There was a time when people whole-heartedly believed in miracles. A time when they thought that visiting a religious relic, saying prayers in a certain church or drinking from a sacred well would bring them what they so desperately needed, whether that was good health, fertility or salvation. St Michael’s Mount was one of those places of pilgrimage for hundreds of years and for a short time in the 13th century a number of miracles were said to have occurred there.

A Hallowed Isle

St Michael’s Mount is at the heart of many Cornish myths and legends. From the archangel it is named after and the star-crossed lovers, Tristan and Isolde, to the giant Cormoran and the idea that it was the ancient Roman tin-trading ‘Isle of Ictis’ mentioned by chroniclers such as Pliny the Elder, so many tales have been told about this beautiful island.

One of the earliest stories connected to the Mount, and the reason that a religious community was formed there, is that in 495AD it was visited by the Archangel St Michael.

The saint was spotted by some local fishermen standing on a rocky ledge on the west side of the island, a place that became known as St Michael’s Chair.

It’s unclear when the island’s Cornish name, Carreck Los yn Cos (meaning ‘grey rock in the woods’, referring to when it was a rocky outcrop surrounded by trees before sea levels rose), fell out of common usage. But at some point it was re-named after the angel and in 1135 the first religious community settled on ‘the Mount of St Michael’ and the first church was built.

The Benedictine Priory was established by Bernard of le Bec, Abbot of Mont St Michel in Normandy, our Cornish Mount’s twin and the church on the Mount was consecrated by the Bishop of Exeter in 1144. At that time the island was occupied by an Abbot and 12 monks.

But it is that long standing connection with the Normandy religious community that has gifted us the tales of the miracles that occurred on St Michael’s Mount in the 13th century.

A Place of Pilgrimage

"Who knows not St Michael's Mount and chair
The Pilgrim's vaunt
Both land and island twice a day
Both fort and port of haunt."
Richard Carew, 1602.

For centuries the faithful had made their way to St Michael’s Mount. It was one of the most important places of pilgrimage in England, particularly during the Middle Ages, and it is thought that the route though Cornwall would zig-zagged to include many chapels and Holy Wells along the way, places that the pilgrims could stop, rest and pray.

The last chapel before the Mount that they could visit on their journey, somewhere that they could wait for the tide to fall so that they could make their final crossing over to the island, was the little church that once stood close to the shore at Marazion.

The church, which huddled on the rocky outcrop still known as Chapel Rock, was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and was pulled down by Royalist troops during the Civil War in 1645.

As well as passing this little chapel on their arrival to the Mount pilgrims would also have been guided by an enormous cross. According to the archaeologist Peter Herring a large granite cross base with a rectangular socket can still be seen about two-thirds of the way across the causeway to the island. He writes:

“The cross it held would have been huge but it was apparently swept away in the 18th century.

Peter Herring, An Archaeological Evaluation of St Michael’s Mount, 1993

Writing in his Lives of Saints compiled in the 16th century Nicholas Roscarrock says that the Mount was a place of pilgrimage “by at least the 12th century when claims were made that pilgrims qualified for the remission of a third of their penances.”

This ‘remission of penances’ was also known as ‘Indulgence’, it was the idea in the early Catholic church that by performing certain actions, such as doing ‘good works’, repeating a specific prayer or visiting a particular holy place you could be forgiven some of your sins and therefore secure a smoother route into heaven.

A visit to St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall could wipe away 30% of your sins.

Pilgrimages to the Mount continued to be popular into the Reformation in the early 16th century and, according to Nicholas Orme in his essay about St Michael in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall (1986), monetary bequests to the religious community there could still be found in Cornish wills up until around 1550. Local people, and the faithful from much further afield, truly believed in the power of this place.

St Michael’s Chair & a Saintly Jaw-Bone

As mentioned by Carew in his poem above, a focal point of any pilgrimage to the Mount was St Michael’s Chair. Carew described it as a “bad seat and a craggy place” that was difficult and dangerous to reach. In his archaeological survey of the island published in 1993 Peter Herring describes it as a “large precariously balanced block of granite” towards the western extremity of the Mount.

“Many pilgrims completed their religious devotions at the Mount by climbing to the famous St Michael’s Chair, thereby adding difficulty and danger to ceremony . . . Perhaps later the moor-stone lantern on the top of the church tower was constructed by the monks to become an alternative seat for St Michael’s Chair . . . Pilgrims were emboldened by faith to climb onto this terrifying seat projecting over the battlements on the top of the church tower and hanging over a precipice of some hundred feet in depth.”

