Sacred Journeys to the Mont Saint-Michel 1520 to 1750

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Journal of Religious History Vol. ••, No. ••, •• 2016 doi: 10.1111/1467-9809.12385

ELIZABETH TINGLE

Long-Distance Pilgrimage and the Counter Reformation in France: Sacred Journeys to the Mont Saint-Michel 1520 to 1750

In the Counter Reformation, a great upsurge in pilgrimage activity occurred across Europe. Much of this pilgrimage was to local shrines, often newly created. Another destination was Rome. Less well known is the post-Reformation refashioning of ancient, long-distance pilgrimages. This article examines the origins and nature of such revived pilgrimage, using the example of the Mont Saint-Michel in northern France. In the Catholic Reformation, the traditional, distant centres of pilgrimage contributed to the devotional culture of individuals and groups who wanted to go beyond the local, to experience a challenge as part of their spiritual and social growth. At the Mont, revival of the shrine came from the universality of the cult of St Michael, his role in the struggle against heresy, and veneration tied increasingly to that of Christ through the Eucharist. While pilgrims continued to travel in search of, or in thanksgiving for, healing and other graces, there was also greater emphasis on spiritual healing and intimacy with God. Also, for many young men, they proved themselves and their Catholicity by undertaking this heroic journey. Through the pilgrimage to the Mont, reformed Catholicism spread many of its ideas and values around the cities and communities of northern France.

Introduction I thought the age of pilgrimages had been at an end in all European nations, and that devotion contented itself with venerating its saints at home – but will you believe it, when I assure you, the number of pilgrims who come annually to pay their vows to Saint Michael at this Mount, are between 8 and 10,000? They are mostly peasants and men of mean occupations; but even among the noblesse there are … those who are induced to make this journey from principles of piety.1

1. W. Wraxall, A Tour through the Western, Southern and Interior Provinces of France in a Series of Letters (Dublin, 1786), 32.

Elizabeth Tingle is Professor of Early Modern European History, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

When the Englishman William Wraxall visited the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy in the 1770s, its status as a popular pilgrimage site was apparent even if visitors were fewer than at the beginning of the century. He was witness to the final phase of a great upsurge in Counter-Reformation pilgrimage activity that occurred across Europe after 1600. Much of this pilgrimage was to local and provincial shrines, often newly created.2 Another great destination was Rome, particularly during its jubilee years. Much less well known is the post-Reformation survival and refashioning of ancient, long-distance pilgrimages in Western Europe such as Santiago de Compostela and Rocamadour. This article will examine the origins and nature of such revived pilgrimage, using the example of the Mont Saint-Michel, and the role played by “heroic journeys” in reformed Catholicism in France. Pilgrimage was one of the defining features of medieval Christianity, demonstrated by historians such as Diana Webb, Jean Chelini, and André Vauchez among many others.3 But the practice declined across Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century, a result of criticism by evangelical reformers, abolition by Protestant regimes, and because of wars and instabi- lity in many regions. Yet from the 1570s onwards, pilgrimage revived, slowly at first then more rapidly after 1600. The period between 1650 and 1750 was, perhaps, the apogee of pre-modern movements. This was a result of the Council of Trent’sconfirmation of the validity of saints’ cults and relics in 1563; the great Roman jubilee of 1575 and the readoption of traditional devotional activities by an increasingly confident and militant Catholic Church eager to revive the faith and to thwart Protestantism.4 However, it was not simply a matter of the revival of old practices; many of its “medieval” features changed in the Catholic Reformation. Firstly, as Robert Sauzet, Eric Nelson, and others show, there was an apparent decline in long-distance pilgrimage and instead, a greater localisation of shrines and religious life in general, based on the parish or neighbouring sites.5 Secondly, there was growing stress on interior pilgrimage, as a spiritual rather than a physical activity, illustrated by Wes Williams’ study of travel

2. French examples include: Reine au Mont Auxois. Le culte et le pèlerinage de sainte Reine des origines à nos jours, ed. P. Boutry and D. Julia (Paris: Cerf, 1997); B. Maës, Le Roi, la Vierge et la nation. Pèlerinages et identité nationale en France entre la guerre de Cent Ans et la Révolution (Paris: Publisud, 2002); P. Martin, Les chemins du sacré, paroisses, processions, pèlerinages en Lorraine du XVIe au XIXe siècle (Metz: Serpenoise, 1995); G. Provost, La fête et le sacré. Pardons et pèlerinages en Bretagne au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Cerf, 1998). 3. D. Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999); Les Chemins de Dieu. Histoire des pèlerinages chrétiens des origines à nos jours, ed. J. Chelini and H. Branthomme (Paris: Hachette, 1982); Lieux sacrés, lieux de culte, sanctuaires. Approches terminologiques, méthodologiques, historiques et monographiques, ed. A. Vauchez (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2000). 4. See Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. N. Tanner 2 vols. (London and Washington: Sheed & Ward and Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2: 796–97. 5. R. Sauzet, Les visites pastorales dans le diocèse de Chartres pendant la première moitié du XVIIe siècle (Rome: Instituto per le ricerche di storia sociale e di storia religiosa, 1975), 249–50, 260; E. Nelson, “The Parish in its Landscape: Pilgrimage Processions in the Archdeaconry of Blois, 1500–1700,” French History 24 (2010): 318–40.

© 2016 Religious History Association PILGRIMAGE TO THE MONT SAINT-MICHEL 3 narratives.6 Thirdly, as Trevor Johnson’s work on Bavaria and Joe Bergin’s on France have illustrated, an increasing role was played at shrines by the new religious orders and reformed mendicants, as a part of their missionary agenda, while dedications to universal saints — principally Mary — expanded at the expense of older cults.7 Finally, a decrease in individual pilgrimage and a rise in collective journeys, parishes, or confraternities travelling together, has been observed, for example by Christophe Duhamel for southern Germany and George Provost for Brittany.8 In sum, historians have found a greater localisation and collectivisation of religious life and devotional activity, under closer control of the clergy. Movements to the great medieval shrines were assumed to have diminished. Yet despite emphasis on the localisation of religious experience, it is clear that long-distance pilgrimage to the classic sites revived in the Counter Reformation. Rome re-emerged as the most important destination following investments in its urban and spiritual fabric by Popes Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, and their successors. Records of the pilgrim hostel of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini show that maximum visitors arrived during Jubilees held between 1575 and 1650.9 Rome’s satellite Loreto also beneﬁted from this resurgence. Recent work on shrines in France, Germany, and Spain has also revealed the importance of longer-distance journeys to individuals’ devotional experiences.10 For example, in his study of the pilgrims passing through eighteenth-century Nuremberg, Duhamel estimates that perhaps one in 300 inhabitants of the region undertook long-distance journeys.11 Whilst not commonplace, such voyages were far from exceptional. This study of the Mont Saint-Michel examines the motives of post-Reformation pilgrimage and assesses its role in the economy of salvation of “ordinary” Catholics. The central question of investigation for this article is therefore how ancient, distant religious shrines reinvented themselves in the early modern period to attract pilgrims: how did they make themselves relevant to the changing priorities of post-Tridentine Catholicism and assist in its

6. W. Williams, Pilgrimage and Narrative in the French Renaissance: The Undiscovered Coun- try (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 7. T. Johnson, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles: The Counter Reformation in the Upper Pa- latinate (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 273–75, 290–91; J. Bergin, Church, Society and Religious Change in France 1580–1720 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 251. 8. C. Duhamelle, “Les pèlerins de passage à l’hospice zum Heiligen Kreuz de Nuremberg au XVIIIe siècle,” in Rendre ses vœux: les identités pèlerines dans l’Europe modern (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), ed. P. Boutry, P.-A. Favre, and D. Julia (Paris: EHESS, 2000), 39–56; G. Provost, “Dévo- tion de groupe et piété personnelle dans les pèlerinages bretons de la Réforme catholique,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 217 (2000): 475. 9. D. Julia, “Gagner son jubilé à l’époque moderne: mesure des foules et récits de pèlerins,” Roma moderna e contemporanea 5 (1997): 311–54. 10. To cite a few examples, Pèlerins et pèlerinages dans l’Europe moderne, ed. P. Boutry and D. Julia (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2000); P. M. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints: Counter- Reformation and Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); M. R. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany 1550–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); W. A. Christian, Jnr, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). 11. Duhamelle, “Les pèlerins de passage,” 48.

