the rock; so that
three messengers, who had been dispatched to Mount Garganus, thence to
bring a portion of red cloth, the gift of St. Michael, together with a
fragment of the stone on which he himself had sate, found on their
return the aspect of things so changed, that "they thought they must
have entered into a new world."

History, from this period, assumes a character of comparative
authenticity. The Norman conquest threatened for awhile the extinction
of Christianity: the baptism of Rollo, rekindling its dying embers, made
them blaze forth with a light and warmth unknown before. The duke
himself, on the fourth day after he had presented himself at the holy
font, endowed the monastery of St. Michael, then styled "_ecclesiam in
periculo maris supra montem positam_."--No further mention occurs of the
convent, during the reign of this monarch, or of his son, William
Longue-Epee; but their immediate successor, Richard I. amply atoned for
any neglect on their part. He built, according to Dudo of St. Quentin, a
church of wondrous size, together with spacious buildings, for a body of
monks of the Benedictine order, whom he established there in 988,
displacing the regular canons, whose irregular lives had been the
subject of much scandal. This munificence on the part of Richard, has
even caused him to be regarded by some writers as the founder of the
convent.--His son and successor, of the same name, selected St.
Michael's Mount, as the favored spot, where, in the beginning of his
reign, he received the hand of the fair Judith, sister to Geoffrey, one
of the principal counts of Brittany. An opportunity was almost
immediately afterwards afforded him of testifying at once his liberality
and his devotion, as well as his love; for, on the first year of the
eleventh century, the church, which had then been completed only five
years, was burned to the ground. The prince, however, appears to have
been somewhat tardy on the occasion; no attempt was made towards
replacing the loss, till Hildebert II. succeeded as abbot. During his
prelacy, in 1022, the foundations of a new church were laid, upon a
still more extensive scale.--Twenty-six years more were suffered to
elapse, and the abbatial mitre had adorned the brows of four successive
abbots, when Ralph de Beaumont witnessed the completion of the work.

The church then built is expressly stated by the authors of the _Gallia
Christiana_, to be the same as was in existence at the ti