Mount Saint Michel part II – The skull with a hole

After visiting Mount Saint-Michel in France, my daughter Clara and I were impressed by the fantastic tales we had heard there.

Perhaps the most fantastic of all is the legend of Saint Aubert, an 8th-century bishop of the nearby village of Avranches, a man so pious and religious that he was believed to  perform miracles.

Legend tells that Aubert saw Archangel Michael in a dream, and that the angel asked him to build a church in his name in nearby Mont Tombe. The problem was,  Mont Tombe was a hill so steep that only sheep grazed there, and Aubert decided to ignore the dream.

But the dream came a second time, and a third. By then the angel was so angry at Aubert, that he pushed the bishop’s forehead with his finger, burning a hole in it – a hole that was visible when the priest woke up, and until the day he died.

Aubert ended up building an oratory on Mont Tombe, later known as Mount Saint-Michel, one of Europe’s main pilgrimage centers in the Middle Ages. Still one of France’s most popular landmarks – three million people visit it annually – Mont Saint Michel is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In France, legend and history are woven together, and the tale of bishop Aubert – later called Saint Aubert – is no exception. What was peculiar about it  was that there was apparently physical evidence to the legend: the priest’s skull, which was displayed in a church called Saint-Gervais d’Avraches, in a town not far from Mont Saint-Michel. I was curious to check it out.

As history goes, bishop Aubert died in the year 720 AD, after performing and witnessing many miracles in Mont Saint-Michel. He was canonized by the Catholic church, and his remains were treated with great honor, before the funeral in the church on top of the mount. His body remained buried there until the French Revolution of 1789, when the shrine was looted – after more than 1000 years of expansion and development by the Benedictine priests. In 1792, a doctor saved the skull of Saint Aubert, which pilgrims had venerated for 8 centuries. Finally, in 1856, the skull – the only remaining relic of the saint – was transferred to the Saint-Gervaise church, in Avranches.

We arrived in Avranches less than 20 minutes after leaving Les Terraces Poulard, our hotel in Mount Saint-Michel. Avranches is a small French town of no particular distinction, and finding Saint-Gervaise church was easy. We parked right in front of it, and read the sign at the entrance saying that the Relic – as Saint Aubert’s skull is called – is only on display certain days of the week. We were there on the wrong day.

Disappointed but not deterred, we entered the church. It was dark, just faintly illuminated by candles lit here and there, in front of images of saints. The silence was heavy, we could hear the sound of our steps. Walking towards an illuminated room in the back, we saw a man staring at a crystal glass enclosure. To our surprise, contradicting the information on the sign outside, the Relic room was open, and we were right in it!

The man was the only other person in the whole church. He was so absorbed in looking at the glass enclosure that he didn’t notice us. I looked towards the direction of what he was staring at, and saw – to my astonishment – a skull with a hole right on its forehead! The famous skull the of the legend was right there, in front of us. Could this be real? I was confused. We stayed there for a few minutes, inspecting the Relic from all angles. I circled it few times, to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, and took a picture.

Walking out of the room, we saw the same man on his way out. He told us he was English, and had come to Avranches only to see the Relic. I asked if he thought it was real. “Who knows,” he replied. “It looked real to me,” he added. “What do you think?” he asked me. I could not answer, I didn’t know what to say.

But I was sure I had just seen a human skull with a hole in its forehead. Was it Saint Aubert’s? I will never know for sure; no one can. But after two days hearing fantastical tales, I was inclined to believe it.

Clara and I left the church in a quiet mood. Leaving Avranches behind, driving on the well-maintained French highway back to our vacation home in Roscoff, I could not help thinking of a famous Shakespeare’s quote_ from Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Maybe that was the answer to the Englishman’s question– and to my doubts