© 2016 Religious History Association 4 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY dissemination? The study is one of agency: what did such sites offer the pilgrim that local shrines and other religious traditions did not? To investigate the role of such institutions in mediating Counter-Reformation ideals into lived practices, the example of one of the most famous of the medieval shrines will be used here, the Mont Saint-Michel in northern France. There are prob- lems studying the history of the Mont for its archive was largely destroyed in 1944. But there remain several early seventeenth-century histories by monks of the abbey as well as a number of contemporary pamphlets, confraternity records, and scattered references in other sources. This provides sufﬁcient evidence to argue that by positioning the cult of Saint Michael as a guardian of orthodoxy against Protestant heresy, and through investment in rich sacramental liturgy and indulgences, the monks of the Mont modernised its spiritual attractions and pursued a reformed Catholic “programme.” The Mont also capitalised on its extra-ordinary physical site to offer devotional experiences that could not be gained in local communities, offering a supple- ment to parish religious life for certain social groups, particularly men. Through an examination of the Mont pilgrimage, therefore, this article offers new perspectives on the role of long-distance pilgrimage in the enhancement of Counter-Reformation spirituality.

A Brief History of the Mont Saint-Michel First, a little historical context is necessary.12 The abbey of the Mont Saint-Michel is located on a spectacular natural site, a small rocky outcrop in the bay of Avranches which is an island at high tide but accessible on foot at low tide. There has been monastic settlement here from at least the sixth century CE. In 708, Aubert, bishop of Avranches, founded a sanctuary on the Mont following dream-revelations of Saint Michael. It imitated the shrine to the archangel at Monte Gargano in Italy, to which Aubert sent for relics for his new church. The abbey was patronised by Charlemagne, the dukes of Normandy and Brittany, and the kings of England of France. As Saint Michael became venerated as an intercessor for departed souls, his cult expanded in Europe and the Mont attracted pilgrims. The highpoint of the shrine’s popularity was the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with a revival in the mid-ﬁfteenth century, when notable children’s pilgrimages from the Rhineland took place.13 Louis XI visited three times and in 1469 he created the Order of Saint-Michel as the highest chivalric honour in France, initially based in the abbey. Francis I visited twice, in 1518 and 1532. Just before the Reformation, in 1518, a secretary who accompanied the Cardinal of Aragon to the Mont wrote that

12. A major series of essays on the Mont Saint-Michel, largely for the Middle Ages, is Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, ed. M. Baudot 4 vols. (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1966–71). The in- formation for the paragraph comes largely from this work. 13. I. Hans-Collas, “Les pelèrinages d’enfants vers le Mont-Saint-Michel au XVe siècle: analyse des chroniques allemandes,” in Chemins et pèlerins, ed. V. Juhel (Granville: Association Les Chemins du Mont-Saint-Michel, 2003), 151–88.

© 2016 Religious History Association PILGRIMAGE TO THE MONT SAINT-MICHEL 5 the place inspired great devotion in all the West and that crowds of people came to the sanctuary to pray to the Archangel.14 We know little about the shrine in the Reformation period, although Charles IX and his brother Henry (later King Henry III) visited the Mont in 1561, while in 1576 the duchess of Bourbon, her seven children and 300-strong entourage came on pilgrimage.15 Registers of the hospital of Saint-Jacques of Argentan, which catered for pilgrims travelling from the east, show that after a reduction in the mid-century, the pilgrimage increased again from the later 1570s. Records are unsystematic, but in 1574 the hospital gave alms to 801 pilgrims going to the Mont.16 The end of the religious wars brought renewed business. In 1604, the Franciscan François Feuardent was commissioned to write a pamphlet for pilgrims, relating the history, miracles, and indulgences of the Mont, part of a renewed promotion of the site.17 At this time, the Benedictine abbey underwent reform, becoming part of the congregation of Saint-Maur in 1622. Famous visitors included Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé in 1631, Louis XIII, and Anne of Austria. After the Fronde, the Queen Mother renewed the dedication of France and the Crown to the archangel, instituting a mass for the ﬁrst Tuesday of every month in his honour for the security and prosperity of the kingdom; while Louis XIV did not visit the Mont, he was inscribed as a member of the Parisian confraternity of Saint-Michel-du-Mont and he renewed its privileges.18 In the mid-seventeenth century, there were still aristocratic pilgrims: in 1663 the governor of Normandy visited and in 1665, so did the duc de Mazarin and Monsieur Colbert, brother of the king’s minister.19 The chronicler Dom de Camps noted that in the 1660s, the abbey was receiving as many pilgrims as it had ever received in the past: in one week alone in 1663 it received a company of 600 and another of 400 men.20 Thereafter, royal and aristocratic interest waned. However, the pilgrimage continued, despite the use of the Mont as a state prison. In 1698, a memoire written by the intendant of Normandy stated that the population of the Mont’s town comprised souvenir makers, sellers, and innkeepers, who catered for “those who come there from all over in very large numbers, such that some years they number 80 or 100,000.”21 It was only from the middle of the eighteenth century that numbers declined. The post-Reformation pilgrimage

14. D. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel du XVe au XVIIIe siècle,” in Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident. Les trois monts dédiés à l’archange, ed. P. Bouet, G. Otranto, and A. Vauchez (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2003), 288. 15. T. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches du Mont Sainct-Michel, Histoire du sanctuaire normand de l’Archange, de sa fondation à l’époque moderne, ed. V. Juhel (Caen: Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 2008), 350–359. 16. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 289. 17. F. Feuardent, Histoire de la fondation de l’église et abbaye du Mont Saint-Michel, des miracles, reliques et indulgences donneés en icelle (Avranches, 1604). 18. M. Baudot, “Diffusion et évolution du culte de Saint-Michel en France,” in Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, 3: 108. 19. J. Huynes, Histoire générale de l’abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel au péril de la mer, ed. E. de Robillard de Beaurepaire, 2 vols. (Rouen: C. Métérie, 1873), 2: 56–57. 20. Huynes, Histoire générale de l’abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, II, 54. 21. G. Hurpin, L’intendance de Rouen en 1698. Édition critique du mémoire rédigé par l’intendant La Bourdonnaye “pour l’instruction du duc de Bourgogne” (Paris: CTHS, 1984) (author’s translation here and elsewhere).

© 2016 Religious History Association 6 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY therefore persisted on a large scale for at least 150 years. It is clear that after the religious wars ended, the monastic community made great effort to attract pilgrims, to cater to their changing spiritual tastes, and to contribute to the Counter-Reformation “project” of the salvation of souls. There was an initial emphasis on anti-Protestantism which evolved into a sustained adoption of new Catholic devotions. Both of these were related to a resurgence of interest in the cult of Saint Michael. The result was a revival of “heroic journeys” to the Mont.

The Refashioning of Pilgrimage at the Mont Saint-Michel: Heresy, Liturgy, and Pardons One of the key factors in the Counter-Reformation revival of shrines in the Holy Roman Empire and France was their association with anti-Protestantism, in symbol and practice. The act of pilgrimage itself was an overt statement of Catholic orthodoxy in the face of Luther’s and especially Calvin’s criticisms of the veneration of saints and the sacrality of place. The “war” on heresy was certainly fundamental in the revival of pilgrimage to the Mont. A factor of major significance for the shrine was the Counter-Reformation church’s deployment of the cult of Saint Michael in the struggle against Protestantism: the iconography of the archangel’s combat against the anti-Christ was used as an allegory of the struggle against heresy and received fresh impetus in this period. Further, the veneration of angels was marshalled as a weapon of Catholic Reform. Recent studies by Peter Marshall, Alexandra Walsham, Laura Sangha, and others have illustrated the continued importance of angels to Protestants and Catholics across the period.22 In particular, the post-Tridentine Catholic Church promoted the cult of the guardian angel with Pope Paul V instituting a universal feast day for them in 1608.23 As Alexandra Walsham states, “fresh reports of their visible intercession … accompanied the enthusiastic resurgence and promotion of the miraculous in the Counter-Reformation Church.”24 From the late sixteenth century, the Mont abbey capitalised on these associations. Pilgrimage to the site of the apparition of the Archangel Michael was promoted as a personal and collective act in the church’s struggle and the kingdom’s fight against Calvinism.25 The Mont, which included a small fortress as well as an abbey, was on the front line of the later wars of religion in France. It resisted successfully a number of Huguenot attacks. In 1577, twenty-five Protestant soldiers disguised as pilgrims attempted unsuccessfully to seize the Mont but were repulsed by a Catholic detachment.26 The incident was widely reported, including in the

22. Angels in the Early Modern World, ed. P. Marshall and A. Walsham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); L. Sangha, Angels and Belief in England 1480–1700 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012). 23. On guardian angels see T. Johnson, “Guardian Angels and the Society of Jesus,” in Angels, 191–213. 24. A. Walsham, “Invisible Helpers: Angelic Intervention in Post-Reformation England,” Past & Present 208 (2010): 77–130, 84. 25. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 299. 26. Huynes, Histoire générale de l’abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, 2: 128–30.

