Seeing an "old" city reconstructed after a destructive battle in August of 1944, a historian has to wonder: is an attempt at reproduction of what was destroyed in the war and act of public forgetting, a denial of what had happened? Would it not have been wiser simply to use modern steel and masonry construction and build a new old St.-Malo? Five minutes into a walk within the ramparts, it is obvious that the Malouines made the right decision: the city is beautifully seductive.
Yet the real joy of the day is, of course, the stunning agglomerated edifice of Mont St.-Michel. What one sees is shocking: layer upon layer of buildings upon which construction commenced in the ninth century, Romanesque style succeeded by Gothic, and even a treadmill in which prisoners were placed after 1789 in order to move materials up the high escarpment. Great figures of French history, from Francis I in 1532 to the revolutionaries Barbes and Blanqui in the nineteenth century had been welcomed or imprisoned here.
As impressive as the site is, one suspects that its location on a granite outcropping in the broad tidal flats invited mystics long before even the Roman era and indeed, we now know from archeological evidence that the history of the site began long before the first century CE.
Neolithic peoples also appreciated the magic of the place, setting up their own places for their now long-forgotten religious rites. We know as well that St.-Michel as a religious warrior succeeded another, pagan warrior-"saint." The historian living in the contemporary world insists on evidence, but the senses of the spirit tell us that this place has had deep religious significance for time immemorial, and the amazing structures that survive testify to something very deep in the human character.
