Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 3: Essays on Literature, Biography, and AntiquitiesMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 3: Essays on Literature, Biography, and Antiquities
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
Mont St. Michel. In that case William the Conqueror or his half-brother
Robert would only have restored the Cornish priory to its rightful owners,
the monks of Mont St. Michel, who had well deserved the gratitude of the
Conqueror by supplying him after the Conquest with six ships and a number
of monks, destined to assist in the restoration of ecclesiastical
discipline in England. After that time the Cornish priory shared the fate
of other so-called alien priories or cells. The prior was bound to visit
in person or by proxy the mother-house every year, and to pay sixteen
marks of silver as an acknowledgment of dependence. Whenever a war broke
out between England and France, the foreign priories were seized, though
some, and among them the priory of St. Michael’s Mount obtained in time a
distinct corporate character, and during the reigns of Henry IV. and Henry
V. were exempted from seizure during war.
Under these circumstances we can well understand how in the minds of the
monks, who spent their lives partly in the mother-house, partly in its
dependencies, there was no very clear perception of any difference between
the founders, benefactors, and patrons of these twin establishments. A
monk brought up at Mont St. Michel would repeat as an old man the legends
he had heard about St. Michel and Bishop Autbert, even though he was
ending his days in the priory of the Cornish Mount. Relics and books would
likewise travel from one place to the other, and a charter originally
belonging to the one might afterwards form part of the archives of another
house.
After these preliminary remarks, let us look again at the memoranda which
William of Worcester made at St. Michael’s Mount, and it will appear that
what we anticipated has actually happened, and that a book originally
belonging to Mont St. Michel in Normandy, and containing the early history
of that monastery, was transferred (either in the original or in a copy)
to Cornwall, and there used by William of Worcester in the belief that it
contained the early history of the Cornish Mount and the Cornish priory.
The Memorandum of William of Worcester runs thus: “Apparicio Sancti
Michaelis in monte Tumba, antea vocata le Hore-rok in the wodd; et fuerunt
tam boscus quarn prata et terra arabilis inter dictum montem et insulas
Syllye, et fuerunt 140 ecclesias parochiales inter istum montem et Sylly
submersse.
“Prima apparicio Sancti Michaelis in monte Gorgon in regno Apuliae fuit
anno Christi 391. Secunda apparicio fuit circa annum domini 710 in Tumba
in Cornubia juxta mare.
“Tertia apparicio Romæ fuit; tempore Gregorii papæ legitur accidisse: nam
tempore magnæ pestilenciæ, etc.
“Quarta apparicio fuit in ierarchiis nostrorum angelorum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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