© 2016 Religious History Association PILGRIMAGE TO THE MONT SAINT-MICHEL 7 journal kept by Claude Haton of Provins.27 The town and monastery of the Mont joined the first Catholic League in 1576 and again after 1588. In 1590, the Sieur de Vicques, military governor of the Mont, was killed while assisting the duke of Mercoeur, the League governor of Brittany, in the siege of Protestant-held Pontorson. De Vicques was taken back to the Mont and buried with full honours in the abbey church.28 In 1591, another surprise raid on the Mont was launched on 29 September, Saint Michael’s main feast day, but it was again defeated, as was a further attack of 1598.29 Jacques-Auguste de Thou visited in 1580 and later, reflecting on the physical insecurity of the Mont, noted in his memoires that “one must be surprised that … the religion of our ancestors made such a marvellous place, and that it surmounted so many difficulties and obstacles.”30 The monks attributed the safety of the Mont to the intercession of the archangel and promoted the abbey as a lieu de mémoire of success against heresy. In 1604, the pamphlet for pilgrims written by the Franciscan Feuardent was aggressively anti-Protestant. A native of the neighbouring diocese of Coutances, Feuardent was also a well-known preacher and polemicist for the Catholic League in Paris during the 1590s and his anti-heresy views were well known. He wrote that “unbelievers and atheists, enemies of miracles and disavowers of the infinite power of God” mocked the marvels of the Mont and he used stories of miracles related to the shrine to refute their claims.31 The Mont became a special site for intercession and thanks-giving. In 1602, 800 people from the town of Vire near Saint-Lô travelled there to give thanks for the triumph of Catholicism over Protestantism.32 In the 1620s and 1630s, bishop François de Péricard of Avranches held special prayers and services in the abbey church for the intercession of Saint Michael in royal engagements against heretics, such as during the siege of La Rochelle in 1628.33 In Normandy, there remained sizeable Protestant communities living alongside Catholics, right down to the edict of Fontainebleau outlawing their church in 1685.34 They were physically present, visible, and undesirable. To visit the Mont, therefore, was to make a statement of Catholic orthodoxy and to reject Protestantism. Equally important in the refashioning of the shrine were the development of the abbey’s sacramental liturgy and a reframing of the veneration of Saint Michael in a strongly Eucharistic and Christological framework. The medieval pilgrimage experience was, of course, framed by liturgy, whether stations,

27. Mémoires de Claude Haton, ed. F. Bourquelot (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1858), 895–96; Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 372. 28. Huynes, Histoire générale de l’abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, 2: 131. 29. Huynes, Histoire générale de l’abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, 2: 134–149. 30. Jacques-August de Thou, Mémoires de Jacques-Auguste de Thou depuis 1553 jusqu’en 1601, ed. A.C. Buchon (Paris: A. Desrez, 1836), 590. 31. Feuardent, Histoire de la fondation de l’église et abbaye du Mont Saint-Michel,1–3. 32. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 302. 33. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 423. 34. See L. Daireaux, Réduire les Huguenots: protestants et pouvoirs en Normandie au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 2010).

© 2016 Religious History Association 8 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY masses, or litanies.35 But a heightened emphasis on personal participation in the Eucharist was novel after 1580. The principal motives of pilgrims were always the seeking of cures or thanksgiving for graces received through saintly intercession, most frequently in fulfilment of a vow made for aid received from the archangel. Thus in 1635, Monsieur de Mesgrigny, maitre de requêtes in Paris, sent a votive silver cockle shell to the abbey, in thanksgiving to Saint Mi- chael for the safe delivery of a child, following a vow, and in 1638, Augustin Gacoing, his wife Denise de Tau and their infant child walked to the Mont from the parish of Marigny in the diocese of Coutances, to give thanks for their baby, born through the archangel’s intercession after five days of labour.36 But in the Counter Reformation, liturgy, and particularly reception of the Eucharist, increased in importance as a pilgrimage activity. The shrine was as much a source of spiritual healing, obtained through confession and communion. This was achieved subtly, through making veneration of the archangel a channel for greater attention to Christ. Thus the monks adopted and fostered the spiritual priorities of counter reformers and modernised the devotional activities of the shrine. One form of evidence for this evolution in devotional priorities is accounts of pilgrims’ activities on the Mont. The Eucharist was framed as the central experience of the visit. For example, in 1654, Pierre de Rosivignan, son of the royal governor of Caen, led a large pilgrimage to the Mont. The whole journey was a ritual procession with the mass at its centre. The pilgrimage commenced in the church of Saint-Pierre of Caen where Veni creator was sung before departure. Along the way, the pilgrims stopped for services in a number of churches: Villedieu; Avranches, where the party attended the offices of None and Vespers at the cathedral; and as they crossed the bay to the Mont at low tide, they sang litanies to the Virgin and saluted Saint Michael. On the day of the visit to the abbey itself, the pilgrims began with prayers and the response “Saint-Michel, ora pro nobis” then a sung mass was celebrated by their accom- panying chaplains. After, the pilgrims visited the shrine’s relics and were divided into groups for tours of the site. On the return journey, the party attended masses at Coutances cathedral; the collegiate church of Saint-Lô; Bayeux cathedral and returning to Caen, the pilgrims dispersed and met again a few days later for a mass in the chapel of Saints Michael and Martin in the Franciscan convent.37 The mass was central to the pilgrimage. A second form of evidence for the augmented status of the Eucharist can be seen in the relative investment of resources in the embellishment of relics and liturgy. At the Mont, in the Middle Ages, there was much investment in luxurious reliquaries to display relics; in the early modern period, altars and

35. Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, ed. L. J. Taylor et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 341–43. 36. Huynes, Histoire générale de l’abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, 2: 35; Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 474. 37. M. de Saint-Martin, Le voyage fait au Mont Saint-Michel par la confrérie de Saint-Pierre de Caen avec 22 ecclésiastiques et plusieurs habitants des autres paroisses, dont M. Pierrre de Rosivignan, ﬁls ainé de M. de Chamboy, gouverneur de la ville et chasteau de Caen (Caen, 1654).

© 2016 Religious History Association PILGRIMAGE TO THE MONT SAINT-MICHEL 9 their furnishings were prioritised. The abbey’s relic collection was quite extensive, with 214 relics collected before the Reformation and 32 after 1600. These included the body of Saint Aubert, the founder; for Saint Michael, there was a piece of marble and a fragment of the archangel’s cape from Monte Gargano; there were also various fragmentary relics of apostles, martyrs, evangelists of north-western France, donated during the long history of the abbey.38 In the fifteenth century, there had been a good deal of investment in new reliquaries, for their veneration was a focus of devotion. In the Counter Reformation, the seeing and touching of relics still remained an important feature of the pilgrim experience: the Mont’s relics were dispersed around the church and choir and treasury, providing “stations” for pilgrims’ tours. While there are no surviving records of miracles occurring as a result of touching relics they still provided a presencing, rendering an immaterial cult visible.39 But Marc Forster’s observations for Germany appear to be true for the Mont as well, that despite an active trade in relics, particularly early martyrs acquired from Rome, they no longer attracted popular devotion as they had in the fifteenth century.40 At the Mont, in the sixteenth century there was no investment in reliquaries and in the seventeenth, there were only two examples: the arm bone of Saint Lawrence was placed into a new silver reliquary in 1623, replacing that commissioned by Abbot Robert in 1065, and a small silver statue of Virgin and Child was acquired in 1644, into which was placed a lock of the Virgin’s hair.41 In 1633, a small relic of Saint Maur was sent to the monks from the parent house of the congregation, but that was more for their own veneration than for the pilgrims.42 Practices were changing. As Forster states, the “‘miracles discourse’ was only part of what happened at shrines, although this was important. … Pilgrims considered shrines to be places to practice devotions and most people began their visit by praying before the altar … they attended mass … they prayed and contem- plated images and relics.”.43 Instead, a great deal was spent refurbishing the abbey church and its altars. Across Europe, international and regional shrines were important vectors of baroque spectacle whose ideas and images pilgrims took home with them. The materiality of worship was an important part of Catholic renewal and received major investment to augment its solemnity and theatre. For this reason, the nave or pilgrim’s altar of Saint-Michel was completely rebuilt in the newest style and reconsecrated in 1644.44 This included a large crucifix suspended above the altar and a new image of Saint Michael vanquishing the devil. In 1647, this was augmented with the addition of an image of a guardian

