 1264, storage rooms, guest hall, monks’ dormitory, refectory, and
cloister were stacked on top of one another in three stories on the north face of the rock.
The first story held the cellar and almonry, the second level held the salle des chevaliers
and part of the dormitory, and the third story held the cloister and the refectory. Most of
these monastic buildings survive, along with the abbot’s lodgings and terraces with
gardens south of the church.
Due to fires and attacks, little evidence of earlier domestic architecture survives,
although their changing locations are known. In the 12th century, houses occupied the
steep rocks to the east of the abbey. Eventually, the town came to occupy its present
position on the south side of the mount. Houses from the 15th and 16th centuries remain.
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