John St Aubyn, St Michael’s Mount – An illustrated history, 1978

Beyond St Michael’s Chair, another reason to make the long journey to Cornwall was to pray beside one of the holy relics once held in the church.

These included the jaw-bone of St Appolonia of Alexandria, a virgin martyr also known as ‘the Catholic Tooth Fairy’. This lady was put to death when she refused to worship a pagan idol in the city of Alexandria in Eygpt. Before her death all her teeth were broken or pulled out and she was considered the patron saint of toothaches.

And then of course, there was the chance of a miracle cure . . .

The Miracles

In the library of Avranches, in Normandy in France there is an extraordinary book. Part of what remains of the library that was once held on Mont St Michel it is the original chronicle written by Abbot Robert of Torigni and presented to King Henry II in 1184.

Inserted into this nearly 900 years old book are three extra pages that appear to have been written in 13th century.

These extra pages are thought to have been inscribed by a monk from St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall visiting the twin monastery at Mont St Michel.

This visit would have been an annual occurrence as the two religious communities remained closely connected until the 15th century and a representative from Cornish priory was known to travel to France each year, either on the Feast of St Aubert (18 June) or at Michaelmas.

It was during one of those visits that the un-named monk felt compelled to record certain events that had happened in Cornwall – four miracles on the Mount!

The first occurred on 14th May 1262. A woman called Christina who was visiting St Michael’s Mount from Glastonbury “for the sake of prayer and pilgrimage” miraculously recovered “the sight of her closed eyes” after being blind for about six years. She had been attending High Mass on the Mount and the miracle was witnessed by “many monks and others”.

The next miracle roughly a month later happened to a local woman, Matilda of Lanisley, present-day Gulval, who had been unconscious for “two days and two nights” and had lost “the power of speech”. She had been brought to the Mount by her parents on 11th June 1262 and by the power of prayer, “the prayers of the Captain of the Heavenly Chivalry”, she woke up and was able to speak again. The author of the account notes that he was there when this happened.

Alice, the subject of the third miracle, arrived at the Mount in January the following year. A young girl who had been born in Wales but had travelled from Herefordshire, she had:

“for seven years past been deprived of the sight of her eyes, coming with the greatest devotion to the said church for the sake of prayer and pilgrimage on the 29th of January, before the rising of the sun, persevering in the greatest faith, by the prayers of the Blessed Archangel Michael recovered miraculously the sight of her closed eyes.”

The details of the fourth miracle, which presumably happened around the same time, are more of a mystery. Although the writer refers to “the fourth miracle, a certain dumb man” it appears that the particulars of the case had been noted down on another page, which has subsequently been lost. We can assume however that a male pilgrim, unable to use his voice for some reason, had miraculously regained the power of speech.

The Rev. G. H. Doble, the vicar of Wendron, who wrote about these miracles in 1934 concluded that St Michael’s Mount would have kept “a register of cures”, a book in which the monks would have recorded all the miracles that had taken place and that those noted in Abbot Robert’s Chronicle were just an extract from this larger volume.

Whether this is the case or not is impossible to know all these centuries later as presumably the volume, if it existed, has long since been lost or destroyed, but it seems unlikely that there would have been this one-off flurry of miracles in 1262-1263 and no others during the hundreds of years that pilgrims were making their way to the island.

Without sounding too cynical, the news of these miracles, and any others that occurred, would have been valuable propaganda for the monks on the Mount, elevating the site’s importance and attracting more pilgrims. More pilgrims brought more alms and this meant a steady, healthy income for the Priory.

Final Thoughts

Whether you believe in miracles or not, there can be little doubt that St Michael’s Mount is a magical place. It’s setting alone, the tiny tidal island topped up a turreted castle, is like something out of a fairy tale but add to that superficial beauty the depth of mystery, faith, history, myth and belief connected to it and it is little wonder that so many still make a pilgrimage across that causeway each year.

Further Reading:

A Cornish Crusader & a fragment of the True Cross, St Grada Church

The Keigwin Arms, Mousehole – ghosts, smuggling & bad behaviour!

Newlyn: The Last Port for the Mayflower

Discover the Giant’s Heart at St Michael’s Mount

Walking Opportunities

Circular walks around Mounts Bay

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