38. F. Neveux, “Les reliques du Mont-Saint-Michel,” in Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident, 245–69. 39. Neveux, “Les reliques du Mont-Saint-Michel,” 267. 40. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque, 75. 41. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 385–527; Huynes, Histoire générale de l’abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, 2: 45. 42. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 444. 43. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque, 99. 44. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 530.

© 2016 Religious History Association 10 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY angel on the altar in the place of a tabernacle, and the completion of a retable with images of Saints Martin and Aubert, Maur and Placidus, John the Baptist and Joseph, a mixture of ancient and modern cults.45 The high altar of the abbey was also embellished, although this may not have been easily accessible to pilgrims. In 1645, a tabernacle of gilded wood and six gilt candlesticks were purchased in Paris and placed on the altar.46 Side altars were also refurbished, important for the “stations” of pilgrims and the holding of votive masses. In 1643, a donation of a painting of the Nativity of Christ was given by the prior Henry du Pont to the chapel of Saint Peter, to serve as reredos to the altar. In 1645, a painting of the fall of the angels with Saint Michael trampling the devil, commissioned by the duke of Nevers, was placed in the chapel of Saint Aubert.47 The Eucharist was considered the best way to venerate the abbey’s saints. New liturgical vessels were commissioned, again to augment the splendour of the Eucharist. In 1623, a number of ancient silver vessels were melted down and remade into a new chalice, paten, suspended altar lamp, and incensier.48 In 1634, more old silver ornaments, including the box and pulley system for suspending hosts over the high altar, were reworked into a “modern” ciborium and sunburst monstrance for the display of the holy sacrament.49 In 1645, a monk of the abbey made ten ornamental candles for use on special feasts.50 Donations contributed to this ornamentation; for example in 1638, the Sieur de Brouhé made a testamentary bequest to found a lamp to burn perpetually before the Holy Sacrament in the church of Saint-Pierre on the Mont, one of the pilgrimage “stations.”51 The investment priority of the monks had shifted from saints’ cults to the Eucharist. The most striking expenditure was for textiles for vestments and altars. In 1644, velvet was purchased from Paris to make an altar frontal, burse, and chalice veil; cloth of silver and lace was acquired to make stoles for the sub-deacon to wear on major feasts; and silver silk with lace, embroidered with ﬂowers, was made into a chalice veil for use on solemn feasts.52 In 1645, the prior Domi- nique Houilliard purchased a high-quality set of matching cloths and vestments of grey silk: an altar frontal decorated with a cross of the Holy Spirit, a chasuble and two tunics, two copes for the cantors, and a cope for the celebrant.53 In 1646, the monk Philibert Chapel, an expert embroiderer, made ten chalice veils and several burses of silk, satin and lace, in all the different liturgical colours, to serve the church throughout the year.54 Again, this investment was augmented by high-proﬁle donations. For example, in 1625, Mlle de Montpensier, future

45. Ibid., 541. 46. Ibid., 543. 47. Ibid., 416. 48. Ibid., 412. 49. Ibid., 455. 50. Ibid., 541. 51. Ibid., 473. 52. Ibid., 529–31. 53. Ibid., 539. 54. Ibid., 557.

© 2016 Religious History Association PILGRIMAGE TO THE MONT SAINT-MICHEL 11 duchess of Orleans, donated a set of gold-work mass vestments, the chasuble embroidered with Saint Michael, worth 2,000 livres, which the abbey kept for its most important ceremonies.55 In 1631, the Dame des Vergers-Grave of Saint-Malo, sister of one of the monks, gave a white satin stole embroidered in silk and pearls with two images of Saint John.56 These acts continued a long-standing tradition of associating the donor with the mass and Christ through gifts, and thus augmenting the beauty of the Eucharistic celebration. The offices used in the abbey were, of course, Benedictine rather than Roman. Once the abbey had affiliated to the Congregation of Saint Maur, it used that liturgy in its choir. In 1645, a new ceremonial was approved by the Congregation, printed and sent to the Mont and in 1648, a revised Ritual was similarly disseminated.57 However, the liturgy was also subject to some Romanisation, while retaining its monastic distinctiveness. In 1648, the abbey adopted the singing of revised hymns and canticles approved by Urban VIII in 1635.58 Within the nave of the church, which served as a parish church as well, Roman liturgy may well have been used. But the crucial message overall was dignity, orthodoxy, and splendour and the special experience of the mass at the Mont for pilgrims was crucial. Another liturgical experience — again enhanced by the embellishments of altars — was the visit of “stations” within the church and its associated chapels, where relics were held, accompanied by the chanting of litanies. As Forster observes for Germany, so at the Mont, pilgrims participated in the practices and devotions of everyday Catholicism at the shrine, processions, prayers and litanies, confession and communion; pilgrimage was framed by and understood within the official church liturgy.59 Another attraction offered by the shrine, strongly linked to confession and reception of the Eucharist, was the opportunity to gain indulgences. Diana Webb argues that in the Middle Ages, there was a change in motive for pilgrims, from a principal concern to venerate relics, to a desire to obtain indulgences.60 The revival of pilgrimage in the late sixteenth century was accompanied by an even stronger interest in pardons.61 Sources for the Mont are fragmentary, but there is evidence that the abbey was acquiring new, plenary indulgences from Rome in the seventeenth century, as did other churches across Europe, to attract pilgrims. There were already plenty of indulgences available at the Mont in the later Middle Ages. When the pilgrimage revived, these were still on offer. In 1604, Feuardent’s pamphlet advertised prominently the indulgences available at the site. They had been bestowed by popes Alexander IV and John XXII, who each gave 100 days of pardon for the major Christological and Marian

55. Ibid., 417. 56. Ibid., 435. 57. Ibid., 544–618. 58. Ibid., 616. 59. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque, 84. 60. D. Webb, “Pardons and Pilgrimage,” in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits. Indul- gences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. R. N. Swanson (Brill: Leiden, 2006), 241–53. 61. E. Tingle, Indulgences after Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France (London: Pick- ering & Chatto, 2015).

