4              MONT-SAINT MICHEL AND  CHARTRES
are still said to be, stood more fully in the centre of the world's move-
ment than our English descendants ever did. We were a part, and a
great part, of the Church, of France, and of Europe. The Leos and
Gregories of the tenth and eleventh centuries leaned on us in their
great struggle for reform. Our Duke Richard-Sans-Peur, in 966,
turned the old canons out of the Mount in order to bring here the
highest influence of the time, the Benedictine monks of Monte Cas-
sino. Richard II, grandfather of William the Conqueror, began this
Abbey Church in 1020, and helped Abbot Hildebert to build it. When
William the Conqueror in 1066 set out to conquer England, Pope
Alexander II stood behind him and blessed his banner. From that
moment our Norman Dukes cast the Kings of France into the shade.
Our activity was not limited to northern Europe, or even confined by
Anjou and Gascony. When we stop at Coutances, we will drive out to
Hauteville to see where Tancred came from, whose sons Robert and
Roger were conquering Naples and Sicily at the time when the Abbey
Church was building on the Mount. Normans were everywhere in
1066, and everywhere in the lead of their age. We were a serious race.
If you want other proof of it, besides our record in war and in politics,
you have only to look at our art. Religious art is the measure of
human depth and sincerity; any triviality, any weakness, cries aloud.
If this church on the Mount is not proof enough of Norman character,
we will stop at Coutances for a wider view. Then we will go to Caen
and Bayeux. From there, it would almost be worth our while to leap
at once to Palermo. It was in the year 1131 or thereabouts that Roger
began the Cathedral at Cefalu and the Chapel Royal at Palermo ; it was
about the year 1174 that his grandson William began the Cathedral of
Monreale. No art — either Greek or Byzantine, Italian or Arab — has
ever created two religious types so beautiful, so serious, so impress-
ive, and yet so different, as Mont-Saint-Michel watching over its
northern ocean, and Monreale, looking down over its forests of orange
and lemon, on Palermo and the Sicilian seas.