It was with a dream of Saint Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, to whom Saint Michael appeared three times in 708 that it all began. In 966, the Benedictines settled there at the request of the Duke of Normandy. Very quickly, the abbey became a major place of pilgrimage for the Christian West but also a center of medieval culture where a large number of manuscripts were produced, preserved and studied. Mont-Saint-Michel took the nickname City of Books. Both a political and an intellectual crossroads, the abbey has been visited over the centuries by a large number of pilgrims, including several kings of France and England.