© 2016 Religious History Association 12 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY feasts, then Urban VI and Innocent IX, who each gave one year and forty days for the major calendar feasts and those of Saint Michael. Nicholas V gave another seven years and seven quarantines for the three feasts of the archangel.62 From the 1620s, the monks obtained more “modern” indulgences from Rome. The new pardons were of three main forms. First, there were indulgences associated with a new confraternity and altar of the rosary, founded in a side chapel of the abbey church in 1624. Membership of the confraternity itself bestowed indulgences as did attendance at its feast day masses. Secondly, pardons for souls in Purgatory were obtained. In 1628, the monks obtained a grant of a privilege for the rosary altar, where, every Monday, each mass said would liberate a soul from Purgatory.63 Thirdly, it is certain that the abbey acquired plenary pardon day indulgences as well, for the main feasts of the archangel on 8 May, 29 September, and 16 October. Finally, papal jubilees were also celebrated at the Mont, for the monks and the parishioners of the town, as well as for visiting pilgrims. For example, at Easter 1668, a universal jubilee decreed by Clement IX for prayers for his pontiﬁcate was held throughout Avranches diocese. At the Mont, the jubilee opened on 3 March with a sermon by Dom Pierre Le Duc, one of the monks, after which the monastic community went in procession through the parish, and monks and congregation undertook prayer stations in the chapels of the church. The jubilee closed on 18 March with another procession and prayers.64 The revival of indulgence practice in the Catholic Reformation was directly important for the expansion of confession and communion, as it was necessary to participate in these sacraments to access the plenary pardons on offer.65 Again, pilgrims were encouraged into sacramental observance by these new developments in piety. Finally, the monks of the Mont used the pilgrimage as an opportunity for education and catechesis, much as the new religious orders did wherever they acted as guardians. Trevor Johnson has argued that there was an attempt at many shrines “to associate pilgrimage with a catechetical discourse, a pedagogic and penitential spirit,” through sermons and other “‘educational’ methods.”66 An important means of achieving this was through the medium of popular print. Philip Soergel comments that the pilgrimage book was a new literary genre created for those participating in the Catholic resurgence. It differed from medieval miracle books in that the contents covered a wide range of issues, interweaving polemical, apologetic, and didactic content. Often in octavo format, they were “pocketbook guides” to shrines for literate pilgrims; they gave the history of the site; they detailed some of the contemporary miracles reported there, they provided lists of the church’s relics, indulgences, and most important pilgrims, and offered prayers, litanies, and meditations for the pilgrim to use.67 They took off enormously as a genre after

62. Feuardent, Histoire de la fondation de l’église et abbaye du Mont Saint-Michel, 40. 63. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 426. 64. Huynes, Histoire générale de l’abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel, 2: 229. 65. Tingle, Indulgences after Luther, ch. 2. 66. Johnson, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles, 290. 67. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 168–70.

1600. Bruno Maës’s study of the shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Liesse and Philippe Martin’s study of Lorraine pilgrimage handbooks emphasise how important these works were in touching a large public and encouraging personal prayer.68 At the Mont as at other shrines, there was a clear attempt to influence pilgrims through print and the abbey was in the mainstream of such devotional initiatives. As we have seen, one of the first activities of the revived Mont pilgrimage was the sponsorship of Feuardent’s pamphlet of 1604. It was republished fourteen more times across the seventeenth century.69 In 1668, another booklet was published by one of the monks, Robert Quatremaire, Histoire abrégée du Mont-Saint-Michel, which described “the motives and methods for usefully and devoutly making the pilgrimage to the glorious archangel Saint Michael.”70 It reused much of Feuardent’s pamphlet but the message had changed subtly. The new handbook was to guide the devotion of pilgrims, to ensure that they filled every minute of their travels with useful and pious activities. The essential aim of the pilgrimage was to “invigorate [pilgrims’] faith, fortify their hopes, embrace charity by seeing these places where His Divine Majesty has revealed particular remains of his holy wisdom” and more particularly, pilgrims should visit the Mont to obtain from God the blessing to die in a state of grace. Pilgrims’ behaviour was also counselled to be “with great fervour” and “with sobriety,” tending towards silence and abstaining from bad conversations.71 This pamphlet was republished at least five times in the later seventeenth century.72 We also see in these works the evolution of devotional priorities in the Counter Reformation. In the early seventeenth century, the tone was one of polemic and an encouragement to overt, militant, anti- Protestant actions typical of the Catholic League. By the second quarter of the century, this was transforming into an attempt to spiritualise the pilgrimage experience through an interiorisation of piety.73 The works were octavo, printed on low-quality paper, with basic typography and were designed to be cheap. The illiterate could also benefit from them, for each work was illustrated with a woodcut of the archangel.74 This could have been used, even by the poorly literate, as an image to aid prayer at home. In all, we can see from the above evidence that the revival of the pilgrimage at the Mont Saint-Michel after 1600 was the result of a careful campaign by the

68. B. Maës, “Les livrets de pèlerinage de la reforme catholique: héritiers du concile de Trente ou médiateurs d’une civilisation nouvelle?,” Annales de l’Est, 63 (2013): 213–27; P. Martin, “Paroles de pèlerins. La prière dans le christianisme moderne,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 217 (2000): 489–502. 69. J.-P. Seguin, “Les Livrets de pèlerinage des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles à l’usage des pèlerins du Mont Saint-Michel,” in Millénaire monastique du Mont Saint-Michel, III, 290. 70. R. Quatremaire, L’Histoire abrégée du Mont Saint-Michel (Paris, 1668); Seguin, “Les Livrets,” 292. 71. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 306. 72. J.-P. Seguin, “Notes sur deux livres de colportage à l’usage des pèlerins du Mont Saint-Michel (XVI–XIXe siécles,” Bulletin du Bibliophile et du Bibliothécaire 2 (1953): 85–86. 73. For a discussion of the changing tone of devotional tracts across the ﬁrst half of the seventeenth century see E. Tingle, Purgatory and Piety in Brittany 1480–1720 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 76–84. 74. Seguin, “Notes,” 92.

© 2016 Religious History Association 14 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY abbey. The monastic community encouraged pilgrimage as a bulwark against heresy and moved the focus of pilgrims’ activities towards the sacramental and the pedagogic. But as Forster points out, although church authorities attempted to direct and supervise pilgrimage piety, the response was ﬁrmly in the hands of the population. The “ordinary” Catholic, whether as an individual or in community, controlled pilgrimage because it was they who deter- mined the relative popularity of shrines.75 Pilgrimage was a demand-led activity for which there was increasing competition in the Counter Reforma- tion. The response of pilgrims to the Mont Saint-Michel’s “offer” was therefore crucial: the success of the pilgrimage stemmed from the fact that people came.

Popular Responses — Motives and Mechanisms for Pilgrimage From the surviving documentary record, one large difference between the medieval and the early modern period was the scope of the pilgrimage to the Mont: there was little international trafﬁc, as in the past. The great Rhineland movements no longer occurred, probably because of confessional changes in these areas. Instead, support was from within the French kingdom, being particularly strong from communities in northern and central France. Paris, Normandy, Anjou, and Maine, but also the Limousin, Burgundy, and the eastern provinces were sources of pilgrims after 1600. Here, the pilgrimage became an embedded part of religious culture, possibly to a greater extent than in the past. The motives of individuals and communities varied: physical and spiritual healing, vows and penitence, curiosity and devotion. The work of cultural anthropologist Victor Turner has emphasised separation, liminality, and reintegration, where individuals left and returned to their communities, their status enhanced by the journey.76 Other historians have stressed the importance of social group, gender, wealth, and other factors as motives.77 In the post-Reformation pilgrimage to the Mont, two cultural factors were of great importance in popularity and participation: its adoption by confraternities and its relationship to aspects of male religious culture. Each will be explored in turn. Across the north and centre of France, certain parishes developed a tradition of pilgrimage to the Mont, usually organised through the framework of a confraternity. Confraternities increased in number and size from the mid- sixteenth century, all over Catholic Europe, including France, after an immedi- ate post-Reformation decline. Catholic solidarity in the face of religious conﬂict, new and revived devotions such as the Holy Sacrament and Rosary, and access to plenary indulgences, were all stimulants to membership, as a number of detailed studies of northern France have shown, particularly the work of Stefano Simiz for Champagne, Andrew Spicer for Orleans, and

75. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque, 97. 76. V. Turner and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Per- spectives (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978). 77. For a useful summary of such historiography see J. M. Candy, The Archaeology of Pilgrim- age on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela: A Landscape Perspective (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2009), 10–14.

