r the Franks of the western parts of Neustria when the
fierce Norman pirates were harrying the country. In this way the village of
Mont St Michel made its appearance at the foot of the rock. The contact of
the canons with this new population brought some trouble in its wake. The
holy men became contaminated with the world, and Richard, Duke of Normandy,
replaced them by thirty Benedictines brought from Mont-Cassin. These monks
were given the power of electing their own abbot who was invested with the
most entire control over all the affairs of the people who dwelt upon the
rock. This system of popular election seems to have worked admirably, for
in the centuries that followed, the rulers of the community were generally
men of remarkable character and great ideals.

About fifty years before the Conquest of England by Duke William, the abbot
of that time, Hildebert II., commenced work on the prodigious series of
buildings that still crown the rock. His bold scheme of building massive
walls round the highest point, in order to make a lofty platform whereon to
raise a great church, was a work of such magnitude that when he was
gathered to his fathers the foundations were by no means complete. Those
who came after him however, inspired by the great idea, kept up the work of
building with wonderful enthusiasm. Slowly, year by year, the ponderous
walls of the crypts and undercrofts grew in the great space which it was
necessary to fill. Dark, irregularly built chambers, one side formed of the
solid rock and the others composed of the almost equally massive masonry,
grouped themselves round the unequal summit of the mount, until at last,
towards the end of the eleventh century, the building of the nave of the
church was actually in progress. Roger II., the eleventh of the abbots,
commenced the buildings that preceded the extraordinary structure known as
La Merveille. Soon after came Robert de Torigny, a pious man of great
learning, who seems to have worked enthusiastically. He raised two great
towers joined by a porch, the hostelry and infirmary on the south side and
other buildings on the west. Much of this work has unfortunately
disappeared. Torigny's coffin was discovered in 1876 under the north-west
part of the great platform, and one may see a representation of the
architect-abbot in the clever series of life-like models that have been
placed in the museum.

The Bretons having made a destructive attack upon the mount in the