Philippe Desmette for Cambrai and Tournai.78 There is some difﬁculty correla- ting confraternities dedicated to Saint Michael to the pilgrimage; as the archangel was patron of numerous parish churches, fraternities dedicated to him in whole or part were not uncommon. For example, in early modern Paris, nineteen known confraternities were dedicated to the archangel as one of their patrons, but only one was founded for those who made the pilgrimage.79 There appears to have been change over time as well. Catherine Vincent argues that medieval confraternities dedicated to Saint Michael gave very limited attention to pilgrimage and do not seem to have actively promoted this form of suffrage.80 The direct association with pilgrimage to the Mont seems to have been a post-Reformation development. Pierre Charpentrat observes that Counter-Reformation shrines typically developed associated confraternities with spiritual privileges, such that the early modern pilgrim joined a group beneﬁtting from particular spiritual privileges rather than launching him or herself heroically onto the routes of adventure, to conquer graces.81 The Mont does not seem to have directly sponsored “out-reach” confraternities of this type, but from the early seventeenth century enthusiastic ex-pilgrims founded their own groups, sometimes reviving medieval ones, sometimes creating new ones, to promote the cult and to encourage others to make the journey. Through these associations, a culture of devotional pilgrimage was organised and encouraged. The best-known pilgrimage confraternity was in Paris, founded by King Philip Augustus in 1280 in a chapel which was later incorporated into the palace precinct on the Île de la Cité. Its function was to perpetuate devotion to the archangel through weekly liturgy and feast day celebrations, amongst confreres who had achieved the journey. On 16 October each year, the confraternity organised a public procession through the capital.82 In the Mont’sown province of Normandy, the importance of the Counter-Reformation pilgrimage is shown by the large number of confraternities stimulated by, if not directly attached to, the pilgrimage.83 We have only passing references to many of these, but we know, for example, that at Evreux, the confraternity of the pilgrims of Saint-Michel took part in general processions in the city dressed in a long robe or cape, a pilgrim’s satchel, and staff.84 A confraternity in the

78. S. Simiz, Confréries urbaines et dévotion en Champagne (1450–1830) (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2002); A. Spicer, “(Re)building the Sacred Landscape: Orléans, 1560–1610,” French History 21 (2007): 247–68. P. Desmette, Les brefs d’indulgences pour les confréries des diocèses de Cambrai et de Tournai aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: A.S.V. Sec. Brev. Indulg. Perpetuae, 2–9 (Brussels: Institut historique Belge de Rome, 2002). 79. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 298. 80. C. Vincent, “Les confréries et le culte de Saint Michel à la ﬁn du moyen âge dans le royaume de France,” in Culte et pèlerinages à Saint Michel en Occident, 199. 81. P. Charpentrat, “L’architecture et son public: les églises de la Contre-Réforme,” Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 28 (1973): 92. 82. A. Lombard-Jourdain, “La confrérie parisienne des pèlerins de Saint-Michel du Mont avec un tableau inédit du XVIIe siècle,” Bulletin de la société d’histoire de Paris et l’Ile de France 113–114 (1988): 105, 141–45. 83. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 299. 84. Baudot, “Diffusion et évolution du culte de Saint-Michel en France,” 109.

© 2016 Religious History Association 16 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY parish of Gloet, near Pont-Audemer, had statutes of an ancient confraternity dedicated to Saint-Michel confirmed in 1664. While it was largely a parish confraternity with an annual feast, requiem masses and funeral for confreres, the statutes stated that “all those who make the journey and pilgrimage to the Blessed Archangel Saint Michael at the place commonly called Mont-Saint- Michel in Lower Normandy, can be associated with this confraternity and enjoy the same privileges as the confreres [and are] obliged to the same obligations as the others,” although women and girls who had undertaken the journey could join with fewer obligations.85 A confraternity of Saint-Michel erected in the church of Freneuse, deanery of Périers, only admitted those who had undertaken the pilgrimage to the Mont. In 1665, there were thirty-three members.86 At Pont-l’Evêque, an ancient confraternity of Saint-Michel was refounded in 1719 by thirty-four men who had made the pilgrimage together and who wanted an association to perpetuate the memory of that journey. In 1752, only six of the original pilgrims were still alive, so they appealed for new members to make up another band of thirty-four to undertake the pilgrimage, which appears to have taken place. The group remained relatively buoyant: ten new members — again, having made the pilgrimage — joined in 1765.87 Examples could be multiplied. Numerous communities in Normandy had religious and cultural attachments to the pilgrimage, fostered by confraternities. The tradition of the pilgrimage was particularly strong in the city of Rouen. Here, there were three Saint-Michel confraternities re/founded in the seventeenth century, specifically to promote or support journeys to the Mont. The earliest of these was established in the parish of Saint-Jean, for which statutes were approved in 1606 and reconfirmed in 1655. It was for pilgrims who had made the journey, but recognised that if there was someone who wanted to travel but who was unable to do so, they could be received into the association.88 A second confraternity was erected in 1623 in the parish church of Saint-Niçaise. In 1645, the group obtained a plenary indulgence for membership and for attendance at the feast of Saint Michael.89 A third, established in 1655 in the parish church of Saint-Maclou, had statutes which stated that its master had to have accomplished the pilgrimage and that he was obliged to lead a pilgrimage of others to the Mont, if a party presented itself with this request. To perpetuate veneration of the archangel, the confraternity organised a weekly and Sunday masses at the altar of Saint-Michel, as well as feast day services on 29 September and 16 October.90 These groups provided a visible, ongoing tradition of sacred journeying.

85. Archives Départementales de la Seine-Maritime (hereafter ADSM) G 1332. Confraternities of the deanery of Pont-Audemer. 86. ADSM G 1457. Confraternities of the deanery of Périers. 87. Archives Départementales du Calvados (hereafter ADC) 6 G 580. Confraternities of Pont l’Eveque. 88. ADSM G 6788. Parish of Saint-Jean; Les confréries dans la ville de Rouen à l’époque moderne (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles), ed. M. Venard (Rouen: Société de l’histoire de Normandie, 2010), 142–45. 89. ADSM G 1241. Saint-Niçaise de Rouen. 90. ADSM G 1235 Saint-Maclou de Rouen.

Confraternities afforded practical support for pilgrimage in a number of ways. Firstly, they provided ritual frameworks for the journey. Saint-Niçaise’s statutes of 1668 stated that anyone undertaking the pilgrimage would be accompanied by the chaplain, master, and clerk of the association, led by the processional cross, to the gates of the city, where he would receive a blessing from the priest.91 Secondly, there were also devotional supports, particularly in print, which the work of Simiz and Marie-Hélène Froeschlé-Chopard have shown to be fundamental to the activities of many confraternities, which were active commissioners of pious tracts for their members.92 The Parisian confraternity commissioned printed pictures on a single sheet to give to its adherents once a year: a copy of the 1662 version survives — of Saint Michael, with a background of pilgrims crossing the bay to the Mont — and a new version was engraved in 1706. Such prints were pinned to walls or used for private prayer and meditation.93 In 1668, the confraternity of Saint-Niçaise sponsored the publication of a booklet authored by Pierre Le Charpentier, their chaplain. It gave details of the statutes and indulgences available to the confraternity and provided prayers for confreres to say in church and at home, for the feast of Saint Michael.94 Spiritual pilgrimage was thus fostered together with physical journeying. In fact, across the seventeenth century, practical and virtual pilgrimage came to coincide more closely in confraternities. For example, there were substitute, shorter pilgrimages which confreres could take to honour the archangel rather than going to the Mont. The Parisian confraternity undertook an annual walk on 8 May to Saint-Cloud, about 12 kilometres from the capital, wearing pilgrimage garb.95 Several of the Rouen confraternities organised pilgrimages to the nearby priory of Saint-Michel.96 That of Saint-Niçaise had a monthly procession there; they carrying lighted candles, were accompanied by children dressed in white, they said prayers at the priory and held a high mass at Saint-Niçaise upon their return.97 Similarly, in the parish of Denestanville near Dieppe, a confraternity seems to have journeyed regularly to the local chapel of Mont-Sainte-Chapelle dedicated to Saint-Michel.98 Archdeacon Henri-Marie Boudon of Evreux, who had a special devotion to the Holy Angels, went as a pilgrim to the Mont but when he founded a confraternity of the Holy Angels in his home town he did not prescribe the long-distance pilgrimage. Rather, the

91. P. Le Charpentier, Instructions pour la confrérie des pellerins du Mont Saint-Michel érigée en la paroisse de Saint-Nicaise en Rouen (Rouen, 1668), Statute 15. 92. Simiz, Confréries urbaines et dévotion en Champagne, 214–29; M.-H. Froeschlé-Chopard, Dieu pour tous et Dieu pour soi. Histoire des confréries et de leurs images à l’époque moderne (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006). 93. Lombard-Jourdain, “La confrérie parisienne des pèlerins de Saint-Michel du Mont,” 133–35. 94. See Le Charpentier, Instructions pour la confrérie des pellerins. 95. Lombard-Jourdain, “La confrérie parisienne des pèlerins de Saint-Michel du Mont,” 141. 96. A. Laghezza and V. Juhel, “Saint-Michel-du-Mont-Gargan de Rouen, origines et développement d’un sanctuaire michaelique,” in Pèlerinages et lieux de pèlerinage en Normandie, ed. Bernard Bodinier (Louviers: Fédération des Sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Norman- die, 2010), 33. 97. Le Charpentier, Instructions pour la confrérie des pellerins, Statute 6; Vincent, “Les confréries et le culte de Saint Michel,” 192. 98. Vincent, “Les confréries et le culte de Saint Michel,” 193.

© 2016 Religious History Association 18 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY statutes enjoined the members on the first Tuesday of every month to visit the chapel of St-Michel-des-Vignes on the hill above Evreux.99 By these means, the Saint-Michel pilgrimage was made accessible to wider groups of people and was also more closely supervised by local clergy. Confraternities also sponsored wider devotions, particularly prayers and masses for the dead. A recent study of post-medieval confraternities in Brittany has shown that this was one of their central functions for their members.100 For example, the confraternity of Saint-Michel at Vaucelles in Caen diocese was primarily founded for those who undertook the pilgrimage to the Mont but it also had a parish function, for the church was dedicated to the archangel. Like all confraternities, its major role was liturgical, providing masses for the benefit of its members, living and dead. In 1717, the confreres undertook to augment the solemnity of its feast days by embellishing them with adorations of the Holy Sacrament, “to give thanks to the Lord for the safe return of pilgrims from their journeys and to bring protection to the whole church, living and at the hour of death.”101 The confraternity also sent to Rome for indulgences for its main feast days. There was co-existence within many of these confraternities between pilgrimage, devotional practices, and activities designed to help souls in Purgatory. They fulfilled a range of functions, fusing pilgrimage into the mainstream of parish devotional life.102 A significant cause of the success of the Mont pilgrimage, and a reason for its longevity, was its association with masculine religious culture, in particular that of male youth groups. It is well known that long-distance pilgrimage was always heavily masculine. For example, Dominique Julia’s study of Roman pilgrims shows that during the 1700 Jubilee, of the pilgrims staying at Santa Trinità hospital, only 19–22 per cent were women and at the hostel of Saint-Louis-des-Français, 4 per cent were women, rising to 11.4 per cent in 1725.103 At the pilgrims’ hospital in Bayonne, where 107 pilgrims to Compostela were recorded between 1724 and 1767, 93 per cent were men.104 Men could leave home and travel more easily than women in early modern Europe; but just as importantly, cultural constructions important to manhood were tested and demonstrated in “heroic” journeys. Christopher Fletcher argues that in the later Middle Ages, the characteristics of “manhood” were understood to be strength, vigour, steadfastness, and a concern with status and honour, including largesse and conspicuous expenditure.105 An arduous journey, alone or with companions, reinforced the status of men, through the achievement of a valiant religious act.

99. Anon, La Vie de M. Henry-Marie Boudon, grand archidiacre d’Evreux, 2 vols. (Paris, Hérissant, 1753); Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 302. 100. Tingle, Purgatory and Piety, ch. 6. 101. ADC G 947 Parish church of Saint-Michel-de-Vaucelles. 102. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque, 140–41. 103. Julia, “Gagner son jubilé à l’époque moderne,” 318–19. 104. D. Julia, “Pour une géographie européenne du pèlerinage à l’époque moderne et contemporaine,” in Pèlerins et pèlerinages dans l’Europe moderne, 112. 105. C. Fletcher, “The Whig Interpretation of Masculinity? Honour and Sexuality in Late Medi- eval Manhood,” in What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World, ed. J. H. Arnold and S. Brady (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 62.

As far as we can tell from the records of the Mont pilgrimage, the typical pilgrim was a man travelling with male companions, both clerical and lay. For example, in 1631, ten merchants and artisans from the parish of Saint-Eustache of Paris bound themselves together before a notary in a legal agreement to go together on pilgrimage to the Mont. Each member of the party was to contribute to the costs of food and lodging while the captain, lieutenant, and ensign would meet the costs of tambour, fife, books, carriage, and banner. If any of the party was to cry off or give up the journey, he was to pay a fine of 100 livres to the rest of the company.106 Examples of groups of men travelling together in this way could be multiplied. The military character of the cult of Saint Michael may have been one reason for its association with masculine religious culture.107 Strength and fighting, a “military” role, was considered manly, a result of the social importance of the nobility as “those who fight” but also “because of the well-established nature in medieval language and culture of the association between men and a form of quasi-military honour.”108 In the sphere of religious culture, such values could be focused on spiritual combat in which sin was the ultimate enemy. The concept of the godly warrior was a Christian trope from its earliest days, for St Paul urged Timothy to suffer persecution like a “soldier of Christ.”109 As Kristin Routt comments, “the model of the soldier of Christ that comes down from later Antiquity does not necessarily vanquish new souls or land for the Church. Rather, he patiently endures the suffering brought about by persecution and inner temptations to sin.”110 She argues that Erasmus and Ignatius Loyola saw mortal life as a kind of permanent warfare in which defence against the assaults of Satan is crucial.111 As Fletcher observes, “it is not just that fighting sin might be characterised as manly, but that this spiritual battle leads to the accumulation of renown or ‘manhood’ of a kind which is analogous with the worldly honour of the battlefield, even as it claims to supersede it.”.112 The pilgrimage to the Mont itself took on a military aspect, a demonstration of masculinity in its symbolic warrior form. Contemporary descriptions show us this style. Thomas Le Roy’s description of the arrival of a group of pilgrims at the Mont in October 1634 is typical of many: “there journeyed out of devotion, to this Mont from the town of Lisieux … a company formed of 300 men, marching quickly, well fitted out, their swords by their sides, carrying white rods in the form of crooks. They arrived at the town gate, the tambour drumming and the ensign flying.”113 An ex-voto in the church of Camembert (Calvados) commemorating a pilgrimage to the Mont in 1772, illustrates the

106. Archives Nationales de France. Minutier central, étude XV, liasse 76, 17 juin 1,631. Tran- scribed in ADSM F 491. 107. Vincent, “Les confréries et le culte de Saint Michel,” 197. 108. Fletcher, “The Whig Interpretation of Masculinity?,” 63. 109. 2 Tim. 2:3–4. 110. K. E. Routt, “Exercises in Masculinity: Models of Early Modern Manhood in the Acta of Ignatius of Loyola,” eHumanista 25 (2013): 182. 111. Routt, “Exercises in Masculinity,” 182. 112. Fletcher, “The Whig Interpretation of Masculinity?,” 66. 113. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 454.

© 2016 Religious History Association 20 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY military style of pilgrims. A road is shown along which are marching sixteen pilgrims, two-by-two, holding lances and accompanied by a tambour keeping time and an ensign carrying a banner.114 A rare event of 1646 reinforces this image. On 19 May, a company of thirty-five women from Baugé in Anjou arrived at the Mont. They were led by a woman carrying a staff in one hand and a rosary in the other, all marching two-by-two, keeping time to the rhythm of a drum played by a young boy.115 For many men, bonding with others, travelling long distance, showing a military style, all carried out under the auspices of the archangel, provided a special male religious experience. In particular, there was widespread adoption of the pilgrimage by youth communities, as a customary practice for adolescents on the cusp of manhood. There was already a medieval tradition of children travelling to the Mont in penitential pilgrimages, which seems to have continued in a small way in the late sixteenth century and seventeenth centuries. Records of the hospital Saint-Jacques of Argentan for the 1570s refer to “michelots,”“petits michelots,” and even “small children going on pilgrimage to the Mont Saint-Michel,” a resurgence of penitential child pilgrimage occurring in the context of the wars of religion.116 Between 1603 and 1625, the accounts of the town council of Epinal in Lorraine include alms given to “children” who were leaving to undertake the pilgrimage to the “grand Saint-Michel”; there were twenty-four in 1618 and thirty in 1623.117 As late as 1680, Richelet in his Nouveau dictionnaire français defined “miquelot” as a “small boy who goes on pilgrimage to the Mont Saint-Michel in the sea, begging.”118 Dominique Julia observes a liturgical link between the archangel and childhood, for all three feasts of Saint Michael, the gospel read at the mass of the day was Matthew 18:1–10 (“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”).119 More important in the early modern period were groups of adolescents and young men. Georges Provost, in his work on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, has seen these long-distance journeys as rites of passage, religious and social, often undertaken by adolescents from rural communities.120Anthropologists have long shown the importance of rites of passage for the transition of childhood to manhood, for “the status of an adult male is something which needs to be won, and is not just something which is conferred by reaching a certain age. Masculinity is thus a matter of …‘becoming’ male (or at least becoming a man).”121 The chronicle of Thomas Le Roy records numerous groups: examples from 8 and 9 May 1647 alone include a party of fifty young men, their curé and vicar from the parish of Rémalard in

114. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 293. 115. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 554. 116. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 291. 117. Ibid., 293. 118. C.-P. Richelet, Nouveau dictionnaire français (Geneva, 1680) cited in Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 271. 119. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 271. 120. Provost, “Dévotion de groupe et piété personnelle,” 399. 121. Fletcher, “The Whig Interpretation of Masculinity?,” 60.

© 2016 Religious History Association PILGRIMAGE TO THE MONT SAINT-MICHEL 21 the Perche; a group of forty young men from Courtemont in the diocese of Le Mans; and a company of fifty-five young men and the curé of the parish of Parcé in Le Mans diocese.122 Many more examples could be given. The journal kept by Isaac Leguay of Caen in the early eighteenth century again shows the youthful composition of the pilgrimage. In 1715, he records three groups of young men leaving for the Mont: on 5 August, around twelve “boys,”“young people” of the parish of Saint-Jean of Caen; on 9 September, around twenty “men as well as boys” of Vaucelles, and on 16 September another “troupe of young people, men as well as boys” left from the city.123 The author Nicolas-Edme Rétif de la Bretonne remembered from his own childhood in the Burgundian village of Sacy that eight days before the feast of Saint Michael in September of c. 1745, Jacques Guerreau, the family’s herd drover, left secretly for the Mont Saint-Michel; Rétif noted that that this pilgrimage was for young men of 15–16 years old and that a lad who had not been to the Mont was regarded as a coward.124 At the end of the eighteenth century, Abbé Legros, former vicar of Saint-Martial of Limoges, noted that before the Revolution, every year in mid-August, between twenty and thirty young men of Solignac went to the Mont. Most of the pilgrims were 12–18 years old and they had to be born in the parish to join the party.125 Long-distance pilgrimage to the Mont Saint-Michel as part of masculine religious culture was vital in maintaining the tradition of sacred journeys in northern and central French communities. Finally, the Mont Saint-Michel attracted pilgrims because of its stunning natural setting – which in turn, made the last phase of the pilgrimage hazar- dous. In his classic work on pilgrimage, Alphonse Dupront argued that the search for the other, often liminal, experience was central to the motive of pilgrims. Pilgrimage had always been at least in part penitential; just as important was detachment, moving out of familiar surroundings to find God in places with greater sacral charge.126 In the early modern period, when religious emphasis was increasingly placed on interior spirituality, challenging journeys still assisted intimacy with God, through asceticism.127 Remoteness combined with hardship certainly attracted pilgrims to the Mont. This was the Mont au péril de la mer, where the tidal reach was the greatest in Europe and pilgrims who were caught unawares could die. Wraxall wrote that “numbers of people are drowned every year in passing this place. The sea comes in with a fury and rapidity beyond idea, and frequently arrests unhappy travellers who presume to venture without a guide. I saw, in the churchyard of Genet, a grave where five persons were interred, who perished within these few days, and

122. Le Roy, Le livre de curieuses recherches, 579–80. 123. Journal d’un bourgeois de Caen [Isaac Leguay called Lamare]1652–1733, ed. G. Mancel (Paris: Derache, 1848), 213–216. 124. R. de la Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 1989), 69. 125. Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 319. 126. Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, 459; A. Dupront, Du sacré: croisade et pèlerinage, image et langage (Paris: Gallimard, 1987). 127. Maës, “Les livrets de pèlerinage de la reforme catholique,” 221.

© 2016 Religious History Association 22 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY similar accidents are common.”128 Such sights and risks were not available at home. Pilgrims, mostly men but also women, were attracted to the Mont by its spiritual services but also because the ardour and dangers of the journey added to its value, making this an epic journey, with social and cultural value as well.

Conclusions Long-distance pilgrimage declined in the eighteenth century as the state tightened its laws on vagabondage and movement of people. Already in the seventeenth century, legislative attempts to reduce vagabondage and mendicity affected pilgrims. In 1665, an edict ordered that all pilgrims intending to travel beyond the frontiers of the kingdom needed passports or letters of support from their bishop, mayor, or consul, and the lieutenant of the local jurisdiction, to prove their good moral standing and the veracity of their journey.129 Royal declarations of 18 July 1724 and 3 August 1764 restricted the movements of paupers and mandated the arrest of vagrants. This caught up many poor pilgrims along the way, as attested by records of the maréchaussée throughout France.130 The spirit of the eighteenth century was also against long-distance journeys and errant journeying was increasingly disapproved of by clergy and laity. Asceticism was no longer regarded as heroic virtue; the Encyclopédie deﬁned pilgrimage as a “journey of misunderstood devotion” and commented that rather than going to visit distance places to obtain heavenly assistance, it was better to ﬁnd it at home by good works and an enlightened devotion.131 Even within the church, the number of holy days was reduced and some feasts were moved to the nearest Sunday in the calendar to reduce “idleness” and increase social utility.132 All of this reduced custom at shrines. In 1752, an English visitor was told by the sub-prior of the Mont Saint-Michel that “this place will not last long because zeal for religion diminishes every day, proven by the small number of pilgrims who have visited.”133 Yet up to the Revolution, there were visitors to the Mont even if numbers were fewer. The attraction and persistence of the “heroic” spiritual journey remained. In the Counter Reformation, the conversion of the sinner and his or her spiritual movement towards God, through the sacraments and prayer, was the fundamental objective of reformers. The means for much of this was available in parishes or at local shrines. But the great, traditional, distant centres of pilgrimage also contributed to the devotional culture of individuals and groups who wanted to go beyond the local, to experience a challenge as part of their spiritual, cultural, and social growth. At the Mont Saint-Michel, the revival

128. Wraxall, A Tour through the Western, Southern and Interior Provinces of France, 37. 129. Chelini and Branthomme, Les Chemins de Dieu, 276; Julia, “Pour une géographie européenne du pèlerinage,” 30–31. 130. D. Julia, “Aveux de pèlerins,” in Rendre ses vœux, 440. 131. D. Didérot, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné, des sciences, des arts et des métiers 17 vols. (Paris, 1751–65): XII, 282–83. 132. Chelini and Branthomme, Les Chemins de Dieu, 274. 133. Quoted in Julia, “Le pèlerinage au Mont-Saint-Michel,” 312.

© 2016 Religious History Association PILGRIMAGE TO THE MONT SAINT-MICHEL 23 and persistence of the shrine from the later sixteenth century came from the universality of the cult of Saint Michael, his role in the struggle against heresy, and veneration tied increasingly to that of Christ through the Eucharist. While pilgrims continued to travel in search of, or in thanksgiving for, healing and other graces, there was also a greater emphasis on spiritual healing and intimacy with God. Also, for many young men, they proved themselves and their Catholicity by undertaking this heroic journey, which was not without peril. Motives also included indulgences and the splendour of the site itself, as a natural wonder. It was worth travelling to experience these things. Through the pilgrimage to the Mont, reformed Catholicism spread many of its ideas and values around the cities and communities of northern France. Papal prestige was strengthened through the pilgrim’s experience of liturgies and particularly indulgences at the shrine. Local support frameworks for pilgrims, principally confraternities who prepared and received pilgrims before and after their journeys, were increasingly supervised by local clergy, who directed and regulated their activities. Encouragement of the pilgrimage through printed pamphlets and handbooks also promoted new-style devotions and prayers, for the real and virtual pilgrim. Thus, the medieval pilgrimage to the Mont was reinvented and refashioned to act as a vector of Tridentine inﬂuences and devotions, which were taken back into local communities. The Mont pilgrimage acted as a node in the intellectual and geographical translation of changing spiritual practices and devotions in the French Counter Reformation.